JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. CIRCUMSTANCES determine the poet; inheritance determines who the poet shall be. It somehow seems to be a marvellous thing that a thrifty, plain Quaker stock should come to such a flowering as was seen in John Greenleaf Whittier. That iridescent colors should play over the Quaker drab! That from the insignificant chrysalis should emerge the brilliant butterfly! From Keltic origin one might expect any surprises. Boyle O'Reilly, who had also something of the prophetic spirit, who also threw himself generously into conflict with powers that did their best to crush him and make a martyr of him, is explained by the fact that he was Keltic. But one scarcely expects a singer from the ranks of sober Friends. That is an anomaly; and to explain the phenomenon one must look into Whittier's ancestry. Four steps bring us back to the days of the Puritans. Whittier's father, John, born in 1760, was the tenth child of Joseph, born in 1716, the ninth and youngest son of Joseph, born in 1669, who was in turn the tenth and youngest child of Thomas, who was born in Southampton, England, in 1620, and sailed for America in the good ship "Confidence" a little more than two and a half centuries ago. Thomas Whittier was no common man. He settled on the Merrimack River, first in Salisbury, then in old Newbury, then in Haverhill, where he built the house in which his famous descendant was born. He is said to have brought the first hive of bees to Haverhill. In those days Indians frequently scalped and murdered defenceless families of white settlers; but Thomas Whittier made them his friends and disdained to protect his house with flint-lock or stockade. Thomas Whittier's son, Joseph, married the daughter of the Quaker, Joseph Peasley, and thus the strain which in those days was regarded as a disgrace, but which in time became a mark of distinction, was grafted upon the Whittier stock. The poet's grandfather married Sarah Greenleaf, a descendant of a French exile, whose name, instead of being perverted like the Lummydews (L'Hommedieux) and the Desizzles (Des Isles), was simply translated into English. What part this Gallic blood played in Whittier's mental make-up, it would be no less difficult than interesting to determine. Whittier's mother, Abagail Hussey, was descended from the Rev. Stephen Bachelor or Batchelder of Hampton, N.H., a man who was famed for his "splendid eye." This feature, which is generally associated with genius, seemed to have been inherited by Whittier, and Daniel Webster, and William Pitt Fessenden, and Caleb Cushing. Dark, expressive, penetrating eyes, full of soul and flashing with sudden lightning glances, were characteristic of the "Batchelder eye," common to so many families in New Hampshire. Whittier's father married at the age of forty-four and had only four children, Mary, John Greenleaf, who was born September 17, 1807, Matthew Franklin, and Elizabeth Hussey. The old Whittier farmhouse, with its huge central chimney, faces the south; the front lower rooms are square, with fifteen-inch oaken beams supporting the low ceilings. The poet was born in the west front room, the two small-paned windows of which look down to a little brook, which in those early days, says Whittier, "foamen, rippled, and laughed" behind its natural fringe of bushes. Across the way was the big unpainted barn. The scenery was the typical landscape of New England - a smooth, grassy knoll (known as Job's Hill), woodland composed of oaks, walnuts, pines, firs, and spruces, with sumachs, which in the autumn, and in the spring as well, are gorgeous with many colors. Whittier, however, was color-blind, and all that splendid display counted as naught to him. Behind the house was the orchard, and behind the orchard a clump of oaks, near which the Whittier graveyard used to be. In 1798 the farm was rated as worth $200. The year before the poet was born his father bought one of three shares in it for $600 of borrowed money, and the debt was not cleared for a quarter of a century. Money was scarce in those days. And yet John Whittier was honored by his townspeople, was frequently in the public service, and entertained men of note at his humble fireside. When Whittier was seven years old, he went to school. His first teacher, who was his lifelong friend, was Joshua Coffin of old Newbury. Still sits the school-house by the road, The charcoal frescos on its wall; The door's worn sill betraying It stood about half a mile from Whittier's home, but the fount of knowledge flowed during only about three months in the year. At home the library was scanty. Only twenty books or so, mostly journals and memoirs of pious Quakers, furnished the boy home reading. He would walk miles to borrow a volume of biography or travel. Naturally, the precepts of the Bible, which was daily read, became a part of his mental and moral fibre. His poems are full of references to Bible events and characters. "In my boyhood," he says, "in our lonely farmhouse, we had scanty sources of information, few books, and only a small weekly newspaper. Our only annual was the Almanac. Under such circumstances story-telling was a necessary resource in the long winter evenings." When Nature sets about to make a poet, she has her own college. These apparent deprivations are enrichments. They concentrate genius. The few hours of regular schooling were counterbalanced with lessons from Dame Nature herself. Knowledge never learned of schools, He goes on autobiographically: I was rich in flowers and trees, |