WHITTIER AT CLOSERANGE
BY
FRANCES CAMPBELL SPARHAWK
Author of
“A Chronicle of Conquest,” “Honor Dalton,”The “Dorothy Brooke” Series, &c.
BOSTON
THE RIVERDALE PRESS, BROOKLINE
1925
COPYRIGHT, 1925
By Frances Campbell Sparhawk
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
The Riverdale Press, Brookline, Boston, Mass.
TO THE MEMORY OF
MY FATHER
F. C. S.
[Pg 7]
FOREWORD
Thanks are due to Messrs. J. B. Lippincottand Company, Thomas Y. Crowell Company,and “The Congregationalist” for the permitteduse of articles written for them and now revisedwith the new material for the book.
“You do, indeed, know a great deal aboutuncle,” wrote Whittier’s niece, Mrs. Pickard,to the writer.
In the middle 1830’s Whittier with hismother, her sister “Aunt Mercy,” and his sisterElizabeth, “our youngest and our dearest” of“Snow Bound” memories, removed from hisbirthplace in Haverhill to the Amesbury homewhich grew to be so dear to him.
His townspeople held him in admiration andloving reverence. Some came to his home ashonored citizens enter a city made free to them,and learned that his life was poetry no less thanhis writings.
In 1887 he said in a letter to the writer: “Ithink often of the old days when thy father wasalive and sister Lizzie and we were all together.”
As the daughter of his physician and friend,she has given in “Whittier at Close Range”intimate glimpses of his life and character.
Frances Campbell Sparhawk.
Brookline, Massachusetts.
[Pg 9]
WHITTIER AT CLOSE RANGE
I
[Illustration]
In the garden room, worthy synonym ofa poet’s study where blossom flowers of thoughtand beauty, a young neighbor of the poetawaited his coming.
His easy chair stood with bookshelves onthe right hand, whence he could gather fromthem as he pleased—although books werescattered everywhere over the house—andat its left was the table between the windowslooking into the garden, while opposite itstood the door from the little hall, so thatthe chair faced all who entered the room.She looked across the room at a painting ofa California sunset—Starr King’s gift to thepoet. Near the painting was the engravingof an Arctic scene sent to the poet and hissister Elizabeth by Dr. Kane on his returnfrom his Arctic explorations. She rememberedhow for a long time the picture hadfailed to appear, and how when a duplicatehad been sent and hung, this first picture hadat last arrived, and had been given by MissWhittier to one of her Amesbury friends.
The poet had banished from the garden rooma fine oil painting of himself in his youth, a[Pg 10]striking portrait, full of individuality, yetbearing a suggestion of Burns. But it was notstrange that one poet should recall the other,since there was in some respects a m