Chapter IV: Part 4

Colonel Higginson is an author who finds his intellectual inspiration in contact with Nature and man, as well as in books. His essays on out-door life, and on physical culture, show the activity of his nature and his zeal for all kinds of knowledge. He easily interests himself in all subjects; he can turn his mind readily from one pursuit to another, and he enjoys all with an equal relish. He has a love of mathematics such as few men possess; and, when in college, Professor Peirce anticipated that would be the direction of his studies. During the time of the anti-slavery riots he one day met the Professor in the street, and remarked to him that he should enjoy an imprisonment of several months for the sake of the leisure it would give him to read La Place’s “Mécanique Céleste.” “I heartily wish you might have that opportunity,” was the Professor’s reply; for he disliked the anti-slavery agitation as much as he loved his own special line of studies. Colonel Higginson has also been an enthusiastic lover of natural history, and he could easily have given his life to that pursuit. Perhaps not less ardent has been his interest in the moral and political sciences, to the practical interpretation of which his life has always been more or less devoted. Not only has he been the champion of the reforms already mentioned, but he has been the zealous friend of education. For three years a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, he has also been on the visiting committees of Harvard University and the Bridgewater Normal School for several years. He was in the Massachusetts Legislature during 1880 and 1881. He has been an active member of the Social Science Association; and he is now the President of the Round Table Club of Boston, which grew out of that organization.

This versatility of talent and activity has had its important influence on Colonel Higginson’s life as an author. It has given vitality, freshness, and a high aim to his work; but it has, perhaps, scattered its force. All who have read his principal works, as now published in a uniform edition by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., will have noted that they embody many phases of his activity. There are the purely literary essays, the two volumes of Newport stories and sketches, the out-door essays, the volume of army reminiscences, and the volume of short essays (from the _Independent_, _Tribune_, and _Woman’s Journal_) devoted to the culture and advancement of woman. The admiring readers of the best of these volumes can but regret that in recent years his attention has been so exclusively drawn to historical writing. Though his later work has been done in the finest manner, it does not give a free opportunity for the expression of Colonel Higginson’s charming style and manner. The day when he returns to purely original work, in the line of his own finished and graceful interpretations of nature and life, will be hailed with joy by the lovers of his books.

Any account of the personal characteristics of Colonel Higginson would be imperfect which omitted to mention his success as a public speaker and as an after-dinner orator. He was trained for public speaking on the anti-slavery platform, a better school than any now provided for the development of youthful talent. When preaching in Worcester he began to deliver literary lectures before the flourishing lyceums of that day. As a lecturer he was successful; and he continued for many years to be a favorite of the lyceum-goers, until the degeneracy of the popular lecture caused him to withdraw from that field of literary effort. The lecture on “The Aristocracy of the Dollar,” which he now occasionally gives to special audiences, has been in use for more than twenty years, and it has been transformed many times. Another well-worn lecture is that on “Literature in a Republic,” which he repeats less often. Among his other subjects have been “Thinking Animals” (instinct and reason), and “How to Study History.” The paper in the “_Atlantic_ Essays” on “The Puritan Minister” long did duty as a lyceum lecture; and those who have read it can but think it well fitted to the purpose.

On the platform Colonel Higginson is self-controlled in manner, and strong in his reserved power. He does not captivate his hearer by the rush and swing and over-mastering weight of his oratory, but by the freshness, grace and finish of his thought. He often appears on the platform in Cambridge and Boston in behalf of the causes for which those cities are noted, and no one is more popular or listened to with greater satisfaction. Perhaps he only needs the passion and the stormy vigor of a cause which completely commands and carries captive his nature to make one of the most successful of popular orators. During the political campaign of 1884 his addresses were marked by their force and fire; and he was called for wherever there was a demand for an enthusiastic and vigorous presentation of the Independent position. As an after-dinner speaker, however, Colonel Higginson’s gifts shine out most clearly and reveal the charm of his style to the best advantage.

It is the public rather than the private side of Colonel Higginson’s character which has been thus revealed; but it is the side which is most important to the understanding and appreciation of his books. It is the quiet and busy life of the scholar and man-of-letters he leads in Cambridge, but of a man-of-letters who is intensely interested in all that pertains to his country’s welfare and all that makes for the elevation of humanity. He is ready at any moment to leave his books and his pen to engage in affairs, and in settling questions of public importance, when the cause of right and truth demands. Quickly and keenly sympathetic with the life of his time, he will never permit the writing of books to absorb his heart to the exclusion of whatever human interests his country calls him to consider.

Born and bred in Cambridge, Colonel Higginson lived in Newburyport, Worcester, and Newport from 1847 to 1878. In the latter year he returned to Cambridge, and took up his residence in a house near the University. Soon after, he built a house on Observatory Hill, between Cambridge Square and Mount Auburn Cemetery, on ground over which he played as a boy. It is a plain-looking structure, combining the Queen Anne and the old colonial style, but very cosey and homelike within. The hall is modeled after that of an old family mansion in Portsmouth; and many other features of the house are copied from old New England dwellings. A sword presented to Colonel Higginson by the freemen of Beaufort, S. C., the colors borne by his regiment, and other relics of the Civil War, decorate the hall. To the left on entering is the study, along one side of which are well-filled book-shelves, on another a piano, while a bright fire burns in the open grate. Beyond is a smaller room, lined on all sides with books, in which Colonel Higginson does his writing. His book-shelves hold many rare books; a considerable collection by and about women, which he prizes highly and often uses, he presented to the Boston Public Library, where it is known as the Galatea Collection. His study has no special ornaments; its furniture is simple, and the book-cases are of the plainest sort. The most attractive article of furniture the room contains is his own easy-chair, which came to him from the Wentworth family, where it had been an heirloom for generations. Back of the parlor is the dining-room, which is sunny and cheerful, adorned with flowers, and adapted to family life and conversation. The pictures that cover the walls all through the house have been selected with discriminating appreciation. Many indications of an artistic taste appear throughout the house; and everywhere there are signs of the domestic comfort the Colonel enjoys so much. His present wife is a niece of Longfellow’s first wife. Her literary tastes have found expression in her “Seashore and Prairie,” a volume of pleasant sketches, in the publication of which Longfellow took a hearty interest; and in her “Room for One More,” a delightful children’s book. Domestic in his tastes, his home is to Colonel Higginson the centre of the world. Its “bright, particular star” is his daughter of twenty, his only child, to whom he is devotedly attached. His happiest hours are spent in her company, and in watching the growth of her mind.

Everything about Colonel Higginson’s house indicates a refined and cultivated taste, but nothing of the dilettante spirit is to be seen. He loves what is artistic, but he prefers not to sacrifice to it the home feeling and the home comforts. He writes all the better for his quiet and home-keeping environment, and for the wide circle of his social and personal relations with the best men and women of his time. His literary work is done in the morning, and he seldom takes up the pen after the task of the forenoon is accomplished. Most of his work is done slowly and deliberately, with careful elaboration and thorough revision. In this manner he wrote his review of Dr. Holmes’s “Emerson” in _The Nation_; and his essays in the same periodical following the deaths of Longfellow, Emerson, and Phillips. He thoroughly enjoyed the writing of the papers published in _Harper’s Monthly_, which were reissued in book form as his “Larger History of the United States,” and he entered on the task of hunting out the illustrations and the illustrative details with an antiquarian’s zeal and a poet’s love of the romantic. His address on a Revolutionary vagabond shows the fascination which the old-time has for him in all its features of quaintness, romance and picturesqueness.

Colonel Higginson finds the morning hour the most conducive to freshness and vigor of thought, and the most promotive of health of body and mind. After dinner he devotes himself to his family, to social recreation, to communings with and studies of Nature, and to business. He is quite at home in Cambridge society; and, being to the manner born, he enters into its intellectual and social recreations with relish and satisfaction. He is a ready and interesting converser, bright, witty, full of anecdote, and quick with illustrations and quotations of the most pertinent kind. His wide reading, large experience of life, and extensive acquaintance with men and women give him rich materials for conversation, which he knows how to use gracefully and with good effect. He readily wins the confidence of those he meets. Women find him a welcome companion, whose kindliness and chivalric courtesy win their heartiest admiration. They turn to him with confidence, as to the champion of their sex, and he naturally numbers many bright and noble women among his friends.

He is a dignified, ready and agreeable presiding officer. As a leader of club life he is eminently successful, whether it be the Round Table, the Browning, or the Appalachian Mountain Club. He enjoys a certain amount of this kind of intellectual recreation; and fortunate is the club which secures his kindly and gracious guidance. Very early a reader of Browning, he is thoroughly familiar with the works of that poet, and rejoices in whatever extends a knowledge of his writings. Especially has he been the soul of the Round-Table Club, which meets fortnightly in Boston parlors--an association full of good-fellowship, the spirit of thoughtful inquiry, and earnest sympathy with the best intellectual life of the time.

As Colonel Higginson walks along the street, much of the soldier’s bearing appears; for he is tall and erect, and keeps the soldier’s true dignity of movement. His chivalric spirit pervades much that he has written, but it is tempered and refined by the artistic instinct for grace and beauty. He has the manly and heroic temper, but none of the soldier’s rudeness or love of violence. So he appears in his books as of knightly metal, but as a knight who also loves the rôle of the troubadour. A master of style, he does not write for the sake of decoration and ornament. He is emphatically a scholar and a lover of books, but not in the scholastic sense. A lover of ideas, an idealist by nature and conviction, he sees in the things of the human spirit what is more than all the scholar’s lore and knowledge wrung from the physical world. He is a scholar who learns of men and events more than of books; and yet what wealth of classic and literary allusion is his throughout all his books and addresses! Whether in the study or in the camp, on the platform or in the State House, his tastes are literary and scholarly; but his sympathies are with all that is natural, manly and progressive.

Seven months of last year Colonel Higginson spent in Europe, and he has just finished a life of Longfellow in the “American Men of Letters” series.

GEORGE WILLIS COOKE.

DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

IN BEACON STREET

“It is strange,” remarks Lady Wilde, “how often a great genius has given a soul to a locality.” We may prefer our own illustration to hers, and remember in simpler fashion what Judd’s “Margaret” did for a little village in Maine, or what Howe did for a little Western town, instead of insisting that Walter Scott created Scotland or Byron the Rhine. But the remark suggests, perhaps, quite as forcibly, what locality has done for genius. The majority of writers who have tried to deal with people, whether as novelists, poets, or essayists, localize their human beings until “local color” becomes one of the most essential factors of their success. Sometimes, like Judd and Howe, they make the most of a very narrow environment; sometimes, like Cable, they make their environment include a whole race, till the work becomes historical as well as photographic; sometimes, like Mrs. Jackson, they travel for a new environment; sometimes, like Howells and James, they travel from environment to environment, and write now of Venice, now of London, now of Boston, with skill equal to the ever-varying opportunity; sometimes, like George Eliot writing “Romola,” or Harriet Prescott Spofford writing “In a Cellar,” they stay at home and give wonderful pictures of a life and time they have never known--compelled, at least, however, to seek the environment of a library. Even Shakspeare, who was certainly not a slave to his surroundings, sought local color from books to an extent that we realize on seeing Irving’s elaborate efforts to reproduce it. Even Hawthorne, escaping from the material world whenever he could into the realm of spirit and imagination, made profound studies of Salem or Italy the basis from which he flew to the empyrean. To understand perfectly how fine such work as this is, one must have, one’s self, either from experience or study, some knowledge of the localities so admirably reproduced.

The genius of Oliver Wendell Holmes was almost unique in the fact that, dealing almost exclusively with human beings--not merely human nature exhibited in maxims--rarely wandering into discussions of books or art or landscape--it was almost entirely independent of any environment whatever. He was anchored to one locality almost as securely as Judd was to New England or Howe to the West; for a chronological record of the events of his life makes no mention of any journeys, except the two years and a half as medical student in Europe, when he was twenty-four years old, and “One Hundred Days in Europe” in 1887. He spent every winter in Boston, every summer at Beverly Farms, which, like Nahant, may almost be called “cold roast Boston”; yet during the fifty years he wrote from Boston, he neither sought his material from his special environment nor tried to escape from it. It is human nature, not Boston nature, that he has drawn for us. Once, in “Elsie Venner,” there is an escape like Hawthorne’s into the realm of the psychological and weird; several times in the novels there are photographic bits of a New England “party,” or of New England character; but the great mass of the work which has appealed to so wide a class of readers with such permanent power appeals to them because, dealing with men and women, it deals with no particular men and women. Indeed, it is hardly even men, women, and children that troop through his pages; but rather man, woman, and child. His human beings are no more Bostonians than the ducks of his “Aviary” are Charles River ducks. They are ducks. He happened to see them on the Charles River; nay, within the still narrower limits of his own window-pane; still, they are ducks, and not merely Boston ducks. The universality of his genius is wonderful, not because he exhibits it in writing now a clever novel about Rome, now a powerful sketch of Montana, and anon a remarkable book about Japan; but it is wonderful because it discovers within the limits of Boston only what is universal. To understand perfectly how fine such work as this is, you need never have been anywhere, yourself, or have read any other book; any more than you would have to be one of the “Boys of ’29” to appreciate the charming class-poems that have been delighting the world, as well as the “Boys,” for fifty years. In “Little Boston” he has, it is true, impaled some of the characteristics which are generally known as Bostonian; but his very success in doing this is of a kind to imply that he had studied his Bostonian only in Paris or St. Louis; for the peculiar traits described are those no Bostonian is supposed to be able to see for himself, still less to acknowledge. If Dr. Holmes were to have spent a winter in New York, he would have carried back with him, not material for a “keen satire on New York society,” but only more material of what is human. Nay, he probably would not have carried back with him anything at all which he had not already found in Boston, since he seems to have found everything there.

So there is no need of knowing how or where Dr. Holmes lived, or what books he read, to understand and enjoy his work. But all the same, one likes to know where he lived, from a warm, affectionate, personal interest in the man; just as we like to know of our dearest friends, not only that they dwell in a certain town, but that their parlor is furnished in red, and that the piano stands opposite the sofa. Of his earliest home, at Cambridge, he has himself told us in words which we certainly will not try to improve upon. Later came the home of his early married life in Montgomery Place, of which he has said: “When he entered that door, two shadows glided over the threshold; five lingered in the doorway when he passed through it for the last time, and one of the shadows was claimed by its owner to be longer than his own.” A few brief, half-mystical allusions such as this are all that we gain from his writings about his personal surroundings, as a few simple allusions to certain streets and buildings are all that localize the “Autocrat” as a Bostonian. For the man who has almost exceptionally looked into his own heart to write has found in his heart, as he has in his city, never what was personal or special, always what was human and universal.

But it will be no betrayal of trust for us to follow out the dim outline a little, and tell how the five shadows flitted together from Montgomery Place to Charles Street. Then, after another dozen years, still another change seemed desirable. Dr. Holmes felt as few men do the charm of association, and the sacredness of what is endeared by age; but the very roundness of his nature which made him appreciate not only what is human, but everything that is human, made him keenly alive to the charm of what is new if it is beautiful. A rounded nature finds it hard to be consistent. He wrote once: “It is a great happiness to have been born in an old house haunted by recollections,” and he asserted more than once the dignity of having, not only ancestors, but ancestral homes; yet if we were to have reminded him of this in his beautiful new house with all the latest luxuries and improvements, we can imagine the kindly smile with which he would have gazed round the great, beautiful room, with its solid woods and plate-glass windows, and said gently: “I know I ought to like the other, and I do, but how can I help liking this, too?” Yes, the charming new architecture and the lovely new houses were too much for them; they would flit again--though with a sigh. Not out of New England--no, indeed! not away from Boston--certainly not. Hardly, indeed, out of Charles Street; for although a “very plain brown-stone front would do,” provided its back windows looked upon the river, the river they must have.

Dr. Holmes wanted, not big front windows from which to study the Bostonians, but a big bay-window at the back, from which he could see the ducks and gulls and think how like to human nature are all their little lives and loves and sorrows. So little is there in his work of what is personal, that it is possible there are people--in England--who really think the “Autocrat” dwelt in the boarding-house of his books. But those who believe with him that, as a rule, genius means ancestors, are not surprised to know that Dr. Holmes himself had many more than the average allowance of ancestors, and that, as a descendant of Dudley, Bradstreet, the Olivers, Quincys, and Jacksons, his “hut of stone” fronted on one of Boston’s most aristocratic streets, though the dear river behind it flows almost close to its little garden gate. Under his windows all the morning trooped the loveliest children of the city in the daintiest apparel, wheeled in the costliest of perambulators by the whitest-capped of French nurses. Past his door every afternoon the “swellest” turn-outs of the great city passed on their afternoon parade. Near his steps, at the hour for afternoon tea, the handsomest _coupés_ came to anchor and deposited their graceful freight. But this is not the panorama, that the Doctor himself was watching. Whether in the beautiful great dining-room, where he was first to acknowledge the sway at breakfast, luncheon and dinner, of a still gentler Autocrat than himself, or in the library upstairs, which was the heart of the home, he was always on the river side of the house. The pretty little reception-room downstairs on the Beacon Street side, he would tell you himself, with a merry smile, is a good place for your “things”; you yourself must come directly up into the library, and look on the river, broad enough just here to seem a beautiful lake. I know of no other room in the heart of a great city where one so completely forgot the nearness of the world as in this library. Even if the heavy doors stood open into the hall, one forgot the front of the house and thought only of the beautiful expanse of water that seemed to shut off all approach save from the gulls. News from the humming city must come to you, it would seem, only in sound of marriage or funeral bells in the steeples of the many towns, distinct but distant, looming across the water. And this, not because the talk by that cheerful fire was of the “Over-Soul” or the “Infinite,” so unworldly, so introspective, so wholly of things foreign or intellectual. Nothing could be more human than the chat that went on there, or the laugh that rang out so cheerily at such frequent intervals. Even with the shadow of a deep personal grief over the hearthstone, a noble cheerfulness that would not let others feel the shadow kept the room bright though the heart was heavy. Are there pictures? There is certainly one picture; for although a fine Copley hangs on one wall, and one of the beautiful framed embroideries (for which Dr. Holmes’s daughter-in-law is famous) on another, who will not first be conscious that in a certain corner hangs the original portrait of Dorothy Q.? Exactly as it is described in the poem, who can look at it without breathing gratefully

“O Damsel Dorothy, Dorothy Q.,
Great is the gift _we_ owe to you,”

and thinking almost with a shudder that if,

“a hundred years ago,
Those close-shut lips had answered No,”

there would have been no Dr. Holmes. Somebody there might have been; but though he had been only “one-tenth another to nine-tenths” _him_, assuredly the loss of even a tenth would have been a bitter loss.

Books there are in this library, of course; but you were as little conscious of the books as you were of the world. You were only really conscious of the presence in the room, and the big desk on which was lying the pen that wrote both “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table” and “The Professor.” As you took it up, it was pretty to see the look that stole over Dr. Holmes’s face; it was the twinkle of a smile that seemed to mean, “Yes, it was the pen that did it! _I_ never could have done it in the world!” His success gave him a deep and genuine pleasure, largely due to the surprise of it. At forty-six he believed he had done all that could be expected of him, and was content to rest his reputation--as well he might--on those earlier poems, which will always make a part of even his latest fame. But the greater fame which followed was--not greatness thrust upon him, for genius such as his is something more than the patience which is sometimes genius,--but certainly greatness _dragged out of him_. The editors of the proposed _Atlantic_ insisted that he should write for it. The Doctor did not yield, till, as he himself tells it, with another twinkling smile, they invited him to a “convincing dinner at Porter’s.” Feeling very good-natured immediately after, he promised to “try,” and a little later sent off a few sheets which he somewhat dubiously hoped would “do.” The storm of greeting and applause that followed even these first sheets filled him with amazement, but with genuine delight. It was beautiful to see how deeply it touched him to know that thousands of readers think “The Autocrat” the most charming book they own. For this was not the arrogant satisfaction of the “master” who announces: “Listen! I have composed the most wonderful sonata that the world has ever heard!” Still less was it the senseless arrogance of a foolish violin that might say: “Listen! you shall hear from me the most superb music you can imagine!” Rather was it the low-voiced, wondering content of an æolian harp, that lying quietly upon the window-sill, with no thought that it is there for anything but to enjoy itself, suddenly finds wonderful harmonies stealing through its heart and out into the world, and sees a group of gladdened listeners gathering about it. “How wonderful! how wonderful that I have been chosen to give this music to the world! Am I not greatly to be envied?” As the harp thus breathes its gratitude to the breeze that stirs it, so Dr. Holmes looked his gratitude to the pen that “helped” him; with something of the same wonder at personal success that made Thackeray exclaim: “Down on your knees, my boy! That is the house where I wrote ‘Vanity Fair’!” Do we not all love Thackeray and Holmes the better for caring so much about our caring for them?

But it is growing late and dark. Across the river--one almost says across the bay--the lights are twinkling, and we must go. As the cool breeze touches our faces, how strange it seems to see the paved and lighted street, the crowding houses, the throng of carriages, and to realize that the great, throbbing, fashionable world has been so near to us all the afternoon while we have been so far from it!

Now, as we go down the steps, a sudden consciousness strikes us of what very pleasant places Boston literary lines seem to fall into! Is it that literary people are more fortunate in Boston, or that in Boston only the fortunate people are literary? For as we think of brilliant names associated with Beacon Street, Boylston Street, Commonwealth Avenue, Newbury and Marlborough Streets, it certainly seems as if the Bohemia of plain living and high thinking--so prominent a feature of New York literary and artistic life--had hardly a foothold in aristocratic, literary Boston.

Finally, if it seems wonderful that living almost exclusively in one locality, Dr. Holmes should have succeeded as few have succeeded in dealing with the mysteries of universal human nature, still more wonderful is it, perhaps, that dealing very largely with the foibles and follies of human nature, nothing that he ever wrote has given offence. True, this is partly owing to his in tense unwillingness to hurt the feelings of any human being. No fame for saying brilliant things that came to this gentlest of autocrats and most genial of gentlemen, tinged with a possibility that any one had winced under his pen, seemed to him of any value, or gave him any pleasure. But, as a matter of fact, no bore has ever read anything Dr. Holmes has written about bores with the painful consciousness, “Alas! I was that bore!” We may take to ourselves a good deal that he says, but never with a sense of shame or humiliation. On the contrary, we laugh the most sincerely of any one, and say “Of course! that is exactly it! Why, I have done that thing myself a thousand times!” And so the genial, keen-eyed master of human nature writes with impunity how difficult he finds it to love his neighbor properly till he gets away from him, and tells us how he hates to have his best friend hunt him up in the cars and sit down beside him, and explains that, although a radical, he finds he enjoys the society of those who believe more than he does better than that of those who believe less; and neighbor and best friend, radical and conservative, laugh alike and alike enjoy the joke, each only remembering how _he_ finds it hard to love _his_ neighbor, and how _he_ hates to talk in the cars. The restless “interviewer,” who may perhaps have gained entrance to the pleasant library, never found himself treated, after he left, with any less courtesy than that which allowed him to be happy while he was “interviewing,” to the misery of his hapless victim. The pen that “never dared to be as funny as it could be,” never permitted itself to be as witty as it might have been, at the expense of any suffering to others. The gentle Doctor, when the interviewer was gone, turned again to his ducks in the beautiful aviary outside his window, and only vented his long-suffering in some general remark thrown carelessly in, as he describes how the bird

Sees a flat log come floating down the stream;
Stares undismayed upon the harmless stranger;--
Ah! were _all_ strangers harmless as they seem!

And the very latest stranger who may have inflicted the blow that drew out that gentlest of remonstrances, would be the first to laugh and to enjoy the remonstrance as a joke!

And so came to the Autocrat what he prized as the very best of all his fame--the consciousness that he never made a “hit” that could wound. So truly was this his temperament, that if you praised some of the fine lines of his noble poem on “My Aviary,” he would say gently: “But don’t you think the best line is where I spare the feelings of the duck?” and you remember,--

Look quick! there’s one just diving!
And while he’s under--just about a minute--
I take advantage of the fact to say
His fishy carcase has no virtue in it,
The gunning idiot’s worthless hire to pay.

And not even “while they are under” would Dr. Holmes ridicule his fellow-men. It is never _we_ whom he was laughing at: it is simply human nature on its funny side; and it is a curious fact that none of us resent being considered to have the foibles of human nature provided they are not made to appear personal foibles. So, while remembering the intensity of the pleasure he has given us, let us remember, what he would care far more to hear, that he has never given any of us anything _but_ pleasure.

ALICE WELLINGTON ROLLINS.

JULIA WARD HOWE

JULIA WARD HOWE

AT “OAK GLEN,” NEWPORT

To those persons who have only visited the town of Newport, taken its ocean drive, lunched at its Casino, strolled on its beach, and stared at its fine carriages and the fine people in them, that fill Bellevue Avenue of an afternoon, the idea of choosing Newport as a place to rest in must seem a very singular one. If their visit be a brief one, they may easily fail to discover that after leaving the limits of the gay summer city, with its brilliant social life, its polo matches, its races, balls, dinners, and fêtes, there still remains a district, some twelve miles in length, of the most rural character. The land here is principally owned by small farmers, who raise, and sell at exorbitant and unrural prices, the fruit, vegetables, eggs, milk, butter and cream which the Newport market-men, adding a liberal percentage, sell again to their summer customers. The interior of the island is in many respects the most agreeable part of it; the climate is better, being much freer from heavy fogs and sea mists, and the thermometer neither rises so high nor falls so low as in the town. The neighborhood of Lawton’s Valley is one of the most charming and healthy parts; and it is in this spot that Mrs. Howe has, for many years, made her summer home. The house stands a little removed from the cross-road which connects the East and West Roads, the two thoroughfares that traverse the island from Newport to Bristol Ferry. Behind the house there is a grove of trees--oaks, willows, maples, and pines--which is the haunt of many singing birds. The quiet house seems to be the centre of a circle of song, and the earliest hint of day is announced by their morning chorus. In this glen “The Mistress of the Valley,” as Mrs. Howe has styled herself, in one of her poems, spends many of her leisure hours, during the six months which she usually passes at her summer home. Here she sits with her books and needle-work, and of an afternoon there is reading aloud, and much pleasant talk under the trees; sometimes a visitor comes from town, over the five long miles of country road; but this is not so common an occurrence as to take away from the excitement created by the ringing of the door-bell. There are lotus trees at Oak Glen, but its mistress can not be said to eat thereof, for she is never idle, and what she calls rest would be thought by many people to be very hard work. She rests herself, after the work of the day, by reading her Greek books, which have given her the greatest intellectual enjoyment of the later years of her life. In the summer of 1886 she studied Plato in the original, and last year she read the plays of Sophocles.

The day’s routine is something in this order: Breakfast, in the American fashion, at eight o’clock, and then a stroll about the place, after which the household duties are attended to; and then a long morning of work. Letter-writing, which--with the family correspondence, business matters, the autograph fiends and the letter cranks--is a heavy burthen, is attended to first; and then whatever literary work is on the anvil is labored at steadily and uninterruptedly until one o’clock, when the great event of the day occurs. This is the arrival of the mail, which is brought from town by Jackson Carter, a neighbor, who combines the functions of local mail-carrier, milkman, expressman, vender of early vegetables, and purveyor of gossip generally; to which he adds the duty of touting for an African Methodist church. Jackson is of the African race, and though he signs his name with a cross, he is a shrewd, intelligent fellow, and is quite a model of industry. After the newspapers and the letters have been digested, comes the early dinner, followed by coffee served in the green parlor, which is quite the most important apartment of the establishment. It is an open-air parlor, in the shape of a semicircle, set about with a close, tall green hedge, and shaded by the spreading boughs of an ancient mulberry tree. Its inmates are completely shielded from the sight of any chance passers-by; and in its quiet shade they often overhear the comments of the strangers on the road outside, to whom the house is pointed out. It was in this small paradise that “Mr. Isaacs” was written, and read aloud to Mrs. Howe, chapter by chapter, as it was written by her nephew, Marion Crawford. Sometimes there is reading aloud from the newspapers and reviews here, and then the busiest woman in all Newport goes back to her sanctum for two more working hours; after which she either drives or walks till sunset.

If it is a drive, it will be, most likely, an expedition to the town, where some household necessity must be bought, or some visit is to be paid. If a stroll is the order of the day, it will be either across the fields to a hill-top near by, from which a wonderful view of the island and the bay is to be had, or along the country road, past the schoolhouse, and towards Mrs. Howe’s old home, Lawton’s Valley. In these sunset rambles, Mrs. Howe is very sure to be accompanied by one or more of her grandchildren, four of whom, with their mother, Mrs. Hall, pass the summers at Oak Glen. She finds the children excellent company, and they look forward to the romp which follows the twilight stroll as the greatest delight of the day. The romp takes place in the drawing-room, where the rugs are rolled up, and the furniture moved back against the wall, leaving the wooden floor bare for the dancing and prancing of the little feet. Mrs. Howe takes her place at the piano, strikes the chords of an exhilarating Irish jig, and the little company, sometimes enlarged by a contingent of the Richards cousins from Maine, dance and jig about with all the grace and _abandon_ of childhood. After supper, when the children are at last quiet and tucked up in their little beds, there is more music--either with the piano, in the drawing-room, or, if it is a warm night, on the piazza, with the guitar. As the evenings grow longer, in the late summer and autumn, there is much reading aloud, but only from novels of the most amusing, sensational or romantic description. None others are admitted; after the long day of work and study, relaxation and diversion are the two things needed. I have observed that with most hard literary workers and speculative thinkers, this class of novel is most in demand. The more intellectual romances are greedily devoured by people whose customary occupations lead them into the realm of actualities, and whose working hours are devoted to some practical business.

Last year Mrs. Howe had at heart the revival of the Town and Country Club, of which she is the originator and President, and which in 1886 had omitted its meetings. These meetings, which take place fortnightly during the season, are held at the houses of different members, and are both social and intellectual in character. The substantial part of the feast is served first, in the form of a lecture or paper from some distinguished person, after which there are refreshments, and talk of an informal character. Among others who in past seasons have read before the Club are Bret Harte, Prof. Agassiz, the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, the late Wm. B. Rogers, Mark Twain, Charles Godfrey Leland (“Hans Breitmann”), and the Rev. Drs. James Freeman Clarke, Frederic H. Hedge and George Ellis.

Mrs. Howe’s work for the summer of 1887 included a paper on a subject connected with the Greek drama, to be read at the Concord School of Philosophy, and an essay for the Woman’s Congress which was held in the early fall. She is much interested in the arts and industries of women, and in connection with these maintains a wide correspondence. But it is not all work and no play, even at such a busy place as Oak Glen. There are whole days of delightful leisure. Sometimes these are spent on the water on board of some friend’s yacht; or a less pretentious catboat is chartered, which conveys Mrs. Howe and her guests to Conanicut, or to Jamestown, where the day is spent beside the waves. Last summer a beautiful schooner yacht was lent to Mrs. Howe for ten days, and a glorious cruise was made, under the most smiling of summer skies. A day on the water is the thing that is most highly enjoyed by the denizens of Oak Glen; but there are other days hardly less delightful, spent in some out-of-the-way rural spot, where picnics are not forbidden, though these, alas! are becoming rare, since the churlish notice was posted up at Glen Anna, forbidding all trespassing on these grounds, which, time out of mind, have been free to all who loved them. There are still the Paradise Rocks, near the house of Edwin Booth, and thither an expedition is occasionally made.

Country life is not without its drawbacks and troubles; but these are not so very heavy after all, compared with some of the tribulations of the city, or of those who place themselves at the mercy of summer hotel keepers and boarding-house ladies. The old white pony, Mingo, _will_ get into the vegetable garden occasionally, and eat off the heads of the asparagus, and trample down the young corn; the neighbor’s pig sometimes gets through the weak place in the wall, with all her pinky progeny behind her, and takes possession of the very best flower-bed; the honeysuckle vine does need training; and the grapes will not ripen as well as they would have done, if the new trellis projected recently had been set up. But after all, taking into consideration the fact that Io, the Jersey cow, is giving ten quarts of rich milk a day, and that the new cook has mastered the simplest and most delightful of dishes--Newport corn-meal flap-jacks,--Mrs. Howe’s life at Oak Glen is as peaceful and happy an existence as one is apt to find in these nihilistic days of striking hotel waiters and crowded summer resorts.

Beautiful as Newport is in these soft days of early summer, it is even lovelier in the autumn, and every year it is harder to leave Oak Glen, to give up the wide arc of the heavens, and to look up into God’s sky, between the two lines of brick houses of a city street. Each winter the place at Newport is kept open a little longer, and it is only the closing days of November that find Mrs. Howe established in her house in Boston. Beacon Street, with its smooth macadamized roadway, whereon there is much pleasure driving, and in the winter a perfect sleighing carnival, is as pleasant a street as it is possible to live on, but a country road is always a better situation than a city street, and a forest path perhaps is best of all. When she is once settled in her Boston home, the manifold interests of the complex city life claim every hour in the day. Her remarkable powers of endurance, her splendid enjoyment of life and health make her winters as full of pleasure as the more peaceful summer-tide. It is a very different life from that led at Oak Glen; it has an endless variety of interests, social, private, public, charitable, philanthropic, musical, artistic, and intellectual. A half-dozen clubs and associations of women in the city and its near vicinity, which owe their existence in large part to Mrs. Howe’s efforts, claim her presence in their midst at least once in every year.

Among the public occasions which have held the greatest interest for Mrs. Howe of late years was the dedication of the new Kindergarten for the Blind in 1887, at which she read one of her happiest “occasional poems.” The authors’ reading in aid of the Longfellow memorial fund, at the Boston Museum, where, before an audience the like of which had never before been seen in the theatre, she read a poem in memory of Longfellow, was an occasion which will not soon be forgotten by those who were present. Mrs. Howe was the only woman who took part in the proceedings, the other authors who read from their own works being Dr. Holmes, Mr. Lowell, Mark Twain, Colonel Higginson, Prof. Norton, Mr. E. E. Hale, Mr. Aldrich and Mr. Howells. Mrs. Howe has spoken several times at the Nineteenth Century Club, and she is always glad to revisit New York, for though she is often thought to be a Bostonian, she never forgets that the first twenty years of her life were passed in New York, the city of her birth.

MAUD HOWE.

MR. HOWELLS

MR. HOWELLS

IN BEACON STREET, BOSTON

If any one wants to live in a city street, I do not see how he can well find a pleasanter one than Beacon Street, Boston. Its older houses come down Beacon Hill, past the Common and the Public Garden, in single file, like quaint Continentals on parade, who, being few, have to make the most of themselves. Then it forms in double file again and goes on a long way, out toward the distant Brookline hills, which close in the view. Howells’s number is 302. In this Back Bay district of made ground, the favored West End of the newer city, you cannot help wondering how it is that all about you is in so much better taste than in New York--so much handsomer, neater, more homelike and engaging than our shabby Fifth Avenue. Beacon Street is stately; so is Marlborough Street, that runs next parallel to it; and even more so is Commonwealth Avenue--with its lines of trees down the centre, like a Paris boulevard,--next beyond it. The eye traverses long fretworks of good architectural design, and there is no feature to jar upon the quiet elegance and respectability. The houses seem like those of people in some such prosperous foreign towns as the newer Liverpool, Düsseldorf or Louvain. The comfortable horizontal line prevails. There are green front doors, and red brick, and brass knockers. A common pattern of approach is to have a step or two outside, and a few more within the vestibule. That abomination, the ladder-like “high stoop” of New York, seems unknown.

These are the scenes amid which Mr. Howells takes his walks abroad. From his front windows he may see the upper-class types about which he has written--the Boston girl, “with something of the nice young fellow about her,” the Chance Acquaintance, with his eye-glass, the thin, elderly, patrician Coreys, the blooming, philanthropic Miss Kingsbury. The fictitious Silas Lapham built in this same quarter the mansion with which he was to consolidate his social aspirations. Perhaps some may have thought it identical with that of Howells, so close are the sites, and so feelingly does the author speak--as if from personal experience--of dealings with an architect, and the like. But Howells’s abode does not savor of the architect, nor of the mansion. It is a builder’s house, though even the builder, in Boston, does not rid himself of the general tradition of comfort and solidity. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes lived in a house but little different, two doors above. That of Howells is plain and wide, of red brick, three stories and mansard roof, with a long iron balcony under the parlor windows. Its chief adornment is a vine of Japanese ivy, which climbs half the entire height of the façade. The singular thing about this vine is, that it is not planted in his own ground, but a section in that of his neighbor on each side. It charmingly drapes his wall, while growing but thinly on theirs, and forms a clear case of “natural selection” which might properly almost render its owners discontented enough to cut it down. The leaves, as I saw them, touched by the autumn, glowed with crimson like sumac. The house is approached by steps of easy grade. There is a little reception-room at the left of the hall, and the dining-room is on the same floor. You mount a flight of stairs, and come to the library and study, at the back, and the parlor in front.

_Vlan!_ as the French have it--what a flood of light in this study! The shades of the three wide windows are drawn up to the very top; it is like being at the seaside; there are no owlish habits about a writer who can stand this. It is, in fact, the seaside, so why should it not seem like it? The bold waters of the Back Bay, a wide basin of the Charles River, dash up to the very verge of the small dooryard, in which the clothes hang out to dry. It looks as if they might some day take a notion to come in and call on the cook in the kitchen, or even lift up the whole establishment bodily, and land it on some new Ararat. This stretch of water is thought to resemble the canal of the Guidecca, at Venice; Henry James, with others, has certified to the view as Venetian. You take the Cambridge gas-works for Palladio’s domes, and Bunker Hill Monument, which is really more like a shot-tower, for a _campanile_; and then, at sunset, when the distant buildings are black upon the glowing, ruddy sky, the analogy is not so very remote. All the buildings on this new-made land are set upon piles, and the tides, in a measure, flow under them twice a day. It was a serious question at the beginning, whether there should not be canals here instead of streets; but, considering that the canals would be frozen up a large part of the year, the verdict was against them. I am rather sorry for this: it would have been interesting to see what kind of gondoliers the Boston hackmen and car-drivers would have made. Would they have worn uniforms? Would they have sung, to avoid collisions, in rounding the corners of Exeter and Fairfield streets? Ah me! for those plaintive ballads that might have been? It would have been interesting to see the congregation of Phillips Brooks’s church--the much-vaunted Trinity--going to service by water, and the visitors to the Art Museum, and the students to the Institute of Technology. All these are but a stone’s-throw from Howells. Howells may congratulate himself on a greater solidity for his share of the land than most, for fifty years ago, when there were tide-mills in this neighborhood, it was the site of a toll-house. _Terra firma_, all about him, has an antiquity of but from twelve to twenty years. His house is perhaps a dozen years old, and he has owned it but four.