Louise Chandler Moulton

"... It is pleasant to feel that she owes this result quite as much to her qualities of character as to her gifts of intellect. There never lived, perhaps, a more thoroughly open-hearted and generous woman; and the poorest and least gifted applicant might always seek her as successfully as the most famous and influential."

"I shall never forget, in particular, with what tears in his eyes the living representative of Philip Bourke Marston spoke to me in London of her generous self-devotion to his son, the blind poet, of whom she became the editor and biographer."

"I never felt alone. Dream children companioned me, and were as real to my thoughts as if other eyes than my own could have seen them. Their sorrows saddened me, their mirth amused me, they shared my visions, my hopes; and the strange dread with which I—brought up in a Puritan household where election and predestination were familiar words—looked forward to the inevitable end.

"Yet haunted as I was by the phantom future, I was happy in the present. I am afraid I was what is called a spoiled child. I loved horses and I loved verses, and on my eighth birthday two presents were made me—a well-equipped saddle horse, and a book of poems. The horse ran away with me that same afternoon while my too sociable father, who was riding with me, stopped to talk town politics with a neighbor; but my steed raced homeward, and I reached my own door in safety. The book of verse I have yet. It was by Mrs. Hemans—now so cruelly forgotten."

"I was not allowed to read fiction or to play any but the most serious games.... Hence I was thrown upon my own resources for amusement. I remember when I was only eight years old carrying in my head all the summer a sort of Spanish drama, as I called it, though I knew little of Spain except some high-sounding Spanish names which I gave to my characters. Each day, as soon as I could get away by myself, I summoned these characters as if my will had been a sort of invisible call-boy, and then watched them performing. It did not seem to me that I created them, but rather that I summoned them, and their behavior often astonished me. For one of them, a young girl, who obstinately persisted in dying of consumption, I sincerely grieved."

"It was a beautiful September morning that ushered in the day of my departure. I rose with the first dawning of light to gaze once more upon those scenes whose loveliness I had so loved to trace. I rejoiced to pay a tribute of gratitude to some of the many friends whose society had contributed so much to my happiness when away from the home of my childhood.... At noon I started.... For many a mile, as we were drawn with dazzling rapidity by our wild steam horse (whose voice resounded like the rolling of distant thunder), I could catch glimpses of the dark blue waters of the Mohawk, which I had so loved to gaze upon, and to whose music I had so often listened in the hush of evening, from my open window, or when walking on its green banks with a friend, dearly loved and highly prized, but whom I shall, perhaps, meet no more forever.... As I rode along my thoughts reverted to her. The river gleaming in quiet beauty from beneath the green foliage of its fringing trees reminded me of the hours we had spent together in contemplating it. The excitement of travelling and the loved home to which I was hastening were alike forgotten in these reveries of the past."

"From such reveries of the past was I awakened by the stopping of the cars at Albany. That night we embarked on board a steamboat, and as we glided o'er the Hudson river, my heart bounded with delight. I stood alone before an open window, and my soul drank in the richness of the scene."

"... But when they had entirely lost sight of land Charles clasped his loved one to his heart and whispered, 'Be comforted, dearest; we go not alone, for is not He with us who said, "Lo, I am with thee always, even unto the end of the world!"'... The young bride burst into an agony of tears.... Her husband led her on deck, and showed her the sun's last, golden rays that lay upon the waves, sparkling like a thousand brilliants.... It seemed a sea of burning gold.... A high and holy resolve rose in the hearts of the young missionaries.... They had left a circle of brilliant acquaintances for the untutored heathen.... They left the deck to sit down in a quiet nook and read the word of Him for whom they forsook all earthly pleasures."

"I used to rhyme as long ago as I can remember anything, and I sent my first contribution to a newspaper when I was fourteen years old.... I remember how secretly, and almost as if it were a crime, I sent it in; and when I found the paper one evening, upon calling at the post-office on my way home from school, and saw my lines—my very own lines—it seemed to me a much more wonderful and glorious event than has anything since that time.... Perhaps it was unfortunate for me that it was accepted at once, since it encouraged me in the habit of verse,—making a habit which future occupations confirmed. But one gain, at least, came to me,—the friendship and encouragement of authors whose work I loved. I was scarcely eighteen when my first book was published. I called it 'This, That, and the Other,' because it was made up of short stories, sketches (too brief and immature to call essays), and the rhymes into which, from the first, I put more of myself than into any other form of expression. Strangely enough, the book sold largely."

"This is almost equal to the picture of Madeline in 'The Eve of St. Agnes,' as she kneels before the oriel window of the casement, high and triple-arched, in all the holiness of prayer."

"She was brought up in abysmal Puritan Calvinism, and her slumber at night was disturbed by terrific visions of a future of endless torment. The doctrine of election pressed heavily on her youthful soul.... The whole upbringing of children in Puritan circles in those days was strict and stern to a degree impossible to be realized in a day when vulgar sentimentalism rules supreme, and when it is considered cruel and harsh to flog a rebellious boy. The way in which children were brought up by the Puritans of New England in Mrs. Moulton's day may have had its faults, but it turned out a class of person whom it is hopeless to expect the present day methods of education will ever be able to produce."

"I remember that the Calvinistic doctrines I was taught filled my imagination with an awful foreboding of doom and despair. I can recall waking in the depth of the night, cold with horror, and saying to myself, 'Why, if I'm not among the elect, I can't be saved, no matter how hard I try,' and stealing along on my little bare feet to my mother's bed, praying to be taken in, with a vague sense that if I must be lost in the far future, at least now I must go where love could comfort me, and human arms shelter me from the shapeless terrors that mocked my solitude."

"The writings of a young girl still on the threshold of life and still to be regarded as a bright, incarnate promise,—her writings are very graceful, very tender, and very beautiful, just what the flowers of life's spring should be."

"I remember the huge posters with which they placarded the walls, headed, 'Read this book and see what a girl of eighteen can do.' I think I had the grace to be a little shocked at these posters, but the reviews were so kind, and said such lovely things that—Ah! shall I ever be so happy again as when I read them!"

"'This, That, and the Other,' is a collection of prose sketches and verse from the pen of a young lady fast rising into a literary reputation; a reputation which, though it is achieved in no 'Uncle Tom' or 'Fanny Fern' mode, is no less sure than that of Mrs. Stowe, or Sara Payson Willis, and will be more substantial, in that the works on which it is founded are more classic and in better taste.... Miss Chandler is a native of Pomfret in this state, and every denizen of Connecticut should be proud of her talents. She is beautiful and interesting; her manners are in marked distinction from the forwardness of the strong-minded woman of the day...."

"... The ladies have invaded the field of fiction and carried off its most substantial triumphs. Mrs. Stowe, Fanny Fern, and now another name, if the portents do not deceive us, is about to be added—that of Miss Chandler, who although the youngest of the band (she is not yet nineteen), is overflowing with genius and promise. Such tales as those of 'Silence Adams,' 'A Husking Party at Ryefield,' 'Agnes Lee,' and 'Only an Old Maid,' reveal the pathos, the beauty, the power, the depth and earnestness of emotion that Ellen Louise has the art of transfusing into the humblest and most commonplace details.... But Ellen Louise must not be deceived by injudicious admiration. Her style, purified, chastened and subdued, would lose none of its attractiveness. She gives evidence of too noble a habit of thought to desire the success which comes of the hasty plaudits of the hour."

"My acquaintance with Louise Chandler began when she entered Mrs. Willard's Seminary in Troy, where we were both pupils. She was at once very much admired and beloved. Her first book, called 'This, That, and the Other,' had been published just before she came, and we were all very proud of her authorship. She had a lovely face, very fair, with beautiful, wavy, sunny hair, falling on either side the deep blue-gray eyes, with their dark, long lashes. Her voice was clear and sweet, with the most cultivated intonation."

"The possession of a noble and true heart in the one, and of a gentle and winning nature in the other, are presages of future bliss."

"Mr. Moulton is a writer of much originality of style and great power; an independent thinker, shrewd in conclusions and fearless in expression. Miss Chandler overflows with kindness, geniality, appreciation of the lovely, and the power of description to a remarkable degree."

"... Of his choice the world can speak. Her literary attainments have made their public mark, and her kindness of heart has won for her an eminent place in the affections of thousands. Our associate may well be congratulated on his acquisition of a new contributor to his happiness, and pardoned, in view of the richness of his prize, for leaving the fair of our own locality for more distant Connecticut."

"She was barely twenty when she married William Upham Moulton, a man of culture and of much personal attraction. Lingering a moment on the church porch in the sunset light, she has been described by one who saw her as a radiant being, in her bridal veil, blooming, blushing, full of life and joy and love. An exquisite skin, the 'rose crushed on ivory,' hazel eyes, with dark lashes and brows, and a confiding, fearless glance, small white teeth, a delightful smile, cheek and chin having the antique line, all united to make a loveliness which no portrait has successfully rendered, and which tender consideration and grace of manner accented to wonderful charm."

"Every one was very good to me—Dr. Holmes, Longfellow, Whittier—all those on whose work I had been brought up. And then the broader religious thought of Boston began to conquer the Puritanism in which I had been educated. Whittier was a Quaker, but he believed most of all in the loving Fatherhood of God,—the Divine care which would somehow, somewhere, make creation a blessing to all on whom had been bestowed the unsought gift of life. He told me once how this conviction first came to him. It was a touching anecdote of his childhood when his mother's tenderness to the erring aroused in him the perception of the goodness of God. Whittier was a singularly modest man; if one praised his work he would say, 'Yes, but there should be a perfection of form, and what I do is full of faults.' Once, at an evening party, he was vainly entreated to recite one of his poems. 'No,' he said, 'but I wish she would,' pointing to me. I then read 'The Swan Song of Parson Avery,' and when I had finished he came across the room and said, 'Why, thee has really made me think I've written a beautiful poem.'

"No words could overpraise the sweet graciousness of Longfellow and Dr. Holmes to me, a new-comer into their world. I knew Ralph Waldo Emerson, also. The very last time I saw him he had just returned from California, and he crossed the Athenæum Library, where we chanced to be, to ask me if I had ever been there myself and had seen the big trees. 'Why,' he said, 'it took thirteen horses to go round one tree, the head of one touching the tail of another—what do you think of that?'

"I remember once, when I was a guest in his house in Concord, his telling me that he had long wanted to make an anthology of the one-poem men. And he went on to speak of the poets who were remembered by only one poem. He never carried out his idea, but I wish some one else might."

"I sat close to the platform, thoroughly entranced, and longing to speak to him—this great man! longing with all a romantic schoolgirl's ardor and capacity for hero-worship. I never missed a lecture. The last day and the last lecture came, and as Mr. Thackeray came from the platform he bent toward me and said: 'I shall miss the kind, encouraging face that has sat beneath me for so many hours'; and I was too surprised to be able to answer him a word. But it is a memory that has never left me."

"You ask my plans. I have none nor ever had. All my life I have been one of those who walk by faith and not by sight. I never can plan ahead. The first words I ever learned to speak were caught from hearing the watchman call out in the middle of the night, 'All's well.' This has always been my great article of faith. An angel seems ever to turn for me at the right time the mystic pages of the book of life, while I stand wondering and waiting,—that is all."

Mrs. Whitman to Mrs. Moulton

November 15 [1855].

My Dear Louise: I have read "Juno Clifford," and my "honest opinion" is that it is a very fascinating story, eloquently related. I was surprised at its finished excellence; yet I expected much from you.

I have written a notice for the Journal which will appear in a few days. I will send you a copy of the paper. I wish I had leisure to tell you all I think of the book. You have all the qualities requisite for a successful novelist, and some very rare ones, as I think. The grief of the poor Irish girl brought tears to my eyes,—eyes long accustomed to look serenely on human sorrows. The character of Juno is admirably portrayed and you have managed the "heavy tragedy" with admirable skill. I do not, however, like to have Juno tear out her beautiful hair by "handfuls," and I think there is a lavish expenditure of love scenes in the latter part of the book; but all young lovers will freely pardon you for this last offence, and I am not disposed to be hypercritical about the hair.

I can find nothing else to condemn, though I would fain show myself an impartial judge. I wish "Juno" all success, and am ever, with sincere regard,

Your friend,

S. Helen Whitman.

P.S.—I saw the death of Miss Locke in The Times! could it have been our Miss Locke? Do you know? I am very busy just now. I have no good pen, and my pencil turns round and round like an inspired Dervish, but utters no sound; so look on my chirography with Christian charity, and love me, nevertheless.

S.H.W.

"I have to-day found time to thank you for your letter and beautiful poem. It is very fine, picturesque, and dramatic. These are, I think, your strong points, but you have touches of pathos.... You must not leave off writing stories, nor do I see any necessity of making any selection between the muse of poetry and the muse of romance. I should say, give attendance to both, as the inspiration comes.... Dr. Holmes, whom I met at the lectures of Lola Montez, is charmed by her...."

"Mrs. Davis read me Mrs. [R.H.] Stoddard's book ['Two Men'], because you spoke of it so highly. It has, indeed, a strange power,—not one that fascinates me, but which impresses me profoundly and piques my curiosity to know more of the author. I marked some paragraphs which indicated a half-conscious power of imaginative description, which I wish she would exercise more freely. Tell me about her in her personal traits of character.... I hope you will not impugn my taste, dear Louise, when I tell you I like your 'two men' better than Mrs. Stoddard's. 'Margaret Holt' is a charming story. Why is it that Mrs. Stoddard so entirely ignores all sweet and noble emotions?"

"'No. 101' reminds us of some wondrous statue, her pen has so sculptured the whole story. 'Four Letters from Helen Hamilton' are enough to stir all hearts with their [sic] high purpose and the beautiful ideal of womanhood which consecrate [sic] them."

"Have the story written by a man. Have him go all his life worshipping one woman, even from boyhood. He wins her,—she is cold but he is satisfied and believes she will grow to love him. After three years she leaves him. He gives his life to seeking her. At last finds her just as she is attempting to drown herself, and takes her home."

"Have a wealthy family travelling in Egypt, and a child born to them there who shall bear the name of the country. This child, Egypt Sunderland, seems to be strangely influenced by her name, and develops all the peculiar characteristics of the Egyptian women."

"Show that there is punishment for our sins lying in the consequence of them, which no repentance can avert, or forgiveness condone,—which must be suffered to the uttermost. Make it clear that passive goodness is not enough. We must do something for humanity. That a man who has no moral fibre or practical wisdom has a claim on us for help. For energy and good judgment are as much a gift as are eyes to see and ears to hear. The very lack of practical wisdom gives the one so lacking a special claim on our sympathies."

"The love of life, the love of children, the love of kin—these constrain all of us; but it was another kind of love that constrained Margaret Grant. Curiously enough the first awakening came to her soul from a book written by an unbeliever, a book meant to bring Christianity to the final test of final obedience, and to prove its absurdity, thereby prove that to be a Christian as Christ taught, would overthrow the uses of the world, and uproot the whole system of things. 'Let the uses of the world go, and the system of things take care of itself,' Margaret Grant said when she laid the book down. 'This same religion of Christ is the best thing I know, and I will go where it leads me.' And then she waited for the true Guide, that Holy Spirit which shall be given to every honest soul that seeks—waited for her special work, but not idly, since every day and all the days were the little offices of love that make life sweeter for whatever fellow-pilgrim comes in our way.

"Margaret read to her half-blind grandmother—taught the small boy that ran the family errands to read—helped her mother with the housekeeping, all on the lines of 'godly George Herbert,' who wrote:

But all the time she felt that these were not the real work of her life, that work which was on its way."

"She was now in her twenty-fifth year, fully launched upon the literary high-seas, contributing to Harper's, the Galaxy, and Scribner's as they came into existence, and to the Young Folks, the Youth's Companion, and other periodicals for children. Her life seemed a fortunate one. She had a charming home in Boston where she met and entertained the most pleasant people; her housekeeping duties were fulfilled to a nicety, and no domestic detail neglected for all her industrious literary undertakings. A daughter had been born to her, Florence, to whom 'Bed-time Stories' were dedicated in some most tender and touching verses, and, somewhat later, a son whose little life was only numbered by days."

"Is it not, after all, the comprehension of love that above all else makes a poet immortal? Who thinks of Petrarch without remembering Laura, of Dante without the vision of Beatrice?"

"I have said that Phillips is the poet of love and of pity. Many poets have uttered the passionate cries of love; but few, indeed, are those who have seen and expressed the piteous tragedy of life as he has done. He says in 'Marpessa,'

And not only has Phillips grieved, but he has felt the grief of other men—listened to the wild, far wail which, one sometimes feels, must turn the very joy of heaven to sorrow."

"She is penetrated with that terrible consciousness of the futility of the life which ends in the grave—that consciousness of personal transitoriness which has haunted and oppressed so many passionate and despairing hearts. She knows that 'there is no name, with whatever emphasis of passionate love repeated, of which the echo is not faint at last.' And against this inevitable doom of humanity she rebels with all the energy of her nature."

Mrs. Agassiz to Mrs. Moulton

Thanks for the pleasant and appreciative article about the Agassiz Museum in the Tribune. It is a good word spoken in season. It is very charming, and so valuable just now, when the institution is in peril of its life. No doubt it will be of real service in our present difficulties by awakening sympathy and affection in many people. Mr. Agassiz desires his best regards to you.

Yours sincerely,

Elizabeth Carey Agassiz.

"The brightest sun of the season shone, and the balmiest airs prevailed, on the 21st of December, in honor of the meeting of the Radical Club under the hospitable roof of Mr. and Mrs. John T. Sargent in Chestnut street. Mrs. Howe was the essayist, and there was a brilliant gathering to hear her. David Wasson was there, and John Weiss, and Colonel Higginson, and Alcott, hoary embodiment of cool, clear thought. Mr. Linton, the celebrated engraver, John Dwight of the Musical Journal, Mrs. Severance, the beloved president of the New England Woman's Club, bonny Kate Field of the honest eyes and the piquant pen, Mrs. Cheney, Miss Peabody, and many others, distinguished in letters or art.

"To this goodly company Mrs. Howe read a brilliant essay on the subject of Polarity. She commenced by speaking of polarity as applied to matter, in a manner not too abstruse for the savants who surrounded her, though it was too philosophical and scholarly to receive the injustice of being reported. The progress of polarity she found to give us the division of sex; and Sex was the subject on which she intended to write when she commenced the essay; but she found it, like all fundamental facts in nature, to be an idea with a history. In the pursuit of this history she encountered the master agency of Polarity, and found herself obliged to make that the primary idea, and consider sex as derived from it."

"There was Mrs. Severance, reminding one so much of an Indian summer day, so calm and peaceful is the sweet face that looks out at you from its framing of fair waving hair. Not far away was Julia Ward Howe, who some way or other makes you think of the old fairy story of the girl who never opened her mouth but there fell down before her pearls and diamonds. That story isn't a fairy story, not a bit of it. It is real, genuine truth, and Mrs. Howe is the girl grown up, and pearls of poetic fancy and diamonds of sparkling wit are the precious stones which fall from her lips. Lucy Stone was there, an attentive listener, looking the very picture of retiring womanliness in her Quaker-like simplicity of dress, and her pleasant face lighted with interest and animation. Sitting by a table, busy with note-book and pencil, was Miss Peabody, the Secretary of the Club. She has a sparkling, animated face, brimming over with kindness and good-will; she wins one strangely—you can't help being drawn to her. There's a world of fun in the black eyes, and you feel sure she would appreciate the ridiculous sides of living as keenly as any one ever could."

"As we drew near Chestnut street we saw a goodly number of pilgrims.... Nora Perry, with the golden hair, had journeyed up from Providence with a gull's feather in her hat and a glint of mischief in her glance; Celia Thaxter, whom the Atlantic naturally delights to honor, since from Atlantic surges she caught the rhythm of her life, sat intent; Mr. Alcott beamed approval; Professor Goodwin had come from Harvard; David A. Wasson had left his bonded ware-house a prey to smugglers; Rev. Dr. Bartol, who seems always to dwell on the Mount of Vision; and Mr. Sanborn, who had sheathed his glittering lance, sat near; Mrs. Howe, taking a little vacation from her labors for women, listened serenely; Miss Peabody had a good word to say for Aspasia; and Mrs. Cheney quoted Walter Savage Landor's opinion of her."

"As the coffin of Mahomet was suspended between heaven and earth, so is Mr. Wasson, who spoke last Sunday at Horticultural Hall, popularly supposed to be suspended between the heaven of Mr. Channing's serene faith and the depths of Mr. Abbot's audacious heresy. But if any one should infer from this statement that Mr. Wasson is a gentle medium, a man without boldness of speculation, or originality of thought, he would find he had never in his life made so signal a mistake. Few men in America think so deeply as David A. Wasson, and fewer still have so many of the materials for thought at their command. He has a presence of power, and is a handsome man, though prematurely gray, with an expansive forehead, where strong thoughts and calm judgment sit enthroned, and with eyes beneath it which see very far indeed. His features are clearly cut, and he looks as if he felt, and felt passionately, every word he utters, as he stands before an audience, his subject well in hand, and with always twice as much to say as his hour will give space for, forced, therefore, against his will, to choose and condense from his thronging thoughts. He spoke, in the Sunday afternoon course, on 'Jesus, Christianity, and Modern Radicalism.'"

"Not the author of 'Gates Ajar,' listening in her pleasant dreams to heavenly pianos, ever drew half so near to the celestial regions, or looked into them with half so disillusionized gaze as the Grecian thought of the time of Homer."

"We saw a woman not young, save with the youth of the immortals; not beautiful, save with the beauty of the spirit; but sweet and gentle, with a placid, earnest face. Her own faith is so assured that she appeals fearlessly to the faith of others; her nature so religious that her religion seems a fact and not a question."

"There too was Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton, looking for all the world like one of her own stories, tender and yet strong, the child-like curving of the mouth and chin in such contrast with the tender, almost sad eyes and well-developed brow covered with its masses of waving light hair."

"With his theories I do not always agree; they seem to me fitter for a larger, more sincere, less complex time than ours; but there is no sham and no affectation, either in the man or in his verse. I could not tell how strong was the impression of sincerity and large-heartedness which he made on me."

"Wordsworth was notably great in only a few poems, and Coleridge, and Keats, and Shelley come under the same limitations. Mr. Lowell is thus not alone in being at times forsaken by his good genius.... If he does not furnish us with a great amount of poetry of the highest order, it is the simple truth to say that in his best he has no rival, excepting Emerson, among American poets. When he is inspired, the key to nature and to man is in his hand, and he becomes the interpreter of both, commanding the secrets of one as truly as he interprets the interior life of the other."

Mr. Whittier to Mrs. Moulton

Amesbury, 3d, 8th month, 1870.

Dear Mrs. Moulton: I am greatly disappointed in not meeting the benediction of thy face when I called last month; but I shall seek it again sometime. It just occurs to me that I may yet have the pleasure of seeing thee under my roof at Amesbury. We have so many friends in common that I feel as if I knew thee through them.

How much I thank thee for thy kind note. It reaches me at a time when its generous appreciation is very welcome and grateful.

Believe me very truly thy friend,

John G. Whittier.

William Winter to Mrs. Moulton

Staten Island, N.Y.
November 8, 1875.

Dear Mrs. Moulton: I accept with pleasure and gratitude your very kind and sympathetic letter,—seeing beneath its delicate and cordial words the sincere heart of a comrade in literature, and the regard of a nature kindred with my own. I wish I could think that your praise is deserved. It has often seemed to me of late that there is no cheer in my newspaper work.... I am aware, however, that the sympathy of a bright mind and a tender heart and the approval of a delicate taste are not won without some sort of merit, and so I venture to find in your most genial and spontaneous letter a ray of encouragement. You will scarcely know how grateful this is to me at this time. I thank you and I shall not forget that you were thoughtful and delicately kind.

To-day I have received a copy of Stedman's poems, which I want to read again with great care. A man who has missed poetic fame himself may find great satisfaction in the success of his friend, and I do feel exceedingly glad in the recognition that has come to Stedman. Your article on the book in the Tribune was excellent.

Faithfully yours,

William Winter.

Mrs. Moulton to Mr. Stedman

"When you say it depends on me whether I will be looked upon as a real judicial authority by people of culture throughout the land, you fire me with ambition, but my springing flame is quenched by the realization that I am not cultured enough to rely on my judgment as a certainty, a finality, and that while I may feel that my intuitions are keen, they are apt to be warped by my strong emotions. I'll try. A very few persons are really my public, and I think how my letters will strike them, rather than how the world will receive them. I wonder how you will like my review of...? Much of the book is 'splendidly null,'—perfect enough in execution, but without that subtle something that sets the heart-chords quivering, and fills the eyes with tender dew; that subtle minor chord of being, to which we are all kin, by virtue of our own pain...."

Mrs. Moulton to Mr. Stedman

"... I am impatient to see your article on Browning. I am so struck by your calling him the greatest of love poets. I, too, have often thought something like that of him. If 'The Statue and the Bust' means anything, it means that Browning thought the Duke and the Lady were fools to let 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would.' But, au contraire, I think 'Pippa Passes' gives one the impression that he considers illegal love a great sin and the natural temptation to still greater sins. Don't you think so? I wish I could have a talk on social questions with you, for I think your ideas are more fixed, more developed in thought and less chaotic than mine...."

Mr. Whittier to Mrs. Moulton

Amesbury, 11th month, 9th, 1874.

My dear friend Louise Chandler Moulton: I thank thee from my heart for thy letter. I think some good angel must have prompted it, for it reached me when I needed it; needed to know that my words had not been quite in vain. And to know that they have been comfort or strength to thee is a cause for deep thankfulness. I do not put a very high estimate upon my writings, in a merely literary point of view, but it has been my earnest wish that they might at least help the world a little. I read thy notice of my book in the Tribune, in connection with Dr. Holmes' last volume, and while very grateful for thy praise, I was saddened by a feeling that I did not fully deserve it. In fact, I fear the world has treated me far better than I had any reason to expect; and I have been blessed with dear friends, whose love is about me like an atmosphere.

I have read the little poem enclosed in thy letter with a feeling of tenderest sympathy. God help us! The loneliness of life, under even the best circumstances, becomes at times appalling to contemplate. We are all fearfully alone; no one human soul can fully know another, and an infinite sigh for sympathy is perpetually going up from the heart of humanity. But doubtless this very longing is the pledge and prophecy and guarantee of an immortal destination. Perfect content is stagnation and ultimate death.

Why does thee not publish thy poems? Everywhere I meet people who have been deeply moved by them.

Thy letter dates from Pomfret, and I direct there to thee. I was in that place once so long ago that thee must have been a mere child. I rode over its rocky hills, bare in the chill December, with the late William H. Burleigh. I think it must be charming in summer and autumn. But something in thy poems and in thy letter leads me to infer that thy sojourn there has not been a happy one. Of course I do not speak of unalloyed happiness, for that can only come of entire exemption from sin and weakness. A passage which I have been reading this morning from Thomas à Kempis has so spoken to my heart that I venture to transcribe it:

"What thou canst not amend in thyself or others, bear with patience until God ordaineth otherwise. When comfort is taken away do not presently despair. Stand with an even mind, resigned to the will of God, whatever may befall; for after winter cometh the summer, after the dark night the day shineth; and after the storm cometh a great calm."

Believe me always gratefully thy friend,

John G. Whittier.

"I have been curiously interested of late about a band of 'Sanctificationists,' who believe Christ meant it when He said, He can save from all sin. So they reason that, trusting in His own words, they can be saved from sin now and here. There is about them a peace and serenity, a sweetness and light, a joy in believing, that is unmistakable. They do live happier lives than others. I cannot believe, somehow, in this 'cleansing blood,' yet, seeing these people, I feel that I lose a great deal by not believing in it. Oh, if one only knew the truth! Reason rejects, it seems to me, the orthodox dogmas, but what is one to do with the argument of holier lives?"

"The entire absence of all the visible signs of art in the composition of these delightful stories betrays a rare degree of artistic culture which knows how to conceal itself, or a singular natural bent to graceful and picturesque expression. Perhaps both of these conditions best explain the secret of their felicitous construction, and their fidelity to nature. The best fruits of sweet womanly wisdom she deems not too good for the entertainment of the young souls with whom she cherishes such a cordial sympathy, and whom she so graciously attracts by the silvery music of her song, which lacks no quality of poetry but the external form.... They inculcate no high-flown moral, but inspire the noblest sentiments. There is no preaching in their appeals, but they offer a perpetual incentive to all that is lovely and good in character."

"Paris over, came Rome, and twelve weeks of raptures and ruins, of churches and galleries, old palaces and almond-trees in flower, the light upon the Alban Hills, the kindly, gracious Roman society, all like a dream from which might come awaking. Certainly no one was ever made to feel the ancient spell, or to enjoy its beauty more than this sensitive, sympathetic, and impressible spirit. Stiff Protestant as she is, she was touched to tears by the benignant old pope's blessing; and she abandoned herself to the carnival, as much a child as 'the noblest Roman of them all.'"

"I had greatly liked many of his poems," she said later, "and I was curious to see if his poems in marble equalled them. I was more than charmed with his work; and I suppose I said something which revealed my enthusiasm, for I remember the smile—half of pleasure, half of amusement—with which he looked at me. He said: 'You don't seem to feel quite as an old friend of mine from Boston felt, when he went through my studio, and, at least, I showed him the best I had. We are all vain, you know; and I suppose I expected a little praise, but my legal friend shook his head. "Ah, William," he said, "you might have been a great lawyer like your father; you had it in you; but you chose to stay on here and pinch mud!"' Another American sculptor whom Rome delighted to honor is Mr. Richard S. Greenough, whose 'Circe' has more fascination for me than almost anything else in modern art; but my acquaintance with him came later. I had a letter of introduction to William and Mary Howitt from Whittier; they made me feel myself a welcome guest."

"Mr. Simmons had almost completed a statue, for which he had received an order from one of the States, had spent a great deal of time and money, when a conception came to him higher than his original idea. Without hesitation he sacrificed his time, his labor, and his marble—no small loss this—and began again. It was an act of simple heroism, of which not every one would have been capable; and there is little doubt that a man who unites to his talent a criticism so unsparing, and a spirit so conscientious, will do work well worthy the attention of the world."

"Shortly after I came into the room, Lord Houghton, whose voice was very low, brought a gentleman up to me whose name I failed to hear. My fellow-guest had a pleasant face, and was dressed in gray; he sat down beside me, and talked in a lively way on everyday topics until Lord Houghton came to take me in to table. Opposite to us sat Miss Milnes, now Lady Fitzgerald, between two gentlemen, one of whom was the man in gray. Presently Lord Houghton asked me if I thought Browning looked like his pictures. 'Browning?' I asked. 'Where is he?' 'Why, there, sitting beside my daughter,' he replied. But, as there were two gentlemen sitting beside Miss Milnes, I sat during the remainder of the breakfast with a divided mind, wondering which of these two men was Browning. After going back to the drawing-room my friend in gray again came and sat beside me, so I plucked up courage and said, 'I understand Mr. Browning is here; will you kindly tell me which he is?' He looked half puzzled, half amused, for a moment; then he called out to some one standing near, 'Look here, Mrs. Moulton wants to know which one of us is Browning. C'est moi!' he added with a gay gesture; and this is how my friendship with the author of 'Pippa Passes' began."

"It was just six weeks before his twenty-sixth birthday. He was tall, slight, and, in spite of his blindness, graceful. He seemed to me young-looking even for his twenty-six years. He had a noble and beautiful forehead. His brown eyes were perfect in shape, and even in color, save for a dimness like a white mist that obscured the pupil, but which you perceived only when you were quite near to him. His hair and beard were dark brown, with warm glints of chestnut; and the color came and went in his cheeks as in those of a sensitive girl. His face was singularly refined, but his lips were full and pleasure-loving, and suggested dumbly how cruel must be the limitations of blindness to a nature hungry for love and for beauty. I had been greatly interested, before seeing him, in his poems, and to meet him was a memorable delight.

"He and the sister, who was his inseparable companion, soon became my close friends, and with them both this friendship lasted till the end."

Mr. Swinburne to Mrs. Moulton

December 19, 1877.

Dear Madame: I am sincerely obliged for the kindness and courtesy to which I am indebted for the sight of the MS. herewith returned. Of course my only feeling of hesitation as to the terms in which I ought to acknowledge and answer the application which accompanied it arises merely from a sense of delicacy in seeming to accept, if not thereby to endorse, an estimate altogether too flattering to the self-esteem of its object.

But even at the risk of vanity or self-complacency, I will simply express my gratitude for your too favourable opinion, and my grateful sense of the delicacy and thoughtfulness which has permitted me a sight of the yet unprinted pages which convey it.

Yours sincerely,

Algernon Charles Swinburne.

"I want to remember this evening which has been so beautiful. I had worked all day to six o'clock dinner, after which I sat and talked awhile with Cecily and Iza, and then took a long moonlight walk with them and Dr. Marston. I think I never saw such a wonderful sky. The blue of it was so intensely blue and great masses of white clouds, hurried and driven on by the wind, met each other and retreated and put on all sorts of fantastic shapes, while among them the moon walked, visible sometimes, and at others hiding her pale face behind some veiled prophet of a cloud, who was mocking the fair night with the gloom of his presence. I never saw such grand effects.

"We climbed a long hill, and from thence we looked down on little Étretat lying below us, with the lights in its many windows, and the sea tossing beyond it white with spray and with moonlight. The trees were quivering at the whispers of a low wind, and still above all the clouds held strange conclave, keeping up their swift march and counter-march. All this time Dr. Marston talked as we sauntered on, and talked superbly. I think the electricity in the air inspired him. He talked of the soul's destiny, of immortality, and expressed, with matchless eloquence, that strong-winged faith which bears him on toward that end that will be, he feels sure, the new life's beginning. From time to time he interrupted himself to point out something that we might not else have seen,—some wonderful phantom of moonlight, some cottage-lamp shining at the end of a long lane, some Rembrandt contrast of light and shade.

"We walked far, but I knew no weariness. I could have walked on forever watching that strange and fitful sky, and listening to such talk as I have seldom heard. Here is an affluent poet, who affords to scatter his riches broadcast, and does not save them all for his printed pages. We went home at last and sat for a while in Dr. Marston's house, and then Philip and Cecily and I went down to the long terrace overlooking the sea, and sat for an hour or more to watch the moonlight on the breaking waves. How happy we were, that little while! We talked of the fitful clouds, the wild, hurrying sea, the white, sweet moon. Then something brought back to me visions of the white statues at Rome, and I tried to show them how fair these old gods stood in my memory. Ah! shall I ever forget this so lovely night? The strange, changeful, wind-swept sky, the waves swollen with the passion of yesterday's storm, marching in like a strong army upon the shore and overwhelming it. Behind us the casino, with its many lights, and down there between the moonlight and the sea, we three who did not know each other three months ago but hold each other so closely now.

"Nothing can ever take from me the fitful splendor, the wild rhythm, the divine mystery of this happy night. I can always close my eyes and see again sea and sky and dear faces; hear again the waves break on this wild coast of Normandy, with the passion of their immortal pain and longing."

"We do not, indeed, know where to find, among the works of English poetesses, the same self-controlled fulness of expression with the same depth and tenderness of simple feeling.... 'One Dread' might have been penned by Sir Philip Sidney."

"It is not too much to say of these poems that they exhibit delicate and rare beauty, marked originality, and perfection of style. What is still better, they impress us with a sense of subtle and vivid imagination, and that spontaneous feeling which is the essence of lyrical poetry.... A poem called 'The House of Death' is a fine example of the writer's best style. It paints briefly, but with ghostly fidelity, the doomed house, which stands blind and voiceless amid the light and laughter of summer. The lines which we print in italics show a depth of suggestion and a power of epithet which it would be difficult to surpass.

"The distinguishing qualities of these poems are extreme directness and concentration of utterance, unvarying harmony between thought and expression, and a happy freedom from that costly elaboration of style so much in vogue.... Yet, while thus free from elaboration, Mrs. Moulton's style displays rare felicity of epithet.... The poetical faculty of the writer is in no way more strongly evinced than by the subtlety and suggestiveness of her ideas."

Mr. Browning to Mrs. Moulton

19 Warwick Crescent, W.
February 24, '78.

My dear Mrs. Moulton: Thank you for the copy of the poems. They need no generosity.... I close it only when needs I must at page the last, with music in my ears and flowers before my eyes, and not without thoughts across the brain. Pray continue your "flights," and be assured of the sympathetic observation of

Yours truly,

Robert Browning.

Mr. Winter to Mrs. Moulton

"It is a beautiful book, Louise, and the spirit of it is tender, dreamlike and sorrowful.... The pathos of it affects me strongly. Life appeals more strongly to you than the pageantry. There is more fancy in your poems and more alacrity and variety of thought, but the quality that impresses me is feeling. I am not a critic, but somehow I must feel that I know a good thing when I see it, and I am sure that no one but a true artist in poetry could have written those stanzas called 'Now and Then.' The music has been running in my mind for days and days,

"And had you loved me then, my dear.

I think you are very kind to remember me and to send such a lovely offering to me at Christmas. God bless you! and may this new year be happy for you, and the harbinger of many happier years to follow."

"The word 'waiting' in the line

'White moons made beautiful the waiting night,'

is full of emotional and imaginative memory.

"In 'A Painted Fan' the line

'The soft, south wind of memory blows,'

is another instance of a perfect poetical thought, perfectly expressed.

"Two lines of an unforgettable beauty are

"And a line Shelley himself might have been proud to own is

'No bird-note quivers on the frosty air.'

"The lines

and

express musically a mystic thought.

"The sonnet 'In Time to Come' is one of astonishing crescendo. The lines

"This is very poetry of very poetry. You must look for your poetic brethren among the noble lyrists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Your insight, your subtlety, your delicacy, your music, are hardly matched, and certainly not surpassed, by Herrick or Campion or Carew or Herbert or Vaughan."

"You see straight into his [Newman's] mind and heart. You feel the glow of his thought, the action of his conscience; you feel the inherent excellence of the man you are dealing with.

"Mr. Spurgeon's style is admirable—strong, vigorous Saxon, short sentences, simple in structure, and full of earnestness. His first prayer was brief and earnest, and extremely simple in phraseology. It gave one a sense of intimacy with God, in which was no irreverence. The sermon commenced at 12 m., and lasted three-quarters of an hour. I thought John Bunyan might have preached just such a discourse."

"I never met Tennyson, but I just lost him by an accident. I shall never get over the regret of it. I had been invited to various places where he was expected as a guest; but you know how elusive he was, even his best friends could get at him but rarely. One day I had gone out for some idiotic shopping—shopping is always idiotic to me—and when I came back at late dinner time Lord Houghton met me with the question, 'Where have you been? I've been sending messengers all over the city for you. I got hold of Tennyson, and he waited for half an hour to see you.' The fates were never kind enough to bring me within the poet's range again."

"There was a singular attraction in the personal presence of this woman. The rooms where she lived habitually were full of her. They were dim, shadowy rooms, rich in tone, crowded with objects of interest, packed with the memorials of a lifetime of friendships; but she herself was always more interesting than her surroundings. When she died, her soft brown hair was scarcely touched with gray. Her voice retained to the last its music, vibrating at seventy-five with the sympathetic cadences of her youth. She was singularly shy. I remember that when I persuaded her to repeat to me one of her poems, she always insisted on going behind me. She could not bring herself to confront eye and ear at the same time."

Mrs. Whitman to Mrs. Moulton

"I will speak of one or two points suggested by the expression, 'true to her early love for Edgar Poe.' Now I was first seen by Edgar Poe in the summer of 1845, when I was forty-two years old, and my earliest introduction to him was in 1848, when I was forty-five. You will see, therefore, that it was rather a late than an early love. I was born on the 19th of January, 1803—Edgar Poe was born on the 19th of January, 1809, being six years, to a day, my junior. Soon after the last edition of Griswold's 'Female Poets' was issued, I happened to be turning over some of the new Christmas books at a bookseller's, when I unwittingly opened a copy of that work, at the very page where an alert, enterprising woman sits perched on a marble pedestal. Glancing at the foot of the page, I read, in blank amazement, my own name. Turning to the preceding page, I found that the lady in question was born in 1813! I began seriously to doubt my own identity. I had never, to the best of my recollection, been modelled in plaster; I had never been 'interviewed' on the delicate point of age. Everybody knows that a lady's age after forty is proverbially uncertain; still it is as well to draw a line somewhere, and so, dear, if you should be called upon to write my obituary, and should consent to do so, here is a faithful transcript from the family Bible:—

"'Sarah Helen Power, born Jan. 19—10 o'clock p.m., 1803.'

"That was the same year that gave birth to Emerson."

Mr. Longfellow to Mrs. Moulton

Cambridge, May 17, 1879.

Dear Mrs. Moulton: For your kind words in the Athenæum, how shall I thank you? Much, certainly, and often,—but more and more for your kind remembrance, and the pleasant hours we passed together before your departure.

... A charming country place in England is the thatched-roofed Inn at Rowsley in Derbyshire, one mile from Haddon Hall. Go there. And do not forget to write to me.

Truly yours,

Henry W. Longfellow.

"Long, high, and altogether spacious and dignified. A library opening from the rear increases the apparent length of the apartment, so that it is a veritable salon; the furnishings are of simple elegance in color and design, and the whole scheme of decoration quiet and not ultra-modern.

"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 idols. It is the real Swinburne she brings to the mind's eye, with his extraordinary personal appearance and his weird manners; the real William Watson, profoundly in earnest and varying in moods; the real George Egerton, with her intensity and devotion to the higher rights of womankind; the real Thomas Hardy and George Meredith and Anthony Hope, and the whole band of British authors, big and little, whom she marshals in review and dissects with unerring perception and the keenest of wit. Anecdotes of all these personages flow from her tongue with a prodigality that makes one long for the art of shorthand to preserve them."

"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."

"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.'"

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.

"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."

Mr. Collins to Mrs. Moulton

"90 Gloucester Place, Portman Square, W.
March 30, 1880.

"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 with redoubled resolution if I feel that I have the great public with me, as I had then (for example) in the case of 'The New Magdalen.' 'Her Married Life,' in the second part, will be essentially happy. But the husband and wife—the world whose unchristian prejudices and law they set at defiance will slowly undermine their happiness, and will, I fear, make the close of the story a sad one."

"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."

"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 that was insincere, none that would lessen the happiness of any other woman; but the fact remains that the slightest act may be done with a graciousness that warms the day, or with a hard indifference that almost repels us from goodness itself. It is possible to buy a newspaper or pay a car-fare in such wise as to make newsboy or car-conductor feel for the moment that he is in a friendly world."

"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 more surely that they do not belong there than any attempt to force their way there by means of shams.... If our steady purpose is, each one, to raise himself, his own mind and spirit, to the highest standard possible for him, he will not only be too busy to pursue shams and shadows, but he will be secure of perpetual good society, since he will be always with himself.... Nothing more surely indicates the parvenu than boastfulness. The man who brings in the name of some fine acquaintance at every turn of the conversation is almost certain to be one whose acquaintance with any one who is fine is of yesterday. Really well-placed people do not need to advertise their connections in this manner.... It is essentially vulgar to push—to run after great people, or to affect a style of living beyond one's means—it is not only vulgar but contemptible to change one's friends with one's bettering fortunes."

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."

"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."

"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 studio is the group of Homer. The figure of the poet is of heroic size, and he is represented sitting on the seashore, reciting the Iliad, and beating time with his hands; even in his blindness, his face wears an expression that seems to be looking into the future and down through the ages of time. At his feet is seated his guide, a youth with Egyptian features, who accompanies Homer with strokes on the lyre."

"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."

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 vision cannot find or our fancy follow him; but he must either be better off in a new birth or else so deeply at rest that no pain can pierce him where he is. Good-bye and God bless you.

Yours most truly,

Louise Chandler Moulton.

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.

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.

"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 'Song-Tide' (Marston's first volume) should, by virtue of this one book, take equal rank with Swinburne, Morris, and Rossetti. Certainly his subsequent volumes fully sustained the promise of this first one, and I feel that when Philip Bourke Marston died, at the age of thirty-seven, on the fourteenth of February, 1887, England lost one of her noblest and subtlest poets—one whose future promise it were hard to overrate. Sometimes I think I care most for some of his sonnets; then the subtle beauty of his lyrics upbraids me,—and I hardly know which to choose. Take him all in all, he seems to me a poet whom future generations will recognize and remember."

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 was needed, and will do a great deal of good to young people, in the matter of manners and morals.

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, neat quarters at a neat farm house, with large cool rooms on the border of the lovely lake.

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.

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."

"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."

"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."

"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.'"

Mr. Winter to Mrs. Moulton

No. 13 Upper Phillimore Place,
High Street, Kensington,
August 14, 1889.

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. But I deeply regret your not coming to the "Red Horse." He might have led us a glorious fairy race. The only one of your titles that hits my fancy is "Vagrant Moods," and that is not good enough. Fancy titles are dangerous things. They generally have been used before. I once made use of the word "Thistledown," as a title for a collection of my poems, and too late found it had been used by an American lady, Miss Boyle, for a similar purpose. And Miss Boyle, or her attorneys, threatened me with the terrors of the law for infringement of copyright. I was also told that Miss Boyle's book had recently passed through my hands; and this was true, though I had not the least recollection of the book or its title. In fact, I had never read a line of it, but only at the request of a friend of hers turned it over to Bayard Taylor for review. He wrote a notice of it in The Tribune. And here, only lately, I learn from an Australian paper that my title of "Shakespeare's England," used by me to indicate the England of poetry, was used twenty-five years ago by a writer about the active England of Shakespeare's time. "Poems, by L.C.M." would be safer than any fancy title. "Awfully hackneyed," I hear. Well, if you have a fancy title, why not cull out a Shakespearian phrase? "The Primrose Path," say? Think a little about this. I will think further. Only look up clear, and so God bless you and good night.—What a lonely place this with no one to speak to and no one to hear.

Always,

Your old friend,

William Winter.

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. Is the Black Tower Death, do you think? But what a wonderful poem it is! I suppose spiritual judgments concern themselves with spiritual states...."

"... 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."

"... 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 thus sounded the deepest depths of love and sorrow, the name of Arlo Bates has now been added, by the publication of his noble and sincere 'Sonnets in Shadow.' Born of one man's undying pain, these sonnets at once become, through the subtlety of their research into the innermost depths of human emotion, the property and the true expression of all souls who have loved and suffered.

"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 have been quite alone save for their good company. I have read the strong, noble sequence through, from first to last, enjoying them more than ever. I like every one of them, but I had a pencil and paper by me and put down the numbers that most moved me. I see that my list is not short; do you care to see what it includes? It begins with the beautiful sonnet of dedication; then the first, with its wonderful procession of the gray days passing the torpid soul, and laying their 'curious fingers, chill and numb,' upon its wounds. Then the sixth, with the

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 exception of 'The Lilies of Mummel See,' which she read to me. I think you would be pleased; could you know how much we both enjoyed and admired the book. To my mind, 'Under the Beech Tree' is the finest romantic drama of the time. I like it far better than I do 'Colombe's Birthday,' much as I like that. Mrs. Spofford is quite wild with enthusiasm about 'The Gift.' She said the last line,

"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."

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."

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.

"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.,
December 29, 1889.

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.

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 health. If this poor expression of his gratitude seems more than usually weak and stupid, ascribe it to that same villainous cold, and believe him, in spite of it, to be always gratefully and cordially yours.

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 in the entity of our being. Then the latent causes of our actions, for good or evil, are as patent to us as to the Author of our being. The friends we long to see are present. This is a practical glance at the thing...."

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.

"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?"

"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."

"Began the New Year by writing a sonnet, to be called 'How Shall We Know,' unless I can find a better title."

"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 those he had loved and lost on its walls, and with only their ghosts for his daily company—I almost feel that, for his own sake, I ought to be glad that he has gone to join the beloved ones whom one can easily fancy making festival of welcome for him."

Richard Garnett to Mrs. Moulton

British Museum, London,
August 4, 1890.

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 that the endeavor to introduce it to the American public through an American publisher fell through. But there seems token of its gradually making way, and I value your approbation among the most signal. I shall be delighted to receive the copy of your poems, which I know I can safely promise to admire.

Believe me,

Most sincerely yours,

R. Garnett.

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 exquisite. I hope you will now be taking some substantial theme, a narrative, for ampler exercise of your powers. I am hard at work and nearing the end of a work that has held me for some time. I have not been in London since the day of Browning's funeral,—a sad one, but having its glory. I had a tinge of apprehension the other day in hearing of Russell Lowell's illness. We have been reassured about him. Boston, I suppose, will soon be losing you...."

"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."

Mr. Huntington to Mrs. Moulton

"Wollaston, Mass.
December 8, 1892.

"My Dear Mrs. Moulton: I find myself unable to send the complete letters of my friend, Duynsters, but take pleasure in sending you the extracts referring to Pascal Germain. After the receipt of his letter (enclosed) dated June 1st, I wrote him of the conversation you and I had in regard to 'Rhea' and the merits of the book. I also mentioned the photograph. He replies:

"'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...."

M. Germain to Mrs. Moulton

Monastery of Ste. Barbe,
Seine Inférieure, France.

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 those who have really died because the physician asserted they could not live.

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 people to be the result of miracle, are really the result of thought. That is, of mental force, used or misused. Don't misuse your forces. Read Plato if you have been reading too much modern fiction, or have been dipping too deep into Wittemberg's philosophy. It seems to me there can be no doubt of the survival of the individual soul. Why not plant your feet on the facts we possess, and on faith, and philosophy? Read your "Imitatione Christi." It fits every mind by transposing the symbolism. I tell you frankly that even if no such man as Jesus ever lived, I can be serene with Plato's guidance and light.

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,
September 13, 1890.

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 can I thank you for the beautiful volume you have sent me.

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,
December 24, 1891.

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 undelivered message of love and thanks to the author of "Lucile" sent to him by a dear friend of mine, a Sister of Charity.

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 Lady Lytton know that the laurel crown was not my gift alone. It was purely as my gift that she generously favored it above all others.

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.

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, as it has been consecrated—the fabric, not the book;—for I owe the giver the courtesy of conforming to the old Catholic (nay, Egyptian, for the matter of that) rule to burn all sacred things when their day is done.

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.

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 besides can do. Some of the greatest ballads belong here. Wordsworth, Scott, and Burns, and many song-writers have given their passion to this country-side, where one has such joy as the best dreams are made of."

"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."

"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."

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 vanity, false ambitions, and by weakly yielding to bad influences."

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."

Mrs. Moulton to William Winter

Durnham House, Chelsea, London,
October 3, 1894.

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. Holmes. We sat very near each other, you and I, and I know how your words moved me, as well as how they moved Dr. Holmes. I felt his death very keenly, but I knew him far less than you did. To know him at all was to love him. How strange that you should have written of so many great pilgrims into the unknown. Thank God for your immortal hope. To me the outlook darkens as I draw nearer and nearer to the end. I am appalled by the immensity of the universe, and the nothingness of our little human atom among the infinite worlds. But God knows what is to come. You are happier than most in the love that surrounds you.

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.

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 increased; he hurts and angers many without meaning to do so.

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 the past three winters, we should go home that way, but as he has not been there this season we shall not appear.

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.

"I hate that phrase 'getting into society.' I don't think one ought to attribute to one's self that sort of ambition. One ought to assume that one is in society—that one is society—and to hold that if one has good manners, one has from the social point of view achieved the great thing. The rest regards others."

William Watson to Mrs. Moulton

Dear Mrs. Moulton: One of the most generous recognitions of my early poems came from your pen. I wished then to express my gratitude. I look forward to the pleasure of making your acquaintance. I am touched by your kind sympathy, and I know that you gladden all our group of friends. It is no ordinary thanks I owe you for your generous and delightful criticism. I have to thank you, already, for my best appreciation in America. You do not know how grateful I am to the first woman in America (and almost the first human being) who gave me hearty and inspiring praise. Your poems add to my store of beautiful things, and I do not prize them the less because some of their qualities are my own despair. When your letter came, that article which I call my conscience, and which I wear less for use than for ornament, gave me no peace. Yet the outward parts of life were to blame rather than I, their victim. I had been moving, and giving the Post Office the trouble of one who inherits a wandering tendency. I hope you will permit me to call upon you when next you are in London, and I am, dear Mrs. Moulton,

Sincerely yours,

William Watson.

Mrs. Burnett to Mrs. Moulton

"... I am so glad you like my story.... It was not I who said 'Human beings can do anything if they set their minds to it'; it was that beloved thing which has said things for me all my life. Sometimes I call it 'The Fairy,' but I think it must be a kind of splendid spirit. It is so strong, it is so good to me, and I do so love it. When I said that thing it seemed to make something waken within me. I began to say it to myself, and to believe it. Only thus could I have finished the story, and this makes me know it is true.... I have sometimes thought the thing I had to give is nearly always part of a story, some note of love, or message that rings clear. I don't ask it should be a loud note, only that some one shall hear it and remember. The fact that you have heard, makes the story a success, so far as I am concerned. As for giving, you give always. I have seen that. You give of gentleness and kindness and all things that help. Your hands are full of things to give."

Mrs. John G. Blake to Mrs. Moulton

Dear Mrs. Moulton: Among all the laurels which are being laid before your conquering feet, will you take my little flower of good-will and congratulations? The sonnets are exquisite, so are you always to

Your affectionate

M.E.B.

"Friendship is about the only real thing in humanity."

"The few of us who, in this muse-forgotten age, still care for real poetry, are to be congratulated no less."

James Whitcomb Riley to Mrs. Moulton

"... You, after months and months of barbarous silence, are asking me why I have not written! Well, I'll answer in my artlessness and most truthfully tell you that my last letter (and a really appealing one) meeting with no response whatever, I just had concluded that I'd win highest favor in your estimate by not writing. So I quit writing, and went to pouting,—this latter so persistently indulged in that my previously benignant features now look as though they were being cast back on my very teeth, so to speak, by a tawdry, wavery, crinkly looking-glass in the last gasp of a boarding-house. But since your voice of yesterday, the eyes of me are lit again, and the whole face beams like radiant summer time. No wonder you continue in indifferent health. It's a judgment on you for your neglect of me. Now you'll begin to improve. And you can get into perfect health by strictly maintaining this rigorous course of writing to me. Heroic treatment, of a truth!..."

"Could hardly get to the Browning Society, where I read 'A Toccata of Galuppi's.' Mr. Moulton seemed interested about the reading, and I read him the 'Toccata' after dinner, and other poems. A beautiful evening."

T.B. Aldrich to Mrs. Moulton

"Some day I must get you to tell me about Andrew Lang. One night last winter as I sat reading one of his books a kind of ghost, distinct, elusive, rose before me. Out of this impression grew my 'Broken Music.'"

George Meredith to Mrs. Moulton

"You are like the northern tribes of the Arabs, in that what you love you love wholly and without ceasing. This poem has been more roundly abused than any other of my much-castigated troop. You help me to think that they are not born offenders, antipathetic to the human mind. Americans who first gave me a reputation for the writing of novels will perhaps ultimately take part in the admission that I can write verse. They may thus carry a reluctant consent in England, when I no longer send out my rhyming note for revision. I have been taught, at least, to set no store upon English opinion in such matters. I would thank you, but gratitude is out of place. There is a feeling hard to verbalize."

Mrs. Moulton to Lloyd Mifflin

"It is five days since I received your 'Slopes of Helicon,' enriched by your kind inscription. I have been too ill to write; but I will no longer postpone the pleasure of telling you how delighted I am to have your charming book. I have already read enough to know that the book will be an abiding pleasure. You are as delightful a lyrist as you are a sonneteer, and I could not give you higher praise. Both the sonnets and lyrics in this volume charm me."

"... This morning, looking over a shelf of books that have accumulated during my absence,—as books are never forwarded to me,—I find your 'Fields of Dawn,' and also 'Lyrics,' by J.H. Mifflin, for both of which I want to thank you at once. I have a real pleasure to look forward to, for I love your sonnets. Am I right in supposing 'J.H.M.' to be your father, and that you are a poet by inheritance?..."

"I am sending a hurried note to tell you how entirely I agree with you about the demand for 'cheerful poetry.'"

"It is worth writing a book to have written the line,

"Made eminent by death,

in that noble poem, 'Peace to the Brave.' The poem entitled 'Herbert Spencer' makes me wonder whether you feel that assurance of the future which he certainly did not feel...."

Lloyd Mifflin to Mrs. Moulton

"... It is very uplifting, as you say in New England, to have such a genuine letter as yours. You read a book as I do, through at once. No one has said that my mind inclines to visions like Blake's, but I see visions. I used to sit and hold the pen and feel it hovering about, becoming nearer and nearer, till suddenly it came, the complete sonnet. I merely recorded it then. This was always wonderful to me. Where do they come from? Not death itself, to say nothing of our earth, can keep a born poet from writing. I can write a better poem about sunset by not seeing it...."

James Whitcomb Riley to Mrs. Moulton

"... Very slightly changing R.L.S.'s line,

and very thankful I am to be at home again. True, the mother is away, the old father, too, and a sister, and a brother; but they all seem to be here still, with the happy rest of us,—for we all believe, thank God. And you must take this for answer to your very last question, for I do feel that I know. I know likewise why fuller assurance has been withheld from us, lest knowing that, not one of all God's children but would be hurrying to Him ere His own good time.... Always your books are near at hand. May I tell you that I think the sonnet is your true voice? Yours is the deep, strong utterance which belongs, with the soul-cry in it, as individual to yourself as Mrs. Browning's to herself. Somewhere we are to talk poetry together sometime!... Of my book, 'A Child's World,' I venture to send you Mr. Howells' printed blessing, ... so delightfully characteristic (I think) of his very happiest way of saying things. And, oh! but I am gloating over a supernal letter from the Archangel Aldrich! Truly with hurtling praise and God-speed the heavenly battlements have loosened on me...."

From the same

"Has it been, and is it being, a beautiful Christmas season to you? for I have been so praying, though vexing you with no line of it in ink. And I've seen two new poems of yours, and they testify to your loyal love of this world of ours; so I know at least you can't be happier till you get to Heaven with no good word or gift forgotten, and such profusion! Since my return home I've been mostly working on pyramids of matter accumulated since my taking to the road. But last night I was struck with a real thought, while I was off guard, so to speak. So I've gone to work on that, and I'll send you the result, if I ever overtake it.... Lor! but don't praise unexpected hit the very crazybone of vanity!"

From the same

"How beautiful your new poems are! Oh, yes! Even to vaguely question your Divine Inspirer's ultimate intent!... Sometimes I even smilingly think that He has given you that haunting doubt here that your delight may be all the more ineffable a glory when you find His throne more real a fact than this first world of ours."

"No one who looks upon life with earnest eyes can fail to be touched by the passionate human cry which rings from Mrs. Moulton's poems. No one whose ear is attuned to catch the wail that is to be heard in the maddest, merriest music of the violin, to whom the sound of wind and sea at midnight is like that of innumerable lamentations; no one who, in the movement of a multitude of human beings—be they marching to the bounding music of fife and drum, or hurrying to witness a meeting of the starving unemployed—no one who in all these hears something of 'the still, sad music of humanity,' can read her verses unstirred."

"I am simply enchanted with the new book William Morris has printed for Wilfrid Blunt, 'The Love Lyrics and Songs of Proteus.'"

"Yes, I did like that one line in Christina Rossetti's poem:

"... half carol and half cry;

but the rest of it is not good enough for her."

"I have had many violets sent me this year, but far the most fragrant were a bunch left for me to-day with a card on which was written:

"I am reading, or rather rereading Rossetti's sonnet sequence, 'The House of Life.' How unequal are the sonnets,—some of them so beautiful they fairly thrill one's soul with their charm, but others seem whimsical and far fetched. On the other hand, how glorious, how like a full chord of music is, for instance, 'The Heart's Compass,' and the sestet of 'Last Fire,' and that magnificent sonnet, 'The Dark Glass.'"

"I had a letter this morning from a far-off stranger who tells me that her heart keeps time to my poems.... I am expecting my beloved Mrs. Spofford to-day.... No sweeter soul than she lives on this earth."

"Recently I sent a rhyme called 'A Whisper to the Moon,' to The Independent, and in accepting it Bliss Carman writes: 'I like it, and that line

"'She is thy kindred, and fickle art thou,

is immense. Lines with the lyric quality of that are imperishable. Quite apart from its meaning—its cold meaning—it is poetry. It floods the heart. It carries all before it. There is no stopping it. It is like the opening of the gates of the sea. You often write such lines.' The line does not seem to me at all worth such praise, but all the same the praise pleased me. How lovely it is to have people single out some special phrase to care for!"

"Louise Guiney and I are looking over my poems together. Oh, I wish there were more variety in them. They are good (I hope and think) in form, but they are, almost all, the cry of my heart for the love that I long for, or its protest against the death that I fear. Ah, well, I can only be myself."

"Mrs. Moulton's last volume of poems, 'At the Wind's Will,' fitly crowns the literary achievement of the century. It is poetry at high-water mark. Her work exhibited in previous volumes has given her a rank among the foremost poets of the world, and much of the work in 'At the Wind's Will' exceeds in grasp and in surrender, in strength and in beauty, anything she has hitherto published."

"Went in evening to read for the Rev. Mr. Shields, of South Boston."

"In the evening read for the College Club. Mrs. Howe presided. The other readers were Dr. Hale, Dr. Ames, Colonel Higginson, J.T. Trowbridge, Judge Grant, and Nathan Haskell Dole."

"Read for the Young Men's Christian Association. I read 'In Arcady,' 'The Name on a Door,' and 'A June Song,' of my own verses; then my paper on the Marstons, entitled 'Five Friends.' People seemed pleased."

"Two years ago this day Mr. Moulton passed out of life. It was my first thought this morning, and the sadness of it has been with me all day."

"I agree with you as to the inanity of struggle for social prominence. How fine is the passage you quote from Emerson: 'My friends come to me unsought. The great God Himself gave them to me.' That is the way I feel. Any social struggle seems to me so little worth while. It is worth while to know the people who really interest one,—but the others! It is always climbing ladders, and there are always other ladders to climb, and one never gets to the top. And then, what will it be if there is an 'after death'? I wonder? Will there be social ambitions,—the desire to get ahead there? It almost seems as if there must be, if there is the continuity of individual existences, for what could change people's desires and tendencies all at once?"

"And what do you think (entre nous) I have been asked to do? To go to Cambridge, England, with a party of friends who have included Mme. Blavatsky, and they are to have some brilliant receptions given them there by the occult folk, or those interested. But I declined."

"Mr. —— goes about asking every one if he has read 'The Story of My Heart,' by Jeffries, which is his latest enthusiasm. After being asked till I was ashamed of saying no, I got the book and read it, finding it the most haunting outcry of pessimism imaginable. When one has read it one feels in the midst of a Godless, hopeless world, where nature is hostile, and the animal kingdom alien, and man alone with his destiny,—a destiny that menaces and appalls him. It is a too powerful book. Jeffries makes one feel, for the moment, that all the happy people are happy only because insensate, and are madly dancing on volcanoes."

"Austin Dobson says: 'I have always admired your sonnets,—a thing I can never manage; but how you do take all Gallometry to be your province!! What are we, poor slaves to canzonets and serenades, to do next?' Very pleasant of him."

"Last Saturday the Boyle O'Reilly monument was unveiled, and I was chosen to crown it with a laurel wreath. It was a wonderful occasion; and President Capen, of Tufts College, gave the most eloquent eulogy to which I ever listened."

"My life is not the beautiful life you think, but it is my soul's steadfast purpose to make it all that you believe it already is. Nothing is of any real consequence save to live up to your very highest ideal. In criticism I made up my mind, long ago, that one should be like Swedenborg's angels, who sought to find the good in everything. Of course, really poor things must be condemned—or what I think is better—boycotted; but I do not like what is harsh, prejudiced, one-sided. I would see my possible soul's brother in every man—which all means that I am an optimist."

"Can you tell me what Henry James means by his story, 'The Private Life'? Is it an allegory or what? I never saw anything so impossible to understand."

"You speak of the 'close and near friendships' you have made in your few weeks in Florence,—'friendships for a lifetime.' That is delightful, only I can't make friendships with new people easily; so if I went I should not have that pleasure."

"... Before I rose this morning, a special messenger came from the Secretary of the Women Writers' Club (which is giving a magnificent dinner to-night at which Mrs. Humphry Ward presides). Miss Blackburne, the 'Hon. Secretary,' had only heard of my being in London this morning, so she at once sent a messenger to invite me. She entreated me to come; said she wanted me to sit at the head of one of the tables, and preside over that table, etc., etc. She sent a most distinguished list of guests, and oh, I did want to go—but I felt so ill I dared not try to go, and I sent an immediate refusal. Many of the authors whom I would like to meet will be among the guests...."

"Here is the little screed ... about Mrs. Browning. The description was given me by an English lady who saw Mrs. Browning very often during Mrs. B.'s last visit to Rome. To her such rumors as (falsely, I am persuaded) have connected Mr. Browning's name with that of another marriage would have seemed an impossible impertinence. Indeed, when one knows—as I happen to know—that Mr. Browning was asked to furnish some letters and some data about Mrs. Browning's life for Miss Zimmern (who had been requested to write about her for the Famous Women Series of Biographies) and refused because he could not bring himself to speak in detail of the past which had been so dear, or to share the sacred letters of his wife with the public, it hardly seems that he can be contemplating the offer of the place she, his 'moon of poets,' held in his life, to another."

"No, she was not what people call beautiful; but she was more and better. I can see her now, as she lay there on her sofa. I never saw her sitting up. She was always in white. She wore white dresses, trimmed with white lace, with white, fleecy shawls wrapped round her, and her dark brown hair used to be let down and fall all about her like a veil. Her face used to seem to me something already not of the earth—it was so pale, so pure, and with great dark eyes that gleamed like stars. Then her voice was so sweet you never wanted her to stop speaking, but it was also so low you could only hear it by listening carefully."

"'Was Mr. Browning there?'

"Oh, yes, and he used to watch her as one watches who has the most precious object in the whole world to keep guard over. He looked out for her comfort as tenderly as a woman.

"I think there never was another marriage like that; a marriage that made two poet souls one forever. Don't you notice how Browning always speaks of finding again the 'soul of his soul'? It was easy enough to see that that was just what she was. And the boy was there, too, a little fellow, with long golden hair, and I remember how quietly he used to play, how careful he was not to disturb his mother. Sometimes he used to stand for a long time beside her, with her 'spirit-small hand,' as her husband called it, just playing with his curls. I wonder if he can have known that she was going away from him so soon."

Mrs. Moulton to Elihu Vedder

"It was such a pleasure to me in my present loneliness to have a good talk with you last night, and I have been thinking of what you said. You would like a big fortune that you might have leisure to fulfil your dreams, but what if you had the fortune and not the dreams? I would a million times rather be you than any capitalist alive. It seems to me that to do work as the few great men in the world have, that must live, is the supreme joy. When you are dust the world will adore the wonder and majesty and beauty of your pictures. It seems to me that I would starve willingly in an attic, like Chatterton, to leave to the wide future one such legacy."

Walter Pater to Mrs. Moulton

"I read very little contemporary poetry, finding a good deal of it a little falsetto. I found, however, in your elegant and musical volume a sincerity, a simplicity, which stand you as constituting a cachet, a distinct note."

Mrs. Moulton to Lady Lindsay

"I am reading, with very unusual interest, 'Blake of Oriel,' by Adeline Sargent. It is a story of fate and of heredity, which sets one thinking and questioning.... Is fate also to be complicated by the curse of evil inheritance? Oh, is it fair to give life to one with such an inheritance of evil, and then condemn the sinner for what he does? Is it?... Is it a loving God who creates men foreknowing that they will commit spiritual suicide?... Are people sinners who are doomed by heredity to sin?"

Arthur Christopher Benson to Mrs. Moulton

"Thank you for what you say of my 'Arthur Hamilton.' It is deeply gratifying to me that the book has ever so slightly interested you. As for the difficulties of the hero, I suppose they are the eternal difficulties. It was like my impudent youth to think that to no one else had the same problem been so unjustly presented before, and to rush wildly into a tourney."

"In 'When Love is Young,' the line

"Time has his will of every man,

is in the strong style of the sixteenth century.

"I think the 'Dead Men's Holiday' martial and glorious.

"And the keen air stung all their lips like wine,

is the kind of line when Nature has taken the pen into her own hand.

"What an exquisite stanza is this in 'The Summer's Queen':

"The line

"Yet done with striving, and foreclosed of care,

in the sonnet entitled 'At Rest' is as good as anything of Drayton's. You know his sonnet,

"Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part!

"Mocked by a day that shines no more on thee,

in the sonnet called 'The New Year Dawns,' is the very truth in the strong simplicity of the Elizabethan age.

"What a wonderful line is the last one of the sonnet, 'The Song of the Stars':

"The waking rapture, and the fair, far place."

"Wrote a sonnet, the first in nearly or quite two years, beginning, 'Once more the New Year mocks me with its scorn.'"

"Went to Lady Wynford's charming luncheon."

"Went to Edward Clifford's to see pictures, and had the loveliest evening."

"Went to Archdeacon Wilberforce's, Mrs. Meynell's, and Mrs. Clifford's, and dined at Annie Lane's."

"Lunch at Sir Richard Burton's at Hampstead Heath. Lady Burton, who can never sit up, because of spinal trouble, was charming."

"Some one—a lady who left no name—brought me charming roses. A good many guests—Lady Wynford, Mrs. Sutherland Orr, Canon Bell, and George Moore among them."

"Went to Lord Iddesleigh's. He gave me his first book, 'Belinda Fitzwarren.'"

Dr. E. Winchester Donald to Mrs. Moulton

"July 9, 1901.

"... This place is a paradise. The Thames, from Windsor to Henley, is a beautiful dream, sailing up and down—no churches, no responsibilities. Consequently we New Englanders need not urge that it is dangerous to linger long upon its bosom. If there be no physical miasma rising from these waters, I fear there is an ethical one.... You are very kind and very generous. Your gift is very acceptable to us, and in my own name and that of those whom the Church is trying to help, I thank you with all my heart. What you have told me of the perplexities that beset you is more than simply interesting,—it is also revelatory of what, I fancy, is not uncommon among the thoughtful folk. But why not fall back deliberately on worship as distinguished from satisfactory precision of opinion or belief? I should not be surprised to learn that prayer has tided many people over the bar of intellectual perplexity into the harbor of a reasonable faith. Indeed, I know it has. The instinct of humanity is to worship and fall down before the Lord, our Maker. Why should we insist on having a precisely formulated proposition as respects the nature of that Lord before we worship? Prayer and praise form the sole common meeting-ground of humanity. Why not come back to the Church, not as a thoroughly satisfied holder of accurately stated formulas, but as a soul eager to gain whatever of help, hope, or comfort the Church has to give? You would never repent this, I am confident. My strong wish, never stronger than to-day, is that all of us may be receiving from God what God is only ready to give. For our reasoned opinions we must be intellectually intrepid and industrious. For our possession of the peace that passeth understanding we must be spiritually receptive and responsive."

"Frances Willard's mother was in her eighties,—she was on her death-bed—it was, I think, the day before she died, and her daughter said to her, 'Well, mother, if you had your life to live over again, I don't think you would want to do anything differently from what you have done.' The dear old lady turned her gray head on the pillow, and smiled, and said, 'Oh, yes; if I had my life to live over again, I would praise a great deal more and blame a great deal less.' I always thought it lovely to have felt and said."

J. McNeill Whistler to Mrs. Moulton

96 Cheyne Road.

Dear Louise: I accept your invitation with great pleasure, and how kind and considerate of you to make it eight-thirty. I really believe I shall reach you, not only in good time, but in the unruffled state of mind and body that is utterly done away with in the usual scramble across country, racing hopelessly for the "quarter to."...

Yours sincerely,

J. McN. W.

"The event of the week par excellence has been the arrival in Buffalo of that gifted writer and eminent woman—Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton of Boston. Mrs. Moulton arrived on Monday evening, and is the guest of her friend, Mrs. Truman J. Martin of North Street, where she is resting after a season of excessive literary work and many social obligations.... Mrs. Moulton has a striking personality. The years have touched lightly her heart and features, her strongest characteristic being a heartiness and sincerity and warmth that come to a great soul who has enjoyed and suffered much and who has dipped into the deepest of life's grand experiences. She dresses handsomely and somewhat picturesquely, elegant laces and rich velvet and silks forming themselves into her expressive attire."

"Flowers were everywhere in the house, bowls and vases of white carnations. 'The Scribblers' flowers, and roses and lilies for 'Rosalys,' Mrs. Martin's middle name, and which she still retains—'Charlotte Rosalys Jones,' as her pen name.... Mrs. Moulton was dressed in black satin, with elegant rose-point lace and diamonds.... The real delight of the afternoon came when Mrs. Moulton took up a little bundle of her poems, special selections of Mrs. Martin's, and read with great expression some of the sublime, pathetic, and passionate thoughts that have endeared this writer to the English reading world and placed her among the foremost of American writers. Mrs. Moulton's voice is of peculiar timbre, and reveals to the intelligent listener a character of the finest mould, suffering intensely through the inevitable decrees of a fate not too kind to the most favored, and a wealth of love and devotion that is immeasurable."

Bliss Carman to Mrs. Moulton

"... Have you seen that perfect thing of Louise Imogen Guiney's with the lines,—

"Isn't that the gold of poetry? She ought to have a triumph on the Common, and a window in Memorial Hall.... Do you see that faun of Auburndale?"

"Went to Lady Seton's luncheon party—of I think twenty—a very pleasant affair in honor of Mr. Howells and his daughter. I sat next to Mr. Howells and had a good talk with him."

"Went to the luncheon at the Cecil, given by the Society of American Women in London in honor of Ambassador and Mrs. Reid and Mr. and Mrs. Longworth."

"Went in the evening to the Women Writers' dinner. I sat at Mrs. Craigie's table."

"Went to the Lyceum Club Saturday dinner. Lady Frances Balfour presided."

"Went to the Baroness Burdett-Coutts' garden-party. Oh, Holly Lodge is such a beautiful place!"

"Went to Irving's dinner at the New Gallery. Sir Edward Russell, editor of the Daily Post, Liverpool, took me out; and a delightful companion he was."

"Many guests: Mrs. Wilberforce, Lady Henry Somerset, Mrs. Henniker, the Pearsall Smiths, William Watson, Oswald Crawfurd, 'Michael Field' (that is to say Miss Bradley and Miss Cooper), Violet Hunt, Mr. and Mrs. Clement Shorter, Archdeacon and Mrs. Wilberforce, and many more."

Louise Imogen Guiney to Mrs. Moulton

"... On an awfully wild and windy day of last week I struck off for Highgate over Hampstead Heath, and got so drenched additionally in the memories of the men who reign over me, Lamb, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and Hunt, that I declare now I must live there a while. Coleridge's tomb I knew to be under the crypt of the Grammar School, and I found the Gilmans' house where he died, thanks to the only knowledge that I seem to have had from everlasting. The tomb is a queer piece of masonry, so placed that you may put your hand within an inch of his coffin. After some exploring and inquiring, George Eliot's grave turned up in the new grounds of Highgate Cemetery, where I suppose poor Philip Marston's must be. Her grave is an entirely unconventional affair, to the memory of Mary Ann Cross. I caught myself wondering whether there were any special reason for laying that great soul (here is some theological inaccuracy!) in so narrow and crowded a space, when suddenly I shifted my position, and saw that she was lying directly at the feet of George Henry Lewes, born August 4, 1817, died December 30, 1878. It gave me a queer sensation, I tell you, for Lewes' marble is half hidden and not visible from the path. If it were George Eliot's wish, honor to Mr. Cross for carrying it out!"

"Some agreeable witchery, sure to be transient, is about me to-day, for I've made a 'pome,' the first since winter, and patched up a trivial old one,—both of which I send you as a slight token that I may get out of Bedlam yet. The sonnet I want you to cherish, it is so abominably pessimistic...."

"I have been luxuriating in 'Atalanta.'... That is my springtime. There is no such music and motion and solemn gladness anywhere in modern verse. In a year or two more I shall know it by heart from cover to cover.... And here is England knee-deep in green and daisies; England piled with ruined Abbey walls."

"I have two refreshments to chronicle,—one is Irving's 'Becket,' and not the stock-still, curiously inefficient play, but just Irving's 'Becket,' otherwise 'St. Thomas of Canterbury,' a flash and a breath from Heaven. Where does that actor get his gift of everything spiritual and supernatural? His charm to me is that he has great moral power,—either inherent from the noble mind ... or else acquired by art so subtle that I never got hold of the like.... Surely, not everybody can see so into a character ... and measure its astonishing depth in humanity and divinity."

Archdeacon Wilberforce to Mrs. Moulton

"Dear Mrs. Chandler-Moulton: Thank you for your letter. On page 237, of the book I send you, I have answered your question 'Why cannot God make people good in the first instance.' Because even God can only make things by means of the process by which they become what they are. God could not make a hundred-year-old tree in your garden in one minute. He cannot make a moral being except through the processes by means of which a moral being becomes what he is. What does Walt Whitman say?

"Our life is closed, our life begins.

And again:

Miss Robbins to Mrs. Moulton

96 Mt. Vernon St.,
January 23, 1906.

My dear Mrs. Moulton: This little note from Dean Hodges belongs to you rather than to me. If you had never written anything else all your life but this beautiful "Help Thou Mine Unbelief," you have done something worth living for, something truly great.

And now to explain a little. I was glad to meet Dean Hodges at your house, and I asked him if among your poems he knew this one that I so prized. I told him that I had shown it to Dr. Momerie, who murmured, after reading it: "It is finer, it is, than 'Lead, Kindly Light.'" Dr. Momerie then went on to say there were only half a dozen good hymns, and that this was one of them. As Dean Hodges did not know the poem, I offered to copy it for him, as I have done for several people before, and now this is his reply. Such praise from such a man is praise indeed!

I had such an interesting time at your house, meeting such interesting people, but what I wanted most was a tête-à-tête with my interesting hostess. I always want to know you better.

Believe me, dear Mrs. Moulton,

Always yours,

Julia Robbins.

Dean Hodges to Miss Robbins

[Enclosed]

The Deanery, Cambridge,
January 22, 1906.

Dear Miss Robbins: I cannot thank you enough for these devout and helpful verses of Mrs. Moulton's. I have read and re-read them,—every time with new appreciation. They belong to the great hymns.

It was a pleasure to meet you, and one I hope to have again.

Faithfully yours,

George Hodges.

Dr. Hale to Mrs. Moulton

April 5, 1906.

Dear Mrs. Moulton: I thank you indeed for the kind expression of memories and hopes which calls up so much from the past and looks forward so cheerfully into the future.... No, as life goes on with us, we do not rest as often as I should like. But that is the special good of a milestone like this,—it gives us a chance to look backward and forward.

This note has carried me back to an old friend, Phillips, the publisher, who died too early for the rest of us. You will not remember it, but he introduced me to you. I wonder if you can know how highly he prized your literary work?

With thanks for your kind note, dear Mrs. Moulton,

I am always yours,

Edward Everett Hale.

Miss Adams to Mrs. Moulton

"Dear Mrs. Moulton: Your beautiful little book is a dear thing. I thank you for sympathy in the loss of my only brother. I am writing to the publisher for your 'Garden of Dreams.' I've never read it and now I need to live in dreams. Do you know Swinburne's lines on the death of Barry Cornwall? No poem ever haunted me like this. The tone of it, even in my brightest moods, seemed to color my words. Of course this must be imagination, but the last lines are so dear,—

"Later.

"How kind, how generous you are, to send me this precious volume! I find many fine poems in it and only wish I could hear you read them."

"There must be always 'the still, sad music of humanity'—the expression of the mind that foresees, of the heart that aches with foreknowledge. One would not ignore the gladness of the dawn, the strong splendor of the mid-day sun; but, all the same, the shadows lengthen, and the day wears late.

"And yet the dawn comes again after the night; and one has faith—or is it hope rather than faith?—that the new world which swims into the ken of the spirit to whom Death gives wings, may be fairer even than the dear familiar earth—that, somewhere, somehow, we may find again the long-lost; or meet the long-desired, the un-found, who forever evaded our reach in this mocking sphere, where we have never been quite at home, because, after all, we are but travellers, and this is but our hostelry, and not our permanent abode."

"I have written many times more prose than verse, but it is my verse which is most absolutely me, and for which I would rather that you should care. Some critics assert that the sonnet is an artificial form of expression. Is it? I only know that no other seems to me so intimate—in no other can I so sincerely utter the heart's cry of despair or of longing—the soul's aspiration toward that which is eternal.

"Am I a realist? I think I am; but who was it who said that the sky is not less real than the mud?"

"Indoors all day; an awful wind storm, and the day was made sad by the news in the morning's paper of T.B. Aldrich's death yesterday, in the late afternoon. Oh, how sad death seems. Aldrich was seventy last November. How soon we, his contemporaries, shall all be gone. His death seems to darken everything."

"Went to the funeral services of T.B. Aldrich, at Arlington Street Church. The services, the music, and Mr. Frothingham's reading, were most impressive and beautiful.... In the evening came Mr. Stedman to see me. His visit was a real pleasure, I had not seen him for so long."

Mrs. Moulton to Mrs. Aldrich

28 Rutland Square,
March 30, 1907.

Dear Mrs. Aldrich: I cannot tell you how my talk with you a few days ago brought the long past back to me. How I wish I could put into words a picture of your poet as I saw him first. I was in New York for a visit, and was invited for an afternoon to an out-of-town place, where a poet-friend and his wife were staying. Other interesting people were there, but the one I remember was T.B.A. His poems had charmed me, and to me he was not only their author, but their embodiment. Had it been otherwise, I should have felt bereft of an ideal; but he was all I had imagined and more. I saw him alive with the splendor of youth, rich, even then, in achievement, and richer still in hope and dreams,—a combination of knight and poet. He escorted me back to New York, I remember, and the charm of his presence and his conversation still lingers in my memory. Ever since then I have kept in touch with his work and loved it. His personality attracted every one who met him, and his generous kindness and appreciation were a joy to those who sought his sympathy.

I remember the pleasure with which my poet-friend, Frederic Lawrence Knowles, told me of a kind invitation to call on Mr. Aldrich, and the yet more enthusiastic delight with which he afterward described the interview. He found his gracious and graceful host to be so wise, sympathetic, hopeful, and suggestive, all that he had hoped for and more. I think every young poet who had the happiness of meeting him could bear similar testimony.

I saw him last on the twelfth of January, 1907, so short a time before his death, and yet he seemed so alert and alive, so interesting, so entirely what he was when I knew him first that one could not have dreamed that the end was near. The only consolation for a loss that will be so widely felt is in the legacy he has left to the world of immortal charm and beauty,—the work that will not die.

Yours most sincerely,

Louise Chandler Moulton.

Dr. Ames to Mrs. Moulton

12 Chestnut St., Boston,
October 24, 1907.

My Dear Friend: I am somewhat foot-fast; but very far from indifferent, and you will never know how often your name is called as I tell my rosary beads.

I wonder if you find comfort, as I often do, in the thought that all true and honorable human friendship is representative of its inspiring source, and that we should not thus care for each other, and wish each other's highest welfare, if our hearts were not in receptive touch with a Heart still greater, purer, and more loving? Can you rest in the imperfect good will of your friends and yet distrust its Origin and Fountain?

I appreciate and share your perplexity over the world's "Vast glooms of woe and sin." But, when most weary and heavy-laden with all our common burden of sorrow and shame, I find some measure of strength and peace in the example and spirit of One who knew and felt it all, One who could gather into a heart of boundless compassion all the blind and struggling multitudes, and could yet trust all the more fully to the Father's love for all, because He felt that love in His own.

The problem of evil—my evil, yours, everybody's—was not solved by Him with any reasoning; it was simply met and overmatched by faith which saw all finite things held in the Infinite, as all the stars are held in space.

Did sin abound? Grace did much more abound. To that superabounding grace I commit all our needy souls. I know no other resource. I need no other.

As for unanswered questions,—let them rest. They rest while you sleep; let them rest while you wake. In opening a window to look out, we shall let in the blessed light of heaven. How many hearts have found this true! Did any ever find it untrue? To escape from self-attention is the sure cure of morbid, self-consuming thoughts and moods....

While you and I are waiting for the sunset gun, what use can we make of our afternoon except to welcome the sacred horizontal light, which shows us how our resources and energies can best be applied to the welfare of others? If in considering our remaining opportunities and duties, we may partly forget our own private troubles, that will be salvation, will it not? We may be sure that all the happiness we try to secure for others will return to ourselves redoubled. You would say this to another, why not say it insistently to yourself.

Faithfully yours,

Charles Gordon Ames.

"An anecdote told by Mrs. Moulton about Thomas Carlyle and his wife has been going the rounds of the press since her death, coming thus to my notice. I only partially recognize it as one she had often told me. The true version of it is as follows: Mrs. Moulton had it from her friend, Lady Ashburton, who was also a friend of Carlyle and his wife. It seems that Lady Ashburton had invited the Carlyles to visit her. There was a large house-party of people congenial to the great man, and one day after dinner Lady Ashburton prevailed on Carlyle to read aloud some passages from the 'French Revolution.' From reading, Carlyle, carried away by his subject, continued a discourse independent of his own work, which was so brilliant and eloquent that his hearers were profoundly impressed. After he had ceased and it was time for all to separate for the night, they went, in turn, to express to him their appreciation. The only person who did not do this was his wife, and as Carlyle stood as if expectant, Lady Ashburton said rather impulsively to Mrs. Carlyle: 'Why don't you speak to him? Your praise means more to him than that of all the rest, and only see how he has moved them!' 'Ah, yes,' replied Mrs. Carlyle, 'but they don't have to live with him.'"

"I first met Mrs. Moulton in London in the early eighties. I had a letter of introduction to her from a common Boston friend. She was then in the beginning of her London success, knowing everybody in the literary world worth knowing, and extending her simple and charming hospitality to very great people indeed. To go to her Fridays was always to meet men and women whose names are famous on two continents. To a young girl as I was, brought up with a deep veneration for all things literary in England, it was a wonderful opportunity to come face to face, through her kindness, with the curious phases of art and literature of that period.

"These movements were the outcome of the pre-Raphaelite, the outward aspects of that erratic and distinguished society, and its artificial simplicity. It was enough to impress any one coming from so conventional a city as Boston. Perhaps the deepest impression made on me was by Philip Bourke Marston, for I remember how Mrs. Moulton brought him to see us, and my father, Julius Eichberg, played for him on the violin. Never shall I forget the picture as he sat there listening, his head supported by his hand, and the various expressions evoked by the music passing over his face.

"It was undoubtedly through Mrs. Moulton that the younger English poets of those earlier days won American recognition. Many of these who have now an assured place in literature were first known in America through her introduction. As I remember now, it was she who first unfolded to me the splendid, stately perfection and the profound thought of William Watson, and I can still hear her lovely voice as she recited to me that wonderful poem of his, 'World-Strangeness.' It was she who first read to me 'The Ballad of a Nun,' by John Davidson, and that moving and tragic poem by Rosamond Marriott, 'Le Mauvais Larron.'

"I remember going with Mrs. Moulton to Miss Ingelow's. Once I remember, when James Russell Lowell was first accredited Minister to the Court of St. James, and had just arrived in London, we met him at Miss Ingelow's. He was evidently a stranger to the hostess and to all her guests, and I recall his talking to her, holding in his hand a cup of tea which he evidently did not want. Miss Ingelow, in a bonnet and shawl, with a lace veil over her face (it was a garden party), seemed to be stricken with a kind of English shyness which made her rather unresponsive, so that he went away without having been introduced to any one, while every one looked on and wanted to know him.

"I remember an enthusiastic American girl who was introduced to Thomas Hardy by Mrs. Moulton, at one of her Fridays, who exclaimed, 'O Mr. Hardy, to meet you makes this a red letter day for me'; whereupon the quiet, reserved, great man looked at her in speechless alarm and fled. It was at Mrs. Moulton's that I first became acquainted with the editor of the famous 'Yellow Book.' He was Henry Harland, and its publisher was John Lane. I recall Mrs. Moulton saying 'Now that I have introduced the editor to you I must also introduce the publisher.'

"It was in the 'Yellow Book' that the most distinguished of the younger English writers first won their spurs, and that erratic genius, Aubrey Beardsley, made his undying mark on the black and white art, not only of England, but of the world. It was all these younger men whose talent Mrs. Moulton made known to the American public.

"In the first years of my friendship with Mrs. Moulton, when she still wrote fiction, she once told me of the plot of a story which had been told to her by Philip Marston. It was a wonderful plot and Mr. Marston wished her to use it. As she told me the details in her vivid way, I was profoundly impressed as if it had been a story of De Maupassant. She seemed to have no great desire to use it, although she was, for the moment, fired by my young enthusiasm for it. If ever I envied, as only a young literary aspirant can, it was Mrs. Moulton then as the ownership of that plot, and I told her so. 'If I do not use it,' she said, 'I will give it to you.' So years passed, and in my mind still lingered the remembrance of that wonderful plot which, so far, Mrs. Moulton had not used. One evening we were at the theatre together, and as we sat talking, between the acts, she suddenly reverted to the plot. 'I have decided,' she said, 'that I shall never use it, and I will give it to you.' I do not think that any gift ever made me so happy; it was a happiness that only a writer of stories can appreciate. It seemed to me as if I could not find words to express my gratitude for her great generosity. I know my delight made her happy. It was so a part of her to be happy in another's happiness. For days and weeks afterward I only lived in that wonderful plot—but to this day the wonderful plot has not been used."