Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 March 1885 — The Quaker Poet [ARTICLE]

The Quaker Poet

The Friends have been always an important element of the population in Rhode Island, and the Newport Yearly Meeting is a kind of annual convocation or general assembly of that silent communion which is very familiar. In the elder days, when the narrow streets of the town were filled with the plain garb of the brethren and sisters from all parte, of the country, how true seemed the gracious words: “The very garments of a Quaker seem incapable of receiving a soil, and cleanliness in them to be something more than the absence of its contrary. Every Quakeress is a lily, and when they come up in bands to their Whitsun conferences, whitening the eastern streets of the metropolis, from all parts of the United Kingdom, they show the troops of the Shining Ones.” If the young Whittier was ever brought to the May meeting in old Newport, he would have thought it a soft diabolic enticement if some fancy had whispered to him that ene day he would be held in reverence and honor as a writer of verses, and that his portrait would be cherished among the chief ornaments of a school of his unworldly fraternity. The Muses were but pagan goddesses to the older Quakers. J ames Naylor and George Fox would have put aside the sweet solicitations of color and of song, as St. Anthony avoided the blandishments of the lovely siren whom he knew to be the devil. But gently the modern Quakers have been won over. The grim austerity, as of the Puritan, has yielded to kindly sympathies, and the wholesome gayeties and the refining graces of life are not disowned by the quietists. Nay, even in a severer day was there not a certain elegance of taste in Friends’ raiment? If the bonnet were rigidly of the Quaker type, was it not of exquisite texture? Was not the fabric of the dress as delicate and soft as if woven in Persian looms? Was a sense of Quaker aristocracy unknown, and has no Quaker equipage been seen which rolled with an air as superior as that of a cardinal’s carriage? But what a delightful character the Quaker tradition imparted to everything that it touched! A certain grave and sweet simplicity, an air of candor and of plain rectitude, a frank and fraternal heartiness—these were all distinctively Quaker. They were imitated to base ends, indeed, and no rogue so roguish as a counterfeited Quaker; no stories of such smug duplicity as those which were told of the smooth knaves in drab. But it was only the homage to virtue. Knaves wore the Quaker garb because the Quaker garb was justly identified, with honesty. Those whose early youth was familial- with Friends, as with them and among them, but not of them, still delight in the recollection, and associate with them still a refined superiority. That the rigid traditions have been relaxed is apparent from the very incident that we have mentioned. The Muses have penetrated the Friends’ Boarding School. There is a piano in the hall. There are busts and portraits of famous Friends. There were eloquence and poetry in commemoration of a Quaker poet. There were universal affection and gratitude for the singer and his song. Bernard Bart oh ivas a Quaker poet. But Whittier is the Quaker poet. It was a curious illustration of the happy fusing of differing creeds in a generous human sympathy and admiration that at the Puritan dinner in New York on Forefathers’ Day, some years ago, a Roman Catholic, James T. Brady, the famous advocate, said to the Easy Chair, “My poet of poets is Whittier.” John Bright has publicly testified his honor and regard. And who does not? That purity and simplicity and native dignity of life blending with the pure and tender and humane song—they are a national possession, they are ennobling and inspiring. That example in the sight of all American youth, that steady fidelity to plain living and high thinking, is inexpressibly valuable. It is not appropriated, and it can not be, by the tranquil religious community to which the poet belongs. It is a common benefit.—Geo. William Curtis, in Harper’s Magazine.