[Manchester—Thursday, 23 August 1866]
Thursday. Cool, overcast, windless on the beach. Looked cold in the east, but a calm spirit was over all—there were no wild birds nearer than the sea-islands where I heard the curlews calling lustily.
Yesterday afternoon Robert Collyer of Chicago came down to pass the night. A large generous frame he wears and his smile is as generous as his frame. He is evidently just the man for Chicago. We were sitting quietly in our room when we heard Mrs Bartol give a joyful cry and run down stairs. He heard her kiss somebody joyously and then carry him up to her bed-room where Lissie & Mr Bartol and Mary received him in the same spirit. At tea we learned it was Mr Collyer. Fortunately the afternoon and the sunset were resplendent, one of those pageants we think we can never forget, and Mr Bartol took him out in his boat and they did not return until tea and dark; afterward we sat and talked until bed time. He said the spirit of the students at Ann Arbor was reverent and beautiful. When he went to speak there the hall was always full, they would bring in their lawbooks after that and sit upon them, then they would sit upon the stairs and sills and afterward they would go away—Ah! I wish for something of this enthousiasm left in Cambridge but perhaps there is enthousiasm of another kind hidden with us and the other kind would be of course more natural in a new country and new college. The President is not a marked man. They hope for another.
The Douglas Institute in the city of Chicago is a fine and growing school—this is where Mr Clarke’s telescope has been placed.
He said they had not a peal of bells in Chicago and he should beg one from the east when his new church was built. His home near Leeds in England (Yorkshire) is also near Haworth where he says is one of the loveliest peal of bells he has ever heard—often and often in the unbroken quiet of Sunday morning he has listened to those bells as they came with their gentle music heaving and swelling over the heath which lay between, and he did not doubt those bells suggested to Charlotte Bronte among other things her pseudonym of Currer Bell.
There is a simple earnest manner of talk about Mr Collyer which enhances the pleasure of what he says immeasurably especially I fear we feel the contrast to some rather artificial talk we are apt to hear. He speaks not as if he wished to exactly but as if he could not help it, the thing would out yet his silence when he is silence [sic] is more from abstractedness sometimes and sometimes bashfulness than ever from reticence or any ungenerous impulse. He was a methodist preacher before he came to this country and I had heard also a blacksmith. He preached in England one year and a half and then came to Pennsylvania where he preached as a methodist 9 years and afterward left that sect and went to Chicago. He had never returned to England since he left it until last year when his people gave him 14 weeks vacation. He went to see his mother immediately. She could hardly let him leave her side, but he stole away to the Continent for 3 weeks and saw England in snatches but was obliged to deny himself the pleasure of seeing Tennyson which he might have done and other great pleasures which opened before him. He was punctual in his return and preached in Chicago exactly according to his promise on the fourteenth Sunday after his departure.
He saw Switzerland however which transcended all his imaginations. His great night was in the valley of Chamonix when one evening he walked towards the foot of a glacier and sat near the steps of the little church to watch the sunset—presently the sun went down and the second sunset died and the valley grew dark and the stars came out but still Mt. Blanc shone in the yellow light in pure magnificence “until it seemed as if the veil were lifted and a glimpse was given as of the great white throne.”
We all went to bed early although somewhat later than usual. Mrs Bartol preceded the huge man up our tiny stair-case “telling him to be careful.” He laughed and said as he gave us “good night”—“if you should fall upon me Mrs Bartol it would indeed be terrible.” We couldn’t help a smile over the pigmy blessed little woman.
Thursday. Soft lowering morning looking much like rain. Went to the beach and had a blessed time listening to the wide and gentle murmurs of the sea. Returning about ten to books and a quiet day, my darling being in town. Before 12 it rained and continued to pour faster and faster until Mr Collyer decided to stay. At dinner the talk turned once to the subject of truth in which he told us by way of illustration of once being a party to a lie by which an insane man was induced to go with him to Hartford being told he was sent for to Washington—but when he at last devined the truth his trouble at discovering himself duped, and that too by one he had trusted was so sad—“that I made up my mind then never to tell a lie even to a crazy man again as long as I lived.”
We finished that wonderful novel, that glorious growth of character and intellect, “Felix Holt” this afternoon. We have read it through aloud since we came down.
The rain came down faster and faster and my darling was the only sunlight which broke through it tonight.
Mr Collyer sat with us in the evening and we had a merry talk beside which he showed us interesting photographs of the forge at which he worked until 10 years ago, of Bolton Abbey, the scene of the White Doe of Rylstone, of Haworth, and other lovely things.
