Julia Ward Howe Part 16

Again, we see ourselves cl.u.s.tered round the piano while our mother sang to us; songs of all nations, from the Polish drinking-songs that Uncle Sam had learned in his student days in Germany, down to the Negro melodies which were very near our hearts.

Best of all, however, we loved her own songs: cradle-songs and nursery nonsense made for our very selves--

"(Sleep, my little child.

So gentle, sweet and mild!

The little lamb has gone to rest, The little bird is in its nest,--"

"Put in the donkey!" cries Laura. The golden voice goes on without a pause--

"The little donkey in the stable Sleeps as sound as he is able; All things now their rest pursue, You are sleepy too!)"

Again, she would sing pa.s.sionate songs of love or battle, or hymns of lofty faith and aspiration. One and all, we listened eagerly; one and all, we too began to see visions and dream dreams.

Now and then, the Muse and Humanity had to stand aside and wait while the children had a party; such a party as no other children ever had.

What wonder, when both parents turned the full current of their power into this channel?

Our mother writes of one such festival:--

"My guests arrived in omnibus loads at four o'clock. My notes to parents concluded with the following P.S.: 'Return-omnibus provided, with insurance against plum-cake and other accidents.' A donkey carriage afforded great amus.e.m.e.nt out of doors, together with swing, bowling-alley, and the Great Junk. While all this was going on, the H.'s, J. S., and I prepared a theatrical exhibition, of which I had made a hasty outline. It was the story of 'Blue Beard.' We had curtains which drew back and forth, and regular footlights. You can't think how good it was! There were four scenes. My antique cabinet was the 'Blue Beard'

cabinet; we yelled in delightful chorus when the door was opened, and the children stretched their necks to the last degree to see the horrible sight. The curtain closed upon a fainting-fit done by four women. In the third scene we were scrubbing the fatal key, when I cried out, 'Try the "Mustang Liniment"! It's the liniment for us, for you know we _must hang_ if we don't succeed!' This, which was made on the spur of the moment, overcame the whole audience with laughter, and I myself shook so that I had to go down into the tub in which we were scrubbing the key. Well, to make a long story short, our play was very successful, and immediately afterward came supper. There were four long tables for the children; twenty sat at each. Ice-cream, cake, blanc-mange, and delicious sugar-plums, oranges, etc., were served up 'in style.' We had our supper a little later. Three omnibus loads went from my door; the last--the grown people--at nine o'clock."

And again:--

"I have written a play for our doll-theatre, and performed it yesterday afternoon with great success. It occupied nearly an hour. I had alternately to grunt and squeak the parts, while Chev played the puppets. The effect was really extremely good. The spectators were in a dark room, and the little theatre, lighted by a lamp from the top, looked very pretty."

It was one of these parties of which the Doctor wrote to Charles Sumner: "Altogether it was a good affair, a religious affair; I say religious, for there is nothing which so calls forth my love and grat.i.tude to G.o.d as the sight of the happiness for which He has given the capacity and furnished the means; and this happiness is nowhere more striking than in the frolics of the young."

Among the plays given at Green Peace were the "Three Bears," the Doctor appearing as the Great Big Huge Bear; and the "Rose and the Ring," in which he played Kutasoff Hedzoff and our mother Countess Gruffanuff, while John A. Andrew, not yet Governor, made an unforgettable Prince Bulbo.

It was a matter of course to us children, that "Papa and Mamma" should play with us, sing to us, tell us stories, bathe our b.u.mps, and accompany us to the dentist; these were things that papas and mammas did! Looking back now, with some realization of all the other things they did, we wonder how they managed it. For one thing, both were rapid workers; for another, both had the power of leading and inspiring others to work; for a third, so far as we can see, neither ever wasted a moment; for a fourth, neither ever reached the point where there was not some other task ahead, to be begun as soon as might be.

Life with a Comet-Apostle was not always easy. Some one once expressed to "Auntie Francis" wonder at the patience with which she endured all the troublesome traits of her much-loved husband. "My dear," she replied, "I shipped as Captain's mate, for the voyage!"

Our mother, quoting this, says, "I cannot imagine a more useful motto for married life."

During the thirty-four years of her own married life the Doctor was captain, beyond dispute; yet sometimes the mate felt that she must take her own way, and took it quietly. She was fond of quoting the words of Thomas Garrett,[38] whose house was for years a station of the Underground Railway, and who helped many slaves to freedom.

[38] Of Wilmington, Delaware.

"How did you manage it?" she asked him.

His reply sank deep into her mind.

"It was borne in upon me at an early period, that if I told no one what I intended to do, I should be enabled to do it."

The bond between our mother and father was not to be entirely broken even by death. She survived him by thirty-four years; but she never discussed with any one of us a question of deep import, or national consideration, without saying, "Your father would think thus, say thus!"

It has been told elsewhere[39] how she once, being in Newport and waked from sleep by some noise, called to him; and how he, in Boston, heard her, and asked, when next they met, "Why did you call me?" To the end of her life, if startled or alarmed, she never failed to cry aloud, "Chev!"

[39] _Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe._

Children were not the only guests at Green Peace. Some of us remember Kossuth's visit; our mother often told of the day when John Brown knocked at the door, and she opened it herself. To all of us, Charles Sumner and his brothers, Albert and George, Hillard, Aga.s.siz, Andrew, Parker were familiar figures, and fit naturally into the background of Green Peace.

Of these Charles Sumner, always the Doctor's closest and best-beloved friend, is most familiarly remembered. We called him "the harmless giant"; and one of us was in the habit of using his stately figure as a rule of measurement. Knowing that he was just six feet tall, she would say that a thing was so much higher or lower than Mr. Sumner. His deep musical voice, his rare but kindly smile, are not to be forgotten.

We do not remember Nathaniel Hawthorne's coming to the house, but his shy disposition is ill.u.s.trated by the record of a visit made by our parents to his house at Concord. While they were in the parlor, talking with Mrs. Hawthorne, they saw a tall, slim man come down the stairs, and Mrs. Hawthorne called out, "Husband! Husband! Dr. Howe and Mrs. Howe are here!" Hawthorne bolted across the hall and out through the door without even looking into the parlor.

Of Whittier our mother says:--

"I shall always be glad that I saw the poet Whittier in his youth and mine. I was staying in Boston during the winter of 1847, a young mother with two dear girl babies, when Sumner, I think, brought Whittier to our rooms and introduced him to me. His appearance then was most striking.

His eyes glowed like black diamonds--his hair was of the same hue, brushed back from his forehead. Several were present on this occasion who knew him familiarly, and one of these persons bantered him a little on his bachelor state. Mr. Whittier said in reply: 'The world's people have taken so many of our Quaker girls that there is none left for me.'

A year or two later, my husband invited him to dine, but was detained so late that I had a tete-a-tete of half an hour with Mr. Whittier. We sat near the fire, rather shy and silent, both of us. Whenever I spoke to Whittier, he hitched his chair nearer to the fire. At last Dr. Howe came in. I said to him afterwards, 'My dear, if you had been a little later, Mr. Whittier would have gone up the chimney.'"

The most welcome visitor of all was Uncle Sam Ward. He came into the house like light: we warmed our hands at his fire and were glad. It was not because he brought us peaches and gold bracelets, Virginia hams (to be boiled after his own recipe, with a bottle of champagne, a wisp of new-mown hay and--we forget what else!), and fine editions of Horace: it was because he brought himself.

"I disagree with Sam Ward," said Charles Sumner, "on almost every known topic: but when I have talked with him five minutes I forget everything save that he is the most delightful companion in the world!"

A volume might be filled with Uncle Sam's _mots_ and jests; but print would do him cold justice, lacking the kindling of his eyes and smile, the mellow music of his laugh. Memory pictures rise up, showing him and our mother together in every variety of scene. We see them coming out of church together after a long and dull sermon, and hear him whisper to her, "_Ce pauvre Dieu!_"

Again, we see them driving together after some function at which the address of one Potts had roused Uncle Sam to anger; hear him pouring out a torrent of eloquent vituperation, forgetting all else in the joy of freeing his mind. Pausing to draw breath, he glanced round, and, seeing an unfamiliar landscape, exclaimed, "Where are we?" "At Potsdam, I think!" said our mother quietly.

Hardly less dear to us than Green Peace, and far dearer to her, was the summer home at Lawton's Valley, in Portsmouth,[40] Rhode Island. Here, as at South Boston, the Doctor's genius for "construction and repairs"

wrought a lovely miracle. He found a tiny farmhouse, sheltered from the seawinds by a rugged hillock; near at hand, a rocky gorge, through which tumbled a wild little stream, checked here and there by a rude dam; in one place turning the wheel of a mill, where the neighboring farmers brought corn to grind. His quick eye caught the possibilities of the situation. He bought the place and proceeded to make of it a second earthly paradise. The house was enlarged, trees were felled here, planted there; a garden appeared as if by magic; in the Valley itself the turbulent stream was curbed by stone embankments; the open s.p.a.ce became an emerald lawn, set at intervals with Norway spruces; under the great ash tree that towered in the centre rustic seats and tables were placed. Here, through many years, the "Mistress of the Valley" was to pa.s.s her happiest hours; to the Valley and its healing balm of quiet she owed the inspiration of much of her best work.

[40] Near Newport, of which it is really a suburb.

The following letters fill in the picture of a time to which in her later years she looked back as one of the happiest of her life.

Yet she was often unhappy, sometimes suffering. Humanity, her husband's faithful taskmistress, had not yet set her to work, and the long hours of his service left her lonely, and--the babies once in bed--at a loss.

Her eyes, injured in Rome, in 1843, by the throwing of _confetti_ (made, in those days, of lime), gave her much trouble, often exquisite pain.

She rarely, in our memory, used them in the evening. Yet, in later life, all the miseries, little and big, were dismissed with a smile and a sigh and a shake of the head. "I was very naughty in those days!" she would say.

_To her sister Louisa_

GREEN PEACE, Feb. 18, 1853.

MY DEAREST LOUISA,--

I have kept a long silence with you, but I suppose that it is too evident before this time that letter-writing is not my _forte_, to need any further explanation of such a fact. Let me say, however, once for all, that I do not stand upon my reputation as a letter-writer. About my poetry and my music, I may be touchy and exacting--about my talents for drawing, correspondence, and housekeeping, I can only say that my pretensions are as small as my merits. With such humility, Justice herself must be satisfied. It is Modesty with her pink lining (commonly mistaken for blushes) turned outside. Are you surprised, my love, at the new style of my writing, and do you think I must have been taking lessons of Mr. Bristow? Learn that my eyes do not allow me to look attentively at my writing, and that I give a glance and a scribble, in a truly frantic and indiscriminate manner. Having ruined my own eyes, you see, I am doing my utmost to ruin the eyes of my friends. This is human nature--all evil seeks thus to propagate itself, while good is satisfied with itself, and stays where it is. When I think of this, I ask myself, does not the devil, then, send missionaries? You will agree with me that he at least sends amba.s.sadors. I have pa.s.sed, so far, a very studious winter. Never, since my youth, have I lived so much in reading and writing--hence these eyes! Of course, you exclaim, what madness! but, indeed, I should have a worse madness if I did not cram myself with books. The bareness and emptiness of life were then insupportable....

Of the nearly eighteen months since my return to America, I have pa.s.sed fourteen at South Boston. Last winter I was fresh from my travels, and had still strength enough to keep up my relation with society, and to invite people a good deal to my house. But this year I am more worn down, my health quite impaired, and the exertion of going out or receiving at home is too much for me....

I have made acquaintance with the Russell Lowells, but we are too far apart to profit much by it. I cannot swim about in this frozen ocean of Boston life in search of friends. I feel as if I had struggled enough with it, as if I could now fold my arms and go down....

_To the same_