Part 14 (1/2)

Mary Smith, Miss Bray's roommate at Haverhill, and her lifelong friend--though for fifty years they were lost to each other--was afterward the wife of Reverend Doctor S. F. Smith, the author of ”America.”

Evelina is described as a tall and strikingly beautiful brunette, with remarkable richness of colouring, and she took high rank in scholars.h.i.+p.

The house on Water Street at which she boarded was directly opposite that of Abijah W. Thayer, editor of the _Haverhill Gazette_, with whom Whittier boarded while at the academy. Whittier was then nineteen years old, and Evelina was seventeen. Naturally, they walked to and from the school together, and their interest in each other was noticeable.

If the Quaker lad harboured thoughts of marriage, and even gave expression to them, it would not be strange. But the traditions of Whittier's sect included disapproval of music, and Evelina's father had given her a piano, and she was fascinated with the study of the art proscribed by the Quakers. Then, too, Whittier was poor, and his gift of versification, which had already given him quite a reputation, was not considered in those days of much consequence as a means of livelihood.

If they did not at first realise, both of them, the hopelessness of their love, they found it out after Miss Bray's return to her home.

About this time Mr. Whittier accompanied his mother to a quarterly meeting of the Society of Friends at Salem, and one morning before breakfast took a walk of a few miles to the quaint old town of Marblehead, where he paid a visit to the home of his schoolmate. She could not invite him in, but instead suggested a stroll along the picturesque, rocky sh.o.r.e of the bay.

This was in the spring or early summer of 1828, and the poet was twenty years old, a farmer's boy, with high ambitions, but with no outlook as yet toward any profession. It may be imagined that the young couple, after a discussion of the situation, saw the hopelessness of securing the needed consent of their parents, and returned from their morning's walk with saddened hearts. Whatever dreams they may have cherished were from that hour abandoned, and they parted with this understanding.

In the next fifty years they met but once again, four or five years after the morning walk, and this once was at Marblehead, along the sh.o.r.e. Miss Bray had in the meantime been teaching in a seminary in Mississippi, and Whittier had been editing papers in Boston and Hartford, and had published his first book, a copy of which he had sent her. There was no renewal at this time of their lover-like relations, and they parted in friends.h.i.+p.

I have said that they met but once in the half-century after that morning's walk; the truth is they were once again close together, but Whittier was not conscious of it. This was while he was editing the _Pennsylvania Freeman_, at Philadelphia. Miss Bray was then a.s.sociated with a Miss Catherine Beecher, in an educational movement of considerable importance, and was visiting Philadelphia. Just at this time a noted Ma.s.sachusetts divine, Reverend Doctor Todd, was announced to preach in the Presbyterian church, and both these Haverhill schoolmates were moved to hear him. By a singular chance they occupied the same pew, and sat close together, but Miss Bray was the only one who was conscious of this, and she was too shy to reveal herself. It must have been her bonnet hid her face, for otherwise Whittier's remarkably keen eyes could not have failed to recognise the dear friend of his school-days.

Their next meeting was at the reunion of the Haverhill Academy cla.s.s of 1827, which was held in 1885, half a century after their second interview at Marblehead. It was said by some that it was this schoolboy love which Whittier commemorated in his poem, ”Memories.” But Mr.

Pickard, the poet's biographer, affirms that, so far as known, the only direct reference made by Whittier to the affair under consideration occurred in the fine poem, ”A Sea Dream,” written in 1874.

In the poet, now an old man, the sight of Marblehead awakens the memory of that morning walk, and he writes:

”Is this the wind, the soft sea wind That stirred thy locks of brown?

Are these the rocks whose mosses knew The trail of thy light gown, Where boy and girl sat down?

”I see the gray fort's broken wall, The boats that rock below; And, out at sea, the pa.s.sing sails We saw so long ago, Rose-red in morning's glow.

”Thou art not here, thou art not there, Thy place I cannot see; I only know that where thou art The blessed angels be, And heaven is glad for thee.

”But turn to me thy dear girl-face Without the angel's crown, The wedded roses of thy lips, Thy loose hair rippling down In waves of golden brown.

”Look forth once more through s.p.a.ce and time And let thy sweet shade fall In tenderest grace of soul and form On memory's frescoed wall,-- A shadow, and yet all!”

Whittier, it will be seen, believed that the love of his youth was dead.

He was soon to find out, in a very odd way, that this was not the case.