Reading Lucy Larcom’s 1880 book, Wild Roses of Cape Ann, and Other Poems, I realized we have much in common. She is my Cape Ann literary and spiritual ancestor.
Because she lived in Beverly, she would have been described by my paternal grandmother Winifred Parsons as from “off the place.” Beverly is about twenty miles south of Rockport, which would have been a day’s walk for Lucy. Yet she was very much of the place called Cape Ann, which she visited and absorbed for her soul’s sake and her writing.
For most of her life, she was a Congregationalist. I am a member of the First Congregational Church of Rockport, and Larcom’s hymn “Draw Thou My Soul, O Christ” is in the Pilgrim Hymnal, which we still use. I feel we have a shared spirituality defined as openness to transcendent goodwill revealed in beauty, human friendships, nature, and God. Larcom understood deity in a gentler, more immanent, and fuller aesthetic sense than the Puritan piety of her day. As evidenced in the poem “R.W. E.” (May 25, 1880), Larcom found a breath of fresh air, opening doors, and widening worlds in the thinking of Ralph Waldo Emerson.2 My sense is that, like me, she had an Emersonian thought process but not many Emersonian conclusions. In “R. W. E.,” Larcom acknowledged that Emerson opened doors, stirred sluggish souls, and brought a sense of widening worlds and ample air. Yet she did not completely endorse his ideas. Combining Larcom’s diaries and letters with his insightful commentary, Daniel Dulany Addison published Lucy Larcom Letters, and Diary, in 1894. From Larcom’s diary of 1862, he provides us with the following:
I heard Ralph Waldo Emerson speak too. “Civilization” was his subject; nobly treated, except that the part of Hamlet was left out of Hamlet. What is civilization without Christianity? There was a kind of religion in what he said; an acknowledging of all those elements which are the result of Christianity; indeed, Emerson’s life and character are such as Christianity would shape. He only refuses to call his inspiration by its right name. The source of all great and good thought is in Christ; so I could listen to the Sage of Concord, and recognize the voice of the Master he will not own in words.3
Put most simply, God as “Unseen Friend” is more personal that Emerson’s divinity as “Over-soul.” In a letter of March 14, 1893, to Miss Fobes, whom Larcom met at Monticello Seminary in Illinois, Larcom writes, “Now the best seems to me the simplest:—to receive, and to give by living it, the life of Christ. That is the thought I have kept before me and in my little book, which I call ‘The Unseen Friend.’”4 It seems to me that Larcom must have missed out on the hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” written by Joseph Scriven in 1857. Maybe this hymn that comforted so many, and still continues to do so, did not make it south of Canada into New England Puritan country. Larcom might be happy to know that today in the First Congregational Church of Rockport, a member of the United Church Christ that is open and affirming, we stress hospitality and friendship.
Larcom remained thoroughly Trinitarian and in 1890 was confirmed in the Episcopal Church.5 She became friends with Phillips Brooks, who is best known for writing the hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and for his pastorate at Trinity Church in Boston. Inspired by Brooks, she wrote her book The Unseen Friend. Imagining a warmer and friendlier world, she asked, “What is the highest and purest human friendship, but a prophecy of the Friend who is both human and Divine?”6 Another friend, poet John Greenleaf Whittier, who was a Quaker and Abolitionist, helped Larcom forge with tensile strength her convictions expressed in The Unseen Friend. In 1892, Larcom wrote to Whittier about her book project and said that the thought is about seeing him who is invisible. She asked permission to dedicate the book to him and said, “I should like to have one book of mine indicate something of what your friendship has helped me to see and to be.”7 The dedication states,
To
John Greenleaf Whittier
Most Beloved and Most Spiritual of American Poets,
Whose Friendship Has Been to Me
Almost A Life-Long Blessing
I Offer This Little Attempt to Write Upon
a Great Theme.
The spiritual journey from Puritan to Episcopalian was not without struggle. Rev. Brooks helped her navigate the sacraments and assured Larcom that she need not give up the good things she found in Puritanism such as the high regard for Sabbath rest.8 Larcom’s experience was that the Episcopal Church preached a practical, spiritual life—more than systems and doctrines—through the Christian year, repeating the story and spirit of Christ’s life.9 Larcom also thought that no church is perfect. Although she chose the Episcopal Church as a place where she could most fully live in Christ, she did not see her new church as the only door to Christ. To summarize, she spoke in March 1890 of the many doors of entrance into one vast temple.10
As skilled as Larcom was at synthesizing different faith communities, she was not enthusiastic about emerging critical biblical scholarship. In 1882, through her diary she voiced her objections to Renan’s Life of Jesus. She blames Renan’s thought on “some lack of perception in himself.” While fascinated with Renan’s book, she was strongly annoyed at the thought of Renan’s conclusion that the Gospel of John is partially composed of legends and memories transformed by the author of this gospel. She saw his book as based on beautiful yet inadequate concepts.
It is here that Larcom and I part completely harmonious company, because of different understandings about the nature of biblical language. While I believe that God is more than metaphor, human language for talking about God is metaphorical. Ultimately, God is beyond human language. The power of poetic metaphor and the sustenance of symbol is more help for me than literal interpretation in striving to participate in the life of Christ. Of course, I must remember that I live in a different century.
Larcom’s book An Idyl of Work is a 183-page poem that reads like a novel and far more compelling than I expected. Three girls befriend one another in their joys and challenges as workers in the mills in Lowell, Massachusetts. In addition to telling a heart-warming story, Larcom presents theology as autobiographically informed fiction. She describes God as “Heavenly Helper,” “Friend Divine,” and “All-Loving Heart.”11 She found God near in every kind thought of the human heart.12 She believed that souls meet more truly in love than in dogma.13 She thought that God is known in God’s gifts and that the “Invisible God” is recognized in all things visible. For Larcom, God was “Friend” and earthly friendships were hints and shadows of God.14 Larcom’s conception of God as “Invisible Guide”15 is like my feeling that God is often for me an inner editor. In addition to reading required material in college and graduate school, I have had a sense of other books and journals needed to further my writing life. In prayer, I imagine God as a Compassionate Editor who helps me think of many angles. Experiencing God as a Compassionate Editor helps me to understand and evaluate emotions and opinions. Sometimes those feelings are mine and at other times the feelings of other people. This image of God is explained more fully in my book, Protestant Pulse: Heart Hopes for God.
Our book titles are similar and reflect roots in the Cape Ann area and the pull of the world beyond. According to Addison, Larcom had plans for a book she did not live to write. It would have been titled Hither-ward: A Life-Path Retraced and one chapter would have been called “The Charm of Elsewhere.”16 This chapter title reminded me of my phrase, “Beyond the cut bridge.” The tension between rejoicing in ancestral place and exploring widening shores provides the emotional rhythm in Larcom’s poem “Horizon” and my poem “Horizons.”