Julia Ward Howe - Richards Laura E. - Страница 8

Or we hear the child at table, remarking innocently that the cheese is strong; and the deep voice replying, "It is no more so than the expression, Miss!"

The family was still at 16 Bond Street, when all the children had whooping-cough severely, and were confined to the house for many weeks. Mrs. Mailliard writes of this time:—

"I remember the screened-off corner of the dining-room, which was called the Bower, where we each retired when the spasms came on, and the promises which we vainly gave each other each morning to choke rather than cough whilst Uncle Doctor made his visit to the nursery; for the slightest sound from one of us provoked the general order of a dose all round."

It was after this illness that Julia Ward first went to Newport. A change of air was prescribed for the children, and they were packed off to the farmhouse of Jacob Bailey, two or three miles from the town of Newport. Here they spent a happy summer, to be followed by many others. They slept on mattresses stuffed with ground corncobs; the table was primitive; but there was plenty of cream and curds, eggs and butter, and there was the wonderful air. The children grew fat and hearty, and scampered all over the island with great delight.

(But when they went down to the beach, Julia must wear a thick green worsted veil to preserve her ivory-and-rose complexion.

"Little Julia has another freckle to-day!" a visitor was told. "It was not her fault, the nurse forgot her veil!")

Julia recalled Newport in 1832 as "a forsaken, mildewed place, a sort of intensified Salem, with houses of rich design, no longer richly inhabited." She was to watch through many years the growth of what was always one of the cities of her heart.

But we must return to Bond Street, and take one more look at No. 16. The Wards were soon to leave it for a statelier dwelling, but many associations would always cling about the old house. Here it was that the good old grandfather, Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel Ward, used to come from No. 7 to talk business with his son or to play with the children. Our mother had a vivid recollection of once, when still a little child, sitting down at the piano, placing an open music-book on the rack (though she could not yet read music), and beginning to pound and thump the keys with might and main. The Colonel was sitting by, book in hand, and endured the noise patiently for some time. Finally he said in his courtly way, "Is it so set down in the book, little lady?" "Yes, Grandpapa!" said naughty Julia, and went on banging; the Colonel, who indeed had little music, made no further comment. But when a game of "Tommy-come-tickle-me" was toward, the children must step in to No. 7 to share that excitement with their grandfather, since no cards were permitted under Mr. Ward's roof.

The year of the first Newport visit, 1832, was also the terrible "cholera year." Uncle Ben Cutler, at that time city missionary, writes in his diary:—

"The cholera is in Quebec and Montreal. This city is beginning to be alarmed; Christians are waking up. My soul, how stands the case with thee?"

And later:—

"I am now in the midst of the pestilence. The cholera, the universal plague, arrived in this city four weeks ago. It has caused the death of over nine hundred persons. This day the report of the Board of Health was three hundred new cases and one hundred and thirty deaths."

Many parts of the city were entirely deserted. Dr. Cutler retained through life the vivid recollection of riding down Broadway in full daylight, meeting no living soul, seeing only a face here and there at an upper window, peering at him as at a strange sight.

Newport took the alarm, and forbade steamboats from New York to land their passengers. This behavior was considered very cold-blooded, and gave rise to the conundrum: "Why is it impossible for Newporters to take the cholera? Answer: Because they have no bowels."

Grandma Cutler was at Newport with the Wards and Francises, and trembled for her only son. She implored him to "flee while it was yet day." "My most precious son," she cried, "oh, come out from thence! I entreat you; linger not within its walls, as Lot would have done, but for the friendly angels that drew him perforce from it!"

The missionary stood firm at his post, and though exhausted by his labors, came safe through the ordeal. But Colonel Ward, who had not thought fit to flee the enemy,—it was not his habit to flee enemies,—was stricken with the pestilence, and died in New York City, August 16. His death was a grievous blow to Mr. Ward. Not only had he lost a loving and beloved father, but he had no assurance of the orthodoxy of that father's religious opinions. The Colonel was thought in the family to be of a philosophizing, if not actually sceptical, turn of mind; it might be that he was not "safe"! Years after, Mr. Ward told Julia of the anguish he suffered from this uncertainty.

It is with No. 16 Bond Street that we chiefly associate the sprightly figure of "Grandma Cutler," who was a frequent visitor there. The affection between Mr. Ward and his mother-in-law was warm and lively. They had a "little language" of their own, and she was Lady Feltham (from her fondness for Feltham's "Resolves," a book little in demand in the twentieth century); and he was her "saucy Lark," or "Plato." Mrs. Cutler died in 1836.

CHAPTER III

"THE CORNER"

1835-1839; aet. 16-20

But well I thank my father's sober house

Where shallow judgment had no leave to be,

And hurrying years, that, stripping much beside,

Turned as they fled, and left me charity.

J. W. H.

The house which Mr. Ward built on the corner of Bond Street and Broadway was still standing in the middle of the nineteenth century; a dignified mansion of brick, with columns and trimmings of white marble.

In her "Reminiscences," our mother recalls the spacious rooms, hung with red, blue, and yellow silk. The yellow drawing-room was reserved for high occasions, and for "Miss Ward's" desk and grand piano. This and the blue room were adorned by fine sculptured mantelpieces, the work of a young sculptor named Thomas Crawford, who was just coming into notice.

Behind the main house, stretching along Broadway, was the picture gallery, the first private one in New York, and Mr. Ward's special pride. The children might not mingle in frivolous gayety abroad, but they should have all that love, taste, and money could give them at home; he filled his gallery with the best pictures he could find. A friend (Mr. Prescott Hall), making a timely journey through Spain, bought for him many valuable pictures, among them a Snyders, a Nicolas Poussin, a reputed Velasquez and Rembrandt. It was for him that Thomas Cole painted the four pictures representing "The Voyage of Life," engravings from which may still be found in old-fashioned parlors.

Some years later, when the eldest son, Samuel, returned from Europe, bringing with him a fine collection of books, Mr. Ward built a library specially for them.

This was the house into which the family moved in 1835, Julia being then sixteen years of age; this was the house she loved, the memory of which was dear to her through all the years of her life.

The family was at that time patriarchal in its dimensions: Mr. Ward and his six children, Dr. and Mrs. Francis and their four; often, too, "Grandma Cutler" and other Cutlers, not to speak of Wards, Greenes, and McAllisters. (Louisa, youngest of the Cutler sisters, one of the most beautiful and enchanting women of her time, was married to Matthew Hall McAllister.) One and all were sure of a welcome at "The Corner"; one and all were received with cordial urbanity, first by Johnson, the colored butler, later by Mr. Ward, the soul of dignified hospitality.