Julia Ward Howe Part 15

Not unto thee, Art's stolen child, My hand should yield it up;

Why should I waste its gold on one That holds a guerdon bright-- A chalice, flashing in the sun Of perfect chrysolite.

And shaped on such a swelling sphere As if some G.o.d had pressed Its flowing crystal, soft and clear On Hebe's virgin breast?

What though the bitter grapes of earth Have mingled in its wine?

The stolen fruits of heavenly birth Have made its hue divine.

Oh, Lady, there are charms that win Their way to magic bowers, And they that weave them enter in In spite of mortal powers;

And hearts that seek the chapel's floor Will throb the long aisle through, Though none are waiting at the door To sprinkle holy dew!

I, sitting in the portal gray Of Art's cathedral dim, Can see thee, pa.s.sing in to pray And sing thy first-born hymn;--

Hold out thy hand! these scanty drops Come from a hallowed stream, Its sands, a poet's crumbling hopes, Its mists, his fading dream.

Pa.s.s on. Around the inmost shrine A few faint tapers burn; This altar, Priestess, shall be thine To light and watch in turn;

Above it smiles the Mother Maid, It leans on Love and Art, And in its glowing depth is laid The first true woman's heart!

O. W. H.

BOSTON, Jan. 1, 1854.

This tribute from the beloved Autocrat touched her deeply, the more so that in the "Commonwealth"[35] she had recently reviewed some of his own work rather severely. She made her acknowledgment in a poem ent.i.tled "A Vision of Montgomery Place,"[36] in which she pictures herself as a sheeted penitent knocking at Dr. Holmes's door.

[35] The _Commonwealth_ was a daily newspaper published in the Anti-Slavery interest. Dr. Howe was one of its organizers, and for some time its editor-in-chief. She says, "Its immediate object was to reach the body politic which distrusted rhetoric and oratory, but which sooner or later gives heed to dispa.s.sionate argument and the advocacy of plain issues." She helped the Doctor in his editorial work, and enjoyed it greatly, writing literary and critical articles, while he furnished the political part.

[36] Printed in _Words for the Hour_, 1857.

I was the saucy Commonwealth: Oh! help me to repent.

Behind my embrasure well-braced, With every chance to hit, I made your banner, waving wide, A mark for wayward wit.

'Twas now my turn to walk the street, In dangerous singleness, And run, as bravely as I might, The gauntlet of the press.

And when I pa.s.sed your balcony Expecting only blows, From height or vantage-ground, you stooped To whelm me with a rose.

A rose, intense with crimson life And hidden perfume sweet-- Call out your friends, and see me do My penance in the street.

She writes her sister Annie:--

"My book came out, darling, on Friday last. You have it, I hope, ere this time. The simple t.i.tle, 'Pa.s.sion Flowers,' was invented by Scherb[37] and approved by Longfellow. Its success became certain at once. Hundreds of copies have already been sold, and every one likes it.

Fields foretells a second edition--it is sure to pay for itself. It has done more for me, in point of consideration here, than a fortune of a hundred thousand dollars. Parker quoted some of my verses in his Christmas sermon, and this I considered as the greatest of honors. I sat there and heard them, glowing all over. The authorship is, of course, no secret now...."

[37] A German scholar, at this time an _habitue_ of the house.

Speaking of the volume long after, she says, "It was a timid performance upon a slender reed."

Three years later a second volume of verse was published by Ticknor and Fields under the t.i.tle of "Words for the Hour." Of this, George William Curtis wrote, "It is a better book than its predecessor, but will probably not meet with the same success."

She had written plays ever since she was nine years old. In 1857, the same year which saw the publication of "Words for the Hour," she produced her first serious dramatic work, a five-act drama ent.i.tled "The World's Own." It was performed in New York at Wallack's Theatre, and in Boston with Matilda Heron and the elder Sothern in the leading parts.

She notes that one critic p.r.o.nounced the play "full of literary merits and of dramatic defects"; and she adds, "It did not, as they say, 'keep the stage.'"

Yet her brother Sam writes to her from New York: "Lenore still draws the best houses; there was hardly standing room on Friday night"; and again: "Mr. Russell went last night, a second time, bought the libretto, which I send you by this mail--declares that there is not a grander play in our language. He says that it is full of dramatic vigor, that the interest never flags--but that unhappily Miss H., with the soul and self-abandonment of a great actress, lacks those graces of elocution, which should set forth the beauties of your verses."

Some of the critics blamed the author severely for her choice of a subject--the betrayal and abandonment of an innocent girl by a villain; they thought it unfeminine, not to say indelicate, for a woman to write of such matters.

At that time nothing could be farther from her thoughts than to be cla.s.sed with the advocates of Women's Rights as they then appeared; yet in "The World's Own" are pa.s.sages which show that already her heart cherished the high ideal of her s.e.x, for which her later voice was to be uplifted:--

I think we call them Women, who uphold Faint hearts and strong, with angel countenance; Who stand for all that's high in Faith's resolve, Or great in Hope's first promise.

Ev'n the frail creature with a moment's bloom, That pays your pleasure with her sacrifice, And, having first a marketable price, Grows thenceforth valueless,--ev'n such an one, Lifted a little from the mire, and purged By hands severely kind, will give to view The germ of all we honor, in the form Of all that we abhor. You fling a jewel Where wild feet tramp, and crushing wheels go by; You cannot tread the splendor from its dust; So, in the shattered relics, shimmers yet Through tears and grime, the pride of womanhood.

We must not forget the Comic Muse. Comparatively little of her humorous verse is preserved; she seldom thought it important enough to make two copies, and the first draft was often lost or given away. The following was written in the fifties, when Wulf Fries was a young and much-admired musician in Boston. Miss Mary Bigelow had invited her to her house "at nine o'clock" to hear him play, meaning nine in the morning. She took this for nine in the evening; the rest explains itself:--

Miss Mary Big'low, you who seem So debonair and kind, Pray, what the devil do you mean (If I may speak my mind)

By asking me to come and hear That Wulf of yours a-Friesing, Then leaving me to cool my heels In manner so unpleasing?

With Mrs. Dr. Susan you That eve, forsooth, were tea-ing: Confess you knew that I should come, And from my wrath were fleeing!

To Mrs. Dr. Susan's I Had not invited been: So when the maid said, "Best go there!"

I answered, "Not so green!"

Within the darksome carriage hid I bottled up my beauty, And, rather foolish, hurried home To fireside and duty.

It's very pleasant, _you_ may think, On winter nights to roam; But when you next invite abroad, _This_ wolf will freeze at home!

While she was pouring out her heart in poem and play, and the Doctor was riding the errands of the hour and binding up the wounds of Humanity, what, it may be asked,--it _was_ asked by anxious friends,--was becoming of the little Howes? Why, the little Howes (there were now five, Maud having been born in November, 1854) were having perhaps the most wonderful childhood that ever children had. Spite of the occasional winters spent in town, our memories centre round Green Peace;--there Paradise blossomed for us. Climbing the cherry trees, picnicking on the terrace behind the house, playing in the bowling-alley, tumbling into the fishpond,--we see ourselves here and there, always merry, always vigorous and robust. We were also studying, sometimes at school, sometimes with our mother, who gave us the earliest lessons in French and music; more often, in those years, under various masters and governesses. The former were apt to be political exiles, the Doctor always having many such on hand, some learned, all impecunious, all seeking employment. We recall a Pole, a Dane, two Germans, one Frenchman. The last, poor man, was married to a Smyrniote woman with a bad temper; neither spoke the other's language, and when they quarrelled they came to the Doctor, demanding his services as interpreter.

Through successive additions, the house had grown to a goodly size; the new part, with large, high-studded rooms, towering above the ancient farmhouse, which nevertheless seemed always the heart of the place.

Between the two was a conservatory, a posy of all sweet flowers: the large greenhouse was down in the garden, under the same roof as the bowling-alley.

The pears and peaches and strawberries of Green Peace were like no others that ever ripened; we see ourselves tagging at our father's heels, watching his pruning and grafting with an absorption equalling his own, learning from him that there must be honor in gardens as elsewhere, and that fruit taken from his hand was sweet, while stolen fruit would be bitter.

We see ourselves gathered in the great dining-room, where the grand piano was, and the Gobelin carpet with the strange beasts and fishes, bought at the sale of the ex-King Joseph Bonaparte's furniture at Bordentown, and the Snyders' Boar Hunt, which one of us could never pa.s.s without a shiver; see ourselves dancing to our mother's playing,--wonderful dances, invented by Flossy, who was always _premiere danseuse_, and whose "Lady Macbeth" dagger dance was a thing to remember.

Then perhaps the door would open, and in would come "Papa" as a bear, in his fur overcoat, growling horribly, and chase the dancers into corners, they shrieking terrified delight.