Louise Chandler Moulton, Poet and Friend

Yours sincerely,J. McN. W.

When in her Boston home Mrs. Moulton was seldom, in later years, allured far afield. She thought little of a journey to Europe, but avoided even an hour's journey "out of town." She had in London, however, come to be fond of the lady who became Mrs. Truman J. Martin, of Buffalo, N.Y., and to her had written the lyric, "A Song for Rosalys"; and she made an exception to her usual custom to visit her friend in her American home. A Buffalo journal remarks on the occurrence with the true floridness of society journalism:

"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."

The reporter goes on to describe a reception given to Mrs. Moulton by her hostess at which a local club known as the Scribblers was represented:

"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."

The hostess might be English, but the description of the entertainment could hardly be more American.

Mrs. Moulton mentioned that during this visit she met Mrs. Charles Rohlfs (Anna Katherine Green), and had an opportunity of saying that she had enjoyed that writer's novels. Like Mrs. Browning, who declared that she "slept with her pillows stuffed with novels," Mrs. Moulton was a confirmed reader of fiction. She read them at seventy with the zest of seventeen, and took "cruel endings" quite to heart.

Among the letters of the winter is an amusing note from Secretary John Hay, accompanying a copy of the "Battle of the Books," and saying: "Don't ask how I obtained it! I am proud to say in a strictly dishonest manner!" An invitation from Miss Anne Whitney, too, asking her to dine, and assuring her that she "will meet some friends without strikingly bad traits"; and many epistles from which pleasant bits might be taken. An interesting letter from Alice Brown refers to the subject of death, and in allusion to her friend, Louise Imogen Guiney, Miss Brown says: "So if you go before Louise and me, it will only be to begin another spring somewhere else,—gay as the daffodils. I hope you'll keep your habit of singing there, and we shall all love to love and love to serve." A letter of Bliss Carman's thus refers to Miss Guiney:

Bliss Carman to Mrs. Moulton

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

"And children without laughter leadThe war-horse to the watering.

"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?"

On New Year's Day, 1903, the diary records: "First of all I wrote a sonnet—'Why Do I never See You in My Dreams?'"

The summer was passed in London as usual, but with, if possible, more festivities than ever. The diary records:

"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."

As the years went on, bringing her to the verge of seventy, Mrs. Moulton's literary activity naturally grew greatly less. The record of her life for the following years was largely a record of friendships, with the enjoyments and honors which belonged to her place among American writers. She was asked often to write her reminiscences of the many distinguished people she had known, but always declined. "I have, alas! kept no records," she wrote to one editor. She was naturally asked to be present at any literary function of importance. She was a guest at the dinner given by the New England Women's Club in 1905, in honor of Mrs. Howe's eighty-fifth birthday, and notes that it was "a brilliant meeting," and adding: "Mrs. Howe had written a gay little poem in response, wonderful woman that she is." The dinner given in honor of Mark Twain's seventieth birthday was the last great occasion of the kind which she attended. In the following year she returned from Europe just too late to join in the dinner given by the Harpers on the seventieth birthday of Dr. Alden. Not only for her literary standing and as an old friend of Dr. Alden would it have been appropriate for her to be present on this occasion; but she might also have appeared as his first contributor, as some thirty years earlier, Dr. Alden's first official act upon assuming the chair as editor of Harper's Magazine had been to accept a contribution from Mrs. Moulton.

In the letters of this period are to be found the truest records of what most interested Mrs. Moulton and best expressed her personality. Unfortunately she often asked that her letters should be destroyed, so that no selection which may now be brought together does her complete justice. The letters she received, however, reflect in many ways those to which they replied; and extracts from them may be left to speak for themselves.

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:

"In the divine ship, the World hasting Time and Space,All People of the globe together sail, sail the same voyage,are bound for the same destination...."Miss Robbins to Mrs. Moulton96 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. MoultonApril 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.

Mrs. Moulton's visit to London in the summer of 1906 was her last. While her health forced her to decline most invitations, she still saw her numerous friends in quiet, intimate ways, and was made to feel their abiding affection.

On her birthday of this year she received, with a single red rose, this poem from the late Arthur Upson:

Does a rose at the bud-time falterTo think of the Junes gone by?Shall our love of the red rose alterBecause it so soon must die?Nay, for the beauty lingersThough the symbols pass away—The rose that fades in my fingers,The June that will not stay.I used to mourn their fleetness,But years have taught me this:A memory wakes their sweetness,The hope of them, their bliss.They are not themselves the treasure,But they signal and they suggestImperishable pleasure,Inviolable rest!

Among the Christmas gifts which she made this year was a copy of "At the Wind's Will," which she sent to Miss Sarah Holland Adams, the accomplished essayist and translator from the German. It was thus acknowledged:

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,—

"For with us shall the music and perfume that die not dwell,Tho' the dead to our dead bid welcome—and we, farewell."

"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."

And so, as always before, on all the New Years of all her lovely life, the old year went out and the New Year came in to the music of gracious words. Her life, marking the calendar with kindly deeds and beautiful thought, leaves as its legacy

… the assurance strongThat love, which fails of perfect utterance here,Lives on to fill the heavenly atmosphereWith its immortal song.

CHAPTER IX

1907-1908

… May she meetWith long-lost faces through the endless days;Find youth again, and life with love replete,In amethystine meadows where she strays;And hear celestial music, strangely sweet,By the still waters of the lilied ways.—Longfellow.… A Hand like this handShall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See Christ stand!—Browning.Break, ties that bind me to this world of sense,Break, now, and loose me on the upper air;Those skies are blue; and that far dome more fairWith prophecy of some divine, intense,Undreamed-of rapture. Ah, from thenceI catch a music that my soul would snareWith its strange sweetness; and I seem aware.Of Life that waits to crown this life's suspense.—L.C.M.

IN any thought of Mrs. Moulton's life, through which gleamed always the double thread of friendship and song, certain words of the Rev. Dr. Ames associate themselves,—that all our time here is God's time, "which we measure off by days and years, that we are, even now, continually with Him in the great Forever, embosomed in the infinite power and purity." In Mrs. Moulton's own words, it is only

From life to Life

that we pass.

In retrospective glance, how beautiful are these closing months of her sojourn on earth! They were filled to the last with love and friendship, and sweet thought, Mrs. Moulton's health was constantly failing from this winter of 1907 until she passed through the "Gleaming Gates" in August of 1908, but so gently imperceptible was the decline that even through this winter she half planned to go to London again in the spring. In a little meditation on the nature of life which T.P. O'Connor induced her to write for his journal about this time, under the caption of "My Faith and My Works," she said:

"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."

"My best reward has been the friendships that my slight work has won for me," she had said; and the assurance of these did not fail her to the end.

In the article just quoted she said of her work:

"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?"

The death of her old friend, Mr. Aldrich, greatly moved her, and in her diary for March 20, 1907, she records:

"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."

Two days later she writes:

"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."

This must have been the last meeting between Mrs. Moulton and Mr. Stedman after their almost life-long friendship.

To Mrs. Aldrich she wrote:

Mrs. Moulton to Mrs. Aldrich28 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.

The last sonnet which Mrs. Moulton wrote was for the birthday of Mrs. Howe.

TO JULIA WARD HOWEOn her Eighty-seventh Birthday, May 27, 1907Youth is thy gift—the youth that baffles Time,And smiles derisively at vanished years.Since the long past the present more endears,And life but ripens in its golden prime,Who knows to what proud heights thou still may'st climb—What summoning call thy listening spirit hears—What triumphs wait, ere conquering death appears—What magic beauty thou may'st lend to rhyme?Sovereign of Love and May, we kiss the handSuch noble work has wrought, and add our baysTo those with which the world has crowned thy brow:Thy subjects we, in this the happy land,Thy presence gladdens, and thy gracious waysEnchant—Queen of the Long-Ago and Now.

During the summer Mrs. Moulton was for the most part in her morning-room, surrounded by her favorite books, her papers, her letters, attended by the faithful Katy, and remembered constantly with flowers and tokens from friends. She cherished until quite midsummer the hope of joining the Schaefers, who were in Europe; but in reply to their urgent wish to return and be with her, she begged that they would not cut short their trip, as it would distress her to feel that they were in Boston during the hot weather. To a friend who remained in town and who saw her every day, she said: "It would make me really ill to have Florence and Will come into this hot town. I should only feel how uncomfortable they must be, dear as they are to wish to come for my sake. With letters and the cable, we are in touch all the time."

It was, on the whole, a pleasant season, although she was often uncomfortable if not actually in pain. Friends urged her to come into the country, but to this she did not feel equal. Mrs. Spofford had met with an accident, but before the summer was over was able to resume her visits; and more than anything else her companionship brightened the days.

The autumn brought back the accustomed circle, and in October came the following letter from Dr. Ames:

Dr. Ames to Mrs. Moulton12 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.

Not all the sins that we have wroughtSo much His tender mercies grieveAs that unkind, injurious thoughtThat He's not willing to forgive.

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....