In June, Whitman visited Riverby. His 'Specimen Days and Collect' pictures the roomy, honeysuckle-and-roseembowered cottage of John Burroughs; the hospitality; the raspberries; the perfect bed; the ample view of the Hudson; the early, Venus-heralded dawn; the noiseless splash of sunrise; and the delicious coffee, with cream, strawberries, and many substantials, for breakfast. With the hot days of July, the little family went to the Old Home, where all three throve in the cooler air of the Catskills. The baby had not yet been named; but while camping with 'Aaron' on the Neversink, in August, Burroughs wrote his wife hoping the little man' was not giving her too much trouble, and suggested that they call him 'Julian,' in which suggestion she concurred. On return to Riverby in the autumn, a willing maid was found, and life went more smoothly than ever before, despite the increased care a baby brought to the silent house. The beckonings of Dame Nature were less heeded; housekeeping was perforce less strenuously pursued; and in the sharing of parental joys and anxieties, husband and wife found more in common than heretofore. His mother visits Riverby. He fills pages of the Journal with her tales of olden times. Deep in his heart he treasured the sight of her as she sat and tended his child. In November, Benton warns Burroughs not to let paternal cares wean him from old friends. Commenting on the venerableness of their correspondence, he says: 'What a different world was that to our eyes, in the days of those first letters!... There was a freshness, a glory to everything that seems to have vanished.' Burroughs replies in the same vein, only more so these men, only a little past forty, viewing everything in the light of the setting sun! Yes [writes Burroughs], it is a sad fact that life and the world lose their freshness and glory as we grow older. The future becomes the past, and we turn more and more from what is, or is to be, to what has been. I think one begins to lose time after he is thirty-five; that is, his hopes and his spirits do not keep pace with the fast flitting years. It is this pack at our back, this burden of memory, grows more and more as the days pass. that I look upon this baby of mine and think how late he has come into the world how much he has missed; what a faded and dilapidated inheritance he has come into possession of. The spring and the summer are gone. Ah! me, what a delusion it is! The eye thinks the sun is fading, when it is our vision that is growing dim. No doubt the youth will find the glory we miss; and in his turn pity us that lived at such an unseasonable time. The youngster, by the way, is doing well. His sense and his intelligence are very keen, and I think I see a future poet in him. He and I have great times already. I am writing a little again, getting my things in shape for another book in the spring, but not breaking much new ground.... I am reading the old authors, Tacitus and Cicero. Tacitus is very noble and good.... When 'Phases of Farm Life' ('Signs and Seasons'), comes out in 'Scribner's,' Benton, writing that it bears the impress of having been written to order, adds: I cannot bear to have you fall into this sort of hack-work, notwithstanding you have the example of the greater part of other eminent writers. Such examples, in fact, ought to be warning enough in themselves. I beg of you, I beseech you, resist all such temptations as you would the Adversary himself. Fortunately you are not in the predicament of many a poor fellow who must hack away to keep the wolf from his door. At this period a correspondence started between Burroughs and E. S. Gilbert, a young farmer in Canaseraga, New York, which, mutually helpful, extended over many years, and which, as a whole, forms a valuable contribution to the wild life of the Hudson and Canaseraga Valleys. It furnishes a good example of the friendly aid Burroughs gave to countless young men who brought to him their natural history observations and problems. In Gilbert's letters one traces, under the tutelage of Burroughs, a natural observer's evolution into a trained observer. Burroughs, with his appetite for facts (which, however, he never offers to his reader as mere facts), welcomed young Gilbert's letters, which chronicle facts about the flowers, the rocks, the birds, and all the wild creatures with a fidelity strikingly like to 'White of Selborne's loving view.' They compared notes, raised queries, and checked each other up in hasty observations. Burroughs sent Gilbert reading-matter and encouraged him to write for the magazines; he quoted from his letters in 'Sharp Eyes' ('Locusts and Wild Honey') and placed some early essays for him. One traces the self-distrustful young farmer, abashed at the elder's words of commendation, but grateful, working with a will; in time editing a column of 'Notes and Queries' in a scientific magazine; writing valuable papers on 'The Formation of Sandbanks,' and the 'Surface Geology of Canaseraga County'; and seriously contemplating a popular work on botany.' As to the botany which Gilbert contemplated writing, Burroughs advised: I am glad you are going to try your hand at a popular botany, I cherished such a purpose myself at one time, but my ambition gradually faded out. Among other things, you must have an Appendix in which the flowers are arranged according to color. Also arranged according to their blooming, March, April, May, etc., so that one can identify any flower they find, without having to analyze it. [Italics mine.] The key in the botanies is no key at all to most people, but a combination-lock. Make the subject clear and easy and your book will be a success.' 'I am indebted to the son of E. S. Gilbert, a namesake of John Burroughs, for the loan of the latter's letters to his father. 'Gilbert never wrote his botany, but Mrs. William Starr Dana (later Parsons), in How to Know the Wild Flowers, and According to Season, followed a similar suggestion made by Burroughs in his essay 'Among the Wild Flowers.' (St. Nicholas, 1891; Riverby, 1894) quoting in her first-named book, the passage which gave her the hint for her helpful books about the wild flowers. CHAPTER VII BITTER-SWEET 1879-1881 Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run, OMAR KHAYYÁM IN the ensuing three years our author drank deep of Time's bitter-sweet vintage. Birds and flowers held rivalry with banks; essay-writing and fruit-growing continued; another book was published; the baby was an increasing delight; new friends came; satisfying comrades lingered; but amid experiences fraught with joy came two bereavements that darkened his life. In the Journal, January 10th, writing from the Old Home, he says: Mother as active as usual. Father... is quite childish at times— cries on the slightest provocation; the least thing that touches his feelings brings the tears and chokes his voice. I could see myself in him perpetually. As he sat reading and trying to sing from his hymn-book Sunday night, I thought I saw more dignity and strength in the lower part of his face than I had ever before seen in it. . . . The accompanying letter to Gilder shows his ready appreciation of a brother author: Your 'Poet and his Master' is still lying upon my table, and I take a sip of it now and then (since the first and second reading) to see what the after-flavor of it really is. Its atmosphere is more familiar to me, more akin to our thoughts and ways in this country than that of the New Day.... The literary quality of the book is very pure and ripe, and in some of the poems there is a pathos that shakes the heart, and Landor, you remember, says that unless the heart is shaken the gods thunder and stride in vain. That Sonnet on the Sonnet is a gem of the first water. Those last two lines are like a 'header' the boys take from some high bridge or precipice. When you get more leisure and health you will put a lifting force in your poems that will test our foundations. Eaton's [Wyatt] Emerson is the best thing yet. There is not quite enough power in the mouth, yet the picture is a better success than I had dared to hope. I do not like his leaving the bust in blank that way, and I find the picture is more acceptable to my eye when this part is covered up. I expect to send you proof of the Pastoral Bees in a few days.... Letters to Benton carry along the story: February 9.... I am writing a little, and moping and yearning a good deal. The proof of my new volume is coming along,' and that occupies me a little, but on the whole my celestial heifer seems to have gone farrow, and I shall get but little out of her. The baby is a refuge from my barren and unhappy moods. He S grows finely, and he and I have quite an understanding already. I take him out riding on the hand-sled, and he crows and exults like any other boy. You must come and see him and his fond parents before the spring has laid its detaining hand upon you. प d S 1 I expect to go to Washington the latter half of this month, but would postpone it to see you here. I like Hardy, too, and shall read any of his books I can lay my hands on. I have only read 'Far from the Madding Crowd.' He is too consciously an artist to be as great as Hawthorne, I think. Mrs. Gilchrist told me she visited Emerson last fall in Concord. He is very serene and cheerful remembers earlier things and events, but is fast losing his hold upon later. He saw Walt Whitman's photograph in her album, and on being told who it was, asked her if he was one of her English friends. 'What was the name of my best friend?' he will inquire of his wife. 'Henry Thoreau,' she will answer. 'Oh, yes, Henry Thoreau.' Dean Stanley stopped some time with him, and Emerson drove him about in the antiquated wagon, holding the lines himself. I like Sanborn's article on him. He [Emerson] does not forget that Shakespeare was the greatest writer that ever lived. He and Carlyle have ceased corresponding on account of their ages and infirmities.... April 20. While sitting on the border of the woods, was attracted by a soft, uncertain, purring sound in the dry leaves, which I soon traced to a spider. I saw and heard several; never heard a sound from a spider before. The little piping frogs were in the fields and woods; long and long I watched and waited to see and catch one, but gave it up; but on my way home, in the cedar lane, I saw one hop, then another, and still another. I captured them all. It never rains but it pours. In the marsh I caught another. They were of different colors, but seemed to belong to the same species. Were they going from or to the marshes? Heard a blue jay secreted in some pines and cedars indulging in a rehearsal that quite astonished me. It was a medley of notes worthy 1 Locusts and Wild Honey. |