NEW ENGLAND MANNERS AND CUSTOMS IN THE TIME OF BRYANT’S EARLY LIFE.

BY MRS. H. G. ROWE.

Ninety-one years ago, in the little town of Cummington, Mass., was born a child, who was destined, in after years, to be the first of a grand line of American poets, who have made this, the second century of our Republic, famous by their genius and originality.

Not long since, in looking over an old magazine, published in Philadelphia in 1809, I came across quite an extended review of Campbell’s, then just issued, poem, “Gertrude of Wyoming,” and was not a little amused at the closing comments.

After a little mild praise, and a good deal of equally mild criticism, of the Scotch poet, the editor goes on to say:—

“But, after all, although lesser poets are constantly rising above the literary horizon, challenging the admiration of the reading world for a few short months,—possibly years,—and then sinking into the obscurity of a forgotten past, the sun of English poetry has set forever. With Pope, Milton, and Dryden, England lost her last true poets. Henceforth all who claim that title must be more or less skilful imitators merely of the great masters who have gone before them.

“As for America,” he continues, with the most unpatriotic candor, “there is not the smallest chance of her ever producing a real poet. Ingenious scribblers she may have, without doubt, but the typical American never had or will have one grain of poetry in his hard, shrewd, matter-of-fact nature.”

This was the verdict of a Philadelphia editor seventy-six years ago. To-day the bust of our own Longfellow stands in Westminster Abbey, side by side with a Chaucer and a Shakspere, while not only the English-speaking world on both sides of the ocean, but the dwellers in sunny Italy, upon the frozen steppes of Russia, and in far-off Japan and India, sing and repeat, each in his own tongue, the stirring battle-hymns and sweet home-songs of the gifted singers of our Western World.

We are often reminded that a writer’s environments have much to do with the character of his writings, and in Bryant’s case this fact is particularly noticeable.

His earliest poems, and especially that great masterpiece, “Thanatopsis,” written at the early age of eighteen, show unmistakably that the boy had grown up in the closest familiarity with the theological tenets of the New England of his day, and that the bent of his young mind was, even then, toward graver subjects than would naturally occupy the thoughts of a boy of that age.

His biographers assert that he drew his inspiration for this grand poem from the pages of Kirke White and Southey. But whatever his acquaintance with these poets may have done for him, there is a striking similarity of imagery and sentiment between his own and the writings of the sacred bards, whose utterances were as familiar to the children of a Christian household in those days as their own childish nursery songs and hymns.

For instance, compare these lines from “Thanatopsis” with a well-known passage in the Book of Job:—

“... Yet the dead are there: And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down In their last sleep,—the dead reign there alone.”

The sacred poet says:—

“Yet shall he be brought to the grave, and shall remain in the tomb. The clods of the valley shall be sweet unto him, and every man shall draw after him as there are innumerable before him.”

Then, again, in “The Old Man’s Funeral”:—

“Then rose another hoary man, and said, In faltering accents, to that weeping train: ‘Why mourn ye that our aged friend is dead? Ye are not sad to see the gathered grain.’”

Compare this with:

“Thou shall come to the grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in his season.”

Examples similar to these occur in many of Bryant’s poems, and tend to show the result of the early religious training, that, as the son of a thoughtful, God-fearing New England gentleman of that day, he most certainly did receive.

That he was intensely, grandly, sometimes fiercely patriotic, is also due, in a great measure, to the surrounding influences of his young life.

The struggle for American independence was at last over, and the lusty young Republic, springing, Minerva-like, from the mighty brain of a no longer imperilled freedom, was ready to throw down the gauntlet of defiance to all the world, and assert her rights as queen regnant of the great Western World.

The armies had been disbanded, and the war-scarred veterans had joyfully returned to their farms and workshops, ready to put their willing hands again to the plough and the plane, and help to restore, by patient toil and honest legislation, prosperity and peace to the land so long distracted by the commotions and uncertainties of war.

Later, his days of toil over, the old soldier sat him down, in restful content, by his own peaceful fireside, while, with the old musket in its honored place above the tall wooden mantle, he fought over again, in memory, his old-time battles, and to sons and grandsons taught, in thrilling, patriotic words, the great lesson to love and revere their country next to their God.

As a boy, no doubt, young Bryant had listened to many of the tales of these honored veterans, and had drank in, with the air of his own native village, long draughts of their fervid patriotism, that animated his writings down to the latest years of his life.

That he had seen with his own eyes some of the leading spirits in that great national struggle, who still lived to honor and be honored by the nation that they had fought so bravely to free from a foreign yoke, is shown by an extract from one of his few humorous poems, in which he says:—

“I pause to state That I, too, have seen greatness—even I— Shook hands with Adams, stared at Lafayette, When, barehead, in the hot noon of July, He would not let the umbrella be held o’er him, For which three cheers burst from the mob before him.”

Patriotic, religious, philosophical, and a true lover of nature, yet Bryant cannot, in any mood, be styled one of our fireside poets, like Longfellow, Whittier, and Lowell.

Perhaps he failed to see in the then bare loneliness of the typical New England home a beauty worth the attention of his fastidious and lofty-minded muse. And that New England homes, at that time, were bare of what we, to-day, deem the absolute necessities of life, no student of the past pretends to deny.

The long war had drained and impoverished the country; our manufactures and commerce were then in their infancy; the whole machinery of our recently organized government was new, and the hands that worked it, however wise and brave they might be, were untried, and had much to learn before the ponderous works could be brought into perfect running order.

Worst of all, President Jefferson, in 1807, laid an embargo upon American shipping, thus unwittingly striking a terrible blow at our foreign commerce, in his endeavor to force England into an amicable settlement of certain difficulties that had arisen between her and the young Republic. This, and the two years’ war with England, that broke out in 1812, made hard times for everybody, and taxed the magnanimity and skill of our foremothers to their utmost to make their homes and families present a decent and respectable appearance.

The very poor then, as now, were forced to content themselves with the barest decencies of life. But the respectable middle classes,—the farmers, mechanics, and small merchants,—were put to the greatest straits to keep up an appearance of respectability and comfort, with scant conveniences, and few or none of even the simplest elegancies of life, in dwelling, dress, or furniture.

The principal room of a New England farm-house was the kitchen, which was usually large enough to serve for a cooking, dining, and sitting room, all in one.

The enormous fireplace, with its long, soot-blackened crane, hung with hooks of various sizes, the massive iron andirons, strong enough to hold the great birch and birchen logs, that often taxed the strength of a full-grown man to lift and adjust in their places, occupied a large part of one side of the room, and served as a kind of family altar, about which the family, with their guests and friends, always assembled, in quiet chat or friendly gossip.

And a cheery spot it was, especially in those long, dark evenings in midwinter, when the ruddy, dancing flames went laughing up the great throat of the chimney, chasing the venturesome, wayward sparks, as they hurried out into the untried darkness of the winter’s night. With what a genial glow they lighted up the bare, unplastered walls, the sanded floor, the rough rafters overhead, and the scant, clumsily-fashioned furniture, until

“The rude, bare-raftered room Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom.”

Nor must we forget that seldom wanting, always interesting, piece of furniture, to which was sure to be accorded the warmest, coziest spot in the wide chimney-corner,—the inevitable wooden cradle,—clumsily fashioned by loving, but unskilled hands, and always large enough to hold, besides the reigning baby, two, and, at a pinch, three, of the younger members of the household.

How the favored youngsters delighted in a ride in that clumsy old vehicle, nor dreamed that its halting, uncertain gait was other than the very poetry of motion! Even mother’s own wooden rocking-chair, a bit of boughten elegance, with its gay patchwork cushion, and dull, contented “creak! creak!” as its dear occupant swayed meditatively to and fro, knitting in hand, in the quiet, restful gloaming, was not quite equal to that dear, delightful old cradle, for a good brisk canter to “Banbury Cross,” or to the famous hunting grounds, where “Baby Bunting’s rabbit skin” was waiting for him.

Many a man, and woman too, whose names are, to-day, blessed and honored by thousands of grateful hearts all over the land, dreamed then their first misty, childish dreams of a grand and helpful manhood and womanhood, and felt swelling up within their young souls inexpressible longings to help right the wrongs of the down-trodden and oppressed, which they heard their elders talk of, and deplore as past remedy.

The light of other days was simply a home-made tallow candle, and as matches were not then invented, careful housewives never suffered the kitchen-fire, even in the hottest days of summer, to die out entirely. The frequent sight of a child running to the nearest neighbor’s, with a long-handled iron fire-shovel in hand, to “borry a few coals ter start the fire up,” was looked upon as a sure sign of slack housewifery; and no woman might lay claim to the distinction of a good housekeeper who failed to renew her cedar broom as often as every other week.

Equal simplicity in dress prevailed, and a gown of bombazette—a very narrow, all-wool goods, worth from seventy-five cents to a dollar a yard,—was often worn for best during the owner’s lifetime, and at her death bequeathed, with the fondly-cherished string of gold beads, to the favorite granddaughter, as a precious legacy.

For common wear, pressed home-made and home-dyed flannel in winter; and cotton and linen, woven in colored stripes or plaids, for summer, was considered plenty good enough, even for the doctor’s and minister’s wives. Under flannels were an unheard-of luxury. And one ceases to wonder at the frequency of hereditary consumption, in our own day, when he reads that fashionable city ladies, in the very depths of a Northern winter, walked the icy streets in thin cotton or silk stockings and low, pointed, high-heeled morocco shoes. Rubbers being then unknown, and the shoes of stout calf-skin, that their country cousins were only too glad to get, were disdained by these dainty dames as coarse and unlady-like.

A girl carded, spun, wove, bleached, and made her one white linen gown, lavishing upon it all her simple art of needlecraft, every seam and hem stitched by the old-time rule, “take up one thread and skip two,” and, perhaps, embroidering a pattern of tiny sprays and eyelets upon the bosom and sleeves, to give it an air of special gentility.

Finished at last, this choice bit of girlish finery probably served its owner for a wedding-dress, and afterwards was cut up into slips for the babies.

Matrons, young as well as old, wore caps of plain white muslin, made after the same fashion as the round, sweeping caps that tidy housekeepers wear at the present day. The younger and gayer ones, who had no scruples of conscience on the subject, wore their caps adorned with bright ribbons, while the elderly and more sedate contented themselves with a plain band of black, across the front, and pinned primly at the back, without bow or knot.

After the death of Washington, in 1799, besides the band of crape that every citizen of the United States, by the desire of Congress, wore upon his left arm for thirty days, many of the loyal matrons provided themselves with mourning-cap ribbons, upon which was stamped, in white letters, upon a black ground:

“General George Washington, Departed this life on the 14th of December, 1799, Æ. 68,”

—a fac-simile of the inscription upon the coffin-plate of that illustrious and well-beloved chief. The wool and flax were home productions, but the cotton was brought, in a raw state, from the West Indies.

It was first picked over very carefully, to remove the seeds and stray bits of foreign rubbish, then “batted,” that is, made into small pats, each large enough to be carded into a roll, which was spun into thread upon either a wool or linnen wheel. This “batting” usually fell to the lot of the children of the family, who probably found the monotonous task as little to their taste as their grandchildren do, when required to wash the dishes or saw wood for the cooking-stove.

Woven plain, by the skilful hands of the housemother, and bleached upon the young grass under the blossoming apple boughs, the cloth served for the underwear of the family, and was regarded as one of the few luxuries of the frugal household,—the raw cotton costing over fifty cents a pound, to say nothing of the time and labor required to convert it into cloth.

On account of the scarcity of cotton, our modern “comfortables” were a thing unheard of, and, for a substitute, woollen quilts, stuffed with wool, and closely quilted, often in the most elaborate patterns, were used in all New England households. These quilts were often few and thin in many a poor home, where the elders had hard work to shield their flock of little ones from the bitter cold of winter, in spite of the immense fires that even the poorest were able to provide where any amount of fuel could be had for the cutting.

I have heard a story of a good lady who lived at that time in a town not a hundred miles from Boston, which gives one some idea of the straits to which our grandparents were often reduced in those days:—

Watching one bitterly cold night with a sick neighbor, she heard, at midnight, the little children crying with cold in the loft overhead, and leaving her sleeping patient, she went upstairs, and tried to find an extra quilt or blanket to spread over them. But in vain, for in that poor home there was not so much as a shoulder-blanket that could be spared. At last, in utter desperation, she spread over the shivering little ones a side of leather, that she found rolled up under the eaves.

“It kept out the cold, anyhow,” she said, as she told the story years afterwards. “And the poor little things stopped their cryin’, and cuddled down as contented an’ comfortable as a nestful o’ kittens.”

If there was little of poetry or romance in the lives of those hard-working, hard farming men and women of a past generation, there was no lack of the patient diligence and simple, unquestioning faith, that give strength to weakness, and sweeten toil with the steadfast belief that, to the faithful heart and willing hand God’s blessing never fails.

One of the favorite proverbs at that time is significant, as proverbs usually are, of the character of the people:—

“Begin your web, and God will supply you with thread.”

While still another suggests that well-known element in the New England character that the Scotch aptly call “canny”:—

“A wise man will bend a little rather than be torn up by the roots.”

Extravagance was more than a fault, it was an actual sin, in the eyes of these prudent, simple-living folk, and you may have heard before the story of the ingenious housewife, who, tired of the blank bareness of her yellow-painted floors, conceived the bold idea of manufacturing a carpet for it herself:

A large square of sail-cloth served her for a canvas, and upon this she painted, with the few colors that she could procure, a pattern of flowers of every kind that she was familiar with,—blue roses and green lilies having the preference, as making more show than their humbler sisters. This, when finished, she covered with a thick coat of varnish, thus making a very good substitute for the more modern oil-cloth.

Of course everybody, from far and near, came to look, and wonder, and admire; and among them a good old deacon, who, after critically surveying the wonderful work, turned to the proud artist, and, with a look half of amazement, half of pitying reproach, upon his honest, weather-beaten face, asked solemnly:—

“Sister ——, do you expect to have all this and heaven too?”

To-day, Boston is sometimes jestingly styled the “Hub of the Universe,” but at the beginning of the present century it was, soberly speaking, the Hub of New England, for from it spokes projected into every part, however distant, of that region.

As in past ages all roads led to Rome, so seventy-five or eighty years ago all roads led to or from Boston. In an old Farmer’s Almanac, printed in 1817, I find, among other things quaint and curious, four closely-printed pages devoted to “Roads to the Principal Towns of the Continent from Boston, with the distances and names of Innkeepers.” Beginning with: “From Boston to Newport, over Seekonk, through Rehoboth, 69 miles,” and ending with “Down the Ohio, to the mouth of the Muskinqum, 524 miles,”—a tolerably long ride in those days of the old-fashioned stage coach.

Naturally, this Umbilicus of the Western World set the fashions in theology, literature, dress, and manners for all New England, and any one who had made a trip to Boston was venerated as a kind of travelled wonder, and forever after regarded as an authority upon all mooted points of general interest.

It has been said, on what authority I am unable to state, that “all good Americans go to Paris when they die.” But in those days of Boston’s supremacy an aspiring dame in one of our Maine villages, finding herself upon her death bed, expressed as her one last wish, that she “might be permitted to go to heaven by the way o’ Boston.”

Evidently the poor soul had pined in vain all her life for a sight of its splendors, and could think of nothing so near akin to heaven as a peep at this earthly Paradise on her way there.

I might go on indefinitely to call up pictures, heroic, quaint, or pathetic, of these earnest-hearted men and women, who toiled, suffered, and planned, for the future, that we, their children, have entered into the fulness of. But time forbids, and I can only say, in closing this paper, that it will be well for us, if, in these days of national prosperity and power, when Liberty, proudly triumphant, stands like

“A bearded man Armed to the teeth,”

ready to hold his own alike against traitors at home and envious despotisms abroad, we do not forget with what a world of self-sacrifice and patient toil our forbears laid the foundations of this great, free government; nor should we deem it a light thing to have been born citizens of a Republic a thousand times grander, nobler, and, God grant! far more enduring, than those of heathen Greece and Rome, that have long since fallen to decay, and now lie buried beneath the melancholy dust of centuries.

Let the words of the great poet whose name stands at the head of this paper speak like a word of warning to every heart within their reach:—

“And they who founded in our land The power that rules from sea to sea, Bled they in vain, or vainly planned, To leave their country great and free? Their sleeping ashes from below Send up the thrilling murmur, No!”