 |
Ever yours,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
Our kind remembrances to Mr. Lane. We are busy, Is city people cannot conceive of, in getting the indoors and outdoors to rights.
To Rev. Henry W. Bellows.
SHEFFIELD, Nov. 26, 1847. MY DEAR FRIEND,—I have thought much of what you said the other morning; and though I expect to see you gain in a fortnight, I cannot let the interval pass without a few words. The new interest in your mind, as far is it is spiritual, and the new measures you propose to adopt in your church, so far as I understand them, have my entire sympathy. But I demur to your manner of stating the speculative grounds of this change in your feeling and view. Certainly my mind is, and has been or a long time, running in a direction contrary to your present leanings. I cannot think that human nature is o low and helpless as you seem to think, nor that the gospel is so entirely the one and exclusive remedy. And yet I agree, too, with much (in its practical bearing) of what you say, in the direction that your mind is taking. I have often insisted in the pulpit that the people do not yet understand Christianity; its spiritual nature, however, rather than its positive facts, its simple love and disinterestedness rather than its supernaturalism, were to me the points where they have failed. . . . fully admit, too, the need of progress in our denomination, but I do not believe in any grand new era to be [197] introduced into its history by the views you urge, or any other views. All good progress must be gradual. If there is a revolution in your mind, does it follow that that must be the measure for others, for your brethren, for the denomination, in past or present time?
Your sympathies are wide; the tendency to outward action is strong in you; your generous nature opens the doors of your mind to light from every quarter; need is, to carry on a strong discriminating work in a mind like yours. With your nature, so utterly opposed to everything sluggish and narrow, you have need of a large and well-considered philosophy, "looking before and after," and settling all things in their right places, and questioning every new-coming thought with singular caution, lest it push you from your propriety or consistency. In truth, you quite mistake me when you say that I have not studied your mind. I have watched its workings with the greatest interest, often with admiration, and sometimes—may I say?—with anxiety. There was a time when I greatly feared that you would go the lengths of Parker. The turn in your mind to what I deem healthier views took place about the time I went abroad; and the relief your letters gave me while I was in Europe, you can hardly have suspected. Now, it seems to me, you are liable to go to the opposite extreme. The truth is, your intellectual insight seems to me greater than your breadth of view, your penetration greater than your comprehension; and the consequence has been a course of thought, as I believe you are aware, somewhat zigzag.
Have I not thought of you, my dear fellow? I guess I have; and among other things I have so thought of you that I now entirely confide in the magnanimity of [198] your mind to receive with candor all this, and more if I should say it,—saying it, as I do, in the truest love and cherishing of you.
My love to E. and all the phalanstery.
As ever, yours,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
P. S. I read this letter to my wife last evening, and I told her of your criticism on the sermon at Providence. She made the very rejoinder that I made to you,—"The power to cast one's self on the great Christian resource, to put one's self in relation with God the Father and with spiritual help, is the very power which he denies to human nature, and the very thing that Mr. H. contended for." Nor yet do I like your mode of statement, for Christianity does not represent itself to me as a sort of Noah's Ark, and human nature as in stormy waters,—to be saved if it can get its foot on that plank, and not otherwise. I prefer my figure of the shower specially sent on the feeble and half-withered plant. All the divines of every school have always said that there is light enough in nature, if with true docility and love men would follow it. Christ came to shed more light on our path, not the only light; to lift up the lame man, not to create limbs for him or to be limbs for him.
And I confess, too, that I do not like another aspect in the state of your mind; and that is, that your newly wakened zeal should fasten, as it seems to do, upon the positive facts and the supernaturalism of Christianity. Not, as I think, that I undervalue them. I do not know if any rational and thinking man that lays more stress on them in their place than I do. But certainly there is something beyond to which they point; and that is, the [199] deep spiritualism of the Gospel, the deep heart's repose and sufficiency in things divine and infinite. If your mind had fastened upon this as the newly found treasure in the Gospel, I should have been better satisfied. I am writing very frankly to you, as you are wont to write to me (and I believe that you and I can bear these terms, and bless them too), and therefore I will add that my greatest distrust of your spiritual nature turns to this very point: whether you have, in the same measure as you have other things, that deep heart's rest, that quiet, profound, all-sufficing satisfaction in the infinite resource, in the all-enbosoming love of the All-Good, in silent and solitary communion with God, settling and sinking the soul, as into the still waters and the ocean depths. Your nature runs to social communions, to visible movements, to outwardness, in short, more than to the central depths within. The defects in your preaching, which I have heard pointed out by the discerning, are the want of consistency,—of one six months with another six months,—and the want of spiritual depth and vitality; of that calm, deep tone of thought and feeling that goes to the depths of the heart.
God knows that I do very humbly attempt to criticise another's religion and preaching, being inexpressibly concerned about the defects of my own. And, dear friend, I speak to you as modestly as I do frankly. I may be wrong, or I may be only partly right. But in this crisis I think that I ought to say plainly what I feel and fear. I cannot bear, for every reason,—for your sake and for the sake of the church, in which, for your age, you are rooting yourself so deeply,—that you should make any misstep on the ground upon which you seem to be entering.
[200] To Rev. William Ware.
SHEFFIELD, Dec. 6, 1847.
MY DEAR WARE,—I think my pen will run on, with such words to start from, though it have spent itself on the weary "Sermons." This is Monday morning, and I am not quite ready in mind to begin on a new one. The readiness, with me, is nine tenths of the battle. I never, or almost never, write a sermon unless it be upon a. subject that I want to write upon. I never cast about for a subject; I do not find the theme, but the theme finds me. Last week I departed from my way, and did lot make good progress. The text, "What shall it profit t man?" struck upon my heart as I sat down on Monday Horning, and I wrote it at the head of my usual seven sheets of white paper, and went on. But the awfulness if the text impressed me all the while with the sense of allure, and though the sermon was finished, I mainly felt at the end that I had lost my week.
One thing I find in my preaching, more and more, and hat is that the simplest things become more and more weighty to me, so that a sermon does not require to be my thing remarkable to interest me deeply. Everything hat I say in the pulpit, I think, is taking stronger and stronger hold upon me, and that which might have been lull in my utterance ten years ago, is not so now. I say his to you, because it has some bearing on one of the natters discussed in our last letters; that is, whether I should leave the pulpit. If I leave it, it will be with a fresher life in it, I think, than has stirred in me at any previous part of my course. And certainly I have long believed that it was my vocation to preach, above all things,—more than to visit parishioners, though I always [201] visit every one of them once a year,—more than to write, though you say I have written to some purpose (and your opinion is a great comfort to me). Certainly, then, I shall not retire from the pulpit, but upon the maturest reflection and for what shall seem to be the weightiest reasons. And I did not mean that the things I referred to should be prima facie reasons for retirement; but the question with me was whether my unprofessional way of thinking and acting were not so misconstrued as to lessen my power to do good; whether the good I do is in any proportion to the strength I lay out.
But enough of myself, when I am much more concerned about you. I see plainly enough how intense is your desire to go to Rome. I see how all your culture and taste and feeling urge you to go, and yet more what a reason in many ways your health supplies. And I declare the author of Zenobia and Probus and Julian ought to go to Rome! There is a fitness in it, and I trust it will come to pass. But you should not go alone. Every one wants company in such a tour,—that I know full well; but your health demands it. You must not be subject to sudden seizures in a strange city,—a stranger, alone. Your family never will consent to it, and I think never ought to. Do give up that idea entirely,—of going alone. Have patience. There will be somebody to go with next spring, or next summer. I would that I could go with you where you go, and lodge with you where you lodge. But somebody will go. Something better will turn up, at any rate, than to go alone. There are young men every year who want to go abroad in quest of art and beauty and culture, and to whom your company would be invaluable. I do not forget the difficulty about expense. But there are those who, like you, would be [202] glad to go directly by Marseilles or Leghorn. It is quite true that movement is the mischief with the purse.-Abiding in Rome or Florence, you can live for a dollar a day. A room, or two rooms (parlor and little sleeping-room), say near the Piazza di Spagna, or the Propaganda just by, can be hired, with bed, etc., all to be kept in order, for three or four pauls (thirty or forty cents, you know) a day. And you can breakfast at a colt; any time you fancy, while wandering about, for two pauls, and dine at a trattoria for from two to four pauls. I have more than once dined on a bowl of soup and bread and butter for two pauls. I hate heavy dinners. In Rome, one should always take a room in which the sun lies. "Where the sun comes, the doctor does n't," they say there. But you won't go before I come and see you and talk it all over with you. Don't fail to let me know if you set seriously about it, for I shall certainly come. The truth is, Airs. Ware should go with you. It is true the women are very precious when it comes to casting them up in a bill of expense, as in all things else. Does not that last clause save me, madam? And, madam dear, I want to talk with you about this project of William's, as much as I want to hear what he says.
About the war, dear Gulielmus, and slavery, and almost everything else under heaven, I verily believe I think just as you do; so I need not write. And my hand is very tired. With ten thousand blessings on you,
Yours ever,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
[203]
To his Daughter Mary.
SHEFFIELD, July 13, 1848.
DEAR MOLLY,—You're an awful miss when you're not here; what will you be, then, when you descend upon us from the heights of Lenox,—from the schools of wisdom, from fiction and fine writing, from tragedy and comedy, from mountain mirrors reflecting all-surrounding beauty, down to plain, prosaic still-life in Sheffield? I look with anxiety and terror for the time; and, to keep you within the sphere of familiarity as much as possible, I think it best to write sometimes; and, to adopt the converse of the Western man's calling his bill "William," I call my William, bill,—my Mary, Molly, thereby softening, mollifying (as I may say) the case as much as possible.
One thing I must desire of you. You are on an experiment. [FN: To try whether the air of Lenox, on the hills, would have any effect in averting an annual attack of hay-fever.] Now be honest. Don't bring any "sneeshin" down here to throw dust in our poor, simple eyes in the valley. Much as ever we can see anything for fogs. Mind ye, I shall be sharp, though. If you fall into any of those practices, I shall say you brought the trick from Lenox. You may say "I-ketch-you" as much as you please, but you won't ketch me.
To Rev. Henry W. Bellows.
SHEFFIELD, Dec. 19, 1848.
MY DEAR BELLOWS,—Now shall I heap coals of fire on your head. You ought to have written to me forty days ago. Your letter bears date of yesterday. I [204] received it this afternoon. I am replying this evening. How does your brain-pan feel, with this coal upon it? "How has it happened that there has been no communication?" Why, it has happened from your being the most unapprehensive mortal that ever lived, or from your having your wits whirled out of you by that everlasting New York tornado. As to letters, I wrote the two last, though the latter was a bit of one. As to the circumstances, my withdrawal from your society was involuntary, and painful to me. You should have written at once to your emeritus coadjutor, your senior friend. I have been half vexed with you, my people quite.
There! I love you too much not to say all that. But I am not an exacting or punctilious person, and that is one reason why we have got along so well together 3 as well as that you are one whom nobody can know without taking a plaguy kindness and respect for, and can't help it. And all that you say about our past relation and intercourse I heartily reciprocate, excepting that which does you less than justice, and me more. As to deep talks, I really believe there is no chance for them in Gotham. And this reminds me that my wife has just been in my study to desire me to send a most earnest invitation to you and E. to come up here this winter and pass a few days with us. It will be easier than you may think at first. The New York and New Haven Railroad will be open in a few days, and then you can be here in seven or eight hours from your own door. Do think of it,—and more than think of it.
To the Same.
ARE n't you a pretty fellow,—worse than Procrustes,—to go about the world, measuring people's talent and [205] promise by their noses? . . . Why, man, Claude Lorraine and Boccaccio and Burke had "small noses;" and Kosciusko and George Buchanan had theirs turned up, and could n't help it. It reminds me of what a woman of our town said, who had married a very heinous-looking blacksmith. Some companions of our "smithess" saw him coming along in the street one day, and unwittingly exclaimed, "What dreadful-looking man is that?" "That's my husband," said the wife, "and God made him."
To the Same.
SHEFFIELD, Jan. 2, 1849.
MY DEAR BELLOWS,—Your letter came on New Year's Day, and helped to some of those cachinnations usually thought to belong to such a time; though for my part I can never find set times particularly happy or even interesting,—partly, I believe, from a certain obstinacy of disposition that does not like to do what is set down for it.
As to church matters, I said nothing to you when I was down last, because I knew nothing. That is, I had no hint of what the congregation was about to do,—no idea of anything in my connection with the church that needed to be spoken of. I was indeed thinking, for some weeks before I went down, of saying to the congregation, that unless they thought my services very important to them, I should rather they would dispense with them, and my mind was just in an even balance about the matter. But one is always influenced by the feeling around him,—at least I am,—and when I found that every one who spoke with me about my coming again seemed to depend upon it, and to be much [206] interested in it, I determined to say nothing about withdrawing. My reasons for wishing to retire were, that I was working hard—hard for me—to prepare sermons which, as my engagement in my view was temporary, might be of no further use to me; and that if I were to enter upon a new course of life, the sooner I did so the better.
And here I may as well dispose of what you and others say and urge with regard to my continuance in the profession. To your question whether I have not sermons enough to last me for five years in some new place, I answer, No, not enough for two. And if I had, I tell you that I cannot enter into these affecting and soul-exhausting relations again and again, any more than I could be married three or four times. The great trial of our calling is the wrenching, the agonizing, of sympathy with affliction; and there is another trying thing which I have thought of much of late, and that is the essential moral incongruity of such relations, and especially with strangers. I almost feel as if nobody but an intimate friend had any business in a house of deep affliction. In a congregation ever so familiar there is trial enough of this kind. If my friend is sick or dying, I go to his bedside of course, but it is as a friend,—to say a word or many words as the case may be; to look what I cannot say; to do what I can. But to come there, or to come to the desolate mourner, in an official capacity,—there is something in this which is in painful conflict with my ideas of the simple relations of man with man. Now all this difficulty is greatly increased when one enters upon a new ministration in a congregation of strangers. Therefore on every account I must say, no more pastoral relations for me. I cannot take [207] up into my heart another heap of human chance and change and sorrow. Do you not see it? Why, what takes place in New Bedford now moves me a hundred times more than all else that is in the world. And so it will always be with all that befalls my brethren in the Church of the Messiah.
As to the world's need of help, I regard it doubtless as you do; and I am willing and desirous to help it from the pulpit as far as I am able. But I cannot hold that sort of irregular connection with the pulpit called "supplying "; nor can I go out on distant missionary enterprises,—to Cincinnati, Mobile, or New Orleans. The first would yield me no support; and as to the last, I must live in my family. Besides, there is sphere enough with the pen; and study may do the world as much good as action. And there is no doubt what direction my studies must take. Why, I have written out within a week—written incontinently in my commonplace book, my pen would run on—a thesis on Pantheism nearly as long as a sermon. And as to preaching, what ground have I to think that mine is of any particular importance? Not that I mean to affect any humility which I do not feel. I profess that I have quite a good opinion of myself as a preacher. Seriously; I think I have one or two rather remarkable qualifications for preaching,—a sense of reality in the matter of the vitality of the thing, and then an edge of feeling (so it seems to me) which takes off the technical and commonplace character from discourse. Oh! if I could add, a full sense of the divineness of the thing, I should say all. Yet something of this, too, I hope; and I hope to grow in this as I hope to live, and do not dread to die. But though I think all this, with all due modesty, it does not [208] follow that others do; and the evidence seems to be rather against it, does it not?
As ever, yours,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
In connection with this letter, and with his own frank but moderate estimate of his gift as a preacher, it is interesting to read the following extract from a paper in his memory, read before the annual meeting of the American Unitarian Association by Rev. Dr. Briggs, May 30, 1882:
"I remember well the way in which he seemed to me to be a power in the pulpit. He was the first man who made the pulpit seem to me as a throne. When he stood in it, I recognized him as king. I remember how eager I was to walk in from the Theological School at Cambridge to hear him when there was an opportunity to do so in any of the pulpits of Boston. I remember walking with my classmate, Nathaniel Hall,—when the matter of the expense of a passage was of great concern to me,—to Providence, where Mr. Dewey was to preach at the installation of Dr. Hall. My Brother Hall was not drawn there simply for the sake of his brother's installation, I, not from the fact that Providence was the home of my boyhood; but both of us, more than by anything else, by our eager desire to hear this preacher where he might give us a manifestation of his power. And, as he spoke from the text, I have preached righteousness in the great congregation,' we felt that we were well repaid for all our efforts to come and listen to him.
"I have heard of some one who heard him preach from the text on dividing the sheep from the goats, and as he came away, he said, I felt as if I were standing before [209] the judgment-seat.' I remember hearing him preach from the text, Thou art the man,' and I felt that that word was addressed to me as directly as it was by the prophet to the king. His was a power scarcely known to the men of this later generation.
"It would be difficult, I think, to analyze his character and mind, and to say just in what his power consisted. He did not have the reasoning power that distinguished Dr. Walker; he did not have the poetic gift that gave such a charm to the sermons of Ephraim Peabody; he did not have that peculiarity of speech which made the sermons of Dr. Putnam so effective upon the congregation, and yet he was the peer of any one of them. It was, I think, because the truth had possession of his whole being when he spoke. It was because he always had a high ideal of the pulpit, and was striving to come up to it, and because he went to the pulpit with that preparation which alone makes any preaching effective, and which will make it mighty forever."
To Rev. Henry W. Bellows.
SHEFFIELD, Feb. 26, 1849.
MY DEAR BELLOWS,—I came from Albany to-day at noon, and have had but this afternoon to reflect upon your letter. But I see that you ought to have an answer immediately; and my reply to your proposition to me grows out of such decided considerations, that they seem to me to require no longer deliberation. I see that you desire my help, and I am very sorry that I cannot offer it to you; but consider. You ask of me what, with my habits of thought and methods of working, would be equal to writing one sermon is a fortnight. I [210] would rather do this than to write four or even three columns for the "Inquirer," considering, especially, that I must find such a variety of topics, and must furnish the tale of brick every week. I have always been obliged to work irregularly, when I could; and this weekly task-work would allow no indulgence to such poor habits of study. Besides, this task would occupy my whole mind; that is, such shattered mind as I have at present to give to anything; I could do nothing else,—nothing to supply my lack of means to live upon. I could better take the "Christian Examiner;" it would cost me much less labor, and it would give me the necessary addition to my income, provided I could find some nook at the eastward where I could live as cheaply as I can here.
I think the case must be as plain to your mind as it is to mine. If I were to occupy any place in your army, it would be in the flying artillery; these solid columns will never do for me. Why, I can't remember the time when I have written twenty-five sermons in a year, and that, I insist, is the amount of labor you desire of me. You may think that I overrate it, and you speak of my writing from "the level of my mind." The highest level is low enough, and this I say in sad sincerity. In fact, if nothing offers itself for me to do that I can do, I think that I shall let the said mind lie as fallow ground for a while, hoping that, through God's blessing, leisure and leisurely studies may give strength for some good work by and by. How to live, in the mean time, is the question; but I can live poor, and must, if necessary, trench upon my principal. But if I am driven to this resort, I will make thorough work of it; I will bind myself to no duty, professional, literary, or journalistic; if a book, or a little course of lectures, or any other little thing comes out from under [211] my hands at the end of one, two, or three years, let it; but I will do nothing upon compulsion, though the things to do be as thick as blackberries. There's my profession of—duty! I have worked hard, however imperfectly. I have worked in weariness, in tribulation, and to the very edge of peril; and I believe that the high Taskmaster, to whom I thus refer with humble and solemn awe, will pardon me some repose, if circumstances beyond my control assign it to me for my lot.
As to the "Inquirer," in times past, you should remember that in what I said of it that was disparaging, I excepted your part in it. That certainly has not lacked interest, whatever else it has lacked. You have, I think, some remarkable qualifications for the proposed enterprise; and if you could give your whole mind and life to it, I should augur more favorably of such a monarchy than of the proposed oligarchy. You are a live man; you have a quick apprehension of what is going on about you; you have insight, generosity, breadth of view. And yet, if I were fully to state what I mean by this last qualification, I should say it is breadth rather than comprehension. You see a great way on one side of a subject, rather than all round. This requires a great deal of quiet, silent study, and where you are going to find space for it, I do not see, look all round as I may, or may pretend to. What I shall most fear about the "Inquirer" is, that it will give an uncertain sound; and this danger will be increased by the number of minds brought into it. Associate editors ought to live near to each other, and to compare notes. How do you know that Mr. C. will not cross Mr.O.'s track, or both of them Mr. Bellows, even if Mr. Bellows do not cross his own? You say you will put your own stamp upon the paper, [212] of course. But your stamp has been rather indefinite as yet. "Shaper and Leader," say you? Suggester and Pioneer, rather, is my thought of your function. This is pretty plain talk; but, confound you, you can bear it. And I can bear to say it, because I love—because I like you, and because I think of you as highly, I guess, as you ought to think of yourself. After all, I do expect a strong, free, living journal from you, and the men of your age, or thereabouts, who are united with you.
You say that I do not understand a "certain spirit of expectation and seeking" in these men. Perhaps not; it is vaguely stated, and I cannot tell. One of these days you will spread it out and I shall see. I have ideas of progress, with which my thoughts are often wrestling, and I shall be glad to have them made more just, expanded, and earnest. With love to all,
Yours ever,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
To Rev. William Ware.
SHEFFIELD, May 25, 1849. MY DEARLY BELOVED AND LONGED FOR,—I can't have you go to New York and not come here; and my special intent in writing now is to show you how little out of your way it is to return to Cambridge by Berkshire, and how little more expense it is. I trust that Mrs. Ware is to be with you.
There! it's a short argument, but a long conclusion shall follow,—a week long of talk and pleasure, which shall be as good as forty weeks long, by the heart's measurement. [213]Alas! these college prayers! If I had anything to do with them, it would be upon the plan of remodelling hem entirely. I would have them but once in a day, it a convenient hour, say eight or nine o'clock in the morning. I would have leave to do what my heart night prompt in the great hours of adoration. Reading the Scriptures with a word of comment, sometimes, or t word uttered as the spirit moved, without reading; or instead, a matin hymn or old Gregorian chant, solemn seasons, free breathings of veneration and joy; sometimes he reading of a prayer of the Episcopal Church, or of he venerable olden time, always a bringing down A the great sentiment of devotion into young life, to De its guidance and strength,—this should be college prayers. . . .
To Rev. Henry W. Bellows.
SHEFFIELD, Feb. II, 1850.
My DEAR FRIEND,—In the first place, La Bruyere was the name of the French satirist that I could not remember the other day. In the second place, I have a letter from Mr. Lowell, inviting me to deliver the second course of lectures, and the time fixed upon is the winter after next; I can't be prepared by next winter. As to the title, I think, after all, Herder's is the best: "Philosophy of Humanity," or I should as lief say, "On the Problem of Evil in the World." You said of me once in some critique, I believe, that I always seemed to write as in the presence of objectors. I shall be very likely to do so now. Well, here is work for me for two years ahead, if I have life and health, and work that I like above all other. In the third place, I don't think I shall do much for the "Inquirer." My name has really [214] no business on the first page; in fact, I never thought of its standing there as a fixture. I supposed you would say for once in your opening that such and such persons would help you. With my habits of writing, I am better able to write long articles than short ones; and the "Christian Examiner" pays more than you, and I am obliged to regard that consideration. I must have three or four hundred dollars a year beyond my income, or sell stock,—a terrible alternative. In the fourth place, every man is right in his own eyes; I am a man: therefore I am right in my eyes. I am very unprofessional; that is, in regard to the etiquette and custom of the profession. I am; and in regard to the professional mannerism and spirit of routine, I am very much afraid of it. But I do not think that many persons have ever enjoyed the religious services of our profession more than I have; the spiritual communion, which is its special function, and that, not through sermons alone, but in sacraments, in baptisms, in fireside conference with darkened and troubled minds, has long been to me a matter of the profoundest interest and satisfaction. It is the one reigning thought of my life now to see and to show how the Infinite Wisdom and Loveliness shine through this universe of forms. To this will I devote myself; nay, am devoted, whether I will or not. This will I pursue, and will preach it. I will preach it in the Lowell Lectures. Shall I be wrong if I give up other preaching for the time? You think so. Perhaps you are right. Any way, it is not a matter of much importance, I suppose. There is a great deal too much of preaching, such as it is. The world is in danger of being preached out of all hearty and spontaneous religion. What would you think, if the love of parents and chil-[215] dren were made the subject of a weekly lecture in the family, and of such lecture as the ordinary preaching is? Oh if a Saint Chrysostom, or even a Saint Cesarius, or a Robert Hall could come along and speak to us once in half a year, they would leave, perhaps, a deeper imprint than this perpetual and petrifying drop-dropping of the sanctuary.
By the bye, read those extracts from the sermons of Saint Cesarius, in the sixteenth lecture of Guizot on French civilization, and see if they are not worth inserting in the "Inquirer." The picture which Guizot gives in that and the following lecture, of Christianity struggling in the bosom of all-surrounding wrong, cruelty, and sensualism, is very beautiful. It is one of the indications of the raging ultraism of the time, that the calm wisdom and piety of such a man as Guizot should be so little appreciated.
When I read such writers as this, I am rather frightened at my undertaking; but I believe there is a great deal to be said to the people that is not beyond me, and I shall modestly do what I can. I began yesterday to study Hegel's "Philosophy of History," and though I can read but a few pages a day, I believe I shall master it; and after one gets through with his theory, I imagine, in looking at his topics ahead, that I shall find matters that are intelligible and practical. I am, as ever,
Yours,
ORVILLE DEWEY. To William Cullen Bryant, Esq.
SHEFFIELD, Feb. 25, 1850.
MY DEAR BRYANT,—You will remember, perhaps, our conversation when you were last up here, about our Club [216] of the XXI. You know my attachment to it. The loss of those pleasant meetings is indeed one of the things I most regret in leaving the city. I cannot bear to forfeit my place in that good company. In this feeling I am about to make a proposition which I beg you will present for me, and that you will, as my advocate, try to explain and show that it is not so enormous as at first it may seem. I pray, then, my dear Magnus, [FN 1] that you will turn your poetical genius to account by describing the beautiful ride up the valley of the Housatonic, and this our beautiful Berkshire, and will put in the statistical fact that it is but six hours and a half from New York to Sheffield, [FN 2] and then will request the Club to meet at my house some day in the coming summer. I name Wednesday, the 9th of June. I propose that the proper Club-meeting be on the evening of that day. The next day I propose that we shall spend among the mountains,-seeing Bashpish, and, if possible, the Salisbury Lakes. And I will thank you, as my faithful solicitor, that, if you are obliged of your knowledge to confess to the fact of my very humble housekeeping, you will also courageously maintain that with the aid of my friends I can make our brethren as comfortable as people expect to be on a frolicking bout, and that I can easily get good country wagons to take them on a jaunt among the mountains. You will tell me, I hope, how my proposition is received; and by received, I do not mean any vote or resolution, but whether the gentlemen seem to think it would be a pleasant thing.
And when you write, tell me whether you or Mrs. Bryant chance to know of any person who would like to [217] come up here this summer and teach French in my sister's school an hour or two a day for a moderate compensation. It must be a French person,—one that can speak the language. Her school is increasing, and she must have more help.
[FN 1: Mr. Dewey was wont to call his friend "our Magnus Apollo."]
[FN 2: Now lessened to five hours.]
With mine and all our kindest regards to Mrs. Bryant and Julia and Fanny, I am, as ever,
Yours truly,
ORVILLE DEWEY. Tell Mrs. Bryant we depend on her at the Club.
To his Daughter Mary.
SHEFFIELD, March 4, 1850.
. . . As I suppose you are tormented with the question, "What's your father doing in Sheffield?" you may tell them that I have taken to lecturing the people, and that I give a second lecture to-morrow evening, and mean to give a third. Forbye reading Hegel every morning, and what do you think he said this morning? Why, that he had read of a government of women, "ein Weiberstaat," in Africa, where they killed all the men in the first place, and then all the male children, and finally destined all that should be born to the same fate. And what do you think your mother said when I told her of these atrocities? Even this: "That shows what bad creatures the men must have been." And that's all I get when trying to enlighten her upon the wickedness of her sex.
And I'm just getting through with Guizot's four volumes, too. Oh, a very magnificent, calm, and beautiful course of lectures. You must read them. It's the best French history, so far as it goes.
[218] To Rev. Henry W. Bellows.
SHEFFIELD, March 6, 1850.
. . . To my poor apprehension this is an awful crisis, especially if pushed in the way the Northern doctrinaires desire. I feel it so from what I saw of Southern feeling in Washington the winter I passed there. I fear disunion, and no mortal line can sound the depth of that calamity. I sometimes think that it would be well if we could wear around this last, terrible, black headland by sounding, and trimming sails, rather than attempt to sail by compass and quadrant. Do not mistake my figure. I am no moral trimmer, and that you know. Conscience must be obeyed. But conscience does not forbid that we should treat the Southern people with great consideration. What we must do, we may do in the spirit of love, and not of wrath or scorn. Oh, what a mystery of Providence, that this terrible burden—I had almost said millstone—should ever have been hung around the neck of this Confederation!
To William Cullen Bryant, Esq.
SHEFFIELD, June 7, 1850.
MY DEAR SIR,—You should n't have lived in New York, and you should n't have been master of the French language, and you should n't have been Mr. Bryant, and, in fact, you should n't have been at all, if you expected to escape all sorts of trouble in this world! Since all these conditions pertain to you, see the inference, which, stated in the most skilfully inoffensive way I am able, stands or runs thus:
[Here followed a request that Mr. Bryant would make [219] some inquiries concerning a French teacher who had applied, and the letter continued:]
Now, in fine, if you don't see that all this letter is strictly logical,—an inference from the premises at the beginning,—I am sorry for you; and if you do see it, I am sorry for you. So you are pitied at any rate.
The 19th draws nigh. If any of the Club are with you and Mrs. Bryant in coming up, do not any of you be so deluded as to listen to any invitation to dine at Kent, but come right along, hollow and merry, and—I don't say I promise you a dinner, but what will suffice for natzir, anyhow. Art, to be sure, is out of the question, as it is when I subscribe myself, and ourselves, to you and Mrs. Bryant, with affectionate regard,
Yours truly,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
To Rev. William Ware.
SHEFFIELD, Oct. 13, 1850.
"THAT'S what I will," I said, as I took up your letter just now, to read it again, thinking you had desired me to write immediately. "How affectionate!" thinks I to myself; "that must have been a good letter that I wrote him last; I really think some of my letters must be pretty good ones, after all; I hate conceit,—I really believe my tendency is the other way,-but, hang it! who knows but I may turn out, upon myself, a fine letter after all? But at any rate Ware loves me, does n't he? He wants me to write a few lines, at least, very soon. It's evident he would be pleased to have me, pleased as the Laird of Ellangowan said of the king's commission,—good honest gentle-[220] man, he can't be more pleased than I am!" But oh! the slips of those who are shodden with vanity! I read on, thinking it was a nice letter of yours,—feeling something startled, to be sure, at the compellation, as if you were mesmerise, and had got an insight (calls me bambino half of the time)—looking at your mood reverential as a droll jest,—vexed at first, but then reconciled, about the book and the lecturing,—charmed and grateful beyond measure at what you say about your health,—when! at last!! I fell upon your request: "Now give me one brief epistle between this and our seeing you."!!! BETWEEN! what a word! what a hiatus! what a gulf! Down into it tumbled pride, vanity, pleasure, everything. Well, great occasions call out virtue. As I emerged, as I came up, I came up a hero; the vanities of this world were all struck off from me in my fall, and I came up a hero; for I determined I would write to you immediately. There! beat that if you can! I give you a chance,-one chance,—I don't ask YOU to write at all.
What is it you call my study now-a-days,—"terrible moral metaphysics "? You may well say "weighed down" with them. I was never in my life before quite so modest as I am now. Not that I have n't enough to say, and all my faculties leap to the task; but all the while there looms up before me an ideal of what such a course of lectures might be, that I fear I shall never reach up to, no, nor one twentieth part of the way to it. . . .
[221]To Mrs. David Lane.
SHEFFIELD, Jan. 25, 1851.
MY DEAR FRIEND,—You won't come, and I will write to you! See the difference. See how I return good for evil!
I say, you won't come; for I have a letter from Mrs. Curtis, from which it is evident the will not, and so I suppose that laudable conspiracy falls to the ground. However, we shall sort o' look for you all the week. But you won't come. I know it to my fingers' ends. Cradled in luxury, wrapped in comfort, enervated by city indulgences, sophisticated by fashionable society—well, I won't finish the essay; but you won't come.
Ah! speaking of fashionable society,—that reminds me,—you ask a question, and say, "Answer me." Well, then,—society we must have; and all the question I should have to ask about it would be whether it pleased me,—not whether everybody in it pleased me, but whether its general tone did not offend me, and then, whether I could find persons in it with whose minds I could have grateful and good intercourse. If I could, I don't think the word "fashion," or the word "world," would scare me. As to the time given to it, and the time to be reserved for weightier matters, that is, to be sure, very material. But the chief thing is a reigning spirit in our life, gained from communion with the highest thoughts and themes, which consecrates all time, and subordinates all events and circumstances, and hallows all intercourse, and turns the dust of life into golden treasures.
I have no thoughts of going to New York or anywhere [222] else at present. I finished my eighth lecture yesterday. This is my poor service to the world in these days,-since you insist that I have relations to the world.
I reciprocate Mr. Lane's kind wishes, and am, as ever,
Yours, with no danger of forgetting,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
To Rev. William Ware.
SHEFFIELD, July 3, 1851.
DEAR GWYLLYM (is n't that Welsh for William?)—I don't know whether your letter with nothing in it, and the postage paid on the contents, is on the way to me; but I am writing to all my friends, to celebrate the Independence-day of friendship and to help the revenue, and not to write to you would be lese-majesty to love and law.
Is it not a distinct mark higher up on the scale of civilization,—this cheap postage? The easier transmission of produce is accounted such a mark,—much more the easier transmission of thought.
Transmission, indeed! When I had got so far, I was called away to direct Mr. P. about the sink. And do you know what directing a man is, in the country? Why, it is to do half the work yourself, and to take all the responsibility. And, in consequence of Mr. P., you won't get a bit better letter than you proposed to send.
Where's your book? What are you doing? What do you think of your Miss Martineau now? Is n't the Seven Gables a subtile matter, both in thought and style?
Have n't I said the truth about the much preaching? Some of the clergy, I perceive, say with heat that [223] preaching is not cold and dull. Better let the laity testify.
There is Mr. P. again.
Yours ever,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
To Rev. Henry W. Bellows.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 11, 1851.
. . . HAVE you seen the "great Hungarian"? Great indeed, and in a way we seem not to have thought of. Is n't there a story somewhere of a man uncaging, as he thought, a spaniel, and finding it to be a lion? We thought we had released and were bringing over a simple, harmless, inoffensive, heart-broken emigrant, who would be glad to settle, and find rest, and behold, we have upon our hands a world-disturbing propagandist, a loud pleader for justice and freedom, who does not want to settle, but to fight; who will not rest upon his country's wrongs, nor let anybody else if he can help it; who does not care for processions nor entertainments, but wants help. Kossuth has doubtless made a great mistake in taking his position here; it is the mistake of a word-maker and of a relier on words, and he has not mended the matter by defining. But I declare he is infinitely more respectable in my eyes than if he had come in the character in which we expected him,—as the protege and beneficiary of our people, who was to settle down among us and be comfortable.
To Rev. William Ware.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 3, 1852.
. . . I MUST fool a little, else I shan't know I am writing to you. And really I must break out somewhere, [224] life is such a solemn abstraction in Washington to a clergyman. What has he to do, but what's solemn? The gayety passes him by; the politics pass him by. Nobody wants him; nobody holds him by the button but some desperate, dilapidated philanthropist. People say, while turning a corner, "How do you do, Doctor?" which is very much as if they said, "How do you do, Abstraction?" I live in a "lone conspicuity," preach in a vacuum, and call, with much ado, to find nobody. "What doest thou here, Elijah?" one might say to a prophet in this wilderness.
What a curious fellow you are! calm as a philosopher, usually, wise as a judge, possessed in full measure of the very Ware moderation and wisdom, and yet every now and then taking some tremendous lurch—against England or for Kossuth! I go far enough, go a good way, please to observe,—but to go to war, that would I not, if I could help it. Fighting won't prepare men for voting. Peaceful progress, I believe, is the only thing that can carry on the world to a fitness for self-government. I have no idea that the Hungarians are fit for it. See what France has done with her free constitution! Oh! was there ever such a solemn farce, before Heaven, as that voting,—those congratulations to the Usurper-President, and his replies?
To Rev. Henry W Bellows.
WASHINGTON, March 7, 1852.
. . . I HAVE seen a good deal of Ole Bull here within a week or two. I admire his grand and simple, reverent and affectionate Norwegian nature very much. He has come out here now with views connected with the welfare [225] of his countrymen; I do not yet precisely understand them. Is it not remarkable that he and Jenny Lind should have this noble nationality so beating at their very hearts?
To the Same.
I DON'T see but you must insert these articles in the "Inquirer" as "Communications." Some of them will have things in them that cannot possibly be delivered as Wegotisms. Don't be stiff about the matter. I tell you there is no other way; and indeed I think it no harm, but an advantage, to diversify the form, and leave out the solemn and juridical Wego sometimes, for the more sprightly and "sniptious" Ego.
To his Daughter Mary.
WASHINGTON, May, 1852.
DEAREST MOLLY,—To be sure, how could you? And, indeed, what did you for? Oh! for little K.'s sake. Well, anything for little K.'s sake. Indeed, it's the duty of parents to sacrifice themselves for their children. It's the final cause of parents to mind the children. Poor little puss! We shall feel relieved when we hear she is in New York, and safe under the sisterly wing. I am afraid she is getting too big for nestling. How I want to see the good little comfort! Is she little? Tell us how she looks and does.
Yesterday, beside preaching a sermon more than half new, and attending a funeral (out of the society), I read skimmingly more than half Nichol's "Architecture of the Heavens." I laid aside the book overwhelmed. What shall we do? What shall we think? Far from our [226] Milky Way,—there they lie, other universes,—rebuke resolved by Rosse's telescope into stars, starry realms, numerous, seemingly innumerable, and as vast as our system; and yet from some of them it takes the light thirty—sixty thousand years to come to us: nay, twenty millions, Nichol suggests, I know not on what grounds. And yet in the minutest details such perfection! A million of perfectly formed creatures in a drop of water! I do not doubt that it is this overwhelming immensity of things that leads some minds to find a sort of relief, as it were, in the idea of an Infinite Impersonal Force working in all things. But it is a child's thought. Nay, does not the very fact that my mind can take in so vast a range of things lead me better to conceive of what the Infinite Mind can do? An ant's mind, if it had one, might find it just as hard to conceive of me.
With love to you two miserable creatures, away from your parents,
Thine ever,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
To the Same.
[Undated.]
What have I not written to you about, you cross thing? Oh! Kossuth. Well, then, here is an immensely interesting person, whom we invited over here to settle, and who is much more likely to unsettle us. How far would you have him unsettle us? To the extent of carrying us into a war with Russia, or of banding us, with all liberal governments, in a war with the despotic governments, so that Europe should be turned into a caldron of blood for years to come, millions of people sacrificed, [227] unutterable miseries inflicted, the present frame of society torn in pieces; and, when all is done, the human race no better off,—worse off? You say, no. Well, anything short of that I am willing Kossuth should accomplish. Any expression of opinion that he can get here, from the people or the government, asserting the rights of nations and the wrong of oppression, let him have,—let all the world have it. Moral influence, gradually changing the world, is what I want. But Kossuth and the Liberals of Europe want to bring on that great war of opinion, which, I fear, will come only too soon. I fear that Kossuth has fairly broached the question of intervention here, and that in two years it will enter the ballot box. I fear these tendencies to universal overthrow that are now revealing themselves all over the civilized world.
Kossuth is a man all enthusiasm and eloquence, but not a man, I judge, of deep practical sagacity. A sort of Hamlet, he seems to me,—graceful, delicate, thoughtful, meditative, moral, noble-minded; and I should not wonder if he was now feeling something of Hamlet's burden: "The time is out of joint: oh, cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!"
A lady, who saw him two days ago, told me that so sad a face she never saw; it haunted her.
It was on his return to his Berkshire home, after this winter in Washington, that the next merry little letter, describing his renewed acquaintance with his country neighbors, was sent to me. The custom of ringing the church bell at noon and at nine in the evening had not then been relinquished, although it has since died out.
[228] To his Daughter Mary.
SHEFFIELD, July 23, 1852.
DEAR MOLLY,—Dr. K. and H. called upon us the very evening after we arrived! Mrs. K. as usual. Mrs. B. is on a visit to her friends; the children with their grandmother. . . . Mr. D. does n't raise any tobacco this summer. I saw Mr. P. lying fiat on his back yesterday,—not floored, however, but high and dry on Mr. McIntyre's counter. Mr. M. has succeeded Doten, Root, and Mansfield. These three gentlemen have all flung themselves upon the paper-mill, hardly able to supply the Sheffield authors. Mr. Austin continues to announce the solemn procession of the hours. Mr. Swift is building an observatory to see 'em as they pass. There are thoughts of engaging me to note 'em down, as I have nothing else to do.
I am particularly at leisure, having demitted all care of the farm to Mr. Charles, and committed all the income thereof to him, down to the smallest hen's-egg.
Your mother is always doing something, and always growing handsomer and lovelier, so that I told her yesterday I should certainly call her a sa-int, if she was n't always a do-int
I have nothing to tell of myself; no stitches or aches to commemorate, being quite free and whole in soul and body, and, freely and wholly
Your loving father,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
[229] To Rev. Henry W. Bellows.
SHEFFIELD, July 24, 1852.
MY DEAR BELLOWS,—Amidst all this lovely quiet, and the beautiful outlooks on every side to the horizon, my thoughts seem ever to mingle with the universe; they bear me beyond the horizon of life, and your reflections, therefore, fall as a touching strain upon the tenor of mine. Experience, life, man, seem to me ever higher and more awful; and though there is constantly intervening the crushing thought of what a poor thing I am, and my life is, and I am sometimes disheartened and tempted to be reckless, and to say, "It's no matter what this ephemeral being, this passing dust and wind, shall come to,"—yet ever, like the little eddying whirlwinds that I see in the street before me, this dusty breath of life struggles upward. I am very sad and glorious by turns; and sometimes, when mortality is heavy and hope is weak, I take refuge in simple resignation, and say: "Thou Infinite Goodness! I can desire nothing better than that thy will be done. But oh! give me to live forever!—eternal rises that prayer. Give me to look upon thy glory and thy glorious creatures forever!" What an awful anomaly in our being were it, if that prayer were to be denied! And what would the memory of friends be, so sweet and solemn now,—what would it be, but as the taper which the angel of death extinguishes in this earthly quagmire?
After you went away, I read more carefully the splendid article on the "Ethics of Christendom;" [FN: From the "Westminster Review," vol. lvii. p. 182, or, in the American edition, p. 98.] and I confess that my whole moral being shrinks from the position [230] of the writer (which brings down the majesty of the Gospel almost to the level of Millerism), that Jesus supposed the end of the world to be at hand, and that he should come in the clouds of heaven, and be seated with his disciples on airy thrones, to judge the nations. No; the false double ethics of the pulpit, which I have labored, though less successfully, all my life to expose, has its origin, I believe, in later superstition, and not in the teachings of Christ.
The passages referred to by the writer, I conceive to be more imaginative, and less formalistic and logical, than he supposes.
To the Same.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 28, 1852.
MY DEAR BELLOWS,—I will wish you all a happy New York, (ahem! you see how naturally and affectionately my pen turns out the old beloved name)—a happy New Year. After all, it isn't so bad; a happy New Year and a happy New York must be very near neighbors with you. I sometimes wish they could have continued to be so with me, for those I have learnt to live with most easily and happily are generally in New York. Our beloved artists, the goodly Club, were a host to me by themselves. I wish I could be a host to them sometimes.
Well, heigho! (pretty ejaculation to come into a New Year's greeting—but they come everywhere!) Heigho! I say submissively —things meet and match us, perhaps, better than we mean. I am not a clergyman—perhaps was never meant for one. I question our position more and more. We are not fairly thrown into the field of life. We do not fairly take the free and [231] unobstructed pressure of all surrounding society. We are hedged around with artificial barriers, built up by superstitious reverence and false respect. We are cased in peculiarity. We meet and mingle with trouble and sorrow,—enough of them, too much,—but our treatment of them gets hackneyed, worn, weary, and reluctant. They grapple with the world's strife and trial, but it is an armor. Our excision from the world's pleasure and intercourse, I doubt, is not good for us. We are a sort of moral eunuchs.
To his Daughter Mary.
WASHINGTON, June 19, 1853.
THOUGH it is very hot,
Though bladed corn faint in the noontide ray, And thermometers stand at ninety-three, And fingers feel like sticks of sealing-wax, Yet I will write thee.
This evening I saw Professor Henry, who said he saw you at the Century Club last Wednesday evening; that le did not speak to you, but that you seemed to be enjoying yourself. I felt like shaking hands with him on the occasion, but restrained myself. But where are you, child, this blessed minute? . . . I would have you to know that it is a merit to write to somebody who is nowhere. Why in thunder don't you write to me? If I were nobody, I am somewhere. I hope you are enjoying yourself, but I can't think you can, conscientiously, without telling me of it.
My love to the Bryants. I hope it may greet the Grand Panjandrum himself. Tell Mrs. C. I should write to her, but I have too much regard for her to think of [232] such a thing with the thermometer at 93 degrees, and that it is as much as I can do to keep cool at any time, when I think of her.
To Mrs. David Lane.
SHEFFIELD, Sept. 2, 1853.
MY DEAR FRIEND,—Do you remember when we were walking once in Weston, that we saw the carpenter putting sheets of tarred paper under the clapboarding of a house? I want you to ask your father if he thinks that a good plan; if he knows of any ill effect, as, for instance, there being a smell of tar about the house, or the tar's running down between the clapboards. If he thinks well of it (that is question first); question second is, What kind of paper is used? and question third, Is it simply boiled tar into which the paper is dipped? I state precisement, and number the queries, because nobody ever yet answered all the questions of a letter. I hope in your reply you will achieve a distinction that will send down your name to future times. . . .
To the Same.
Sept. 9, 1853.
You have achieved immortal honor; the answers, Numbers 1, 2, and 3, are most satisfactory. I have thoughts of sending your letter to the Crystal Palace. I am much obliged to your father, and I will avail my-self of his kindness, if I should find it necessary, next rear, when I may be building an addition here.
I am sorry things don't go smoothly with-; but I guess nothing ever did go on without some hitches, that s, on this earth. It is curious, by the bye, how we go in blindly, imagining that things go smoothly with many [233] people around us,—with some at least,—with some Wellington, or Webster, or Astor, when the truth is, they never do with anybody. To take our inevitable part with imperfection, in ourselves, in others, in things,—to take our part, I say, in this discipline of imperfection, without surprise or impatience or discouragement, as a part of the fixed order of things, and no more to be wondered at or quarrelled with than drought or frost or flood,—this is a wisdom beyond the most of us, farther off from us, I believe, than any other. Ahem! when you told me of those rocks in the foundation of the house, you did not expect this "sermon in stones.". . .
To William Cullen Bryant.
SHEFFIELD, May 13, 1854.
DEAR EDITOR,—Are we to have fastened upon us this nuisance that is spreading itself among all the newspapers,—I mean the abominable smell caused by the sizing or something else in the manufacture? For a long time it was the "Christian Register" alone that had it, and I used to throw it out of the window to air. Now I perceive the same thing in other papers, and at length it has reached the "Post." Somebody is manufacturing a villanous article for the paper-makers (I state the fact with an awful and portentous generality.) But do you not perceive what the nuisance is? It is a stink, sir. I am obliged to sit on the windward side of the paper while I read its interesting contents, and to wash my hands afterwards—immediately.
But, to change the subject,—yes, toto aelo,-for I turn to something as fragrant as a bed of roses,—will [234] not you and Mrs. Bryant come to see us in June? Do. It is a long time since I have sat on a green bank with you, or anywhere else. I want some of your company, and talk, and wisdom. The first Lowell Lecture I wrote was after a talk with you here, three or four years ago. Come, I pray, and give me an impulse for another course. Bring Julia, too. I will give her my little green room.
I shall be down in New York on business a fortnight hence, and shall see you, and see if we can't fix upon a time.
With all our loves to you all,
Yours as ever,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
Mr. Dewey's father died at the very beginning of his son's career, in 1821, and early in 1855 he lost also his mother from her honored place at his fireside. He was, nevertheless, obliged to leave home in March, to fulfil an engagement made the previous autumn to lecture in Charleston, S. C.
To his Daughter Mary.
CHARLESTON, March 16, 1855.
I HAVE been trying four hours to sleep. No dervish ever turned round more times at a bout, than I have turned over in these four hours. I dined out to-day, at Judge King's, and afterwards we went to the celebrated Club 3 and, whether it is that I was seven consecutive hours in company, or that I drank a cup of coffee,
The reason why, I cannot tell, But this I know full well, [235] that here I am, at three o'clock in the morning, venting my rage on you.
It would do your heart good to see the generous and delighted interest which the G.'s and D.'s, and indeed many more, take in the phenomenon of the lectures. The truth is, that their attention to the matter, and the intelligence of the people, and the merits of the lecturer, must be combined to account for such an unprecedented and beautiful audience,-larger, and much more select, they say, than even Thackeray's. I'll send you a newspaper slip or two, if I can lay my hand upon them, upon the last lecture, which, assembled (the audience, I mean), under a clouded sky, and in face of a threatening thunder-gust, was a greater wonder, some one said, than any I undertook to explain.
Bah! what stuff to write I But all this is such an agreeable surprise to me, and will, I think, give me so much better a reward for this weary journey and absence than I expected, that you must sympathize what you can with my dotage.
As to the "Corruptions of Christianity," dear, if you don't find enough of them about you,—and you may not, as you live with your mother mostly,—you will find them in the library somewhere. There were, I think, two editions, one in one volume, and another in two. There are a hundred in the world.
The Club mentioned in this letter was that of which my father wrote in his Reminiscences: "This Charleston Club, then, I think, forty years old, was one of the most remarkable, and in some respects [236] the most improving, that I have ever known. An essay was read at every meeting, and made the subject of discussion. One evening at Dr. Gilman's was read for the essay a eulogy upon Napoleon III. It was written con amore, and was really quite sentimental in its admiration,—going back to his very boyhood, his love of his mother, and what not. I could not help touching the elbow of the gentleman sitting next me and saying, Are n't we a pretty set of fellows to be listening to such stuff as this? He showed that he thought as I did. When the reading was finished, Judge King, who presided, turned to me and asked for my opinion of the essay. I was considerably struck up,' to be the first person asked, and confessed to some embarrassment. I was a stranger among them, I said, and did not know but my views might differ entirely from theirs. I was not accustomed to think myself illiberal, or behind the progress of opinion, and I knew that this man, Louis Napoleon, had his admirers, and perhaps an increasing number of them; but if I must speak,—and then I blurted it out,—I must say that it was with inward wrath and indignation that I had listened to the essay, from beginning to end. There was a marked sensation all round the circle; but I defended my opinion, and, to my astonishment, all but two agreed with me."
The following winter he was invited to repeat his lectures in Charleston, and passed some time there, accompanied by his family. In March, 1856, he went with Mrs. Dewey to New Orleans, and, returning to Charleston at the end of April, went home in June.
[237] To his Daughters.
ON BOARD THE "HENRY KING," ON THE
ALABAMA RIVER, March 18, 1856.
. . . Sum charming things cars are! No dirt,—no sp-tt-g, oh! no,—and such nice places for sleeping! Not a long, monotonous, merely animal sleep, but intellectual, a kind of perpetual solving of geometric problems, as, for instance,—given, a human body; how many angles is it capable of forming in fifteen minutes? or how many more than a crab in the same time? And then, no crying children,—not a bit of that,—singing cherubs, innocently piping,—cheering the dull hours with dulcet sounds.
I write in the saloon, on this jarring boat, that shakes my hand and wits alike. We are getting on very prosperously. Your mother bears the journey well. This boat is very comfortable-for a boat; a good large state-room, and positively the neatest public table I have seen in all the South.
There! that'll do,—or must do. I thought wife would do the writing, but I have "got my leg over the harrow," and Mause would be as hard to stop.
To Mrs. David Lane.
NEW ORLEANS, March 29, 1856.
DEAR FRIEND,—Yesterday I was sixty-two years old. After lecturing in the evening right earnestly on "The Body and Soul," I came home very tired, and sat down with a cigar, and passed an hour among the scenes of the olden time. I thought of my father, when, a boy, I used to walk with him to the fields. Something way-[238] ward he was, perhaps, in his moods, but prevailingly bright and cheerful,—fond of a joke,—strong in sense and purpose, and warm in affection,—steady to his plans, but somewhat impulsive and impatient in execution. Where is he now? How often do I ask! Shall I see him again? How shall I find him after thirty, forty years passed in the unseen realm? And of my mother you will not doubt I thought, and called up the scenes of her life: in the mid-way of it, when she was so patient, and often weary in the care of us all, and often feeble in health; and then in the later days, the declining years, so tranquil, so gentle, so loving,—a perfect sunshine of love and gentleness was her presence.
But come we to this St. Charles Hotel, where we have been now for a week, as removed as possible from the holy and quiet dreamland of past days. Incessant hubbub and hurly-burly are the only words that can describe it, seven hundred guests, one thousand people under one roof. What a larder! what a cellar! what water-tanks, pah! filled from the Mississippi, clarified for the table with alum. People that we have known cast up at all corners, and many that we have not call upon us,—good, kind, sensible people. I don't see but New Orleans is to be let into my human world.
You see how I blot,—I'm nervous,—I can't write at a marble table. Very well, however, and wife mainly so. Three weeks more here, and then back to Savannah, where I am to give four lectures. Then to Charleston, to stay till about the 25th May.
The lectures go here very fairly,—six hundred to hear. They call it a very large audience for lectures in New Orleans. . . . With our love to all your household,
Yours ever,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
[239]The Same
SHEFFIELD, Aug. 10, 1856.
DEAR FRIEND,—My time and thoughts have been a good deal occupied of late by the illness and death of Mr. Charles Sedgwick. The funeral was on last Tuesday, and Mr. Bellows was present, making the prayer, while I read passages, and said some words proper for the time. They were hearty words, you may be sure; for in some admirable respects Charles Sedgwick has scarcely left his equal in the world. His sunny nature shone into every crack and crevice around him, and the poor man and the stranger and whosoever was in trouble or need felt that he had in him an adviser and friend. The Irish were especially drawn to him, and they made request to bear his body to the grave, that is, to Stockbridge, six miles. And partly they did so. . . . It was a tremendous rain-storm, but the procession was very long.
But I must turn away from this sad affliction to us all,—it will be long before I shall turn my thought from it,—for the world is passing on; it will soon pass by my grave and the graves of us all. I do not wonder that this sweeping tide bears our thoughts much into the coming world,—mine, I sometimes think, too much.
But we have to fight our battle, perform our duties, while one and another drops around us; and one of the things that engages me just now, is to prepare a discourse to be delivered under our Elm Tree on the 21st.
The Elm Tree Association, before which the address just alluded to was made, was a Village Improvement Society, of which my father was [240] one of the founders, and which took its name from an immense tree, one of the finest in Massachusetts, standing near the house of his maternal grandfather. To smooth and adorn the ground around the Great Elm, and make it the scene of a yearly summer festival for the whole town, was the first object of the Society, extending afterwards to planting trees, grading walks, etc., through the whole neighborhood; and it was one of the earlier impulses to that refinement of taste which has made of Sheffield one of the prettiest villages in the country. With its fine avenue of elms, planted nearly forty years ago, its gardens and well-shaven turf, it shows what care and a prevailing love of beauty and order will do for a place where there is very little wealth. It was about this time that my father planted in an angle of the main street the Seven Pines, which now make, as it were, an evergreen chapel to his memory, and with the proceeds of some lectures that he gave in the town, set out a number of deciduous trees around the Academy, many of which are still living, though the building they were intended to shade is gone.
The Elm Tree Association, however, from one cause and another, was short-lived; but "It lived to light a steadier flame" in the Laurel Hill Association, of Stockbridge, which, taking the idea from the Sheffield plan, continues to develop it in a very beautiful and admirable manner. [241] The address at the gathering in 1856 was chiefly occupied with a review of the history of the town, and with the thoughts appropriate to the place of meeting; and at the close the speaker took occasion to explain to his townspeople his ideas upon the national crisis of the day, and the changed aspect that had been given to the slavery question by the fresh determination of the South to maintain the excellence of the system and to force it upon the acceptance of the North in the new States then forming. Against this he made earnest and solemn protest, with a full expression of his opinion as to the innate wrong to the blacks, and the destructive effects on the whites, of slavery; but at the same time he spoke with large and kindly consideration for the Southerners. After doing justice to the care and kindness of many of them for their slaves, he said, in close:—
"I have listened also to what Southern apologists have said in another view,—that this burden of slavery was none of their choosing; that it was entailed upon them; that they cannot immediately emancipate their people; that they are not qualified to take care of themselves; that this state of things must be submitted to for a while, till remedial laws and other remedial means shall bring relief. And so long as they said that, I gave them my sympathy. But when they say, 'Spread this system,—spread it far and wide,' I cannot go another step with them. And it is not I that has changed, but they. When they say, 'Spread it, —spread it over [242] Kansas and Nebraska, spread it over the far West, annex Mexico, annex Cuba, annex Central America, make slavery a national institution, make the compact of the Constitution carry it into all Territories, cover it with the national images, set it up as part of our great republican profession, stamp on our flag and our shield and our scutcheon the emblem of human slavery,' I say,—no—never-God forbid!"
It seems strange now that so temperate and candid a speech should have raised a storm of anger when read in Charleston. But the sore lace was too tender for even the friendliest such, and of all those who had greeted him here so cordially the winter before, but two or three maintained and strengthened their relations with him after this summer. It was one of many trials to which his breadth of view exposed him.
To Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D.
SHEFFIELD, Aug. 11, 1856.
MY DEAR BELLOWS,—I do not complain of your Teter; but what if it should turn out that I cannot agree with you? What if my opinions, when properly understood, should displease many persons? Is it the first time that honest opinions have been proscribed, or the expression of them thought "unfortunate "?
I appreciate all the kindness of your letter, and your care for my reputation; but you are not to be told that here is something higher than reputation.
You write with the usual anti-slavery assurance that our opinion is the correct one. It is natural; it is the [243] first-blush, the impromptu view of the matter. But whether there is not a juster view, coming out of that same deliberateness and impartiality that you accuse me of,—whether there is not, in fact, a broader humanity and a broader politics than yours or that of your party, is the question.
I don't like the tendencies of your mind (I don't say heart) on this question; your willingness to bring the whole grand future of this country to the edge of the present crisis; your idea of this crisis as a second Revolution, and of the cause of liberty as equally involved; your thinking it so fatal to be classed with Tories, or with-, and-, and your regret that I should have gone down South to lecture. It all looks to me narrow.
I may address the public on this subject. But if I do, I shan't do it mainly for my own sake; at any rate, I shall write to you when I get leisure.
With love to E.,
Yours ever,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
To Rev. Ephraim Peabody, D.D.
SHEFFIELD, Nov. 10, 1856.
MY DEAR PEABODY,—I have written you several imaginary letters since I saw you, and now I'm determined (before I go to Baltimore to lecture, which is next week) that I will write you a real one. I desired H. T. to inquire and let me know how you are, and she writes that you are very much the same as when I was in Boston,—riding out in the morning, and passing, I fear, the same sad and weary afternoons. I wish I were near you this winter, that is, if I could help you at all through those heavy hours. [244] I am writing a lecture on "Unconscious Education;" for I want to add one to the Baltimore course. And is not a great deal of our education unconscious and mysterious? You do not know, perhaps, all that this long sickness and weariness and prostration are doing for you. I always think that the future scene will open to us the wonders of this as we never see them here.
Heine says that a man is n't worth anything till he has suffered; or something like that. I am a great coward about it; and I imagine sometimes that deeper trial might make something of me.
My dear friend, if I may call you so, I write to little purpose, perhaps, but out of great sympathy and affection for you. I do not know of a human being for whom I have a more perfect esteem than for you. And in that love I often commend you, with a passing prayer, or sigh sometimes, to the all-loving Father. We believe in Him. Let us "believe the love that God hath to us."
With all our affectionate regards to your wife and girls and to you,
Yours ever,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
Within a few weeks the pure and lofty spirit to whom these words were addressed was called hence, and the following letter was written:—
SHEFFIELD, Dec. 17, 1856.
MY DEAR MRS. PEABODY,—Do you not know why I dread to write to you, and yet why I cannot help it? Since last I spoke to you, such an event has passed, that I tremble to go over the abyss and speak to you again. But you and your children stand, bereft and stricken, on [245] the shore, as it were, of a new and strange world,—for strange must be the world to you where that husband and father is not,—and I would fain express the sympathy which I feel for you, and my family with me. Yet not with many words, but more fitly in silence, should I do it. And this letter is but as if I came and sat by you, and only said, "God help you," or knelt with you and said, "God help us all;" for we are all bereaved in your bereavement.
True, life passes on visibly with us as usual; but every now and then the thought of you and him comes over me, and I exclaim and pray at once, in wonder and sorrow.
But the everlasting succession of things moves on, and we all take our place in it-now, to mourn the lost, and now, ourselves to be mourned—till all is finished. It is an Infinite Will that ordains it, and our part is to bow in humble awe and trust.
I had a letter once, from a most lovely woman, announcing to me the death of her husband, a worthless person; and she spoke of it with no more interest than if a log had rolled from the river-bank and floated down the stream. What do you think of that,—with affections, venerations, loves, sympathies, swelling around you like a tide?
I know that among all these there is an unvisited loneliness which nothing can reach. May God's peace and presence be there!
I could not write before, being from home. I do not write anything now, but to say to you and your dear children, "God comfort you."
From your friend,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
[246] To his Daughter Mary.
BALTIMORE, Nov. 24, 1856.
DEAREST MOLLY,—I must send you a line, though somehow I can't make my table write yet. I have just been out to walk in the loveliest morning, and yet my nerves are ajar, and I can't guide my pen. I preached very hard last evening. I don't know but these people are all crazy, but they make me feel repaid. The church was full, as I never saw it before. The lecture Saturday evening was crowded. So I go.
I am reading Dr. Kane's book. Six pages could give all the actual knowledge it contains; but that fearful conflict of men with the most terrible powers of nature, and so bravely sustained, makes the story like tragedy; and I read on and on, the same thing over and over, and don't skip a page. But Mrs.—has just been in, and sat down and opened her widowed heart to me, and I see that life itself is often a more solemn tragedy than voyaging in the Arctic Seas. Nay, I think the deacon himself, when he accepted that challenge (how oddly it sounds!), must have felt himself to be in a more tragic strait than "Smith's Strait," or any other that Kane was in.
Your letters came Saturday evening, and were, by that time, an indispensable comfort. . . .
This will be with you before the Thanksgiving dinner. Bless it, and you all, prayeth, giving thanks with and for you,
Your
ORVILLE DEWEY.
[247]Mr. Dewey had been asked repeatedly, since his retirement from New York, to take charge of Church Green, in Boston, a pulpit left vacant by the death of Dr. Young; and he consented to go there in the beginning of 1858, with the understanding that he should preach but once on a Sunday. He had an idea of a second service, which should be more useful to the people and less exhausting to the minister than the ordinary afternoon service, which very few attended, and those only from a sense of duty. He had written for this purpose a series of "Instructions," as he called them, on the 104th Psalm. Each was about an hour long, and they were, in short, simple lectures on religious subjects. To use his own words, "This was not preaching, and was attended with none of the exhaustion that follows the morning service. Many people have no idea, nor even suspicion, of the difference between praying and preaching for an hour, with the whole mind and heart poured into it, and any ordinary public speaking for an hour. They seem to think that in either case it is vox et preterea nihil, and the more voice the more exhaustion; but the truth is, the more the feelings are enlisted in any way, the more exhaustion, and the difference is the greatest possible."
[248] To William Cullen Bryant, Esq.
BOSTON, Sept. 7, 1858.
DEAR BRYANT,-You have got home. If you pronounce the charm-word four times after the dramatic (I mean the true dramatic) fashion, all is told. It makes me think of what Mrs. Kemble told us the other day. In a play where she acted the mistress, and her lover was shot,—or was supposed to be, but was reprieved, and came rushing to her arms,—instead of repeating a long and pretty speech which was set down for her, the dramatic passion made her exclaim: "ALIVE! ALIVE! alive! alive!"
Well, you are such a nomadic cosmopolitan, that I won't answer for you; but I will be bound it is so with. Mrs. Bryant, and I guess Julia too. How you all are, and how she is especially, is the question in all our hearts; and without waiting for forty things to be done, all working you like forty-power presses, pray write us three words and tell us.
. . . I hope that some time in the winter I shall get a sight of you. You and the Club would make my measure full. And yet Boston is great.
To Mrs. David Lane.
BOSTON, Sept. 20, 1858.
MY DEAR FRIEND,—Dr. Jackson is fast turning me into a vegetable,-homo multi-cotyledonous is the species. My head is a cabbage—brain, cauliflower; my eyes are two beans, with a short cucumber between them, for a nose; my heart is a squash (very soft); my lungs—cut a watermelon in two, lengthwise, and you have them; [249]my legs are cornstalks, and my feet, potatoes. I eat nothing but these things, and I am fast becoming nothing else. I am potatoes and corn and cucumber and cabbage,—like the chameleon, that takes the color of the thing it lives on. Dr. Jackson will have a great deal to answer for to the world. Had n't you better come into town and see about it? Perhaps you can arrest the process. . . .
I declare I think it is too bad to send such a poor dish to you as this, and especially in your loneliness; but it is all. Dr. Jackson's fault.
Think of mosquito-bars in Boston! They must be very trying things—to the mosquitoes. You see they don't know what to make of it; and very likely their legs and wings get caught sometimes in the "decussated, reticulated interstices," as Dr. Johnson calls them. At any rate, from their noise, they evidently consider themselves as the most ill-treated and unfortunate outcasts upon earth. Paganini wrote the "Carnival of Venice." I wonder somebody does n't write the no-carnival of the mosquitoes.
To the Same.
BOSTON, Dec. 30, 1858.
DEAR MY FRIEND,—I cannot let the season of happy wishes pass by without sending mine to you and yours. But you must begin to gather up patience for your venerable friend, for the happy anniversaries somehow begin to gather shadows around them; they are both reminders and admonishers.
Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that the "Happy New Year!" is never sounded out in the minor key; always it has a ring of joyousness and hope in it. Read that [250] little piece of Fanny Kemble's,[FN: Mrs. Kemble's Poems] on the 179th page,—the "Answer to a Question." I send you the volume 1 by this mail. Ah! what a clear sense and touching sensibility and bracing moral tone there is, running through the whole volume! But I was going to say that that little piece tells you what I would write better than I can write it. We all send "Merry Christmas" and "Happy New Year" to you all, in a heap; that is, a heap of us to a heap of you, and a heap of good wishes.
My poor head is rather improving, but it is n't worth much yet, as you plainly see. Nevertheless, in the other and sound part of me I am,
As ever, your friend,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
To his Sister, Miss F. Dewey.
[Date missing. About 1859.]
So you remember the old New Bedford times pleasantly,—and I do. And I remember my whole lifetime in the same way. And even if it had been less pleasant, if there had been many more and greater calamities in it, still I hold on to that bottom-ground of all thanksgiving, even this, that God has placed in us an immortal spark, which through storm and cloud and darkness may grow brighter, and in the world beyond may shine as the stars forever. I heard Father Taylor last Sunday afternoon. Towards the close he spoke of his health as uncertain and liable to fail; "But," said he, "I have felt a little more of immortality come down into me today, and as if I should live awhile longer here."
[251]To Mrs. David Lane.
BOSTON, Saturday evening [probably Oct., 1859]
DEAR MY FRIEND,—I imagine you are all so cast down, forlorn, and desolate at my leaving you, and especially "At the close of the day, when the hamlet is still, And mortals the sweets of forgetfulness prove, When naught but the torrent is heard on the hill, And naught but the nightingale's song in the grove," that I ought to write a word to fill the void. I should have said, on coming away, like that interesting child who had plagued everybody's life out of them, "come again!"
Bah! you never asked me; or only in such a sort that I was obliged to decline. Am I such a stupid visitor? Did I not play at bagatelle with L.? Did I not read eloquently out of Carlyle to you and C.? Did I not talk wisdom to you by the yard? Did I not let drop crumbs of philosophy by the wayside of our talk, continually? Above all, am I not the veriest woman, at heart, that you ever saw? Why, I had like to have choked upon "Sartor Resartus." I wonder if you saw it. But, ahem!-a great swallow a man must have, to gulp down the "Everlasting Yea." And a great swallow implies a great stomach. And a great stomach implies a great brain, unless a man's a fool. "If not, why not?" as Captain Bunsby says; "therefore."
Oh, what a mad argument to prove swan sane,—and good company besides I Well, I am mad, and expect to be so,-at least I think I have a right to be so, in the proportion of one hour to twenty-four, being so rational the rest of the time. I think it's but a reasonable allowance. [252] You will judge that this is my mad hour to-day, and it is; nevertheless, I am, soberly,
Your friend,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
In the winter of 1859 he writes to the same friend upon New York City politics with a passionate vivacity that old New Yorkers will sadly appreciate.
"I took up the paper this morning that announced Fernando Wood's election by two thousand plurality. If you had seen the way in which I brought down my hand upon the table,—minding neither muscle nor mahogany, you would know how people at a distance, especially if they have ever lived in New York, feel about it. I hope he will pay you well. I wish he would take out some of your rich, stupid, arms-folding, purse-clutching millionnaires into Washington Square and flay them alive. Something of the sort must be done, before our infatuated city upper classes will come to their senses." |
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