boats, and newly-laid eggs - what could be pleasanter? I thought to write some poems here, but I have been too happy in the flesh. I have to be a trifle melancholy - to escape from something to write decent verses. I wanted to escape from nothing here - especially the library. On the other side of the lake - a joyous row is it across — is a place called "Willowbrook." A gracious little brook winds in and out among groves of willows, singing all day and all night long to one of the quaintest old houses in the world. It belongs to one Mr. Martin. The building consisted originally of four rooms: additions have been made from year to year until now there are thirty. There is no attempt at architecture in the thing, the extensions have been stuck on just where they were most wanted and handiest. The result, outside, would set a lover of the grotesque quite wild with pleasure: inside, the narrow by-ways and odd nooks leading into each other, make me think of midnight murders and Mrs. Radcliffe. In this shapeless old pile is a collection of books that would make your eyes stare - Shelf after shelf of rare old black-letter volumes, annotated and autographed by famous handsoriginal editions of almost everything that is rare. I should like to be confined there with you for two weeks on bread and water rations. We'd come out mere souls. I suppose I cannot tempt you to envy me my content, since your own. summer has been so pleasant. I would like to add your visit to Whittier to my list of congenial doings. I don't know him at all, but I think he must be a genuine fine spirit. I would also like to confiscate your delight in writing a long poem. Men who cannot write verse are ignorant of the highest earthly enjoyment -the least earthy, I Your friend, mean. T. B. ALDRICH. In the autumn of 1865 three events occurred which definitely mark that year as the true annus mirabilis of our poet's life: his collected poems were published in the authentic Ticknor & Fields Blue and Gold Series; he was established in a singularly pleasant editorial chair; and he was married. Of the 1865 volume more than half — and all that he had written since 1863—has gone into the canon of his works, and there is little need to analyze it. All that need be said of it here was said by Dr. Holmes in another of those admirable letters, this one written November 13, 1865: – "I have been much struck," Holmes wrote, "with the delicate grace of your descriptions and the sandal-wood aroma (if I may use so bold a figure) that perfumes all the passages which breathe of the Orient. I began with 'Judith,' whose story you have told very effectively, — I read 'Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book' over again with renewed pleasure, I passed by 'Garnaut Hall,' as I remember it very vividly, and I refreshed myself with the sweet and touching story of 'Babie Bell.' Besides these, I read several of the new poems with pleasure. "Now tell me how often do you do as much for a new book of poems sent you? And how often does it happen that you can mention so many as having given you delight to read? I think some of the hints I once gave you were not ill-judged your danger is of course on the sensuous side of the intellect, you see what I mean the semivoluptuous excess of color and odor, such as you remember in Keats's 'Endymion,' a very different thing from vulgar sensuousness. But your cabinet pictures are really so carefully drawn and so cunningly tinted that I am disposed to cease from criticism and trust your Muse to finish them according to her own sweet will." Four days later Aldrich received another letter which was momentous in his life. It lies before me now as I write, a yellowing bit of paper with some black marks on it, a queer faded thing to have caused so much joyful excitement forty years ago: DEAR ALDRICH, — We have decided to do "Every Saturday," and that T. B. A. is the man to edit it. Please meet me on Sunday at the St. Denis at as early an hour as convenient, say nine o'clock,—and we will decide upon details. Yours truly, J. R. OSGOOD. The "details" were arranged to the entire satisfaction of both parties, and it was decided that the paper should make its bow in Boston on the first of January, 1866. At the time, however, it was not precisely the conduct of the paper that was first in Aldrich's thoughts. At last mar riage was made possible for him! There was no delay, or elaborate preparation. He was married to Miss Woodman in New York on November 28, 1865. Bayard Taylor wrote a sonnet for the occasion one of his best. To T. B. A. AND L. W. Sad Autumn, drop thy weedy crown forlorn, Give buds another dream, another tryst Yet, if unfriendly thou, with sullen skies, And bridal emblems unto these belong: Round her the sunshine of her beauty lies, And breathes round him the spring-time of his song! Never, perhaps, was happier marriage made by poet. On November 27, 1905, Aldrich wrote to one of his closest friends: "To-morrow Lilian and I shall have been married forty years! Forty happy years with only one great sorrow. How many married pairs in this sad world can say as much?" In the story of those forty happy years, the brilliant achievements in prose and verse, the secure laurels were for him but the tinsel trappings of mortality. His real and vital life was always at his hearthside; his deepest joy was in the daily companionship of her to whom he wrote "Forever and a Day." CHAPTER IV BEACON HILL 1866-1874 HOUGH I am not genuine Boston," Aldrich liked to TH say in later years, "I am Boston-plated." As a matter of fact there was an even deeper tincture of Boston in him than would be suggested by his own metaphor. He was no sooner fairly settled in the friendly, lettered, somewhat leisurely circle that awaited him there than he felt that his life had found its appointed channel. Though he always liked to joke about the Brahmin caste, he caught, unconsciously perhaps, something of its dignity, and as time went on he cared less and less to revisit, even in memory, the glimpses of the Bohemian moon. The young couple took lodgings in an admirable boarding house in Hancock Street, on the very summit of that acropolitan portion of Boston known as Beacon Hill. This classic eminence, whether one views its fine definite roundness on the map, or from across the Common beholds its calm acclivity rising against the clear New England sky, stands to the imaginative mind the microcosm of all that is mellowest and best in the historic city. Throughout the rest of his life Aldrich's urban residence was always on its slope. |