[Boston—Monday, 22 April 1872]
Monday April 22. A Springlike rain today is starting the grass and the birds are chirruping in cheerful anticipation of worms, doubtless—but this is almost the first hint of Spring; surely there never was such a cold bleak season before it seems to me. It is the second of Mr. Emerson’s Readings or Conversations and he is coming with his daughter Ellen, also Longfellow & Alice, Dr. Holmes, W.M. Hunt and his wife, to have dinner afterward. I arranged lilies and azaleas on the table and very pretty they looked. I wished to bring Celia Thaxter home with me but she went dutifully back to her home which is no home and passed the evening all alone in her little parlor. How sad! how sad!
We had a very gay lovely time at our dinner. Ah! but first about the lecture. Emerson talked of poetry, the unity of science & poetry, the latter being the fine insight which solves all problems. The poetry unwritten, of today, the virgin soil, was strongly, inspiringly revealed to us. He was not talking he said of the smooth verses of magazines but of the true poetry wherever it was found. I do not take notes, and I lose the splendor of expression which mark all his work. But I sit with Celia, “Rooshue,” (as I have called Mrs Hunt) and other pleasant members who congregate in our corner, and the quick response of feeling runs from one to the other & multiplies our delight. He read favorite single lines also from Byron’s Island giving Byron great praise, feeling conscious of the injustice which has been done him in our time; after the Island he read a lyric written by a traveller to the Ponga Islands named Mariner, the poem is in Martin’s travels—also he read a noble poem called “The Soul” and a sonnet by Wordsworth on the Polish Patriot. We were entranced as the magic of his sympathetic voice passed from one poetic vision to another. Indeed we could not bear to see the hour fade away. Coming home, Ellen’s trunk had not arrived, so she came, like a good child most difficult in a woman grown, to dinner in her travelling dress. Alice Longfellow looked very pretty in a polonaise of lovely olive brown over black; a little feather of the same color in her hair. Rooshue and her husband came in their everydays too, I wore a lilac polonaise with a yellow rose—I speak of the latter because it seemed to please W.M. Hunt to see the dash of color. At dinner Emerson asked Longfellow about his English visit, about Ruskin and other celebrities. Longfellow is always extremely reticent upon this head but he liked Ruskin much. The quiet gentle-manly way, he said “in which Ruskin gave vent to his extreme opinions was very pleasant and quite a surprise. It seemed no effort to him to express them but appeared to him a matter of course that everyone should give expression to the faith that is in him in the same unvarnished way, not looking for agreement but for conversation & discussion. It is strange said Ruskin, being considered so much out of harmony with America that the two Americans I have known and loved best, you & Norton, should give me such feeling of friendship and repose.” He saw Matthew Arnold & his wife. He thought her a lovely person much more attractive than her husband. He also returned to Lady Herbert as I have so frequently heard him do, in his conversations upon the people whom he met in England as being one of the most delightful of women. What a pity she should have written an unsuccessful book he said. The subject of homeopathy came up but was smiled down by L. who has had enough of that with O.W.H. but he gave us a slight sketch of Du Bartas, an extract from whose poem he gives in the little newspaper for the fair now going forward. Hunt convulsed us with a story of seeing a man run through by an iron bolt when a distinguished physician is called in. The physician asks if he can sleep well—and a thousand & one questions of like relevancy to all of which the patient only replies by gasps of agony. Hunt acted the whole scene famously. The sunset too delighted him as it gilded the old sheds back of the house & made them “like Solomon’s Temple.” Longfellow has written to Miss Rossetti, the author of the Shadow of Dante, to thank her for her pleasant book. He asks her the difficult question why Dante puts Venus nearest the sun. Also he points out her fault of saying the spirits of the blest inhabited the planets whereas Dante clearly states that they all lived in one heaven but visited the planets.
The truth of Hawthorne’s tale of the minister with the black veil was hunted up. His name was Moody and one of the Emerson family. It seems the poor man in his youth shot a boy by accident and as he grew older a morbid temper settled upon him and he did not think himself fit to preach. So he withdrew from the ministry but taught a small school, always covered with a black veil, literally a handkerchief. Ellen said her aunt was taught by him & she appeared anxious to set the matter right. Rose Hawthorne & her husband have been to see Mr. Emerson & he likes them both well, thinks Rose looks happy & the young man promising, which is much. There is hope of Una’s recovery & return.
After dinner, we ladies looked over manuscripts for a time until Longfellow went—when Mrs Hunt went to the piano and played & sang. Finally he came and they sang their little duets together and afterward she sang a song with words by Channing about a pine tree, set to a scrap of a sonata by Helen Bell and after that a touching German song with English words—then she read Celia’s new poem to Mr. Emerson called “The Tryst”. She read it only pretty well which disgusted her and she said it reminded her of William’s reading which was the worst she ever knew, he would literally stop in the middle of a sentence because it happened to be the bottom of a page and ask her what it meant. At that he took Celia’s poem and read it through word for word like a school-boy looking up to her to see if he was right and should go on. She laughed immoderately and as for Mr. Emerson “J.” said his eyes left their wonted sockets and went to laugh far back in his brain.
Putting down his book, Hunt launched off into his own life as a painter. His lonely position here without anyone to look up to in his art—his idea of art being entirely misunderstood, his determination not to paint cloth and cheeks but to paint the glory of age and the light of truth. He became almost too excited to find words, but when he did grasp a phrase it was such a fine one that it went a great way. His wife sat by making running comments, but when he said, if any man who was talking could not be heard he would naturally try to talk so that he could be heard, we tried to urge him to stand firm and to assure him that his efforts were neither lost nor in vain. If the books you wrote were left all dusty and untouched upon the shelves, don’t you think you would try to write so that people should want them? I am sure you would. His wife tried to say he must stand in the way he knew was right—so did we all—but he seemed to think it way too hard, too Sisyphus-like a labor. The portrait of little Paul is still unsold. After keeping the carriage waiting one hour and a half they went—a most interesting pair. I only trust she will be gentle & reticent enough with him. She is a noble noble creature.
