Handwriting: John G. Whittier
And what is love of freedom but the mainspring of Democracy? And what is Democracy but the rallying-cry of the age, the one word of the present, the one word of the future, the word of all words, and the white, electric beacon-light of modern life?
At the apex of modern Democracy stands Jesus of Nazareth; at its base stand the poets and heroes of freedom of the past hundred years. Christian Democracy has had its revolutions, its religious ferments and revolts, and its emancipations of slaves. Quakerism is one of its outcomes. Democracy produced George Fox; George Fox produced Quakerism; Quakerism produced Whittier; Whittier helped destroy slavery. He could not help doing so, for with slavery both Democracy and Quakerism are incompatible. Whittier fought slavery as a Quaker, he has lived as a Quaker, and written as a Quaker; he has never fully emancipated himself from the shackles of the sect. To understand him, therefore, we must understand his religion.
The principles of the sect are all summed up in the phrases Freedom and the Inner Light. Historically considered, Quakerism is a product of the ferment that followed the civil war in England two centuries ago. Considered abstractly, or as a congeries of principles, it has a sociological and a philosophical root, both of these running back into the great tap-root, love of freedom, whose iron-tough, writhen fibres enwrap the dark foundation rocks of human nature itself.
Sociologically speaking, Quakerism is pure democracy, an exaltation of the majesty of the individual and of the mass of the people. It is the pure precipitate of Christianity. It is a protest against the hypocrisy, formalism, tyranny, of priestcraft, king-craft, and aristocracy.
Philosophically, its theory of the Inner Light is identical with the doctrine of idealism or innate ideas, held by Descartes, Fichte, Schelling, Cousin. It means individualism, a return to the primal sanities of the soul. "I think, therefore I am." My thinking soul is the ultimate source of ideas and truth. In that serene holy of holies full-grown ideas leap into being,—subjective, a priori, needing no sense-perception for their genesis.
But Transcendentalism differed from Quakerism in this: the former held that the illumination of the mind was a natural process; but Quakerism maintains that it is a supernatural process, the work of the "Holy Ghost." And herein Quakerism is inferior to Transcendentalism. But it is superior to it in that it does not believe in the infallibility of individual intuitions, but considers the true criterion of truth to be the universal reason, the "consensus of the competent." Yet the great danger that pertains to all moonshiny, or subjective, systems of philosophy is that their individualism will spindle out into wild extravagances of theory, and foolish eccentricities of manner and dress; and we shall find that, practically, Quakerism has as Quixotic a record as Transcendentalism. To say that both systems have performed noble and indispensable service in the development of mind is but to utter a truism.
We may now consider a little more closely the peculiarities of doctrine and life which characterize the Friends. The doctrine of the Inner Light, or pure spirituality, resulted in such tenets as these: the freedom of conscience; the soul the fountain of all truth, worthlessness of tradition and unsanctified learning; the conscience or voice within the judge of the Bible or Written Word; disbelief in witchcraft, ghosts, and other superstitions; love of friends and enemies, the potency of moral suasion, moral ideas, and as a consequence the wickedness of war, and a belief in human progress as the result of peaceable industry; universal enfranchisement, every man and woman may be enlightened by the Inner Light,—hence equality of privilege, no distinction between clergy or laity or between sex and sex,—the right of woman to develop her entire nature as she sees fit. In the principles which define the attitude of the Quaker toward social conventions, we find a queer jumble of the doctrines of primitive Christianity with the ideas of individual independence innate in the Germanic mind, and especially in the popular mind.[20] The Christian gospel of love forbids the Quakers to countenance war, capital punishment, imprisonment for debt, slavery, suppressment of the right of free speech and the right of petition. Their doctrine of equality in virtue of spiritual illumination forbids them to remove their hats in presence of any human being, even a king; leads them to avoid the use of the plural "you," as savoring of man-worship, and to refuse to employ a hired priesthood. Their doctrine of pure spirituality is inconsistent with sacerdotal rites and mummeries, such as baptism, the eucharist, forms of common prayer, etc. Music, poetry, painting, and dancing also have a worldly savor and tend to distract the mind from its spiritual life. So do rich and gaudy robes: we must therefore have simplicity of dress. Hear William Penn on this subject:[21]—
"I say, if sin brought the first coat, poor Adam's offspring have little reason to be proud or curious in their clothes.... It is all one as if a man who had lost his nose by a scandalous distemper, should take pains to set out a false one, in such shape and splendor as should give the greater occasion for all to gaze upon him; as if he would tell them he had lost his nose, for fear they would think he had not. But would a wise man be in love with a false nose, though ever so rich, and however finely made?"
A natural corollary of the Friends' doctrine of inward supernatural illumination is their habit of silent worship, or silent waiting.[22] It is probable that this feature of their religious gatherings has done much to cultivate that peculiar tranquillity of demeanor which distinguishes them.[23] They meet the burdens, bereavements, and disappointments of life with a placid equanimity in strong antithesis to the often passionate grief and rebellion of other classes of religious people. Finally, we may add to the list of their characteristics their great moral sincerity. "With calm resoluteness they tell you your faults face to face, and without exciting your ill-will."
The objections to the Quakerism of our day are that it is retractile, stationary, negative; it is selfish, narrow, ascetic, tame; it has no iron in its blood; it rarely adds anything to the world's thought. The Quakers are a hopelessly antiquated sect, a dying branch almost wholly severed from connection with the living forces of the tree of modern society. There are, it is true, a goodly number of liberal Quakers, who, in discarding the peculiar costume of the time of Charles II., which many of them even yet wear, have also thrown off the intellectual mummy-robes of the sect. Many adopt the tenets of Unitarianism, or make that religious body the stepping-stone to complete emancipation from an obsolete system of thought. But the mass of them are immovable. They have been characterized substantially in the following words by Mr. A. M. Powell, himself a Quaker by birth, and an unwilling witness to the faults of a system of doctrines in which he sees much to admire:—
"In its merely sectarian aspect, Quakerism is as uninteresting, narrow, timid, selfish, and conservative as is mere sectarianism under any other name. The Quakers have little comprehension of the meaning of Quakerism beyond a blind observance of the peculiarities of dress and speech and the formality of the Meeting. They cling to the now meaningless protests of the past. They are inaccessible to new conceptions of truth. They have dishonored the important fundamental principle [of the Inner Light] and tarnished the Society's good name by subordinating it to narrow views of religion, to commercial selfishness, and to the prevalent palsying conservatism of the outside world."[24]
In all that is said in these pages by way of criticism of the Quakers, reference is had solely to their doctrines as a system of thought. Of their sweet and beautiful lives it is hardly necessary to speak at length. Volumes might be filled with instances of their large-hearted benevolence and personal self-sacrifice in care for others. The loveliness of their lives is like a beautiful perfume in the society in which they move. As you see the Quaker women of Philadelphia, with their pure, tranquil faces, and plain, immaculate dress, moving about among the greedy and vile-mannered non-Quaker canaille of that democratic city, they seem like Christian and Faithful amid the crowds of Vanity Fair. Their faces are like a benediction, and you thank heaven for them. The liberal Friends in America have many great and noble names on their roll of honor. And surely a sect that has produced such characters as Lucretia Mott, John Bright, and John G. Whittier, must win our intellectual respect. But it is only because these persons, like Milton, were in most respects above their sect that we admire them. There are proofs manifold, however, throughout the prose and poetry of Whittier that he has nominally remained within the pale of Quakerism all his days. Doubtless such a course was essential to the very existence in him of poetic inspiration. His genius is wholly lyrical. A song or lyric is the outgushing of pure emotion. Especially in the case of the religious and ethical lyrist is faith life, and doubt death. Doubt, in Whittier's case, would have meant the cessation of his songs. To break away entirely from the faith of his fathers would have chilled his inspiration. He has not, it is true, escaped the conflict with doubt. As we shall see, no man has had a severer struggle to reconcile his faith with the terror and mystery of life. But, although his religious views have been liberalized by science, yet he has never ceased to retain a hearty sympathy with, and belief in, the Quaker principles of the Inner Light, silent waiting, etc.
That he has remained within the pale of Quakerism has been an injury to him as well as a help. It makes him obtrude his sectarianism too frequently, especially in his prose writings. By the very nature of the creed, he must either be blind to its faults, or constantly put on the defensive against the least assault, from whatever quarter it may come. When he dons the garb of the sectary, he naturally becomes weakened, and loses his chief charm. We see then that he is a man hampered by a creed which forbids a catholic sympathy with human nature. He is shut up in the narrow field of sectarian morals and religion. He cannot, for example, enter, by historical imagination, into poetical sympathy with the gorgeous ritual and dreamy beauty of a European cathedral service. And yet so pure, gentle, and sweet is his nature that it is hard to censure him for this peculiarity. It is regret rather than censure that we feel, regret that he has been so bound by circumstances that prevented his breaking wholly away from hampering limitations, and to be always, what he so often is, the strong and sweet-voiced spokesman of the heart of humanity.
Let us hear his gentle confessions of faith. In the autobiographical poem, "My Namesake," we read:—
"He worshipped as his fathers did,
And kept the faith of childish days,
And, howsoe'er he strayed or slid,
He loved the good old ways.
The simple tastes, the kindly traits,
The tranquil air, and gentle speech,
The silence of the soul that waits
For more than man to teach."
In "The Meeting" he has given us an "Apologia pro Vita Sua,"—a defence of his religious habits. He says he is accustomed to meet with the Friends twice a week in the little "Meeting" at Amesbury, chiefly for two reasons: first, because in the silent, unadorned house, with "pine-laid floor," his religious communings are not distracted by outward things as they would be if he worshipped always amid the solitudes of nature; and, secondly, he finds in "The Meeting" a heart-solace in the memories of dear ones passed away, who once sat by his side there. He says, in reference to the Quaker service:—
"I ask no organ's soulless breath
To drone the themes of life and death,
No altar candle-lit by day,
No ornate wordsman's rhetoric-play,
No cool philosophy to teach
Its bland audacities of speech,
* * * *
No pulpit hammered by the fist
Of loud-asserting dogmatist."
In "Memories" he says:—
"Thine the Genevan's sternest creed,
While answers to my spirit's need
The Derby dalesman's simple truth.
For thee, the priestly rite and prayer,
And holy day and solemn psalm;
For me, the silent reverence where
My brethren gather slow and calm."
There are two epochs in the religious or philosophical development of Whittier. The first—that of simple piety unclouded by doubt, the epoch of unhesitating acceptance of the popular mythology—seems to have lasted until about 1850, or the period of early Darwinism and Spencerianism,—the most momentous epoch in the religious history of the world. This pivotal point is very well marked by the publication, in 1853, of "The Chapel of the Hermits" and "Questions of Life." It is now that harrowing doubt begins, and restless striving to retain the faith amid new conditions and a vastly widened mental horizon. Transcendentalism, too, had just passed the noon meridian of its splendor. Emerson had written many of his exquisite philosophical poems, and Parker had blown his clear bugle-call to a higher religious life. It is evident that Whittier was—as, indeed, he could not help being—profoundly moved by the new spirit of the times.
With Transcendentalism he must have had large sympathy, owing to the similarity of its principles to those of Quakerism. And that he was profoundly agitated by the revelations of science his poetry shows. In "My Soul and I" (a poem remarkable for its searching subjective analysis), and in the poem "Follen," he had given expression to religious doubt, over which, as always in his case, faith was triumphant. But it is in "The Chapel of the Hermits" and succeeding poems that he first gave free and full utterance to the doubt and struggle of soul that was not his alone, but which was felt by all around him. In respect of doubt "My Soul and I" and "Questions of Life" resemble "Faust," as well as Tennyson's "Two Voices" and the "In Memoriam."
"Life's mystery wrapped him like a cloud;
He heard far voices mock his own,
The sweep of wings unseen, the loud,
Long roll of waves unknown.
The arrows of his straining sight
Fell quenched in darkness; priest and sage
Like lost guides calling left and right,
Perplexed his doubtful age.
Like childhood, listening for the sound
Of its dropped pebbles in the well,
All vainly down the dark profound
His brief-lined plummet fell."
My Namesake
The "Questions of Life" are such as these:—
"I am: but little more I know!
Whence came I? Whither do I go?
A centred self, which feels and is;
A cry between the silences."
"This conscious life,—is it the same
Which thrills the universal frame?"
"Do bird and blossom feel, like me,
Life's many-folded mystery,—
The wonder which it is To Be?
Or stand I severed and distinct,
From Nature's chain of life unlinked?"
Such questions as these he confesses himself unable to answer. He shrinks back terrified from the task. He will not dare to trifle with their bitter logic. He will take refuge in faith; he will trust the Unseen; let us cease foolish questioning, and live wisely and well our present lives. He comes out of the struggle purified and chastened, still holding by his faith in God and virtue. A good deal of the old Quakerism is gone,—the belief in hell, in the Messianic and atonement machinery, in local and special avatars, etc. Again and again, in his later poems, he asserts the humanity of Christ and the co-equal divinity of all men: see "Miriam," for example. His opinion about hell he embodies in the sweet little poem, "The Minister's Daughter," published in "The King's Missive." In short, his religion is a simple and trustful theism. But there is no evidence that he has ever incorporated into his mind the principles of the development-science,—the evolution of man, the correlation of forces, the development of the universe through its own inner divine potency; or, in fine, any of the unteleological, unanthropomorphic explanations of things which are necessitated by science, and admitted by advanced thinkers, both in and out of the Churches.
As witnesses to his trustful attitude, we may select such a cluster of stanzas as this:—
"Yet, sometimes glimpses on my sight,
Through present wrong, the eternal right;
And, step by step, since time began,
I see the steady gain of man;
That all of good the past hath had
Remains to make our own time glad,—
Our common daily life divine,
And every land a Palestine.
* * * * * *
Through the harsh noises of our day
A low, sweet prelude finds its way;
Through clouds of doubt, and creeds of fear,
A light is breaking calm and clear."
"Yet, in the maddening maze of things,
And tossed by storm and flood,
To one fixed stake my spirit clings;
I know that God is good!
* * * *
"I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care."
The Eternal Goodness.
"When on my day of life the night is falling,
And in the winds from unsunned spaces blown,
I hear far voices out of darkness calling
My feet to paths unknown,
Thou who hast made my home of life so pleasant,
Leave not its tenant when its walls decay;
O love divine, O Helper ever present,
Be Thou my strength and stay!"
At Last.
"Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways!
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise."
The Brewing of Soma.
But Whittier is as remarkable for his faith in man as for his faith in God. He is in the highest degree patriotic, American. He loves America because it is the land of freedom. It has been charged against him that he is no true American poet, but a Quaker poet. The American, it is said, is eager, aggressive, high-spirited, combative; the Quaker, subdued and phlegmatic. The American is loud and boastful and daring and reckless; the Quaker, cautious, timid, secretive, and frugal. This is undoubtedly true of the classes as types, but it is far from being true of Whittier personally. He has blood militant in him. He comes of Puritan as well as Quaker stock. The Greenleafs and the Batchelders were not Quakers. The reader will perhaps remember the Lieutenant Greenleaf, already mentioned, who fought through the entire Civil War in England.[25] But his writings alone furnish ample proof of his martial spirit. The man and the Quaker struggle within him for the mastery; and the man is, on the whole, triumphant. Whenever his Quakerism permits, he stands out a normal man and a genuine American. As Lowell says:—
"There is Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart
Strains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart,
And reveals the live Man still supreme and erect
Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect."
If anybody will take the trouble to glance over the complete works of Whittier, he or she will find that one of the predominant characteristics of his writings is their indigenous quality, their national spirit. Indeed, this is almost too notorious to need mention. He, if any one, merits the proud title of "A Representative American Poet." His whole soul is on fire with love of country. As in the case of Whitman, his country is his bride, and upon it he has showered all the affectional wealth of his nature. The Quaker may be too obtrusive in his prose writings, but it is not so in the greater and better portion of his poetry. When the rush and glow of genuine poetical inspiration seize him, he invariably rises in spirit far above the weltering and eddying dust-clouds of faction and sect into the serene atmosphere of genuine patriotism. Read his "Last Walk in Autumn," where he says:—
"Home of my heart! to me more fair
Than gay Versailles or Windsor's halls,
The painted, shingly town-house where
The freeman's vote for Freedom falls!"
Read his "Eve of Election":—
"Not lightly fall
Beyond recall
The written scrolls a breath can float;
The crowning fact,
The kingliest act
Of Freedom is the freeman's vote!"
Or take "After Election," a poem that cannot be read without a thrill of the nerves and a leaping of the heart. You have concentrated in that wild lyric burst the purest essence of democratic patriotism,—the trembling anxiety and yearning of a mother-heart. It is a poem celebrating a victory of peace with all the fiery energy of a war-ode (a significant fact that the advocates of gory war, as a source of poetic inspiration, would do well to ponder):—
"The day's sharp strife is ended now,
Our work is done, God knoweth how!
As on the thronged, unrestful town
The patience of the moon looks down,
I wait to hear, beside the wire,
The voices of its tongues of fire.
Slow, doubtful, faint, they seem at first:
Be strong, my heart, to know the worst!
Hark!—there the Alleghanies spoke;
That sound from lake and prairie broke,
That sunset gun of triumph rent
The silence of a continent!
That signal from Nebraska sprung,
This, from Nevada's mountain tongue!
Is that thy answer, strong and free,
O loyal heart of Tennessee?
What strange, glad voice is that which calls
From Wagner's grave and Sumter's walls?
From Mississippi's fountain-head
A sound as of the bison's tread!
There rustled freedom's Charter Oak!
In that wild burst the Ozarks spoke!
Cheer answers cheer from rise to set
Of sun. We have a country yet!"
To sum up now our analysis of the poet's character. We have seen that the central trait of his mind is love of freedom. (Even his religion, which is so profound an element in his nature, and so all-pervasive in his writings, will be found, on a deep analysis, to be a yearning for freedom from the trappings of sense and time, in order to attain to a spiritual union with the Infinite.) This love of freedom, this hatred of oppression, intensified by persecution, both ancestral and personal, stimulated by contact with Puritan democracy, as well as by the New England Transcendental movement, and flowering out luxuriantly in the long struggle against slavery,—this noble sentiment, and that long self-sacrificing personal warfare in behalf of the oppressed, form the true glory of Whittier's character. Shy, timid, almost an invalid, having a nervous horror of mobs and personal indignities, he yet forgot himself in his love of Man, overcame and underwent,—suffered social martyrdom for a quarter of a century, never flinching, never holding his peace for bread's sake or fame's sake, not stopping to count the cost, taking his life in his hand, and never ceasing to express his high-born soul in burning invective and scathing satire against the oppressor, or in words of lofty hope and cheer for the suffering idealist and lover of humanity, whoever and wherever he was. Whittier is a hero as well as a poet. He will be known to posterity by a few exquisite poems, but chiefly by his moral heroism and patriotism. As a thinker and a poet he belongs, with Bryant and Longfellow, to the pre-scientific age. The poetry of the future (of the new era of self-consciousness) will necessarily differ widely from that of the first half of this century. It will not be distinctively the poetry of Wordsworth, or Cowper, or Byron, or Longfellow, or Whittier. When the present materialistic and realistic temper of mind disappears from literature, and really noble ideal poetry returns, it will be vast in its scope and range, robust in its philosophy, unfettered by petty rhymes and classicisms, but powerfully rhythmic and harmonious. The writings of Shakspere, Goethe, Jean Paul, Hugo, Tennyson, Whitman, and Emerson are the magnificent proem to it. It will be built upon a scientific and religious cosmism. It will not discuss Apollo and Luna and Neptune, and the nymphs and muses, but will draw its imagery from the heaven-staining red-flames of the sun, the gulfs of space, the miracles of organic and inorganic life, and human society. It will draw its inspiration not more from the storied past than from the storied future foreseen by its prophetic eye. It will idealize human life and deify nature. It will fall in the era of imagination. (After it will come another age of criticism.) It will fall in the age of splendid democracies. And in that age men will look back with veneration, not so much, perhaps, to the scholar-poets as to the hero-poets, like Whittier, who put faith in the rights of man and woman, who did believe in divine democracy, and were not ashamed of it, but nursed it patiently through its puling infancy, well assured of its undying grandeur when it should come to man's estate.
We subjoin fittingly to this chapter a characteristic letter of Mr. Whittier's, in which he speaks lovingly of Robert Burns, that other poet of freedom and independence of thought for all men.
At the Burns festival in Washington, 1869, the following letter from John G. Whittier was read:
"Amesbury, 1st month, 18th day, 1869.
"Dear Friend,—I thank the club represented by thee for remembering me on the occasion of its annual festival. Though I have never been able to trace my ancestry to the Land o' Cakes, I have—and I know it is saying a great deal—a Scotchman's love for the poet whose fame deepens and broadens with years. The world has never known a truer singer. We may criticise his rustic verse and compare his brief and simple lyrics with the works of men of longer scrolls and loftier lyres; but after rendering to Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning the homage which the intellect owes to genius, we turn to Burns, if not with awe and reverence, [yet] with a feeling of personal interest and affection. We admire others; we love him. As the day of his birth comes round, I take down his well-worn volume in grateful commemoration, and feel that I am communing with one whom living I could have loved as much for his true manhood and native nobility of soul as for those wonderful songs of his which shall sing themselves forever.
"They know little of Burns who regard him as an aimless versifier—'the idle singer of an idle lay.' Pharisees in the Church, and oppressors in the State, knew better than this. They felt those immortal sarcasms which did not die with the utterer, but lived on to work out the divine commission of Providence. In the shout of enfranchised millions, as they lift the untitled Quaker of Rochdale into the British Cabinet, I seem to hear the voice of the Ayrshire poet:—
"'For a' that and a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that;
That man to man the world o'er
Shall brothers be for a' that.'"With hearty sympathy and kind greetings for the Burns Club of Washington,
"I am, very truly, thy friend,
"John G. Whittier."