LITTLE JULIA WARD
1819-1835; _aet._ 1-16
FROM MY NURSERY: FORTY-SIX YEARS AGO
When I was a little child,
Said my passionate nurse, and wild:
"Wash you, children, clean and white;
God may call you any night."
Close my tender brother clung,
While I said with doubtful tongue:
"No, we cannot die so soon;
For you told, the other noon,
"Of those months in order fine
That should make the earth divine.
I've not seen, scarce five years old,
Months like those of which you told."
Softly, then, the woman's hand
Loosed my frock from silken band,
Tender smoothed the fiery head,
Often shamed for ringlets red.
Somewhat gently did she say,
"Child, those months are every day."
Still, methinks, I wait in fear,
For that wonder-glorious year--
For a spring without a storm,
Summer honey-dewed and warm,
Autumn of robuster strength,
Winter piled in crystal length.
I will wash me clean and white;
God may call me any night.
I must tell Him when I go
His great year is yet to know--
Year when working of the race
Shall match Creation's dial face;
Each hour be born of music's chime,
And Truth eternal told in Time.
J. W. H.
Lieutenant-Colonel Ward had ten children, of whom seven lived to grow
up. The fifth child and son was Samuel, our mother's father, born in
Warwick, Rhode Island, May 1, 1786. When he was four years old, the
family moved to New York, where the Colonel and his brother established
themselves as merchants under the firm name of Samuel Ward & Brother.
The firm was only moderately successful; the children came fast. With
his narrow income it was not possible for the father to give his boy the
college education he desired; so at fourteen, fresh from the common
schools, Samuel entered as a clerk the banking house of Prime & King.
While still a mere lad, an old friend of the family asked him what he
meant to be when he came to man's estate.
"I mean to be one of the first bankers in the United States!" replied
Samuel.
At the age of twenty-two he became a partner in the firm, which was
thereafter known as Prime, Ward & King.
In a memoir of our grandfather, the partner who survived him, Mr.
Charles King, says:--
"Money was the commodity in which Mr. Ward dealt, and if, as is hardly
to be disputed, money be the root of all evil, it is also, in hands that
know how to use it worthily, the instrument of much good. There exist
undoubtedly, in regard to the trade in money, and respecting those
engaged in it, many and absurd prejudices, inherited in part from
ancient error, and fomented and kept alive by the jealousies of
ignorance and indigence. It is therefore no small triumph to have lived
down, as Mr. Ward did, this prejudice, and to have forced upon the
community in the midst of which he resided, and upon all brought into
connexion with him, the conviction that commerce in money, like commerce
in general, is, to a lofty spirit, lofty and ennobling, and is valued
more for the power it confers, of promoting liberal and beneficent
enterprises, and of conducing to the welfare and prosperity of society,
than for the means of individual and selfish gratification or
indulgence."
Mr. Ward's activities were not confined to financial affairs. He was
founder and first president of the Bank of Commerce; one of the founders
of the New York University and of the Stuyvesant Institute, etc., etc.
In 1812 he married Julia Rush Cutler, second daughter of Benjamin Clarke
and Sarah Mitchell (Hyrne) Cutler. Julia Cutler was sixteen years old at
the time of her marriage, lovely in character and beautiful in person.
She had been a pupil of the saintly Isabella Graham, and her literary
taste had been carefully cultivated in the style of the day. One of her
poems, found in Griswold's "Female Poets of America," shows the deeply
religious cast of her mind; yet she was full of gentle gayety, loved
music, laughter, and pretty things.
During the first years of their married life, Mr. and Mrs. Ward lived in
Marketfield Street, near the Battery. Here four children were born,
Samuel and Henry, and the two Julias. She who was known as "the first
little Julia" lived only four years. During her fatal illness her father
was called away by urgent business. In great distress of mind, he
arranged that certain tokens should inform him of the child's
condition. A few days later, as he was riding homeward, a messenger came
to meet him and silently laid in his hand a tiny shoe: the child was
dead.
Not long after this, on May 27, 1819, a second daughter was born, and
named Julia.
Julia Ward was very little when her parents moved to "a large house on
the Bowling Green, a region of high fashion in those days."[6] Here were
born three more children: Francis Marion, Louisa Cutler, and Ann Eliza.
For some time before the birth of the last-named child, Mrs. Ward's
health had been gradually failing, though every known measure had been
used to restore it. There had been journeys to Niagara and up the
Hudson, in the family coach, straw-color outside with linings and
cushions of brilliant blue. Little Julia went with her mother on these
journeys; the good elder sister, Eliza Cutler, was also of the party;
and a physician, Dr. John Wakefield Francis, who was later to play an
important part in the family life. Julia remembered many incidents of
these journeys, though the latest of them took place when she was barely
four years old. She sat in a little chair placed at the feet of her
elders, and she used to tell us how, cramped with remaining in one
position, she was constantly moving the chair, bringing its feet down on
those of Dr. Francis, to his acute anguish. In spite of this, the good
doctor would often read to her from a book of short tales and poems
which had been brought for her amusement, and she always remembered his
reading of "Pity the sorrows of a poor old man," and how it brought the
tears to her eyes.
[6] _Reminiscences_, p. 4.
At Niagara Falls she asked Dr. Francis, "Who made that great hole where
the water came down?" and was told "The great Maker of all!" This
puzzled her, and she inquired further, but when her friend said, "Do you
not know? Our Father who art in heaven!" she "felt that she ought to
have known, and went away somewhat abashed."[7]
[7] _Reminiscences_, p. 4.
She remembered a visit to Red Jacket, the famous Indian chief, at his
encampment. Julia was given a twist of tobacco tied with blue ribbon,
which she was to present to him. At sight of the tall, dignified savage,
the child sprang forward and threw her arms round his neck, to the great
discomfiture of both; baby as she was, Julia felt at once that her
embrace was unexpected and unwelcome.
Sometimes they went to the pleasant farm at Jamaica, Long Island, where
Lieutenant-Colonel Ward was living at this time, with his unmarried
sons, and his two daughters, Phoebe and Anne.
Phoebe was an invalid saint. She lived in a darkened room, and the
plates and dishes from which she ate were of brown china or crockery, as
she fancied her eyes could not bear white. Anne was equally pious, but
more normal. She it was who managed the farm, and who would always bring
the cheeses to New York herself for the market, lest any of the family
grow proud and belittle the dignity of honest work.
It is from Jamaica that Mrs. Ward writes to her mother a letter which
shows that though the tenderest of mothers, she had been strictly imbued
with the Old Testament ideas of bringing up children.
DEAREST MOTHER,-- ... I find myself better since I came hither....
Husband _more devoted than ever_; children sweet tho' something of a
drawback on my recovery.... Thus in one page, you have the whole history
of my present life, reading and thinking only excepted, which occupy by
far the greatest portion of my time.... I was obliged to whip Julia
yesterday afternoon, and have been sick ever since in consequence of the
agitation it threw me into.... I felt _obliged_ to try Solomon's
prescription, which had a worse effect on me than on her.... I think it
is the last time, however, blow high or low, for she is as nervous as
her mama was at her age, at the sight of a rod, and screamed herself
almost to death; indeed her nerves were so affected that she cannot get
over it and has cried all today, trembling as violently as if she had
the ague all the time I whipped her and could not eat.
Julia was to retain through life the memories of the dear mother so
early lost. She remembered her first sewing-lesson; how being told to
take the needle in one hand she straightway placed the thimble on the
other. She remembered her first efforts to say "mother," and how
"muzzer" was all she could produce, till "the dear parent presently
said, 'if you cannot do better than that, you will have to go back and
call me "mamma."' The shame of going back moved me to one last effort,
and, summoning my utmost strength of tongue I succeeded in saying
'mother.'"[8]
[8] _Reminiscences_, p. 8.
All devices to restore the young mother's failing strength were in vain:
soon after giving birth to the fourth daughter, Ann Eliza, she died.
Her life had been pure, happy, and unselfish; yet her last hours were
full of anguish. Reared in the strictest tenets of Evangelical piety,
she was oppressed with terror concerning the fate of her soul; the
sorrows of death compassed her about, the pains of hell gat hold upon
her. It is piteous to read of the sufferings of this innocent creature,
as described by her mourning family; piteous, too, to realize, by the
light of to-day, that she was almost literally _prayed to death_. She
was twenty-seven years old when she died and had borne seven children.
Mr. Ward's grief at the death of this beloved wife was so extreme as to
bring on a severe illness. For some time he could not bear to see the
child who, he thought, had cost her mother's life; and though he
gathered his other children tenderly around him, the little Annie was
kept out of his sight.
By and by his father came to make him a visit and heard of this state of
things. Going to the nursery, the old gentleman took the baby from its
nurse, and carrying it into the room where his son sat desolate, laid it
gently in his arms. From that moment the little youngest became almost
his dearest care.
He could not live with his sorrow in the same dwelling that had
contained his joy. The beautiful house at Bowling Green was sold, with
the new furniture which had lately been ordered to please his Julia, and
which the children never saw uncovered; and the family removed to Bond
Street, then at the upper end of New York City.
"Mr. Ward," said his friends, "you are going out of town!"
Bond Street in the twentieth century is an unlovely thoroughfare, grimy,
frowzy, given over largely to the sale of feathers and artificial
flowers; Bond Street in the early part of the nineteenth century was a
different affair.
The first settler in the street was Jonas Minturn, who about 1825 built
No. 22. Mr. Ward came next. The city was then so remote, one could
hardly see the houses to the south across the woods and fields.
The Ward children saw the street grow up around them; saw the dignified
houses, brick or freestone, built and occupied by Kings, Halls, Morgans,
Grinnells, most of all by Wards. Mr. Ward was then at No. 16; his
father, the old Revolutionary soldier, soon came to live at No. 7, with
his daughter Anne; his brother Henry was first at No. 14, then at No.
23; while his brother John was to make No. 8 a dwelling beloved by three
generations.
Julia did not remember in what year her father bought the tract of land
at the corner of Bond Street and Broadway. At first a large part of it
was fenced in, and used as a riding-ring by the Ward boys. There was
also, either here or at No. 16, something in the way of a garden, which
she thus recalls in an address on horticulture, given in her later
years:--
"My earliest horticultural recollections go back to an enclosure,
usually called a yard, in the rear of my father's house in New York.
When my little brother and I were turned out to play there, we might
just as well have picked the bugs off the rosebushes as the buds, of
which we made wicked havoc. Not knowing what to do with the flower
border, we barbarized instead of cultivating it. Being of extremely
inquiring minds, we picked the larkspurs and laburnums to pieces, but
became nothing the wiser for the process. A little daily tuition might
have transformed us into a miniature Adam and Eve, and might have taught
us some things that these old friends of ours did not know. But tuition
to us then meant six or eight daily hours passed in dry conversation
with the family governess or French master. No one dreamed of turning
the enamelled pages of the garden for us. We grew up consequently with
the city measure of the universe--your own house, somebody else's, the
trees in the park, a strip of blue sky overhead, and a great deal of
talk about Nature read from the best authors. Much that is most
beautiful in the works of all the poets was perfectly unintelligible to
us, because we had never seen the phenomena referred to; or if we had
seen them, we had not been taught to observe them. You will ask where we
passed our summers? In travelling, or at the seashore, perhaps. But we
took our city measure with us, and were never quite at home beyond its
limits."
She adds: "I state these facts only to show how much of the world's
beauty and value may be shut out from the eyes of a human being, by even
a careful education! This loss cannot easily be remedied in later years.
I myself had reached mature life before I experienced the deep and calm
enjoyments of country life. The long, still summer days, the open,
fragrant fields, the shy wild blossoms, the song of birds; these won me
at last to delight in them--at first they seemed to me only a void. It
was a new gospel that the meadows taught me, and my own little children
were its interpreters. I know now some country craft, and could even
trim fruit trees and weed garden beds. But I have always regretted in
this respect the lost time of youth. When I made acquaintance with
Nature, I was too old to learn the skill of gardening. Year after year
in the savage island of Newport, where labor is hard to hire, I have
passed summers ungladdened by so much as a hollyhock, and the garden I
at last managed to secure owes nothing to my skill or knowledge."
The truth is, people were afraid of the open air in those days. Julia
and her sisters sometimes went for a drive in pleasant weather, dressed
in blue pelisses and yellow satin bonnets to match the chariot; they
rarely went out on foot; when they did, it was in cambric dresses and
kid slippers; the result was apt to be a cold or a sore throat, proving
conclusively to the minds of their elders how much better off they were
within doors.
Julia's nursery recollections were chiefly of No. 16 Bond Street. Here
the little Wards lived a happy but somewhat sober life, under the
watchful care of their father, and their faithful Aunt Eliza, known in
the family as "Auntie Francis."
The young mother, in dying, had commended her children specially to the
care of this, her eldest sister, whose ability had been tried and proved
from childhood. In 1810 her father, Benjamin Clarke Cutler, died
suddenly under singular and painful circumstances. Her mother, crushed
by this event, took to her bed, leaving the care of the family to Eliza,
then fifteen years of age. Eliza took up the house-mother's burden
without question; nursed her mother, husbanded the narrow resources of
the household, brought up the four younger children with a strong hand.
"There were giants in those days."
Nothing could daunt Eliza Cutler's spirits, which were a perpetual
cordial to those around her. She was often "borrowed" by one member and
another of the family; she threatened to hang a sign over her door with
the inscription, "Cheering done here by the job by E. Cutler." Her
tongue could be sharp as well as merry; witness many anecdotes.
The housekeeper of a certain millionnaire, calling upon her to ask the
character of a servant, took occasion to enlarge upon the splendors of
her employer's establishment. "Mr. So-and-So keeps this; Mr. So-and-So
keeps that:--"
"Yes! yes!" said Mrs. Francis; "it is well known that Mr. So-and-So
keeps everything, except the Ten Commandments!"
"Oh! Mrs. Francis, how _could_ you?" cried the poor millionnaire when
next they met.
In 1829 Eliza Cutler married Dr. John Wakefield Francis, the historian
of Old New York, the beloved physician of a whole generation. He was
already, as has been seen, a member of the Ward household, friend and
resident physician. His tremendous vitality, his quick sympathies, his
amazing flow of vivid and picturesque language, made him the delight of
the children. He called them by singular pet names, "Cream Cheese from
the Dairy of Heaven," "Pocket Edition of Lives of the Saints," etc.,
etc. He sang to them odd snatches of song which were to delight and
exasperate later generations:--
"To woodman's hut one evening there came
A physician and a dancing-master:
The wind did blow, io, io,
And the rain poured faster and faster."
Edgar Allan Poe said of Dr. Francis that his conversation was "a sort of
Roman punch, made up of tragedy, comedy, and the broadest of all
possible farce."
In those days "The Raven," newly published, was the talk of the town.
Dr. Francis, meeting Poe, invited him to come to his house on a certain
evening, and straightway forgot the matter. Poe came at the appointed
time. The Doctor, summoned to the bedside of a patient, left the
drawing-room hastily, and in the anteroom ran into a tall, cadaverous
figure in black. Seizing him in his arms, he carried him into the
drawing-room and set him down before his wife. "Eliza, my dear--the
Raven!" and he departed, leaving guest and hostess (the latter had never
heard of "The Raven"!) equally petrified.
Mrs. Francis adored her husband, yet he must sometimes have tried her
patience sorely. One evening they had a dinner party, eighteen covers, a
state occasion. Midway in the repast the Doctor rose, and begging the
guests to excuse him and his wife for a moment, led her, speechless with
amazement, into the next room. Here he proceeded to bleed her, removing
twelve ounces of blood; replying to her piteous protestations, "Madam, I
saw that you were on the point of apoplexy, and I judge it best to avert
it."
In strong contrast with "Uncle Doctor" was "Uncle Ben," the Reverend
Benjamin Clarke Cutler, for many years rector of St. Anne's Church,
Brooklyn. This uncle was much less to Julia's taste: indeed, she was
known to stamp her childish foot, and cry, "I don't care for old Ben
Cutler!" Nevertheless he was a saintly and interesting person.
He was twelve years old at the time of his father's tragic death, and
was deeply influenced by it. His youth was made unhappy by spiritual
anguish, duty to his widowed mother and the call to the ministry
fighting within him. The latter conquered. In his twenty-first year he
drew up, signed, and sealed "An Instrument of Solemn Surrender of
Myself, Soul and Body, to God!" This document was in the form of a
testament, in which he solemnly ("with death, judgment and eternity in
view") gave, covenanted, and made over himself, soul and body, all his
faculties, all his influence in this world, all the worldly goods with
which he might be endowed, into the hands of his Creator, Preserver, and
Constant Benefactor, to be his forever, and at his disposal. He goes on
to say: "Witness, ye holy angels! I am God's servant; witness, thou,
Prince of Hell! I am thy enemy, thy implacable enemy, from this time
forth and forevermore."
That this covenant was well kept, no one who reads his memoirs and the
testimony of his contemporaries can doubt.
There are many anecdotes of Uncle Ben. Once, during his early ministry,
he was riding in a crowded stagecoach. One of the passengers swore
profusely and continuously, to the manifest annoyance of the others.
Presently Dr. Cutler, leaning forward, addressed the swearer.
"Sir," he said, "you are fond of blasphemy; I am fond of prayer. This is
a public conveyance, and for the remainder of our journey, as often as
you swear aloud, I shall pray aloud, and we will see who comes off
best." The swearing stopped!
In his later years, he met one day a parishioner clad in deep mourning
for a near relative. The old clergyman laid his hand on the crape
sleeve. "What!" he said sternly. "Heathen mourning for a Christian
saint!"
But of all the uncles (and there were many) the beloved Uncle John Ward
was always first. Of him, through many years Julia's devoted friend and
chief adviser, we shall speak later on.
We have dwelt upon the generation preceding our mother's, because all
these people, the beautiful mother so early lost, so long loved and
mourned, the sternly devoted father, the vivacious aunts, the stalwart
uncles, were strong influences in the life of Julia Ward.
The amusements of the little Wards were few, compared with those of
children of to-day. As a child of seven, Julia was taken twice to the
opera, and heard Malibran, then Signorina Garcia, a pleasure the memory
of which remained with her through life. About this time Mr. Ward's
views of religious duty deepened in stringency and in gloom. There was
no more opera, nor did Julia ever attend a theatre until she was a grown
woman. In Low Church circles at that time, the drama was considered
distinctly of the devil. The burning of the first Bowery Theatre and of
the great theatre at Richmond, Virginia, were spoken of as "judgments."
Many an Evangelical pastor "improved" the occasions from the pulpit.
The child inherited a strong dramatic sense from the Marion Cutlers. She
had barely learned to read when she found in an "Annual" a tale called
"The Iroquois Bride," which she dramatized and presented to the nursery
audience, with herself for the bride, her brother Marion for the lover,
and a stool for the rock they ascended to stab each other. The
performance was not approved by Authority, and the book was promptly
taken away.
Her first written drama was composed at the age of nine, but even the
name of it is lost.
Mr. Ward did not encourage intimacies with other children. He felt
strongly that brothers and sisters were the true, and should be the
only, intimates for one another; indeed, the six children were enough to
make a pleasant little circle of their own, and there were merry games
in the wide nursery. Sam, the eldest born, was master of the revels in
childhood, as throughout his life. It was his delight, in the early
morning, to wrap himself in a sheet, and bursting into the room where
the little sisters slept, leap from bed to bed, announcing himself as a
ghost come to haunt them; or, when the three ladies, Mrs. Mills, Mrs.
Brown, and Mrs. Francis (otherwise known as Julia, Louisa, and Annie)
were playing with their dolls, to whisper in their ears that they must
on no account venture near the attic stairs, as an old man in red was
sitting there. Of course the little Fatimas must needs peep, and the old
man was always there, a terrible figure, his face hidden. In "Bro'
Sam's" absence it was Marion who played the outlaw and descended like a
whirlwind upon the unhappy ladies, who were journeying through dense and
dreadful forests.
Mrs. Mills, Mrs. Brown, and Mrs. Francis were devoted mothers, and
reared large families of dolls. They kept house in a wide bureau drawer,
divided into three parts. Our Aunt Annie (Mrs. Adolphe Mailliard)
writes: "Mrs. Mills' (Julia) dolls were always far more picturesquely
dressed than ours, although I can say little for their neatness. Oh! to
what numberless parties they went, and how tipsy they invariably got! I
can see distinctly to-day the upset wagon (boxes, on spools for wheels),
and the muddy dresses, for they always fell into mud puddles."
Marion was as pious as he was warlike. His morning sermons, delivered
over the back of a chair, were fervent and eloquent; he was only seven
years old when he wrote to his Cousin Henry Ward, who was ill with some
childish ailment:--
"Do not forget to say your prayers every morning and evening. I hope
that you trust in God; and, my dear cousin, do not set your mind too
much on Earthly things! And my dear cousin, this is the prayer."
Follows the Lord's Prayer carefully written out. On the next page of the
same sheet, the eight-year-old Julia adds her exhortation:--
"Dear Cousin, I hope that you will say the Prayer which my Brother has
written for you. I hear with regret that you are sick, and it is as
necessary as ever that you should trust in God; love him, dear Henry,
and you will see Death approaching with joy. Oh, what are earthly
things, which we must all lose when we die--to our immortal souls which
never die! I cannot bear the thought of anybody who is dying without a
knowledge of Christ. We may die before to-morrow, and therefore we ought
to be prepared for death."
This was scarcely cheering for Henry, aged ten; as a matter of fact, he
was to have half a century in which to make his preparations.
Some of the nursery recollections were the reverse of merry. When Julia
was still a little child, the old housekeeper died. The children loved
her, and Auntie Francis did not wish them to be saddened by the funeral
preparations; she gave them a good dose of physic all round and put them
to bed for the day.
Julia was a beautiful child, but she had red hair, which was then
considered a sad drawback. She could remember visitors condoling with
her mother on this misfortune, and the gentle lady deploring it also,
and striving by the use of washes and leaden combs to darken the
over-bright locks. Still, some impression of good looks must have
reached the child's mind; for one day, desiring to know what she really
was like, she scrambled up on a chair, then on a dressing-table, and
took a good look in the mirror.
"_Is that all?_" she cried, and scrambled down again, a sadly
disappointed child.
Her first lessons were from governesses and masters; when she was nine
years old, she was sent to a private school in the neighborhood. She was
placed in a class with older girls, and learned by heart many pages of
Paley's "Moral Philosophy"; memorizing from textbooks formed in those
days a great part of the school curriculum. She did not care especially
for Paley, and found chemistry (without experiments!) and geometry far
more interesting; but history and languages were the studies she loved.
She had learned in the nursery to speak French fluently; she soon began
the study of Latin. Hearing a class reciting an Italian lesson, she was
enchanted with the musical sound of the language; listened and marked,
day after day, and presently handed to the amazed principal a note
correctly written in Italian, begging permission to join the class.
At nine years old she was reading "Pilgrim's Progress," and seeking its
characters in the people she met every day. She always counted it one of
the books which had most influenced her. Another was Gibbon's "Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire," which she read at seventeen.[9]
[9] In later life she added to these the works of Spinoza, and of
Theodore Parker.
She began at an early age to write verse. A manuscript volume has been
preserved in which some of these early poems were copied for her father.
The title-page and dedication are here reproduced:--
Poems
Dedicated to
Samuel Ward esq
By His
affectionate daughter
Julia Ward.
_LET ME BE THINE!_
Regard not with a critic's eye.
New York 1831.
To Samuel Ward.
Beloved father,
Expect not to find in these juvenile productions the delicacy and grace
which pervaded the writings of that dear parent who is now in glory. I
am indeed conscious of the many faults they contain, but my object in
presenting you with these (original) poems, has been to give you a
little memorial of my early life, and I entreat you to remember that
they were written in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth years of my
life.
Your loving daughter
JULIA.
The titles show the trend of the child's thought: "All things shall pass
away"; "We return no more"; "Invitation to Youth" (1831!); "To my dear
Mother"; "Mine is the power to make thee whole"; "To an infant's
departing spirit"; "Redeeming Love"; "My Heavenly Home," etc., etc.
At Newport, in 1831, she wrote the following:--
MORNING HYMN
Now I see the morning light,
Shining bright and gay.
God has kept me through the night;
He will, if He thinks it right,
Preserve me through this day.
Let thy holy Spirit send
Of heavenly light a ray;
Thy face, oh! Lord, I fain would seek,
But I am feeble, vain and weak;
Oh, guide me in thy way!
Let thy assistance, Lord, be given,
That when life's path I've trod,
And when the last frail tie is riven,
My spirit may ascend to heaven,
To dwell with thee, My God.
We cannot resist quoting a stanza from the effusion entitled "Father's
Birthday":--
Louisa brings a cushion rare,
Anne Eliza a toothpick bright and fair;
And O! accept the gift I bring,
It is a _daughter's_ offering.
Julia's mind was not destined to remain in the evangelical mould which
must have so rejoiced the heart of her father. In 1834, at the ripe age
of fifteen, she describes her
"Vain Regrets
written on looking over a diary kept while I was under serious
impressions":--
Oh! happy days, gone, never to return
At which fond memory will ever burn,
Oh, Joyous hours, with peace and gladness blest,
When hope and joy dwelt in this careworn breast.
The next poem, "The Land of Peace," breaks off abruptly at the third
line, and when she again began to write religious verse, it was from a
widely different standpoint.
It may have been about this time that she tried to lead her sisters into
the path of poesy.
Coming one day into the nursery, in serious mood, she found the two
little girls playing some childish game. Miss Ward (she was always Miss
Ward, even in the nursery!) rebuked them for their frivolity; bade them
turn their thoughts to graver matters, and write poetry.
Louisa refused point-blank, but little Annie, always anxious to please,
went dutifully to work, and produced the following lines:--
He feeds the ravens when they call,
And stands them in a pleasant hall.
"Mitter Ward" (to give him his nursery title) treasured these tokens of
pious and literary promise. He even responded in kind, as is shown by
some verses which are endorsed:--
"From my dearest Father.
JULIA EUPHROSYNE WARD [_sic_]."
His letters are full of playful affection. He would fain be father and
mother both to the children who were now his all. Under the austere
exterior lay a tenderness which perhaps they hardly comprehended at the
time. It was in fact this very anguish of solicitude, this passionate
wish that they should not only have, but be everything desirable and
lovely, that made him outwardly so stern. This sterner note impressed
itself so deeply upon the minds of his children that the anecdotes
familiar to our own generation echo it. We see the little Julia, weary
with long riding in the family coach, suffering her knees to drop apart
childwise, and we hear Mr. Ward say: "My daughter, if you cannot sit
like a lady, we will stop at the next tailor's and have you measured for
a pair of pantaloons!"
Or we hear the child at table, remarking innocently that the cheese is
strong; and the deep voice replying, "It is no more so than the
expression, Miss!"
The family was still at 16 Bond Street, when all the children had
whooping-cough severely, and were confined to the house for many weeks.
Mrs. Mailliard writes of this time:--
"I remember the screened-off corner of the dining-room, which was called
the Bower, where we each retired when the spasms came on, and the
promises which we vainly gave each other each morning to choke rather
than cough whilst Uncle Doctor made his visit to the nursery; for the
slightest sound from one of us provoked the general order of a dose all
round."
It was after this illness that Julia Ward first went to Newport. A
change of air was prescribed for the children, and they were packed off
to the farmhouse of Jacob Bailey, two or three miles from the town of
Newport. Here they spent a happy summer, to be followed by many others.
They slept on mattresses stuffed with ground corncobs; the table was
primitive; but there was plenty of cream and curds, eggs and butter, and
there was the wonderful air. The children grew fat and hearty, and
scampered all over the island with great delight.
(But when they went down to the beach, Julia must wear a thick green
worsted veil to preserve her ivory-and-rose complexion.
"Little Julia has another freckle to-day!" a visitor was told. "It was
not her fault, the nurse forgot her veil!")
Julia recalled Newport in 1832 as "a forsaken, mildewed place, a sort of
intensified Salem, with houses of rich design, no longer richly
inhabited." She was to watch through many years the growth of what was
always one of the cities of her heart.
But we must return to Bond Street, and take one more look at No. 16. The
Wards were soon to leave it for a statelier dwelling, but many
associations would always cling about the old house. Here it was that
the good old grandfather, Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel Ward, used to come
from No. 7 to talk business with his son or to play with the children.
Our mother had a vivid recollection of once, when still a little child,
sitting down at the piano, placing an open music-book on the rack
(though she could not yet read music), and beginning to pound and thump
the keys with might and main. The Colonel was sitting by, book in hand,
and endured the noise patiently for some time. Finally he said in his
courtly way, "Is it so set down in the book, little lady?" "Yes,
Grandpapa!" said naughty Julia, and went on banging; the Colonel, who
indeed had little music, made no further comment. But when a game of
"Tommy-come-tickle-me" was toward, the children must step in to No. 7 to
share that excitement with their grandfather, since no cards were
permitted under Mr. Ward's roof.
The year of the first Newport visit, 1832, was also the terrible
"cholera year." Uncle Ben Cutler, at that time city missionary, writes
in his diary:--
"The cholera is in Quebec and Montreal. This city is beginning to be
alarmed; Christians are waking up. My soul, how stands the case with
thee?"
And later:--
"I am now in the midst of the pestilence. The cholera, the universal
plague, arrived in this city four weeks ago. It has caused the death of
over nine hundred persons. This day the report of the Board of Health
was three hundred new cases and one hundred and thirty deaths."
Many parts of the city were entirely deserted. Dr. Cutler retained
through life the vivid recollection of riding down Broadway in full
daylight, meeting no living soul, seeing only a face here and there at
an upper window, peering at him as at a strange sight.
Newport took the alarm, and forbade steamboats from New York to land
their passengers. This behavior was considered very cold-blooded, and
gave rise to the conundrum: "Why is it impossible for Newporters to take
the cholera? Answer: Because they have no bowels."
Grandma Cutler was at Newport with the Wards and Francises, and trembled
for her only son. She implored him to "flee while it was yet day." "My
most precious son," she cried, "oh, come out from thence! I entreat you;
linger not within its walls, as Lot would have done, but for the
friendly angels that drew him perforce from it!"
The missionary stood firm at his post, and though exhausted by his
labors, came safe through the ordeal. But Colonel Ward, who had not
thought fit to flee the enemy,--it was not his habit to flee
enemies,--was stricken with the pestilence, and died in New York City,
August 16. His death was a grievous blow to Mr. Ward. Not only had he
lost a loving and beloved father, but he had no assurance of the
orthodoxy of that father's religious opinions. The Colonel was thought
in the family to be of a philosophizing, if not actually sceptical, turn
of mind; it might be that he was not "safe"! Years after, Mr. Ward told
Julia of the anguish he suffered from this uncertainty.
It is with No. 16 Bond Street that we chiefly associate the sprightly
figure of "Grandma Cutler," who was a frequent visitor there. The
affection between Mr. Ward and his mother-in-law was warm and lively.
They had a "little language" of their own, and she was Lady Feltham
(from her fondness for Feltham's "Resolves," a book little in demand in
the twentieth century); and he was her "saucy Lark," or "Plato." Mrs.
Cutler died in 1836.