Frothingham

“ He paused in New York a few hours, long enough to get a disagreeable mail from the other side—a dismal letter from old Bagley, a suspiciously cheerful note from Evelyn, a few lines from Surrey with a postscript about Gwen—“I’ve shipped her off to Mentone. She’s a bit seedy this winter, poor girl.” Frothingham quarrelled at Hutt, drank himself into a state of glassy-eyed gloom and took the three-o’clock express for Washington. As he sat in the smoking car a man dropped into the next chair with a “How d’ye do, Frothingham?” ”

“ She was a stout, conceited sixteen-year-old when her mother died, so spoiled and so self-centred that old Lady Frothingham had been heard more than once to mutter that the young lady could get down from her high horse and make herself useful, or she could march. ”

“ It is said that they contracted the habit in New York and Newport. But I doubted it.”
“Perhaps it’s the horses that make ’em swear,” suggested Frothingham. “Horses are such stupid brutes.”
“And they smoke—but that’s an old story. All the women smoke in New York, don’t they?”
“I’m not observant. You see, I don’t see well unless I look sharp.”
Mrs. Sullivan smiled amiably. “You’re very discreet, Lord Frothingham. You don’t gossip—I detest it myself.”
She talked to the man at her left, but soon turned to him with: “Doesn’t it shock you, the way divorce is growing nowadays? ”

“ Ballantyne, in her grandest manner. “We educate too much.”
The carriage rushed into the brilliantly lighted entrance of Senator Pope’s house. Frothingham saw Ysobel’s face, saw that she was having a violent attack [193] of silent laughter. And he understood why. “The young ’un has a sense of humour,” he said to himself. “It’s ridiculous for these beggars to pose and strut before they’ve had time to brush the dirt off their knees and hands.”
As they entered the drawing room Frothingham’s attention riveted upon two gilt armchairs ensconced in a semicircle of palms and ferns. ”

“ Miss Frothingham added with a grave expression, as the older woman turned inquiring eyes upon her. “Mr. Rutledge has been ill for weeks, and the baby is quite small—six or seven months old, I suppose.”
“Why, he’s a successful man!” his sister said impatiently as the other paused.
“Oh, yes, they have a good Swedish girl, I know, and a little car, and all that! But I imagine this has been a terribly hard winter for them. They’re lovely people, Doctor Madison,” added little Miss Frothingham bravely and earnestly. ”

“ But it applies only to a few districts in New York and perhaps one or two other cities.”
“It sounds like our system,” said Frothingham. “A devilish good system, I call it. If it weren’t for that the lower classes would be chucking us all out and putting their own kind in.”
“Well, we think it bad. I feel something like a fellow who knows he wouldn’t have won the race if he hadn’t bribed the other fellow’s jockey.”
[175] “That’s your queer American way of looking at things. You are always pretending that birth and rank and wealth aren’t entitled to consideration. ”

“ I tell you I have no respect for those men. To profess to be Christians and from within the fort batter down its fortifications isn't honest."
"That's right," said Frothingham, who, having no certain convictions of his own, was prepared to enjoy a racy tirade from either side.
"So you are wrong, you see," said Hubert, "in thinking Prof. Cutting's lecture in my line. When I get ready to open a broadside against the Christian religion, I'll not put on a ministerial coat and collar to do it in. You'd be shot in war if the enemy caught you in their clothes—and you'd deserve it!" ”

“ Aren't we, Aunt Dora?"
"If you think—" ventured Mr. Frothingham in perplexity; but Mr. Frothingham's perplexity always impressed one as duty-born rather than judicious, and Miss Holland had already risen.
"Olivia!" protested Mrs. Hastings faintly, accepting St. George's hand, "do look at those children's aprons. I'm afraid we'll all contract fever after fever, just coming this far."
Unkempt women were occupying the doorstep of No. 19. St. George accosted them and asked the way to the rooms of a Mr. Tabnit. ”

“ Perhaps Matthew Arnold's definition of religion as "morality touched with emotion" comes as near expressing Dr. Frothingham's conception as any. There must be morality; that is cardinal; that lies at the foundation of all systems; that must be strict and high. But emotion is indispensable also. This runs into praise, the love of goodness, the worship of the highest. This imparts warmth, glow, passion, the upward lift that inspires. Morality alone is cold, emotion alone is apt to be visionary. ”

“ FROTHINGHAM, OCTAVIUS BROOKS (1822–1895) , American clergyman and author, was born in Boston on the 26th of November 1822, son of Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham (1793–1870) , a prominent Unitarian preacher of Boston, and through his mother’s family related to Phillips Brooks. He graduated from Harvard College in 1843 and from the Divinity School in 1846. He was pastor of the North Unitarian church of Salem, Massachusetts, in 1847–1855. From 1855 to 1860 he was pastor of a new Unitarian society in Jersey City, where he gave up the Lord’s Supper, thinking that it ministered to self-satisfaction ”

“ Frothingham had not reflected on this letter long before he was telling Hutt to get his belongings together. The next afternoon found him at the Bellevue in Philadelphia, and a few hours later he was dining [244] at the Hopkins’ with Elsie and her uncle and aunt. He liked the Hopkinses—stiff and shy, but kindly. He liked the dark furniture, and walls and woodwork, suggesting old English; liked the faces in the family portraits—English faces; liked surroundings where there was nothing new or new-fashioned except his own and Elsie’s dress, where there was so much that was fine as well as old. ”

“ So many go merely for self-display; so few of us, not to speak of those dreadful people in the promenade, care anything about the dear, beautiful, noble horses.”
“Why look at horses,” said Honoria, “when there’s a human show that’s so much more interesting? It may be vulgar, but it’s amusing. I’m afraid my tastes are not refined.”
Frothingham looked at her with the expression of a thirsty man who is having a glass of cold water. ”

“ His library contained a rich collection of works in philosophy, theology, hermeneutics, criticism [Pg 323] of the Old and New Testaments, and divinity in its different branches of dogmatics and sentiment. He was intimate with N. L. Frothingham and Convers Francis, the admirable scholar, the hospitable and independent thinker, the enthusiastic and humane believer, the centre and generous distributor of copious intellectual gifts to all who came within his reach. Theodore Parker was the intellectual product of these two men, Convers Francis and George Ripley. ”

“ Boughton is his granduncle’s heir and his granduncle is old and a widower—still—well, the dukedom might slip away from him. For instance, he might die before his granduncle.”
“That would be ghastly for her, wouldn’t it, now?” said Frothingham.
“It would kill poor Ysobel. She’s so proud and ambitious! And that’s why she has an eye for the Prince—he’s of a frightfully old family, you know. One of his ancestors tried to poison Cesare Borgia and did succeed in getting himself poisoned or smothered or something thrilling. And they were an old, old family then. Oh, Ysobel is flying high. ”

“ He had met, at Brook Farm, which lay close to him at West Roxbury, the finest, most cultivated, most ardent intellects of the day; he had made the acquaintance of delightful people; he had studied and talked a great deal; he had been brought face to face with practical problems of society. He was independent of sectarian bonds, he stood alone, he could bring his forces to bear without fear of wounding souls belonging to the regular Unitarian communion, and he was thoroughly imbued with the modern spirit. ”

“ V Mr. Herbert Frothingham had that evening been one of a dinner party of six at Armenonville. He had sat between Miss Hope Van Tuyl and Lady Constance Vincent, and across a plateau of primrose-coloured orchids the charming Mrs. ”

“ On the 19th of September, 1836, the first meeting of the Transcendental Club was held at his house in Boston. In 1838 he replied to Andrews Norton's criticism of Mr. Emerson's Address before the Alumni of the Cambridge Divinity School. In 1840 he said to his congregation in Purchase Street:
There is a faculty in all—the most degraded, the most ignorant, the most obscure—to perceive spiritual truth when distinctly presented ”

“ This controversy as to the Battle of Jutland has been carried on with bitterness in Great Britain, and volumes of matter have been written that will be utterly useless, so far as a true story of the action is concerned. Partisans have made the mistake of putting on record arguments that have been founded on phases of the British operations—48with imaginary corresponding situations of the enemy, which never existed in actual fact. ”

“ Paralysis threatened him and he never fully recovered his health; in 1881 he returned to Boston, where he died on the 27th of November 1895. To this later period of his life belongs his best literary work. While he was in New York he was for a time art critic of the Tribune. Always himself on the unpopular side and an able but thoroughly fair critic of the majority, he habitually under-estimated his own worth ”

“ I hold no such opinion. I adduce no such argument. It may be cruel to annihilate so much "magnitude" and "sublimity," but I must state that they have no better basis than Mr Swett's imagination.
In opposition to this "mob" theory, Mr Swett goes to the other extreme, and affirms, p. 18—"That the army at Cambridge was regularly organized and consolidated under Ward, Warren, Putnam, and other officers in regular gradation, without any distinction in regard to the colonies whence 16 the troops came." ”

“ It was born of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death. It is the rainbow, Hope, shining upon the tears of grief. ”

“ A strong intellectual bent characterized the early settlers, who were persons of inquisitive minds, addicted to experiments and enterprises, exceedingly ingenious. Near the middle of the last century there was in existence in Salem a social evening club, composed of eminent cultivated and accomplished citizens. On the evening of Monday, March 31, 1760, a meeting was held at the Tavern House of a Mrs. Pratt for the purpose of "founding in the town of Salem a handsome library of valuable books, apprehending the same may be of considerable use and benefit under proper regulations." ”

“ He made it a principle to act alone, herein being a true disciple of Emerson, whose mission was to individual minds. He wrote a long letter to me on the occasion of establishing the "Free Religious Association," of which I wished him to become a member, that recalls the letter written by Mr. Emerson in reply to George Ripley when asked to join the community of Brook Farm, and whereof the following is an extract:
My feeling is that the community is not good for me, that it has little to offer me which with resolution I cannot procure for myself.... ”

“ We need a philosophy like this to purify and enlighten our politics, to consecrate our industry, to cheer and elevate society. We need it for our own use in the hours of mental misgiving and gloom; when the mystery of the universe presses heavily upon our souls; when the fountains of the great deep are broken up, and the
"Intellectual power
Goes sounding on, a dim and perilous way," ”

“ It is a very mysterious thing in history, this alliance between the most turbulent and the most tyrannical, the most depraved and the most despotic portions of society. The most undisciplined, barbarous, savage members of a community are ever in a league with the most overbearing, insolent, imperious, and domineering members of it. ”

“ The power that the richest genius has in Shakspeare, Rafael, Goethe, Beethoven, to reconcile the soul to life, to give joy for heaviness, to dissipate fears, to transfigure care and toil, to convert lead into gold, and lift the veil that conceals the forms of hope, Grimm ascribes in the highest measure to Emerson. ”

“ With power and longing he hears them open, and is brim full again with the rhythm that collects from the whole face of Nature,—the hillside, the ravine, the drifting cloud, the vapors just arrived from the ocean, the drops that flowers nod with to flavor the stream, the human smiles that colonize both banks of it. ”

“ The freedom from care, the spontaneousness of labor, the absence of all signs of toil and anxiety, the sense of equality in condition, and the abolition of all class distinctions, made work a delight. There was exhilaration, joy, gayety. The new earth had come. Wealth was nothing, fame was nothing; natural development was all. Mr. Ripley was over, in, and through the whole. ”

“ She must be stabbed to her heart of hearts, stabbed through and through, in every one of her affections, by these people for whom her life had been a perpetual process of dying! Why, if they had but known this that I have been telling you, or but a tenth part of it, those men would have defended with their bodies every thread of carpet she trod on. ”