Loom and spindle

by Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson

Miss Larcom might have married, once when she was quite young, and again later; but for reasons of her own she declined,—reasons, the validity of which, in one instance at least, I did not see. I have been asked if Mr. Whittier and Miss Larcom were never more than friends. I can truly answer, no. Miss Larcom was the intimate friend of Elizabeth Whittier, the poet’s sister, who, as she said, “was lovely in character, and had fine poetic taste.”

She often visited their home, and after the death of the sister the friendship with the brother continued. Miss Larcom was Mr. Whittier’s assistant in compiling the books of selections which bear his name, and did a great deal of the actual work in collecting material; they were true friends.

In a letter written shortly after his death, she says,—

“I have not spoken of Mr. Whittier going away. You will know that it is a real sorrow to me, and yet a joy that he has entered into a larger life.... This imperfect existence of ours can be but the shadow of the true life; in that, there is no death.”...

One of her last letters to me was written from Boston a few weeks before her death, and is as follows:—

Dear H.,—I have been here nearly a month, but have hardly been out at all. I have never been so much of an invalid, and I don’t like it. I suppose I have been steadily “running down,” the last year or so, but have gone on just as if I were well. Now I am brought to a stop, and am told that I must never do any more hard work. Lack of strength is what I feel most. They tell me that if I will really rest, brain and body, I may yet accomplish a good deal before I die. I do not feel as if I had got through yet; but who knows? I am trying to realize that it does not make much difference what part of the universe we are in, provided we are on the right track upward. Somehow I feel nearer Emmeline and Mr. Whittier,—as if we knew each other better now than before they went away. I should like to leave my life and work here just when I can go on with what is waiting for me elsewhere. But there is a Master of life who takes care of all that.

Ever truly yours,

Lucy Larcom.

Of her religious life, it may be said that in her early childhood Lucy became a communicant of the Congregational church; but in later years, as her mind broadened, she became deeply imbued with a sense of the divine fatherhood of God, and the impossibility that He would leave one of the souls that He had made to perish eternally, or, as she says, to quote from her “Biography,” “After probing my heart, I find that it utterly refuses to believe that there is any corner in God’s universe where hope never comes, ... where love is not brooding, and seeking to penetrate the darkest abyss.”

In 1879 she first listened to Phillips Brooks, and his preaching to her “was the living realization of her own thought.” She did not give up her Puritanism, but thought she saw, in the belief and service of his church, a new way of finding the right path towards the end of her journey in search of the truth. As she wrote, “It is not the church, but only one way of entering Christ’s church.” Her religious faith was not so much changed as deepened by this departure from some of the old-time beliefs; for, in writing of the matter to me, she said, “I count the faith of my whole life as one.”