Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis eBook

I have heard various rumors of Brook Farm, none agreeable.  I feel as if my letter might not find you there; but what can you be doing anywhere else?  I have received no letter from you, no direct news from Brook Farm, except through Lizzie Curzon and Geo. Bradford.  But it floats on in my mind, a sort of Flying Dutchman in these unknown seas of life and experience, full of an old beauty and melody.  I know how your time is used, and am not surprised at any length of silence.  We go into the beautiful country about us for a fortnight, to Salerno, Sorrento, Pestum, and Capri, afterwards Rome again.  Florence, the Apennines, Venice, Milan, Como, the Tyrol, Switzerland, and Germany lie before us.  What a spring which promises such a summer!  You will still go with me as silently as before.

At this moment I raise my eyes to Vesuvius, which is opposite my window, and the blue bay beneath.  I can see the line of the Mediterranean blending with the sky, and remember that you are at the other side.  I write as if Brook Farm still was there, and am more than ever

Yr friend

G.W.C.

LETTERS OF LATER DATE

I

PROVIDENCE, Thursday, Oct. 10, ’50.

My dear Dwight,—­I was very very sorry not to find you the other day; but as I was only a few hours in Boston, I had no opportunity of renewing the attempt.

This morning I saw a letter, I suppose from you, in the Tribune, about Jenny’s Saturday concert in Boston.  It reminded me to send you a most rapid criticism(?) of mine published here yesterday.  I address the paper as I do this note.

This Jenny Lind singing is a matter of such lofty art in the sublimest sense, and we are so young and jejune in all art, that I cannot much wonder at the general impression.  It is precisely what would be the fate of really fine pictures and poems.  Huge wonder, childish delight, intoxication, delirium, and disappointment—­but little of the apprehensive perception of the presence of an artist so profound and grand.

I knew, of course, that you must be realizing somewhere the greatness of this gift.  Now I have heard you say so, I am glad to send you a kind of echo.

When shall I see you?  I shall be here for a day or two more, then relapse into New York, for how long I know not.  Let me have a line from you, saying that among all your virtues you yet count Memory, as does yours most rememberingly,

George W. Curtis.

II

PROVIDENCE, March 17th, ’51, Monday.

I believe, dear John, that I have not yet had the grace to congratulate you upon “the great change” that you have recently undergone.  But, happily, I am equally sure that you have not ascribed my silence to anything but the habit of epistolary silence that has come upon me since my return from the other continent, mainly distinguished, if my memory may confirm universal remark, by the great number of letters written from it.