  And this is the reward. That the ideal shall be real to thee, and the impressions of the actual world shall fall like summer rain, copious, but not troublesome.... Doubt not, O Poet, but persist.—Emerson.
MRS. MOULTON’S morning-room was on the second floor, its windows looking into the green trees of Rutland Square. In one corner was her desk, in the centre a table always piled with new books, many of which were autographed copies from their authors, and around the walls were low bookcases filled with her favorite volumes. Above these hung pictures, and on their tops were photographs and mementos. The mantel was attractive with pretty bric-a-brac, largely gifts. Between the two front windows was her special table filled with the immedi No allusion to these delightful talks with Mrs. Moulton in her morning-room could be complete without mention of her faithful and confidential maid, Katy, whom all the frequenters of the house regarded with cordial friendliness as an important figure in the household life. It was Katy who knew to a shade the exact degree of greeting for the unending procession of callers, from the friends dearest and nearest, to the wandering minstrels who should have been denied, though they seldom were. It was Katy who surrounded the gracious mistress of the establishment with as much protection as was possible; but as Mrs. Moulton's sympathies were unbounded, while her time and strength had their definite limits, it will be seen that Katy's task was often difficult. The informal lingerings in Mrs. Moulton's morning-room were so a part of the "dear days" that "have gone back to Paradise" that without some picture of them no record of her Boston life could be complete. The first mail was an event, and to it Mrs. Moulton gave her immediate attention after glancing Now it was a typewriter given with such graceful sweetness to a literary worker whose sight was failing; now checks that saved the All the world of letters was talked over in those morning hours in her room. Sometimes her friends "gently wrangled," and bantered her with laughter and love. At one time she had made in a lyric a familiar allusion to larks and nightingales, and Louise Guiney, who, because she bore Mrs. Moulton's name, usually addressed her as "Godmam," took her to task for some ornithological inadvertence in the terrestrial location of her
and had ungallantly commented: "But Mrs. Moulton has lain down to sleep all her life in America, and never looked forward to seeing the morning lark on awakening. She never saw or sought the nightingale at dusk in the green lanes of her native Connecticut. Why should she revert to the habits of her colonial ancestors, and meditate on these pleasing foreign fowl as necessary stage-properties for a vision of death and immortality?" Another writer had come to the defence of the poet in this fashion: "Considering that Mrs. Moulton goes to Europe the last of every April, not returning till late in October, it would seem natural for her to sing of 'larks and nightingales,' since she must hear them both sing in the English May. Do, dear Colonel Higginson, permit her to sing of them, though they are not native birds, since in the magic of her art she almost makes us hear them too." Miss Guiney, laughing over these comments, turned to Mrs. Moulton. "Godmam," she asked, "did you ever see a nightingale?" "Why, yes, Louise; plenty of them." "Where?" "Why, anywhere. Out here, I suppose," replied the elder poet, dreamily glancing from the windows of her morning-room into the tree-tops of Rutland Square. "In London, too, I believe," she added, rather vaguely. "Singing in Trafalgar Square, godmam," rejoined the younger poet mischievously. The informal loiterers in the morning-room were never weary of asking Mrs. Moulton's impressions of London writers. "You knew Thomas Hardy well?" someone would ask. "I knew him. I even venture to think of him as a friend—at least as a very friendly acquaintance. I cared deeply for many of his books before I had the pleasure of meeting him; and I quite adored 'The Return of the Native.'" "And you liked the author as well as the books?" "I think no one could know Thomas Hardy and not like him. He is sympathetic, genial, unaffected, altogether delightful; somewhat Many of her reminiscences which entered into the talk have been told in her newspaper letters, and need not be repeated here, but they took on a fresh vitality from the living voice and the gracious, unaffected manner. By some untraced or unanalyzed impulse Mrs. Moulton was apt to be moved on each New Year's day to write a poem. Usually this was a sonnet, but now and then a lyric instead; and for many years the first entry in the fresh volume of her diary records the fact. On the first of January, 1890, she writes: "Began the New Year by writing a sonnet, to be called 'How Shall We Know,' unless I can find a better title." "The Last Good-bye" was the title upon which she afterward fixed. On the fifth day of January of this year died Dr. Westland Marston. Mrs. Moulton wrote in her Herald letters a review of his life and work, in the course of which she said with touching earnestness: "I scarcely know a life which has been so tragic as his in the way of successive bereavements; and when I think of him as I saw him last, on the first day of last November—in his solitary library, with the pictures of Her intimacy had been close with all the family, and while Edmund Gosse was right when he wrote to her that she seemed to him always to have been "Philip's true guardian-ray, or better genius," her friendship for Cecily Marston, for Mrs. O'Shaughnessy, and with Dr. Marston himself was hardly less close. The tragic ending of the family could not but cast a bleak shade over the opening year. Her relations with English writers and the good offices by which she helped to make their work better known on this side of the Atlantic might be illustrated by numerous letters. Richard Garnett to Mrs. Moulton British Museum, London, Dear Mrs. Moulton: I hope I need not say how your letter has gratified me. The progress of "The Twilight of the Gods" has been slow, and I was especially disappointed Believe me, Most sincerely yours, R. Garnett. Both Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Meredith had, each unknown to the other, suggested to Mrs. Moulton that she write a novel in verse. "Lucile" and "Aurora Leigh" had each in its time and way made a wide popular success, and they felt that Mrs. Moulton might succeed equally. To this suggestion Mr. Meredith alludes in a letter in which he thanks Mrs. Moulton for a copy of "In the Garden of Dreams." George Meredith to Mrs. Moulton March 9, 1890. "Dear Mrs Moulton: Your beautiful little volume charms us all. It is worth a bower of song, and I am rightly sensible of the gift. You are getting to a mastery of the sonnet that is rare, and the lyrics are ex In the years directly following its publication, "In the Garden of Dreams" went rapidly through several editions. One sonnet which elicited much praise was that called HELP THOU MINE UNBELIEF.
The deeply religious feeling, the profound sincerity, and what might perhaps not inaptly be called the completely modern mood of this, a mood which in its essence is permanent but which in its outward form varies with each generation, gave it a power of wide appeal. A church paper in England said of it: "Profound faith in the infinite goodness of God is the spirit which animates most of Mrs. Moulton's work. The sonnet ... deserves a place among the best devotional verse in the language. It is a question if, outside of the volume of Miss Rossetti, any devotional verse to equal this can be found in the work of a living woman-writer." The critic need hardly have limited himself to the poetry of women. Mrs. Moulton was all her life vitally interested in the religious side of life, and many more of her letters might have been quoted to show how constantly her mind returned to the question of immortality and human responsibility. The sonnet had become for her a natural mode of utterance, as it was for Mrs. Browning when she wrote the magnificent sequence which recorded her love; and in this especial poem is the essence of Mrs. Moulton's spiritual life. Mrs. Moulton's mastery of the sonnet has been alluded to before, but as each new volume brought fresh proof of it, and as she went on producing work equally important, it is impossible not to refer to this form of her art again and again. Whittier wrote to her after the appearance of "In the Garden of Dreams": "It seems to me the sonnet was never set to such music before, nor ever weighted with more deep and tender thought;" and Miss Guiney, in a review, declared that "we rest with a steadfast pleasure on the sonnets, and in their masterly handling of high thoughts." Phrases of equal significance might be multiplied, and to them no dissenting voice could be raised. In 1890 Mrs. Moulton brought out a volume of juvenile stories under the title "Stories Told at Twilight," and in 1896 this was followed by another with the name "In Childhood's Country." Always wholesome, kindly, attractive, these volumes had a marked success with the audience for which they were designed; and of few books written for children can or need more be said. Among the letters of this period are a number from a correspondent signing "Pascal Germain." The writer had published a novel called "Rhea: a Suggestion," but his identity A letter from Edward Stanton Huntington, author of "Dreams of the Dead," rather deepens than clears the mystery. The writer was a nephew of Bishop Huntington, and is not now living. Mr. Huntington to Mrs. Moulton "Wollaston, Mass. "My Dear Mrs. Moulton: I find myself unable to send the complete letters of my friend, Duynsters, but take pleasure in sending "'What you tell me of the photograph and Mrs. Moulton amuses me very much. Let me assure you that the photograph is no more the picture of Pascal Germain than it is of Pericles, or Gaboriau, or Zoroaster. I am the only human being who knows the identity of Germain, beside himself, and no one can possess his photograph.' "Duynsters then goes on to discuss the symbolism and sound psychology of the work. My own conclusion, after reading the words of my friend Duynsters, and hastily perusing 'Rhea,' (I confess I was not much interested in the book)—my conclusions are that Germain is the pen name of some man or woman of peculiar genius and eccentric taste. "Mr. Duynsters is a very cultivated man, one who has travelled extensively, and who has a keen judgment of men and affairs; so it puzzles me exceedingly to decide who this author of 'Rhea' really is. Time will tell...." A copy of "Rhea" was among Mrs. Moulton's books, but the novel seems never to have made a marked impression on either side of the Atlantic. What is apparently the earliest letter remaining of the series seems to throw light on a passage in the note of Mr. Huntington, and to give the impression that Pascal Germain had played a mischievous trick on Mrs. Moulton by sending her a photograph which was not genuine. M. Germain to Mrs. Moulton Monastery of Ste. Barbe, Madame: It is in sincere gratitude that I tender you my thanks for your kind words about the photograph which I had many misgivings in venturing to lay before you, fearing it might be de trop. Whether you really forgive me for sending it, or were so gentle as to conceal your displeasure, it leaves me your debtor always. Although I write from Paris now, the above is my address, and I beg you will remember it if at any time I can serve you on this side of the ocean. I beg you to command me freely. Believe me to remain, Yours very faithfully, Pascal Germain. From the same Paris. Tuesday Morn. Dear Friend: I am inexpressibly touched by your letter, and I reply at once. I drop all other work to write to you, solely that I may lose no time. Yours of the 1st has been here only a few minutes. Believe me, your idea of death is purely a fancy, born of an atmosphere of doubt, out of which you must get as soon as possible. I am glad you wrote, for in this I may serve you as I have served others. When I tell you I feel sure your phantom of approaching death is unreal, I am telling you a truth deduced from hard study, and than which no other conclusion could arrive. Of this I give you my most sacred assurance. Put this thought out of your mind as you would recoil from any adverse suggestion. The fact is, very few deaths are natural: they are the result of fear. The natural death is at the age of from a hundred to a hundred and twenty or thirty years. The deaths about us are from fright, ignorance, and concession to the opinions of uneducated friends, and half-educated doctors. This I know. I could cite you case after case of If your delusion is mental, swing to the other side of the circle, and read or study the most agreeable things that are widely apart from what you have been dwelling upon. Exercise strengthens the mind. It is the folly of fools to speak of the brain being over-worked. It may be stupidly exercised, but if used in a catholic development, the use makes it more vigorous. Look at the blue sky; not the ground. God is the Creator, but man is also a creator. His health depends largely on his will,—that is to say, in the sense of that will being plastic to the Divine will. If your illness is physical stop thinking about yourself,—do as Saint Teresa did, take up some other subject, and suddenly you will find yourself well. Nature requires only a few months, not years, to make the body all over again. Death is natural. Few physicians know anything about it. They have shut down every window in their souls to the light. For your comfort let me tell you that what I am saying is the subject of a long talk with one of the first physicians on the Continent. Many things, accepted by the common Stop critical reading. Really a critic is an interpreter, but what modern critic knows this? The only modern critic I honor is Herbert Spencer. Believe me, Yours with great respect, Pascal Germain. From the same 17, Avenue Gourgard (Monceau), Paris, My Dear Mrs. Moulton: I hope you have believed that all this while I have been away my letters were not forwarded and only now I have wandered through it reading over and over special poems that fascinate me. I have not really read them all yet, though I ought to know this volume very well, for I bought it some years ago. I am particularly pleased with the poems, "A Painted Fan," and "The House of Death." The poem called "Annie's Daughter" is picturesque to a great degree. By the way I have a letter from an American magazine asking me to write for them "anything." The letter is in French. Now why should I not write for them an article on your poems? They tell me they will faithfully translate all I send. Your informant was right. I am French only on one side of the house. Lest I may forget, I want to say here and now how much I like your "At Étretat." I should have known it meant that place, even without the title. The picture is so vivid. Do you know the Riviera? There is material for you in grays and browns, and the sound of the sea. But I think the poetry of the "fan" expresses you best, and there you have the advantage of being alone in your beautiful thought. What lonely things beauty, truth, and the soul are! The atoms never touch. Forgive the length of this if you can, and believe me, Your faithful servant, Pascal Germain. From the same 17, Avenue Gourgard (Monceau), Paris, Madame: I trust it will not displease you to hear from me again, though my fate is perilously uncertain, since not from you, nor from any mutual friend, can I be sure that my "Rhea" has not fallen under your displeasure. But I offer something more welcome to your poet's hands than any work of mine. The laurel which I enclose is from the casket of dear Owen Meredith. You may have seen in the newspapers an account of the brilliantly solemn funeral, when honors were paid him which only before have been paid to the Chief Marshals of France; and how through all that pomp and pageantry, but one laurel wreath rested on his casket,—the crown laid upon his beloved clay by his wife. There was a good deal of talk about this wreath, though no one but Lady Lytton and the sender knew from whence it came. It was I—yet not altogether myself,—for it was a late (too late) atonement for an unde Lord Lytton's death was, as you know, sudden, and my message was unwritten because I had only returned to Paris after years of travelling, and I was simply waiting for better news of him in order to go to the Embassy with the story of her life, and what the ideal woman in the poem had done for the heroine in the flesh, when the startling news of his death came. I did what I thought the dear Sister would like done, since words were useless. One might quote his own words, Soul to soul, since from my hands to the poet's wife the laurel was laid upon him; and I send it because it has a touch of the supernatural; of the mystical love and sweetness of your own domain,—and is no common occurrence, that, out of all the wreaths and tokens, sent by kings and queens and nobles, from all over the world, the one alone from a Sister of Charity, was laid upon his casket from the first, in the death-chamber, in the church, and in the sad procession, and finally buried with him at Knebworth. For I must explain that not till a fortnight afterward did She was profoundly touched when I told her the story, and only last Sunday she wrote and asked me if she might some day give it to the public, to which, of course, I assented. I am therefore breaking no confidence in sending these few leaves which I plucked from the wreath after it was woven. As they had faded I regilded them, as you see. (Laurels and gold for poets.) Nor is this boldness all mine. It is my artist friend, Monsieur Carl Gutherz, who bids me send them to you, "because," he says, "they will weave into her fancies in some sweet and satisfying dream." Madame, believe me, Your faithful servant, Pascal Germain. Among the Moulton books now in the collection in the Boston Public Library is a 16mo copy of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's "Paul et Virginie," bound in an old brocade of a lovely hue of old-rose. On its cover obliquely is to be seen the faintest shadow of a cross, and in it is preserved the following letter: M. Germain to Mrs. Moulton Paris, Wednesday. My dear Mrs. Moulton: The little book is not quite what I was looking for. The binding I was searching for I did not find, but if I delay too long, I shall be away to Madrid; not the place most likely to reward my search. I wonder if you will like the odd cover? It was ordered by me in an impulse without stopping to reflect that its associations to me mean nothing to you. The bit of tapestry is the relic of one of the oldest and most picturesque chambers in Normandy, and was given me by a nun who nursed me through an illness there—in fact I begged her for it because it is interwoven with a story which I think my best (not yet finished). If you hold the book so that the light plays horizontally, you will see the trace of time-wear in the shape of a †. The fabric was the vestment more than a hundred years in the service of the church there, and was worn by the hero of my story—a priest whose life was a long agony—for a fault nobly atoned. But I must not assume your interest in the tragedy. Perhaps the color—which an artist friend borrowed to robe one of his angels in—may please you. If not, kindly burn the packet, No doubt the cover does not look professional. I got it done at short notice by one not used to my sometimes eccentric requests and wishes. Will you kindly give it value by accepting it with the best wishes of Your very faithful, Pascal Germain. So these letters remain, with their curious suggestiveness. Mrs. Moulton's memorial volume on Arthur O'Shaughnessy was published in 1894,—a volume containing selections from his poems preceded by a biographical and critical introduction. Mrs. Spofford pronounced the book "an exquisite piece of work, full of interest and done with such delight in touch." Mrs. Moulton had written with her accustomed skill, and through every line spoke her intimate sympathy with the poet and with his work. Her summers, after the visit to her daughter in Charleston, were still passed in Europe. Rome, Florence, and other southern cities were often visited before she went to England Her friends in London were so many, and the diary records so many pleasant social diversions that it is no wonder that Thomas Hardy should write to her: "Why don't you live in London altogether? You might thus please us, your friends, and send to America letters of a higher character than are usually penned. You would raise the standard of that branch of journalism." Season after season she notes dinners, luncheons, drives, functions of all sorts, and one does not wonder that with this and her really arduous literary work her health began to suffer. A German "cure" came to be a regular part of the summer programme, and yet with her eager temperament and keen interest in the human, she could not bring herself to forego the excitement and enjoyment which probably did much to make this necessary. Not a little did her voluminous correspond It is now well known that the poems published over the name "Michael Field" were Miss Cooper to Mrs. Moulton "We have just returned from Fiesole and Orvieto, and such names are poems. I had hoped to send you verses in The Academy, welded by Michael, on some Greek goddess in the British Museum. We very much care for the sympathy and interest of Americans." "I don't know any poet who is so spontaneously true to himself as you are. I actually stand by you as I read, and see the harmonious movement of your lips, and the half-deprecating, half-shadowed look in your eyes.... Your verses are like music. What is this? You are not able to sing? Is this the effect of Boston on its winter guest? I can sympathize, for I have not written a line since our play was brought out last October." "The placid hills [in the Lake Country] make one love them as only Tuscan hills be "In a cover somewhat like this paper in tone 'StÉphanie' presents herself to you.... We have the audacity to think it is nearly as well woven as one of the William Morris carpets. We have taken ten years over the ten pages." On one of her visits to the cure at Wiesbaden Mrs. Moulton made the acquaintance of Friedrich von Bodenstedt and visited at his house. She characterized the lyrics of the author of the "Lieder des Mirza-Schaffy" as "warm with the love of life and the life of love, and perfumed with the roses of the East." Her description of his personal appearance is not without interest. "A tall, handsome, active man of seventy-two, with gray hair, with eyes full, still, of the keen fire of youth; with the grand manner which belongs to the high-bred gentlemen of his generation, and the gift to please and to charm which is not always the dower even of a poet." Her return voyage from Europe in 1891 was a sorrowful one. Just before sailing she notes in Moulton's mother Louisa Rebecca Chandler, Mrs. Moulton’s Mother Page 199 The letters of Mrs. Moulton show through these years a growing feeling in regard to the mystery of death. So many of her friends had gone that the brevity of life was more and more deeply impressed upon her. In the correspondence of many of her friends are traces that her letters to them, not now available, had touched upon the questions to her so vital. Mrs. Maxwell (Miss M.E. Braddon) for instance, wrote: Mrs. Maxwell to Mrs. Moulton "I have never believed in the gloomy and pitiless creed of the Calvinists. I believe every one is master of his destiny so far as perfect freedom of choice for good or evil. When we take the wrong road we do it perhaps in the blindness of passion, with eyes blind to consequences, minds darkened by selfish desires, by Canon Bell to Mrs. Moulton "I hope you are seeing your way clearly to faith in God and His dear Son. A sure trust in our Heavenly Father is the only true consolation in this world of change and sorrow. That brings peace." Lady Henry Somerset to Mrs. Moulton "I well understand what you say about looking onward. I think our eyes are turned that way when the steps of life lead us nearer to the journey's end with each setting sun. It is absorbingly interesting. Yes, I believe the love of God will be closest; and, in the last, victorious." What the words were to which these were replies may in part be gathered from the following: Mrs. Moulton to William Winter Durnham House, Chelsea, London, Dear Willie: I hope your lecture last night was a success, but it seems to me that all you do is. Yes,—how well I remember that seventieth-birthday breakfast to Dr. Thank you a thousand times for your dear letter. If I go to New York or you come to Boston, do not let us fail to meet, for the time in which earthly meetings are possible is short. Oh, how I hope there may be a life to come in which we shall find lost loves and hopes, and above all, lost possibilities. I think it is hardest of all to me to think what I might have been, might have done, and to be so utterly discontented with myself as I am. If you pray, say a prayer sometimes for one of the truest and fondest of your many friends,—this wanderer, L.C.M. Without doubt the state of Mrs. Moulton's health had much to do with her apprehensions in regard to a future life, and no one who was intimately associated with her could fail to know that these expressions of gloom and foreboding, while entirely genuine at the moment of their utterance, convey an impression of her usual state of mind far more dark than was warranted by the truth. She was too sincerely interested in life and friendship, too much of her time and thought went to earnest work, however, for her to be in general either brooding or fearsome. The extracts given rather indicate her attitude of mind toward certain grave questions than toward life in general. The frankness of the following letter from a woman who possessed remarkable powers which the public never fully appreciated is striking and refreshing: Mrs. Richard Henry Stoddard to Mrs. Moulton Mattapoisett, January 20. Dear Mrs. Moulton: Will you accept Mr. Stoddard's thanks for your pleasant notice through me? I write nearly all his personal letters, I may say, nearly all except business letters. He was always averse to letter writing, and since his blindness this aversion is in I think your first quotation a very poor one. The value of reviews or notices seems to me to be in quotations rather than in the ordinary criticism. In reading them I have often taken the poems in a new and striking light; the medium—that is, the writer—has instructed and cleared my understanding. The happiest in regard to "The Lion's Cub" is the extract in The Critic. There has been no review of the book; the nearest, so far, is the Springfield Republican's and that is suggestive of a review. Mr. Stoddard considers the book a failure; I doubt if he ever collects again. Boyle O'Reilly once said that he saw Stoddard in Broadway and that no one noticed him; "had he been in Boston," he continued, "on Washington Street, every man's hat would have been off to his white head." We are most delightfully set aside from the afternoon teas of the city, though the invitations chase us up here; the gray tranquil waters of our little bay, the solitary street, a dog occasionally going by, sometimes a man, is a pleasing contrast to 15th Street and Broadway. We shall remain a few days longer and then go into our incongruous life again. If Lorimer were acting in Boston as he did for Have you come across my friend, young Edward McDowell, the composer, who has made such a success? He and his wife are charming. And Miss ——, will you give her my regards when you see her? She has been not only attentive to me, but to my young sister, who followeth not in her aged sister's steps. Mr. Stoddard also wished to be remembered kindly to you. Yours truly, Elizabeth Stoddard. P.S. I meant to say while on "The Lion's Cub" that I never was so impressed with the gravity and dignity of S.'s verse, nor so clearly saw the profound melancholy of his mind. He really cares little for life. Ah, me! E.S. |
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