Part 24

"But turn to me thy dear girl-face Without the angel's crown, The wedded roses of thy lips, Thy loose hair rippling down In waves of golden brown.

"Look forth once more through space and time And let thy sweet shade fall In tenderest grace of soul and form On memory's frescoed wall,-- A shadow, and yet all!"

Whittier, it will be seen, believed that the love of his youth was dead. He was soon to find out, in a very odd way, that this was not the case.

Early in the forties, Miss Bray became principal of the "female department" of the Benton School at St. Louis. In 1849, during the prevalence of a fearful epidemic, the school building was converted into a hospital, and one of the patients was an Episcopal clergyman, Reverend William S. Downey, an Englishman, claiming to be of noble birth. He recovered his health, but was entirely deaf, not being able to hear the loudest sound for the remainder of his life. Miss Bray married him, and for forty years endured martyrdom, for he was of a tyrannous disposition and disagreeably eccentric.

Mrs. Downey had never told her husband of her early acquaintance with Whittier, but he found it out by a singular chance. When Reverend S. F. Smith and his wife celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their marriage the event was mentioned in the papers, and the fact that Mrs. Smith was a schoolmate of Whittier was chronicled. Mr. Downey had heard his wife speak of being a schoolmate of the wife of the author of "America," and, putting these two circumstances together, he concluded that his wife must also have known the Quaker poet in his youth. He said nothing to her about this, however, but wrote a letter to Whittier himself, and sent with it a tract he had written in severe denunciation of Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll. As a postscript to this letter he asked: "Did you ever know Evelina Bray?" Whittier at once replied, acknowledging the receipt of the tract, and making this characteristic comment upon it:

"It occurs to me to say, however, that in thy tract thee has hardly charity enough for that unfortunate man, Ingersoll, who, it seems to me, is much to be pitied for his darkness of unbelief. We must remember that one of the great causes of infidelity is the worldliness, selfishness, and evil dealing of professed Christians. An awful weight of responsibility rests upon the Christian church in this respect."

And to this letter Whittier added as a postscript: "Can you give me the address of Evelina Bray?" Mr. Downey at once wrote that he was her husband, told of his service of the Master, and indirectly begged for assistance in his work of spreading the gospel. At this time he was an evangelist of the Baptist church, having some time since abandoned the mother faith. And, though he was not reduced to poverty, he accepted alms, as if poor, thus trying sorely the proud spirit of his wife. So it was not an unwonted request.

Of course, the poet had no sympathy with the work of attack Mr. Downey was evidently engaged in. But he feared the girl friend of his youth might be in destitute circumstances, and, for her sake, he made a liberal remittance. All this the miserable husband tried to keep from his wife, who he knew would at once return the money, but she came upon the fact of the remittance by finding Whittier's letter in her husband's pocket.

Naturally, she was very indignant, but her letter to Whittier returning the money was couched in the most delicate terms, and gave no hint of the misery of her life. Until the year of his death she was an occasional correspondent with the poet, one of his last letters, written at Hampton Falls in the summer of 1892, being addressed to her. Their only meeting was at the Haverhill Academy reunion of 1885, fifty-eight years after the love episode of their school-days.

When they met at Haverhill the poet took the love of his youth apart from the other schoolmates, and they then exchanged souvenirs, he receiving her miniature painted on ivory, by Porter, the same artist who painted the first likeness ever taken of Whittier. This latter miniature is now in the possession of Mr. Pickard. The portrait of Miss Bray, representing her in the full flush of her girlish beauty, wearing as a crown a wreath of roses, was returned to Mrs. Downey after the poet's death, by the niece of Whittier, into whose possession it came.

Mrs. Downey spent her last days in the family of Judge Bradley, at West Newbury, Massachusetts. After her death some valuable china of hers was sold at auction, and several pieces were secured by a neighbour, Mrs. Ladd. The Ladd family has since taken charge of the Whittier birthplace at East Haverhill, and by this chain of circumstances Evelina Bray's china now rests on the Whittier shelves, together with the genuine Whittier china, put in its old place by Mrs. Pickard.

It was not because of destitution that Mrs. Downey made application to enter the Old Ladies' Home which Whittier endowed, but, because, cherishing until the day of her death her youthful fondness for the poet, she longed to live during the sunset time of her life near his grave. In all probability her request would have been granted, had not she, too, been suddenly called to the land where there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage.

THE END.

INDEX

Adams, John, 96.

Adams, Mrs. John, 111.

Adams, Samuel, 119.

Agassiz, Mrs., 290.

Alford, Mrs. A. G., 297.

Allston, 270.

Antigua merchant, 60.

Auburn, Mount, 323.

Bana, Doctor, discovers Deborah Sampson's secret, 181; sends letter to General Patterson, 188.

Bancroft, 309.

Barlow, Mrs., 301.

Barr, George L., buys Royall House, 72.

Bartley, Judge, 368.

Bath, 13; death of Frankland at, 55.