TO MRS. S. I. SPALDING.
Beverly, Mass., June 3, 1891.
My dear Friend,—I do not think the weather would have kept me here quite, last week, but I also have had to call myself half-sick. I think it must be the “grippe” or the effect of some subtle seizure of that fiend, for I am unaccountably good-for-nothing, in many ways. I had to lie still all last Sunday. I must go to Boston next Sunday, for it is the Communion Service, which has become very dear to me, and more so now.
Perhaps I will try again this week coming to you on Friday and going to Amesbury on Saturday for a call; thence to Boston. If you should hear that Mr. Whittier had gone to Portland (he is expected there next week) perhaps you will let me know by Friday morning.
I should prefer coming to see you when I could stay over Sunday. But while Mr. Brooks preaches I want to improve every chance of hearing him. I thought he would not be permitted to leave Trinity Church—I believe that he was himself surprised at his own nomination. But he would have fallen in the harness there: no man could do forever the superhuman work he was doing, and the collapse might have been sudden. I have seen him within a week or two, and he looks at the new work with all the enthusiasm of a boy. The change may prolong his strength and usefulness; for nothing but change of work would be rest to him.
The little side of Episcopacy is making itself manifest, as it must, when so great a man is brought into contrast with mere systematizers, petty planners of the Kingdom which is infinite, so infinite that it absorbs them, as the atmosphere does motes and insects.
Yours with love,
Lucy Larcom.
September 13, 1891. Summit of Moosilauke. I have been here three weeks yesterday, with rainy or cloudy weather most of the time, and a few days of perfect beauty. It has been warm weather, never cold enough for winter clothing, but heavy and damp sometimes. In every bright interval I have been out, half a dozen times out in the sunrise alone (one of the best things up here). The sunrises in which the sun was not visible were loveliest; when the rays reached across from under a cloud, and over the lower mists, to the distant mountains in the south, penciling them with soft rose and pearl tints. The finest sunrise was when the sunbeams shone down from under a dark purple cloud on a foamy sea of white mist that covered the landscape, touching its upper surface with the splendor we usually see from below. There was a sunset the night before, with a similar effect, just as a storm was rolling away. There has been less variety in the phases of cloud-beauty than usual.
Yesterday was my best day of all. I walked over to the East Peak, and looked down into the great ravine, where the shadow of our mountain was slowly ascending the opposite slopes. The higher peaks behind shone in soft purple through the rosy mist, and as I stopped at a crest half-way to the Peak, they grew so beautiful in their loneliness, uplifted from sombre depths to luminous height, and brought to my thoughts such heavenly-human associations, of the great ones known and unknown, who have glorified my life and uplifted it into spiritual splendor, that my eyes were again and again filled with warm, happy tears. God has been very good to me in these latter years, in bringing me to the mountains and giving me friends. It is the utter loneliness that I sometimes have with nature, up here, that makes the place so delightful to me. The people are only incidental; only now and then one who loves the mountains in my way, or in a better way, gives them a new attraction.
The mountains are more human to me than any other exhibition of inorganic nature; they are indeed presences. There must be something like them in heaven.
I go down to-morrow, to hotel-life for a week or so, but the peace and strength of the hills will remain in my heart.
Beverly, October 17, 1891. These last three weeks,—these last three days, especially,—have been so full! I have lived more in them, in the very deepest part of my life, than in as many years, often.
The consecration of a bishop whose ministry has been more to my spiritual life than that of any other minister; the joy of knowing him as a friend; the sorrow of losing him as a minister; the thankfulness that I may be counted in as one of his people still, to work in his larger field with him; the certainty that God has called him to do more than ever for the coming of His Kingdom: it is a great flood of regret and triumph that has been flowing through me, and that fills me still. I am full of tears and song; I never felt life so real and so deep. It is like setting sail on the grandest voyage of hope, with a chosen spirit of God at the helm, and all of us full of the inspiration of his life and faith.
I was glad to sit a little aside at the Consecration Service, and feel more than I could see, though I saw all the best of it,—that grand manhood in the midst of white-robed clergy and bishops, one with it all, and yet so superior to it all, the great humble man, bowed among his brethren, to receive his new office! And I shall never forget my first glimpse of him in his new character, with the Communion cup in his hand, a token of service yet to be rendered; Christ’s life still to be poured out for his brethren through his own.
So may our lives all be enlarged and strengthened with his, to serve our Master better, in a wider and deeper service of humankind!
TO J. G. WHITTIER.
Beverly, February 24, 1892.
... The thought of a present God, who is a personal Friend to every Soul, has always haunted me, and of late years has become more real and close. It seems to me that all truth and peace and hope centre there. It gives new meaning to immortality, and to this life as the beginning of an immortal one. Every year it seems a happier thing to be alive, and to know that I cannot die.
Through thee, my friend, I have come to see this very slowly. I have always thought of thee as a spiritual teacher. And then of late years to have had in addition the teachings and friendship of Phillips Brooks has been a great and true help. I thank God that you two men live, and “will always live,” as he says to you, and that I have known you both.
When he called at Mrs. Spalding’s after seeing you, he told us about the Ary Scheffer poem, and repeated it to us from the words “O heart of mine,” through to the end, as he went away, standing before the picture,—“Christus Consolator,” which hangs at her parlor door....
TO THE SAME.
Beverly, Mass., July 10, 1892.
My dear Friend,—I heard of you last in Danvers, but I am not sure whether you are there or not, though I have been trying to get around and see! I have been occupied with various matters which have taken me to Boston frequently, and I have usually stayed with Mrs. Guild, Roxbury.
... I do not find myself so strong as usual this year, and my plans for work may all fall through. I think I never had so much that I wanted to do, before. My last two little books have been so widely and warmly welcomed, that it seems to me as if I had only just learned what I can do. If I had begun to write from what I feel most deeply twenty years ago, I might have been of some real help to the world. But then I had not had the experience, and perhaps could not.
It makes me very thankful to know that you approve my work. We have so often talked over these matters together. I think the inspiration must be partly, at least, from you. I know that my one desire is for reality in the spiritual life, for self and for others....
Beverly, October 16, 1892. This summer has brought me little time for writing, but much for suffering and thinking. Three months ago to-day my dear sister Emeline left this world; suddenly,—quietly,—just “slipped away,” her daughter Lucy says. She made herself ready for church, and sat waiting,—but it was heaven for her, instead. Her going makes more difference to me than the departure of any one else could; for she has been part of my life ever since I was born. She did more to shape my mind—my soul—than any one else did. And yet I differed from her in my way of thinking, upon many things; the deep agreement was underneath, at the spiritual foundations. I think her great power over me was in her great capacity for love. Her great heart, while it was faithful to home ties, failed of love to none of God’s children; and to me she was even more mother than sister. Her going makes it an easier thing for me to go, when the time comes.
Then, while on Moosilauke summit, the news of Mr. Whittier’s death came to me—more translation than death. I seemed to see him pass on by me, up the heights, and seemed to hear him say, as he passed, “So easy a thing it is to die! Like the mountain blending with the clouds, like the melting of earth into sky, is the transition from life into loftier life.” He too passed away in peace; the lovelier to think of, because he had always dreaded the hour of death. He, too, was my noble and tried friend; in my life for more than fifty years. He is associated in my life with the beauty of the hills and the sea that we have enjoyed together, with the deep things of poetry and religion, which were indeed one reality to him. The memory of fireside talks in his own home, with his sister, so dear to us both; the readings of “In Memoriam” with him after she was gone,—are most blessedly vivid to me.
And Tennyson has died, within a week! One could know him only through his poetry, but what a halo that has hung over our mortal life in all its phases! To know the man and the poet, as I knew Whittier, and to be able to feel the greatness of both, is an immortal possession.
Emerson, Browning, Bryant, Whittier, Tennyson,—and where are the singers who take us into the heart of things as they did? There is a delicate murmur of trained voices making music in this modern air, but it does not arrest us and hold us, as the voices of the now silent masters did. It is hardly an age of song.
TO MRS. S. T. PICKARD.
Beverly, October 16, 1892.
... I have dreamed of him [Mr. Whittier] lately, sitting by the fireside chatting in the old way, as when I used to visit him and Aunt Lizzie. She was more to me than almost any friend, more even than he. I always thought of them as one; and now they are together again. They cannot be far away. I want to keep near them in spirit, so as to find them at once, by and by. I am glad I did not ever know that he was rich. He used to want to pay my bills when we were at West Ossipee, etc., but I declined, for I supposed he was almost as poor as myself, though I know of late years his books have paid well. I am very glad he left me the copyright of the books I compiled with him; and indeed it was only right, as I worked so hard on them. The “Songs of Three Centuries” nearly cost me my health; the publishers “rushed” it so. I was good for nothing for three or four years after, as far as writing went. But he never knew.
TO S. T. PICKARD.
Beverly, Mass., November 11, 1892.
Dear Mr. Pickard,—The trouble with me now is that I am on the invalid list, and am warned not to promise or undertake any new work at present, nor to work continuously in the future, as I have done. The heart seems to be the weak member, and really stops me, even upon slight exertion. I have meant to look over my letters from our friend, and see if there was anything you could use; but they are packed away with others in a cold room, where I do not venture to go. I have not left the house for nearly four weeks, now, and I see that some revolution in my way of living must be made. But I hope to be stronger some time than I am now,—at least to the extent of getting out into the air. I am sorry not to be able to say that I can be depended upon, though I will gladly do what I can to help you.
It is unfortunate for me to be hindered by the state of my health, as I had plans I wanted to set about at once, of my own. It is imperative for me to be earning money regularly, for an income, as I have never quite accumulated it into the thousands. My recent little books, for the past four years, have been more profitable than before, and I can see one or two more as possibilities, if I could put myself down to the work. I mention all this to show you how I am situated, as to doing what you suggest.
Then there is one other thing,—Mr. Whittier many times said to me, apparently in earnest and jest, both,—“Don’t thee ever go writing about me!” It used to hurt me a little, as if I would parade his friendship for me in any way! I could not do, after he died, what I would not when he was alive,—unless I knew he was willing,—and he never hinted any wish of the kind, certainly. I have already been asked to furnish “Recollections” for two periodicals, and have declined. I may be over-particular in this matter, but I do feel a delicacy about it,—almost as if I had not the right.
I write just as the matter looks to me now, and with the sincerest wish to honor our dear friend’s memory. Tell me your view of it!
Yours sincerely,
Lucy Larcom.
TO FRANKLIN CARTER.
214 Columbus Avenue, Boston,
January 10, 1893.Dear Frank,—I have just finished reading the life of Dr. Mark Hopkins, and think it a most interesting record of a grand life. I thank you for sending it to me. I could not help thinking, as I read, how full our country is of noble men of whom we know nothing, or very little. I knew Dr. Hopkins was an able man, but he was only a name to me until I read your book. But of course he was a very unusual man. How grateful and glad you must be that he was your teacher, and that you could tell his story so well! I have known little of you, and you of me, for several years. I have felt that the years of work could not be many for me, and so I have been hard at work writing, that I might give something to those who could receive from me, before I died.
I do not know whether you have seen my little books or not. I have published three in the last two years. The two prose books I thought I had a call to write, and the response they have received has shown that I was not wholly wrong.
Perhaps I have given myself too closely to writing, for I am far from well. Careful medical examination shows that I have organic heart-disease, which will need to be watched carefully in the future; I shall have to go slowly hereafter. Yet I have many plans that I want to carry out; and it is as necessary now as ever for me to earn my daily bread. But I am not in the least bit anxious. The kind of writing I do, does not bring much money, and I am not desirous of writing the kind that does.
These later years have been happy ones to me, because I have been doing things I like to do, and have had noble and sympathetic friends. One of my best friends—Whittier—is out of sight now, but I do not feel that he is far away. Life is one, in all the worlds, and it is life in God that unites us all. God in Christ is the great uniting reality to me. And yet I live so far from my ideal of what it is! How much more we should all be to each other, if we believed it, through and through!—
I cannot write, or do anything continuously, without pain in my chest, so I desist, with love to you and yours.
Faithfully ever,
Lucy Larcom.
TO MISS FOBES.
Roxbury, Mass., March 14, 1893.
My dear Miss Fobes,—I did not think it would be so long before your kind letters would be acknowledged, but the truth is that even a little book, if one’s heart is in the writing of it, is very absorbing,—and mine has taken all my time. I am reading the proof sheets of it now, and it will be out early in April. (I am visiting a friend here, for a week, trying to rest a rather tired head.)
These little books I have somehow been impelled to write, from the feeling that others might be helped, by seeing the way I had been led, and the point at which I had arrived. For I can but think of these later years as having been most plainly to myself under spiritual guidance. I prayed for it always. I remember walking alone in the woods behind Monticello Seminary, my heart asking with tears that I might suffer much, if so I could find the true secret of life. I have not suffered as many have,—I have only had ordinary trials and losses and matter-of-fact struggles with circumstances, but I have often been in danger of succumbing to lower standards than I believed in. But it has been the one effort of my life to keep in sight the highest and best, and to be satisfied with nothing less.
Now the best seems to me the simplest:—to receive, and to give by living it, the life of Christ. That is the thought I have kept before me in my little book, which I call “The Unseen Friend.” I shall send you a copy, as soon as possible.
I am much interested in what you write of the word “eternal.” It was on the meaning of that word that my first divergence from the Calvinistic theories occurred, many years ago. I read F. D. Maurice much, and still do so. His rendering of the word “eternal” was, you know, considered heresy in his own church. Now, the exception is, in this region, to hear it preached in any other sense. I think it first implies the character of the life, but also its duration. It is only the real that can last, and grow better and better forever, as being a progress into the infinite life of God. It is death to refuse to receive this life; I cannot think that any soul will forever refuse, though the freedom of the human will makes it a possibility.
I look upon this life on earth as but a beginning, rather an education than a probation—and yet that also, as every hour of our life is a trial of our fitness for the next hour. One thing I have liked in the Episcopal Church since I knew it and have been in it, is that they preach this practical, spiritual life so much more than systems and doctrines. The Christian year is a repeated following of the story and the spirit of Christ’s life, and everybody can understand it. Nobody can hold the Apostles Creed, and not believe in the oneness of the Son and Father, and that is the pivotal truth of Christianity. More and more I see the failures in my past life, through not entering into this central truth in a more living way.
I thank you for the kind things you say of my poems and books. There is no one whose approval I value more deeply. Sometimes I wish I had more years before me, for I feel as if I were just beginning to see clearly, and I am more and more interested in this human life of ours. Yet how little any of us can do to relieve its burdens. How hopeless its evils and sins sometime look!
I have just read “David Grieve.” It is far from being a cheerful book, though powerfully written. It is, however, an improvement upon “Robert Elsmere,” which seemed to me wordily weak.
I have seen Emily Dickinson’s poems, and enjoy their queer gleaming and shadowy incoherences. It does not seem as if her mind could have been fairly balanced. But her love of nature redeems many faults.
That poem in the “Christian Union,” “The Immortal Now,” must have been printed early in the year 1890, I think. Possibly in 1889, but I believe I wrote it in the winter of 1889-90. If I can find a duplicate, I will send it to you. I have a half-project of collecting my religious poems by themselves, for next Christmas. What would you think of it?
Always affectionately yours,
Lucy Larcom.
The following letter was written to Bishop Brooks a few days before his death, and was found on his desk, while his body still lay in his home, the soul having gone to be “near the Master and Friend.”
TO PHILLIPS BROOKS.
214 Columbus Avenue,
January 17, 1893.It is a real trial to me, my dear friend, that I am unable to hear you to-night, when you are probably speaking so near me; and yet a greater to think that I may be denied it all winter. For I find myself more ill than I supposed I was, and am not at present permitted to go out at all. It is a heart derangement, which has shown some dangerous symptoms. I have been to Trinity Church, but am told that I must not attempt walking there again. It seems childish to tell you about it, but you know you are my rector still,—and I had been looking forward to seeing and hearing you occasionally.
Sometimes it seems to me that God’s way of dealing with me is not to let me see much of my friends, those who are most to me in the spiritual life, lest I should forget that the invisible bond is the only reality. That is the only way I can reconcile myself to the inevitable separations of life and death. I know that I feel more completely in sympathy with those who went away from me into heaven long ago than I did when they were here. Still I love and long for my friends, and would gladly see them while they are here, in the dear familiar way.
I have accustomed myself to the thought that my call hence may come suddenly, and if I should not meet you again here, you will know that in any world I shall look for you near the Master and Friend in whose presence you live here, and whose love you have helped me to see as the one thing worth living for anywhere. I can truly say that the last ten years of my life have been better and happier than all that went before.
Faithfully yours,L. L.
February 20, 1893. A strange mingled experience the last three or four months. Weeks of illness in the late autumn in Beverly, when I suddenly was brought to the knowledge that I have an incurable disease of the heart, which had been aggravated by overwork and neglect. In the enforced quiet, I could only think, and that was not permitted about disturbing things. Then, a little recovered, I came to Boston just before Christmas, and used my strength too rapidly, so that now I have been in my room under the doctor’s care, for over a month. And since I have lain here, a great calamity has befallen. The noblest of men and friends has left the world,—Phillips Brooks. One month ago this morning he breathed his last. He, with whom it was impossible to associate the idea of death;—was?—is so, still!—the most living man I ever knew—physically, mentally, spiritually. It is almost like taking the sun out of the sky. He was such an illumination, such a warmth, such an inspiration! And he let us all come so near him,—just as Christ does!
I felt that I knew Christ personally through him. He always spoke of Him as his dearest friend, and he always lived in perfect, loving allegiance to God in Him. Now I know him as I know Christ,—as a spirit only, and his sudden withdrawal is only an ascension to Him, in the immortal life. Shut into my sick-room, I have seen none of the gloom of the burial; I know him alive, with Christ, from the dead, forevermore. Where he is, life must be. He lived only in realities here, and he is entering into the heart of them now. “What a new splendor in heaven!” was my first thought of him, after one natural burst of sorrow. What great services he has found! How gloriously life, with its immortal opportunities, must be opening to him! He,—one week here,—the next there,—and seen no more here again. The very suddenness of his going makes the other life seem the real one, rather than this. And a man like this is the best proof God ever gives human beings of their own immortality.
I treasure my last memories of him, the last sermon I heard him preach at Trinity, at the October Communion; the last time I saw him there, just before Christmas, and the last warm pressure of his hand, and the sunlike smile as he spoke to me at the church door; the last note he wrote me when he spoke of Mr. Whittier in the other life, with such reverent love: “Think what—where—he is now!”—even as we are thinking of him. It seems as if God gave me these last three years of intimate friendship with him, in connection with the Church, as the crowning spiritual blessing of my life. The rest of it must be consecrated to the noblest ends, like his.
In March and early April, 1893, Miss Larcom’s heart-trouble was rapidly developing into an alarming condition, and she realized that the end must soon come. Her life had reached its climax in the little book, “The Unseen Friend,” in which she had written her last and greatest religious message to the world. More of her friends were on the “other side” than here, and her eyes eagerly sought the visions beyond.
Her old pupils and friends remembered her during those weary days of suffering in the Hoffman House, Boston. Her beloved niece, Miss Lucy Larcom Spaulding (now Mrs. Clark) was with her constantly, ministering to her needs. Some sent her flowers, which she loved so dearly; others, fruit; one desired to send from the West a luxurious bed; and one sent a reclining-chair. The old cook, Norah, at Norton, asked the privilege of making graham bread for her. Her old scholars remembered her more substantially, by a loving gift, in those days when her pen was forced into idleness. She painfully felt the restraints of her illness. Her nights were full of distress. In a half-amused way, she said, “I never knew what it was to be really sick. I knew people had to stay in bed, and have the doctor, but I thought they slept at night.”
The end drew near. On Saturday evening, April the fifteenth, she said it would be a great joy to exchange the physical for the spiritual body; and she was comforted by reading Bishop Brooks’s addresses, “Perfect Freedom.”
On Monday, April the seventeenth, she grew rapidly worse; and in her unconsciousness, she frequently murmured in prayer, the word “Freedom.” On this day her soul was released, and she entered into the fullness of the Glory of God.
On a little slip of paper she had written these last words:—
“O Mariner-soul,
Thy quest is but begun,