and I, for my part, am in no hurry to get away again. It is just
such a house as you would expect to find a man like Stoddard in: a
poet’s home and literary workshop. There is no space, and no need,
for a parlor. The front room (to the left as you enter the house) is
called the library. Its general air is decidedly luxurious. There is
a profusion of easy chairs and lounges, and of graceful tables laden
with odd and precious bits of bric-à-brac. There is more bric-à-brac on
the mantel-piece. The walls are covered close with paintings. At the
windows hang heavy curtains; and the portière at a wide doorway at the
back of the apartment frames a pleasant glimpse of the dining-room.
Rugs of various dimensions cover the matting almost without break.
The fireplace is flanked on each side by high book-cases of
artistically carved dark wood, filled with books in handsome bindings.
A full-length portrait of an officer in uniform fills the space above
the mantel-piece: it is Colonel Wilson Barstow, of General Dix’s staff,
who served at Fortress Monroe during the war, and died in 1868. It
hangs where it does because the Colonel was Mrs. Stoddard’s brother.
Between the front windows is a plaster medallion of the master of the
house, by his old friend Launt Thompson. (A similar likeness of “Willy”
Stoddard, and a plaster cast of his little hand, both by Mr. Thompson,
are the only perishable mementoes his parents now possess--save “a lock
of curly golden hair”--to remind them of their first-born, dead since
’61.) On the east wall is a canvas somewhat more than a foot square,
giving a full-length view of Mr. Stoddard, standing, as he appeared to
T. W. Wood in 1873, when the snow-white hair against which the laurel
shows so green to-day had just begun to lose its glossy blackness.
Alongside of this hangs a larger frame, showing W. T. Richards’s
conception of “The Castle in the Air” described in the first poem of
Stoddard’s that attracted wide attention,--
A stately marble pile whose pillars rise
From deep-set bases fluted to the dome.
* * * * *
The spacious windows front the rising sun,
And when its splendor smites them, many-paned,
Tri-arched and richly-stained,
A thousand mornings brighten there as one.
The painting has grown mellow with the flight of a quarter-century.
It shows the influence of Turner very plainly, and is accepted by the
painter of the scene in words as a fair interpretation in color of
the _château en Espagne_ of his song. It was a favorite of Sandford
Gifford’s--another dear friend of the poet’s, whose handiwork in lake
and mountain scenery lights up other corners of the room. Kindred
treasures are a masterly head, by Eastman Johnson, of a Nantucket
fisherman, gazing seaward through his glass; a glimpse of the Alps,
presented by Bierstadt to Mrs. Stoddard; a swamp-scene, by Homer
Martin, in his earlier manner; a view of the Bay of Naples, by
Charles Temple Dix, the General’s son; and bits of color by Smillie,
Jarvis McEntee, S. G. W. Benjamin, and Miss Fidelia Bridges. Two
panels (“Winter” and “Summer”) were given to the owner by a friend
who had once leased a studio to J. C. Thom, a pupil of Edouard
Frère. When the artist gave up the room, these pictures were sawed
out of the doors on which he had painted them. Besides two or three
English water-colors, there are small copies by the late Cephas G.
Thompson, whose art Hawthorne delighted to praise, of Simon Memmi’s
heads of Petrarch and Laura, at Florence. A more personal interest
attaches to an oil-painting by Bayard Taylor--a peep at Buzzard’s Bay
from Mattapoisett, disclosing a part of the view visible from Mrs.
Stoddard’s early home. Not all of these works are to be found in the
library; for in our hurried tour of inspection we have crossed the
threshold of the dining-room, where such prosaic bits of furniture as a
sideboard, dinner-table and straight-backed chairs hold back the flood
of books. One wave has swept through, however, and is held captive in a
small case standing near the back windows. The summer light that finds
its way into this room is filtered through a mass of leaves shading a
veranda similar to the one in front.
The poet’s “den,” on the second floor, embraces the main room and an
alcove, and is lighted by three windows overlooking the street. His
writing-desk--a mahogany one, of ancient make--stands between two of
the windows. Above it hangs a large engraving of Lawrence’s Thackeray,
beneath which, in the same frame, you may read “The Sorrows of Werther”
in the balladist’s own inimitable hand. As you sit at the desk, Mrs.
Browning looks down upon you from a large photograph on the wall at
your right--one which her husband deemed the best she ever had taken.
A delicate engraving hangs beside it of Holmes’s miniature of Byron--a
portrait of which Byron himself said, “I prefer that likeness to any
which has ever been done of me by any artist whatever.” It shows a
head almost feminine in its beauty. An etching of Hugo is framed above
a striking autograph that Mr. Stoddard paid a good price for--at a
time, as he says, when he thought he had some money. The sentiment
is practical: “Donnez cent francs aux pauvres de New York. Donnez
moins, si vous n’êtes pas assez riche; mais donnez. VICTOR HUGO.”
The manuscript, which looks as if it might have been written with a
sharpened match, is undated and unaddressed. Every one, therefore, is
at liberty to regard it as a personal appeal or command to himself.
Close beside the Byron portrait is an etching of Mr. Stedman; into its
frame the owner has thrust that gentleman’s visiting card, on which,
over the date “Feb. 14, 1885,” are scribbled these lines:
It is a Friar of whiskers gray
That kneels before your shrine,
And, as of old, would once more pray
To be your VALENTINE.
Among the treasures of mingled literary and artistic interest in this
room is a small portrait of Smollett. It is painted on wood, and the
artist’s name is not given. Mr. Stoddard has not found it reproduced
among the familiar likenesses of the novelist. Along the wall above the
mantel-piece runs a rare print of Blake’s “Canterbury Pilgrimage,”
with the designation of each pilgrim engraved beneath his figure. It
is noteworthy for its dissimilarity, as well as its likeness, to the
poet-painter’s more familiar works. The main wall in the alcove I
have spoken of displays a life-size crayon head of Mr. Stoddard, done
by Alexander Laurie in 1863. It also gives support to several rows
of shelves, running far and rising high, filled chock-full of books
less prettily bound than those in the library, but of greater value,
perhaps, to the eyes that have so often pored upon them. It is the
poet’s collection, to which he has been adding ever since he was a
boy, of English poetry of all periods; and it has been consulted to
good purpose by many other scholars than the owner. Under an engraving
of Raphael’s portrait of himself, at the back of the larger room, is
a case filled with books of the same class, but rarer still--indeed,
quite priceless to their owner; for they are the tomes once treasured
by kindred spirits, and inscribed with names writ in that indelible
water which still preserves the name of Keats.
Of the books of this class, from the libraries of famous authors--some
being presentation copies, and others containing either the owners’
signatures or their autographic annotations of the text,--may be
mentioned volumes that once belonged to Edmund Waller, Thomas Gray,
Sir Joshua Reynolds, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Lamb, William
Wordsworth, John Keats, Robert Southey, Hartley Coleridge, Lord
Byron, Thomas Lisle Bowles, Felicia Hemans, Thomas Campbell, William
Motherwell, and Caroline Norton. Among signatures or documents in
the manuscript of famous men are the names of William Alexander,
Earl of Sterling; Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke; Thomas Sackville,
Lord Buckhurst, author of “Gorboduc”; Samuel Garth, author of “The
Dispensary,” and others. Among the manuscripts cherished by Mr.
Stoddard are letters or poems from the pens of William Shenstone,
Burns, Cowper, Sheridan, Southey, Wordsworth, Sir Walter Scott, Thomas
Moore, Campbell, Dickens, Thackeray, Bryant, Longfellow, Poe, Lowell,
Bayard Taylor, Ebenezer Elliott, “the Corn Law Rhymer”; Walter Savage
Landor, James Montgomery, Felicia Hemans, Thomas Hood, Bryan Waller
Procter (“Barry Cornwall”), Miss Mitford, Lord Tennyson, Swinburne,
Frederick Locker-Lampson, N. P. Willis, Charles Brockden Brown, J. G.
Whittier, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Leigh Hunt, Washington Irving, Robert
Browning, Mrs. Browning, and scores of other English and American poets
and writers of distinction.
Included in this choice collection are the manuscripts of Hunt’s “Abou
Ben Adhem,” Thackeray’s “Sorrows of Werther,” Bryant’s “Antiquity of
Freedom,” Longfellow’s “Arrow and Song” (“I shot an arrow into the
air”), Mrs. Browning’s “Castrucci Castricanni,” pages of Bryant’s
translation of Homer, Tennyson’s “Tears, Idle Tears,” Lord Houghton’s
“I Wandered by the Brookside,” Barry Cornwall’s “Mother’s Last Song,”
Sheridan’s “Clio’s Protest” (containing the famous lines,
They write with ease to show their breeding,
But easy writing’s cursed hard reading),
Poe’s sonnet “To Zante,” Holmes’s “Last Leaf,” Lowell’s “Zekle’s
Courtin’” and a manuscript volume containing nearly all of Bayard
Taylor’s “Poems of the Orient.” His library of English poets contains
many now scarce first editions--Drayton’s Poems, 1619; Lord Sterling’s
“Monarchic Tragedies,” 1602; Brooke’s “Alaham Mustapha,” 1631; Milton’s
Poems, 1645; the early editions of Suckling, etc.
The most precious of all Mr. Stoddard’s literary relics is a lock of
light brown or golden hair--the veriest wisp,--that came to him from
his friend and brother poet Mr. George H. Boker of Philadelphia. Mr.
Boker had it from Leigh Hunt’s American editor, S. Adams Lee, to whom
it was given by Hunt himself. It was “the distinguished physician
Dr. Beatty” who gave it to the English poet; and it was Hoole, the
translator of Tasso, who gave it to Beatty. The next previous owner to
Hoole was Dr. Samuel Johnson. Further back than this, Leigh Hunt could
not trace it; but he believed it to be a portion of the lock attached
to a miniature portrait of Milton known to have existed in the time of
Addison and supposed to have been in his possession. That it came from
the august head of the poet of “Paradise Lost” had never been doubted
down to Dr. Beatty’s day; so at least wrote Hunt, in a manuscript of
which Mr. Stoddard preserves a copy, in Lee’s handwriting, in a volume
of Hunt’s poems edited by that gentleman. There is a fine sonnet of
Hunt’s on these golden threads, written when they passed into his
possession; and Keats’s poem, “On Seeing a Lock of Milton’s Hair,” has
made the relic still more memorable. It is smaller now than it was
when these great spirits were sojourning on earth, for Leigh Hunt gave
a part of it to Mrs. Browning. “Reverence these hairs, O Americans!
(as indeed you will),” he wrote, “for _in them_ your great Republican
harbinger on this side of the Atlantic appears, for the first time,
actually and _bodily_ present on the other side of it.” A companion
locket holds a wisp of silver hairs from the head of Washington.
It would be a serious oversight to ignore any member of the little
Stoddard household--to make no mention of that gifted woman who caught
the contagion of writing from her husband, and has won not only his
cordial “Well done,” but the admiration of such authoritative critics
as Hawthorne and Stedman, to name but these two; or of that son who
is now an only child, and therefore trebly dear to both his parents.
Mrs. Stoddard is known and admired as a poet; the bound volumes of
_Harper’s Monthly_ bear abundant testimony to her skill as a writer
of short stories; and her powers as a novelist are receiving fresh
recognition through the republication, by Cassell & Co., of “Two Men,”
“The Morgesons” and “Temple House.” The son, Lorimer, a youth of
twenty-four, has chosen the stage as his profession, and in that very
popular piece, “The Henrietta,” has made his mark in the character of
the young nobleman. In speaking of the home of the Stoddards, some
reference to the long-haired little terrier, Œnone, may be pardoned.
She has been an inmate of the house for many years; and she trots
here and there about it, upstairs and down, as freely and with as few
misadventures as if she were not stone-blind.
The blindness of Œnone reminds me that her master (whom rheumatism
once robbed of the use of his right hand for many years) is gradually
losing the use of his eyes. I found him this summer, on his return
from a few weeks’ sojourn in the Adirondacks, reading and writing with
the aid of a powerful magnifying-glass. He said the trip had done him
little good in this respect; and the glare of the sunlight upon the
salt water at Sag Harbor, whither he was about to repair for the rest
of the season, was not likely to prove more beneficial. This seashore
town, where his friend Julian Hawthorne long since established himself,
has of late years taken Mattapoisett’s place as the Stoddards’ summer
home.
A personal description of Mr. Stoddard should be unnecessary. At this
late day few of his readers can be unfamiliar with his face. It has
been engraved more than once, and printed not only with his collected
poems, but in magazines of wider circulation than the books of any
living American poet. It is not likely to disappoint the admirer of
his work, for it is a poet’s face, as well as a handsome one. The
clear-cut, regular features are almost feminine in their delicacy;
but in the dark eyes, now somewhat dimmed though full of thought and
feeling, there is a look that counteracts any impression of effeminacy
due to the refinement of the features, or the melodious softness of
the voice. The hair and beard of snowy whiteness make a harmonious
setting for the poet’s ruddy countenance. Though slightly bowed, as he
steps forward to meet you (with left hand advanced) Mr. Stoddard still
impresses you as a man of more than middle height. His cordial though
undemonstrative greeting puts the stranger at his ease at once; for his
manner is as gentle as his speech is frank.
JOSEPH B. GILDER.
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
IN HARTFORD
Until Mrs. Stowe’s health began to fail, twice a day regularly she
walked abroad for an hour or more, and between times she was apt to
be more or less out of doors. The weather had to be unmistakably
prohibitory to keep her housed from morning till night. Not
infrequently her forenoon stroll took her to the house of her son,
the Rev. Charles E. Stowe, two miles away, in the north part of the
city. So long as the season admitted of it, she inclined to get off
the pavement into the fields; and she was not afraid to climb over or
under a fence. As one would infer from her writings, she was extremely
fond of wild flowers, and from early spring to late autumn invariably
came in with her hands full of them. To a friend who met her once on
one of her outings, she exhibited a spray of leaves, and passed on
with the single disconsolate remark, “Not one flower can I find,” as
if she had failed of her object. As a general thing she preferred to
be unaccompanied on her walks. She moved along at a good pace, but, so
to speak, quietly, with her head bent somewhat forward, and at times
so wrapped in thought as to pass without recognition people whom she
knew, even when saluted by them. Yet she would often pause to talk
with children whom she saw at their sports, and amuse both herself and
them with kindly inquiries about their affairs--the game they were
playing or what not. One day she stopped a little girl of the writer’s
acquaintance, who was performing the then rather unfeminine feat of
riding a bicycle, and had her show how she managed the mount and the
dismount, etc., while she looked on laughing and applauding. It was
very much her way, in making her pedestrian rounds, to linger and
watch workingmen employed in their various crafts, and to enter into
conversation with them--always in a manner to give them pleasure. She
said once: “I keep track of all the new houses going up in town, and
I have talked with the men who are building most of them.” A number
of years ago her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, sent her a letter which
he had received from a friend in Germany, condoling with him on the
supposed event of her decease, a rumor of which had somehow got started
in Europe; and this letter afforded her no little entertainment,
especially its closing with the expression “Peace to her ashes.” “I
guess,” she observed with a humorous smile, and using her native
dialect, “the gentleman would think my ashes pretty lively, if he was
here.” To what multitudes was her continued presence in the world she
blessed a grateful circumstance!
Mrs. Stowe resided in Hartford after 1864, the family having removed
thither from Andover, Massachusetts, upon the termination of Prof.
Stowe’s active professional career. Her attachment to the city dated
back to her youth, when she passed some years there. It was also the
home of several of her kindred and near friends. She first lived
in a house built for her after her own design--a delightful house,
therefore. But its location proved, by and by, for various reasons,
so unsatisfactory that it was given up; and after an interval, spent
chiefly at her summer place in Florida, the house where she lived until
her death in 1896, was purchased. It is an entirely modest dwelling,
of the cottage style, and stands about a mile west of the Capitol in
Forest Street, facing the east. The plot which it occupies--only a
few square rods in extent--is well planted with shrubbery (there is
scarcely space for trees) and is, of course, bright with flowers in
their season. At the rear it joins the grounds of Mark Twain, and is
but two minutes’ walk distant from the former home of Charles Dudley
Warner. The interior of the house is plain, and of an ordinary plan. On
the right, as you enter, the hall opens into a good-sized parlor, which
in turn opens into another back of it. On the left is the dining-room.
In furnishing it is altogether simple, as suits with its character,
and with the moderate circumstances of its occupants. Yet it is a
thoroughly attractive and charming home; for it bears throughout,
in every detail of arrangement, the signature of that refined taste
which has the art and secret of giving an air of grace to whatever
it touches. The pictures, which are obviously heart selections, are
skilfully placed, and seem to extend to the caller a friendly greeting.
Among them are a number of flower-pieces (chiefly wild) by Mrs. Stowe’s
own hand.
While there are abundant indications of literary culture visible, there
is little to denote the abode of one of the most famous authors of
the age. Still, by one and another token, an observant stranger would
soon discover whose house he was in, and be reminded of the world-wide
distinction her genius won, and of that great service of humanity with
which her name is forever identified. He would, for instance, remark
on its pedestal in the bow-window, a beautiful bronze statuette, by
Cumberworth, called “The African Woman of the Fountain”; and on an
easel in the back parlor a lovely engraving of the late Duchess of
Sutherland and her daughter--a gift from her son, the present Duke
of that name--subscribed: “Mrs. Stowe, with the Duke of Sutherland’s
kind regards, 1869.” Should he look into a low oaken case standing in
the hall, he would find there the twenty-six folio volumes of the
“Affectionate and Christian Address of Many Thousands of Women in
Great Britain and Ireland to their Sisters of the United States of
America,” pleading the cause of the slave, and signed with over half
a million names, which was delivered to Mrs. Stowe in person, at a
notable gathering at Stafford House, in England, in 1853; and with it
similar addresses from the citizens of Leeds, Glasgow and Edinburgh,
presented at about the same time. The house, indeed, is a treasury
of such relics, testimonials of reverence and gratitude, trophies of
renown from many lands--enough to furnish a museum--all of the highest
historic interest and value; but for the most part they are out of
sight. Hid away in closets and seldom-opened book-cases is a priceless
library of “Uncle Tom” literature, including copies of most of its
thirty-seven translations. Somewhere is Mrs. Stowe’s copy of the first
American edition, with the first sheet of the original manuscript
(which, however, was not written first) pasted on the fly-leaf, showing
that three several beginnings were made before the setting of the
introductory scene was fixed upon.
There are relics, also, of a more private sort. For example, a smooth
stone of two or three pounds weight, and a sketch or study on it
by Ruskin, made at a hotel on Lake Neufchâtel, where he and Mrs.
Stowe chanced to meet; he having fetched it in from the lake-shore
one evening and painted it in her presence to illustrate his meaning
in something he had said. One of her most prized possessions was a
golden chain of ten links, which, on occasion of the gathering at
Stafford House that has been referred to, the Duchess of Sutherland
took from her own arm and clasped upon Mrs. Stowe’s, saying: “This
is the memorial of a chain which we trust will soon be broken.” On
several of the ten links were engraved the great dates in the annals of
emancipation in England; and the hope was expressed that she would live
to add to them other dates of like import in the progress of liberty
this side the Atlantic. That was in 1853. Twelve years later every link
had its inscription, and the record was complete.
It was difficult to realize, as one was shown memorials of this kind,
that the fragile, gentle-voiced little lady, who stood by explaining
them, was herself the heroine in chief of the sublime conflict they
recall. For a more unpretending person every way than she was, or one
seeming to be more unconscious of gifts and works of genius, or of a
great part acted in life, it is not possible to imagine. In her quiet
home, attended by her daughters, surrounded by respect and affection,
filled with the divine calm of the Christian faith, in perfect charity
with all mankind, the most celebrated of American women passed the
tranquil evening of her days. She would often be found seated at the
piano, her hand straying over its keys--that hand that was clothed with
such mighty power,--singing softly to herself those hymns of Gospel
hope which were dear to her heart through all her earthly pilgrimage,
alike in cloud and in sunshine. During her last years she almost wholly
laid her pen aside, her last work having been the preparation, with her
son’s assistance, of a brief memoir of her honored husband, who passed
away in 1886.
There continued to come to her in retirement, often from distant
and exalted sources, messages of honor and remembrance, which she
welcomed with equal pleasure and humility. Among them was a letter
from Mr. Gladstone, inspired by his reading “The Minister’s Wooing”
for the first time, and written in the midst of his public cares. What
satisfaction it gave her may be judged by an extract from it. After
telling her that, though he had long meant to read the book, he had
not found an opportunity to do so till a month or two before, he says:
“It was only then that I acquired a personal acquaintance with the
beautiful and noble picture of Puritan life which in that work you have
exhibited, upon a pattern felicitous beyond example, so far as my
knowledge goes. I really know not among four or five of the characters
(though I suppose Mary ought to be preferred as nearest to the image of
our Saviour), to which to give the crown. But under all circumstances
and apart from the greatest claims, I must reserve a little corner of
admiration for Cerinthy Ann.”
JOSEPH H. TWICHELL.
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
IN HARTFORD