By Grace E. Sellon

Near the town of Haverhill, Massachusetts, in the old homestead of his father’s family, the poet John Greenleaf Whittier was born December 17, 1807. Like all the other children who generation after generation had come to live in this Quaker dwelling, he was brought up in simple, useful ways, and was early given his full share of the duties about the farm. No matter how sharply the cold of the harsh New England winter pierced his homespun clothes, the snow must be shoveled from the paths, firewood must be brought, the stalls in the barn must be littered, and, worst task of all for him, seven cows must be milked. Yet there was plenty of fun to be had, too. When the snow fell so heavily that it blocked all the roads and closed in tightly about the house, the two Whittier boys found it exciting work to dig their way to the outside world.

When the early twilight fell and passed into night, the boys with their sisters joined the group gathered about the great hearth, and there listened to stories of Indians, witches and Christian martyrs, and to many another weird or adventurous tale told by the older members of the family. While they were being thus entertained, the blaze of the red logs went roaring up the chimney,

“The house-dog on his paws outspread
Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
The cat’s dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger’s seemed to fall;
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons’ straddling feet,
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,
And, close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October’s wood.”

All too soon this pleasant time came to an end, and the boys must go to their bare, unheated room upstairs. There, the poet has written,

“Within our beds awhile we heard
The wind that round the gables roared,
With now and then a ruder shock,
Which made our very bedsteads rock.
We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us, through the unplastered wall,
Felt the lightsifted snowflakes fall;
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new;
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams.
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,
And lapsing waves on quiet shores.”

In the warm season, though there was much to do in helping plant and harvest the crops, there were good times to be had in climbing to the top of Job’s hill, next to the house, where the friendly oxen were pastured, or in gathering berries or nuts, or in watching the birds, bees and squirrels as they worked or played about their homes. It was these delights of his childhood that the poet was calling to remembrance when he wrote The Barefoot Boy, which may be found elsewhere in these volumes.

Probably there are few country lads to-day who know so little as did the Whittier boys of the common sights and pleasures of city life. The strict Quaker belief regarding children’s amusement barred them from most of the enjoyment familiar to the young people in the great world that lay beyond their home. So little were they acquainted with the forbidden attractions at the circus that one time when President Monroe visited Haverhill, Greenleaf (as the poet was known in his home), looking next day for traces of the presence of the great man, whom he had not been allowed to see, came upon the tracks of an elephant that had been in town with a traveling menagerie, and in his ignorance believed that these were the footsteps of the famous visitor. The theater, so the children were taught, was to be shunned as a place of wickedness. Once when Greenleaf was visiting in Boston he was asked to go to a play by a lady whom he met in the home where he was staying. When he found that the lady was an actress, he became so much afraid of being led into sinful ways that, not daring to remain longer, he started off at once for home.

Though young Whittier was a wide-awake boy and eager to learn, there was only the district school, held for a few weeks each winter, for him to attend. Yet an opportunity was not lacking for bringing to light his poetic gift. One of his schoolmasters, who lived for part of the term in the Whittier home, used to read to the family from various interesting books, and one night chose for their entertainment a volume of Burns’s poems. As the lines of the much-loved Scotch poet fell from the reader’s lips, the young boy listened as he had never before listened in his life. His own power awakened and responded warmly to that of the older poet. From that hour, whether he was at home or at school, he found great pleasure in writing verses, which he often showed to his young friends. Thus it was that his older sister Mary was able, all unknown to him, to send off one of his poems to the Newburyport Free Press. When the paper containing the verses came, the young poet read the lines over and over again, almost too dazed to recognize them as his own. This contribution was followed by another made to the same paper. By this time the editor’s interest had been so much aroused that, learning from the postman of the author’s whereabouts, he traveled to Haverhill to visit him. This editor was no other than William Lloyd Garrison, who later became famous as a leader of the cause of abolition. He urged strongly that the boy’s education be continued. Perhaps his words would have counted for nothing, however, had it not been that somewhat later the editor of the Haverhill Gazette, in which some of young Whittier’s verses had been published, entreated the boy’s parents to send him to the new Haverhill Academy. His father’s consent having been gained, Greenleaf learned from a man who worked on the farm how to make slippers, and thus he became able to pay his own expenses during a term at the Academy. By teaching school in the winter, and by helping to keep the books of a Haverhill merchant, he was able to provide for a second term. Thus was completed his regular schooling.

In the meanwhile his friend Garrison had kept an eye on him, and at the close of 1825 secured for him the editorship of The American Manufacturer, a weekly magazine published in Boston. Young Whittier entered with great interest into the work, contributing articles on politics and temperance as well as numerous poems. Though he received only nine dollars a week, he was able, when called back to Haverhill in 1829, by his father’s illness, to give about one half of what he had earned to help remove the mortgage on the farm.

He remained at home until his father’s death in 1830, editing for a time the Haverhill Gazette and sending to the New England Review, of Hartford, Connecticut, various poems and articles. So much favor did these find with the editor, George D. Prentice, that he invited the young writer to fill his position during a temporary absence. The offer was highly complimentary, for the Review was the principal political journal in Connecticut supporting Henry Clay. However, Whittier was well prepared for the work, for he had become acquainted with the leaders and with the chief interests of the Whig party while editing the Manufacturer, and was himself an enthusiastic follower of Clay. His common sense and shrewd but kindly reading of human nature, united with a high sense of honor and justice, enabled him to fill this responsible position with marked success until his failing health forced him to give it up in January, 1832.

There was much reason for Whittier to look for success in political life, for his editorial work had made him widely known as a man of sane and practical views, and he was so highly regarded in the district where he lived that had he reached the required age of twenty-five, he would in all probability have been made a candidate for Congress in 1832. Thus it was that although he had published more than a hundred favorably received poems between 1828 and 1832, he wrote in the latter year: “My prospects are too good to be sacrificed for any uncertainty. I have done with poetry and literature.”

A far nobler mission, however, and greater usefulness than he could have planned for himself lay before Whittier. It was not political success that was to draw forth the greatness of his nature. The strong and fearless interest with which his friend Garrison had begun to champion the abolition of slavery in the United States appealed to him, he felt with all his heart that the cause was right, and, closing his eyes to the bright promise of political success, he chose to unite himself with the scorned and mistreated upholders of freedom. After thorough consideration and study, he wrote and published in 1833 the pamphlet Justice and Expediency, in which he set forth fully the arguments against slavery. This was the first of his strong and stirring protests against oppression. From that time until the close of the Civil War his fervent, fearless love of liberty voiced itself through ringing verses, in constant appeals to the conscience of the nation. The greatness of this influence, as it worked silently in men’s hearts, who can estimate?

Whittier’s part in the anti-slavery struggle was not always a quiet one. On one occasion, when in company with a famous but unpopular English reformer he was to address an audience on the subject of abolition, he was attacked by a mob while passing quietly along the street with a friend, and narrowly escaped being tarred and feathered. Somewhat later he was set upon in another town by a crowd armed with sticks and stones and other missiles, from which he fled with more haste than dignity. It was while he was editor of the Freeman that Pennsylvania Hall, where the Philadelphia Abolitionists held their meetings, was burned by a mob, and the papers from Whittier’s editorial room in this building were used to help start the blaze.

In 1836 the farm at Haverhill had been sold, and a cottage was bought in Amesbury near the Quaker meetinghouse. It was in this quiet place, under the loving care of his mother and sister, that Whittier made his home after resigning his position with the Freeman. These two women were in their way as unselfishly devoted to the cause of freedom as was the poet himself, for they encouraged his loyalty and bore privation uncomplainingly. In the darkest hour of their need, when it seemed as if their home must be mortgaged, Whittier was invited to become a contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, then being founded, and thus the long period of want was brought to an end.

After the death of his mother, in the following year (1858), Whittier’s association with his sister Elizabeth became even closer than before, though they had always shared each other’s hopes and interests with unusual sympathy and understanding. When she died, in 1864, it seemed to him that part of his life had gone with her. It was with this grief still fresh in his mind that he wrote the best known of his poems, Snow-Bound, A Winter Idyl, in which he pictures in the most simple and lifelike manner the quiet loveliness of his childhood home. With especial tenderness he tells of the much-loved sister, and lets his mingled grief and hope of reunion be seen:

“As one who held herself a part
Of all she saw, and let her heart
Against the household bosom lean,
Upon the motley-braided mat
Our youngest and our dearest sat,
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes,
Now bathed within the fadeless green
And holy peace of Paradise.
Oh, looking from some heavenly hill,
Or from the shade of saintly palms,
Or silver reach of river calms,
Do those large eyes behold me still?
With me one little year ago:—
The chill weight of the winter snow
For months upon her grave has lain;
And now, when summer south-winds blow,
And brier and harebell bloom again,
I tread the pleasant paths we trod,
I see the violet-sprinkled sod,
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak,
The hillside flowers she loved to seek,
Yet following me where’er I went
With dark eyes full of love’s content.
The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills
The air with sweetness; all the hills
Stretch green to June’s unclouded sky;
But still I wait with ear and eye
For something gone which should be nigh,
A loss in all familiar things,
In flower that blooms, and bird that sings.
And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,
Am I not richer than of old?
Safe in thy immortality,
What change can reach the wealth I hold?
What chance can mar the pearl and gold
Thy love hath left in trust with me?
And while in life’s late afternoon
Where cool and long the shadows grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I cannot feel that thou art far,
Since near at need the angels are;
And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy beckoning hand?”

After the death of Elizabeth Whittier, the Amesbury home was cared for by the poet’s niece. During the remaining years of his life Whittier passed his time here or in the country. He lived in comparative comfort, for the publication of Snow-Bound in 1866 had brought very good returns. These were years of great peace, in which he remained actively interested in the affairs of the nation, yet liked most to dwell upon the beauty of nature and especially upon the thought of God’s goodness that must triumph over all the evil in the world. Among the Hills and the collections Tent on the Beach and At Sundown were produced in the last period; but his religious poems seem best to represent his thought and feeling in the closing years. From these were taken the beautiful verses At Last, read as the poet passed away from earth, September 7, 1892.

Though Whittier remained throughout his life a Quaker not only in dress and speech but in belief and character, yet with his quietness and quaint simplicity was blended no severity nor gloom. He had a great love of fun, which alone can account for his mischievous habit of teasing, and for his keeping such pets as the little bantam rooster that aroused the household each morning with its crowing, and the parrot “Charlie” that swore when excited, stopped the horses in the street with its cries of “whoa,” and nipped the ankles of unwary visitors. Then, too, he was always attractive to children, and often preferred their society to that of older people. But above all else, with each succeeding year he became more just and compassionate towards others. The kindliness of his nature was untouched by the sorrow and sickness that he bore. “Love—love to all the world,” he would often repeat in his last years, and the sweet influence of the benediction is felt by all who read his life and works:

“Best loved and saintliest of our singing train,
Earth’s noblest tributes to thy name belong.
A lifelong record closed without a stain,
A blameless memory shrined in deathless song.”390-2