Julia Ward Howe - Richards Laura E. - Страница 28

With every chance to hit,

I made your banner, waving wide,

A mark for wayward wit.

'Twas now my turn to walk the street,

In dangerous singleness,

And run, as bravely as I might,

The gauntlet of the press.

And when I passed your balcony

Expecting only blows,

From height or vantage-ground, you stooped

To whelm me with a rose.

A rose, intense with crimson life

And hidden perfume sweet—

Call out your friends, and see me do

My penance in the street.

*        *        *        *        *        *

She writes her sister Annie:—

"My book came out, darling, on Friday last. You have it, I hope, ere this time. The simple title, 'Passion Flowers,' was invented by Scherb[37] and approved by Longfellow. Its success became certain at once. Hundreds of copies have already been sold, and every one likes it. Fields foretells a second edition—it is sure to pay for itself. It has done more for me, in point of consideration here, than a fortune of a hundred thousand dollars. Parker quoted some of my verses in his Christmas sermon, and this I considered as the greatest of honors. I sat there and heard them, glowing all over. The authorship is, of course, no secret now...."

Speaking of the volume long after, she says, "It was a timid performance upon a slender reed."

Three years later a second volume of verse was published by Ticknor and Fields under the title of "Words for the Hour." Of this, George William Curtis wrote, "It is a better book than its predecessor, but will probably not meet with the same success."

She had written plays ever since she was nine years old. In 1857, the same year which saw the publication of "Words for the Hour," she produced her first serious dramatic work, a five-act drama entitled "The World's Own." It was performed in New York at Wallack's Theatre, and in Boston with Matilda Heron and the elder Sothern in the leading parts. She notes that one critic pronounced the play "full of literary merits and of dramatic defects"; and she adds, "It did not, as they say, 'keep the stage.'"

Yet her brother Sam writes to her from New York: "Lenore still draws the best houses; there was hardly standing room on Friday night"; and again: "Mr. Russell went last night, a second time, bought the libretto, which I send you by this mail—declares that there is not a grander play in our language. He says that it is full of dramatic vigor, that the interest never flags—but that unhappily Miss H., with the soul and self-abandonment of a great actress, lacks those graces of elocution, which should set forth the beauties of your verses."

Some of the critics blamed the author severely for her choice of a subject—the betrayal and abandonment of an innocent girl by a villain; they thought it unfeminine, not to say indelicate, for a woman to write of such matters.

At that time nothing could be farther from her thoughts than to be classed with the advocates of Women's Rights as they then appeared; yet in "The World's Own" are passages which show that already her heart cherished the high ideal of her sex, for which her later voice was to be uplifted:—

I think we call them Women, who uphold

Faint hearts and strong, with angel countenance;

Who stand for all that's high in Faith's resolve,

Or great in Hope's first promise.

*        *        *        *        *        *

Ev'n the frail creature with a moment's bloom,

That pays your pleasure with her sacrifice,

And, having first a marketable price,

Grows thenceforth valueless,—ev'n such an one,

Lifted a little from the mire, and purged

By hands severely kind, will give to view

The germ of all we honor, in the form

Of all that we abhor. You fling a jewel

Where wild feet tramp, and crushing wheels go by;

You cannot tread the splendor from its dust;

So, in the shattered relics, shimmers yet

Through tears and grime, the pride of womanhood.

*        *        *        *        *        *

We must not forget the Comic Muse. Comparatively little of her humorous verse is preserved; she seldom thought it important enough to make two copies, and the first draft was often lost or given away. The following was written in the fifties, when Wulf Fries was a young and much-admired musician in Boston. Miss Mary Bigelow had invited her to her house "at nine o'clock" to hear him play, meaning nine in the morning. She took this for nine in the evening; the rest explains itself:—

Miss Mary Big'low, you who seem

So debonair and kind,

Pray, what the devil do you mean

(If I may speak my mind)

By asking me to come and hear

That Wulf of yours a-Friesing,

Then leaving me to cool my heels

In manner so unpleasing?

*        *        *        *        *        *

With Mrs. Dr. Susan you

That eve, forsooth, were tea-ing:

Confess you knew that I should come,

And from my wrath were fleeing!

To Mrs. Dr. Susan's I

Had not invited been:

So when the maid said, "Best go there!"

I answered, "Not so green!"

Within the darksome carriage hid

I bottled up my beauty,

And, rather foolish, hurried home

To fireside and duty.

It's very pleasant, you may think,

On winter nights to roam;

But when you next invite abroad,