CHAPTER IX

NO. 13 CHESTNUT STREET, BOSTON

1864; aet. 45

PHILOSOPHY

Naked and poor thou goest, Philosophy!

Thy robe of serge hath lain beneath the stars;

Thy weight of tresses, ponderously free,

Of iron hue, no golden circlet bars.

Thy pale page, Study, by thy side doth hold,

As by Cyprigna's her persuasive boy:

Twin sacks thou bear'st; one doth thy gifts infold,

Whose modest tendering proves immortal joy.

The other at thy patient back doth hang

To keep the boons thou'rt wonted to receive:

Reproof therein doth hide her venomed fang,

And hard barbaric arts, that mock and grieve.

Here is a stab, and here a mortal thrust;

Here galley service brought the age to loss;

Here lies thy virgin forehead rolled in dust

Beside the martyr stake of hero cross.

They who besmirched thy whiteness with their pitch,

Thy gallery of glories did complete;

They who accepted of thee so grew rich,

Men could not count their treasures in the street.

Thy hollow cheek, and eye of distant light,

Won from the chief of men their noblest love;

Olympian feasts thy temperance requite,

And thy worn weeds a priceless dowry prove.

I know not if I've caught the matchless mood

In which impassioned Petrarch sang of thee;

But this I know,—the world its plenitude

May keep, so I may share thy beggary.

J. W. H.

After the two real homes, Green Peace and Lawton's Valley, the Chestnut Street house was nearest to our hearts; this, though we were there only three years, and though it was there that we children first saw the face of sorrow. It was an heroic time. The Doctor was in constant touch with the events of the war. He was sent by Governor Andrew to examine conditions of camps and hospitals, in Massachusetts and at the seat of war; he worked as hard on the Sanitary Commission, to which he had been appointed by President Lincoln, as on any other of his multifarious labors: his knowledge of practical warfare and his grasp of situations gave him a foresight of coming events which seemed well-nigh miraculous. When he entered the house, we all felt the electric touch, found ourselves in the circuit of the great current.

So, these three years were notable for us all, especially for our mother; for beside these vital interests, she was entering upon another phase of development. Heretofore her life had been domestic, studious, social; her chief relation with the public had been through her pen. She now felt the need of personal contact with her audience; felt that she must speak her message. She says in her "Reminiscences": "In the days of which I now write, it was borne in upon me (as the Friends say) that I had much to say to my day and generation which could not and should not be communicated in rhyme, or even in rhythm."

The character of the message, too, was changing. In the anguish of bereavement she sought relief in study, her lifelong resource. Religion and philosophy went hand in hand with her. She read Spinoza eagerly: read Fichte, Hegel, Schelling; finally, found in Immanuel Kant a prophet and a friend. But it was not enough for her to receive; she must also give out: her nature was radiant. She must formulate a philosophy of her own, and must at least offer it to the world.

In September, 1863, she writes to her sister Louisa, "My Ethics are now the joke of my family, and Flossy or any child, wishing a second helping, will say: 'Is it ethical, Mamma?' Too much of my life, indeed, runs in this channel. I can only hope that the things I write may do good to somebody, how much or how little we ourselves are unable to measure."

Yet she could make fun of her philosophers: vide the following passage from one of her "Tribune" letters:—

"We like to make a clean cut occasionally, and distinguish ourselves from our surroundings. Else, we and they get so wedded that we scarcely know ourselves apart. Do I own these four walls, or do they own me, and detain me here for their pleasure and preservation? Do I want these books, or do their ghostly authors seize me wandering near the shelves, impanel me by the button-hole, and insist upon pouring their bottled-up wisdom into my passive mind? I once read a terrible treatise of Fichte upon the me and not me, in which he gave so many reasons why I could not be the washstand, nor the washstand I, that I began after a while to doubt the fact. Had I read further, I think I should never have known myself from house-furniture again. Let me here remark that many of these gymnastics of German metaphysics seem to have no other office than that of harmlessly emptying the brain of all its electricity. Their battery strikes no hammer, turns no wheel. Fichte, having decided that he was not the washstand, smoked, took beer, and walked out to meet some philosophic friend, who, viewing himself inclusive, as the Germans say, thought he might be that among other things. Fatherland meantime going to the Devil—strong hands wanted, clear, practical brains,—infinitesimal oppression to be undermined, the century helped on. 'I am not the washstand,' says Fichte; 'I am everything,' says Hegel. Fatherland, take care of yourself. Yet who shall say that it is not a vital point to know our real selves from the factitious personalities imposed upon us, and to distinguish between the symptoms of our fancy and the valid phenomena of our lives?"

The Journal says:—

"At 11.53 [September 24] finished my Essay on Religion, for the power to produce which I thank God. I believe that I have in this built up a greater coherence between things natural and things divine than I have seen or heard made out after this sort by anyone else. I therefore rejoice over my work, ... hoping it may be of service to others, as it has certainly been to me."

Two days later she adds, "I leave this record of my opinion of my work, but on reading it aloud to Paddock,[49] I found the execution of the task to have fallen far short of my conception of it. I shall try to rewrite much of the Essay."

The Journal of 1864 is a quarto volume, with a full page for every day. There are many blank pages, but the record is much fuller than heretofore.

"January 15. Worked all the afternoon at my Essay on Distinction between Philosophy and Religion. Got a bad feeling from fatigue. A sort of trembling agony in my back and left side."