Some Early Letters of George William Curtis

EDITED BY CAROLINE TICKNOR

I

THERE are, no doubt, as many idealists to-day as there were in the notable epoch which produced Brook Farm and the Concord School of Philosophy. But they are not idealists of the old school.

The new school of idealists contains few poets, and its exponents express themselves in social service of splendid, practical proportions. They are, it is true, persons of ‘ vision,’ but their ‘clear sight’ reveals to them the coming man as an improved physiological specimen, rather than a newly awakened spirit.

The idealism of which George William Curtis is a most admirable example, was the idealism of the poet; that of to-day is the idealism of the philanthropist. And it is well for us to pause amid the strenuous social conditions which now prevail, for a half-hour’s consideration of the more tranquillizing idealism of the old school.

George William Curtis was a true poet; as such, he saw and felt, and he expressed himself in the language of poetry. As a producer of immortal verse, he did not rise to the first rank, although he has bequeathed us some poems of exquisite feeling and workmanship. He did not regard poetry as his vocation, nor did he lay claim to poetic laurels, yet the imprint of his keen poetic sensibilities is stamped on all of his literary work, and the poetic strain echoes through all his silvery oratory.

Curtis was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1824, and he early made up his mind to enter the profession of letters. It has been usual to ascribe the direction of his career to the influence of his juvenile experience at Brook Farm, where he dwelt from 1840 to 1844, but one must not forget that the Brook Farm ideal was in his mind before he joined that Utopian community, which he did at sixteen years of age.

The following correspondence with Mrs. Whitman opens in 1845, the year after Curtis had left Brook Farm. At this period he was a lithe, slender young man, handsome of feature, with blue eyes, wavy brown hair and a most winning smile. His bearing was one of extreme grace and dignity and his manners were those of the natural aristocrat, who treats all his fellow beings with the most exquisite consideration.

The literary career of Curtis began in 1846, when he was but twenty-two years old. Many bright stars were just then in the American firmament. Irving, Dana, Bryant, and Cooper were at the height of their powers. Longfellow, Whittier, and Hawthorne were ascending; the tragic career of Edgar Allan Poe was nearing its close; Holmes was but thirty-seven, and Emerson fortytwo.

At this time Sarah Helen Whitman’s home in Providence was the literary centre about which revolved the intellectual men and women of her day, and Mrs. Whitman herself was adored as the high-priestess of Poetry and Letters in the distinguished circle of which she was the most conspicuous ornament. Endowed with beauty, great charm of voice and manner, and a magnetic personality, she drew about her, not only the gifted men and women of her own city, but those from all parts of the world;and Mrs. Browning, writing from Italy, declared that Sarah Helen Whitman was the one woman in America whom she most desired to meet.

Mrs. Whitman’s exquisite sonnets to Poe have been pronounced second only to Mrs. Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese, and her best work surely entitles her to the leading place which has been assigned her among the poetesses of New England.

Mrs. Whitman was born in 1803, and in 1828 she married John Winslow Whitman, a Boston lawyer, who died in 1833. Her romantic engagement to Edgar Allan Poe did not occur until 1848, a few months before the latter’s death, and was broken off on the eve of marriage, following Poe’s appearance at the home of his betrothed in a state of intoxication.

To the end of her life, Mrs. Whitman remained loyal to Poe and to her genuine affection for him, and though she deplored his faults and weaknesses, she looked upon him as a great spirit groping toward the light, a man of brilliant intellect, splendid imagination, and marvelous gift of expression. Herself a poet, she thoroughly appreciated his poetic gift; a critic, she could measure his keen insight into literary values; a mistress of English style, she recognized in his creative touch the master-hand. And when, after his death, Poe’s critics and detractors put forth their unjust and bitter denunciations of the man, it was Mrs. Whitman who came forward to champion him with simple dignity, in her little volume entitled Edgar Poe and his Critics, of which Curtis wrote in Harper’s Weekly, in 1860, it is ‘the brave woman’s arm thrust through the slide to serve as a bolt against the enemy ... it is not a eulogy: it is a criticism which is profound by force of sympathy and vigorous by its clear comprehension.’

At the time of her engagement to Poe Mirs. Whitman was forty-five years old and he thirty-nine, but her freshness of spirit and charm of presence must have made her seem by far the younger of the two. Only from the pictures drawn by friends who had known and studied the original can we gather something of the illusive charm and extraordinary fascination which this remarkable woman exerted up to the t ime of her death, at seventy-five years of age. No one ever associated the idea of age with her, and she is represented as lying beautiful as a bride in death, her brown hair scarcely touched with gray.

Besides having many suitors, Mrs. Whitman had countless warm friends among those men and women who were the intellectual leaders of her day, and with whom she carried on an extensive correspondence in regard to the literary, social, and spiritual movements of the times. She had a peculiar gift of sympathetic appreciation, and was able to give to each that especial response which he, or she, most craved.

The following letters, chosen from a correspondence which extended over a period of fifteen years, speak for themselves and for the two poets whom they concerned. They were accompanied by many pages of verse forwarded by Curtis for Mrs. Whitman’s criticism. He was at. this time twenty-one and she forty-two.

The first letter, dated at Concord, in April, 1845, reveals the writer keenly enjoying the natural beauties about him, as well as the opportunity to enter into the intellectual life of Hawthorne, Emerson, and others, with whom Curtis delighted to discuss all that was near his heart concerning the literary life which beckoned him persistently, and the alluring field of poetry, which he at first believed himself peculiarly fitted to enter.

II

CONCORD, April 9, 1845.<br/> MY DEAR MRS. WHITMAN,— May I say a few words about poetry and poets to you, hoping so to provoke from you a closer criticism upon my verses than you have yet. given me. . . .
It was a great delight to me to find in you the insight into the poetical part of poetry, which I find in so very few persons. That you could realize, as I had so long done without sympathy, that the charm of a poem was not the tho’t, nor the melody, but a subtle poetical perception, which gives the character to the tho’t, and which from the nature of things, is melodious, and so in its natural expression constitutes poetry.— Shall I say that the poetical sense is so rare among men, so much rarer than the intellectual, that the most approved of the poems of the great masters are not the most poetical? that As You Like It is less tho’tful but more purely poetical than Hamlet? and that Tennyson is more truly a poet than Wordsworth?
And to the perfect poet belongs this fineness of perception and, of equal necessity, faculty of expression. The prose poets of whom we hear, are men who have the first but not the second, and therefore they are the true audience of the poet and his only critics, as men who have a delicate appreciation of form and color are unworking painters, and so constitute the only valuable spectators of pictures. They cannot be called painters, nor can the first class be called poets.
Byron had the faculty but not the perception. He did not see things poetically. With Shelley, I think more and more, poetry was an elegant and passionate pursuit. He was too much a scholar. This is seen in the forms his poems took. The principal ones are moulded in the antique Grecian style. With Keats, poetry was an intense life. It was a vital, golden fire that burned him up. Wordsworth is a man of tho’t, who gives it a rhythmical form.
Milton would have been more purely a poet, if he had been a Catholic, rather than an ultra Protestant. There is a severity in his poetry, which makes him the favorite of intellectual men,— but is a little too hard — not oriental enough to sat isfy poetical men.
In Shakespeare was the wonderful blending — the delicate harmony — but his sonnets would have been credential enough to his fit audience. Because in this sphere of man the intellect rules, therefore that declares upon all things. Those books are eternal, those poets Olympian whom it crowns. But it is a singular fantasy of Nature, that the intellect is always too intellectual to rightly estimate the value of poetry, which is the higher language of this sphere.
Music, so imperfect here, foreshadows a state more refined and delicat e. It is a womanly accomplishment, because it is sentiment, and the instinct declares its nature, when it celebrates heaven as the state where glorified souls chant around the Throne. Poetry is the adaptation of music to an intellectual sphere. But it. must therefore be revealed thro’ souls too fine to be measured justly by the intellect.
I hope that you will guess my tho’t from these fragmentary hints and will answer it and my questions as speedily as you will. Direct simply to me, Concord, Massachusetts.
Truly yours,
G. W. CURTIS.

CONCORD, May 8, 1845.
My DEAR FRIEND,— I had attributed your silence to some sufficient reason, like the real one, and your letter, tho’ late, was not unexpected and very grateful. I am glad that you ask me to write to you, for in this spring it seems that I must tell all, of the singular beauty that diffuses itself so widely. . . .
This afternoon I paddled out on Walden Pond — a beautiful sheet of water not far away. It was formerly wooded with heavy pine banks to the edge, but recently the woods have been cut from part of the shore. It has a retired, virgin beauty, and not even the railroad, which passes close by one side, can banish its flower of privacy. It is deep and still; and this afternoon the sun toward the setting threw the dark shadows of the pines upon the surface like a mute anthem to the spirits of the lake. Landscapes often impress me like strains of music, and so music gives me a sense of sunniness and gloom, which is more subtle than anything I see. The woods yearn to be dissolved in music, when the wind sings in the trees, and only a wail lingers because it may not be so — or is it a wail because I cannot understand the burthen? The winds that have blown so constantly during the spring fell grievingly against my face, as if I was vexed with them, and as if they sighed because I was not of a nature fine enough to be mingled with their triumph. . . .
Recently I have been reading Milton, much. There is a solemn simplicity in the Paradise Lost. It is almost too severe. The few classical allusions dropped in the course of the story are like gushes of warm south moisture in the heart of a steady fresh north wind. The poem is bracing like ocean air. . . .
But while the genius of Milton has the grace of stately mountain heights, and the solemn melody of cathedral music, it seems to lack the delicate aerial grace of folded clouds and the lines of hills in the dim horizon, and the low gushing music of birds disappearing in the sky. His poetry is fuller of rapt serene contemplation, than of subtle sentiment. We ascend to heaven upon angel wings, fanning a majestic melody, but are not wafted thither on the note of a thrush. Must not the organ tone and the thrush singing be blended in the tune of melody, each retaining its own character, and tinged with each other’s? Milton’s genius is hardly suggestive enough. He was a man made positive by his life and culture. It fell to him as a statesman to speak very decidedly, and the poet could not quite shake off the tone. I should hardly think his nature was very rich, but he had so cultivated and adorned himself, that it was almost as good. Do you remember what Keats says of him?
Sincerely your friend,
G. W. CURTIS.

CONCORD, June 2, 1845.
I am glad that you speak so truly of Keats. It is rare to find any one who has the just appreciation of his genius. It is of that nature which is too much condemned, or too much praised. And that because either one does not understand him, or if so, the prospect which he opens is the most ravishing to a poet. There lay in him the keenest and most delicate perception and the truest feeling. Tho’t was all fused with sentiment. Poetry was to him an element such as music would be to some natures. His blood seemed to thrill, rather than flow thro’ his veins, and I always picture him as in ecstasy. But all his life and poetry are hints, they are the rarest tinted leaflets folded close in the bud. If they do not flower, there can be no regret. The influence of such beauty is true and deep, because it was budded beauty and not flowered. How often, walking in the woods, I have seen a drooping anemone bud which revealed a more delicate grace than the fairest flower. It figures the intensity of feeling which closes the eyes of a lover in the presence of his mistress; yes, and the relation itself which exists between them — a hope, a promise, the morning red before the sunrise. . . .
The essay of Shelley to which you refer, I will look at again. I read it some time since, and was not much pleased generally. I have never seen any prose upon poetry which pleased me much. Sir Philip Sidney’s is beautiful to read, so is Emerson’s, but I wait. The Poet is still an unexpressed mystery. He is a phantom when you would clutch him, but a beautiful blessing angel when you sit in the shadow of his wings. I look with interest for your article on Mr. Emerson. It is much to be the contemporary, how much to be the neighbor of a man whom I cannot class but with Plato and Bacon, and the other great teachers. I feel that you will speak golden words of him, and I shall be very prompt to tell you what I think of the article.
I spoke to Mr. Hawthorne. He says that Mr. Langley, the publisher, is the business man, that different prices are paid to various authors, and that an engagement should be made previously. There has been some difficulty about the payment of the Democratic, I believe, but do not know precisely what. Mr. Hawthorne says, that Mr. O’Sullivan the editor is an honorable man. He values the articles.
Your friend,
G. W. CURTIS.

CONCORD, June 22, 1845.
I have delayed writing until I should have returned from a trip to Wachusett mountain, and until I had read your article. The first I have done, the second not yet. Knowing that Mr. Emerson had it, I spoke to him of it, regretting that I had not seen it first, to correct some errors of which I had been advised. He was very curious to know the author, for he said tho’ it was headed ‘ By a Disciple,’ it was evidently written from a purely independent point, and he seemed to do such excellent justice to it, altho’ he said it had the usual vice of kindness, which he says of all reviews of himself, that when he told me he tho’t he ought to know who wrote it, I ventured to tell him. I hope I have not done wrong. Henry Thoreau also said it was not by a Disciple in any ordinary sense. It is his copy which is here, and he wishes me to make it as perfect as I can. This week I shall see it, and will then write you.
I went to Wachusett with Mr. Hawthorne and Mr. Bradford. It has long lured me from its post in the western horizon. And as I climbed the green sides, I felt as an artist must feel, who first treads the ground of Italy. . . .
Monadnock was the only single object visible from the summit. It is a rough sharp mountain and Wachusett is rounded and delicate, and the feminine character of the one was in beautiful contrast with the masculine of the other.
It would be a long tale, the history of the beautiful walks we had. My regret was at returning. It seemed proper to go on from mountain to mountain thro’ the summer, until winter sent me home again; and to return and find that the hill had relapsed into the old mystery, and was still as wonderful as before, was one of the best results of the journey.
Have you read Consuelo, George Sand’s novel? I may say great novel, for after Wilhelm Meister, I know none superior. It is long but it is a picture of no less genius than Goethe’s and Raphael’s. I mean it leaves the same satisfaction. . . .
There are very few copies in the country. I read Mr. Emerson’s, for he and Mr. Hawthorne and Miss Fuller first spoke of it.
You shall certainly speak of the manuscripts whenever you choose, altho’ they are not good. If you hear any opinion expressed, will you not let me know it, if it be most entire condemnation. I am sure that is my vocation, but I am not sure that I shall effect anything. I must labor very long and very hard before I can come even to the foot of a statue. Perhaps after all my life is only to fill up some chink and the Fates have granted me this versifying talent as a plum for content. My life seems very aimless because I pursue my profession entirely in secret, while outwardly I am abandoned to the sun and wind. That will be good for me; while all the plants are so carefully trained by the gardeners, let one grow in the clear, open air. Yet it is not without pain that I hear those who are very dear to me grieve that I am running to waste. At least, if my life does not justify itself, I am fain to hope they will feel it was meant to be what it was. It seems very bold, but I am sure of it.
I shall write you again very soon if you do not tire of my long letters.
Your friend,
G. W. CURTIS.

June 28, 1845.
I read with great delight your article. It is the best I have seen upon Mr. Emerson. I might say that it finds more of a system of philosophy than I think he is conscious of, altho’, after all, you only indicate the central tho’t which animates his writings, and say such good things of philosophy that it loses that very rigid outline which marks it in the Schools. I am glad that you treat him as a prophet rather than poet. My feeling about the latter is very strong, and yet few contemporaries write verses which I love so much. I wish you might have seen Mr. E. and Mr. Hawthorne for the last year, casually and at all times, as I have done; that I might know if you would not at last say, the wise Emerson, the poetic Hawthorne. I am going to show some of my verses to the latter. I do not care to do so to the former. And I do it with some trembling, as I did to you, for I feel that he knows what is poetry, and what is poetical, — what is the power of the poet — and what the force of talented imitation.
Your friend,
G. W. C.

CONCORD, August C>, 1845.
I returned yesterday from the Berkshire hills, and shall be on the wing again on Friday for the White mountains. There is something inspiriting in the mountain air which I have never perceived before. I suppose that one is astonished in such a region that his tho’ts do not at once expand and soar to a corresponding spiritual altitude, but the mountains and the sea are seed too large to ripen their flower very speedily. . . .
I felt very strongly the want of some sound, corresponding to the grandeur of the landscape. That the ocean gives you if you wake at night upon the sea shore, the low murmur of the water presses a sense of its constant presence upon the mind,— in the pause of light conversation, the same sound rises like a vast tho’tful bass to which all tho’t should be tuned, and in the rigid silence of the Winter there is no silence there, but a music that deepens and strengthens the stillness. Among the hills when the darkness shuts them from the eye, only the memory can retain them. Awakening after a sleep of years among them, there would be no presence in the air to suggest them, but awaking near the sea the first consciousness would receive its tone from that.
Yet while the eye could possess them, the hills were very impressive. Mantled with green their strength was subdued to tenderness, so that the influence was, in character, like that of a man of delicate strength and beauty. They folded the valleys with such gentle superiority, as if the world beat on their outer sides with heavy waves in vain. And the sloping sunset light was more soft and striking than I remember to have seen. The sudden dark shades upon the hillsides and the fairy green of the distant bare slopes turned to the West, and pervading all, a singular freshness and glow in the atmosphere made a bath of beauty wherein Diana should have laved and arisen more purely human.
G. W. CURTIS.

CONCORD, October 1, 1845.
MY DEAR FRIEND,— I hope your long silence portends no illness, at which you hinted in your last letter to me, which I received just as I was on the wing for the White hills, and answered only by a few songs, or has the Autumn which lies round the horizon like a beautifully hued serpent crushing the flower of Summer, fascinated you to silence with its soft, calm eyes? This seems the prime of the season, for the trees are yet full of leaves and thickness and the mass of various color is solid,— before this month is over the woods will grow sere and wan, and so the splendid result of the year becomes its mausoleum. . . .
Yesterday afternoon I sat upon the cliff, a lofty pile of rock, the abrupt end of a hill over the river, and above a wood of birch and pines, and there the wind blew without any hindrance. It was a most monopolizing sound. It was not so much the inability to read or write or pursue any peaceable business of that sort which turned me wholly to the wind, but it was a special character in its own tone, which if I had tho’t of in the stillest Summer evening would have called me from anything else. The singular magnificent beauty, which had lain all the long warm months so quietly, now breaking up into final splendor and decay, thundered in my ear its wail of death. The water rolled and wrestled in the river, the pine trees bent over the slight birches, withered leaves flew high and sadly in the air, and I the only unmoved, I pushing on to a fuller and fairer maturity, here or somewhere, received upon my face the rush of the wind and in my heart its inward agony. I took off my cap and it streamed thro’ my hair. Why could not I bend with the trees and sing as they sang? Far away in the North, the cold, white North, where the Winter lies in wait, lay the outlines of mountains against the gray horizon. The sound of their lonely beauty was like that of the wind. Rugged and grim and dim, and long after the spring sun has drawn the green grass from out the winter, here they will still be white with snow.
When the sun set, the wind died. Then the silence was more mournful than the sound, — like the air thro’ which a dirge has just passed, which still cherishes the soul of its sadness. I came slowly home thro’ the woods. The crickets sang as usual, the trees stood steady and still. Jupiter arose in the east— Mars and Saturn in the southeast; and the earth swung noiselessly with them as if the stars, so pure and cold and steadfast, should not hear its wail or suspect a grief.
And so will each day be, each more desperate, till there are no leaves to sigh and rustle upon the trees or fly in the air, and the waves are chained, and the splendor quenched by the rigid winter. Yet soft warm days now and then, and the brief, beautiful Indian summer, will show that there are more summers in store. . . .
Thro’ the summer Mr. Hawthorne had the ‘Orpheus’ — the smaller long poem, and some of the smaller verses. It was most grateful to me to hear him say what he did, for I have great faith in his perception. ‘The Poet’ I did not show him. The ‘Orpheus’ he thinks may be corrected and improved by correction, which I felt when you suggested something of the same sort before. I will do that during the autumn or winter.
Concord loses very much to me in his final departure, which takes place to-morrow, Friday. He is a fountain of deep, still water, where the stars may be seen at noon.
Mr. Emerson is writing lectures upon Plato, Goethe, Swedenborg, Montaigne, and Shakespeare.
I have been most of the day with Ellery Channing, whom I like very much. If I was to remain here thro’ the winter I should know him much better than I ever have, fori have seen him very little, since I have lived here. I am not afraid of silence in my friends, so you shall write only when you care and can.
Your friend,
G. W. CURTIS.

III

The month of November finds the young poet in New York, recalling regretfully the pastoral surroundings of Concord, and endeavoring to adjust himself to the whirl and bustle of the city where the ‘muse’ flourishes under difficulties and poets pine for solitude.

Some two months later he writes from the same place that he has been invited to join Ellery Channing in a trip to Italy, an unexpected proposition which may be looked upon as a milestone in the career of Curtis, whose first important literary contribution sprang from this ideal sojourn in the old world.

NEW YORK, November 27, ’45.
MY DEAR FRIEND,— I always feel lonely when I first come to N. Y. for such constant and vigorous labor outlaws one whose path lies elsewhere. ... I grow thin and pale here. Everything that men do seems so small. Their life is a card-house built over the eternal gulf. And the priests, the ministers of the soul, are not as I dreamed, care-worn and wasted like devoted physicians in a plaguestricken city, but comfortable and smiling men,— and as I sit in the warm church richly painted and gilded and cushioned and the smooth voice utters smoothly what the man believes, for I do not question his sincerity, then the history of men in the past and the daily history of the world and of the city where we are, the woe, the misery, the wordless despair of thousands, rushes upon my mind, and by the unspiritual face of the preacher, I see the thorncrowned head of Jesus and the features pale with sorrow for sin, not with agony for suffering, and looking with eyes too sad for tears upon the silent audience, imploring the priest to speak as to men who are wandering and waiting and looking for the peace to which the necessity of life drives them, and which is the crown of flowers for their bloody hours. Then bursts in the organ and the flowing, gushing, soothing music lifts me above the crowd like celestial wings, and the face I see becomes milder and softer, more beautiful as the melody is finer and fuller, and peace, deeper than sorrow, bathes it like dew, and it fades from my sight as the music swells, as stars fade in the morning, and in the wavering, dying, permeating sound, I feel the soul of that heavenly beauty. . . . I study Italian vigorously 3 hours a day. I read German and French about 2, and just now Swedenborg and Festus occupy the rest of my leisure. I find Time, the true ‘celestial Railroad.’ At Jno. Dwight’s request I wrote an account of the Symphony of Mendelssohn’s for the Harbinger. It will be entitled ‘ Music in New York.' It is the hardest thing in the world to write about music, for the best part of the impression is so evanescent and delicate, tho’ deep, like the influence of sunset clouds: one wants to dip his brush in them if he must paint them.

NEW YORK, February 6, 1846.
MY DEAR FRIEND,— What should surprise me the other day like a bird flying into the midst of the winter silence, but a proposition from Ellery Channing for us to accompany himself and George Bradford to Italy in May, and there pass a year? I tho’t at once that I could not go, as a lover looks coldly upon the mistress whom he adores, but I found that the direct proposal had kindled the long dormant spark into a flame, and that sooner or later it would elevate me to that soft celestial atmosphere, which spiritually and physically belongs to Italy. Burrill leans upon his hand and thinks intently about it. He wants to postpone, to study the language more thoroughly, to read the history of the country, until every stone and tower shall tell readily what it is and has been. But I seldom think about things. A proposition comes to my mind and is ripened into action without any influence wilfully upon my part, like a nestegg hatched by the sun and not by the parental warmth. So this idea of Italy lies cooking, and what the issue will be is not at all certain. I think it very doubtful if we go in the spring. If we do not, we shall lose our party which is so pleasant to my fancy, but we shall gain a better knowledge of the language than we have now. If I went I should regard it as a preparation for going again hereafter, and yet I feel as if I should be very unwilling to come home again when once there.
Since Ellery’s letter came I have been reading Saddle books and Italian travel Shelley’s letters from Italy please me very much. They are so full of delicate appreciation of the country and all its influences. He was so finely wrought that it seems the air must have passed into his frame and mingled many a golden secret with his being, which no tongue can utter and no coarser nature feel. There was a spiritual voluptuousness in his nature which Italy alone could satisfy, and which constituted in him so much of his poetical feeling and fancy. The same thing was in Keats, but in him more fiery and intense. It sucked up his whole being at times, so that its expression syllabled fire and passion, as in the invocation to the moon in Endymion. In Shelley it was less ardent and never of that fierce lavishness which it was in Keats. . . .
The Muse knows not these brick walls, I have written scarcely a line since I have been here, and have left the ’Orpheus’ and the long poem I read you for alteration and re-formation in the summer. I have meant to copy some portions for you and will do so. You will find it hard to read this but I always write fast about Keats.
Your friend,
G. W. C.

N.Y., January 20, ’46.
MY DEAR FRIEND,—
You will have seen from my last letter that I did not sympathise with Miss Fuller’s view of Cromwell, but I tho’t her review of Longfellow one of the best things that I ever saw of hers. How is it that we differ so much, for you say while those on Cromwell were among her best, those upon Longfellow were among the worst. She seemed to me to give him with great tenderness and consideration and due appreciation his just place. She did not abruptly say, ‘you are no poet,’ but having expressed her views of poetry and t he poet, measured him by it. He failed by that [measure], as he has long ago by mine and by that of his best friends, and those most calculated to appreciate him, one of whom told me he was sorry for Mr. Longfellow, for he did not seem to understand that his popularity must so soon abate, nor had he courage and character enough to sustain the consciousness when it should come. His verses are pleasing to me, but I see a thousand old Teutons looking thro’ his eyes and giving them the light they have. Very many seem translations from the German; the imagery and the circumstances are not his own, but are pleasant to him from association and study. Miss Fuller’s criticism of imagery I think unjust. It is overflowing another and drowning him in her individuality; but in the main I should say with her, that Mr. Longfellow is an elegant scholar, a man of good taste and delicate mind, who is fluent and sweet, but writes from a vein of sentiment which is not sound, and is too little inspired to write anything important.
You speak of Poe’s article upon Miss Barrett. I should much like to see anything really good of his. With the exception of his volume of poems I know nothing of him save a tale in one of the reviews a month ago, which was only like an offensive odor. There seems to be a vein of something in him, but if of gold he is laboring thro’ many baser veins, and may at last reach it. In one of the foreign reviews I found a recent article upon Miss B. It was on the whole just, altho’ I am struck with the utter want of sympathy between critics and their prey. This review disposed of the lady as a jockey disposes of horses. And yet I love to have those whom I love pass thro’ this coldest ordeal and show that they have something for it. If the diamond in the head does not show itself to such critics, at least they rejoice in the brightness of the eyes. My love must, be so beautiful that the blind can rejoice, themselves feeling the perfect form.
I love Shelley so much and am so much indebted to him for pleasant hours that it seems cruel to deny him the name which was evidently his dearest dream and hope to possess. And yet it was finely said to me once, after I had unconsciously perceived the same thing, ‘Reading Shelley is like searching for gold dust in shining sand.’ It is perpetually suggested to you but never found. He seems to want an infinite background, his poems are not stars against the depthless sky. But they are bright and beautiful and if he is not so much to me as he once was, he is still a dove in ‘heaven’s sweetest air.’ You probably liked Miss Fuller’s notice of him. It expressed a great debt. . . .
I think we have no right to complain that the breath of God is stayed, in a century which has borne Napoleon, Washington, Swedenborg, Goethe, and Beethoven. If you observe the programme of Mr. Emerson’s lectures, out of six great men whom he finds in history, three are from his own century. I am reading Chaucer too, and dashed thro’ the Countess of Rudolstadt, the sequel to Consuelo, last week. It is not so sunnily beautiful as that, altho’ a fine work. A life of Mozart I found interesting, also some tragedies of Ford’s. So I drift, and toward every flower which attracts me, I turn my boat. Have you read Margaret ? It is a book of great and peculiar interest. One of the most original books I have met for a long time, altho’ it is very long and thick, to read. And the character of Margaret does not develop so perfectly as I expected from the beginning. I have flooded you with my Biographia Literaria; if you escape undrowned and have vigor left, let me hear from you soon.
Your friend,
G. W. C.

NEW YOHK, May 2, 1846.
MY DEAR FRIEND,— I hope the spring brings you health as well as pleasure. Although I suppose there must be an intense sadness in the beauty, when we do not have in ourselves the health which is the first condition of beauty. But I always think that when the spring comes and those whom the winter has imprisoned can once more walk in the green fields and smell the fresh flowers, fresh and wonderful always, altho every year brings the same, they will then regain the lost treasures in the fragrance all around them. A walk yesterday in the late afternoon, and twilight, quite beyond the city where I could hear the frogs and the home-flying and twittering birds, and see a short lane stretching thro’ a green border of bushes and grass, and losing itself against woods beyond, lifted me entirely out of my winter life, unlocked all the fountains of spring feeling, and gave me the feeling of surprise and delight, which every season awakens.
It is a great thing that Nature always appears so perfect and novel to us. Even the best of men do not do so. They do not seem to have an infinite richness altho’ that may be because we too are human, and that we can never be, or, rather, are never so simply related to other human beings. And yet as if to show the real superiority of a real man, an artist of genius shows us on his canvas the landscape that we loved, arrayed in a more subtle and delicate beauty than we have ever seen upon it, because his genius is a finer glass than our common perceptions and he gives us the representation of that.
This winter I have been more really interested in art than ever before, and probably the longer a man lives in the country, the finer will be his taste and appreciation of whatever is good in art, because Nature is the basis and nurse of the grandest art, which is surely not a copy or imitation, but while it is faithful to the minutest detail of Nature, is a reproduction of it thro’ the genius which sees the inner meaning and beauty of the natural image and so presents it in a serener and more graceful form. This is true perhaps only of parts, for was there ever a picture which satisfied one as a beautiful face or landscape does? I certainly ought not to say it, for even now I am writing some little verses where ‘the Painter who paints best’ and ‘the sculptor of most skill’ are the sun and moon. . . .
I shall probably not write you from New York for a long time, as I shall go up the river to-morrow and pass a few days with the Cranches at Fishkill and soon after go to the East. We shall probably sail on the 1st of August, for the ship which sails in September is not a good one. Our French and Italian quarters are over, and I feel quite at home in the speaking of the former. Practice will perfect the latter.
I shall see you in Providence in the summer, altho’ I feel I shall not. have much to show for the long time since I saw you last.
Truly your friend,
G. W. C.

CONCORD, June, 12, l846.
Shall we not one day be of so delicate a perception, that we can catch the secret of this summer air which now flows by us so alluringly and silently? Often in the midst of beautiful days and places it seems to me there is some fairy revelry proceeding all around me, which I cannot appreciate, and which comes to me as sadness and longing, like the echo of festal music saddened by distance. Often walking homeward from the village in the moonlight, I wish for wings to move silently and not disturb the repose of the night, by my echoing footsteps. To tread as softly as the dew falls, to speak in cadences like the whisper of leaves and the gushing of brooks, to feel in our lives, not only the superior possibility, but the real depth and delicacy, which lies around us in Nature,—is a tho’t that often haunts me. How cold we are when we meet, how reserved, how proud. Even the warmest, tenderest hearts are crushed by a weight of self-consciousness. Everybody should be a messenger of beauty for the soul that follows, like the long-haired beautiful heralds sent before the Heroes of Gods of old, and yet we cannot sit gracefully, scarcely comfortably, in our chairs.
The landscape is so gentle and beautiful here and I am so pleasantly situated with some old Brook Farm friends, hearty, homely and quiet people, that I am sorry my summer is not to be passed here. Already I feel how sorry I shall be when I must really say goodbye and separate from all I know, for even Burrill will not go with me, but has the best reasons for remaining in America. It will be a crisis in my life in various ways, and I have a singular curiosity about the influence of Europe upon myself. . . . Association and art, and an indefinable individuality of external Nature constitute my charm for Italy, and with a general reading one has all the material ready. As the time conies, it seems to me as if I looked more closely, almost more tenderly upon our count ry here, — the landscape I mean. Nature is such a splendid mute bride, whose lips we constantly watch expecting to sec them overflow with music, with melodious explanations of all that her beauty has hinted and nourished. . . . To-day in a newspaper I chanced to see a poem of Bryant’s, an old one I think, called ‘June.’ The end is remarkably fine, — you will remember it.: speaking of his grave made in June and of all that he would wish to have around it, and those he would wish to come, he concludes of himself, That seems to me very fine. Bryant interested me very much as I saw him occasionally in the winter. I did not know him personally, but his head is so rocky and strong and commanding. I realize more than ever the transparent simplicity and sincere beauty of his poetry. It is like buttercups and daisies, which we are apt to disregard and yet which give a deeper beauty to the landscape and are fed with all the hues and airs of heaven.
I have read a good deal of Browning, but neither ‘Paracelsus’ nor ‘ Sordello.’ The ‘ Bells and Pomegranates’ are full of richness and luxuriant imagination. What says Miss Barrett about them, ‘cut down deep in the middle,’ ‘blood veined,’ or something like it? I do not know any poetry now which seems to show that a keen, rushing sense of life tingles to the very finger tips of the poet as this does. It is only too wild, too salient. . . . Browning, as you will suppose, is often clumsy and obscure, but always real, he always holds fast to his tho’t, whether it is a good one or a bad one and never sacrifices it to anything. A poet never should do that, but also he should never be necessitated to do it. He speaks in numbers for the numbers come.
Do you observe how, in speaking of men of genius, we incline to measure them by the standard of entire genius, forgetting that every such man has but a ray, and makes beautiful only what that ray shines upon? I have been very much amused by several persons saying that Ellery Channing could not be a true poet, because he went to Europe and left his wife as he did. They tho’t of the great perfect man, whom we choose to call poet, and who is supposed to fulfill all the duties of life as well as he sings, while Ellery is a selfish, indolent person (tho’ a good deal more and better) who certainly does write good poetry. It is a terrible situation for them. They have hitherto perhaps tho’t him a poet, but the true poet — would he have done so? Aut Cæsar aut nihil. Good night, I hope I have not wearied you by so long a talk, if so, you must take it by easy stages, as we used to read Xenophon did — the only Greek fact I remember. . . .
Sunday. A soft genial day, the flower of June weather as June is the flower of the year. By chance I laid my hand upon Whittier’s Poems, a book I always have by me on Sundays. . . . Did you know that Ida Russell is very intimate with Whittier, so that I have sometimes heard that they were engaged. She pointed him out to me once, in an Anti-Slavery convention. He is a thin man, with a sad almost sharp face, and dark hair. He moved silently and lonelily among the crowd, and seemed like a strain of his poetry impersonized. Mr. Hawthorne told me that he came to see him once, and he was much pleased with his quiet manner.
I have written to ask Mr. H. to go to Monadnock mountain with me this week, but I am afraid his duties, for he is a Custom house officer, will not permit.
Here I am at the end of my paper, and yet I could say a great deal more. I wish we were sitting together on some shady bank of the Seekonk, and gliding down the sunny hours with conversation as simple and natural as its course, not so anxious for tho’t as gentle union with the feeling and the silence of the day. The Sabbath feeling, I shall not have in Italy; that will be one of the great changes or the great losses. Do you remember in Margaret the description of a Sunday morning in June? I shall go from Concord by the first of July and be in Providence a week or two afterwards. If you can, write; if not, farewell until I see you.
Your friend,
G. W. C.

PROVIDENCE, July 25, 1846.
MY DEAR FRIEND,— I am sorry not to see you this afternoon, but as I could have remained but a few moments it is perhaps as well, but a warm shake of the hand is better than this.
Good-bye, for that is all that I have to say. I owe you more than I can say, . . . Farewell and may all good angels bless you.
Your friend,
GEORGE WM. CURTIS.

With the conclusion of this letter, the early phase of Curtis’s career is closed, and having passed this milestone, he enters that wider sphere in which his future activities are to be so successfully employed.

His correspondence with Mrs. Whitman, which was later renewed, was continued at intervals for many years. He ever turned with unfailing confidence to consult his early friend in regard to his later literary work, and in 1860, one finds him appealing to her judgment when he writes: —

‘Tell me “certain true” whether Trumps is worth publishing as a book?’

Throughout his life, Curtis retained those characteristics which are so clearly outlined in his early letters, namely his sentiment, his love of music and of nature, his worship of art and beauty, and his chivalrous attitude toward all mankind. His early promise was amply fulfilled, even though it failed to blossom primarily in the poetic field, and he must ever remain in the eyes of posterity, what his friend Winter has pronounced him: —

‘The illustrious orator, the wise and gentle philosopher, the serene and delicate artist, the incorruptible patriot, the supreme gentleman.’