"Mr. Burroughs, why don"t you PAINT things?" asked a little boy of four, who had been spending a happy day at Slabsides, but who, at nightfall, while nestling in the author"s arms, seemed suddenly to realize that this rustic house was very different from anything he had seen before.
"I don"t like things painted, my little man; that is just why I came up here--to get away from paint and polish--just as you liked to wear your overalls to-day and play on the gra.s.s, instead of keeping on that pretty dress your mother wanted you to keep clean." "Oh!" said the child in such a knowing tone that one felt he understood. But that is another story.
The time of which I am speaking--that gray September day--what a memorable day it was! How cheery the large, low room looked when the host replenished the smouldering fire! "I sometimes come up here even in winter, build a fire, and stay for an hour or more, with long, sad, sweet thoughts and musings," he said. He is justly proud of the huge stone fireplace and chimney which he himself helped to construct; he also helped to hew the trees and build the house. "What joy went into the building of this retreat! I never expect to be so well content again." Then, musing, he added: "It is a comfortable, indolent life I lead here; I read a little, write a little, and dream a good deal.
Here the sun does not rise so early as it does down at Riverby. "Tired nature"s sweet restorer" is not put to rout so soon by the screaming whistles, the thundering trains, and the necessary rules and regulations of well-ordered domestic machinery. Here I really "loaf and invite my soul." Yes, I am often melancholy, and hungry for companionship--not in the summer months, no, but in the quiet evenings before the fire, with only Silly Sally to share my long, long thoughts; she is very attentive, but I doubt if she notices when I sigh. She doesn"t even heed me when I tell her that ornithology is a first-rate pursuit for men, but a bad one for cats. I suspect that she studies the birds with greater care than I do; for now I can get all I want of a bird and let him remain in the bush, but Silly Sally is a thorough-going ornithologist; she must engage in all the feather-splittings that the ornithologists do, and she isn"t satisfied until she has thoroughly dissected and digested her material, and has all the dry bones of the subject laid bare."
We sat before the fire while Mr. Burroughs talked of nature, of books, of men and women whose lives or books, or both, have closely touched his own. He talked chiefly of Emerson and Whitman, the men to whom he seems to owe the most, the two whom most his soul has loved.
"I remember the first time I saw Emerson," he said musingly; "it was at West Point during the June examinations of the cadets. Emerson had been appointed by President Lincoln as one of the board of visitors. I had been around there in the afternoon, and had been peculiarly interested in a man whose striking face and manner challenged my attention. I did not hear him speak, but watched him going about with a silk hat, much too large, pushed back on his head; his sharp eyes peering into everything, curious about everything. "Here," said I to myself, "is a countryman who has got away from home, and intends to see all that is going on"--such an alert, interested air! That evening a friend came to me and in a voice full of awe and enthusiasm said, "Emerson is in town!"
Then I knew who the alert, sharp-eyed stranger was. We went to the meeting and met our hero, and the next day walked and talked with him.
He seemed glad to get away from those old fogies and talk with us young men. I carried his valise to the boat-landing--I was in the seventh heaven of delight."
"I saw him several years later," he continued, "soon after "Wake-Robin"
was published; he mentioned it and said: "Capital t.i.tle, capital!" I don"t suppose he had read much besides the t.i.tle."
"The last time I saw him," he said with a sigh, "was at Holmes"s seventieth-birthday breakfast, in Boston. But then his mind was like a splendid bridge with one span missing; he had--what is it you doctors call it?--_aphasia_, yes, that is it--he had to grope for his words. But what a serene, G.o.dlike air! He was like a plucked eagle tarrying in the midst of a group of lesser birds. He would sweep the a.s.sembly with that searching glance, as much as to say, "What is all this buzzing and chirping about?" Holmes was as brilliant and scintillating as ever; sparks of wit would greet every newcomer, flying out as the sparks fly from that log. Whittier was there, too, looking nervous and uneasy and very much out of his element. But he stood next to Emerson, prompting his memory and supplying the words his voice refused to utter. When I was presented, Emerson said in a slow, questioning way, "Burroughs--Burroughs?" "Why, thee knows _him_," said Whittier, jogging his memory with some further explanation; but I doubt if he then remembered anything about me."
It was not such a leap from the New England writers to Whitman as one might imagine. Mr. Burroughs spoke of Emerson"s prompt and generous indors.e.m.e.nt of the first edition of "Leaves of Gra.s.s": "I give you joy of your free, brave thought. I have great joy in it." This and much else Emerson had written in a letter to Whitman. "It is the charter of an emperor!" Dana had said when Whitman showed him the letter. The poet"s head was undoubtedly a little turned by praise from such a source, and much to Emerson"s annoyance, the letter was published in the next edition of the "Leaves." Still Emerson and Whitman remained friends to the last.
"Whitman was a child of the sea," said Mr. Burroughs; "nurtured by the sea, cradled by the sea; he gave one the same sense of invigoration and of illimitableness that we get from the sea. He never looked so much at home as when on the sh.o.r.e--his gray clothes, gray hair, and far-seeing blue-gray eyes blending with the surroundings. And his thoughts--the same broad sweep, the elemental force and grandeur and all-embracingness of the impartial sea!"
"Whitman never hurried," Mr. Burroughs continued; "he always seemed to have infinite time at his disposal." It brought Whitman very near to hear Mr. Burroughs say, "He used to take Sunday breakfasts with us in Washington. Mrs. Burroughs makes capital pancakes, and Walt was very fond of them; but he was always late to breakfast. The coffee would boil over, the griddle would smoke, car after car would go jingling by, and no Walt. Sometimes it got to be a little trying to have domestic arrangements so interfered with; but a car would stop at last, Walt would roll off it, and saunter up to the door--cheery, vigorous, serene, putting every one in good humor. And how he ate! He radiated health and hopefulness. This is what made his work among the sick soldiers in Washington of such inestimable value. Every one that came into personal relations with him felt his rare compelling charm."
It was all very well, this talk about the poets, but climbing "break-neck stairs" on our way thither had given the guest an appet.i.te, and the host as well; and these appet.i.tes had to be appeased by something less transcendental than a feast of reason. Scarcely interrupting his engaging monologue, Mr. Burroughs went about his preparations for dinner, doing things deftly and quietly, all unconscious that there was anything peculiar in this sight to the spectator. Potatoes and onions were brought in with the earth still on them, their bed was made under the ashes, and we sat down to more talk.
After a while he took a chicken from the market-basket, spread it on a toaster, and broiled it over the coals; he put the dishes on the hearth to warm, washed the celery, parched some grated corn over the coals while the chicken was broiling, talking the while of Tolstoy and of Maeterlinck, of orioles and vireos, of whatever we happened to touch upon. He avowed that he was envious of Maeterlinck on account of his poetic "Life of the Bee." "I ought to have written that," he said; "I know the bee well enough, but I could never do anything so exquisite."
Parts of Maeterlinck"s "Treasures of the Humble," and "Wisdom and Destiny," he "couldn"t stand." I timorously mentioned his chapter on "Silence."
""Silence"? Oh, yes; silence is very well--some kinds of it; but _why make such a noise about silence_?" he asked with a twinkle in his eyes.
When the chicken was nearly ready, I moved toward the dining-table, on which some dishes were piled. As though in answer to my thought, he said:
"Yes, if there"s anything you can do there, you may." So I began arranging the table.
"Where are _my_ knife and fork?" "In the cupboard," he answered without ceremony.
We brought the good things from the hearth, hot and delicious, and sat down to a dinner that would have done credit to an Adirondack guide,--and when one has said this, what more need one say?
In helping myself to the celery I took an outside piece. Mine host reached over and, putting a big white centre of celery on my plate, said: "What"s the use taking the outside of things when one can have the heart?" This is typical of John Burroughs"s life as well as his art--he has let extraneous things, conventionalities, and non-essentials go; has gone to the heart of things. It is this that has made his work so vital.
As we arose from the table, I began picking up the dishes.
"You are going to help, are you?"
"Of course," I replied; "where is your dish-cloth? "--a natural question, as any woman will agree, but what a consternation it evoked!
A just perceptible delay, a fumbling among pots and pans, and he came toward me with a most apologetic air, and with the sorriest-looking rag I had ever seen--its narrow circ.u.mference encircling a very big hole.
"Is _that_ the best dish-cloth you have?" I asked.
For answer he held it up in front of his face, but the most of it being hole, it did not hide the eyes that twinkled so merrily that my housewifely reproof was effectually silenced. I took the sorry remnant and began washing the dishes, mentally resolving, and carrying out my resolution the next day, to send him a respectable dish-cloth. Prosaic, if you will, but does not his own Emerson say something about giving--
"to barrows, trays, and pans, Grace and glimmer of romance"?
And what graces a dish-pan better than a clean, whole, self-respecting dish-cloth?
So there we stood, John Burroughs and his humble reader, washing and wiping dishes, and weighing Amiel and Schopenhauer in the balance at the same time; and a very novel and amusing experience it was. Yet it did not seem so strange after all, but almost as though it had happened before. Silly Sally purred beseechingly as she followed her master about the room and out to the wood-pile, reminding him that she liked chicken bones.
While putting the bread in the large tin box that stood on the stair-landing, I had some difficulty with the clasp. "Never mind that,"
said Mr. Burroughs, as he sc.r.a.ped the potato skins into the fire; "a Va.s.sar girl sat down on that box last summer, and it"s never been the same since."
The work finished, there was more talk before the fire. It was here that the author told his guest about Anne Gilchrist, the talented, n.o.ble-hearted Englishwoman, whose ready acceptance of Whitman"s message bore fruit in her penetrating criticism of Whitman, a criticism which stands to-day unrivaled by anything that has been written concerning the Good Gray Poet.
Like most of Mr. Burroughs" readers, I cherish his poem "Waiting," and, like most of them, I told him so on seeing him seated before the fire with folded hands and face serene, a living embodiment of the faith and trust expressed in those familiar lines. It would seem natural that he should write such a poem after the heat of the day, after his ripe experience, after success had come to him; it is the lesson we expect one to learn on reaching his age, and learning how futile is the fret and urge of life, how infinitely better is the att.i.tude of trust that what is our own will gravitate to us in obedience to eternal laws. But I there learned that he had written the poem when a young man, life all before him, his prospects in a dubious and chaotic condition, his aspirations seeming likely to come to naught.
"I have lived to prove it true," he said,--"that which I but vaguely divined when I wrote the lines. Our lives are all so fearfully and wonderfully shot through with the very warp and woof of the universe, past, present, and to come! No doubt at all that our own--that which our souls crave and need--does gravitate toward us, or we toward it.
"Waiting" has been successful," he added, "not on account of its poetic merit, but for some other merit or quality. It puts in simple and happy form some common religious aspirations, without using the religious jargon. People write me from all parts of the country that they treasure it in their hearts; that it steadies their hand at the helm; that it is full of consolation for them. It is because it is poetry allied with religion that it has this effect; poetry alone would not do this; neither would a prose expression of the same religious aspirations do it, for we often outgrow the religious views and feelings of the past.
The religious thrill, the sense of the Infinite, the awe and majesty of the universe, are no doubt permanent in the race, but the expression of these feelings in creeds and forms addressed to the understanding, or exposed to the a.n.a.lysis of the understanding, is as transient and flitting as the leaves of the trees. My little poem is vague enough to escape the reason, sincere enough to go to the heart, and poetic enough to stir the imagination."
The power of accurate observation, of dispa.s.sionate a.n.a.lysis, of keen discrimination and insight that we his readers are familiar with in his writings about nature, books, men, and life in general, is here seen to extend to self-a.n.a.lysis as well,--a rare gift; a power that makes his opinions carry conviction. We feel he is not intent on upholding any theory, but only on seeing things as they are, and reporting them as they are.
A steady rain had set in early in the afternoon, effectually drowning my hopes of a longer wood-land walk that day, but I was then, and many a time since then have been, well content that it was so. I learned less of woodland lore, but more of the woodland philosopher.
In quiet converse pa.s.sed the hours of that memorable day in the humble retreat on the wooded hills,--
"Far from the clank of the world,"--
and in the company of the poet-naturalist. So cordial had my host been, so gracious the admission to his home and hospitality, that I left the little refuge with a feeling of enrichment I shall cherish while life lasts. I had sought out a favorite author; I had gained a friend.
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
(In response to my request, Mr. Burroughs began in 1903 to write for me a series of letters, autobiographical in character. It is from them, for the most part, helped out by interviews to fill in the gaps, that I have compiled this part of the book. The letters were not written continuously; begun in 1903, they suffered a long interruption, were resumed in 1906, again in 1907, and lastly in 1912. The reader will, I trust, pardon any repet.i.tion noted, an occasional return to a subject previously touched upon being unavoidable because of the long intervals between some of the letters.
It seems to me that these letters picture our author more faithfully than could any portrait drawn by another. Thomas Bailey Aldrich has said that no man has ever yet succeeded in painting an honest portrait of himself in an autobiography, however sedulously he may have set about it; that in spite of his candid purpose he omits necessary touches and adds superfluous ones; that at times he cannot help draping his thought, and that, of course, the least shred of drapery is a disguise. But, Aldrich to the contrary notwithstanding, I believe Mr. Burroughs has pictured himself and his environment in these pages with the same fidelity with which he has interpreted nature. He is so used to "straight seeing and straight thinking" that these gifts do not desert him when his observation is turned upon himself. He seems to be a shining example of the exception that proves the rule. Besides, when Aldrich p.r.o.nounced that dictum, Mr. Burroughs had not produced these sketches.
This record was not written with the intention of its being published as it stood, but merely to acquaint me with the facts and with the author"s feelings concerning them, in case I should some day undertake his biography. But it seems to me that just because it was so written, it has a value which would be considerably lessened were it to be worked over into a more finished form. I have been willing to sacrifice the more purely literary value which would undoubtedly grace the record, were the author to revise it, that I may retain its homely, unstudied human value.
I have arranged the autobiographical material under three headings: Ancestry and Family Life, Childhood and Youth, and Self-a.n.a.lysis.--C.
B.)
ANCESTRY AND FAMILY LIFE
I am, as you know, the son of a farmer. My father was the son of a farmer, as was his father, and his. There is no break, so far as I know, in the line of farmers back into the seventeenth century. There was a Rev. George Burroughs who was hanged (in 1692) for a witch in Salem. He was a Harvard graduate. I know of no other Harvard graduate by our name until Julian (Mr. Burroughs"s son) graduated in 1901 from Harvard. My father"s cousin, the Rev. John C. Burroughs, the first president of Chicago University, was graduated from Yale sometime in the early forties.