Letter from Emma Stebbins to Anne Whitney, Oct 30, 1879
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Wellesley College Archives, Papers of Anne Whitney (MSS.4)Creator
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Dear Friend,
Your last letter is much too good to have waited so long for an answer, but there have been +++ and hindrances, and your letters are of the sort that requires a response through the spirit – that is that the spirit should move me to the proper mood & ability to answer them for your thoughts are deep, and we live generally in the surface, at least I try to do so, because the depths do not bear stirring. – But indeed outside things have been contrary – during all Oct 2 when I ought to have been simply enjoying the glory and beauty of that pleasant time, I had to be full of thoughts and preparations for heating up my little home, and since I came to the city, the same necessities in an+++ +++ have beset me, and I could not profess my soul in peace or patience. The effect of the city on me is always depressing at first, until I have sternly[?] summoned all my powers of endurance and submission to meet what I cannot help. Dont you think and believe our lives are given to us here, just to heap us in
[p.2] to this selfabnegation[?]- to make us willing to offers up all that we are or may be – in the altar of selfsacrifice? – I have a friend who quarrels with the world, and calls me an optimist, because I will say that “whatever is, is right” – that is that all things work together for ultimate good. – My optimism seems to consist mainly in “letting go” as the spirits say – and believing that God knows better than I do. It is a lesson I have been learning all my life – and it is only half-learned yet – but I am learning it and I find it +++ and +++ easy as I practice it, and I believe that I perfect +++ and +++ my true inward self, and approach nearer the heavenly law, which the father has written in the consciences of all his children. – It seems to me so beautiful a faith, to believe that all is permitted here, to work a wise purpose, to perfect[?] at the better part of us, to purify us as gold is purified in the furnace, until it can perfect his image all seems to me so clear in that light, so lurid and hopeless in any other. – I pray always that God’s will may be done, I believe in prayer, not that you can ask for a plum and have it -but that through it, and by well wishing – well thinking, and above all by well doing – you can bring yourself.
[p. 3] into the stream of spirit and influences, which is ever flowing in and through all things. Don’t think I have taken to preaching – it is only that this subject chiefly interests me in these days – and I should like to have your opinion upon it.–
I find in looking over your letter, a resumé of your philosophy, such as you have +++ +++ – and you consider one of your most “happy weaknesses” – your belief in “the permanence of friendship, and the ever newness of love” – +++ I wholly agree with you. I lived with the embodied principle of love so many years, that it became a part of my being – and has grown with me +++ and more since it was taken away from me, so much so, that I have an ever present consciousness that her spirit is still suggesting to me the beautiful principle by which she lived and wrought.
On last Sunday Evening I went with my sister to hear Rev.[?] Colger[?] preach, he has lately come to our city from Chicago - he is of this popular type of speaker – a Yorkshireman with a rather peculiar accent and he was preaching on the value and necessity of joy [underlined] – from the text – “There is time to laugh” – they say he makes
[p.4] his audience laugh – and in fact they did so in this occasion. all the time I listened to him, I am thinking of Charlotte as I mostly am – and speculating on the peculiar gift which makes some proper magnetic, and how wonderfully above anyone of her day and generation she was endowed with it – when suddenly I fairly jumped as I heard him utter her name in the pulpit. He was telling how he had been impressed with her final scene in Meg Merrilies, when in the very agony of death, she laughs in delight over her “+++”! – It is just such things as this constantly occurring, which fill me with my conviction of the reality of spiritual influences – not in outward and material sense, which most human nature seems to require, but in the suggestive and subtle touches[?] which flow through our inner consciousness, “Touching[?] the electric chain wherewith we’re darkly bound”
I don’t know how much or how little you are interested in these things – I [word crossed out] am deeply – but in a very quiet way
[p. 5] I see by the papers that +++ does herself the honor to want a copy of your Samuel Adams – you have fairly conquered +++. I am glad for you! – Does this involve the necessity of a new model? and can it be cast in +++ to your satisfaction here? I ought to know all these things – but I have been too long on the shelf – and everything in the art way has naturally gone by me. This summer I have felt better and brighter than for three years past – I seem to be emerging from the cloud a little – and if it came in my way I might even essay to work ["a little" crossed out] the feeling is so strange to me, that I hardly know what to make of it. This winter I hope to be able to go about a little in the art world and see what is doing– by & by I am
[p.6] going to make my usual autumn visit to Villa Cushman, and perhaps Sallie and I may make a trip to Boston to see you and go to Mt. Auburn.
Meantime I know you must be such a busy woman, that I shall not expect you to write to me, unless you feel that “spur to prick the sides of your intent” of which you speak +++ assure of my need to hear from you– But whether you do or do not write, I am always
truly & affectionately
Yours
ES [underlined]
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Massachusetts, 1879 October 30" (1879). Papers of Anne Whitney (MSS.4): Correspondence. 2016.
https://repository.wellesley.edu/whitney_correspondence/2016
