New England," and Prof. Hitchcock, the geologist, have waxed eloquent over their charm, as well as Henry Ward Beecher and J. T. Headley, the biographer.
Amid such scenes of grandeur combined with sweet country life, these two children grew to girlhood. Each began her career in the very bud of youth, when barely nine years old. A few years later they published together a little volume of verses called "Apple Blossoms." It was an "almost unconscious outflow of two simple, wholesome," child-like lives.
How the mountain air and colors of Berkshire ring out in the early poems of these two sisters! How laden they are with woodland odors, and how aglow also with childhood's spirit and spontaneity! They contrast not unpleasantly with the fuller, grander music of Bryant's "Yellow Violet" and "A Walk at Sunset."
Mount Washington is the extreme southwestern town in Berkshire and in Massachusetts. Below it on the east, among its beautiful elms, lies the quiet and pretty village of Sheffield, illustrious in the intellectual history of Berkshire as the home of the Barnard and Dewey families. Dr. Frederick A. P. Barnard was president of Columbia College, New York, for a quarter of a century. Rev. Orville Dewey was one of the greatest preachers in the last generation of American Unitarians. Of the Dewey home at Sheffield, Miss Sedgwick wrote in 1854 : "I never saw a less ostentatious, or a more cordial and effective hospitality." The beautiful new building of the "Friendly Union" in the village is a memorial to Dr. Dewey.
We have told but in part the tale these Berkshire Hills might unfold had they but tongues. There are others identified with Berkshire deserving place here as worthily as some mentioned. A noble race of men and women have been fostered here. Many of the earlier ones seemed built like the old New England farmhouses of hand-hewed, tough timber, calculated long to withstand the tempest's blast. Endurance, achievement, success, were written on their foreheads. There has been plain living and high thinking in Berkshire. Nature has set this region apart, especially in the past. In isolation, one must think, if he works at all: in Berkshire one must look up if he looks at all, so high on every hand is the horizon.
Let him who loves form or who loves color wend his way to Berkshire when the snow drifts over the fences and bows the birches to earth; or in the young spring when the buds are swelling, and the birds arriving; or best of all in the golden autumn, when the country as far as the eye can reach is aflame with scarlet and gold. Of an Italian valley bathed in hues not more intense, Ruskin once exclaimed, "This is not color, it is conflagration!" The autumn in Berkshire seems a conflagration.
But at any season, and by night as well as by day, these mountains, and, lovelier still, the low-lying hills, appeal to the emotions of the visitor. Whatever is beautiful to the eye of man becomes doubly dear by association; form and color, thus enriched, enter the realm of the ideal. Like beauty of character shining through features already lovely are these Berkshire associations, dealing with men and women of whom our nation and our literature are proud. Berkshire, though the last county in Massachusetts to be settled, has furnished to American literature its first great metaphysical writer, its first writer of romance worthy of note, and its first great poet of nature. With such a heritage, Berkshire will surely continue in the future to multiply her literary associations.
-- page 22 --
End
|
These pages are © Laurel O'Donnell, 2005, all rights reserved
Copying these pages without written permission for the purpose of republishing
in print or electronic format is strictly forbidden
This page was last updated on
11 Feb 2005
|