The world knows well many of the poet’s rare and gracious qualities. But the life that Whittier lived in his own family and among his neighbors, the traits that came out in this daily life—these are not known to the world, and never can be, except by lightest sketches. Yet of all his poems the most beautiful was his life.
It was in 1869 that he wrote the following characteristic note to Dr. S——, the “doctor” of these pages:
“Dear Doctor:
There is to be what they call a surprise party at Mrs. C——’s this evening—the anniversary of her marriage forty years ago. They would like to see thee and Mrs. S——, I am sure. It was got up by some of her friends and relatives.”
The poet does not mention that he himself was one of the “friends” most active in this endeavor to help a neighbor to tide over one of those hard places plentifully scattered throughout her life. Her home was across the little side street from Mr. Whittier’s. She had always been a friend and many times a nurse to his sister Elizabeth. For in those days when trained nurses were rare in the country, she often went into families to nurse in illness. She had been much in the poet’s home in his anxiety, his sorrow, and his own times of straitened means.
Her early opportunities of education had been small, and yet the terms on which she lived with the Whittier family were in themselves an education. Whittier appreciated her love of books, and it is to her advice that the world owes a beautiful poem. One day when she was in the house he came out of the garden room with a volume of “Mrs. Jamieson” in his hand, and reading this neighbor in whose literary judgment he believed, that writer’s account of the origin of the stars and stripes, he remarked that it would be a good subject for a poem.
“Indeed, it would; and you are just the one to write it,” retorted his listener with spirit. “Why don’t you do it?”
The poet returned to his room. And we have “The Mantle of St. John de Matha.”
Years afterward when poverty and illness had become intimates of hers, from her bed of pain which was henceforth to know only respite and not cure, she epitomized in a sentence the poet’s character. Looking up into the face of the writer who standing beside her had been speaking of him, she exclaimed: