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!”