Julia Ward Howe Part 56

How I left New Orleans, how I came North, how I let myself down here, is no doubt known to you thro' inference. How hot New Orleans was before I left it, you cannot know, nor how sick I was once upon a time, nor how I came up upon iced champagne and recovered myself, and became strong again. Ever since I came home, I have slaved at my report of the Woman's Department. Weary pages have I written. Life seems at last to consist in putting a pen into an inkstand, and taking it out again, scribble, scribble, nibble, nibble (meal-times), and go to bed between whiles....

So ended one of the most interesting and arduous experiences of her life. She always held in affectionate remembrance the city where she had enjoyed and suffered so much, and the friends she made there.

_To Laura_

OAK GLEN, November 4, 1885.

YOU LITTLE HATEFUL THING!

Herewith returned is the letter you wrote for. I had a mind to send it to you, beast that you are, without one word, just to pay you for that postal. Of course, I meant to write you immediately afterward in a separate envelope, telling you that I still love you. But there! I reflected that you could have a bad feeling if you opened the envelope and found no greeting from me. For the sake of posterity, Madam, I declined to give you this bad feeling. I do also retain some proprietorship in a certain pair of eyes which are like Sapphira's. Oh!

I mean sapphires, and I don't want to dim them with any tear diamonds.

"You flatter yourself," replies the Good-Natured One,[96] "to think of my shedding tears about anything that you could say or do, or leave unsaid or undone." Just so. All right. I have got beefsteak for dinner to-day. What do you think of the weather, and does your husband know when your blacking is out?

[96] Laura had once been told that she "would not amount to much without her good nature."

Now, my sweet darling, your old Mammy is just back from a _tremendous_ jaunt. I had a beautiful time in Iowa, and am as well as possible. Only think, travelling and at work for one calendar month, and not a finger ache, 'cept one day, when I had a slight headache. And I brought home over $200 earned by lectures....

_To the same_

THE BERKELEY NUISANCE,[97] NEW YORK, December 26, 1885.

... What have I been doing for the last eight weeks? Never you mind, my little dear. Mostly putting a girdle round the earth by correspondence, and some-ly worrying about my poor relations. Don't you flatter yourself that I ever thought of you under this head. But the ----, and the ----, and the ----, taken together, are enough to give one a turn at the worry-cat system. Well 'm, I had also to see the distribution of the whole edition of my New Orleans Report, and I can only compare this to the process of taking down a house, and of sending each individual brick somewhere, labelled with your compliments; supposing the bricks to be one thousand in number, it would take some time to distribute them, Harry Richards will be able to tell you how much time, and how many masculine oaths would go to each hundred of the articles. Well, that's enough about that. You have had one of my bricks sent you, and hang me if I believe you have read it. Sweetison (a new little 'spression which I have this minute invented), I stayed at Oak Glen until Monday last, which was the 21st. Then I came here by the way of Boston, and arrove on Tuesday evening. Our quarters, or rather eighths, are small, considering my papers and Maud's clothes. The food is fine, the style first-rate, the rigs imposing to a degree, but, ah! I kind of hate it all. New York is too frightfully dirty! and then so stereotyped and commonplace.

Boston losing its prestige? Not as I am at present advised....

[97] Berkeley Chambers, where she and Maud spent this winter.

CHAPTER V

MORE CHANGES

1886-1888; _aet._ 67-69

GIULIA ROMANA ANAGNOS

Giulia Romana! how thy trembling beauty, That oft would shudder at one breath of praise, Comes back to me! before the trump of duty Had marshalled thee in life's laborious ways.

We used to wonder at thy blush in hearing Thy parents praised. We now know what it meant: A consciousness of their gifts reappearing Perchance in thine--to consummation blent.

Oh, she was beautiful, beyond all magic Of sculptor's hand, or pencil to portray!

Something angelical, divinely tragic, Tempered the smile that round her lips would play.

Dear first-born daughter of a hero's heart!

Pa.s.s to perfection, all but perfect here!

We weep not much, remembering where thou art, Yet, child of Poesy! receive a tear.

T. W. PARSONS.

The years 1886 and 1887 were marked by two events which changed materially the course of her private life: the death of Julia, the beloved eldest daughter, and the marriage of Maud, the house-mate and comrade.

During the winter of 1885-86 she made her headquarters in New York.

Lecture engagements, conferences, and sermons took her hither and thither, and much of the time that should have been "precious" was pa.s.sed in trains and boats.

In the last days of February, Julia was stricken with rheumatic fever, which soon developed into typhoid. The weather was "direful: bitter cold and furious wind." Our mother went at once to South Boston, where "arriving, found my dear child seriously but not dangerously ill. Her joy at my coming was very pathetic."

On the 28th she writes:--

"I cannot be sure whether it was on this day that she said to me: 'Mamma, don't you remember the dream you had when Flossy and I were little children, and you were in Europe? You dreamed that you saw us in a boat and that the tide was carrying us away from you. Now the dream has come true, and the tide is bearing me away from you.'

"This saying was very sad to me; but my mind was possessed with the determination that death was not to be thought of."

For a time conditions seemed to improve, and she hastened to New York, where her presence was imperative; but a telegram summoned her back: Julia was not so well, and "a pain as of death" fell on the anxious mother.

"Saw by Katie's face when she opened the door that things were worse. I flew up the stairs and found my darling little changed, except that her breathing seemed rather worse. She was so glad to see me!... About this time I noticed a change come over her sweet face.... I felt, but would not believe, that it was the beginning of the end. Julia was presently very happy, with Michael on one side of her and myself on the other.

Each of us held a hand. She said: 'I am very happy now: if one has one's parents and one's husband, what more can one want?' And presently, 'The angels have charge of me now, mamma and Mimy.'[98] She said to me: 'What does the Lord want to kill me for? I am dying.' I said, 'No, my darling, you are going to get well.' She said: 'Remember, if anything happens to me, you two must stay together.'... A little later Michael and I were alone with her. She began to wander, and talk as if with reference to her club or some such thing. 'If this is not the right thing,' she said, 'call another priestess'; then, very emphatically: 'Truth, truth.' These were her last words.

[98] Michael.

"My darling should have been forty-two years old this day...."

A few days later she writes to Mary Graves:--

"I am not wild, nor melancholy, nor inconsolable, but I feel as America might if some great, fair State were blotted from its map, leaving only a void for the salt and bitter sea to overwhelm. I cannot, so far, get any comfort from other worldly imaginings. If G.o.d says anything to me now, he says, 'Thou fool.' The truth is that we have no notion of the value and beauty of G.o.d's gifts until they are taken from us. Then He may well say: 'Thou fool,' and we can only answer to our name."

The Journal says:--

"This is the last day of this sorrowful March which took my dear one from me. I seem to myself only dull, hard, and confused under this affliction. I pray G.o.d to give me comfort by raising me up that I may be nearer to the higher life into which she and her dear father have pa.s.sed. And thou? _eleison_...."

"Have had an uplifting of soul to-day. Have written to Mary Graves: 'I am at last getting to stand where I can have some spiritual outlook.'

The confusion of 'is not' is giving place to the steadfastness of 'is.'

Have embodied my thoughts in a poem to my dear Julia and in some pages which I may read at the meeting intended to commemorate her by the New England Woman's Club."

The Journal of this spring is full of tender allusions to the beloved daughter. The dreams of night often brought back the gracious figure; these visions are accurately described, each detail dwelt on with loving care.

In the "Reminiscences" she tells of Julia's consecrated life, of her devotion to her father, and to the blind pupils; describes, too, her pleasure in speaking at the Concord School of Philosophy (where her "mind seemed to have found its true level") and in a Metaphysical Club of her own founding.

"It was beautiful to see her seated in the midst of this thoughtful circle, which she seemed to rule with a staff of lilies. The club was one in which diversity of opinion sometimes brought individuals into sharp contrast with each other; but her gentle government was able to bring harmony out of discord, and to subdue alike the crudeness of scepticism and the fierceness of intolerance."

In the "Reminiscences" we find also the record of Julia's parting injunction to her husband: "Be kind to the little blind children, for they are papa's children."

"These parting words," our mother adds, "are inscribed on the wall of the Kindergarten for the Blind at Jamaica Plain. Beautiful in life, and most beautiful in death, her sainted memory has a glory beyond that of worldly fame."