_ Early Letters To John S. Dwight
Chapter XXV
CONCORD,
May 3, '45.
I am weary of these winds, which have blown so constantly through the spring; and would so gladly exchange their long wail to-night for some of your music. And yet they are musical, and when I feel vexed at their persistency they seem to fade and breathe against my face with a low sigh, like one who shouts a secret which I cannot understand, and then mourns softly that I cannot. In spite of the wind we went to a new pond near us (new to us) this afternoon. There we separated, and Burrill went roaming over the hills and along the shore; and I sat down with Bettine upon the margin. That is the best workbook that I know. I read it for the first time in the Brook Farm pine-woods on a still Sunday; but to-day, as I followed her vanishing steps through Fairyland, the wind that rustled and raged around was like the tone of her nature interpreting to my heart, rather than to my mind, what I read. She was intellectual, spiritual more than poetical. She was such a glancing, dancing, joyous, triumphant child. I imagine great dark eyes, sparkling to the centre, and heavy locks overhanging--pine-trees drooping over diamonds, deepest brilliancy, with splendor, and a low singing sadness like the wind again, for her position is sad. The ardent, bursting, seeking-ripe girl, and the calm old man, wise and cold, not harsh. A sense of singular unfitness, a sweet-brier and an oak, a feeling as if some string in the great harp had slipped from its harmony, always strikes me when I read Bettine. Will you say no youthful lover would have inspired such a gush of the tenderest and profoundest girlishness? But it was no more than the bursting out of an irrepressible fountain, and it would have flowed as clearly and sweetly through a new wood conduit of to-day as through the polished golden channel which lay there for it. She must love, and love the best, and if only the best had been younger, fitter! Would not the steady massiveness of Goethe's nature have been splendidly adorned by the arabesques and intricately graceful woof of Bettine's? Now it was spring flowers on an old brow, with all the sweetness, but not the freshness, of youth. The imperial Goethe, supreme in wisdom and age, smelling a violet! Ah! though the flowers and the laughter and the dance and the sparkle are for the child, but sadly serious autumnal wreaths for the old man; but the world does the best it knows how to do with the poets, so did Goethe with his young lover. Friendly, cool, gentle, never flattering, Bettine asks him half sadly, as if for once those world-roving eyes were still: Do I speak to you or only speak in your presence? She answered her question by asking it.
She speaks much of music. It is beauty impersonized to her; she pours out gems and flowers of words, and sketches grotesquely exquisite shapes dimly all over the landscape, coins all the beautiful fancies that crowd her brain, throws them to Goethe sparkling in the sunlight, and says: This is music, and finds at last that music is God. That is the most orthodox Pantheism.
The year has piloted us into the flowery haven of May, but I lay so languidly charmed with the beauty, and looking to see if I cannot this time see the goddess whose smiles I feel, that it will be June and summer before I know it. I treat the season as I do poetry. Sometimes I dissect a line which has fascinated me, or a poem, to expose the secret. But it folds and fades and changes under my glance as a cloud at twilight; and the beauty of the spring is as elusive as the foam upon a wave. In the midst of summer, the summer that we anticipated in January seems farther off. It sinks constantly into itself. The deep solitude of rest, the murmurous silence of woods at noon, these are as real in winter as when we are melting in June. The senses will have their share. It is melancholy that a man with the stomach-ache cannot enjoy Shakespeare; and that this wild, wayward, glowing, and glorious Bettine must disappear in the Frau von Arnim, wearing caps and taking snuff, and instead of these pine-trees, false curls, cut from the last criminal, perhaps, and then croaking and child-bearing and nursing and diapering! things so beautiful for many, but not for her. She is not yet a woman, but belongs to us and the woods and the waters and the midnight. A child singing wonderful songs in the starlight, serenading with tender, passionate love-songs the old man who waves his hand and breathes down a kiss which is chilled by the night air, and falls like a snow-flake into her hot bosom, not as a star upon her brow.
We had some May-baskets left for us by unknown hands upon May-day. The flowers drooped over the sides, as if they would not meet my eye to tell the secret; but a group of smiling girls next morning were not so inexorable, and I thanked nature for such almoners of her gifts. These beautiful tributes are touching if one is serious. They are hung upon our wall, which is adorned with the Urania and sketches from Michel Angelo, and one or two drawings of Burrill's.
Mrs. Brown (Mrs. Emerson's sister) wishes Charles Newcomb to return some letters he has about little Waldo's death. Will you speak to him and say that Mrs. Brown will like them by the first opportunity?
I hope my name is down as a subscriber to the Paper. When shall we see it? Mr. Emerson read us a part of your letter.
Here is another of the unconscionable epistles; not to mention answering, it is too audacious to demand that they shall be read.
Ever yr
G.W.C. _