Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860. No. XXXVI. - Various
After passing this grand specimen of the architecture of the sea,
there appeared long rocky reaches like Egyptian temples,--old, dead
cliffs of yellowish gray, checked off by lines and seams into squares,
and having the resemblance, where they have fallen out into the ocean,
of doors and windows opening in upon the fresher stone. Presently we
came to a break, where there were grassy slopes and crags
intermingled, and a flock of goats skipping about, or ruminating in
the warm sunshine. A knot of kids--the reckless little creatures--were
sporting along the edge of a precipice in a manner almost painful to
witness. The pleasure of leaping from point to point, where a single
misstep would have dropped them hundreds of feet, seemed to be in
proportion to the danger. The sight of some women, who were after the
goats, reminded the boatmen of an accident which occurred here only a
few days before: a lad playing about the steep fell into the sea, and
was drowned.
We were now close upon the point just behind which we expected to
behold the iceberg. The surf was sweeping the black reef that flanked
the small cape, in the finest style,--a beautiful dance of breakers of
dazzling white and green. As every stroke of the oars shot us forward,
and enlarged our view of the field in which the ice was reposing, our
hearts fairly throbbed with an excitement of expectation. "There it
is!" one exclaimed. An instant revealed the mistake. It was only the
next headland in a fog, which unwelcome mist was now coming down upon
us from the broad waters, and covering the very tract where the berg
was expected to be seen. Farther and farther out the long, strong
sweep of the great oars carried us, until the depth of the bay between
us and the next headland was in full view. It may appear almost too
trifling a matter over which to have had any feeling worth mentioning
or remembering, but I shall not soon forget the disappointment, when
from the deck of our barge, as it rose and sank on the large swells,
we stood up and looked around and saw, that, if the iceberg, over
which our very hearts had been beating with delight for twenty-four
hours, was anywhere, it was somewhere in the depths of that untoward
fog. It might as well have been in the depths of the ocean.
While the pale cloud slept there, there was nothing left for us but to
wait patiently where we were, or retreat. We chose the latter. C. gave
the word to pull for the settlement at the head of the little bay just
mentioned, and so they rounded the breakers on the reef, and we turned
away for the second time, when the game was fairly ours. Even the
hardy fishermen, no lovers of "islands-of-ice," as they call them,
felt for us, as they read in our looks the disappointment, not to say
a little vexation. While on our passage in, we filled a half-hour with
questions and discussions about that iceberg.
"We certainly saw it yesterday evening; and a soldier of Signal Hill
told us that it had been close in at Torbay for several days. And you,
my man there, say that you had a glimpse of it last evening. How
happens it to be away just now? Where do you think it is?"
"Indeed, Sir, he must be out in the fog, a mile or over. De'il a bit
can a man look after a thing in a fog, more nor into a snow-bank.
Maybe, Sir, he's foundered; or he might be gone off to sea,
altogether, as they sometimes do."
"Well, this is rather remarkable. Huge as these bergs are, they escape
very easily under their old cover. No sooner do we think we have them,
than they are gone. No jackal was ever more faithful to his lion, no
pilot-fish to his shark, than the fog to its berg. We will run in
yonder and inquire about it. We may get the exact bearing, and reach
it yet, even in the fog."
THE FISHERMAN'S.
The wind and sea being in our favor, we soon reached a fishery-ladder,
which we now knew very well how to climb, and wound our "dim and
perilous way" through the evergreen labyrinth of fish bowers, emerging
on the solid rock, and taking the path to the fisherman's house. Here
lives and works and wears himself out William Waterland, a
deep-voiced, broad-chested, round-shouldered man, dressed, not in
cloth of gold, but of oil, with the foxy remnant of a last winter's
fur cap clinging to his large, bony head, a little in the style of a
piece of turf to a stone. You seldom look into a more kindly, patient
face, or into an eye that more directly lets up the light out of a
large, warm heart. His countenance is one sober shadow of honest
brown, occasionally lighted by a true and guileless smile. William
Waterland has seen the "island-of-ice." "It lies off there, two miles
or more, grounded on a bank, in forty fathoms water."
It was nearly six o'clock; and yet, as there were signs of the fog
clearing away, we thought it prudent to wait. A dull, long hour passed
by, and still the sun was high in the northwest. That heavy cod-seine,
a hundred fathoms long, sank the stern of our barge rather deeply, and
made it row heavily. For all that, there was time enough yet, if we
could only use it. The fog still came in masses from the sea, sweeping
across the promontory between us and Torbay, and fading into air
nearly as soon as it was over the land. In the mean time, we sat upon
the rocks, upon the wood-pile, stood around and talked, looked out
into the endless mist, looked at the fishermen's houses, their
children, their fowls and dogs. A couple of young women, that might
have been teachers of the village school, had there been a school,
belles of the place, rather neatly dressed, and with hair nicely
combed, tripped shyly by, each with an arm about the other's waist,
and very merry until abreast of us, when they were as silent and
downcast as if they had been passing by their sovereign queen or the
Great Mogul. Their curiosity and timidity combined were quite amusing.
We speculated upon the astonishment that would have seized upon their
simple, innocent hearts, had they beheld, instead of us, a bevy of our
city fashionables in full bloom.
At length we accepted an invitation to walk into the house, and sat,
not under the good man's roof, but under his chimney, a species of
large funnel, into which nearly one end of the house resolved itself.
Here we sat upon some box-like benches before a wood fire, and warmed
ourselves, chatting with the family. While we were making ourselves
comfortable and agreeable, we made the novel and rather funny
discovery of a hen sitting on her nest just under the bench, with her
red comb at our fingers' ends. A large griddle hung suspended in the
more smoky regions of the chimney, ready to be lowered for the baking
of cakes or frying fish. Having tarred my hand, the fisherman's wife,
kind woman, insisted upon washing it herself. After rubbing it with a
little grease, she first scratched it with her finger-nail, and then
finished with soap and water and a good wiping with a coarse towel. I
begged that she would spare herself the trouble, and allow me to help
myself. But it was no trouble at all for her, and the greatest
pleasure. And what should I know about washing off tar? They were
members of the Church of England, and seemed pleased when they found
that I was a clergyman of the Episcopal Church. They had a pastor who
visited them and others in the village occasionally, and held divine
service on Sunday at Torbay, where they attended, going in boats in
summer, and over the hills on snow-shoes in the winter. The woman told
me, in an undertone, that the family relations were not all agreed in
their religious faith, and that they could not stop there any longer,
but had gone to "America," which they liked much better. It was a hard
country, any way, no matter whether one were Protestant or Papist.
Three months were all their summer, and nearly all their time for
getting ready for the long, cold winter. To be sure, they had codfish
and potatoes, flour and butter, tea and sugar; but then it took a deal
of hard work to make ends meet. The winter was not as cold as we
thought, perhaps; but then it was so long and snowy! The snow lay
five, six, and seven feet deep. Wood was a great trouble. There was a
plenty of it, but they could not keep cattle or horses to draw it
home. Dogs were their only teams, and they could fetch but small loads
at a time. In the mean while, a chubby little boy, with cheeks like a
red apple, had ventured from behind his young mother, where he had
kept dodging as she moved about the house, and edged himself up near
enough to be patted on the head, and rewarded for his little liberties
with a half-dime.
THE ICEBERG.
The sunshine was now streaming in at a bit of a window, and I went out
to see what prospect of success. C., who had left some little time
before, was nowhere to be seen. The fog seemed to be in sufficient
motion to disclose the berg down some of the avenues of clear air that
were opened occasionally. They all ended, however, with fog instead of
ice. I made it convenient to walk to the boat, and pocket a few cakes,
brought along as a kind of scattering lunch. C. was descried, at
length, climbing the broad, rocky ridge, the eastern point of which we
had doubled on our passage from Torbay. Making haste up the crags by a
short cut, I joined him on the verge of the promontory pretty well
heated and out of breath. The effort was richly rewarded. The mist was
dispersing in the sunny air around us; the ocean was clearing off; the
surge was breaking with a pleasant sound below. At the foot of the
precipice were four or five whales, from thirty to fifty feet in
length, apparently. We could have tossed a pebble upon them. At times
abreast, and then in single file, or disorderly, round and round they
went, now rising with a puff followed by a wisp of vapor, then
plunging into the deep again. There was something in their large
movements very imposing, and yet very graceless. There seemed to be no
muscular effort, no exertion of any force from within, and no more
flexibility in their motions than if they had been built of timber.
They appeared to move very much as a wooden whale might be supposed to
move down a mighty rapid, roiling and plunging and borne along
irresistibly by the current. As they rose, we could see their mouths
occasionally, and the lighter colors of the skin below. As they went
under, their huge, black tails, great winged things not unlike the
screw-wheel of a propeller, tipped up above the waves. Now and then
one would give the water a good round slap, the noise of which smote
sharply upon the ear, like the crack of a pistol in an alley. It was a
novel sight to watch them in their play, or labor, rather; for they
were feeding upon the caplin, pretty little fishes that swarm along
these shores at this particular season. We could track them beneath
the surface about as well as upon it. In the sunshine, and in contrast
with the fog, the sea was a very dark blue or deep purple. Above the
whales the water was green, a darker green as they descended, a
lighter green as they came up. Large oval spots of changeable green
water, moving silently and shadow-like along, in strong contrast with
the surrounding dark, marked the places where the monsters were
gliding below. When their broad, blackish backs were above the waves,
there was frequently a ring or ruffle of snowy surf, formed by the
breaking of the swell around the edges of the fish. The review of
whales, the only review we had witnessed in Her Majesty's dominions,
was, on the whole, an imposing spectacle. We turned from it to witness
another of a more brilliant character.
To the north and east, the ocean, dark and sparkling, was, by the
magic action of the wind, entirely clear of fog; and there, about two
miles distant, stood revealed the iceberg in all its cold and solitary
glory. It was of a greenish white, and of the Greek-temple form,
seeming to be over a hundred feet high. We gazed some minutes with
silent delight on the splendid and impressive object, and then
hastened down to the boat, and pulled away with all speed to reach it,
if possible, before the fog should cover it again, and in time for C.
to paint it. The moderation of the oarsmen and the slowness of our
progress were quite provoking. I watched the sun, the distant fog, the
wind and waves, the increasing motion of the boat, and the seemingly
retreating berg. A good half-hour's toil had carried us into broad
waters, and yet, to all appearance, very little nearer. The wind was
freshening from the south, the sea was rising, thin mists, a species
of scout from the main body of the fog lying off in the east, were
scudding across our track. James Goss, our captain, threw out a hint
of a little difficulty in getting back. But Yankee energy was
indomitable. C. quietly arranged his painting--apparatus, and I,
wrapped in my cloak more snugly, crept out forward on the little deck,
a sort of look-out. To be honest, I began to wish ourselves on our way
back, as the black, angry-looking swells chased us up, and flung the
foam upon the bow and stern. All at once, whole squadrons of fog swept
up, and swamped the whole of us, boat and berg, in their thin, white
obscurity. For a moment we thought ourselves foiled again. But still
the word was, "On!" And on they pulled, the hard-handed fishermen, now
flushed and moist with rowing. Again the ice was visible, but dimly,
in his misty drapery. There was no time to be lost. Now, or not at
all. And so C. began. For half an hour, pausing occasionally for
passing flocks of fog, he plied the brush with a rapidity not usual,
and under disadvantages that would have mastered a less experienced
hand. We were getting close down upon the berg, and in fearfully rough
water. In their curiosity to catch glimpses of the advancing sketch,
the men pulled with little regularity, and trimmed the boat very
badly. We were rolling frightfully to a landsman. C. begged of them to
keep their seats, and hold the barge just there as near as possible.
To amuse them, I passed an opera-glass around among them, with which
they examined the iceberg and the coast. They turned out to be
excellent good fellows, and entered into the spirit of the thing in a
way that pleased us. I am sure they would have held on willingly till
dark, if C. had only said the word, so much interest did they feel in
the attempt to paint the "island-of-ice." The hope was to linger about
it until sunset, for its colors, lights, and shadows. That, however,
was suddenly extinguished. Heavy fog came on, and we retreated, not
with the satisfaction of a conquest, nor with the disappointment of a
defeat, but cheered with the hope of complete success, perhaps the
next day, when C. thought that we could return upon our game in a
little steamer, and so secure it beyond the possibility of escape. The
seine was hauled from the stern to the centre of the barge, and the
men pulled away for Torbay, a long six miles, rough and chilly. For my
part, I was trembling with cold, and found it necessary to lend a hand
at the oars, an exercise which soon made the weather feel several
degrees warmer, and rendered me quite comfortable. After a little the
wind lulled, the fog dispersed again, and the iceberg seemed to
contemplate our slow departure with complacent serenity. We regretted
that the hour forbade a return. It would have been pleasant to play
around that Parthenon of the sea in the twilight. The best that was
left us was to look back and watch the effects of light, which were
wonderfully fine, and had the charm of entire novelty. The last view
was the very finest. All the east front was a most tender blue; the
fissures on the southern face, from which we were rowing directly
away, were glittering green; the western front glowed in the yellow
sunlight; around were the dark waters, and above one of the most
beautiful of skies.
We fell under the land presently, and passed near the northern cape of
Flat-Rock Bay, a grand headland of red sandstone, a vast and dome-like
pile, fleeced at the summit with green turf and shrubs of fir. The
sun, at last, was really setting. There was the old magnificence of
the king of day,--airy deeps of ineffable blue and pearl, stained with
scarlets and crimsons, and striped with living gold. A blaze of white
light, deepening into the richest orange, crowned the distant ridge
behind which the sun was vanishing. A vapory splendor, rose-color and
purple, was dissolving in the atmosphere; and every wave of the ocean,
a dark violet, nearly black, was "a flash of golden fire." Bathed with
this almost supernatural glory, the headland, in itself richly
complexioned with red, brown, and green, was at once a spectacle of
singular grandeur and solemnity. I have no remembrance of more
brilliant effects of light and color. The view filled us with emotions
of delight. We shot from beneath the great cliff into Flat-Rock Bay,
rounding, at length, the breakers and the cape into the smoother
waters of Torbay. As the oars dipped regularly into the polished
swells, reflecting the heavens and the wonderful shores, all lapsed
into silence. In the gloom of evening the rocks assumed an unusual
height and sublimity. Gliding quietly below them, we were saluted
every now and then by the billows thundering in some adjacent cavern.
The song of the sea in its old halls rung out in a style quite
unearthly. The slamming of the mighty doors seemed far off in the
chambers of the cliff, and the echoes trembled themselves away,
muffled into stillness by the stupendous masses.
Thus ended our first real hunting of an iceberg. When we landed, we
were thoroughly chilled. Our man was waiting with his wagon, and so
was a little supper in a house near by, which we enjoyed with an
appetite that assumed several phases of keenness as we proceeded.
There was a tower of cold roast beef, flanked by bread and butter and
bowls of hot tea. The whole was carried silently, without remark, at
the point of knife and fork. We were a forlorn-hope of two, and fell
to, winning the victory in the very breach. We drove back over the
fine gravel road at a round trot, watching the last edge of day in the
northwest and north, where it no sooner fades than it buds again to
bloom into morning. We lived the new iceberg-experience all over
again, and planned for the morrow. The stars gradually came out of the
cool, clear heavens, until they filled them with their sparkling
multitudes. For every star we seemed to have a lively and pleasurable
thought, which came out and ran among our talk, a thread of light.
When we looked at the hour, as we sat fresh and wakeful, warming at
our English inn in St. John's, it was after midnight.
* * * * *
THEODORE PARKER.
"Sir Launcelot! ther thou lyest; thou were never matched of none
earthly knights hands; thou were the truest freende to thy lover
that ever bestrood horse; and thou were the kindest man that ever
strooke with sword; and thou were the sternest knight to thy mortall
foe that ever put spere in the rest." _La Morte d'Arthur._
In the year 1828 there was a young man of eighteen at work upon a farm
in Lexington, performing bodily labor to the extent of twenty hours in
a day sometimes, and that for several days together, and at other
times studying intensely when work was less pressing. Thirty years
after, that same man sat in the richest private library in Boston,
working habitually from twelve to seventeen hours a day in severer
toil. The interval was crowded with labors, with acquisitions, with
reproaches, with victories, with honors; and he who experienced all
this died exhausted at the end of it, less than fifty years old, but
looking seventy. That man was Theodore Parker.
The time is far distant when out of a hundred different statements of
contemporaries some calm biographer will extract sufficient materials
for a true picture of the man; and meanwhile all that each can do is
to give fearlessly his own honest impressions, and so tempt others to
give theirs. Of the multitude of different photographers, each
perchance may catch some one trait without which the whole portraiture
would have remained incomplete; and the time to secure this is now,
while his features are fresh in our minds. It is a daring effort, but
it needs to be made.
Yet Theodore Parker was so strong and self-sufficing upon his own
ground, he needed so little from any other, while giving so freely to
all, that one would hardly venture to add anything to the
autobiographies he has left, but for the high example he set of
fearlessness in dealing with the dead. There may be some whose fame is
so ill-established, that one shrinks from speaking of them precisely
as one saw them; but this man's place is secure, and that friend best
praises him who paints him just as he seemed. To depict him as he
_was_ must be the work of many men, and no single observer, however
intimate, need attempt it.
The first thing that strikes an observer, in listening to the words of
public and private feeling elicited by his departure, is the
predominance in them all of the sentiment of love. His services, his
speculations, his contests, his copious eloquence, his many languages,
these come in as secondary things, but the predominant testimony is
emotional. Men mourn the friend even more than the warrior. No fragile
and lovely girl, fading untimely into heaven, was ever more
passionately beloved than this white-haired and world-weary man. As he
sat in his library, during his lifetime, he was not only the awakener
of a thousand intellects, but the centre of a thousand hearts;--he
furnished the natural home for every foreign refugee, every hunted
slave, every stray thinker, every vexed and sorrowing woman. And never
was there one of these who went away uncomforted, and from every part
of this broad nation their scattered hands now fling roses upon his
grave.
This immense debt of gratitude was not bought by any mere isolated
acts of virtue; indeed, it never is so bought; love never is won but
by a nobleness which, pervades the life. In the midst of his greatest
cares there never was a moment when he was not all too generous of his
time, his wisdom, and his money. Borne down by the accumulation of
labors, grudging, as a student grudges, the precious hour that once
lost can never be won back, he yet was always holding himself at the
call of some poor criminal, at the Police Office, or some sick girl in
a suburban town, not of his recognized parish perhaps, but longing for
the ministry of the only preacher who had touched her soul. Not a mere
wholesale reformer, he wore out his life by retailing its great
influences to the poorest comer. Not generous in money only,--though
the readiness of his beneficence in that direction had few equals,--he
always hastened past that minor bestowal to ask if there were not some
other added gift possible, some personal service or correspondence,
some life-blood, in short, to be lavished in some other form, to eke
out the already liberal donation of dollars.
There is an impression that he was unforgiving. Unforgetting he
certainly was; for he had no power of forgetfulness, whether for good
or evil. He had none of that convenient oblivion which in softer
natures covers sin and saintliness with one common, careless pall. So
long as a man persisted in a wrong attitude before God or man, there
was no day so laborious or exhausting, no night so long or drowsy, but
Theodore Parker's unsleeping memory stood on guard full-armed, ready
to do battle at a moment's warning. This is generally known; but what
may not be known so widely is, that, the moment the adversary lowered
his spear, were it for only an inch or an instant, that moment
Theodore Parker's weapons were down and his arms open. Make but the
slightest concession, give him but the least excuse to love you, and
never was there seen such promptness in forgiving. His friends found
it sometimes harder to justify his mildness than his severity. I
confess that I, with others, have often felt inclined to criticize a
certain caustic tone of his, in private talk, when the name of an
offender was alluded to; but I have also felt almost indignant at his
lenient good-nature to that very person, let him once show the
smallest symptom of contrition, or seek, even in the clumsiest way, or
for the most selfish purpose, to disarm his generous antagonist. His
forgiveness in such cases was more exuberant than his wrath had ever
been.
It is inevitable, in describing him, to characterize his life first by
its quantity. He belonged to the true race of the giants of learning;
he took in knowledge at every pore, and his desires were insatiable.
Not, perhaps, precocious in boyhood,--for it is not precocity to begin
Latin at ten and Greek at eleven, to enter the Freshman class at
twenty and the professional school at twenty-three,--he was equalled
by few students in the tremendous rate at which he pursued every
study, when once begun. With strong body and great constitutional
industry, always acquiring and never forgetting, he was doubtless at
the time of his death the most variously learned of living Americans,
as well as one of the most prolific of orators and writers.