repent having undertaken it. I suppose there
would be no difficulty in your getting to the rehearsals
through some of your friends, as you did before.
The orchestra is to consist of 150 and the chorus
of 300 or 400 persons. “The Desert”
is to be played for the fifth time on Monday evening.
Trinity Church is to be consecrated on Thursday, the
day after the concert, and Pico will doubtless sing
somewhere during the week. I heard her and Julia
Northall last evening in “The Messiah.”
Their voices were glorious. After the “Pastoral
Symphony” the clear, rich, sunny voice of Miss
Northall in the recitative “While Shepherds
watched,” etc., was most fitting and beautiful.
It was a soft stream of pearly light, as the hope
of Christ was upon the darkness of his time.
Pico sang, “I know that my Redeemer liveth,”
simply and sweetly, and was obliged to repeat it.
The choruses were weak; they did not smite steadily
upon the ear, but wavered, ghost-like, through the
great tabernacle. The “Hallelujah”
seemed to awaken the singers, and there was some tolerable
body in that.
I heard Walker at his room with the greatest delight.
He is so delicately feminine that I felt with him
as with a splendid woman in whose nature you do not
feel the want of masculine elements, since there is
strength enough in a feminine way; with Rakemann I
always feel the man with the womanly tenderness and
sweetness which belongs to a real man. It was
very pleasant to feel such a harmonious difference,
as when you see a beautiful man and wife.
This being anniversary week, the Unitarians have been
holding meetings and discussions. I do not feel
impressed by them very much, they stand in such a
negative position, “one stocking off and the
other stocking on.”
At Isaac’s request I have been reading the life
of the founder of his order, St. Alphonse of Liguori.
He was a very pious man, and the Church was very jealous
of him. It is a painful book to read, for the
Catholic Church seems to use heaven as a weapon whereby
to conquer the earth. I have not yet written
Isaac, as he wanted me to read the book first; but
if his promised prayers fall as short as the history,
I shall be delivered incontinently to the buffetings
of Satan.
I hope this will not find you at Brook Farm, for it
cannot reach there until Monday; the concert is on
Wednesday, if it is pleasant. Charles Newcomb
and his mother are here.
Yours ever,
G.W.C.
CONCORD, June 6, 1846.
My dear Friend,—I send you some verses
for the Harbinger, which are not a conceit, although
they relate to no actual personal experience except
that I am sometimes conscious of the main fact, for
my dreams do sometimes so surpass the waking reality
that the charm of the suggesting person, if not lost,
is indefinitely subdued and postponed. It is very
pleasant here at Minot’s. The family are
still, the household goes smoothly on, and we live
in a house 150 years old, under a tree of apparently
almost equal age and looking across a green meadow
to a clump of pines and birches beyond. The scenery
in Concord is very gentle but pleasant. I have
become attached to it as to a taciturn friend who
has no splendid bursts of passion but wears always
a soft smile.
