Old Times in Dixie Land Part 10

Nor were Miss Willard's powers of attraction confined to her own s.e.x. Her fascination for men of taste was evident to the end of her blessed life.

Their letters of late date to her proved that "age could not wither nor custom stale her infinite variety." Gifted men loved to sit at her feet; she was kindly disposed to the whole brotherhood. I have heard her say, "If there is a spectacle more odious and distasteful to me than a man who hates women it is a woman who hates men." She also said: "If there is anything on earth I covet that pertains to men it is their self-respect."

She combined in her work a wonderful grasp on details and all the attributes of a great general, and in her temperament the intellectual and the emotional qualities. This woman was capable of sympathy toward every human being; she possessed the rare "fellowship of humanity," and while she called out the best and n.o.blest aspirations in others, she was herself the gentlest and humblest and most ready to take reproof. She seemed incapable of envy and jealousy, and it used to be said at National Headquarters: "If you want a great kindness from Miss Willard it is only necessary to persecute her a little." With all her discriminating insight into human nature, her social relations were simply her human relations; she had no time for "society"--only for humanity. She proved to the world that a woman can be strong-minded, gentle-mannered and sweet-hearted at the same time, and that the n.o.blest are the simplest souls.

No truthful pen picture can be given of Miss Willard which does not include some account of the woman she loved best in the world. Lady Henry Somerset, whom she had long admired in the distance, she loved at first sight when this t.i.tled lady came to the World's and National W. C. T. U.

Conventions, at Boston, in 1891. The rank and file of her old friends were startled and sore to discover that the queen of their affections, always before so easy of access, was much absent after business hour in the Convention, from her headquarters at the Revere House, and was with Lady Henry at the Parker House. This emulation of the first place in their leader's regard for a time somewhat threatened the unity and peace of the White Ribbon Army in the United States. But Lady Somerset so swiftly made her own way into American hearts that the littleness of jealousy was discarded, and the women shared with Miss Willard high regard for this n.o.ble Englishwoman--the daughter of the Earl of Somers. The _Review of Reviews_ styled her "a romance adorning English life." She had only now come to believe that if the world's woes are to be lessened, women must grapple bravely with their causes and range themselves on the side of those who struggle for justice; and that the heart and instinct and intellect of woman must be felt in the councils of nations. Thus she became the foremost woman in English reforms.

I sent a word to Lady Henry asking if she objected to being mentioned in these pages, and received the following characteristic reply:

"EASTOR CASTLE, LEDBURY, Sept. 28, 1899.

"MRS. C. E. MERRICK:

"My dear friend, I thank you very much indeed for your letter. The words you write about Frances touched my heart. She is indeed the woman of the century who has done more than any other to give woman her place, and yet retain her womanliness. Anything you care to say about me and my poor little efforts belongs to you. Believe me yours in our best and truest bond,

"ISABEL SOMERSET."

While the love I cherish for Frances Willard was shared, in such degree, with Lady Henry, making a common bond between us, it was Mrs. Hannah Whitehall Smith who introduced me to her in Boston. Writing afterward to Mrs. Harriet B. Kells, in Chicago, at National W. C. T. U. Headquarters in the Temple, I said: "Give my love to our peerless Frances, G.o.d bless her!

You say she is happy in the enjoyment of the delectable society of Lady Henry Somerset. I would say G.o.d bless Lady Henry too! only she doesn't need any blessing, having already everything on earth any one can wish for, with our chieftain's heart superadded."

Mrs. Kells repeated this to Lady Henry, who seemed much amused, but did not reveal whether there were yet any unsatisfied longings in her life.

Many American hearts to-day say tenderly, "G.o.d bless Lady Henry!" for she is a sweet spirit, a brave soul, a true woman. It is no exaggeration to say that these two heroic women are chief historic figures in the records of their s.e.x, and while they were needful to each other their united labor was more important for the world's reforms.

So many arc-lights have been thrown on Miss Willard's character that it may not be possible to add more to the world's knowledge of her. Still I should like to make known a little of her self-revealings in letters to me, on points that ill.u.s.trate her simple greatness. When the Red Cross was making its first essays in America, a postal card came which showed her friendliness to all worthy organizations: "The Red Cross is _royal_. No grander plan for 'We, Us & Co.' of North and South. If not in W. C. T. U.

I should give myself to it. The n.o.blest spirits of all civilized lands are enlisted. Princes in the old world are its sponsors."

Again, she wrote: "How do you like dear Miss Cobbe's book, 'Duties of Women'? I had a letter from her the other day and the creature said, to my astonishment and delight, that she was just as familiar with my name as I was with hers! And she the biggest woman of the age!"

No censure, abuse or disappointment seemed ever to destroy the sweet hopefulness of her spirit. At one time she wrote: "Somebody's strictures in the _New Orleans Picayune_ gave me many thoughts. I may come under criticism not only in these regards, but in others concerning which there may not have been expression. I sincerely desire to be a true and a growing Christian woman. Some friends can hold the mirror to our faults."

All the world knows how her soul was moved that the church of G.o.d should uphold our Christian cause, and that the M. E. Conference should seat its women delegates. At that time her word came to me: "If the M. E. pastors don't endorse our blessed gospel, so much the worse for them--in history, that's all! 'This train is going through; clear the track!' I want you in a delegation to the General Conference in May. Will Mrs. Bishop Parker allow her name added? It is a blessed chance to put a blessed name to a most blessed use. Oh that he may see this for the sake of G.o.d and Home and Humanity!"

Frances Willard's fearless mind threw a searchlight into any new thought that seemed worthy of exploration. She investigated Swedenborgianism, Faith-healing, Psychic and Christian Science--if perchance she might find the soul of truth which is ever at the origin of all error. She was not afraid of the evolution of man, for she early realized that the works and word of G.o.d must harmonize; that when science and religion should better understand themselves and each other there could be no real conflict,--and she joyed in this larger vision. After a visit to my house, in 1896, she wrote thus to Judge Merrick: "Christ and His gospel are loyally loved, believed in and cherished by me, and have been all along the years; nor do I feel them to be inconsistent with avowing one's position as an evolutionist: 'When the mists have cleared away,' how beautiful it will be to talk of the laws of the universe in our Father's house, and to find again there those whom we have loved and lost--awhile. In this faith I am ever yours.

"FRANCES E. WILLARD."

It is scarcely worth while to say that she often was the subject of the doctrinaire. At one time a noted advocate of the faith cure was her guest, and was using all diligence to lead Miss Willard to embrace her "higher life." She said to this lady: "Come with me to-day to see a friend, a lovely woman, who seems to me to walk the higher life of faith in great beauty and peace and power for others. I think you will be kindred spirits." The visit was made, and the two strangers fell into each other's arms, as it were, in the intensity of their spiritual sympathy. On their return to Rest Cottage, Miss Willard quietly said to her guest: "That friend is one of the most noted Christian Science healers." Now this was the chiefest of heterodoxies to the faith-healer. "How I did enjoy her shocked astonishment," Miss Willard gleefully said to me, "and I told her I was more than ever sure how truly _one_, in the depths of their natures and their essential faiths, are those who are sincerely seeking to know G.o.d."

Frances Willard's spiritual life was too overflowing and comprehensive to find expression in creeds. Her own new beat.i.tude, "Blessed are the inclusive, for they shall be included," is a fair statement of her doctrine as it related to her human ties, and to all the household of faith. Her whole law and gospel was "To love the Lord thy G.o.d with all thy heart--and thy neighbor as thyself:" and she found G.o.d in His works as well as in His Word, and His image in every beautiful soul that pa.s.sed her way--and always her spirit ascended unto the Father. She herself was regenerate by love, and she expected love alone--enough of it--to transform the world. She wrote me: "Be it known unto thee that I believe--and _always_ did--that the fact of _life_ predicts the fact of immortality. Lonesome would it be indeed for us yonder in Paradise were not the trees and flowers and birds we loved alive, once more with us to make heaven homelike to our tender hearts. How rich is life in friendships, opportunity, loyalty, tenderness! To me these things translate themselves in terms of Christ. Perhaps others speak oftener of Him, and have more definite conceptions of Him as an ent.i.ty; but in the wishful sentiment of loyalty and a sincere intention of a life that shall confess Him by the spirit of its deeds I believe I am _genuine_."

Just after the Boston World's and National Conventions of 1891, Lilian Whiting--that keen a.n.a.lyzer of motive and character--wrote: "Frances Willard is a born leader; but with this genius for direction and leadership, she unites another quality utterly diverse from leadership--that of the most impressionable, the most plastic, the most sympathetic and responsive person that can possibly be imagined. Her temperament is as delicately susceptible as that of an Aeolian harp; one can hardly think in her presence without feeling that she intuitively perceives the thought. She has the clairvoyance of high spirituality.

"No woman of America has ever done so remarkable a work as that being done by Frances Willard. There is no question of the fact that she was called of the Lord to consecrate herself to this work. She is so simple, so modest, so eager to put every one else in the best possible light, so utterly forgetful of self, that it requires some attention to realize her vast comprehensiveness of effort and achievement. If ever a woman were in touch with the heavenly forces it is she. Frances Willard is the most remarkable figure of her age."

Some one else in a private letter writes: "Her strength was because she could love as no one else has loved since the Son of Man walked the earth."

CHAPTER XIV.

SORROW AND SYMPATHY.

Unwilling to be separated from me, Clara proposed in 1882 that she and her two children should spend the summer in New England. Her Uncle William had placed his furnished house at our disposal; so Mr. Merrick and I had the novel experience of housekeeping in the land of the Pilgrims. We had the social pleasure of entertaining most interesting people, among them Miss Lucretia n.o.ble, the author of "A Reverend Idol."

After this visit Clara wrote a critique of this much-talked-of book, published in the _New Orleans Times-Democrat_, in which these words occur: "Miss n.o.ble reminds one forcibly of that charming woman--Genevieve Ward.

The ident.i.ty of the 'Idol' is supposed to be established in the character of the worshiped and worshipful Phillips Brooks." Clara had at times been a newspaper contributor, and often said a timely word for "the Cause that needed a.s.sistance." She had addressed an open letter, just before leaving the city, to Mr. Paul Tulane, the philanthropist whose monument is Tulane University, urging vainly that this great inst.i.tution should be co-educational in its scope. It was said of her that while her intellect and style were exquisitely womanly they possessed firm rationality and searching a.n.a.lytical qualities.

Rev. W. F. Warren, D. D., president of Boston University, came also with his most attractive family to Wilbraham. The friendship and love of his wife, Harriet Cornelia Merrick, proved a source of great comfort in that season of sorrow, and a true satisfaction as long as she lived. Her vigorous, wholesome, sympathetic nature was one on which everybody was willing to ease off their own burdens. Her intellectual abilities ranked high, for she had acquired the culture of seven years spent in Europe. She was widely known for twenty-four years, as the editor of the _Heathen Woman's Friend_--the organ of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. She was an artist in music and a master of the French, German and Italian languages. A friend in Germany said: "Her German is perfect. She is never taken for an American; for does she not possess all the virtues of a German housewife? Does she not dearly love to fill her chest with fine linen, and take the best care of her household?

And then she cultivates her flowers, makes fine embroideries, and last is a good knitter. She cannot be an American lady!" Yet she was a model mother after the American ideal; besides being a trustee of the New England Conservatory of Music, and a leading officer of numerous other boards. She had a breezy fashion of conversation, a fascinating smile, a cheery word, a fun-sparkling eye and bright hair waving prettily from a broad brow. When I confided to her the fact of my daughter's threatened life by a latent disease, she gave such heartful sympathy that I have never ceased to be grateful, and shed many tears when she too was called away.

I needed a close friend this sad summer, for though my daughter was not in usual health when we left home, none knew of the presence of a fatal malady. After a physician from Springfield had told us that she might survive a year in a warmer climate, it was difficult to keep strong enough to show her a cheerful face; but the medical orders were that Clara should not be informed of her own danger if we expected to take her home alive. I telegraphed for Mr. Guthrie. When he arrived and saw her looking as usual, sitting by an open window, bright, and beautifully dressed, he sent an immediate message to New Orleans allaying anxiety. But it was soon evident that she had entered upon the beginning of the end. She drove out every day and did not suffer: and we found her serenely conscious of her own condition. She said: "It is all right, if I die. I have been as happy as opportunities, and kindness, and attentions, and love can make a human being. It is beautiful to die here in Wilbraham where every one is so kind." Every day she was bright and cheerful, and looked her own sweet self. One day her father a.s.sisted her into the carriage, and I knew it was for her a last drive. Though almost prostrated with grief, I was able to welcome her cheerfully when she returned. The next morning she got up as usual, and calling for her children, took a tender leave of all of us.

"Don't grieve, mother dear, don't!" she said; "I am safe in G.o.d's keeping."

"Oh, my child, what can I do without you!" I cried. "Do as other bereaved mothers have done and bear it bravely! and you will have both my little children to rear; they are yours." When at the last she fixed her beautiful eyes on me and said: "My mother!" her earthly word was silenced, her life-work done.

I find that I wrote thus to a dear friend at that time: "Here I am--sitting in the chamber of my dead. The Marthas and the Marys are here doing according to their natures. Mary sits in the quiet with me, Martha writes of our loss to the absent, or prepares dinner. G.o.d help us! the business of life must go on even in the presence of death. My Clara lies on the lounge, wrapped in white cashmere, so still--so cold;--and this is the last day she can so lie before she is buried from my sight. The wind blows cool, as often in a New England August, but it drives pangs into my sore heart, and the day seems different from any other day of my life. Why does G.o.d leave us at such times set apart to suffer, as on some eminence?

The people pity us. Her father says the time is short and we shall soon go to her. Yes--and then the air and the sunshine will take on a new nature for some one else--for our sakes. But it is different to lay old frames in the dust from putting under the daisies' bed the young in their glorious prime. G.o.d knows best. It may be that she is taken from evil to come. She lived happily, and has laid down all of earth bravely to go into the other life.

"The students stop in pa.s.sing, and seeing our mourning door ask, 'Who is dead?' My dead is nothing to them. They never saw Clara--nor me. It is only an idle question. We are only two atoms among earth's millions. O Lord, forget not these particles in Thy universe,--for we are being tossed to and fro,--and bring us to a resting place somewhere in Thy eternal kingdom!

"I know the world must still go on, though it is stationary for me, and I am honestly trying to have patience with its cheerful progress; but even the playfulness of my two motherless little ones jars upon me. It is useless for me to try to realize human sympathy from the lonely height where I sit and weep over the untimely death of my two beautiful daughters. They were G.o.d-given, and my very own by ties of blood, but more by that happy responsiveness of soul which const.i.tutes 'born friends.'

After being as the woman whose children rise up and call her blessed, I am now like Rachel of old, refusing to be comforted because they are not. I lie down in humble submission because I cannot help myself. I say over and over, 'Thy will be done!'--but all the same I would have them back if I could. None of us try to raise a controversy with the inevitable. We are grateful for kind words and sympathy. They cannot change anything, but they give just a drop of comfort to a desolate, disrupted life on the human side of that gateway, through which the majority have gone down into the silence where 'the dead praise not the Lord.'"

Many testimonies to the character and worth of our child were written and published. They shall speak for her and for the greatness of our loss. The _Times-Democrat_ said: "Wherever she moved she was by the necessities of her sweet nature a 'bright, particular star' among earth's shining ones.

Her conversation was a delight to all within sound of her voice. Her wit was gentle, pure, generous and sincere. She ruled all hearts, and loved to rule, for she ruled by love."

Catharine Cole wrote: "Many men and women famous in the great world of art and literature will pay the sweet tribute of tears to the memory of this lovely woman; and here in our own home, where she was so beloved and admired, her gentle, cheery presence will be missed and mourned for many sad days. She shone like a jewel set amid dross."

From Mrs. Mollie Moore Davis--widely known for her exquisitely delicate love poems and quaint tales of real life--came this tender word: "I truly appreciated her great gifts and greater loveliness. She is a star gone from my sky."

Mrs. Mary Ashley Townsend sent me these words: "Her constant and determined intellectual development, her devotion to progress, her literary tastes, her social charms, her reliability as a friend, her loveliness as a wife and mother, formed a combination of qualities that made her the realization of the poet's dream,

"'Fair as a star when only one Is shining in the sky.'"

Mrs. Townsend is herself a rarely gifted poet, long and deeply homed in the heart of New Orleans. With the exception of Longfellow and Cable, no writer has so vividly mirrored the very atmosphere of lower Louisiana. In "Down the Bayou" its "heroed past," its shrined memories find an eloquent voice; there in everlasting tints are painted its dank luxuriance and verdant solitudes; its red-tiled roofs and stucco walls, the "mud-built towers of castled cray-fish," its sluggish, sinuous bayoux and secrets of lily-laden lagoons, its odors of orange bloom and mossy swamps mingled with flute-toned song and flitting color amid the solemn, dark-hued live-oaks. Mary Ashley Townsend had three lovely daughters. One has pa.s.sed over the river, but she still has Adele, who resembles her gifted mother, and Daisy, to comfort her life.

James R. Randall, the gifted author of "My Maryland," said in his own newspaper: "She was too radiantly dowered for this world she glorified.

She was all that poets have sung and men have wished daughter and wife to be. Well may the bereaved father and husband wonder with poor Lear 'why so many mean things live while she has ceased to be.'" Other expressions were as follows: "It is something worth living for, to have been the mother of such a being." "Outside of your mother-love the loss of the sweet friendship and congeniality of your lives will create an awful void. But that beautiful soul is yours still--growing and developing in Paradise."

"Amid all her charms what impressed me most was her admiration for her mother. She addressed you often and fondly as 'dear,' as if you were the child and she the mother." "Centuries of experience have not developed a philosophy deeper or more comforting for the human race than that of David: 'He shall not return to me but I shall go to him.' I thank G.o.d for the great gift of death!"

A minister of G.o.d wrote me, from Worcester, Ma.s.s., a word that may be as great a light to some sitting in darkness as it was to me: "I must confess that, for my own part, I take such sorrows with less heaviness of heart than once, for the reason that every such loss seems to strengthen, rather than weaken, my faith in immortality. In good and beautiful lives I see so vividly a revelation of G.o.d--the Infinite Holiness and Beauty shining through the human soul and the raiment of clay--that I cannot believe it possible for death to extinguish their real life 'hidden with Christ in G.o.d.' I cannot believe that they can be 'holden of the grave.' I feel a.s.sured that theirs is a conscious life of progress and joy, and cannot mourn for them as dead, but only as far away. More and more am I convinced that this vivid feeling of the Divine Presence in beautiful human lives is peculiarly the Christian's ground of hope in immortality. It was what the apostle meant by 'Christ in you, the hope of glory,' and it gives us gradually the clear vision of an immortal world. Only thus, as we gain that 'knowledge of G.o.d' which is 'eternal life' _here and now_, can we rise above the mist and smoke of this temporal world and lift our eyes 'unto the hills whence cometh our help.' Only thus as we live in the eternal world, _here and now_, can we feel secure that nothing fair and good in human life can perish."

Mrs. Hannah Whitehall Smith wrote me thus from Philadelphia the sad December of this year:

"MY DEAR FRIEND:

"Miss Willard wants to open the lines between your soul and mine. She feels sure we can do each other good, and asks me to tell you about my Ray who went home three years ago, because you, too, have lost a daughter and will understand. My Ray died after five days' sickness.

As soon as she was taken ill, I began, as my custom is, to say, 'Thy will be done.' I said it over and over constantly, and permitted no other thought to enter my mind. I hid myself and my child in the fortress of G.o.d's blessed will,--and there I met my sorrow and loss.