Chapter XIII. Cambridge.

  On Sunday last what do you suppose I did? I actually preached at the Memorial Hall. My subject was “The New Faith,” in which I took lots of ideas from my New York pastor. I believe it is to be published in next Saturday’s “Commonwealth,” though I had n’t the slightest idea of its being printed when I wrote it. But Mr. Slack pounced upon me with an editorial pistol and I did n’t know what to do but stand and deliver, though I had already stood and delivered it to the whole congregation. I felt that I wanted to have once the satisfaction of saying in the Fraternity pulpit the things I did say, and I had a large and attentive and apparently sympathetic audience.

  Your picture of Parker makes me feel ridiculously small, and thus I have wasted more of my life than I care about remembering. But it’s no use for me to cry about it. I am growing old, but perhaps I may do something yet that may be of some little service to my fellow creatures. But this Theodore Parker haunts me and rebukes my conscience terribly.

  I take the liberty also of sending you my “Libretto.”¹ And I am now, as ever, with the same admiration and affection,

  We are now in the hardships of the worst spring that I can compare with my remembrances: but I trust it may yet lead us to as fair a summer as its sisters have done, and I trust my wife may be well enough, and you good enough, and I unloaded enough of my slow task, to secure us a visit from you on the best day.

  I don’t know what dear Emma will think of the old Harmonic after hearing the Boston Handel and Haydn. I think we are pretty good on a regular trot, like the “Messiah” and “Creation.” We can even keep alongside of that active little roadster, Bach, whose legs move under him so quick. But if you want to see fits of hysterics, you ought to see us in “Prometheus”! It is a perfect nightmare. The Detlingen “Te Deum” and the “Stabat Mater” last night were splendid. We had a great house, and everybody was delighted: I think must very nearly have paid expenses. That Mrs. Smith has such a clear, pure, high soprano, and sings so accurately! Whitney is a magnificent bass. If our Emma had had Mrs. Barry’s part, and Varley had been a natural-born tenor, which he is n’t, and the Cincinnati Orchestra had stopped scratching, the Quartettes would have been perfect.

  . . . Well, just pray for me; thermometer 90°, standing in cloth coat, on the top tier of two hundred singers, whose natural temperature excited by “Prometheus,” and blazing gas, and audience of two thousand down there, and the spiders in the ceiling hatching their eggs prematurely on account of the heat, singing something I don’t know, jostled by nervous elbows, and sympathetically affected by a general fuss—and this at sixty-five, when I ought to be in bed snoring a natural bass to myself like a husband and father. . . . Annie enjoys it though. She is one of the altos. I go for her sake.

  This is Independence Day, and the bells are ringing like mad; there never was such a place for bells as Cambridge. It is like Florence or Rome. This morning before sunrise they began it;—this is the noonday peal, and this afternoon and at sunset I suppose there will be more of it, with chimes to boot. But no guns, no cannon, not even a firecracker has been heard, nothing bigger than a torpedo. . . . Many people have left Cambridge. I suppose all the boys are suppressed by law, clapped into barrels, or sent off somewhere. But O these bells! It is a little too much. There is a big Newfoundland dog in the street, who evidently can’t stand it; he is running about barking. Certainly pealing and barking go naturally together. . . .

  I don’t know how I got into this sermonizing strain, I suppose it was your letter, and the morning sun at my windows, and the stillness of Thanksgiving Day that set me going. But when we can talk, let us talk. Why don’t we talk oftener? Hit were as easy to write, as to speak, I suppose we should, only once in a while some harmony of circumstances makes it easy.

  Last night we had a little party, about a dozen. Among our guests were Charles Elliott and wife, our near neighbors, and your friend, Mrs. Sarah Perkins. After tea and chocolate we had quite a jolly evening. Miss Lizzie Boott sang an Italian song and her Pa, Mr. Frank Boott sang two of his own songs, a good pair of Boots, and I sang “Heathen Chinee” and “Chiquita,” and “ Isaac Abbott,” and made the crying baby. After which our friend Brooks gave his inimitable specimens of acting—”Widow Bedott” and the old woman telling the shad story, ending with his celebrated Fourth of July oration.

  The letters end abruptly, just before the Hon. Richard Cranch’s death in 1811. Grandmother Cranch, I think, died the same year, and very shortly afterwards. The birth of each child is mentioned in Father’s letters—and sometimes there are little notices of them, as boys and girls. . . .

  I feel now like a person who has read only the first volume of a novel, and knows, or fears the second is lost. I want to follow the fortunes of the family from Washington to Alexandria, and see how I came into the world; and to know some few incidents attending my early childhood. Are there any letters preserved, of this period? or later? Perhaps Margie has some. She is the chief record keeper of the Cranch family. I never knew before that there was a Christopher Cranch before me—I don’t mean the infant of Mother’s that died—but a Christopher in Richard Cranch’s time-in England-one of his cousins. It looked queer to see his signature on those yellow old letters. One of the most interesting letters of Grandfather’s, is one in which he tells of the original Christopher Pearse, for whom I was named. He was our Grandfather’s grandfather and must have been born during Cromwell’s Civil War.

  As to the Libretto for the “Cantata of America,” I dare say I was very rash to consent to do it. I see what may Be done, vaguely see it; but it doesn’t at all shape itself yet to me in a lyric or dramatic form. I have no inspirations as yet. I shall pray for them. I am tolerable at meditative poetry on America, as you may see in my Phi Beta poem, but have n’t got hold yet of a conception for dramatic music.

  There must be a sort of chaos to begin with, like. Haydn’s “Creation” overture. Do you remember Gardiner’s description of it in his “Music of Nature?” Show it to Mr. Singer. Let him make his overture. But it is funny my saying what Mr. Singer ought to do, before I have an idea of my own.

  How would it do to have a wail and lamentation from the Red Men, on their vanishing wigwams and hunting fields, and the encroaching white pioneers? But something grander must precede this. Mystical voices from the old world, predicting the discovery of the new world, and the uprising of a great shining continent beyond the unknown ocean. I shall have to pump at the dry cistern of my wits; perhaps to bore an artesian well, before I touch my Castalian fount. I am frightened to think of it. But if I don’t do it, somebody else will, who can’t do it either. If ever I had to invoke the Muse it is now! Let us pray for favorable conditions. Medium work and spirit manifestations are nothing to this.

  Last night I read an essay on Shakespeare’s Sonnets at Mrs. J. T. Sargent’s in Boston.² I met there a lady I knew in New York, a musician and writer, who likes my hook immensely. These little sops are sweet under the tongue.

  I have been busy painting several small pictures. . . . I have also done some good poetical work, the best of which I consider ten sonnets addressed to my brother Edward. I write no sonnets now except in the orthodox Italian manner, with the double rhymes. I have taken a studio in Boston for the winter, and shall get into it in the New Year. I shall throw out my nets. There is better fishing in Boston than in Cambridge, which is the the deadest place for art I know.

  I go to Boston every day to my Studio; but must give it up either by the middle of March or 1st of April. Carrie is there part of the time.

  Did you read my sonnet on “Pennyroyal” in the March “Atlantic”? I wrote it last summer in the country, one Sunday morning lying under an oak-tree. I thought my love of pennyroyal was a specialty of mine and a few others, but it seems the sonnet has brought out half a dozen sympathizers. Only to-day I received the thanks of an old Boston lawyer, and at the same time Howells showed me a letter from a gentleman in West-Newton, with a poem which he had named “Pennyroyal,” till he saw mine; very good, too, it is. I will here transcribe some lines of mine, which will appear in the “Atlantic,” sometime. They are to nobody in particular, but to a sort of Ideal Voice.

  We had a glorious concert here last night at Sanders Theatre. . . . Paine’s new Romanza, and Scherzo for piano and ‘cello went off finely. All the Cambridge élite are at these concerts, and a good many Bostonians. I think you haven’t seen the new theatre. It is very beautiful, holds fifteen hundred people, and is well adapted to music. In the Beethoven Trio for piano, violin, and ‘cello, the Andante Cantabile was the most divine thing I have beard for a long time. I saw John Dwight and Lowell and Norton, and other friends of yours at a distance.

  On Monday next is the Annual Dinner of the Harvard Musical Association at Parker’s in Boston, where I shall give my contribution in the shape of some verses, of a light and humorous vein.

  Write and tell me how you have been this cold and snowy winter. I keep Carrie’s sketch of you on my study mantelpiece and look at it every day. It is very like you, and I think, is a masterly sketch rough and unfinished as it is.

  With his letter is a sort of log kept on the margin of a map in which is registered the distance and course of the ship each day, from New York to the rock on which it split, with a brief entry of any unusual incident. I was shocked to read opposite November 15, the following: “Quincy Cranch fell off the mizzen royal yard and was killed—Ship kept her course.”

  On the tracing of the route opposite the 17th day of November there is the following entry, Death of Cranch 88.56° lat., 18.28° long. Cape of Good Hope.

  This is all, and yet far too much! Doubtless you will have heard, before this, fuller details of this catastrophe. Should my son’s diary, or letters, ever come to hand, I will profit by anything they may contain to answer some of the numerous questions which this meagre record will provoke.

  You will break this intelligence to Mrs. Cranch and your family as you best can. God knows how sincerely I sympathize with you and them.

  Lizzie was away at Fishkill when I read the letter from Mr. Tuckerman enclosing the brief extract from the Captain’s letter to Mr. Lyman, partner of A. A. Low & Co. It was on the 8th-my birthday, at five o’clock P.M. as I returned from Boston. Carrie and I held a consultation, and it was thought it would never do for Lizzie to come back alone, so I left Boston in the nine o’clock train that night and waited for the train from Fishkill. It was there, at the station, that she first learned the news. We left that afternoon and returned. Lizzie was ill for several days, but she is now well again, and strong, and full of faith that she will see her boy again. Then he is spared so much struggle and trial in this world. The sharpest bitterness of the blow is becoming gradually less. It is a blessed thing that we have work to engross us. This, and time are the great consolers.

  Politically it has been a most exciting winter, and the end is not until the fourth of March is gone. Luckily I have no kind of official ambition, so my soul is at rest. My Lizzie’s music is a great delight, and for so young a girl, she plays very well.

  On Christmas Day I was sick in bed with an attack of vertigo, a thing I never had before. (But our good Doctor soon cured me.) We were all invited to dine at Henry James’s; but Lizzie and Carrie went without me. I was at the “Atlantic” dinner, on Whittier’s seventieth birthday, of which, I suppose, you have seen an account. I didn’t get home till near two o’clock, I believe; but then I waited for Mr. Houghton who brought me out in his carriage. I had written a sonnet to Whittier, and sent it to him, and received a pleasant answer from him; but as the sonnet was printed in the “Tribune,” it couldn’t properly be read at the dinner.

  The next evening I was at a party in Boston, at Mr. Eldredge’s-brother-in-law to Story-who was there, the party being for him. It was a big, fashionable party, and though I went late, I was almost the first there, and besides, much to my disgust, had on a pair of shrilly creaking boots, and there was no carpet on the stairs! This was awful. But I said to myself, “I’m an old gentleman, what matters it?” This looks as if I were a society man. But I’m not. I’m almost a hermit.

  We have been having Sunday afternoon meetings; a little movement got up among some of the liberal people “unchurched” in Cambridge. They are small gatherings of about twenty or more gentlemen and ladies, meeting at each other’s houses, where an essay is read and followed by conversation. They have been very interesting. The first meeting was in our parlor, March 10, where I read aloud the “Immortal Life”; the second, at Mr. Parks’s, where Mr. Beckwith, a young minister, read about “Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces in Thought, and in Society”; the third, at Mrs. Stearns’s, essay by Professor C. C. Everett on “Nature”; the fourth, at our house, essay by Mr. Weiss on “Idealism and Materialism.” Weiss and John Dwight dined with us that day. The conversation was more interesting than usual, much less formal and bookish and stilted than at Mrs. Sargent’s Club. We have had no organization, or name as yet, and I don’t know whether we shall, except the appointment of a Committee, of which I am chairman, to provide readers. Next Sunday, Mr. Sydney H. Morse reads, and the next, Dr. Hedge at his house. I think it would be a good thing for you to try it in Burlington, where, I dare say, there are a good many who don’t go to church, yet feel the need of some spiritual and intellectual communion.

  If you want to know what I have been doing, I can hardly tell you. Only I am generally busy about something. I try my hand at too many things, I know, but somehow I can’t help it. . . . I send some verses occasionally to some magazine, and I paint pictures. . . . My latest things have been some water-colors, chiefly Venetian subjects, which I shall send to the New York Exhibition for February. I sold two there last year. And these are better. . . .

  Then, translating verse is one of my vanities. I believe I told you I had done the ten Eclogues of Virgil into hexameter, line for line. This was some time ago. I think it is one of the best things I have done. Lately I have been trying my hand at a few of the Odes of Horace. One of them is published in the first number of the New Series of Dwight’s “Journal.” So you see I try “the stops of various quills.” I have enough translations of shorter poems, of the German and Latin chiefly, to make a volume, but there is no demand for such wares. . . .

  But I am running on, and here is the end of my paper. I will hunt up that “Symposium.” I like such reading, too. But sometimes I like to cut loose from all thought on the Problem of Life, which I can never solve and go back to my canvas and brushes, where I can enjoy work and not be obliged to think on these tangled questions.

  We made two visits to Staten Island, and were two weeks up the River to see our relatives in Fishkill. I was within three doors of the Century Club, and they gave me a card of admittance during the time I was in the city. We saw hosts of old friends and acquaintances, heard Frothingham preach, and were at the reception given to him before he left for Europe, which was a great occasion. Many friends wanted us to stay in New York, but it is not the place for us. It is too big, and too noisy. I was homesick for our quiet life in Cambridge, and am very glad to get back again.

  I wish I could hear from you sometimes. But I ought not to complain, for if I, who have so much leisure and the free use of my fingers, am still such a bad correspondent, what must it be for you with your hours crowded with work and your lame wrist?. . .

  I can’t remember when you wrote to me last, or when I wrote to you. I wish, if you can’t write, you would dictate an epistle, or send me a scrap of drawing. Now I come to think of it, you will be actually seventy years old in a few days! And I am creeping along close to your steps. And fate still separates us, and the mystery of life and of the great Future still wraps us about, and we know nothing about the Beyond! And yet I am sure that all will be for the best. Now I think of it, I will send you four sonnets, written last March, on this great theme. But I am inclined to think it best, if we can, to forget all about Death and the Future, and live in the Present. We’ve got to let these things take care of themselves.—What have we got to do with it? If a man by taking thought can’t add one cubit to his stature, neither can he add one day to his life. All we can do is to submit to the Great Ruler of events, and trust and hope. My great creed now is to believe in the Unconscious life, and take counsel of it. And its great lesson is Faith, and not Doubt or Denial. And I trust too that even in this mortal vale we shall meet again, and that before long.

  Our anniversary is fast approaching,and I hope to hear from you as usual on that memorable day. How goes it at Ashfield? Give our love to all, and greet the greenwooded hills for me.

  Why should you go away? What have we all done? To-day the spring begins here. It is still, and warm, and blue, and the Forsythia, and Periwinkle, and company, are in full blast. But if you are really going, what is the name of the curse-rigged ship, and when does she sail and whence? I shall be very, very sorry if this story turns out to be true. We are all well, and we all send our love to Lizzie and Carrie and you. Don’t go!