 
I see the Gleaming Gates and toward them press.—L.C.M. MR. and Mrs. Moulton when they first set up their household gods established themselves on Beacon Hill. A few years later, however, a new part of the city was developed at the South End, and popular favor turned in that direction. The broad streets and squares with trees and turf were quiet and English-looking, and The dwelling was a four-story brick house, the front windows looking out upon the greenery of a little park in the centre of the square. At one end of the place was a stone church, defined against the sky and especially lovely with the red of sunset behind it; and an old-world atmosphere of retirement and leisure always pervaded the region. In Rutland Square, No. 28 came to be well known to every Bostonian and to whomever among visitors was interested in things literary. It was the most cosmopolitan centre of social life in the city; and to it famous visitors to this country were almost sure to find their way. For thirty years Mrs. Moulton's weekly receptions through the winter were notable. The drawing-room and library where groups of charming and famous people assembled were such as to remain pictured in the memory of the visitor. They were fairly furnished, so to speak, with the tributes of friends. There were water-colors from Rollin Tilton of Rome; a vigorous sketch of a famous "The morning skies were all aflame;" and another, revealing a group of shadow-faces, illustrated the line, "I see your gentle ghosts arise." There were signed photographs of Robert Barrett Browning's "Dryope," a gift from the artist; a painting of singular beauty from the artist, Signor Vertunni, of Rome; and from William Ordway Partridge three sculptures,—the figure of a child in Carrara marble, a head tinted like old ivory, and a portrait bust of Edward Everett Hale, a speaking likeness. There was that wonderful drawing by Vedder, "The Cup of Death" (from the Rubaiyat), which the artist had given to Mrs. Moulton in memory of her sonnet on the theme, the opening lines of which are:
And among the rare books was a copy of StÉphane MallarmÉ's translation of Poe's "Raven," with illustrations by Manet, the work being the combined gift to Mrs. Moulton of the poet-translator and the artist. Library The Library in Mrs. Moulton’s Boston Home, Page 109 Many were the rare books in autograph copies given to Mrs. Moulton by her friends abroad—copies presented by Lord Houghton, George Eliot, Tennyson, Jean Ingelow, Christina Rossetti, Oswald Crawfurd, George Meredith, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur O'Shaughnessy, and several, too, which were dedicated to her,—the "Wind Voices" of Philip Bourke Marston, inscribed: "To Louise Chandler Moulton, true poet and true friend," and another by Herbert L. Clarke of London. The rooms were magnetic with charming associations. A correspondent from a leading New York daily, commissioned to write of Mrs. Moulton's home, described her drawing-room as "Long, high, and altogether spacious and dignified. A library opening from the rear increases the apparent length of the apart "But in this attractive room are more treasures than one would dream of at first glance. The fine paintings that are scattered here, there, and everywhere, are all of them veritable works of art, presented to Mrs. Moulton by their painters; the etchings are autograph copies from some of the best masters of Europe. Almost every article of decoration, it would seem, has a history. The books that have overflowed from the dim recesses of the library are mostly presentation copies in beautiful bindings, with many a well-turned phrase on their fly leaves written by authors we all know and love. "There could be no better guide through all this treasure-house of suggestive material than Mrs. Moulton herself. Without question she knows more English people of note than does any other living American. As she spreads out before the delighted caller her remarkable collection of presentation photographs, she intersperses the exhibit with brilliant off-hand descriptions of their originals—the sort of word-painting that bookmen are eager to hear in connection with their literary From this home in the early eighties the daughter of the house was married to Mr. William Henry Schaefer, of Charleston, South Carolina. In her daughter's removal to that Southern city, Mrs. Moulton's life found an extension of interests. She made frequent visits to Charleston before what now came to be her annual spring sailings to Europe. In her later years Mrs. Moulton and her daughter and son-in-law often travelled together, though Mrs. Moulton's enjoyment centred itself more and more, as the years went by, in her extensive and sympathetic "The deep blue Italian sky seemed warm with love and life, the fountains tossed high their white spray and flashed in the sunshine. Peasants were milking their goats at the foot of the Spanish Steps. Flower-girls had their arms full of fresh flowers, with the dew still on them, loading the air with fragrance." Or this of Florence: "I never cross the Ponte Vecchio, or Jewellers' Bridge, in Florence, without thinking of Longfellow's noble sonnet, and quoting to myself: 'Taddeo Gaddi built me,—I am old.' Nor could I ever approach the superb equestrian statue of the Grand Duke Ferdinand without thinking of Browning's 'The Statue and the Bust.' 'The passionate pale lady's face' wrought by Lucca della Robbia no longer 'watches it from the square.'" Just before her sailing in 1880 came this note from Mr. Longfellow: Mr. Longfellow to Mrs. Moulton Craigie House, Cambridge, March 2, 1880. Dear Mrs. Moulton: ... Yes, surely I will give you a letter to Lowell. I will bring it to you as soon as I am able to leave the house.... It was a great pleasure to meet you at Mrs. Ole Bull's, but I want to hear more about your visits to England, and whom you saw, and what you did. What is it? Is it the greater freedom one feels in a foreign country where no Evening Transcript takes note of one's outgoings and incomings? I can't attempt to explain it. Please don't get expatriated. Ah, no, life is not all cathedrals and ruined castles, and other theatrical properties of the Old World. It is not all scenery, and within the four walls of home life is much the same everywhere. Truly yours, Henry W. Longfellow. Of cathedrals and ruins she saw much, but people always interested her more than any inanimate things. She records her talks with one and another of the intellectual She visited the Roman studios, and in that of Mr. Story saw the busts of Robert and Elizabeth Browning, and others, and the statue of "Medea," just then completed. She wrote later that the concluding ten lines of Swinburne's "Anactoria" "express the character of Story's 'Sappho.' It is as if the poem had been written for the statue, or the statue was modelled to interpret the poem." One result of her travels was the publication in 1881 of a charming little collection of papers called "Random Rambles." The book contained short chapters about Rome and Paris and Genoa and Florence and Venice and Edinburgh and the London parks. A reviewer characterized the volume aptly when he said: "Mrs. Moulton seems to have gathered up the poetic threads of European life which were too fine for other visitors to see or get, to have caught and given expression to the impalpable aromas of the various places she visited, so that the reader feels a certain atmospheric charm it is impossible to describe." The little book was deservedly successful. Mrs. Moulton's writings seemed always to conform to the standard set by Mr. Aldrich, who once said to her: "Literature ought to warm the heart; not chill it." Her readers were conscious without fail of a current of sympathetic humanity. It was this quality no less than her real critical power, or perhaps even more than that, which made authors so grateful for her reviews of their work. In reference to a newspaper letter in which she had spoken of Wilkie Collins, the novelist wrote to her: Mr. Collins to Mrs. Moulton "90 Gloucester Place, Portman Square, W. "I have read your kind letter with much pleasure. I know the 'general reader' by experience as my best friend and ally.... When I return to the charge I shall write The letter referred to was one of a long series which Mrs. Moulton contributed to the New York Independent. Many of these papers were of marked literary value. A typical one was upon Mme. Desbordes-Valmore, founded upon Sainte Beuve's memoir of that interesting and unhappy French poet. Mrs. Moulton characterizes Mme. Desbordes-Valmore as "the sad, sweet nightingale among the singers of France, and as a tender, elegiac poet" without equal. She closes with these words: "Mme. Valmore passed away in July of 1859. 'We shall not die,' she had said. In that hour a gate was opened to some strange land of light, some new dawning of glory, and the holy saints, to whose fellowship she belonged, received her into the very peace of God." Mrs. Moulton's witty essay on "The Gospel of Good Gowns" was one of this series in The Independent, and a fine paper of hers on Thoreau was widely quoted. In a department which for some months she conducted under the title, "Our Society," in a periodical called Our Continent, Mrs. Moulton discoursed on manners, morals, and other problems connected with the conduct of life. The incalculable influence of the gentle, refined ideals that she persuasively imaged was a signal factor in the progress of life among the younger readers. Mrs. Moulton's ideal of the importance of manner was that of Tennyson's as expressed in his lines,—
Many of these papers are included in Mrs. Moulton's book called "Ourselves and Our Neighbors," published in 1887. In one of these on "The Gospel of Charm" she says: "So many new gospels are being preached, and that so strenuously, to the girls and women of the twentieth century, that I have wondered if there might not be a danger lest the Gospel of Charm should be neglected. And yet to my mind there are few teachings more important. I would advocate no charm Certainly the "gospel of charm" never had a more signal illustration than in her own attitude toward those with whom she came in contact. In one of the chapters, "The Wish to Rise," she writes: "The moment a strong desire for social advancement seizes on a man or woman it commences to undermine the very foundations of character, and great shall be the fall thereof. 'To keep up appearances,' 'to make a show'—one of these sentences is only more vulgar than the other. The important thing is not to appear, but to be. It is true, and pity 'tis, 'tis true, that many people are shut out by limited and narrow fortunes from the society to which by right of taste and culture they should belong. But nothing proves The book had a merited success, and even yet is in demand. In the early eighties an enterprising publisher conceived the idea of a book on "Famous Women," in which those exceptional beings should write of each other. To Mrs. Moulton's pen fell Louisa M. Alcott, and a request Miss Alcott to Mrs. Moulton "I have not the least objection to your writing a sketch of L.M.A. I shall feel quite comfortable in your hands. I have little material to give you; but in 'Little Women' you will find the various stages of my career and experience. Don't forget to mention that I don't like lion hunters, that I don't serve autophotos and biographies to the hundreds of boys and girls who ask, and that I heartily endorse Dr. Holmes' views on this subject." To this volume the sketch of Mrs. Moulton herself was written by the graceful pen of Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford, who wrote with the sympathetic appreciation of the poet and close friend. While on a visit to Spain in 1883,—and "Spain," she wrote, "is a word to conjure with,"—Mrs. Moulton made the acquaintance of Oswald Crawfurd the novelist, when he was in the diplomatic service. From his letters then and afterward might be taken many interesting passages, of which the following may serve as examples: "There is another writer whose acquaintance I have made, through his books, I mean, for such interesting creatures as authors seldom come to Portugal. We have to put up with royalties, rich tourists, and wine merchants. For me, the writers, the manipulators of ideas, the shapers of them into human utterance, are the important people of the age, as well as the most agreeable to meet, in their books or in life. This particularly pleasant one I have just met is Frank Stockton. You will laugh at the idea of my discovering what other people knew long ago, but it happens that I have only just read his books. The three notes that strike me in him are his perfect originality, his literary dexterity, and his new and delicate humor. I cannot say how he delighted me." "We are going to give you Andrew Lang to take you in [at the dinner] on Friday, and on the other side you will have either James Bryce or Mr. Chapman, the 'enterprising young publisher' mentioned by Dickens. Regarding Lang, I know no man who does so many things so very well,—journalist, philologist, mythological researcher,—and to the front in all these characters. To almost any one but yourself I should call him a poet also. His face is very refined and beautiful." "I have been reading your poems again. You are as true a lyric artist as Landor or Herrick. I admire your sonnets,—they have a particular charm for me, and I am glad that you do not despise the old English form with the two last lines in rhyme. Shakespeare's, indeed, are so. I am almost inclined to think that for our rhymeless language, for an ear not attuned to the Italian perception for delicate rhyme of sounds, the strong emphasis on the ending couplet is right and good." "I honestly like and admire the genius of Howells. I like his novels immensely, but his theories not at all." Moulton Louise Chandler Moulton Page 122 The brief records in Mrs. Moulton's journal in these days suggest her crowded life of social enjoyment and literary work. On New Year's day of 1885 she notes having been the night before at a party at Mrs. Ole Bull's; and on that day she goes to a reception at the Howard Ticknors'; friends come to her in the evening. January second falls on a Friday, and as she is about to visit her daughter and son-in-law in Charleston, this is her last reception for the season. Naturally, it is a very full one, and while she does not chronicle the list of her guests, it is constructively easy to fancy that among them may have been Dr. Holmes, Bliss Carman and Edgar Fawcett from New York were sometimes to be met in Mrs. Moulton's drawing-room; and there were also a group of Boston artists,—Arthur Foote who had set to music several of Mrs. Moultons' lyrics; B.J. Lang and his daughter, who had also set some of Mrs. Moulton's songs; the painters, I.M. Gaugengigl, Winthrop Pierce, John Enneking; Miss Porter and Miss Clarke, the editors of Poet-Lore; Caroline Ticknor, the young author whose work continued the literary traditions of her famous name; and often some of the clergy of Boston,—the Rev. Dr. Charles Gordon Ames, with Mrs. Ames, both of whom were among Mrs. Moulton's most dearly-prized friends; occasionally Rev. Dr. Edward Everett Hale, and Bishop Phillips Brooks; in a later decade, Rev. Dr. E. Winchester Donald, who succeeded Phillips Brooks as rector of Trinity; Rev. Bernard Carpenter, a brother of the Lord Bishop of Ripon; and beside the throngs of representative people who, at one time or another through some thirty years, were to be
A book of Mr. Stedman's of which he sent to Mrs. Moulton a copy bore on its fly-leaf the inscription:
In the winter of 1885 the journal notes a visit to Mrs. Schaefer in Charleston, where amid all the festivities she finds time to send "four short stories and a poem" to various editors. On her way North she visited Washington, where dinners and receptions were given to her in private and in diplomatic circles. Then she went on to New York, and before sailing for Europe met Monsignor Capel In Venice this year Mrs. Moulton wrote the charming pseudo-triolet, IN VENICE ONCE.
It is interesting to feel in this a far suggestion of Browning's "A Toccata of Galuppi's," because so seldom does any echo of her contemporaries strike through Mrs. Moulton's verse. With friends Mrs. Moulton visited Capri, Sorrento, Amalfi, Castellamare, Pompeii, and then went on to Rome. Here she passed the morning of her fiftieth birthday in the galleries of the Vatican. Friends made a festa of her birthday, with a birthday-cake and gifts; and she dined with the Storys, to go on later to one of Sir Moses Ezekiel's notable musi "Suspended from the lofty ceiling was a hanging basket of flowers encircled by a score of lights; while around the walls hundreds of candles in antique sconces were burning, throwing fitful gleams over marble busts and groups of statuary. The frescoes on the walls are fragments of the walls of Diocletian, and the floor is covered with rich antique tiles fifteen hundred years old. Eight elephants' heads hold the candles that light the studio on ordinary occasions. Two colossal forms claim the attention of the visitor; one, the picture of a herald, drawn by Sir Moses, holds in his right hand the shield of art; the other is the figure of Welcome, holding in one hand a glass of wine, while the other rests upon a shield. The most striking and interesting work in the In the studio was also a bronze bust of Liszt, the only one for which he ever sat, and which Sir Moses modelled at the Villa d'Este. After Rome came Florence, where Mrs. Moulton was the guest of Mrs. Clara Erskine Clement Waters, who had taken a villa in that city. Among other people whom Mrs. Moulton met at this time was "Ouida," who unbent from her accustomed stiffness to Americans, and, yielding to the charm of her guest, displayed her house and pets in a manner which for her was almost without precedent. Mrs. Waters gave a brilliant reception in her honor; she was the guest of the Princess Koltzoff Massalsky (Dora d'Istria), and she visited Professor Fiske at the Villa Landor, where she was "charmed by his wonderful library" with its collections of the most notable edi From Florence she went to Aix-les-Bains. Then she passed to England. In London she saw constantly almost everybody of note in literary circles. Her diary records visits to or from or meetings with the Lord Bishop of Winchester, Mrs. Bloomfield Moore, Lord Morley, Thomas Hardy, the Bishop of Ripon, Mr. Verschoyle of the Fortnightly Review, William Sharp, Frederick Wedmore, Sir Frederic and Lady Pollock, Dr. Furnival, and others, for a list too long to give entire. Her journal shows how full were her days. "Mrs. Campbell-Praed came to lunch; a lot of callers in the afternoon, among them the Verschoyles, the Francillons, Mrs. Cashel-Hoey, Mrs. Fred Chapman, and Mrs. Anna Lea Merritt. "Went to the Chapmans' to luncheon; met George Meredith.... Meredith is a very brilliant and agreeable man. "Francillon to luncheon. A lovely letter from Oswald Crawfurd, praising Andrew Lang.... Went with Mrs. Marable to see Mrs. Sutherland Orr; a very charming person." Herbert E. Clarke, whom in a letter to Professor Bates she described as "a wonderfully charming and fine fellow," accompanied a volume of his poems which he sent to her with these graceful dedicatory verses: TO LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. (With “Verses on the Hillside.”)
One particularly delightful day was that on which Mrs. Moulton attended a garden-party at Lambeth Palace as the guest of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Mrs. Benson. Another of the red-letter days was an afternoon with the Holman Hunts, in their rambling, fascinating house, filled with artistic treasures, when on the lawn a Hungarian orchestra played their national airs. Among the guests were Lewis Morris, Edwin Arnold, Hall Caine, Theodore Watts-Dunton, and many others who bore names well known. The diary records, too, a studio-reception given by Felix Moscheles, a coaching trip to Virginia Water; and so on for a round of gay doings which make it amazing that all this time Mrs. Moulton continued her literary work. In the autumn Mrs. Moulton journeyed to Carlsbad, and there "made Lady Ashburton's acquaintance in the morning and sat up in the wood with her for a couple of hours." The acquaintance ripened into a warm friendship between the two, and Mrs. Moulton was often a guest at Lady Ashburton's place, Kent House, Knightsbridge. The sonnet "One Afternoon" is the memory of this first meeting written at Carlsbad a year after. On her return to America in the autumn, Mrs. Moulton went to Pomfret to visit her Mrs. Moulton to Mr. Adams 28 Rutland Square, Sunday. My dear Friend: Your letter just received draws my very heart out in sympathy. I wish you were here, that I could tell you all the feelings that it brought, for I know what it is to lose my dearest friend. Louise Guiney said to me when she came Friday afternoon: "I have something to tell you. Bensel is dead. His brother has written me." And I was not myself all the afternoon. I could not put aside the thought that pleaded for my tears. And I grieved that I had not yet written to him about his book. I find such fine things in it. Come back and let us grieve for him together,—not that I grieve as you do who loved him so, but I do understand all you feel, and I felt his death very unusually, myself. I wish, oh, how I wish, we could call him back to life, and give him health, and the strength to work, and more favorable conditions. But we do not know but that he may now be rejoicing somewhere in a great gain, beyond our vision. He has gone where our Yours most truly, Louise Chandler Moulton. The Boston winters were full always with social and literary interests. The relations of Mrs. Moulton to the writers of her circle were indicated when on her sailing in the spring of one of the late eighties a post-bag was arranged which was delivered to her in mid-ocean. The idea originated with Miss Marian Boyd Allen, and among the contents were a manuscript book of poems for every day by Bliss Carman; poems by Clinton Scollard, Arlo Bates, Willis Boyd Allen, Minot J. Savage, Celia Thaxter, the Rev. Bernard Carpenter, Gertrude Hall, Mary Elizabeth Blake, and Hezekiah Butterworth; a silver vinaigrette from Professor James Mills Pierce; a book from Mrs. Clara Erskine Clement Waters; two charming drawings from Winthrop Pierce; with notes from Nora Perry, Colonel T.W. Higginson, and others. Miss Guiney addressed as her "Chief Emigrant and Trans-Atlantic Gadder, Most Ingenious Poet, and Queen of Hearts." Colonel Higginson wrote: T.W. Higginson to Mrs. Moulton Cambridge, May 3, 1887. Dear Friend: I gladly join with others in this mid-ocean post-bag. I hope you will take your instalments of friendship in as many successive days. Few American women,—perhaps none,—have succeeded in establishing such a pleasant intermedian position before English and American literature as have you, and as the ocean does not limit your circle of friends, it seems very proper that we on this side should stretch our hands to you across it. As one of your oldest and best friends, I wish you not only "many happy returns," but one, at least, in the autumn. Ever cordially, T.W. Higginson. On the other side of the Atlantic Philip Bourke Marston and his friend William Sharp greeted her return to London in three sonnets. Philip Bourke Marston to Mrs. Moulton UNDESCRIED.—TO L.C.M.
William Sharp to Mrs. Moulton ANTICIPATED FRIENDSHIP
AFTER MEETING
The following letter from Mr. Sharp explains itself in this cluster of greetings: William Sharp to Philip Bourke Marston 19 Albert Street, Regent's Park. Dear Philip: I couldn't be bothered going out anywhere, as you suggested, and an hour or two ago I was able to complete a second sonnet for the two on "Anticipated Friendship" addressed to Mrs. Moulton. I told you how much I liked her, and what a relief it was to find my hopes not disappointed. In reading these sonnets (at least, the second one) remember the dolorous condition I am in, and have mercy on all short-comings that therein abound; and, please, if you think the spirit of thankfulness in them not sufficient to overbalance all deficiencies, throw them in the fire without showing them to their unconscious inspirer, and thus earn the future gratitude of Your loving friend, William Sharp. In February of 1887 Philip Bourke Marston died. He bequeathed to Mrs. Moulton his books and manuscripts, and many autographs of great interest and value. Among them was the first page of the original manuscript of the first great chorus in "Atalanta in Calydon" corrected in Swinburne's own hand. Marston requested that she should be his literary executor. Speaking of this work some years later, Mrs. Moulton said: "When I first knew the Marstons they were a group of five,—dear old Dr. Marston, his son, Philip Bourke Marston, his unmarried daughter Cecily, his married daughter Mrs. Arthur O'Shaughnessy, and her husband. I edited a volume of selections by O'Shaughnessy; and I was named by Mr. Marston, in his will, as his literary executor. I brought out after his death a volume whose contents had not been hitherto included in any book, and which I called 'A Last Harvest.' Then I put all his flower-poems together (as he had long wished to do) in a volume by themselves, which was entitled 'Garden Secrets.' Finally I have brought out a collected edition of his poems, including the three volumes published before his death, and the ones I had compiled after he died. "Ah, you may well call his life tragic. He was only three years old when he lost his sight. He was educated orally, but his knowledge of literature was a marvel. The poets of the past were his familiar friends, and he could repeat Swinburne's poems by the hour. To recite Rossetti's 'House of Life' was one of the amusements of his solitary days. But he longed, beyond all things, to be constantly in touch with the world—to know what every year, every month, was producing. 'Can you fancy what it is,' he would say to me sometimes, 'to be just walled in with books that you are dying to read, and to have them as much beyond your reach as if they were the other side of the world?' Yet he had, despite his sad fate, the gayest humor—the most naturally cheerful temperament; he could be so merry with his friends—so happy 'when there was anything to be happy about.' Of his work 'Garden Secrets' is uniquely charming. Rossetti once wrote him, in a letter of which I am the fortunate possessor, that he had been reading these 'Garden Secrets,' the evening before, to William Bell Scott, the poet-artist, and adds, 'Scott fully agreed with me that they were worthy of Shakespeare, in his subtlest lyrical moods.' Some of the best critics in London declared that the author of Regarding the death of Mr. Marston, Mr. Whittier wrote to the friend who had brought so much brightness into the life of the blind poet: Mr. Whittier to Mrs. Moulton Centre Harbor, N.H., 7th month, 1887. My dear Friend, Louise Chandler Moulton: It was very kind in thee to send thy admirable little book and most welcome letter. We have read thy wise and charming essay up here among the hills, and under the shadow of the pines, with hearty approval. It seems a very long time since I had the great pleasure of seeing thee, or of hearing directly from thee. I meant to have been in Boston in the early spring, and looked forward to the satisfaction of meeting thee, but I was too ill to leave home, and I felt a real pang of regret when I learned of thy departure. I am now much better, but although I cannot say with the Scotch poet that
I must still confess that they are getting uncomfortably heavy. But I have no complaint to make. My heart is as warm as ever, and love and friendship as dear. I was pained by the death of thy friend, Philip Marston. It must be a comfort to thee to know that thy love and sympathy made his sad lot easier to be borne. He was one who needed love, and I think he was one to inspire it also. My old and comfortable hotel at Centre Harbor, where I have been a guest for forty years, was burned to ashes a few days ago, after we came away. But we are now in good, Good-bye, dear friend! While enjoying thy many friends in London, do not forget thy friends here. Ever affectionately thy old friend, John G. Whittier. Herbert E. Clarke, the warm and intimate friend of Marston, touchingly alludes to his death in this sonnet. TO LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
To Arlo Bates, Mrs. Moulton, reading this, repeated the closing line with a touching tenderness, and then without further word laid the manuscript aside. In the middle years of the eighties Mrs. Moulton began to send to the Boston Herald a series of literary letters from London, and these she continued for a number of years. She was especially well fitted for the undertaking by her wide acquaintance with English writers, her unusual power of appreciating work not yet endorsed by public approval, and her sympathetic instinct for literary quality. The work, while arduous, gave her pleasure, chiefly because it provided opportunity for her to give encouragement and aid to others, and to help to make better known writers and work not yet appreciated in America. "I am sending a literary letter each week to the Boston Herald," she writes Mr. Stedman. "It is hard work, but it gives me the pleasure of expressing myself about the current literature. I believe the letters are accounted a success." Many were the letters of gratitude which came to her from those of whom she had written. The sympathetic quality of her approval, so rarely found in combination with critical judgment, made her praise especially grateful. Not only did she interest and enlighten her reading public, but she encouraged and inspired those of whom she wrote. Other letters of grateful recognition came
Facsimile of the Original Draft of “Laus Veneris,” Page 143 It is not to be wondered that the artist wrote in warm acknowledgment: Mr. Burne-Jones to Mrs. Moulton "I think you must know how glad all workers are of such sympathy as you have shown me, and I don't know of any other reward that one ever sets before one's self that can be compared for a moment with the gratified sense of being understood. It's like hearing one's tongue in a foreign land. I do assure you I worked all the more confidently the day your letter came. Confidence and courage do often fail, and when all the senses are thoroughly tired with work, and the heart discouraged, a tribute like the one you sent me is a real refreshment." During all these years Mrs. Moulton's mastery of technical form, and especially her efficiency in the difficult art of the sonnet, had steadily increased. George H. Boker wrote to her: "In your ability to make the sonnet all it should be you surpass all your living, tuneful sisterhood." Certainly after the death of Mrs. Browning no woman writing English verse could be named as Mrs. Moulton's possible rival in the sonnet save Christina Rossetti, and no woman in America, In many of Mrs. Moulton's sonnets is found a subtle, elusive suggestion of spiritual things, as if the poet were living between the two worlds of the seen and the unseen, with half-unconscious perceptions, strange and swift, of the unknown. With this spiritual outlook are mingled human love and longing. The existence of any genuine poet must be dual. He holds two kinds of experience, one that has been lived in outward life; the other, not less real, that has been lived intuitively and through the power of entering, by sympathy, into other lives and varied qualities of experience. Mrs. Moulton's imaginative work, both in her stories and her poems, suggests this truth in a remarkable degree. Her nature presents a sensitive surface to impressions. She has the artist's power of selection from these, and the executive gift to combine, arrange, and present. Thus her spiritual receptivity gives to her work that deep vitality, that sense of soul in it that holds the reader, while her artistic touch moulds her rare and exquisite beauty of finished design. In 1889 Mrs. Moulton published another volume of collected tales, the last that she On her way north from a visit to her daughter in Charleston, Mrs. Moulton saw Walt Whitman. Little as she could be in sympathy with his chaotic art-notions, she was much impressed by his personality. Her diary records: "Went with Talcott Williams to see Walt Whitman, a grand, splendid old man. He sat in the most disorderly room I ever saw, but he made it a temple for his greatness. He expounded his theories of verse; he spoke of his work, of his boyhood; of his infirmities merely by way of excuse for his difficulty in moving, and he gave me a book. He was altogether delightful." From the diary one gets a curiously vivid impression that Mrs. Moulton's work was done in the very midst of interruptions and almost in an atmosphere so markedly social that it might seem to be utterly incompatible with imaginative production. Of course, a large number of those whom she saw most "Full of interruptions, but managed to get written an editorial entitled 'A Post Too Late.'" "Went to Lady Seton's breakfast-party and sat beside Oswald Crawfurd. In the morning before I went out at all I wrote a sonnet commencing, "Have pity on my loneliness, my own!" "Finished Herald letter. Mr. F.W.H. Myers called. Lunched at Walter Pater's and met M. Gabriel Sarrazin, the French critic, who told me that Guy de Maupassant thought the three disgraces for a French author were to be dÉcorÉ, to belong to the Academy, and to write for the Revue des Deux Mondes." "Jan. 1, 1889. Wrote poem, 'At Dawn,' or whatever better title I can think of. Spent the time from 8 to 2 in correcting my 13,000 words story." "Louise Guiney came in to help me look over my poems. We worked till night, then went to the Cecilia concert to hear Maida Lang's quartet." "Such a busy morning! Polished off a rondel to send to the Independent. Read Herald proof; wrote letters. This afternoon pleasant guests,—Mrs. Ole Bull, Mr. Clifford, Percival Lowell, and others." [In New York.] "Went over to Brooklyn and gave a Browning reading.... Met the Russian Princess Engalitcheff. Lunched at Mrs. Field's with the Princess and Mr. and Mrs. Locke Richardson. Went in the evening to the Gilders'." "Wrote a little.... Mrs. [John T.] Sargent and sweet Nellie Hutchinson called in the forenoon; and in the afternoon ten people, including Stedman." [In London.] "Worked on poems in forenoon. Had a lovely basket of flowers from dear old Mr. Greenough. Gave a little dinner at night at the Grand Hotel, to the Oswald Crawfurds, Sir Bruce Seton, Mrs. Trubner, and Mr. Greenough." Extracts of this sort might be multiplied, and they explain why it was that amid so Among the records of the year 1889 is this touching entry, with the date April 27, at the close of a visit to her mother: "Poor mother's last words to me were: 'I love you better than anything in this world. You are my first and last thought. Believe it, for it is the truth.'" In London this summer Mrs. Moulton was considering a title for a new volume of poems, and had asked advice of William Winter. He chanced to be in England at the time, and wrote at once: Mr. Winter to Mrs. Moulton No. 13 Upper Phillimore Place, Dear Louise: Your letter has just come. Business affairs brought me suddenly to town. I will seek to see you as soon as they can be disposed of, Saturday or Sunday, perhaps. Always, Your old friend, William Winter. The solution of Mrs. Moulton's difficulty was found in the attractive title, "In the Garden of Dreams." The volume appeared in the following year. Among the special friendships of Mrs. Moulton's life of both literary and personal interest, one of the most important and enjoyable to her was that with Professor Arlo Bates, the poet and romancist, whose work she appreciated highly and whose sympathetic companionship gave her great pleasure. With him she felt a peculiar sympathy, and to him she wrote a series of letters, extending over many years, beginning in the decade of the eighties. The extracts presented from these are here grouped, as, while they thus lose a strict chronological thread, they gain in a more complete representation, and their nature is such that the precise date (rarely given, The extracts chosen deal almost exclusively with literary matters. The only son of Professor Bates, in his twentieth year, afterward the author of "A Madcap Cruise," whom Mrs. Moulton playfully called "Prince Oric," and to whom in his sixth year she wrote a delicious sonnet under that title, is alluded to, as well as is his mother, who wrote over the pen-name Eleanor Putnam. Mrs. Moulton to Arlo Bates "... Thanks for the charming book. My love to the sweetest wife I know. Thank her for her letter...." "... Your letter about Marston's songs came to me when he and William Sharp happened to be passing the evening with me. I read it aloud, to Mr. Marston's great delight. It quite went to his heart.... I am so sorry I shall not find you and Mrs. Bates where you were last year. That desperate flirtation with Master Oric is off entirely...." "... I have just been reading 'Childe Roland,' and it baffles me, as it has so often done before. I feel less sure that I understand it than any other of Browning's poems. "... I am delighted with what you say of Mr. Marston's poem in Harper's, because I think the poem too subtle and delicate to be appreciated, save by the very elect; and I am also delighted because what you said gave him so much pleasure. Marston said of you, 'What a wonderful psychological vein, almost as powerful as that of Browning, runs through many of the poems of Mr. Bates.'..." "... I am so eager to see your novel of artistic Boston. 'The Pagans,'—a capital title. I am glad you have had the courage to tell the truth in it as you see it. I don't see it quite as you do, I fancy, but I am thankful when any one has the courage of his opinions, for it seems to me that the English and American writers are just now very much like cats standing on the edge of a stream, and afraid to put in their feet. They say what they think is expected of them to say, and they reserve the truth for the seasons when they enter their closets and shut the door on all the world. I think there is more hypocrisy in novels than in religion." "... I am ashamed that two weeks have gone by since I received your noble book, 'Told in the Gate.' I have not been so neglectful of it as it seems. I have not only taken my own pleasure in it, but I have shown it to other poets who are interested in knowing what is being done in America. It is a beautiful book externally—how beautiful it is internally I am sure the world of readers will eagerly perceive; but never one of them can love it more than I do. Even in print it is hard for me to say which poem I prefer. There is not one among them that is not well done from the point of art, and thrillingly interesting as a story. The lyrics star the book like gems. They sing themselves over and over to my listening mind.... I feel a glow of exultant pride that the author is my friend. I am proud and glad to have my name inscribed in a volume I so admire and love. I am enjoying London as I always do.... I go toward the end of August to pay some visits in Scotland, and then to visit Lady Ashburton in Hampshire and after that to Paris. I enclose some foreign stamps for the young Prince.... Your poems are among the pleasures of my life." Of the sonnets of Mr. Bates Mrs. Moulton wrote: "... Dante breathed through the sonnet the high aspirations of that love which shaped and determined his soul's life. By sonnets it was that Petrarch wedded immortally his name to that of his ever-wooed, never-won Laura of Avignon. Strong Michael Angelo wrote sonnets for that noble lady, Vittoria Colonna, whose hand he kissed only after Death had kissed the soul from her pure lips. "The one personal intimacy with Shakespeare to which any of his worshippers have been admitted is such as comes from loving study of his sonnets, in 'sessions of sweet, silent thought.' The sonnets of Elizabeth Barrett Browning burned with the pure flame of her perfect love. In the sonnets of 'The House of Life' Rossetti commemorated that love and loss so passionate and so abiding that it seemed to him the whole of life. In the sonnets of 'Song-Tide' Marston sang the praises of his early love, as in those of 'All In All' he bewailed her loss; and his sonnets of later years throb like a tell-tale heart with the profoundest melancholy out of whose depths a human soul ever cried for pity. "Such and thus intimate have been the revelations made through this form of verse—so rigid, yet so plastic and so human. "To the list of these sonneteers who have "A few of us know, personally, the rare charm, the exquisite loveliness, of her thus royally honored and passionately lamented; and all of us who read can feel that thus and thus our own hearts might be wrung by such a loss—that in us, also, if we have souls at all, such sorrow might bear fruit in kindred emotion, even though for want of words our lips be dumb. It seems to me that it is the dumb souls—who feel all that the poet has sung, and yet cannot break the silence with a cry—who owe the deepest debt to this, their interpreter." Mrs. Moulton to Mr. Bates "October 27, 1889. "I have been passing this rainy afternoon with your sonnets. I had read some of them more than once before, but this afternoon I
And the fifteenth with its visions of love. "Never can joy surmise how long are sorrow's hours, ought to be, like certain lines of Wordsworth, among the immortal quotations. I think your sonnets noble alike in thought and in execution. They can have no more faithful lover than I am; and I do believe that if there is anything in which my opinion has any value, it is on the form of poetry. I love it so sincerely and I have studied it so devotedly.... "... Mrs. Spofford has been to stay over Sunday with me and I read through to her your new volume of poems, with the excep "His heart is still mine, beating warm in my grave, is not only the finest line in your book, but the finest line that has been written by any one in a score of years." "... Your suggestion as to national characteristics of women struck me as a curious coincidence with the fact that the editor of the Fortnightly has just asked me to write an article on American and English women, contrasting and comparing them, and discussing their differences. But the differences; seem to me individual, not national. "Thanks for your suggestion about the sonnet. "Break through the shining, splendid ranks seems to me simpler and more forcible, but then this involves the 'I pray,' to which you greatly object. "Break through their splendid militant array: "I'll copy both, and see what you think. On the whole, I like yours better. "I have been arranging books all the afternoon, and I am so tired that I wish I had the young prince here, or such another,—only there is no other." The same to the same "Dear Pagan: I am on page 238 of 'The Puritans,' and I pause to say how piteously cruel is your portrait of ——. Sargent, at his best, was never so relentlessly realistic. I pity Fenton so desperately I can hardly bear it. Why do I sympathize so with him when he is so little worthy? Is it your fault, or mine? I believe I am not pitiless enough to write novels, even if I had every other qualification. "Your character of Fenton is admirably studied. It is worthy of the author of 'The Pagans' and 'A Wheel of Fire.'" "... I have finished reading 'The Puritans,'—all the duties of life neglected till I came to the end. I have not been so interested in a book for ages. I am especially interested in the conflict of the souls between degrees of agnosticism. It is the keenest longing of my life to know what is truth." "I have reason to be grateful for your birthday, since I find you one of the most interesting persons I have ever had the happiness to know." "I have just finished reading 'The Diary of a Saint,' and I cannot wait an hour to tell you how very greatly I admire it. It has been said that all the stories were told. You prove how untrue is this statement,—for your story, or anything like it, has never been told before. It is absolutely unique and original.... I am so interested in every page of the book that I have an impatient desire to know all the spiritual experiences that lead to it." "Just now at Les Voirons (Haute Savoie) I have found a sort of hilltop paradise. Four thousand and more feet above the sea level, the air is like balm, and the views indescribably lovely. I have never seen Mont Blanc half so well. It is far more wonderful than the view from Chamounix. And just now at night the white ghost of a young moon hangs above it, in a pale, clear sky, and the lesser peaks all around shimmer in the moonlight. This hotel is ten climbing miles from any railroad station. You can buy nothing here but postage stamps." In a characteristic letter from Rome, Richard Greenough, the sculptor, says: Mr. Greenough to Mrs. Moulton "The sidereal certainty of your movements impresses me. It reminds me of the man who ordered his dinner in England a year in advance, and when the time came he was there to eat it.... Do I feel sure of a life after this? Was ever a note charged with such heavy ballast? To attempt an answer would take a volume,—to give an answer would require a conscience.... While reading Cicero's Tusculan Disputations 'On Grief,' I found a quotation from Sophocles that reminds me of your loss in Philip's death.
"I wonder if you know how poetic you are? Do what you may,—read, write, or talk, you make real life seem ideal, and ideal life seem real. Your sweet 'After Death' is above all praise." On the appearance of "Robert Elsmere" Mrs. Moulton read it with the greater inter Mrs. Ward to Mrs. Moulton London, June 20, 1888. Dear Mrs. Moulton: Thanks for your interesting letter in re Robert Elsmere. There is no answer merely to the problems of evil and suffering except that of an almost blind trust. I see dimly that evil is a condition of good. Heredity and environment are awful problems. They are also the lessons of God. Sincerely yours, Mary A. Ward. The publication in 1889 of the collection of poems entitled "In the Garden of Dreams" added greatly to Mrs. Moulton's standing as a poet. On the title-page were the lines of Tennyson:
The book contained a group of lyrics "To French Tunes," which showed that Mrs. Moulton had responded to the fashion for The voice of the press was one of unanimous praise on both sides of the Atlantic. The privately expressed criticisms of the members of the guild of letters were no less in "It is a perfect thing. The wings of flying are all through it. It is fine, and free, and beautiful as the 'Statue and the Bust.' It is high, and sweet, and touching." Dr. Holmes to Mrs. Moulton 296 Beacon St., My dear Mrs. Moulton: I thank you most cordially for sending me your beautiful volume of poems. They tell me that they are breathed from a woman's heart as plainly as the fragrance of a rose reveals its birthplace. I have read nearly all of them—a statement I would not venture to make of most of the volumes I receive, the number of which is legion, and I cannot help feeling flattered that the author of such impassioned poems should have thought well enough of my own productions to honor me with the kind words I find on the blank leaf of a little book that seems to me to hold leaves torn out of the heart's record. Believe me, dear Mrs. Moulton, Faithfully yours, O.W. Holmes.
Facsimile of a Letter from Oliver Wendell Holmes Page 164 Dr. Rolfe to Mrs. Moulton Cambridge, Christmas, 1889. Dear Mrs. Moulton: How can I thank you enough for giving me a free pass to your "Garden of Dreams" with its delightful wealth of violets, fresh and sweet; lilies and roses, rosemary, and Elysian asphodel, and every flower that sad embroidery weaves? Put your ear down close and let me whisper very confidentially,—tell it not at our meetings at the Brunswick, publish it not in the streets of Boston! that I like your delicate and fragrant blossoms better than some of the hard nuts that the dear, dead Browning has given us in his "Asolando." Sour critics may tell us that the latter will last longer,—they are tough enough to endure,—but I doubt not that old Father Time,—who is not destitute of taste, withal,—will press some of your charming flowers between his ponderous chronicles, where their lingering beauty and sweetness will delight the appreciation of generations far distant. So may it be! Luckily, one may wander at will with impunity in your lovely garden, even if he has as bad a cold as at present afflicts and stupefies your friend, though he may enjoy these all the more when he recovers his wonted good With the best wishes of the holiday time, W.J. Rolfe. Mr. Greenough to Mrs. Moulton "December, 1889. "I took a long walk in 'The Garden of Dreams.' What a perfect title! Dr. Charles Waldstein is staying with me on his way to Athens, and I read him some of these poems which most pleased me, finding instant response. "You will feel Browning's death very much. Story was with him only a few weeks ago. They were making excursions, and, despite remonstrances, Browning insisted on scaling heights, though often obliged to stop. It was a great disappointment to his son that he could not be buried by E.B.B., as he desired to be.... Yes, positively and inexorably, the past exists forever. We do not apprehend it, owing to the limitations of our faculties, but once granting the removal of these limitations by organic change (as by death), then the past becomes awakened, and we are again alive Such extracts might be extended almost indefinitely, for with Mrs. Moulton's very large circle of friends the number of letters which naturally came to her after the appearance of a new volume was inevitably large, and "In the Garden of Dreams" was so notable an achievement as to make this especially true. The closing decade found her rich in fame and in friends with an acknowledged and indeed undisputed place in the literary world, not only on this side of the water but the other, and the consciousness that it had been won not alone by her great natural gifts and marked personal charm, but by sincere and conscientious devotion, untiring and unselfish, to her art. A pleasant closing note was a Christmas card adorned with violets, on the back of which William Sharp had written the graceful lines: TO L.C.M.
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