Of course, the poet had no sympathy with the work of attack Mr. Downey was evidently engaged in. But he feared the girl friend of his youth might be in destitute circumstances, and, for her sake, he made a liberal remittance. All this the miserable husband tried to keep from his wife, who he knew would at once return the money, but she came upon the fact of the remittance by finding Whittier's letter in her husband's pocket.
Naturally, she was very indignant, but her letter to Whittier returning the money was couched in the most delicate terms, and gave no hint of the misery of her life. Until the year of his death she was an occasional correspondent with the poet, one of his last letters, written at Hampton Falls in the summer of 1892, being addressed to her. Their only meeting was at the Haverhill Academy reunion of 1885, fifty-eight years after the love episode of their school-days.
When they met at Haverhill the poet took the love of his youth apart from the other schoolmates, and they then exchanged souvenirs, he receiving her miniature painted on ivory, by Porter, the same artist who painted the first likeness ever taken of Whittier. This latter miniature is now in the possession of Mr. Pickard. The portrait of Miss Bray, representing her in the full flush of her girlish beauty, wearing as a crown a wreath of roses, was returned to Mrs. Downey after the poet's death, by the niece of Whittier, into whose possession it came.
Mrs. Downey spent her last days in the family of Judge Bradley, at West Newbury, Massachusetts. After her death some valuable china of hers was sold at auction, and several pieces were secured by a neighbour, Mrs. Ladd. The Ladd family has since taken charge of the Whittier birthplace at East Haverhill, and by this chain of circumstances Evelina Bray's china now rests on the Whittier shelves, together with the genuine Whittier china, put in its old place by Mrs. Pickard.
[Illustration: WHITTIER'S BIRTHPLACE, EAST HAVERHILL, MASS.]
It was not because of destitution that Mrs. Downey made application to enter the Old Ladies' Home which Whittier endowed, but, because, cherishing until the day of her death her youthful fondness for the poet, she longed to live during the sunset time of her life near his grave. In all probability her request would have been granted, had not she, too, been suddenly called to the land where there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage.