Cambridge Neighbors | Page 4

ACQUAINTANCES--Cambridge
Neighbors
by William Dean Howells
CAMBRIDGE NEIGHBORS
Being the wholly literary spirit I was when I went to make my home in

Cambridge, I do not see how I could well have been more content if I
had found myself in the Elysian Fields with an agreeable eternity
before me. At twenty-nine, indeed, one is practically immortal, and at
that age, time had for me the effect of an eternity in which I had
nothing to do but to read books and dream of writing them, in the
overflow of endless hours from my work with the manuscripts, critical
notices, and proofs of the Atlantic Monthly. As for the social
environment I should have been puzzled if given my choice among the
elect of all the ages, to find poets and scholars more to my mind than
those still in the flesh at Cambridge in the early afternoon of the
nineteenth century. They are now nearly all dead, and I can speak of
them in the freedom which is death's doubtful favor to the survivor; but
if they were still alive I could say little to their offence, unless their
modesty was hurt with my praise.

I.
One of the first and truest of our Cambridge friends was that exquisite
intelligence, who, in a world where so many people are grotesquely
miscalled, was most fitly named; for no man ever kept here more
perfectly and purely the heart of such as the kingdom of heaven is of
than Francis J. Child. He was then in his prime, and I like to recall the
outward image which expressed the inner man as happily as his name.
He was of low stature and of an inclination which never became
stoutness; but what you most saw when you saw him was his face of
consummate refinement: very regular, with eyes always glassed by
gold-rimmed spectacles, a straight, short, most sensitive nose, and a
beautiful mouth with the sweetest smile mouth ever wore, and that was
as wise and shrewd as it was sweet. In a time when every other man
was more or less bearded he was clean shaven, and of a delightful
freshness of coloring which his thick sunny hair, clustering upon his
head in close rings, admirably set off. I believe he never became gray,
and the last time I saw him, though he was broken then with years and
pain, his face had still the brightness of his inextinguishable youth.
It is well known how great was Professor Child's scholarship in the
branches of his Harvard work; and how especially, how uniquely,
effective it was in the study of English and Scottish balladry to which
he gave so many years of his life. He was a poet in his nature, and he

wrought with passion as well as knowledge in the achievement of as
monumental a task as any American has performed. But he might have
been indefinitely less than he was in any intellectual wise, and yet been
precious to those who knew him for the gentleness and the goodness
which in him were protected from misconception by a final dignity as
delicate and as inviolable as that of Longfellow himself.
We were still much less than a year from our life in Venice, when he
came to see us in Cambridge, and in the Italian interest which then
commended us to so many fine spirits among our neighbors we found
ourselves at the beginning of a life-long friendship with him. I was
known to him only by my letters from Venice, which afterwards
became Venetian Life, and by a bit of devotional verse which he had
asked to include in a collection he was making, but he immediately
gave us the freedom of his heart, which after wards was never
withdrawn. In due time he imagined a home-school, to which our little
one was asked, and she had her first lessons with his own daughter
under his roof. These things drew us closer together, and he was willing
to be still nearer to me in any time of trouble. At one such time when
the shadow which must some time darken every door, hovered at ours,
he had the strength to make me face it and try to realize, while it was
still there, that it was not cruel and not evil. It passed, for that time, but
the sense of his help remained; and in my own case I can testify of the
potent tenderness which all who knew him must have known in him.
But in bearing my witness I feel accused, almost as if he were present;
by his fastidious reluctance from any recognition of his helpfulness.
When this came in the form of gratitude taking credit to itself in a pose
which reflected honor