In speaking with the author of a “Dream of Lilies,” I casually
mentioned the name of another Boston poetess, “one of the _Pilot_
poets,” as the gifted Carpenter was wont to speak of those whose genius
was nursed by Boyle O’Reilly. For a few years previous to my coming,
little waif poems, suggestive of talent and refinement, had seen light
in the columns of that brilliant journal. They had about them that
something which makes the reader hazard a bet that the youngster when
fully fledged would some day leave the lowlands of minor minstrelsy
for a height on Parnassus. From this singer Miss Conway had that
morning received a notelet. It was none of the ordinary kind, a little
anarchistic, if one might judge from the awkward pen-sketch of a
hideous grinning skeleton-skull held by cross-bones which served as an
illustration to the bantering text that followed, in a rather cramped
girlish hand. The notelet was signed Louise Imogen Guiney.
“Are you not afraid, Miss Conway,” said I, “to receive such warning
notes?” “It is from the best girl in America,” was the frank reply;
“read it.” A perusal of the few dashing lines was enough, and my
generous host, reading my eyes, gave me the coveted notelet. That
notelet begot an interest in the writer; an interest fully repaid
by the strong, careful work put forth under her name. Louise Imogen
Guiney, poet, essayist, dramatist, was born in Boston, that city of
“sweetness and light,” in January, 1862. Her parents were Irish. Her
father, Patrick Guiney, came from the hamlet of Parkstown, County
Tipperary, at an early age. He was a man of the most blameless and
noble character. During the civil war, as Col. Guiney of the Irish
Ninth Massachusetts Volunteers, his heroism on behalf of his adopted
country won him the grateful admiration of all lovers of freedom. This
admiration at the close of the war was substantially shown by his
election as Judge of Probate. Constant suffering from an old wound,
received at the battle of the Wilderness, gave the old soldier but few
years to enjoy honors from his fellow-citizens. His death was mourned
by all who loved virtue and honor. Of him a Boston poet sang:
“Large heart and brave! Tried soul and true!
How thickly in thy life’s short span,
All strong sweet virtues throve and grew,
As friend, as hero, and as man.
Unmoved by thought of blame or praise,
Unbought by gifts of power and pride,
Thy feet still trod Time’s devious ways
With Duty as thy law and guide.”
Good blood, you will say, from whence our poet came, and blood counts
even in poetry. I have no anecdotes to relate of Miss Guiney’s early
years. I am not sure that there were any. Anecdotes are usually
manufactured in later life, if the subject happens to become famous.
Her education was carefully planned, and intelligently carried out.
She was not held in the dull routine of the school-room, but was
allowed to emancipate herself in the works of the poets. What joy must
have been her’s, scampering home after the study of _de omni scibili_,
the ordinary curriculum of any American school, to a quiet nook and
the dream of her poets. Amid these dreams came the siren whisperings
of the muse, telling her of the poet within struggling for life and
expression. These struggles begot a tiny little volume happily named
“Songs at the Start.” The great American reviewer, who, ordinarily,
“Bolts every book that comes out of the press,
Without the least question of larger or less,”
on this occasion, by some untoward event, stumbled on a truth when he
informed us, with the air of one who rarely touches earth, that the
book bore signs of promise. The people, by all means a better critic,
were more apt in their judgment of the young singer. A few years
later they asked her to write the memorial poem for the services in
commemoration of General Grant. Thus honored by her native city, in
an easy way she was led to climb the ladder of fame. In 1885 appeared
her first volume of essays, “Goose Quill Papers;” in 1887 a volume
of poems bearing the fanciful name of “White-Sail;” in 1888 a pretty
book for children; in 1892 “Monsieur Henri, a Foot-note to French
History.” It us something to be noted in regard to a “Foot-note to
French history,” that the novelist Stevenson, in his far-off home in
Samoa, was publishing at the same time a work which bore a decided
likeness to her title. Stevenson’s book was published as “A Foot-Note
to History.” In 1893 appeared her latest volume of verse, being a
selection of poems previously published in American magazines. This
selection (the poet has a genuine knack for tacking taking names to
her volumes) is quaintly named “A Wayside Harp,” and dedicated to a
brace of Irish poets, the Sigerson sisters. The graceful dedication
as well as many of its strongest and most artistic poems, were the
outcome of a trip to Great Britain and Ireland. The author travelled
with open eyes, and brought back many a dainty picture of the scenes
she had so lovingly witnessed. This volume fulfils the early promise,
and what is more, gives indubitable signs that the poet possesses a
reserve force. Not a few women poets write themselves out in their
first volume. Not so with Miss Guiney, every additional volume shows
greater strength and more complete mastery of technique. After the
surfeit of twaddle passing current as poetry, such a book as “A Wayside
Harp” should find a waiting audience, Miss Guiney has the essentials of
a poet, which I take to be color, music, perfume and passion. In their
use she is an artist. In her first book an excess of these everywhere
prevailed; it was from this excess, however, that the prudent critic
would have hazarded a doubt as to her fitness to join the company of
the bards. Since then she has been an ardent student. This study has
not only taught her limitations, a thing that saves so much after
pruning, but that other lesson, forgotten by so many bardlets, that
the greatest poetic effects are the result of the masterful mixing of
a few simple colors. It is well that she has learned these lessons at
the outset of her career. Let not the fads and fancies of this _fin de
siècle_ and the senseless worship of those poetasters who scorn sense
while they hug sound lead her from the true road of song. No amount
of meaningless words airily strung together, no amount of gymnastic
rhyming feats can produce a poet. They are the badges of those wondrous
little dunces that pass nature with a frown, alleging in the language
of the witty Bangs that “Nature is not art.” Guiney’s friend and
faithful mentor, O’Reilly, had taught her to abhor all those who spent
their waking hours chiselling cherry stones. To him it was a poet’s
duty to aim high, attune his lyre, not to the petty, but the manly
and hopeful; never to debase the lyre by an utterance of selfishness,
but to consecrate it with the strains of liberty and humanity. If
Guiney follows the teachings of her early friend—teachings which are
substantially sound, she will yet produce poems that the world will
not willingly let die. That Rosetti fad of hiding a mystic meaning
in a poem, now occupying the brains of our teeming songsters, is now
and then to be met with in our poet. It is a trade-trick. Poetry is
sense—common-sense at that, and you cannot rim common-sense things
with mystical hues. Abjuring these trade-tricks, and shaking off the
trammels of her curious and extensive reading and evolving from herself
solely, she has, says Douglas Sladen, a great promise before her. As an
instance of this promise let us quote that fine poem, “The Wild Ride,”
which is full of genuine inspiration, and which may be the means of
introducing to some the most thoroughly gifted Catholic woman writer of
our country.