The Author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic—Her Views of Education for Young Women

APOET, author, lecturer, wit and conversationalist, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe unites with the attributes of a tender, womanly nature—which has made her the idol of her husband and children—the sterner virtues of a reformer; the unflinching courage which dares to stand with a small minority in the cause of right; the indomitable perseverance and force of character which persist in the demand for justice in face of the determined opposition of narrow prejudice and old-time conservatism.

Although more Bostonian than the Bostonians themselves, Mrs. Howe first saw the light in New York, and has spent much of her later life at Newport. Born in 1819, in a stately mansion near the Bowling Green, then the most fashionable quarter of New York, she was the fourth child of Samuel Ward and Julia Cutler Ward, people of unusual culture, refinement, and high ideals. Mr. Ward was a man of spotless honor and business integrity; and, although not wealthy as compared with the millionaires of to-day, his fortune was ample enough to surround his wife and children with all the luxuries and refinements that the most fastidious nature could crave. Mrs. Ward possessed a rare combination of personal charms and mental gifts, which endeared her to all who had the privilege of knowing her. All too soon, the death angel came and bore away the lovely young wife and mother, then in her twenty-eighth year.

Rousing himself, with a great effort, from the grief into which the death of his wife had plunged him, Mr. Ward devoted himself to the training, and education of his children. Far in advance of his age in the matter of higher education for women he selected as the tutor of his daughters the learned Doctor Joseph Green Cogswell, with instruction to teach them the full curriculum of Harvard college.

The scholarly and refined atmosphere of her father’s home, which was the resort of the most distinguished men of letters of the day, was an admirable school for the development of the literary and philosophic mind of the “little Miss Ward,” as Mr. Ward’s eldest daughter had been called from childhood.

Learned even beyond advanced college graduates of to-day, an accomplished linguist, a musical amateur of great promise, the young and beautiful Miss Julia Ward, of Bond street, soon became a leader of the cultured and fashionable circle in which she moved. In the series, “Authors at Home,” by M. C. Sherwood, we get a glimpse of her, about that time, in a whimsical entry from the diary of a Miss Hamilton, written at the time of the return of Doctor Howe, from Greece, whither he had gone to fight the Turks:—

“I walked down Broadway with all the fashion and met the pretty blue stocking, Miss Julia Ward, with her admirer, Doctor Howe, just home from Europe. She had on a blue satin cloak and a white muslin dress. I looked to see if she had on blue stockings, but I think not. I suspect that her stockings were pink, and she wore low slippers, as grandmamma does. They say she dreams in Italian and quotes French verses. She sang very prettily at a party last evening. I noticed how white her hands were. Still, though attractive, the muse is not handsome.”

SHE MARRIED A REFORMER

Soon after the loss of her father, in 1839, Miss Ward paid the first of a series of visits to Boston, where she met, among other distinguished people who became life-long friends, Sarah Margaret Fuller, Horace Mann, Charles Sumner, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1843 she was married to the director of the institute for the blind, in South Boston, the physician and reformer, Doctor Samuel G. Howe, of whom Sydney Smith spoke—referring to the remarkable results attained in his education of Laura Bridgman,—as “a modern Pygmalion who has put life into a statue.” Immediately after their marriage, Doctor and Mrs. Howe sailed for Europe, making London their first stopping place. There they met many famous men and women, among them Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle, Sydney Smith, Thomas Moore, the Duchess of Sutherland, John Forster, Samuel Rogers, Richard Monckton Milnes, and many others. After an extensive continental tour, including the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, France, and Italy, Doctor and Mrs. Howe returned home and took up their residence in South Boston.

One of her friends has said: “Mrs. Howe wrote leading articles from her cradle;” and it is true that at seventeen, at least, she was an anonymous but valued contributor to the New York Magazine, then a prominent periodical. In 1854, her first volume of poems was published. She named it “Passion Flowers,” and the Boston world of letters hailed her as a new poet. Though published anonymously, the volume at once revealed its author; and Mrs. Howe was welcomed into the poetic fraternity by such shining lights as Emerson, Whittier, Longfellow, Bryant, and Holmes. The poem by which the author will be forever enshrined in her country’s memory is, par excellence, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which, like Kipling’s “Recessional,” sang itself at once into the heart of the nation. As any sketch of Mrs. Howe would be incomplete without the story of the birth of this great song of America, it is here given in brief.

STORY OF THE “BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC”

It was in the first year of our Civil War that Mrs. Howe, in company with her husband and friends, visited Washington. During their stay in that city, the party went to see a review of troops, which, however, was interrupted by a movement of the enemy, and had to be put off for the day. The carriage in which Mrs. Howe was seated with her friends was surrounded by armed men; and, as they rode along, she began to sing, to the great delight of the soldiers, “John Brown.” “Good for you!” shouted the boys in blue, who, with a will, took up the refrain. Mrs. Howe then began conversing with her friends on the momentous events of the hour, and expressed the strong desire she felt to write some words which might be sung to this stirring tune, adding that she feared she would never be able to do so. “She went to sleep,” says her daughter, Maude Howe Eliot, “full of thoughts of battle, and awoke before dawn the next morning to find the desired verses immediately present to her mind. She sprang from her bed, and in the dim gray light found a pen, and paper, whereon she wrote, scarcely seeing them, the lines of the poem. Returning to her couch, she was soon asleep, but not until she had said to herself, ‘I like this better than anything I have ever written before.’”

“EIGHTY YEARS YOUNG”

Of Mrs. Howe it may very fittingly be said that she is eighty years young. Her blue eye retains its brightness, and her dignified carriage betokens none of the feebleness of age. Above all, her mind seems to hold, in a marvelous degree, its youthful vigor and elasticity; a fact that especially impressed me as the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” expressed her views on the desirability of a college training for girls.

“The girls who go to college,” said Mrs. Howe, “are very much in request, I should say for everything,—certainly for teaching. Then, naturally, if they wish to follow literature, they have a very great advantage over those who have not had the benefit of a college course, having a liberal education to begin with.”

“Which is the greater advantage to a girl, to have talent or great perseverance?”

“In order to accomplish anything really worth doing, I think great perseverance is of the first importance. On the other hand, one cannot do a great deal without talent, while special talent without perseverance never amounts to much. I once heard Mr. Emerson say, ‘Genius without character is mere friskiness;’ and we all know of highly gifted people, who, because lacking the essential quality of perseverance, accomplish very little in the world.”

“Do you think the college girl will exercise a greater influence on modern progress and the civilization of the future than her untrained sister?”

“Oh, very much greater,” was the quick, emphatic reply. “In the first place, I think that college-bred girls are quite as likely to marry as others, and when a college girl marries, then the whole family is lifted to a higher plane, the natural result of the well-trained, cultivated mind. Mothers of old, you know, were very ignorant. Indeed, it is sad to think what few advantages they had. Of course, some of them had opportunities to study alone, but this solitary study could not accomplish for them what the colleges, with their corps of specialists and trained professors, are doing for the young women of to-day.”

THE IDEAL COLLEGE

Speaking of the advantages and disadvantages of coeducational institutions, Mrs. Howe said:—

“While there are many advantages in coeducation, there are also some dangers. The great advantage consists in the mingling of both sorts of mind, the masculine and the feminine. This gives a completeness that cannot otherwise be obtained. I have observed that when committees are made up of both men and women, we get a roundness and completeness that are lacking when the membership is composed of either sex alone; and so in college recitations, where the boys present their side and the girls theirs, we get better results. This, of course, is natural. Fortunately, so far, scandals have been very rare, if found at all, in coeducation at colleges. Many people, however, would not care to trust their children, nor would we send every girl, to such colleges; and, for this reason, I am glad that we have women’s colleges. I think, however, that, if the students are at all earnest, and have high ideals set before them, the coeducational is the ideal college; for the course in these colleges is like a great intellectual race, which arouses and stimulates all the nobler faculties.”

“What influence do you think environment has on one’s career,—on success in life?”

“What do you mean by environment?”

“Well, I mean especially the sort of people with whom one is associated; their order of mind?”

“I think it has a very important effect. If we are kept perpetually under lowering influences—lowering both morally and Æsthetically,—the tendency will inevitably be to drag us down. I say Æsthetically, because I think in that sense good taste is a part of good morals. You can, of course, have good taste without good morals; but with morality there is a certain feeling or measure of reserve and nicety which does not accompany good taste without good morals. You know St. Paul says: ‘Evil communications corrupt good manners.’ That is as true to-day as it ever was. We can’t always be with our equals or our superiors, however; we must take people as we find them. But we should try to be with people who stand for high things, morally and intellectually. Then, when we have to be among people of a lower grade, we can help them, because I think human nature, on the whole, desires to be elevated rather than lowered.”

“Do you think it is necessary to success in life to have a special aim?”

“I think it is a great thing to have a special aim or talent, and it is better to make one thing the leading interest in life than to run after half-a-dozen.”