me, I know. The lines: “When the earth with blossoms again is gay,” etc., is from Schiller’s “William Tell.” You will find that translation in Bayard Taylor’s Studies in German Literature. Jim has the book.
Affectionately,
HENRY.
OBERLIN, Thursday, September 15, ’81.
DEAR EVERYBODY, ESPECIALLY THOSE TO WHOM I OWE LETTERS, FATHER, MOTHER, HATTIE, HELEN, CARRIE, AND COUSIN WILL, I THINK ARE ALL,
I am sitting down to write in a rather bunged up condition. There is an offensive piece of red flannel tied around my throat and that member is plentifully rubbed with turpentine. I don’t mind the latter much. I like the smell, and the smart is comparatively mild. But what I do object to is the flannel. It makes me half wild. Oh, how miserable it is to be nervous. And I think I never was more so than now. I am afflicted with a sore throat and that stubborn man Dr. Allen has condemned me to stay in the house all day, and of course Auntie and the Deacon are in alliance with him as usual. So I have not been to class today. This is rather hard luck, to be laid up the second day of school. But I have had a kind of headache and fever ever since I returned from my travels. However the headache is about gone and the fever is entirely, and I shall be well to-morrow. I was beginning to be alarmed about my eyes too, as they would smart and begin to weep of their own accord, but I have come to the conclusion that that was caused by the fever, since I have not been troubled with it to-day. Well I am back from my travels, vacation is through at last, and, established in new quarters, with new hopes and anticipations, and a new stock of good resolutions, I am ready to begin the work of a new year. As to the good resolutions they will go the way of all the earth; as to the hopes, I presume they will prove unfounded; and the anticipations are probably destined never to be realized. I said new quarters, I am now occupying Bowen’s room. The wind is howling dismally outside, but I rather like the sound and the aspect of my room is not altogether uncheerful though it is a rather gloomy day. I always liked this room. I am rooming alone. Reky and I have parted company. On many accounts it was better. We could not keep our room in order when together. Its condition used to be frightful sometimes. My room is in order now, I think I can keep it so without difficulty. But pride goeth before a fall and I may have to make the humiliating confession that even that task is too hard for me. I am boarding with Auntie. I enjoy it very much at Auntie’s but it is going to be very solitary. However if I can stand it and don’t suffer from homesickness and loneliness it will be a fine thing for me. Being thrown in upon myself I will employ my time better, will study and read more, and when I feel a little loneliness and the want of human converse I will take my book and go sit with Auntie and Uncle before the fire. Isn’t that a bright picture? There is nobody but flippant girls and foolish boys across the hall. How much better it is to take Gibbon and Wordsworth and Shelley for my friends. What a glow of pleasure it gives me to look up at my shelves. They are dear old friends all of them, and I love them as such. They are always talking to me about realities, never about shams and conventions. How much better to listen to their words of wisdom, than to waste in purposeless babble with some girl the precious hours. But alas, I am unworthy of their company. “How lurid looks this soul of mine” after dipping into the pure and etherealized mind of Hawthorne or the elevated soul of Emerson. My account this time will destroy many of your last illusions about me. You will find that I am extravagant and not economical, careless and not careful. Mine is a nature which requires a companionship congenial to its better moods to enable me to make the best of myself, and faithfully satisfy the cravings of my higher part. When I am not so sustained, a vain aspiration is only too apt to take the place of performance, an aspiration whose intensity increases as its object becomes further out of reach. Perhaps this is a common failing of a nature like mine, speculative rather than active, theoretical rather than practical. But I think it is not a necessary attendant, rather a particular fault of mine, especially as it follows me into my very thinking. I am only too apt to think in a circle, widening the circle perhaps as my mind expands, but still going wearily over the same treadmill round, unable to come to any conclusion, to attain a firm conviction on any subject. The passionate longing to believe something seems to be accompanied by its contradictory, the inability to believe anything thoroughly. So that I seem to be a compound of opposites, intense aspiration being accompanied by no ability for performance, the need of belief with no power to believe, the longing for expression without the power of speech. Iron and clay! A character made up of contradictions, self mocked.
“Oh, trusted broken prophecy,
Oh, fortune sourly crost,
Born for the future—
To the future lost.”
Bow! wowl wow!
But I forgot you didn’t want a morbid, rhapsodizing, up in the clouds attempt at analyzing such an earthborn creature as I am. I had a very pleasant time while East. I stayed at Uncle Alvan’s nearly two weeks. I didn’t do much while there, except stay in the house all day and loaf. I went over to the city once or twice, crossed the Brooklyn bridge again with Coz Tenney Peck, and visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park. Saw the obelisk which stands in front of that building. They have got it finely placed, but it is a dilapidated looking affair and will bear no comparison with that at Paris. The one at London I didn’t see. The Museum of Art is a new thing. It is a finely arranged affair and will bear comparison with anything of the kind in Europe, I think. It seemed lighter and pleasanter than most Museums. The statues too were all white and sparkling, and a real ornament to the place, instead of bring battered and imperfect remnants of that classic marble which has been clipped into such distorted shape for the cultured and critical few. I saw the Bryant vase which I thought ugly but Tenney Peck admired and so I followed suit. You have heard of it? Pure silver and variously carved. Tiffany. I am pretty nearly disgusted with trying to appreciate painting. The gallery of old masters made me sick. The traditional back-ache made its appearance at once. And I was carried back to old Europe. But fortunately America is a new country, and so we got into a room where the pictures had not the merit of age. We felt refreshed accordingly. Almost all paintings by American masters. Saw Bouguereau’s Joan of Arc, which you may remember was engraved in Scribner. It is certainly a striking picture. Also a painting by him of Literature, Art and Music, I think those were the three, which I liked exceedingly. We stayed there three hours. It has a vast number of visitors, and seems to me ought to do much to develop Art in America. Notwithstanding my discouragement about liking Art, I do not intend to give up, I want to start an Art Album. You can get excellent photographs of paintings cabinet size for a dollar and a half a dozen. And I want to get a blank book and paste them in, collecting them slowly of course. In that way in a few years, I can get a large number without feeling it. Allan White is doing it. Does the idea meet your approval, Father? I went to Prospect Park with Aunt Sarah, Tenney and Allie, but the mosquitoes nearly devoured us. What fearful creatures they are in this country. As large as a butter plate and of an insatiable thirst for blood. They gave us no peace. And we finally returned home in a condition of frenzy. That’s just the kind of a country this is—you can’t do anything in the woods here. They are so full of insects which worry you almost to death. Most of the time, I spent quietly at the house. I would take a book and retire to Vernon’s room after breakfast, ensconce myself in a chair by the window, and literally read all day. I read George Eliot’s “Silas Marner” and didn’t like it very much. I believe it is considered good however. I read the “Scarlet Letter,” “The House of the Seven Gables” and a good number of the “Twice-Told Tales,” “Mosses from an old Manse,” etc. Hawthorne is delightful. I like the “Scarlet Letter,” and the “House of the Seven Gables” too pretty well. But one needs to read the sketches to get at the man. I feel almost as if I were personally acquainted with him now. He beats Irving all hollow-on his own ground. Of course he only comes into competition with him in the short stories and sketches. I read the “Last Days of Pompeii” too. I like it Carrie, and yet it has not materially changed my opinion of Bulwer. I think it an unusually interesting book, and the action of Vesuvius all along is well managed. He certainly has entered into the awfulness of the catastrophe in a remarkable way, and, what is great praise when he
