Louise Chandler Moulton, Poet and Friend

"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."

In a characteristic letter from Rome, Richard Greenough, the sculptor, says:

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.

"No comforter is so endowed with wisdomThat while he soothes another's heavy grief,If altered fortune turns on him her blow,He will not bend beneath the sudden shockAnd spurn the consolation he had given.

"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."

On the appearance of "Robert Elsmere" Mrs. Moulton read it with the greater interest in that, as has already been noted, her own mind constantly reverted to religious problems. Writing to Mrs. Humphry Ward to congratulate her on the achievement, she received the following reply:

Mrs. Ward to Mrs. MoultonLondon, 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.

The publication in 1889 of the collection of poems entitled "In the Garden of Dreams" added greatly to Mrs. Moulton's standing as a poet. On the title-page were the lines of Tennyson:

Not wholly in the busy world, nor quiteBeyond it, blooms the garden that I love.

The book contained a group of lyrics "To French Tunes," which showed that Mrs. Moulton had responded to the fashion for the old French forms of rondel, rondeau, triolet, and so on which in the eighties prevailed among London singers. They showed her facility in manipulating words in metre and were all graceful and delicate; but she was a poet of emotion too genuine and feeling too strong to be at her best in these artificial and constrained measures. She wrote a few in later years, which were included in the volume called "At the Wind's Will," but although they were praised she never cared for them greatly or regarded them as counting for much in her serious work. The book as a whole showed how the natural lyric singer had developed into the fine and subtle artist. The noblest portion of the collection, as in her whole poetic work, was perhaps in the sonnets; but throughout the volume the music of the lines was fuller and freer, the thought deeper, the emotion more compelling than in her earlier work. With this volume Mrs. Moulton took her place at the head of living American poets, or, as an English critic phrased it, "among the true poets of the day."

The voice of the press was one of unanimous praise on both sides of the Atlantic. The privately expressed criticisms of the members of the guild of letters were no less in accord. Mrs. Spofford said of "Waiting Night":

"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. Moulton296 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. MoultonCambridge, 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...."

Such extracts might be extended almost indefinitely, for with Mrs. Moulton's very large circle of friends the number of letters which naturally came to her after the appearance of a new volume was inevitably large, and "In the Garden of Dreams" was so notable an achievement as to make this especially true. The closing decade found her rich in fame and in friends with an acknowledged and indeed undisputed place in the literary world, not only on this side of the water but the other, and the consciousness that it had been won not alone by her great natural gifts and marked personal charm, but by sincere and conscientious devotion, untiring and unselfish, to her art.

A pleasant closing note was a Christmas card adorned with violets, on the back of which William Sharp had written the graceful lines:

TO L.C.MFrom over-seaViolets (for memories)I send to thee.Let them bear thought of me,With pleasant memoriesTo touch the heart of thee,From over-sea.A little way it is for love to flee.Love winged with memories,Hither to thither over-sea.

CHAPTER VI

1890-1895

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.

Onward the chariot of the Untarrying moves;Nor day divulges him nor night conceals.William Watson.They are winged, like the viewless wind,These days that come and go.—L.C.M.

MRS. MOULTON’S morning-room was on the second floor, its windows looking into the green trees of Rutland Square. In one corner was her desk, in the centre a table always piled with new books, many of which were autographed copies from their authors, and around the walls were low bookcases filled with her favorite volumes. Above these hung pictures, and on their tops were photographs and mementos. The mantel was attractive with pretty bric-a-brac, largely gifts. Between the two front windows was her special table filled with the immediate letters of the day, and by it her own chair in which, on mornings, she was quite sure to be found by the little group of friends privileged to familiar intimacy.

No allusion to these delightful talks with Mrs. Moulton in her morning-room could be complete without mention of her faithful and confidential maid, Katy, whom all the frequenters of the house regarded with cordial friendliness as an important figure in the household life. It was Katy who knew to a shade the exact degree of greeting for the unending procession of callers, from the friends dearest and nearest, to the wandering minstrels who should have been denied, though they seldom were. It was Katy who surrounded the gracious mistress of the establishment with as much protection as was possible; but as Mrs. Moulton's sympathies were unbounded, while her time and strength had their definite limits, it will be seen that Katy's task was often difficult.

The informal lingerings in Mrs. Moulton's morning-room were so a part of the "dear days" that "have gone back to Paradise" that without some picture of them no record of her Boston life could be complete. The first mail was an event, and to it Mrs. Moulton gave her immediate attention after glancing through the morning paper with her coffee and roll. Her correspondence increased with every season, and while it was a valued part of her social life, it yet became a very serious tax on her time and energy. There were letters from friends and from strangers; letters from the great and distinguished, and from the obscure; and each and all received from her the same impartial consideration. Every conceivable human problem, it would seem, would be laid before her. Her name was sought for all those things for which the patroness is invented; there were not wanting those who desired her advice, her encouragement, her practical aid in finding, perhaps, a publisher for their hitherto rejected MSS. with an income insured; and they wanted her photograph, her autograph, her biography in general; a written "sentiment" which they might, indeed, incorporate into their own concoctions by way of adornment; or they frankly wanted her autograph with the provision that it should be appended to a check, presumably of imposing dimensions,—all these, and a thousand other requests were represented in her letters, quite aside from the legitimate correspondence of business and friendship. With all these she dealt with a generous consideration whose only defect was perhaps a too ready sympathy. Her familiar friends might sometimes try to restrain her response. "It is an imposition!" one might unfeelingly exclaim. "God made them," she would reply. And to the insinuation that the Divine Power had perhaps little to do in the creation of professional bores and beggars, she would smile indulgently, but she usually insisted that it "wasn't right" to turn away from any appeal, although, of course, all appeals were not to be granted literally. In vain did one beseech her to remember Sir Hugo's advice to Daniel Deronda: "Be courteous, be obliging, Dan, but don't give yourself to be melted down for the tallow trade." She always insisted that even to be unwisely imposed upon was better than to refuse one in real need; and her charities—done with such delicacy of tender helpfulness that for them charity is too cold a name—were most generous. Her countless liberal benefactions, moreover, were of the order less easy than the mere signing of checks, for into them went her personal sympathy. She helped people to help themselves in the most thoughtful and lovely ways.

Now it was a typewriter given with such graceful sweetness to a literary worker whose sight was failing; now checks that saved the day for one or another; again the numerous subscriptions to worthy objects; or the countless gifts and helps to friends. A woman lecturer had been ill and unfortunate, but had several modest engagements waiting in a neighboring city if only she had ten dollars to get there. Mrs. Moulton sent her fifty that she might have a margin for comforts that she needed. To a friend in want of aid to bridge over a short time was sent a check, totally unsolicited and undreamed of, and accepted as a loan; but when the recipient had, soon afterward, a birthday, a delicate note from Mrs. Moulton made the supposed loan a birthday gift. Never did any one make such a fine art of giving as did she. Pages could be filled with these instances—the complete list, indeed, is known to the Recording Angel only.

All the world of letters was talked over in those morning hours in her room. Sometimes her friends "gently wrangled," and bantered her with laughter and love. At one time she had made in a lyric a familiar allusion to larks and nightingales, and Louise Guiney, who, because she bore Mrs. Moulton's name, usually addressed her as "Godmam," took her to task for some ornithological inadvertence in the terrestrial location of her nightingale. Colonel Higginson, in a review of her poems, had quoted the stanza:

Shall I lie down to sleep, and see no moreThe splendid affluence of earth and sky?The morning lark to the far heavens soar,The nightingale with the soft dusk draw nigh?

and had ungallantly commented:

"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?"

Another writer had come to the defence of the poet in this fashion:

"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."

Miss Guiney, laughing over these comments, turned to Mrs. Moulton.

"Godmam," she asked, "did you ever see a nightingale?"

"Why, yes, Louise; plenty of them."

"Where?"

"Why, anywhere. Out here, I suppose," replied the elder poet, dreamily glancing from the windows of her morning-room into the tree-tops of Rutland Square. "In London, too, I believe," she added, rather vaguely.

"Singing in Trafalgar Square, godmam," rejoined the younger poet mischievously.

The informal loiterers in the morning-room were never weary of asking Mrs. Moulton's impressions of London writers.

"You knew Thomas Hardy well?" someone would ask.

"I knew him. I even venture to think of him as a friend—at least as a very friendly acquaintance. I cared deeply for many of his books before I had the pleasure of meeting him; and I quite adored 'The Return of the Native.'"

"And you liked the author as well as the books?"

"I think no one could know Thomas Hardy and not like him. He is sympathetic, genial, unaffected, altogether delightful; somewhat pessimistic, to be sure, and with a vein of sadness—a minor chord in his psalm of life: but all the same with a keen sense of fun. I remember I was telling him once about an American admirer of his. It was at a party at Hardy's own house, and a few people were listening to our talk. The American of whose praise I spoke was Charles T. Copeland, of Harvard, who had just reviewed 'Tess,' in the Atlantic Monthly. Mr. Hardy listened kindly, and then he said, 'What you say is a consolation, just now.' I knew some good fun lurked behind the quaint humor of his smile. 'Why just now?' I asked. 'Oh, I dined, two nights ago, at the house of a Member of Parliament. It was by way of being a political dinner; but, as "Tess" was just out, one and another spoke of it—kindly enough. Finally one lady, two or three seats away from me, leaned forward. Her clear voice commanded every one's attention. "Well, Mr. Hardy," she said, "these people are complaining that you had Tess hanged in the last chapter of your book. That is not what I complain of. I complain because you did not have all your characters hanged, for they all deserved it!" Don't you think, Mrs. Moulton, that after that I need consolation from somewhere?'"

Many of her reminiscences which entered into the talk have been told in her newspaper letters, and need not be repeated here, but they took on a fresh vitality from the living voice and the gracious, unaffected manner.

By some untraced or unanalyzed impulse Mrs. Moulton was apt to be moved on each New Year's day to write a poem. Usually this was a sonnet, but now and then a lyric instead; and for many years the first entry in the fresh volume of her diary records the fact. On the first of January, 1890, she writes:

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

"The Last Good-bye" was the title upon which she afterward fixed.

On the fifth day of January of this year died Dr. Westland Marston. Mrs. Moulton wrote in her Herald letters a review of his life and work, in the course of which she said with touching earnestness:

"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."

Her intimacy had been close with all the family, and while Edmund Gosse was right when he wrote to her that she seemed to him always to have been "Philip's true guardian-ray, or better genius," her friendship for Cecily Marston, for Mrs. O'Shaughnessy, and with Dr. Marston himself was hardly less close. The tragic ending of the family could not but cast a bleak shade over the opening year.

Her relations with English writers and the good offices by which she helped to make their work better known on this side of the Atlantic might be illustrated by numerous letters.

Richard Garnett to Mrs. MoultonBritish 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.

Both Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Meredith had, each unknown to the other, suggested to Mrs. Moulton that she write a novel in verse. "Lucile" and "Aurora Leigh" had each in its time and way made a wide popular success, and they felt that Mrs. Moulton might succeed equally. To this suggestion Mr. Meredith alludes in a letter in which he thanks Mrs. Moulton for a copy of "In the Garden of Dreams."

George Meredith to Mrs. MoultonMarch 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...."

In the years directly following its publication, "In the Garden of Dreams" went rapidly through several editions. One sonnet which elicited much praise was that called

HELP THOU MINE UNBELIEFBecause I seek Thee not, oh seek Thou me!Because my lips are dumb, oh hear the cryI do not utter as Thou passest byAnd from my life-long bondage set me free!Because, content, I perish far from Thee,Oh, seize me, snatch me from my fate, and tryMy soul in Thy consuming fire! Draw nighAnd let me, blinded, Thy salvation see.If I were pouring at Thy feet my tears,If I were clamoring to see Thy face,I should not need Thee, Lord, as now I need,Whose dumb, dead soul knows neither hopes nor fears,Nor dreads the outer darkness of this place—Because I seek not, pray not, give Thou heed!

The deeply religious feeling, the profound sincerity, and what might perhaps not inaptly be called the completely modern mood of this, a mood which in its essence is permanent but which in its outward form varies with each generation, gave it a power of wide appeal. A church paper in England said of it:

"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."

The critic need hardly have limited himself to the poetry of women. Mrs. Moulton was all her life vitally interested in the religious side of life, and many more of her letters might have been quoted to show how constantly her mind returned to the question of immortality and human responsibility. The sonnet had become for her a natural mode of utterance, as it was for Mrs. Browning when she wrote the magnificent sequence which recorded her love; and in this especial poem is the essence of Mrs. Moulton's spiritual life.