Julia Ward Howe - Richards Laura E. - Страница 99

After this we have "a day of dreadful hurry, preparing to go West and also to shut up this house. Had to work tight every minute...."

This Western lecture trip was like many others, yet it had its own peculiar pleasures and mishaps.

"October 12. Dunkirk, lecture.... No one must know that I got off at the wrong station—Perrysburg, a forlorn hamlet. No train that would bring me to Dunkirk before 6.30 P.M. Ought to have arrived at 1.30. Went to the 'hotel,' persuaded the landlord to lend his buggy and a kindly old fellow to harness his horses to it, and drove twenty miles or more over the mountains, reaching Dunkirk by 5.10 P.M. When the buggy was brought to the door of the hotel, I said: 'How am I to get in?' 'Take it slow and learn to pedal,' said my old driver. Presently he said, 'I guess you ain't so old as I be.' I replied, 'I am pretty well on toward seventy.' 'Well, I am five years beyond,' said he. He drives an accommodation wagon between Perrysburg and Versailles, a small town where a man once wanted to set up a mill, and to buy land and water power, and they wouldn't sell either. Whereupon he went to Tonawanda and made the place. 'Guess they'd have done better to gin him the land and water, and to set up his mill for him,' said my man, Hinds."

On this trip she saw the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, taking the seven-mile walk; went as far as Kansas City; was received everywhere with delightful warmth.

To Laura

December 1, 1886.

You see, I was waiting for the winter to begin, in order to write you, and that you ought to have known. But bless you, in Gardiner, Maine, you don't know when real Winter begins, 'cause you have so much sham winter. Well, better late than never. Here's thanking you very much for the delightful [tea] cozy. Maud said, "What are you going to do with it?" sarcastic-like. I replied, "Put it on my head"; to which she inquit, "Most natural thing for you to do." The sight of the monogram gave me real satisfaction and a sense of inborn dignity. You boil down to your monogram, after all, and this one was beyond my highest expectations. I am only thinking, dear, whether you would not have shown more respect by putting the crimson satin bow on the monogram side, and thus, as it were, calling attention to the distinguished initials.... I am grinding now in all of my mills, of which one is a paper for the "Woman Suffrage Bazaar," which paper I am doing my best to edit. I cannot in conscience ask you to send me anything for its columns, because, poor dear, you have to do so much work on your own account. At the same time, a trifling overflow into the hat would be very welcome....

Winter brought another grave anxiety. Florence in her turn developed rheumatic fever and became alarmingly ill. The mother-bird flew to her in terror. On the way she met Henry Ward Beecher and told him of her deep distress, made still more poignant by the thought of the little children who might be left motherless. She was scarcely comforted by his assurance that he "had known stepmothers who were very good to their stepchildren"!

It was Christmas time, and she divided her time between the beloved patient and the children who must not lack their holiday cheer.

"December 27. The day was a very distressing one to me. I sat much of the time beside Flossy with a strange feeling that I could keep her alive by some effort of my will. I seemed to contend with God, saying, 'I gave up Julia, I can't give up Flossy—she has children.'..."

"December 28. Most of the day with dear Flossy, who seems a little better. I sat up with her until 1.30 A.M., and made a great effort of will to put her to sleep. I succeeded—she slept well for more than an hour and slept again for a good while without any narcotic."

Throughout the illness she fought against the use of narcotics.

The cloud of danger and anxiety passed, and the year closed in happiness and deep thankfulness. The last entry reads:—

"God bless all my dear people, sisters, children, grandchildren, and cousins. God grant me also to serve while I live, and not to fail of the high and holy life. Amen!"

To Laura

Monday, January 31, 1887.

Now, you just look here.

Daughter began her school and music to-day. Nobody's a-neglecting of her. What you mean? Grandma took her to Clarke church, prouder than a peacock,—Grandma, I mean.

Congregation inquit: "Whose child is that?"

"Laura's," responsa sum.

"Id cogitavi" was the general answer. And she's pop'lar, she is. Little fourteen-year-olds keep a-coming and a-coming. And I draws her bath, and tucks her up in bed. And she's having a splendid time. And I want some more of this paper. And my feelings won't allow me to say any more. No—my dearest sweetest pug pie, your darling won't be forgotten for a moment. We couldn't get at the lessons before, and last week, like strong drink, was raging.

'Fectionate

Ma.

Maud was now engaged to John Elliott, a young Scottish painter, whose acquaintance they had made in Europe in 1878. The marriage took place on February 7, 1887. Though there were many periods of separation, the Elliotts, when in this country, made their home for the most part with our mother. The affection between her and her son-in-law was deep; his devotion to her constant. Through the years that were to follow, the comradeship of the three was hardly less intimate than that of the two had been.

The Journal carries us swiftly onward. In place of the long meditations on philosophy and metaphysics, we have brief notes of comings and goings, of speaking and preaching, writing and reading. She works hard to finish her paper on "Women in the Three Professions, Law, Medicine, and Theology," for the "Chautauquan." "Very tired afterwards."

She speaks at the Newport Opera House with Mrs. Livermore (who said she did not know Mrs. Howe could speak so well); she takes part in the Authors' Reading for the Longfellow Memorial in the Boston Museum, reciting "Our Orders" and the "Battle Hymn," with her lines to Longfellow recently composed.

"I wore my velvet gown, my mother's lace, Uncle Sam's Saint Esprit, and did my best, as did all the others."

The next day she speaks at a suffrage meeting in Providence, and makes this comment:—

"Woman suffrage represents individual right, integral humanity, ideal justice. I spoke of the attitude and action of Minerva in the 'Eumenides';[102] her resistance to the Furies, who I said personified popular passion fortified by ancient tradition; her firm stand for a just trial, and her casting the decisive ballot. I hoped that this would prefigure a great life-drama in which this gracious prophecy would be realized."

In a "good talk with Miss Eddy,"[103] she devises a correspondence and circular to obtain information concerning art clubs throughout the country. "I am to draft the circular."

She makes an address at the Unitarian Club in Providence.

"The keynote to this was given me yesterday, by the sight of the people who thronged the popular churches, attracted, in a great measure no doubt, by the Easter decoration and music. I thought: 'What a pity that everybody cannot hear Phillips Brooks.' I also thought: 'They can all hear the lesson of heavenly truth in the great Church of All Souls and of All Saints; there is room enough and to spare.'"

She writes a poem for the Blind Kindergarten at Jamaica Plain.

"I worked at my poem until the last moment and even changed it from the manuscript as I recited it. The occasion was most interesting. Sam Eliot presided, and made a fine opening address, in which he spoke beautifully of dear Julia and her service to the blind; also of her father. I was joined by Drs. Peabody and Bartol, Brooke Herford and Phillips Brooks. They all spoke delightfully and were delightful to be with. I recited my poem as well as I could. I think it was well liked, and I was glad of the work I bestowed on it."