Whittier, John Greenleaf

John Greenleaf (1807-1892), an American poet. He was born December 17, 1807, in a farmhouse three miles from Haverhill, Massachusetts. His parents were Quakers. His father was of Huguenot descent. Thomas Whittier, the fourth ancestor, the original Whittier of the Colonies, settled in Haverhill about 1640. He brought the first hive of bees to the parish. He was a friend of George Fox. He was a man of gigantic stature. He weighed 300 pounds. He was noted not only for the heaviness of his hand but for the justice of his dealings. He made friends with the Indians far and wide. When they descended upon Haverhill and carried away Hannah Dustin, they left the Whittier homestead unmolested.

The future poet was named for his father, John, and for the family of his father's mother, Sarah Greenleaf. Whittier, as well as Daniel Webster, had a fine, dark, expressive eye, doubtless of Huguenot origin. They traced this feature to a common ancestor. Higginson describes Whittier at thirty-five as "a tall, slender man with olive complexion, black hair, straight black eyebrows, and brilliant eyes."

The Whittier farmhouse stood in a position from which no neighbors could be seen. The location within sound of ocean's roar, the secluded farm, the barn, the well sweep, the house, the fireplace, the home circle, the books, games, and pastimes, the cider, nuts, and tales, the snowdrifts and blockaded roads, the ox teams and the old doctor on his rounds, are described in Snowbound with fidelity. Even the old housedog is not omitted. Whittier tells us else-where how his uncle, "innocent of books," taught him to fish, and how, on one occasion, when fishing, he rejoiced too soon, before he had landed his pickerel. Barefoot Boy is without doubt a reminiscence of Whittier's own childhood. The first school he attended was kept by a queer old pedagogue in a room of his own house:

Still another glimpse of his boyhood is given in School Days. Little money was going in the Whittier household. Farm work six days in the week and a ride over the hills to Quaker meeting at Amesbury on the seventh was the customary weekly round. Books were scarce. The Bible he read and reread until he knew the Bible stories by heart. A teacher placed a volume of Burns in his hands. On his first visit to Boston he bought a copy of Shakespeare. He read one or two of the Waverley novels without the knowledge of his parents.

Whittier attended a few terms of district school. Under the influence of Burns' poems, he was in the habit of scribbling rhymes on a slate and passing them around to the great amusement of his schoolmates. In his way he was fond of fun. He was a great hand to tease his mother and the cat. By binding boots and teaching he managed to pay for two terms at Haverhill Academy. At nineteen a poem sent to the Newbury-port Free Press attracted the attention of its editor, William Lloyd Garrison. This poem, The Exile's Departure, is not given usually in the single-volume editions of Whittier's poems. Garrison drove out to the Whittier homestead to hunt up a youth of so much promise. The acquaintance thus begun ripened into a lifelong friendship.

Few realize that Whittier got his start in life and practice in writing as a country editor. In 1830 he conducted the Haver-hill Gazette. He was for two years editor of the New England Review, founded by G. D. Prentiss at Hartford, Connecticut. In 1838-40 he edited an anti-slavery paper, the Pennsylvania Freeman, at Philadelphia. His office was sacked and burned by a mob. Four years later he undertook the management of the Middlesex Standard in Lowell. He was for years a corresponding editor of the National Era at Washington, D. C. He also was a contributor from time to time to the columns of the Atlantic Monthly. During his editorial experience in Massachusetts Whittier was also a local politician with a strong ambition to enter Congress. He was a Whig in politics, a supporter of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. For years no measure of importance was undertaken by the Massachusetts Whigs without his cooperation. He sat in the Massachusetts legislature and was considered a political leader of integrity and no little shrewdness. Becoming interested, however, in the anti-slavery movement, Whittier resigned all idea of political preferment and devoted himself to the antislavery cause. He attended meetings, encouraged speakers, wrote poems, and for twenty years was one of the foremost abolitionists in the United States. He was influential in the formation of the Republican party. His anguish over the defection of Daniel Webster from the cause of freedom is expressed in Ichabod.

Whittier supported John C. Calhoun and Abraham Lincoln for the presidency. He was opposed to war as a means of setting the slave free, but, seeing that war was inevitable, he supported the cause of the North ardently. He urged his Quaker friends to contribute their assistance by engaging in hospital service.

In 1836 Whittier sold the old Haverhill farm for $3,000 and paid $1,200 for a house in Amesbury adjoining the Quaker church. He enlarged the cottage by successive additions and planted fruit trees. Although Amesbury became a busy manufacturing town, the vicinity has never ceased to be attractive. "Woodsy, and wild, and lonesome," Whittier called it. Here he settled down with his sister as housekeeper. He was never married. The romance of his life, if any, must be inferred from passages in The Last Eve of Summer, Memories, A Sea Dream, and other poems. He was too shy to give friends his full confidence.

At the close of the Civil War Whittier entered upon the peaceful part of his life and wrote the greater part of his best poetry. He worked in what he called his "garden room." He felt that the terms library and study were too pretentious, and, indeed, the word library would hardly have been appropriate, for he had so many books that they overran the whole house. Whittier contributed his poems to many newspapers and periodicals. A number were written for anniversaries, banquets, and other public meetings. Some of the little volumes which were published from time to time before a complete edition of his works appeared were Legends of New England, 1831; Voices of Freedom, 1846; Songs of Labor, 1850; In War Time, 1863; Snowbound, 1866; Tent on the Beach, 1867; Among the Hills, 1869; Hazel Blossoms, 1875; and The Sundown, 1892. Whittier's life at Amesbury was calm, and, we may believe, happy. He wrote, corresponded, received visitors, and indulged in making numerous gifts. His writings brought him in an income quite sufficient for all his wants. His royalty on the first edition of Snowbound was $10,000.

His seventieth birthday was marked by an outpouring of tribute in verse and prose from literary people. The publishers of the Atlantic gave a dinner in his honor. Emerson and Longfellow sat at his right; Holmes, Howells, and Warner at his left. Fifty other guests of literary note sat about the table. Speeches were made by Howells, Warner, Higginson, and others. Emerson read Whittier's Ichabod. Oliver Wendell Holmes read the poem in which he speaks of Whittier as "The woodthrush of Essex," and Whittier begged his friend Longfellow to read for him a few lines, which he termed his Response. His eightieth birthday was celebrated by an excursion party coming from Boston by special train.

Whittier was fond of traveling in a quiet way, of camping, and of entertaining friends. He continued to the last to write with a steel pen costing a penny. He dipped it into a five-cent bottle of ink bought from the village stationer. His correspondence became very heavy. He was very patient in answering questions as to the meaning of his poems. He sent his autograph freely to those who asked it. The story is told of his rising from bed to write his name in the autograph books of a party of students from an academy. He was generous in his contributions for philanthropic purposes.

In his later years he became quite feeble. He died September 7, 1892. The funeral exercises were held in his garden. Seats were provided for several hundred. The lads of the neighborhood, many a barefoot boy among them, climbed into the trees; the sweet-voiced Hutchinsons, old and staunch friends, sang; Edmund Clarence Stedman spoke the words of farewell. Whittier's remains were laid at rest in the old family burying ground at Amesbury in which the family circle of Snowbound was now reunited.

Critics rank Whittier below Longfellow and Lowell; the people rank him as the Burns of New England. His poems are quoted by school children and in the pulpit and on the platform everywhere. Of all men of letters he is held in deepest affection from the place of his birth westward. When his anti-slavery poems--cries of agony for the oppressed, but without hatred for the oppressor--have in a measure passed out of mind with the occasion of their birth, Whittier will be recognized as the first of New England poets, the poet of the farm and the shop--the poet of the people.

Soon after Whittier's death the old farmhouse where he was born was purchased and placed in the hands of a board of trustees selected by the Whittier Club of Haverhill. The farm and home have been restored as nearly as possible to their original condition. An electric railway runs through the old lane. The scene of Snowbound is visited by thousands of literary pilgrims. His Amesbury home is kept substantially as he left it. The garden room in which he used to receive his friends and guests still retains his books and pictures. The chair in which he sat and the desk on which he wrote Snowbound are preserved here.

See Webster; Abolitionist; Fremont