Chapter C: A B (3)

DEAR FRIEND,—Are you willing to tell me what is right? Mrs.
Jackson, of Colorado [“H. H.,” her early schoolmate], was with
me a few moments this week, and wished me to write for this.
[A circular of the “No Name Series” was inclosed.] I told her
I was unwilling, and she asked me why? I said I was incapable,
and she seemed not to believe me and asked me not to decide
for a few days. Meantime, she would write me. She was so
sweetly noble, I would regret to estrange her, and if you would
be willing to give me a note saying you disapproved it, and
thought me unfit, she would believe you. I am sorry to flee so
often to my safest friend, but hope he permits me.

In all this time—nearly eight years—we had never met, but she had sent invitations like the following:—

AMHERST.

DEAR FRIEND,—Whom my dog understood could not elude others.

I should be so glad to see you, but think it an apparitional
pleasure, not to be fulfilled. I am uncertain of Boston.

I had promised to visit my physician for a few days in May, but
father objects because he is in the habit of me.

Is it more far to Amherst?

You will find a minute host, but a spacious welcome....

If I still entreat you to teach me, are you much displeased? I
will be patient, constant, never reject your knife, and should
my slowness goad you, you knew before myself that

Except the smaller size
No lives are round.
These hurry to a sphere
And show and end.
The larger slower grow
And later hang;
The summers of Hesperides
Are long.

Afterwards, came this:—

AMHERST.

DEAR FRIEND,—A letter always feels to me like immortality
because it is the mind alone without corporeal friend. Indebted
in our talk to attitude and accent, there seems a spectral
power in thought that walks alone. I would like to thank you
for your great kindness, but never try to lift the words which
I cannot hold.

Should you come to Amherst, I might then succeed, though
gratitude is the timid wealth of those who have nothing. I am
sure that you speak the truth, because the noble do, but your
letters always surprise me.

My life has been too simple and stern to embarrass any. “Seen
of Angels,” scarcely my responsibility.

It is difficult not to be fictitious in so fair a place, but
tests’ severe repairs are permitted all.

When a little girl I remember hearing that remarkable passage
and preferring the “Power,” not knowing at the time that
“Kingdom” and “Glory” were included.

You noticed my dwelling alone. To an emigrant, country is idle
except it be his own. You speak kindly of seeing me; could it
please your convenience to come so far as Amherst, I should be
very glad, but I do not cross my father’s ground to any house
or town.

Of our greatest acts we are ignorant. You were not aware that
you saved my life. To thank you in person has been since then
one of my few requests.... You will excuse each that I say,
because no one taught me.

At last, after many postponements, on August 16, 1870, I found myself face to face with my hitherto unseen correspondent. It was at her father’s house, one of those large, square, brick mansions so familiar in our older New England towns, surrounded by trees and blossoming shrubs without, and within exquisitely neat, cool, spacious, and fragrant with flowers. After a little delay, I heard an extremely faint and pattering footstep like that of a child, in the hall, and in glided, almost noiselessly, a plain, shy little person, the face without a single good feature, but with eyes, as she herself said, “like the sherry the guest leaves in the glass,” and with smooth bands of reddish chestnut hair. She had a quaint and nun-like look, as if she might be a German canoness of some religious order, whose prescribed garb was white piqué, with a blue net worsted shawl. She came toward me with two day-lilies, which she put in a childlike way into my hand, saying softly, under her breath, “These are my introduction,” and adding, also under her breath, in childlike fashion, “Forgive me if I am frightened; I never see strangers, and hardly know what I say.” But soon she began to talk, and thenceforward continued almost constantly; pausing sometimes to beg that I would talk instead, but readily recommencing when I evaded. There was not a trace of affectation in all this; she seemed to speak absolutely for her own relief, and wholly without watching its effect on her hearer. Led on by me, she told much about her early life, in which her father was always the chief figure,—evidently a man of the old type, _la vieille roche_ of Puritanism,—a man who, as she said, read on Sunday “lonely and rigorous books”; and who had from childhood inspired her with such awe, that she never learned to tell time by the clock till she was fifteen, simply because he had tried to explain it to her when she was a little child, and she had been afraid to tell him that she did not understand, and also afraid to ask any one else lest he should hear of it. Yet she had never heard him speak a harsh word, and it needed only a glance at his photograph to see how truly the Puritan tradition was preserved in him. He did not wish his children, when little, to read anything but the Bible; and when, one day, her brother brought her home Longfellow’s “Kavanagh,” he put it secretly under the pianoforte cover, made signs to her, and they both afterwards read it. It may have been before this, however, that a student of her father’s was amazed to find that she and her brother had never heard of Lydia Maria Child, then much read, and he brought “Letters from New York,” and hid it in the great bush of old-fashioned tree-box beside the front door. After the first book, she thought in ecstasy, “This, then, is a book, and there are more of them.” But she did not find so many as she expected, for she afterwards said to me, “When I lost the use of my eyes, it was a comfort to think that there were so few real books that I could easily find one to read me all of them.” Afterwards, when she regained her eyes, she read Shakespeare, and thought to herself, “Why is any other book needed?”

She went on talking constantly and saying, in the midst of narrative, things quaint and aphoristic. “Is it oblivion or absorption when things pass from our minds?” “Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it.” “I find ecstasy in living; the mere sense of living is joy enough.” When I asked her if she never felt any want of employment, not going off the grounds and rarely seeing a visitor, she answered, “I never thought of conceiving that I could ever have the slightest approach to such a want in all future time”; and then added, after a pause, “I feel that I have not expressed myself strongly enough,” although it seemed to me that she had. She told me of her household occupations, that she made all their bread, because her father liked only hers; then saying shyly, “And people must have puddings,” this very timidly and suggestively, as if they were meteors or comets. Interspersed with these confidences came phrases so emphasized as to seem the very wantonness of over-statement, as if she pleased herself with putting into words what the most extravagant might possibly think without saying, as thus: “How do most people live without any thoughts? There are many people in the world,—you must have noticed them in the street,—how do they live? How do they get strength to put on their clothes in the morning?” Or this crowning extravaganza: “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”

I have tried to describe her just as she was, with the aid of notes taken at the time; but this interview left our relation very much what it was before;—on my side an interest that was strong and even affectionate, but not based on any thorough comprehension; and on her side a hope, always rather baffled, that I should afford some aid in solving her abstruse problem of life.

The impression undoubtedly made on me was that of an excess of tension, and of something abnormal. Perhaps in time I could have got beyond that somewhat overstrained relation which not my will, but her needs, had forced upon us. Certainly I should have been most glad to bring it down to the level of simple truth and every-day comradeship; but it was not altogether easy. She was much too enigmatical a being for me to solve in an hour’s interview, and an instinct told me that the slightest attempt at direct cross-examination would make her withdraw into her shell; I could only sit still and watch, as one does in the woods; I must name my bird without a gun, as recommended by Emerson.

After my visit came this letter:—

Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only
pathetic counterfeits.

Fabulous to me as the men of the Revelations who “shall not
hunger any more.” Even the possible has its insoluble particle.

After you went, I took “Macbeth” and turned to “Birnam Wood.”
Came twice “To Dunsinane.” I thought and went about my work....

The vein cannot thank the artery, but her solemn indebtedness
to him, even the stolidest admit, and so of me who try, whose
effort leaves no sound.

You ask great questions accidentally. To answer them would be
events. I trust that you are safe.

I ask you to forgive me for all the ignorance I had. I find no
nomination sweet as your low opinion.

Speak, if but to blame your obedient child.

You told me of Mrs. Lowell’s poems. Would you tell me where
I could find them, or are they not for sight? An article of
yours, too, perhaps the only one you wrote that I never knew.
It was about a “Latch.” Are you willing to tell me? [Perhaps “A
Sketch.”]

If I ask too much, you could please refuse. Shortness to live
has made me bold.

Abroad is close to-night and I have but to lift my hands to
touch the “Heights of Abraham.”

DICKINSON.

When I said, at parting, that I would come again some time, she replied, “Say, in a long time; that will be nearer. Some time is no time.” We met only once again, and I have no express record of the visit. We corresponded for years, at long intervals, her side of the intercourse being, I fear, better sustained; and she sometimes wrote also to my wife, inclosing flowers or fragrant leaves with a verse or two. Once she sent her one of George Eliot’s books, I think “Middlemarch,” and wrote, “I am bringing you a little granite book for you to lean upon.” At other times she would send single poems, such as these:—

THE BLUE JAY

No brigadier throughout the year
So civic as the jay.
A neighbor and a warrior too,
With shrill felicity
Pursuing winds that censure us
A February Day,
The brother of the universe
Was never blown away.
The snow and he are intimate;
I’ve often seen them play
When heaven looked upon us all
With such severity
I felt apology were due
To an insulted sky
Whose pompous frown was nutriment
To their temerity.
The pillow of this daring head
Is pungent evergreens;
His larder—terse and militant—
Unknown, refreshing things;
His character—a tonic;
His future—a dispute;
Unfair an immortality
That leaves this neighbor out.

THE WHITE HEAT

Dare you see a soul at the white heat?
Then crouch within the door;
Red is the fire’s common tint,
But when the vivid ore

Has sated flame’s conditions,
Its quivering substance plays
Without a color, but the light
Of unanointed blaze.

Least village boasts its blacksmith,
Whose anvil’s even din
Stands symbol for the finer forge
That soundless tugs within,

Refining these impatient ores
With hammer and with blaze,
Until the designated light
Repudiate the forge.

Then came the death of her father, that strong Puritan father who had communicated to her so much of the vigor of his own nature, and who bought her many books, but begged her not to read them. Mr. Edward Dickinson, after service in the national House of Representatives and other public positions, had become a member of the lower house of the Massachusetts legislature. The session was unusually prolonged, and he was making a speech upon some railway question at noon, one very hot day (July 16, 1874), when he became suddenly faint and sat down. The house adjourned, and a friend walked with him to his lodgings at the Tremont House, where he began to pack his bag for home, after sending for a physician, but died within three hours. Soon afterwards, I received the following letter:—

The last afternoon that my father lived, though with no
premonition, I preferred to be with him, and invented an
absence for mother, Vinnie [her sister] being asleep. He seemed
peculiarly pleased, as I oftenest stayed with myself; and
remarked, as the afternoon withdrew, he “would like it to not
end.”

His pleasure almost embarrassed me, and my brother coming, I
suggested they walk. Next morning I woke him for the train, and
saw him no more.

His heart was pure and terrible, and I think no other like it
exists.

I am glad there is immortality, but would have tested it
myself, before entrusting him. Mr. Bowles was with us. With
that exception, I saw none. I have wished for you, since my
father died, and had you an hour unengrossed, it would be
almost priceless. Thank you for each kindness....

Later she wrote:—

When I think of my father’s lonely life and lonelier death,
there is this redress—

Take all away;
The only thing worth larceny
Is left—the immortality.

My earliest friend wrote me the week before he died, “If I
live, I will go to Amherst; if I die, I certainly will.”

Is your house deeper off?

YOUR SCHOLAR.

A year afterwards came this:—

DEAR FRIEND,—Mother was paralyzed Tuesday, a year from the
evening father died. I thought perhaps you would care.

YOUR SCHOLAR.

With this came the following verse, having a curious seventeenth-century flavor:—

“A death-blow is a life-blow to some,
Who, till they died, did not alive become;
Who, had they lived, had died, but when
They died, vitality begun.”

And later came this kindred memorial of one of the oldest and most faithful friends of the family, Mr. Samuel Bowles, of the Springfield “Republican”:—

DEAR FRIEND,—I felt it shelter to speak to you.

My brother and sister are with Mr. Bowles, who is buried this
afternoon.

The last song that I heard—that was, since the birds—was “He
leadeth me, he leadeth me; yea, though I walk”—then the voices
stooped, the arch was so low.

After this added bereavement the inward life of the diminished household became only more concentrated, and the world was held farther and farther away. Yet to this period belongs the following letter, written about 1880, which has more of what is commonly called the objective or external quality than any she ever wrote me; and shows how close might have been her observation and her sympathy, had her rare qualities taken a somewhat different channel:—

DEAR FRIEND,—I was touchingly reminded of [a child who had
died] this morning by an Indian woman with gay baskets and
a dazzling baby, at the kitchen door. Her little boy “once
died,” she said, death to her dispelling him. I asked her what
the baby liked, and she said “to step.” The prairie before
the door was gay with flowers of hay, and I led her in. She
argued with the birds, she leaned on clover walls and they
fell, and dropped her. With jargon sweeter than a bell, she
grappled buttercups, and they sank together, the buttercups the
heaviest. What sweetest use of days! ’Twas noting some such
scene made Vaughan humbly say,—

“My days that are at best but dim and hoary.”

I think it was Vaughan....

And these few fragmentary memorials—closing, like every human biography, with funerals, yet with such as were to Emily Dickinson only the stately introduction to a higher life—may well end with her description of the death of the very summer she so loved.

“As imperceptibly as grief
The summer lapsed away,
Too imperceptible at last
To feel like perfidy.

“A quietness distilled,
As twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered afternoon.

“The dusk drew earlier in,
The morning foreign shone,
A courteous yet harrowing grace
As guest that would be gone.

“And thus without a wing
Or service of a keel
Our summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.”

XX

JULIA WARD HOWE

JULIA WARD HOWE

Many years of what may be called intimacy with Mrs. Julia Ward Howe do not impair one’s power of painting her as she is, and this for two reasons: first, because she does not care to be portrayed in any other way; and secondly, because her freshness of temperament is so inexhaustible as to fix one’s attention always on what she said or did not merely yesterday, but this morning. After knowing her more than forty years, and having been fellow member or officer in half-a-dozen clubs with her, first and last, during that time, I now see in her, not merely the woman of to-day, but the woman who went through the education of wifehood and motherhood, of reformer and agitator, and in all these was educated by the experience of life.

She lived to refute much early criticism or hasty judgment, and this partly from inward growth, partly because the society in which she moved was growing for itself and understood her better. The wife of a reformer is apt to be tested by the obstacles her husband encounters; if she is sympathetic, she shares his difficulties, and if not, is perhaps criticised by the very same people for not sharing his zeal. Mrs. Howe, moreover, came to Boston at a time when all New Yorkers were there regarded with a slight distrust; she bore and reared five children, and doubtless, like all good mothers, had methods of her own; she went into company, and was criticised by cliques which did not applaud. Whatever she did, she might be in many eyes the object of prejudice. Beyond all, there was, I suspect, a slight uncertainty in her own mind that was reflected in her early poems.

From the moment when she came forward in the Woman Suffrage Movement, however, there was a visible change; it gave a new brightness to her face, a new cordiality in her manner, made her calmer, firmer; she found herself among new friends and could disregard old critics. Nothing can be more frank and characteristic than her own narrative of her first almost accidental participation in a woman’s suffrage meeting. She had strayed into the hall, still not half convinced, and was rather reluctantly persuaded to take a seat on the platform, although some of her best friends were there,—Garrison, Phillips, and James Freeman Clarke, her pastor. But there was also Lucy Stone, who had long been the object of imaginary disapproval; and yet Mrs. Howe, like every one else who heard Lucy Stone’s sweet voice for the first time, was charmed and half won by it. I remember the same experience at a New York meeting in the case of Helen Hunt, who went to such a meeting on purpose to write a satirical letter about it for the New York “Tribune,” but said to me, as we came out together, “Do you suppose I could ever write a word against anything which that woman wishes to have done?” Such was the influence of that first meeting on Mrs. Howe. “When they requested me to speak,” she says, “I could only say, I am with you. I have been with them ever since, and have never seen any reason to go back from the pledge then given.” She adds that she had everything to learn with respect to public speaking, the rules of debate, and the management of her voice, she having hitherto spoken in parlors only. In the same way she was gradually led into the wider sphere of women’s congresses, and at last into the presidency of the woman’s department at the great World’s Fair at New Orleans, in the winter of 1883-84, at which she presided with great ability, organizing a series of short talks on the exhibits, to be given by experts. While in charge of this, she held a special meeting in the colored people’s department, where the “Battle Hymn” was sung, and she spoke to them of Garrison, Sumner, and Dr. Howe. Her daughter’s collection of books written by women was presented to the Ladies’ Art Association of New Orleans, and her whole enterprise was a singular triumph. In dealing with public enterprises in all parts of the country she soon made herself welcome everywhere. And yet this was the very woman who had written in the “Salutatory” of her first volume of poems:—

“I was born ’neath a clouded star,
More in shadow than light have grown;
Loving souls are not like trees
That strongest and stateliest shoot alone.”

The truth is, that the life of a reformer always affords some training; either giving it self-control or marring it altogether,—more frequently the former; it was at any rate eminently so with her. It could be truly said, in her case, that to have taken up reform was a liberal education.

Added to this was the fact that as her children grew, they filled and educated the domestic side of her life. One of her most attractive poems is that in which she describes herself as going out for exercise on a rainy day and walking round her house, looking up each time at the window where her children were watching with merry eagerness for the successive glimpses of her. This is the poem I mean:—

THE HEART’S ASTRONOMY

This evening, as the twilight fell,
My younger children watched for me;
Like cherubs in the window framed,
I saw the smiling group of three.

While round and round the house I trudged,
Intent to walk a weary mile,
Oft as I passed within their range,
The little things would beck and smile.

They watched me, as Astronomers,
Whose business lies in heaven afar,
Await, beside the slanting glass,
The reappearance of a star.

Not so, not so, my pretty ones!
Seek stars in yonder cloudless sky,
But mark no steadfast path for me,—
A comet dire and strange am I.

...

And ye, beloved ones, when ye know
What wild, erratic natures are,
Pray that the laws of heavenly force
Would hold and guide the Mother star.

I remember well that household of young people in successive summers at Newport, as they grew towards maturity; how they in turn came back from school and college, each with individual tastes and gifts, full of life, singing, dancing, reciting, poetizing, and one of them, at least, with a talent for cookery which delighted all Newport; then their wooings and marriages, always happy; their lives always busy; their temperaments so varied. These are the influences under which “wild erratic natures” grow calm.

A fine training it was also, for these children themselves, to see their mother one of the few who could unite all kinds of friendship in the same life. Having herself the _entrée_ of whatever the fashion of Newport could in those days afford; entertaining brilliant or showy guests from New York, Washington, London, or Paris; her doors were as readily open at the same time to the plainest or most modest reformer—abolitionist, woman suffragist, or Quaker; and this as a matter of course, without struggle. I remember the indignation over this of a young visitor from Italy, one of her own kindred, who was in early girlhood so independently un-American that she came to this country only through defiance. Her brother had said to her after one of her tirades, “Why do you not go there and see for yourself?” She responded, “So I will,” and sailed the next week. Once arrived, she antagonized everything, and I went in one day and found her reclining in a great armchair, literally half buried in some forty volumes of Balzac which had just been given her as a birthday present. She was cutting the leaves of the least desirable volume, and exclaimed to me, “I take refuge in Balzac from the heartlessness of American society.” Then she went on to denounce this society freely, but always excepted eagerly her hostess, who was “too good for it”; and only complained of her that she had at that moment in the house two young girls, daughters of an eminent reformer, who were utterly out of place, she said,—knowing neither how to behave, how to dress, nor how to pronounce. Never in my life, I think, did I hear a denunciation more honorable to its object, especially when coming from such a source.

I never have encountered, at home or abroad, a group of people so cultivated and agreeable as existed for a few years in Newport in the summers. There were present, as intellectual and social forces, not merely the Howes, but such families as the Bancrofts, the Warings, the Partons, the Potters, the Woolseys, the Hunts, the Rogerses, the Hartes, the Hollands, the Goodwins, Kate Field, and others besides, who were readily brought together for any intellectual enjoyment. No one was the recognized leader, though Mrs. Howe came nearest to it; but they met as cheery companions, nearly all of whom have passed away. One also saw at their houses some agreeable companions and foreign notabilities, as when Mr. Bancroft entertained the Emperor and Empress of Brazil, passing under an assumed name, but still attended by a veteran maid, who took occasion to remind everybody that her Majesty was a Bourbon, with no amusing result except that one good lady and experienced traveler bent one knee for an instant in her salutation. The nearest contact of this circle with the unequivocally fashionable world was perhaps when Mrs. William B. Astor, the mother of the present representative of that name in England, and herself a lover of all things intellectual, came among us.

It was in the midst of all this circle that the “Town and Country Club” was formed, of which Mrs. Howe was president and I had the humbler functions of vice-president, and it was under its auspices that the festival indicated in the following programme took place, at the always attractive seaside house of the late Mr. and Mrs. John W. Bigelow, of New York. The plan was modeled after the Harvard Commencement exercises, and its Latin programme, prepared by Professor Lane, then one of the highest classical authorities in New England, gave a list of speakers and subjects, the latter almost all drawn from Mrs. Howe’s ready wit.

Q · B · F · F · F · Q · S
Feminae Inlustrissimae
Praestantissimae · Doctissimae · Peritissimae
Omnium · Scientarvum · Doctrici
Omnium · Bonarum · Artium · Magistrae
Dominae

IULIA · WARD · HOWE
Praesidi · Magnificentissimae

Viro · Honoratissimo
Duci · Fortissimo
In · Litteris · Humanioribus · Optime · Versato
Domi · Militiaeque · Gloriam · Insignem · Nacto
Domino
Thomae · Wentworth · Higginsoni
Propraesidi · Vigilanti

Necnon · Omnibus · Sodalibus
Societatis · Urbanoruralis
Feminis · et · Viris · Ornatissimis

Aliisque · Omnibus · Ubicumque · Terrarum
Quibus · Hae · Litterae · Pervenerint
Salutem · In · Domino · Sempiternam

Quoniam · Feminis · Praenobilissimis
Dominae · Annae · Bigelow
Dominae · Mariae · Annae · Mott
Clementia · Doctrina · Humanitate · Semper · Insignibus
Societatem · Urbanoruralem
Ad · Sollemnia · Festive · Concelebranda

Invitare · Singulari · Benignitate · Placuit
Ergo
Per · Has · Litteras · Omnibus · Notum · Sit · Quod
Comitia · Sollemnia
In · Aedibus · Bigelovensibus
Novi Portus
Ante · Diem · Villi Kalendas · Septembres
Anno · Salutis · CIↃ · IↃ · CCC · L XXXI
Hora Quinta Postmeridiana
Qua · par · est · dignitate · habebuntur

_Oratores hoc ordine dicturi sunt, praeter eos qui ualetudine
uel alia causa impediti excusantur._

I. Disquisitio Latina. “De Germanorum lingua et litteris.”
Carolus Timotheus Brooks.

II. Disquisitio Theologica. “How to sacrifice an Irish Bull to
a Greek Goddess.” Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

III. Dissertatio Rustica. “Social Small Potatoes; and how to
enlarge their eyes.” Georgius Edvardus Waring.

IV. Thesis Rhinosophica. “Our Noses, and What to do with them.”
Francisca Filix Parton, Iacobi Uxor.

V. Disquisitio Linguistica. “Hebrew Roots, with a plan of a new
Grubbarium.” Guilielmus Watson Goodwin.

VI. Poema. “The Pacific Woman.” Franciscus Bret Harte.

VII. Oratio Historica. “The Ideal New York Alderman.” Iacobus
Parton.

Exercitationibus litterariis ad finem perductis, gradus
honorarii Praesidis auspiciis augustissimis rite conferentur.

Mercurii Typis

I remember how I myself distrusted this particular project, which was wholly hers. When she began to plan out the “parts” in advance,—the Rev. Mr. Brooks, the foremost of German translators, with his Teutonic themes; the agricultural Waring with his potatoes; Harte on Pacific women; Parton with his New York aldermen, and I myself with two recent papers mingled in one,—I ventured to remonstrate. “They will not write these Commencement orations,” I said. “Then I will write them,” responded Mrs. Howe, firmly. “They will not deliver them,” I said. “Then I will deliver them,” she replied; and so, in some cases, she practically did. She and I presided, dividing between us the two parts of Professor Goodwin’s Oxford gown for our official adornment, to enforce the dignity of the occasion, and the _Societas Urbanoruralis_, or Town and Country Club, proved equal to the occasion. An essay on “rhinosophy” was given by “Fanny Fern” (Mrs. Parton), which was illustrated on the blackboard by this equation, written slowly by Mrs. Howe and read impressively:—

“Nose + nose + nose = proboscis
Nose - nose - nose = snub.”

She also sang a song occasionally, and once called up a class for recitations from Mother Goose in six different languages; Professor Goodwin beginning with a Greek version of “The Man in the Moon,” and another Harvard man (now Dr. Gorham Bacon) following up with

“Heu! iter didilum
Felis cum fidulum
Vacca transiluit lunam.
Caniculus ridet
Quum talem videt
Et dish ambulavit cum spoonam.”

The question being asked by Mrs. Howe whether this last line was in strict accordance with grammar, the scholar gave the following rule: “The conditions of grammar should always give way to exigencies of rhyme.” In conclusion, two young girls, Annie Bigelow and Mariana Mott, were called forward to receive graduate degrees for law and medicine; the former’s announcement coming in this simple form: “Annie Bigelow, my little lamb, I welcome you to a long career at the ba-a.”

That time is long past, but “The Hurdy-Gurdy,” or any one of the later children’s books by Mrs. Howe’s daughter, Mrs. Laura Richards, will give a glimpse at the endless treasury of daring fun which the second generation of that family inherited from their mother in her prime; which last gift, indeed, has lasted pretty well to the present day. It was, we must remember, never absolutely out of taste; but it must be owned that she would fearlessly venture on half-a-dozen poor jokes for one good one. Such a risk she feared not to take at any moment, beyond any woman I ever knew. Nature gave her a perpetual youth, and what is youth if it be not fearless?

In her earlier Newport period she was always kind and hospitable, sometimes dreamy and forgetful, not always tactful. Bright things always came readily to her lips, and a second thought sometimes came too late to withhold a bit of sting. When she said to an artist who had at one time painted numerous portraits of one large and well-known family, “Mr. ⸺, given age and sex, could you create a Cabot?” it gave no cause for just complaint, because the family likeness was so pervasive that he would have grossly departed from nature had he left it out. But I speak rather of the perils of human intercourse, especially from a keen and ready hostess, where there is not time to see clearly how one’s hearers may take a phrase. Thus when, in the deep valley of what was then her country seat, she was guiding her guests down, one by one, she suddenly stopped beside a rock or fountain and exclaimed,—for she never premeditated things,—“Now, let each of us tell a short story while we rest ourselves here!” The next to arrive was a German baron well known in Newport and Cambridge,—a great authority in entomology, who always lamented that he had wasted his life by undertaking so large a theme as the diptera or two-winged insects, whereas the study of any one family of these, as the flies or mosquitoes, gave enough occupation for a man’s whole existence,—and he, prompt to obedience, told a lively little German anecdote. “Capital, capital!” said our hostess, clapping her hands merrily and looking at two ladies just descended on the scene. “Tell it again, Baron, for these ladies; _tell it in English_.” It was accordingly done, but I judged from the ladies’ faces that they would have much preferred to hear it in German, as others had done, even if they missed nine tenths of the words. Very likely the speaker herself may have seen her error at the next moment, but in a busy life one must run many risks. I doubt not she sometimes lost favor with a strange guest, in those days, by the very quickness which gave her no time for second thought. Yet, after all, of what quickness of wit may not this be said? Time, practice, the habit of speaking in public meetings or presiding over them, these helped to array all her quick-wittedness on the side of tact and courtesy. Mrs. Howe was one of the earliest contributors to the “Atlantic Monthly.” Her poem “Hamlet at the Boston” appeared in the second year of the magazine, in February, 1859, and her “Trip to Cuba” appeared in six successive numbers in that and the following volume. Her poem “The Last Bird” also appeared in one of these volumes, after which there was an interval of two and a half years during which her contributions were suspended. Several more of her poems came out in volume viii (1861), and the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” in the number for February, 1862 (ix, 145). During the next two years there appeared six numbers of a striking series called “Lyrics of the Street.” Most of these poems, with others, were included in a volume called “Later Lyrics” (1865). She had previously, however, in 1853, published her first volume of poems, entitled “Passion Flowers”; and these volumes were at a later period condensed into one by her daughters, with some omissions,—not always quite felicitous, as I think,—this definitive volume bearing the name “From Sunset Ridge” (1898).

Mrs. Howe, like her friend Dr. Holmes, has perhaps had the disappointing experience of concentrating her sure prospects of fame on a single poem. What the “Chambered Nautilus” represents in his published volumes, the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” represents for her. In each case the poet was happy enough to secure, through influences impenetrable, one golden moment. Even this poem, in Mrs. Howe’s case, was not (although many suppose otherwise) a song sung by all the soldiers. The resounding lyric of “John Brown’s Body” reached them much more readily, but the “Battle Hymn” will doubtless survive all the rest of the rather disappointing metrical products of the war. For the rest of her poems, they are rarely quite enough concentrated; they reach our ears attractively, but not with positive mastery. Of the war songs, the one entitled “Our Orders” was perhaps the finest,—that which begins,—

“Weave no more silks, ye Lyons looms,
To deck our girls for gay delights!
The crimson flower of battle blooms,
And solemn marches fill the night.”

“Hamlet at the Boston” is a strong and noble poem, as is “The Last Bird,” which has a flavor of Bryant about it. “Eros has Warning” and “Eros Departs” are two of the profoundest; and so is the following, which I have always thought her most original and powerful poem after the “Battle Hymn,” in so far that I ventured to supply a feebler supplement to it on a late birthday.

It is to be remembered that in the game of “Rouge et Noir” the announcement by the dealer, “Rouge gagne,” implies that the red wins, while the phrase “Donner de la couleur” means simply to follow suit and accept what comes.

ROUGE GAGNE

The wheel is turned, the cards are laid;
The circle’s drawn, the bets are paid:
I stake my gold upon the red.

The rubies of the bosom mine,
The river of life, so swift divine,
In red all radiantly shine.

Upon the cards, like gouts of blood,
Lie dinted hearts, and diamonds good,
The red for faith and hardihood.

In red the sacred blushes start
On errand from a virgin heart,
To win its glorious counterpart.

The rose that makes the summer fair,
The velvet robe that sovereigns wear
The red revealment could not spare.

And men who conquer deadly odds
By fields of ice and raging floods,
Take the red passion from the gods.

Now Love is red, and Wisdom pale,
But human hearts are faint and frail
Till Love meets Love, and bids it hail.

I see the chasm, yawning dread;
I see the flaming arch o’erhead:
I stake my life upon the red.

This was my daring supplement, which appeared in the “Atlantic Monthly” (Contributors’ Club) for October, 1906.

LA COULEUR

“I stake my life upon the red!”
With hair still golden on her head,
Dame Julia of the Valley said.

But Time for her has plans not told,
And while her patient years unfold
They yield the white and not the gold.

Where Alpine summits loftiest lie,
The brown, the green, the red pass by,
And whitest top is next the sky.

And now with meeker garb bedight,
Dame Julia sings in loftier light,
“I stake my life upon the white!”

Turning to Mrs. Howe’s prose works, one finds something of the same obstruction, here and there, from excess of material. Her autobiography, entitled “Reminiscences,” might easily, in the hands of Mr. M. D. Conway, for instance, have been spread out into three or four interesting octavos; but in her more hurried grasp it is squeezed into one volume, where groups of delightful interviews with heroes at home and abroad are crowded into some single sentence. Her lectures are better arranged and less tantalizing, and it would be hard to find a book in American literature better worth reprinting and distributing than the little volume containing her two addresses on “Modern Society.” In wit, in wisdom, in anecdote, I know few books so racy. Next to it is the lecture “Is Polite Society Polite?” so keen and pungent that it is said a young man was once heard inquiring for Mrs. Howe after hearing it, in a country town, and when asked why he wished to see her, replied, “Well, I did put my brother in the poorhouse, and now that I have heard Mrs. Howe, I suppose that I must take him out.” In the large collection of essays comprised in the same volume with this, there are papers on Paris and on Greece which are full of the finest flavor of anecdote, sympathy, and memory, while here and there in all her books one meets with glimpses of Italy which remind one of that scene on the celebration of the birthday of Columbus, when she sat upon the platform of Faneuil Hall, the only woman, and gave forth sympathetic talk in her gracious way to the loving Italian audience, which gladly listened to their own sweet tongue from her. Then, as always, she could trust herself freely in speech, for she never spoke without fresh adaptation to the occasion, and her fortunate memory for words and names is unimpaired at ninety.

Since I am here engaged upon a mere sketch of Mrs. Howe, not a formal memoir, I have felt free to postpone until this time the details of her birth and parentage. She was the daughter of Samuel and Julia Rush (Cutler) Ward, and was born at the house of her parents in the Bowling Green, New York city, on May 27, 1819. She was married on April 14, 1843, at nearly twenty-four years of age, to Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, whom she had met on visits to Boston. They soon went to Europe,—the first of many similar voyages,—where her eldest daughter, Julia Romana, was born during the next spring. This daughter was the author of a volume of poems entitled “Stray Clouds,” and of a description of the Summer School of Philosophy at Concord entitled “Philosophiæ Quæstor,” and was the founder of a metaphysical club of which she was president. She became the wife of the late Michael Anagnos, of Greek origin, her father’s successor in charge of the Institution for the Blind, and the news of her early death was received with general sorrow. Mrs. Howe’s second daughter was named Florence Marion, became in 1871 the wife of David Prescott Hall, of the New York Bar, and was author of “Social Customs” and “The Correct Thing,” being also a frequent speaker before the women’s clubs. Mrs. Howe’s third daughter, Mrs. Laura E. Richards, was married in the same year to Henry Richards, of Gardiner, Maine, a town named for the family of Mr. Richards’s mother, who established there a once famous school, the Gardiner Lyceum. The younger Mrs. Richards is author of “Captain January” and other stories of very wide circulation, written primarily for her own children, and culminating in a set of nonsense books of irresistible humor illustrated by herself. Mrs. Howe’s youngest daughter, Maud, distinguished for her beauty and social attractiveness, is the wife of Mr. John Elliott, an English artist, and has lived much in Italy, where she has written various books of art and literature, of which “Atalanta in the South” was the first and “Roma Beata” one of the last. Mrs. Howe’s only son, Henry Marion, graduated at Harvard University in 1869 and from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1871, is a mining engineer and expert, and is a professor in the School of Mines at Columbia University. His book on “The Metallurgy of Steel” has won for him a high reputation. It will thus be seen that Mrs. Howe has had the rare and perhaps unequaled experience of being not merely herself an author, but the mother of five children, all authors. She has many grandchildren, and even a great-grandchild, whose future career can hardly be surmised.

There was held, in honor of Mrs. Howe’s eighty-sixth birthday (May 27, 1905), a meeting of the Boston Authors’ Club, including a little festival whose plan was taken from the annual Welsh festival of the Eistedfodd, at which every bard of that nation brought four lines of verse—a sort of four-leaved clover—to his chief. This being tried at short notice for Mrs. Howe, there came in some sixty poems, of which I select a few, almost at random, to make up the outcome of the festival, which last did not perhaps suffer from the extreme shortness of the notice:—

BIRTHDAY GREETINGS, LIMITED

Why limit to one little four-line verse
Each birthday wish, for her we meet to honor?
Else it might take till mornrise to rehearse
All the glad homage we would lavish on her!

JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE.

THE “NONNA” OF MAGNA ITALIA

Within the glow shed by her heart of gold,
Warm Southern sunshine cheers our Northern skies,
And pilgrim wanderers, homesick and a-cold,
Find their loved Italy in her welcoming eyes.

VIDA D. SCUDDER.

FIVE O’CLOCK WITH THE IMMORTALS

The Sisters Three who spin our fate
Greet Julia Ward, who comes quite late;
How Greek wit flies! They scream with glee,
Drop thread and shears, and make the tea.

E. H. CLEMENT.

Hope now abiding, faith long ago,
Never a shadow between.
White of the lilacs and white of the snow,
Seventy and sixteen.

MARY GRAY MORRISON.

In English, French, Italian, German, Greek,
Our many-gifted President can speak.
Wit, Wisdom, world-wide Knowledge grace her tongue
And she is _only_ Eighty-six years young!

NATHAN HASKELL DOLE.

How to be gracious? How to be true?
Poet, and Seer, and Woman too?
To crown with Spring the Winter’s brow?
Here is the answer: _this_ is Howe.

MARY ELIZABETH BLAKE.

If man could change the universe
By force of epigrams in verse,
He’d smash some idols, I allow,
But who would alter Mrs. Howe?

ROBERT GRANT.

Lady who lovest and who livest Peace,
And yet didst write Earth’s noblest battle song
At Freedom’s bidding,—may thy fame increase
Till dawns the warless age for which we long!

FREDERIC LAWRENCE KNOWLES.

Dot oldt Fader Time must be cutting some dricks,
Vhen he calls our goot Bresident’s age eighty-six.
An octogeranium! Who would suppose?
My dear Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, der time goes!

YAWCOB STRAUSS (CHARLES FOLLEN ADAMS).

You, who are of the spring,
To whom Youth’s joys _must_ cling,
May all that Love can give
Beguile you long to live—
Our Queen of Hearts.

LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.

H ere, on this joyous day of days,
O deign to list my skill-less praise.
W hate’er be said with tongue or pen
E xtolling thee, I cry “Amen.”

BEULAH MARIE DIX.

Mrs. Howe was not apprised of the project in advance, and certainly had not seen the verses; but was, at any rate, ready as usual, and this sketch may well close with her cheery answer:—

MRS. HOWE’S REPLY

Why, bless you, I ain’t nothing, nor nobody, nor much,
If you look in your Directory you’ll find a thousand such.
I walk upon the level ground, I breathe upon the air,
I study at a table and reflect upon a chair.

I know a casual mixture of the Latin and the Greek,
I know the Frenchman’s _parlez-vous_, and how the Germans speak;
Well can I add, and well subtract, and say twice two is four,
But of those direful sums and proofs remember nothing more.

I wrote a poetry book one time, and then I wrote a play,
And a friend who went to see it said she fainted right away.
Then I got up high to speculate upon the Universe,
And folks who heard me found themselves no better and no worse.

Yes, I’ve had a lot of birthdays and I’m growing very old,
That’s why they make so much of me, if once the truth were told.
And I love the shade in summer, and in winter love the sun,
And I’m just learning how to live, my wisdom’s just begun.

Don’t trouble more to celebrate this natal day of mine,
But keep the grasp of fellowship which warms us more than wine.
Let us thank the lavish hand that gives world beauty to our eyes,
And bless the days that saw us young, and years that make us wise.

XXI

WILLIAM JAMES ROLFE

WILLIAM JAMES ROLFE

The “man of one book” (_homo unius libri_) whom St. Thomas Aquinas praised has now pretty nearly vanished from the world; and those men are rare, especially in our versatile America, who have deliberately chosen one department of literary work and pursued it without essential variation up to old age. Of these, Francis Parkman was the most conspicuous representative, and William James Rolfe is perhaps the most noticeable successor,—a man who, upon a somewhat lower plane than Parkman, has made for himself a permanent mark in a high region of editorship, akin to that of Furnivall and a few compeers in England. A teacher by profession all his life, his especial sphere has been the English department, a department which he may indeed be said to have created in our public schools, and thus indirectly in our colleges.

William James Rolfe, son of John and Lydia Davis (Moulton) Rolfe, was born on December 10, 1827, in Newburyport, Massachusetts, a rural city which has been the home at different times of a number of literary and public men, and is still, by its wide, elm-shaded chief avenue and ocean outlook, found attractive by all visitors. Rolfe’s boyhood, however, was passed mainly in Lowell, Massachusetts, where he was fitted for college in the high school. He spent three years at Amherst College, but found himself unable to afford to remain any longer, and engaged in school-teaching as a means of immediate support. A bankrupt country academy at Wrentham, about twenty-five miles from Boston, was offered to him rent free if he would keep a school in it, and, for want of anything better, he took it. He had to teach all the grammar and high school branches, including the fitting of boys for college, and his pupils ranged from ten years old to those two or three years older than himself. He was the only teacher, and heard from sixteen to twenty classes a day. Besides these, which included classes in Latin, French, Greek, and German, he had pupils out of school in Spanish and Italian, adding to all this the enterprise, then wholly new, of systematically teaching English with the study of standard writers. This was apparently a thing never done before that time in the whole United States.

So marked was the impression made by his mode of teaching that it led to his appointment as principal of the pioneer public high schools at Dorchester, Massachusetts. He there required work in English of all his pupils, boys and girls alike, including those who had collegiate aims. At this time no English, as such, was required at any American college, and it was only since 1846 that Harvard had introduced even a preliminary examination, in which Worcester’s “Elements of History and Elements of Geography” were added to the original departments of Latin, Greek, and mathematics. Rolfe’s boys enjoyed the studies in English literature, but feared lest they might fail in the required work in classics unless they were excused from English. To relieve their anxiety and his own, their teacher wrote to Professor Felton, afterwards President of Harvard, telling him what his boys were doing in English, and asking permission to omit some portion of his Greek Reader then required for admission. Professor Felton replied, in substance, “Go ahead with the English and let the Greek take care of itself.” As a result, all four of the boys entered Harvard without conditions, and it is worth noticing that they all testified that no part of their preparatory training was more valuable to them in college than this in English. It is also noticeable that the late Henry A. Clapp, of Boston, long eminent as a lecturer on Shakespeare, was one of these boys.