1895-1900
... The laurel and the praise
But unto them, true helpers of their kind,
Who, daily walking by imagined streams
Rear fanes empyreal in Verse of Gold,--
Rare architects of figments and of dreams.--LLOYD MIFFLIN.
That jar of violet wine set in the air,
That palest rose sweet in the night of life.
--STEPHEN PHILLIPS.
I give you a day of my life;
My uttermost gift and my best.--L.C.M.
The last decade of the century, to half of which the preceding chapter
was given, stands out pre-eminently in Mrs. Moulton's life. Her fame,
which had come to her so untainted by any self-seeking, and the
abounding richness of friendship which so filled her life, friendship
as sympathetic and cordial as it was widespread, made these years
wonderful. Death and sorrow did bring into them a profound sadness,
but even these brought her into closer touch with humanity and ripened
her experiences. The recognition which her art won gave her something
much more satisfying than merely
... to hear the nations praising her far off.
And if to deal with literature is only to know about the Eternal
Beauty, while living and loving are in it and of it, she was indeed
fortunate. In the life of no poet could be less of the abstraction of
literary fame and more of the vitality of real existence. Her social
life, both at home and abroad, was full of companionship sweet and
genuine. For the mere ceremonial of life she cared little. Life was to
her a thing too real, too precious, to make of it a spectacle. If her
association was so largely with persons of distinction, it was because
they interested her personally, and not because of the social
position. That was incidental. Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells, speaking after
the death of Mrs. Moulton, remarked: "I honored her for her literary
power; I loved her for herself. But especially I felt her refinement."
Such refinement is incompatible with ostentation, and it was
significant of her feeling on social matters that she copied in her
note-book, with the remark, "I agree with this entirely," this
paragraph from Henry James' "Siege of London":
"I hate that phrase 'getting into society.' I don't think
one ought to attribute to one's self that sort of ambition.
One ought to assume that one is in society--that one is
society--and to hold that if one has good manners, one has
from the social point of view achieved the great thing. The
rest regards others."
While she was a woman of the world, she was not a worldly woman. She
might easily have been presented at court during her many seasons in
London, but she never cared to be. She not infrequently met the
Princess Louise and other members of the Royal Family, and her own
comings and goings were chronicled in the London press. She was the
guest and the intimate friend of titled persons in England and of
those first in American society; but all this never altered her simple
and utterly unaffected cordiality toward those who were of no social
prominence whatever. "The reason for her popularity," wrote Miss
Josephine Jenkins very justly, "is summed up in the sympathy of her
nature, which expands with loving and often helpful solicitude to
those seeking encouragement, precisely as it expands toward those
having attained some noble distinction. Not every human being is
endowed with this genius for appreciation."
Mrs. Moulton wrote to Coulson Kernahan on one occasion: "I do wonder
who spoke of me as 'a woman, above all things, of society.' Nothing
could be more remote from truth. I simply will not go to balls; I
don't care for large receptions, though I do go to them sometimes; I
enjoy dinners, if I am by the right person. But I refuse ten
invitations to every one I accept, and the thing I most and really
care for in all the world is the love of congenial friends and quiet,
intimate tête-à-tête with them. The superficial, external side of life
is nothing to me. I long for honest and true love as a child set down
in a desert might long for the mother's sheltering arms."
On New Year's day, 1895, she wrote, with that curious periodicity
which characterized the opening of so many years for her, a sonnet
entitled "Oh, Traveller by Unaccustomed Ways," fine and strong, and
with haunting lines such as:
Searcher among new worlds for pleasures new.--....
Some wild, sweet fragrance of remembered days.
The sestet is as follows:
I send my message to thee by the stars--
Since other messenger I may not find
Till I go forth beyond these prisoning bars,
Leaving this memory-haunted world behind,
To seek thee, claim thee, wheresoe'er thou be,
Since Heaven itself were empty, lacking thee.
The letters of this time are as usual full of allusions to Mrs.
Moulton's work, and are as usual from a very wide circle of literary
friends. Sir Frederick Pollock expresses his appreciation of her book
upon Marston, and the pleasure he and Lady Pollock anticipate in
seeing her in London next season. J.T. Trowbridge writes to her that
the technique of her songs and sonnets "is well-nigh faultless, and
their melody never fails to respond to the tender feeling by which
they are inspired." Lord de Tabley thanks her for a notice of his
work, "and particularly," he adds, "for putting me in such good
company as that of William Watson, whom I greatly admire." Sir Lewis
Morris writes cordially, and reminds her of their "pleasant lunches at
Lord Haylston's." Marie Corelli expresses her gratitude for pleasant
things which Mrs. Moulton has said of her in a letter to Mrs. Coulson
Kernahan. Other letters were from Miss Bayley (Edna Lyall), Andrew
Lang, Rose Kingsley, Lady Temple, Stephen Phillips, the Hon. Florence
Henniker. If, as Emerson says, "a letter is a spiritual gift," these
gifts were showered upon Mrs. Moulton.
_William Watson to Mrs. Moulton_
DEAR MRS. MOULTON: One of the most generous recognitions of
my early poems came from your pen. I wished then to express
my gratitude. I look forward to the pleasure of making your
acquaintance. I am touched by your kind sympathy, and I know
that you gladden all our group of friends. It is no ordinary
thanks I owe you for your generous and delightful criticism.
I have to thank you, already, for my best appreciation in
America. You do not know how grateful I am to the first
woman in America (and almost the first human being) who gave
me hearty and inspiring praise. Your poems add to my store
of beautiful things, and I do not prize them the less
because some of their qualities are my own despair. When
your letter came, that article which I call my conscience,
and which I wear less for use than for ornament, gave me no
peace. Yet the outward parts of life were to blame rather
than I, their victim. I had been moving, and giving the Post
Office the trouble of one who inherits a wandering tendency.
I hope you will permit me to call upon you when next you are
in London, and I am, dear Mrs. Moulton,
Sincerely yours,
WILLIAM WATSON.
To a friend Mr. Watson wrote of Mrs. Moulton: "Her letters show her
absolute goodness of heart, which is worth all other human qualities
put together."
Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett writes characteristically of that inner
inspirer which she calls her "Fairy."
_Mrs. Burnett to Mrs. Moulton_
"... I am so glad you like my story.... It was not I who
said 'Human beings can do anything if they set their minds
to it'; it was that beloved thing which has said things for
me all my life. Sometimes I call it 'The Fairy,' but I think
it must be a kind of splendid spirit. It is so strong, it is
so good to me, and I do so love it. When I said that thing
it seemed to make something waken within me. I began to say
it to myself, and to believe it. Only thus could I have
finished the story, and this makes me know it is true.... I
have sometimes thought the thing I had to give is nearly
always part of a story, some note of love, or message that
rings clear. I don't ask it should be a loud note, only that
some one shall hear it and remember. The fact that you have
heard, makes the story a success, so far as I am concerned.
As for giving, you give always. I have seen that. You give
of gentleness and kindness and all things that help. Your
hands are full of things to give."
Just before Mrs. Moulton's sailing in the spring of 1895 a breakfast
was given to her by a group of her friends, at which the decoration
was very prettily all of mountain laurel. In the centre of the table
was a basket of green osiers filled with the faintly pink kalmia, and
this color-scheme was carried out in the menu-cards, the embroidered
centre-piece, the candle-shades, and in the Venetian glass with which
the table was furnished. It is to this breakfast that Mrs. Blake
alludes in the little note which follows:
_Mrs. John G. Blake to Mrs. Moulton_
DEAR MRS. MOULTON: Among all the laurels which are being
laid before your conquering feet, will you take my little
flower of good-will and congratulations? The sonnets are
exquisite, so are you always to
Your affectionate
M.E.B.
In 1896 was published "Lazy Tours," Mrs. Moulton's most important book
in prose. This volume records her impressions in her wanderings in
Spain, in Southern Italy, in France, and in Switzerland. It is a
delightful mosaic of bits about people and places, of glimpses of
Rome, of Florence, of Paris, of the German "cures," and of pleasant
experiences of all sorts. The book is dedicated to Sir Bruce and Lady
Seton, "The well-beloved friends and frequent hosts of this lazy
tourist." The dedication is as appropriate as it is pleasantly
phrased, for the Setons were not only among the closest of Mrs.
Moulton's English friends, but with them she had done a great deal of
journeying. The book is charmingly vivid, and is a pleasant companion
for the traveller in the places with which it deals. Mrs. Moulton
neither was nor claimed to be an expert critic of painting and
sculpture, but her artistic taste responded sensitively to what was
best, and she recorded her feelings with a frank enthusiasm and a
wonderful freshness.
Arlo Bates, in acknowledging a gift copy of "Lazy Tours" wrote: "I
thank you for 'Lazy Tours.' It is done with a touch not only light and
delicate, but strangely gentle. It is written with the experience of a
woman and the enthusiasm of a girl." In another note of Mr. Bates',
belonging to this time, are the remarks:
"Friendship is about the only real thing in humanity."
"The few of us who, in this muse-forgotten age, still care
for real poetry, are to be congratulated no less."
The sculptor Greenough wrote: "Verily, your 'Lazy Tours' are a rebuke
to industry, for it has woven a magic carpet, as that of the 'Arabian
Nights,' only you transport the reader, in every sense of the word....
What excellent prose you poets write when you try." The critics were
all agreed, and the verdict of the public endorsed that of Mrs.
Moulton's friends and of the reviewers. The book had precisely that
lightness of touch which is perennially charming, and which perhaps is
due equally to literary expertness and to innate good taste.
The usual summer abroad, full of social experiences, followed; and
then the winter in Boston with the crowded Friday receptions. A letter
which belongs to this winter is full of a lightness and kindliness
characteristic of the writer.
_James Whitcomb Riley to Mrs. Moulton_
"... You, after months and months of barbarous silence, are
asking me why I have not written! Well, I'll answer in my
artlessness and most truthfully tell you that my last letter
(and a really appealing one) meeting with no response
whatever, I just had concluded that I'd win highest favor in
your estimate by not writing. So I quit writing, and went
to pouting,--this latter so persistently indulged in that my
previously benignant features now look as though they were
being cast back on my very teeth, so to speak, by a tawdry,
wavery, crinkly looking-glass in the last gasp of a
boarding-house. But since your voice of yesterday, the eyes
of me are lit again, and the whole face beams like radiant
summer time. No wonder you continue in indifferent health.
It's a judgment on you for your neglect of me. Now you'll
begin to improve. And you can get into perfect health by
strictly maintaining this rigorous course of writing to me.
Heroic treatment, of a truth!..."
One of the entries in the diary of the winter reads:
"Could hardly get to the Browning Society, where I read 'A
Toccata of Galuppi's.' Mr. Moulton seemed interested about
the reading, and I read him the 'Toccata' after dinner, and
other poems. A beautiful evening."
[Illustration: WILLIAM U. MOULTON
_Page 215_]
Strangely enough this was Mr. Moulton's last evening of being in
health. The next day he was taken ill, and on February 19, 1898, he
passed into "the life more abundant." The funeral service was read by
the Rev. E. Winchester Donald, rector of Trinity, and Mrs. Moulton
more than once spoke of the kindness and sympathy which he showed to
her at this time. She wrote in her diary: "Dr. Donald called; he is,
it seems to me, a nobly good man." Her daughter was with her, and her
many friends were about her. Numerous were the letters of condolence,
and they were full of the genuine feeling which could be called out
only by one who was herself so ready and quick to respond to the
sorrows of others.
In the summer following Mr. Moulton's death Mrs. Moulton remained in
America. Her life was saddened and cumbered with the cares needful in
business matters, and on the last day of the year she wrote in her
diary: "This sad year which is now ending--how strange a year it has
been for me. Mr. Moulton died in February and changed all. I have done
nothing, enjoyed nothing. With 1899 I must turn over a new leaf, or
give up life and all its uses, altogether." In this mood it was
natural that her predisposition to brood upon the problem of death
should reassert itself. She writes to William Winter: "No,--my dread
of death does not seem to me to be physical, for it is not the pain of
death that I ever think of. I hate the idea of extinction, but I could
reconcile myself to that; ... but what I dread most is the to-morrow
of death,--the loneliness of the unclothed soul." And again: "For
myself, I have an unutterable and haunting horror of going out into
the dark.... I always wish I might die at the same moment with some
well beloved friend, so that hand and hand we might go into the
mystery."
Her literary work, however, continues. She said from time to time that
she could not write, and that she should never write a line again; but
the poetic instinct was strong, and asserted itself in its own time
and way. In a letter to a friend she remarks in passing: "The
_Century_ has just come with my poem, 'A Rose Pressed in a Book,' and
it seems to me to read pretty well." The lyric to which she modestly
alludes as reading "pretty well" is beautifully characteristic of some
of her choicest poetic qualities: easy and seemingly unconscious
mastery of form, delicacy of touch, charming melody, and sincerity of
emotion.
Always her correspondence goes on.
_T.B. Aldrich to Mrs. Moulton_
"Some day I must get you to tell me about Andrew Lang. One
night last winter as I sat reading one of his books a kind
of ghost, distinct, elusive, rose before me. Out of this
impression grew my 'Broken Music.'"
In allusion to his much discussed "Modern Love," George Meredith
writes:
_George Meredith to Mrs. Moulton_
"You are like the northern tribes of the Arabs, in that what
you love you love wholly and without ceasing. This poem has
been more roundly abused than any other of my
much-castigated troop. You help me to think that they are
not born offenders, antipathetic to the human mind.
Americans who first gave me a reputation for the writing of
novels will perhaps ultimately take part in the admission
that I can write verse. They may thus carry a reluctant
consent in England, when I no longer send out my rhyming
note for revision. I have been taught, at least, to set no
store upon English opinion in such matters. I would thank
you, but gratitude is out of place. There is a feeling hard
to verbalize."
_Mrs. Moulton to Lloyd Mifflin_
"It is five days since I received your 'Slopes of Helicon,'
enriched by your kind inscription. I have been too ill to
write; but I will no longer postpone the pleasure of telling
you how delighted I am to have your charming book. I have
already read enough to know that the book will be an abiding
pleasure. You are as delightful a lyrist as you are a
sonneteer, and I could not give you higher praise. Both the
sonnets and lyrics in this volume charm me."
"... This morning, looking over a shelf of books that have
accumulated during my absence,--as books are never forwarded
to me,--I find your 'Fields of Dawn,' and also 'Lyrics,' by
J.H. Mifflin, for both of which I want to thank you at once.
I have a real pleasure to look forward to, for I love your
sonnets. Am I right in supposing 'J.H.M.' to be your father,
and that you are a poet by inheritance?..."
"I am sending a hurried note to tell you how entirely I
agree with you about the demand for 'cheerful poetry.'"
"It is worth writing a book to have written the line,
"Made eminent by death,
in that noble poem, 'Peace to the Brave.' The poem entitled
'Herbert Spencer' makes me wonder whether you feel that
assurance of the future which he certainly did not feel...."
_Lloyd Mifflin to Mrs. Moulton_
"... It is very uplifting, as you say in New England, to
have such a genuine letter as yours. You read a book as I
do, through at once. No one has said that my mind inclines
to visions like Blake's, but I see visions. I used to sit
and hold the pen and feel it hovering about, becoming nearer
and nearer, till suddenly it came, the complete sonnet. I
merely recorded it then. This was always wonderful to me.
Where do they come from? Not death itself, to say nothing of
our earth, can keep a born poet from writing. I can write a
better poem about sunset by not seeing it...."
_James Whitcomb Riley to Mrs. Moulton_
"... Very slightly changing R.L.S.'s line,
"This be the verse which ye grave for me,
Home he is where he longed to be;
and very thankful I am to be at home again. True, the mother
is away, the old father, too, and a sister, and a brother;
but they all seem to be here still, with the happy rest of
us,--for we all believe, thank God. And you must take this
for answer to your very last question, for I do feel that I
know. I know likewise why fuller assurance has been
withheld from us, lest knowing that, not one of all God's
children but would be hurrying to Him ere His own good
time.... Always your books are near at hand. May I tell you
that I think the sonnet is your true voice? Yours is the
deep, strong utterance which belongs, with the soul-cry in
it, as individual to yourself as Mrs. Browning's to herself.
Somewhere we are to talk poetry together sometime!... Of my
book, 'A Child's World,' I venture to send you Mr. Howells'
printed blessing, ... so delightfully characteristic (I
think) of his very happiest way of saying things. And, oh!
but I am gloating over a supernal letter from the Archangel
Aldrich! Truly with hurtling praise and God-speed the
heavenly battlements have loosened on me...."
_From the same_
"Has it been, and is it being, a beautiful Christmas season
to you? for I have been so praying, though vexing you with
no line of it in ink. And I've seen two new poems of yours,
and they testify to your loyal love of this world of ours;
so I know at least you can't be happier till you get to
Heaven with no good word or gift forgotten, and such
profusion! Since my return home I've been mostly working on
pyramids of matter accumulated since my taking to the road.
But last night I was struck with a real thought, while I was
off guard, so to speak. So I've gone to work on that, and
I'll send you the result, if I ever overtake it.... Lor! but
don't praise unexpected hit the very crazybone of vanity!"
_From the same_
"How beautiful your new poems are! Oh, yes! Even to vaguely
question your Divine Inspirer's ultimate intent!...
Sometimes I even smilingly think that He has given you that
haunting doubt here that your delight may be all the more
ineffable a glory when you find His throne more real a fact
than this first world of ours."
Among the pleasant friendships which came into a life whose entire
texture seemed woven of friendship and song, was that with Coulson
Kernahan, who, though one of the younger men of letters in England,
had already made a recognized place. His warmly responsive nature made
the two especially sympathetic, and they were alike in their devotion
to literature. After the vanishing of the "Marston group," Mrs.
Moulton's most intimate London circle came to comprise Sir Bruce and
Lady Seton, with whom she stayed frequently at Durham House, Mr.
Kernahan, Mrs. Campbell-Praed, and Herbert E. Clarke. Mr. Kernahan's
acquaintance with Mrs. Moulton began from a critique on "Swallow
Flights" which he had written for the _Fortnightly_. In it he had
said:
"No one who looks upon life with earnest eyes can fail to be
touched by the passionate human cry which rings from Mrs.
Moulton's poems. No one whose ear is attuned to catch the
wail that is to be heard in the maddest, merriest music of
the violin, to whom the sound of wind and sea at midnight is
like that of innumerable lamentations; no one who, in the
movement of a multitude of human beings--be they marching to
the bounding music of fife and drum, or hurrying to witness
a meeting of the starving unemployed--no one who in all
these hears something of 'the still, sad music of humanity,'
can read her verses unstirred."
Mr. Kernahan had also emphasized--Mrs. Moulton herself thought
somewhat unduly--the strain of sadness in her poems; and had he known
her personally at the time he wrote, he would surely not have called
her "world-weary and melancholy." The point was one often made by
critics, and has been alluded to in an earlier chapter. Partly the
melancholy note was due to environment, but more to temperament. Mrs.
Moulton almost at the beginning had edited a "gift-book" and the fact
is significant of the literary fashions of her youth. The "annuals"
and "gift-books" of the second quarter of the nineteenth century were
redolent of a sort of pressed-rose sadness, a sort of faded-out
reminiscence of belated Byronism; a richly passionate gloom of spirit
was held to be necessary to lyric inspiration. By this convention Mrs.
Moulton was undoubtedly affected, although by no means to such an
extent as was Edgar Allan Poe. With her the cause of the minor cadence
was chiefly a temperament which gave a sad quality to her singing as
nature has put a plaintive timbre into the notes of certain birds. In
writing to Mr. Kernahan about his article, she said: "I always hear
the minor chords in nature's music; after the summer, the autumn;
after youth, age; after life, death. I happened yesterday to close a
poem:
"O June, dear month of sunshine and of flowers,
The affluent year will hold you not again;
Once, only once, can youth and love be ours,
And after that the autumn and the rain.
Is it not true?" Yet she assured him that she was "often gay."
The numerous letters of Mrs. Moulton to Mr. Kernahan were intimate and
full of details of business in regard to publication, with personal
matters relating to friends and the like, but through them all runs a
thread of comment on literature and life.
"I am simply enchanted with the new book William Morris has
printed for Wilfrid Blunt, 'The Love Lyrics and Songs of
Proteus.'"
"Yes, I did like that one line in Christina Rossetti's poem:
"... half carol and half cry;
but the rest of it is not good enough for her."
"I have had many violets sent me this year, but far the most
fragrant were a bunch left for me to-day with a card on
which was written:
"Since one too strange to risk intrusion
Would dare rebuke, nor meet confusion,
Yet fain would--failing long to meet you--
With gentle words and memories greet you,
Sweet Mistress of the Triolet,
Admit, I pray, a violet."
"I am reading, or rather rereading Rossetti's sonnet
sequence, 'The House of Life.' How unequal are the
sonnets,--some of them so beautiful they fairly thrill one's
soul with their charm, but others seem whimsical and far
fetched. On the other hand, how glorious, how like a full
chord of music is, for instance, 'The Heart's Compass,' and
the sestet of 'Last Fire,' and that magnificent sonnet, 'The
Dark Glass.'"
"I had a letter this morning from a far-off stranger who
tells me that her heart keeps time to my poems.... I am
expecting my beloved Mrs. Spofford to-day.... No sweeter
soul than she lives on this earth."
"Recently I sent a rhyme called 'A Whisper to the Moon,' to
_The Independent_, and in accepting it Bliss Carman writes:
'I like it, and that line
"'She is thy kindred, and fickle art thou,
is immense. Lines with the lyric quality of that are
imperishable. Quite apart from its meaning--its cold
meaning--it is poetry. It floods the heart. It carries all
before it. There is no stopping it. It is like the opening
of the gates of the sea. You often write such lines.' The
line does not seem to me at all worth such praise, but all
the same the praise pleased me. How lovely it is to have
people single out some special phrase to care for!"
"Louise Guiney and I are looking over my poems together. Oh,
I wish there were more variety in them. They are good (I
hope and think) in form, but they are, almost all, the cry
of my heart for the love that I long for, or its protest
against the death that I fear. Ah, well, I can only be
myself."
[Illustration: LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON
_Page 227_]
In this year appeared Mrs. Moulton's third volume of poems, "At the
Wind's Will," the title being taken from Rossetti's "Wood-spurge":
I had walked on at the wind's will,--
I sat now, for the wind was still.
Of it Mrs. Spofford said:
"Mrs. Moulton's last volume of poems, 'At the Wind's Will,'
fitly crowns the literary achievement of the century. It is
poetry at high-water mark. Her work exhibited in previous
volumes has given her a rank among the foremost poets of the
world, and much of the work in 'At the Wind's Will' exceeds
in grasp and in surrender, in strength and in beauty,
anything she has hitherto published."
So the year wore to a close. Her last record for December in her diary
reads: "Now this year of 1899 goes out,--a year in which I have
accomplished nothing,--gone back, I fear, in every way. God grant 1900
may be better." In part this was the expression of the melancholy
natural to ill health, but it was a characteristic cry from one always
too likely to underrate herself. Surely the prayer was granted, for
the year 1900 gave her again a spring in Rome and Florence, and was
filled with rich and significant experiences.