[Illustration: THE WHITTIER HOME, AMESBURY]
While repairs were making in this part of the house in the summer of 1903, a package of old letters was found in the wall, bearing the date of 1847, the year when the enlargement was made. One of them reveals the source of the money required for the improvement. It was from Lewis Tappan of New York, the financial backbone of the anti-slavery society, inclosing a check for arrears of salary due Whittier for editorial work. Mr. Tappan writes: "I will ask the executive committee to raise the compensation. I wish we could pay you according to the real value of your productions, rather than according to their length.... Inclosed is a check for one hundred dollars. Mr. Sturge authorizes me to draw on him for one thousand dollars at any time when you and I should think it could be judiciously invested in real estate for your family. I can procure the money in a week by drawing on him. When you have made up your mind as to the investment, please let me know."
At this time the poet was feeling the pinch of real poverty and was living in a little one-story cottage that gave him no room for a study, and no suitable chamber for a guest. It was at this time that he received the letter which contained not only a check for overdue salary, but a promise of a gift of one thousand dollars from his generous English friend, Joseph Sturge. The result of this beneficence was the building of the "garden room," to which thousands of visitors come from all parts of this and other countries, because in it were written "Snow-Bound," "The Eternal Goodness," and most of the poems of Whittier's middle life and old age. Mr. Sturge had sent Whittier six years earlier a draft for one thousand dollars, intending it should be used by him in traveling for his health. But Whittier had given most of this toward the support of an anti-slavery paper in New York. Two years later the same generous friend offered to pay all his expenses if he would come to England as his guest, an offer he was obliged to decline. A portrait of Sturge is appropriately placed in this room. Tappan's letter was written April 21, 1847, and the addition to the cottage was built in the summer of that year. The whole expense of the improvement was no doubt covered by Sturge's gift. Other interesting letters of the same period were included in the package in the wall.