XX. 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 [288] 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 [289] 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 [290] 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,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 [291] with merry eagerness for the successive glimpses of her. This is the poem I mean:--
More in shadow than light have grown;
Loving souls are not like trees
That strongest and stateliest shoot alone.
I remember well that household of young people in successive summers at Newport, as [292] 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 entree 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 [293] 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 [294] 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.Bigelow 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 [295] classical authorities in New England, gave a list of speakers and subjects, the latter almost all drawn from Mrs. Howe's ready wit. “ 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 [296]
Invitare * Singulari * Benignitate * Placuit
Ergo
Per Has * Litteras * Omnibus * Notum * Sit * Quod
Comitia * Sollemnia
In * Aedibus * Bigelovensibus
Novi Portus
Ante * Diem * Viiii Kalendas * Septembres
Anno * Salutis * CID3 Izzzd 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” [297] 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 = proboscisShe also sang a song occasionally, and once called up a class for recitations from Mother [298] 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
Nose — nose — nose = snub.
Heu! iter didilumThe 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 [299] 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 [300] 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 quickwittedness on the side of tact and courtesy. [301] 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 “Battie [302] 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,--
Felis cum fidulum
Vacca transiluit lunam.
Caniculus ridet
Quum talem videt
Et dish ambulavit cum spoonam.
Weave no more silks, ye Lyons looms,“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. [303] 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.
To deck our girls for gay delights!
The crimson flower of battle blooms,
And solemn marches fill the night.
This was my daring supplement, which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly (Contributors' Club) for October, 1906.
Turning to Mrs. Howe's prose works, one finds something of the same obstruction, here and there, from excess of material. Her autobiography, entitled “Reminiscences,” might [305] easily, in the hands of Mr. M. D. Conway, for instance, have been spread out into three or four interesting octavos; but in her more hurried grasp it is squeezed into one volume, where groups of delightful interviews with heroes at home and abroad are crowded into some single sentence. Her lectures are better arranged and less tantalizing, and it would be hard to find a book in American literature better worth reprinting and distributing than the little volume containing her two addresses on “Modern Society.” In wit, in wisdom, in anecdote, I know few books so racy. Next to it is the lecture “Is Polite Society Polite?” so keen and pungent that it is said a young man was once heard inquiring for Mrs. Howe after hearing it, in a country town, and when asked why he wished to see her, replied, “Well, I did put my brother in the poorhouse, and now that I have heard Mrs. Howe, I suppose that I must take him out.” In the large collection of essays comprised in the same volume with this, there are papers on Paris and on Greece which are full of the finest flavor of anecdote, sympathy, and memory, while here and there in all her books one meets with glimpses of Italy which remind one of that scene on the celebration of the birthday of Columbus, when she sat upon the platform of Faneuil Hall, the [306] only woman, and gave forth sympathetic talk in her gracious way to the loving Italian audience, which gladly listened to their own sweet tongue from her. Then, as always, she could trust herself freely in speech, for she never spoke without fresh adaptation to the occasion, and her fortunate memory for words and names is unimpaired at ninety. Since I am here engaged upon a mere sketch of Mrs. Howe, not a formal memoir, I have felt free to postpone until this time the details of her birth and parentage. She was the daughter of Samuel and Julia Rush (Cutler) Ward, and was born at the house of her parents in the Bowling Green, New York city, on May 27, 1819. She was married on April 14, 1843, at nearly twenty-four years of age, to Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, whom she had met on visits to Boston. They soon went to Europe, the first of many similar voyages,--where her eldest daughter, Julia Romana, was born during the next spring. This daughter was the author of a volume of poems entitled “Stray Clouds,” and of a description of the Summer School of Philosophy at Concord entitled “Philosophiae Quaestor,” and was the founder of a metaphysical club of which she was president. She became the wife of the late Michael Anagnos, of Greek origin, her father's successor [307] in charge of the Institution for the Blind, and the news of her early death was received with general sorrow. Mrs. Howe's second daughter was named Florence Marion, became in 1871 the wife of David Prescott Hall, of the New York Bar, and was author of “Social customs” and “The correct thing,” being also a frequent speaker before the women's clubs. Mrs. Howe's third daughter, Mrs. Laura E. Richards, was married in the same year to Henry Richards, of Gardiner, Maine, a town named for the family of Mr. Richards's mother, who established there a once famous school, the Gardiner Lyceum. The younger Mrs. Richards is author of “Captain January” and other stories of very wide circulation, written primarily for her own children, and culminating in a set of nonsense books of irresistible humor illustrated by herself. Mrs. Howe's youngest daughter, Maud, distinguished for her beauty and social attractiveness, is the wife of Mr. John Elliott, an English artist, and has lived much in Italy, where she has written various books of art and literature, of which “Atalanta in the South” was the first and “Roma Beata” one of the last. Mrs. Howe's only son, Henry Marion, graduated at Harvard University in 1869 and from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1871, is a mining [308] engineer and expert, and is a professor in the School of Mines at Columbia University. His book on “The Metallurgy of Steel” has won for him a high reputation. It will thus be seen that Mrs. Howe has had the rare and perhaps unequaled experience of being not merely herself an author, but the mother of five children, all authors. She has many grandchildren, and even a great-grandchild, whose future career can hardly be surmised. There was held, in honor of Mrs. Howe's eighty-sixth birthday (May 27, 1905), a meeting of the Boston Authors' Club, including a little festival whose plan was taken from the annual Welsh festival of the Eistedfodd, at which every bard of that nation brought four lines of verse --a sort of four-leaved clover — to his chief. This being tried at short notice for Mrs. Howe, there came in some sixty poems, of which I select a few, almost at random, to make up the outcome of the festival, which last did not perhaps suffer from the extreme shortness of the notice:--
[309]
[310]
[311] Mrs. Howe was not apprised of the project in advance, and certainly had not seen the verses; but was, at any rate, ready as usual, and this sketch may well close with her cheery answer:--
[313]
