Chapter V (1)

1880-1890

The busy shuttle comes and goes
Across the rhymes, and deftly weaves
A tissue out of autumn leaves,
With here a thistle, there a rose.

With art and patience thus is made
The poet's perfect Cloth of Gold;
When woven so, nor earth nor mould
Nor time can make its colors fade.--T.B. ALDRICH.

And others came,--Desires and Adorations;
Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies;
Splendors and Glooms and glimmering Incantations
Of hopes and fears and twilight fantasies.--SHELLEY.

I see the Gleaming Gates and toward them press.--L.C.M.

Mr. and Mrs. Moulton when they first set up their household gods established themselves on Beacon Hill. A few years later, however, a new part of the city was developed at the South End, and popular favor turned in that direction. The broad streets and squares with trees and turf were quiet and English-looking, and although fickle fashion has in later years forsaken the region, it remains singularly attractive. Here Mr. Moulton became the owner of a house, and for the remainder of their lives he and his wife made this their home.

The dwelling was a four-story brick house, the front windows looking out upon the greenery of a little park in the centre of the square. At one end of the place was a stone church, defined against the sky and especially lovely with the red of sunset behind it; and an old-world atmosphere of retirement and leisure always pervaded the region. In Rutland Square, No. 28 came to be well known to every Bostonian and to whomever among visitors was interested in things literary. It was the most cosmopolitan centre of social life in the city; and to it famous visitors to this country were almost sure to find their way. For thirty years Mrs. Moulton's weekly receptions through the winter were notable.

The drawing-room and library where groups of charming and famous people assembled were such as to remain pictured in the memory of the visitor. They were fairly furnished, so to speak, with the tributes of friends. There were water-colors from Rollin Tilton of Rome; a vigorous sketch of a famous group of trees at Bordighera by Charles Caryl Coleman; a number of signed photographs from Vedder; sketches in clay from Greenough, Ezekiel, and Robert Barrett Browning; a group of water-colors, illustrating Mrs. Moulton's poem, "Come Back, Dear Days," by Winthrop Pierce,--one of these showing a brilliant sunrise, while underneath was the line,

"The morning skies were all aflame;"

and another, revealing a group of shadow-faces, illustrated the line,

"I see your gentle ghosts arise."

There were signed photographs of Robert Barrett Browning's "Dryope," a gift from the artist; a painting of singular beauty from the artist, Signor Vertunni, of Rome; and from William Ordway Partridge three sculptures,--the figure of a child in Carrara marble, a head tinted like old ivory, and a portrait bust of Edward Everett Hale, a speaking likeness. There was that wonderful drawing by Vedder, "The Cup of Death" (from the Rubaiyat), which the artist had given to Mrs. Moulton in memory of her sonnet on the theme, the opening lines of which are:

She bends her lovely head to taste thy draught,
O thou stern "Angel of the Darker Cup,"
With thee to-night in the dim shades to sup,
Where all they be who from that cup have quaffed.

And among the rare books was a copy of Stéphane Mallarmé's translation of Poe's "Raven," with illustrations by Manet, the work being the combined gift to Mrs. Moulton of the poet-translator and the artist.

_Page 109_]

Many were the rare books in autograph copies given to Mrs. Moulton by her friends abroad--copies presented by Lord Houghton, George Eliot, Tennyson, Jean Ingelow, Christina Rossetti, Oswald Crawfurd, George Meredith, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur O'Shaughnessy, and several, too, which were dedicated to her,--the "Wind Voices" of Philip Bourke Marston, inscribed: "To Louise Chandler Moulton, true poet and true friend," and another by Herbert L. Clarke of London. The rooms were magnetic with charming associations.

A correspondent from a leading New York daily, commissioned to write of Mrs. Moulton's home, described her drawing-room as

"Long, high, and altogether spacious and dignified. A
library opening from the rear increases the apparent length
of the apartment, so that it is a veritable salon; the
furnishings are of simple elegance in color and design, and
the whole scheme of decoration quiet and not ultra-modern.

"But in this attractive room are more treasures than one
would dream of at first glance. The fine paintings that are
scattered here, there, and everywhere, are all of them
veritable works of art, presented to Mrs. Moulton by their
painters; the etchings are autograph copies from some of the
best masters of Europe. Almost every article of decoration,
it would seem, has a history. The books that have overflowed
from the dim recesses of the library are mostly presentation
copies in beautiful bindings, with many a well-turned phrase
on their fly leaves written by authors we all know and love.

"There could be no better guide through all this
treasure-house of suggestive material than Mrs. Moulton
herself. Without question she knows more English people of
note than does any other living American. As she spreads out
before the delighted caller her remarkable collection of
presentation photographs, she intersperses the exhibit with
brilliant off-hand descriptions of their originals--the sort
of word-painting that bookmen are eager to hear in
connection with their literary idols. It is the real
Swinburne she brings to the mind's eye, with his
extraordinary personal appearance and his weird manners; the
real William Watson, profoundly in earnest and varying in
moods; the real George Egerton, with her intensity and
devotion to the higher rights of womankind; the real Thomas
Hardy and George Meredith and Anthony Hope, and the whole
band of British authors, big and little, whom she marshals
in review and dissects with unerring perception and the
keenest of wit. Anecdotes of all these personages flow from
her tongue with a prodigality that makes one long for the
art of shorthand to preserve them."

From this home in the early eighties the daughter of the house was married to Mr. William Henry Schaefer, of Charleston, South Carolina. In her daughter's removal to that Southern city, Mrs. Moulton's life found an extension of interests. She made frequent visits to Charleston before what now came to be her annual spring sailings to Europe. In her later years Mrs. Moulton and her daughter and son-in-law often travelled together, though Mrs. Moulton's enjoyment centred itself more and more, as the years went by, in her extensive and sympathetic social life. Always was she pre-eminently the poet and the friend; and travel became to her the means by which she arrived at her desired haven, rather than was indulged in for its own sake. Yet the lovely bits of description which abound in her writings show that she journeyed with the poet's eye; as, for instance, this on leaving Rome:

"The deep blue Italian sky seemed warm with love and life,
the fountains tossed high their white spray and flashed in
the sunshine. Peasants were milking their goats at the foot
of the Spanish Steps. Flower-girls had their arms full of
fresh flowers, with the dew still on them, loading the air
with fragrance."

Or this of Florence:

"I never cross the Ponte Vecchio, or Jewellers' Bridge, in
Florence, without thinking of Longfellow's noble sonnet, and
quoting to myself:

'Taddeo Gaddi built me,--I am old.'

Nor could I ever approach the superb equestrian statue of
the Grand Duke Ferdinand without thinking of Browning's 'The
Statue and the Bust.' 'The passionate pale lady's face'
wrought by Lucca della Robbia no longer 'watches it from the
square.'"

Just before her sailing in 1880 came this note from Mr. Longfellow:

_Mr. Longfellow to Mrs. Moulton_

CRAIGIE HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE, March 2, 1880.

DEAR MRS. MOULTON: ... Yes, surely I will give you a letter
to Lowell. I will bring it to you as soon as I am able to
leave the house.... It was a great pleasure to meet you at
Mrs. Ole Bull's, but I want to hear more about your visits
to England, and whom you saw, and what you did. What is it?
Is it the greater freedom one feels in a foreign country
where no _Evening Transcript_ takes note of one's outgoings
and incomings? I can't attempt to explain it. Please don't
get expatriated.

Ah, no, life is not all cathedrals and ruined castles, and
other theatrical properties of the Old World. It is not all
scenery, and within the four walls of home life is much the
same everywhere.

Truly yours,

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

Of cathedrals and ruins she saw much, but people always interested her more than any inanimate things. She records her talks with one and another of the intellectual friends whom she met now in one city and now in another. She records, for instance, a talk with Miss Anne Hampton Brewster, so long the Roman correspondent of the _Boston Advertiser_, the topic being the poetry of Swinburne. "She regarded his 'Laus Veneris' as the most fearful testimony against evil she ever read," Mrs. Moulton wrote; "and in 'Hesperia,' that glorious, beautiful, poetic cry, she declared could be found the way to the poet's meaning."

She visited the Roman studios, and in that of Mr. Story saw the busts of Robert and Elizabeth Browning, and others, and the statue of "Medea," just then completed. She wrote later that the concluding ten lines of Swinburne's "Anactoria" "express the character of Story's 'Sappho.' It is as if the poem had been written for the statue, or the statue was modelled to interpret the poem."

One result of her travels was the publication in 1881 of a charming little collection of papers called "Random Rambles." The book contained short chapters about Rome and Paris and Genoa and Florence and Venice and Edinburgh and the London parks. A reviewer characterized the volume aptly when he said:

"Mrs. Moulton seems to have gathered up the poetic threads
of European life which were too fine for other visitors to
see or get, to have caught and given expression to the
impalpable aromas of the various places she visited, so that
the reader feels a certain atmospheric charm it is
impossible to describe."

The little book was deservedly successful. Mrs. Moulton's writings seemed always to conform to the standard set by Mr. Aldrich, who once said to her: "Literature ought to warm the heart; not chill it." Her readers were conscious without fail of a current of sympathetic humanity.

It was this quality no less than her real critical power, or perhaps even more than that, which made authors so grateful for her reviews of their work. In reference to a newspaper letter in which she had spoken of Wilkie Collins, the novelist wrote to her:

_Mr. Collins to Mrs. Moulton_

"90 GLOUCESTER PLACE, PORTMAN SQUARE, W.
March 30, 1880.

"I have read your kind letter with much pleasure. I know the
'general reader' by experience as my best friend and
ally.... When I return to the charge I shall write with
redoubled resolution if I feel that I have the great public
with me, as I had then (for example) in the case of 'The New
Magdalen.' 'Her Married Life,' in the second part, will be
essentially happy. But the husband and wife--the world whose
unchristian prejudices and law they set at defiance will
slowly undermine their happiness, and will, I fear, make the
close of the story a sad one."

The letter referred to was one of a long series which Mrs. Moulton contributed to the _New York Independent_. Many of these papers were of marked literary value. A typical one was upon Mme. Desbordes-Valmore, founded upon Sainte Beuve's memoir of that interesting and unhappy French poet. Mrs. Moulton characterizes Mme. Desbordes-Valmore as "the sad, sweet nightingale among the singers of France, and as a tender, elegiac poet" without equal. She closes with these words:

"Mme. Valmore passed away in July of 1859. 'We shall not
die,' she had said. In that hour a gate was opened to some
strange land of light, some new dawning of glory, and the
holy saints, to whose fellowship she belonged, received her
into the very peace of God."

Mrs. Moulton's witty essay on "The Gospel of Good Gowns" was one of this series in _The Independent_, and a fine paper of hers on Thoreau was widely quoted.

In a department which for some months she conducted under the title, "Our Society," in a periodical called _Our Continent_, Mrs. Moulton discoursed on manners, morals, and other problems connected with the conduct of life. The incalculable influence of the gentle, refined ideals that she persuasively imaged was a signal factor in the progress of life among the younger readers. Mrs. Moulton's ideal of the importance of manner was that of Tennyson's as expressed in his lines,--

For manners are not idle, but the fruit
Of loyal nature and of noble mind.

Many of these papers are included in Mrs. Moulton's book called "Ourselves and Our Neighbors," published in 1887. In one of these on "The Gospel of Charm" she says:

"So many new gospels are being preached, and that so
strenuously, to the girls and women of the twentieth
century, that I have wondered if there might not be a danger
lest the Gospel of Charm should be neglected. And yet to my
mind there are few teachings more important. I would
advocate no charm that was insincere, none that would
lessen the happiness of any other woman; but the fact
remains that the slightest act may be done with a
graciousness that warms the day, or with a hard indifference
that almost repels us from goodness itself. It is possible
to buy a newspaper or pay a car-fare in such wise as to make
newsboy or car-conductor feel for the moment that he is in a
friendly world."

Certainly the "gospel of charm" never had a more signal illustration than in her own attitude toward those with whom she came in contact.

In one of the chapters, "The Wish to Rise," she writes:

"The moment a strong desire for social advancement seizes on
a man or woman it commences to undermine the very
foundations of character, and great shall be the fall
thereof. 'To keep up appearances,' 'to make a show'--one of
these sentences is only more vulgar than the other. The
important thing is not to appear, but to be. It is true, and
pity 'tis, 'tis true, that many people are shut out by
limited and narrow fortunes from the society to which by
right of taste and culture they should belong. But nothing
proves more surely that they do not belong there than any
attempt to force their way there by means of shams.... If
our steady purpose is, each one, to raise himself, his own
mind and spirit, to the highest standard possible for him,
he will not only be too busy to pursue shams and shadows,
but he will be secure of perpetual good society, since he
will be always with himself.... Nothing more surely
indicates the parvenu than boastfulness. The man who brings
in the name of some fine acquaintance at every turn of the
conversation is almost certain to be one whose acquaintance
with any one who is fine is of yesterday. Really well-placed
people do not need to advertise their connections in this
manner.... It is essentially vulgar to push--to run after
great people, or to affect a style of living beyond one's
means--it is not only vulgar but contemptible to change
one's friends with one's bettering fortunes."

The book had a merited success, and even yet is in demand.

In the early eighties an enterprising publisher conceived the idea of a book on "Famous Women," in which those exceptional beings should write of each other. To Mrs. Moulton's pen fell Louisa M. Alcott, and a request on her part for information brought to her the following characteristic note, dated January, 1883:

_Miss Alcott to Mrs. Moulton_

"I have not the least objection to your writing a sketch of
L.M.A. I shall feel quite comfortable in your hands. I have
little material to give you; but in 'Little Women' you will
find the various stages of my career and experience. Don't
forget to mention that I don't like lion hunters, that I
don't serve autophotos and biographies to the hundreds of
boys and girls who ask, and that I heartily endorse Dr.
Holmes' views on this subject."

To this volume the sketch of Mrs. Moulton herself was written by the graceful pen of Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford, who wrote with the sympathetic appreciation of the poet and close friend.

While on a visit to Spain in 1883,--and "Spain," she wrote, "is a word to conjure with,"--Mrs. Moulton made the acquaintance of Oswald Crawfurd the novelist, when he was in the diplomatic service. From his letters then and afterward might be taken many interesting passages, of which the following may serve as examples:

"There is another writer whose acquaintance I have made,
through his books, I mean, for such interesting creatures as
authors seldom come to Portugal. We have to put up with
royalties, rich tourists, and wine merchants. For me, the
writers, the manipulators of ideas, the shapers of them into
human utterance, are the important people of the age, as
well as the most agreeable to meet, in their books or in
life. This particularly pleasant one I have just met is
Frank Stockton. You will laugh at the idea of my discovering
what other people knew long ago, but it happens that I have
only just read his books. The three notes that strike me in
him are his perfect originality, his literary dexterity, and
his new and delicate humor. I cannot say how he delighted
me."

"We are going to give you Andrew Lang to take you in [at the
dinner] on Friday, and on the other side you will have
either James Bryce or Mr. Chapman, the 'enterprising young
publisher' mentioned by Dickens. Regarding Lang, I know no
man who does so many things so very well,--journalist,
philologist, mythological researcher,--and to the front in
all these characters. To almost any one but yourself I
should call him a poet also. His face is very refined and
beautiful."

"I have been reading your poems again. You are as true a
lyric artist as Landor or Herrick. I admire your
sonnets,--they have a particular charm for me, and I am glad
that you do not despise the old English form with the two
last lines in rhyme. Shakespeare's, indeed, are so. I am
almost inclined to think that for our rhymeless language,
for an ear not attuned to the Italian perception for
delicate rhyme of sounds, the strong emphasis on the ending
couplet is right and good."

"I honestly like and admire the genius of Howells. I like
his novels immensely, but his theories not at all."

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The brief records in Mrs. Moulton's journal in these days suggest her crowded life of social enjoyment and literary work. On New Year's day of 1885 she notes having been the night before at a party at Mrs. Ole Bull's; and on that day she goes to a reception at the Howard Ticknors'; friends come to her in the evening. January second falls on a Friday, and as she is about to visit her daughter and son-in-law in Charleston, this is her last reception for the season. Naturally, it is a very full one, and while she does not chronicle the list of her guests, it is constructively easy to fancy that among them may have been Dr. Holmes, Professor Horsford, the poet Aldrich and his lovely wife; Dean Hodges, always one of her most dearly esteemed friends; Mrs. Ole Bull, the Whipples, Oscar Fay Adams, Professor Lane of Harvard, Arlo Bates, in whose work, even then, she was taking great delight; Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, or her daughter, Mrs. Maud Howe Elliott; Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford; Mrs. Julius Eichberg and her brilliant daughter, Mrs. Anna Eichberg King (now Mrs. John Lane of London),--these and many others of her Boston circle who were habitués of her "Fridays," and seldom, indeed, was one of these receptions without some guests of special distinction who were visiting Boston. On one occasion it was Mr. and Mrs. Edmund Gosse of London; or again, Matthew Arnold; W.D. Howells was to be met there when in Boston; and not infrequently Colonel T.W. Higginson; Helen Hunt, whom Mrs. Moulton had long known; Mary Wilkins (now Mrs. Freeman), always cordially welcomed; Mrs. Clement Waters, the art writer; President Alice Freeman of Wellesley College (later Mrs. George Herbert Palmer); and Governor and Mrs. Claflin, at whose home Whittier was usually a guest during his sojourns in Boston, were among the familiar guests. Mr. Whittier could seldom be induced to appear at any large reception; but from Mrs. Moulton's early youth he had been one of her nearer friends, and his calls were usually for her alone.

Bliss Carman and Edgar Fawcett from New York were sometimes to be met in Mrs. Moulton's drawing-room; and there were also a group of Boston artists,--Arthur Foote who had set to music several of Mrs. Moultons' lyrics; B.J. Lang and his daughter, who had also set some of Mrs. Moulton's songs; the painters, I.M. Gaugengigl, Winthrop Pierce, John Enneking; Miss Porter and Miss Clarke, the editors of _Poet-Lore_; Caroline Ticknor, the young author whose work continued the literary traditions of her famous name; and often some of the clergy of Boston,--the Rev. Dr. Charles Gordon Ames, with Mrs. Ames, both of whom were among Mrs. Moulton's most dearly-prized friends; occasionally Rev. Dr. Edward Everett Hale, and Bishop Phillips Brooks; in a later decade, Rev. Dr. E. Winchester Donald, who succeeded Phillips Brooks as rector of Trinity; Rev. Bernard Carpenter, a brother of the Lord Bishop of Ripon; and beside the throngs of representative people who, at one time or another through some thirty years, were to be met at Mrs. Moulton's, the socially unknown guest received from the hostess the same cordial welcome. Her sympathies had little relation to social standing. No praise of the critics ever gave her more happiness than did a letter from a stranger in the West, written by a young girl who had for years been unable to move from her bed, telling of the blessed ministry of a poem by Mrs. Moulton, of which the first stanza runs:

We lay us down to sleep,
And leave to God the rest,
Whether to wake and weep
Or wake no more be best.

A book of Mr. Stedman's of which he sent to Mrs. Moulton a copy bore on its fly-leaf the inscription:

My life-long, loyalist friend,
My sister in life and song.

In the winter of 1885 the journal notes a visit to Mrs. Schaefer in Charleston, where amid all the festivities she finds time to send "four short stories and a poem" to various editors. On her way North she visited Washington, where dinners and receptions were given to her in private and in diplomatic circles. Then she went on to New York, and before sailing for Europe met Monsignor Capel at dinner, lunched with the Lawrence Barretts, attended Mr. Barrett's performance of "The Blot in the 'Scutcheon," which she found a "wonderful piece of acting," and at last sailed, as usual lavishly remembered with flowers and graceful tokens.

In Venice this year Mrs. Moulton wrote the charming pseudo-triolet,

IN VENICE ONCE.

In Venice once they lived and loved--
Fair women with their red gold hair--
Their twinkling feet to music moved,
In Venice where they lived and loved,
And all Philosophy disproved,
While hope was young and life was fair,
In Venice where they lived and loved.

It is interesting to feel in this a far suggestion of Browning's "A Toccata of Galuppi's," because so seldom does any echo of her contemporaries strike through Mrs. Moulton's verse.

With friends Mrs. Moulton visited Capri, Sorrento, Amalfi, Castellamare, Pompeii, and then went on to Rome. Here she passed the morning of her fiftieth birthday in the galleries of the Vatican. Friends made a _festa_ of her birthday, with a birthday-cake and gifts; and she dined with the Storys, to go on later to one of Sir Moses Ezekiel's notable _musicales_ at his study in the Baths of Diocletian. "The most picturesque of studios," she wrote, "and a most cosmopolitan company,--at least fifty ladies and gentlemen, representing every civilized race.... All languages were spoken. Pascarella, the Italian poet, recited.... Professor Lunardi, of the Vatican library, who has his Dante and Ariosto by heart, was talking Latin to an American Catholic clergyman." Of this studio she gives a picturesque description:

"Suspended from the lofty ceiling was a hanging basket of
flowers encircled by a score of lights; while around the
walls hundreds of candles in antique sconces were burning,
throwing fitful gleams over marble busts and groups of
statuary. The frescoes on the walls are fragments of the
walls of Diocletian, and the floor is covered with rich
antique tiles fifteen hundred years old. Eight elephants'
heads hold the candles that light the studio on ordinary
occasions. Two colossal forms claim the attention of the
visitor; one, the picture of a herald, drawn by Sir Moses,
holds in his right hand the shield of art; the other is the
figure of Welcome, holding in one hand a glass of wine,
while the other rests upon a shield. The most striking and
interesting work in the studio is the group of Homer. The
figure of the poet is of heroic size, and he is represented
sitting on the seashore, reciting the Iliad, and beating
time with his hands; even in his blindness, his face wears
an expression that seems to be looking into the future and
down through the ages of time. At his feet is seated his
guide, a youth with Egyptian features, who accompanies Homer
with strokes on the lyre."

In the studio was also a bronze bust of Liszt, the only one for which he ever sat, and which Sir Moses modelled at the Villa d'Este.

After Rome came Florence, where Mrs. Moulton was the guest of Mrs. Clara Erskine Clement Waters, who had taken a villa in that city. Among other people whom Mrs. Moulton met at this time was "Ouida," who unbent from her accustomed stiffness to Americans, and, yielding to the charm of her guest, displayed her house and pets in a manner which for her was almost without precedent. Mrs. Waters gave a brilliant reception in her honor; she was the guest of the Princess Koltzoff Massalsky (Dora d'Istria), and she visited Professor Fiske at the Villa Landor, where she was "charmed by his wonderful library" with its collections of the most notable editions of Dante and Petrarca; and she was entertained by Professor and Madame Villari.

From Florence she went to Aix-les-Bains. Then she passed to England.

In London she saw constantly almost everybody of note in literary circles. Her diary records visits to or from or meetings with the Lord Bishop of Winchester, Mrs. Bloomfield Moore, Lord Morley, Thomas Hardy, the Bishop of Ripon, Mr. Verschoyle of the _Fortnightly Review_, William Sharp, Frederick Wedmore, Sir Frederic and Lady Pollock, Dr. Furnival, and others, for a list too long to give entire. Her journal shows how full were her days.

"Mrs. Campbell-Praed came to lunch; a lot of callers in the
afternoon, among them the Verschoyles, the Francillons, Mrs.
Cashel-Hoey, Mrs. Fred Chapman, and Mrs. Anna Lea Merritt.

"Went to the Chapmans' to luncheon; met George Meredith....
Meredith is a very brilliant and agreeable man.

"Francillon to luncheon. A lovely letter from Oswald
Crawfurd, praising Andrew Lang.... Went with Mrs. Marable to
see Mrs. Sutherland Orr; a very charming person."

Herbert E. Clarke, whom in a letter to Professor Bates she described as "a wonderfully charming and fine fellow," accompanied a volume of his poems which he sent to her with these graceful dedicatory verses:

TO LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.

(WITH "VERSES ON THE HILLSIDE.")

Go forth, O little flower of song,
To her who found you fair;
After a winter black as night,
I plucked you when spring's smile brought light,
And April's winds were blithe and strong,
And Hope was in the air.

Poor stray of Autumn left to Spring,
I send you forth to be
'Twixt us a pledge of happier hours;
Yea, though she hath far fairer flowers
Always at hand for gathering,
Go forth undoubtingly.

For thou hast gained a happy meed,
And wert thou weed or worse,
With her praise for a light above,
Many should find thee fair, and love
Though not for thine own sake indeed,--
But her sake, O my verse.

Be weed or flower, and live or die,
To me thou art more dear
Than all thy sister flowerets are,
O herald of the single star
That rose above the lowering sky
Of my most hopeless year.

One particularly delightful day was that on which Mrs. Moulton attended a garden-party at Lambeth Palace as the guest of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Mrs. Benson. Another of the red-letter days was an afternoon with the Holman Hunts, in their rambling, fascinating house, filled with artistic treasures, when on the lawn a Hungarian orchestra played their national airs. Among the guests were Lewis Morris, Edwin Arnold, Hall Caine, Theodore Watts-Dunton, and many others who bore names well known. The diary records, too, a studio-reception given by Felix Moscheles, a coaching trip to Virginia Water; and so on for a round of gay doings which make it amazing that all this time Mrs. Moulton continued her literary work.

In the autumn Mrs. Moulton journeyed to Carlsbad, and there "made Lady Ashburton's acquaintance in the morning and sat up in the wood with her for a couple of hours." The acquaintance ripened into a warm friendship between the two, and Mrs. Moulton was often a guest at Lady Ashburton's place, Kent House, Knightsbridge. The sonnet "One Afternoon" is the memory of this first meeting written at Carlsbad a year after.

On her return to America in the autumn, Mrs. Moulton went to Pomfret to visit her mother. While there she heard from Miss Guiney of the death of a young poet, James Berry Bensel, of whom she wrote to Oscar Fay Adams as follows:

_Mrs. Moulton to Mr. Adams_

28 RUTLAND SQUARE, Sunday.

MY DEAR FRIEND: Your letter just received draws my very
heart out in sympathy. I wish you were here, that I could
tell you all the feelings that it brought, for I know what
it is to lose my dearest friend. Louise Guiney said to me
when she came Friday afternoon: "I have something to tell
you. Bensel is dead. His brother has written me." And I was
not myself all the afternoon. I could not put aside the
thought that pleaded for my tears. And I grieved that I had
not yet written to him about his book. I find such fine
things in it. Come back and let us grieve for him
together,--not that I grieve as you do who loved him so, but
I do understand all you feel, and I felt his death very
unusually, myself. I wish, oh, how I wish, we could call him
back to life, and give him health, and the strength to work,
and more favorable conditions. But we do not know but that
he may now be rejoicing somewhere in a great gain, beyond
our vision. He has gone where our vision cannot find or our
fancy follow him; but he must either be better off in a new
birth or else so deeply at rest that no pain can pierce him
where he is. Good-bye and God bless you.

Yours most truly,

LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.

The Boston winters were full always with social and literary interests. The relations of Mrs. Moulton to the writers of her circle were indicated when on her sailing in the spring of one of the late eighties a post-bag was arranged which was delivered to her in mid-ocean. The idea originated with Miss Marian Boyd Allen, and among the contents were a manuscript book of poems for every day by Bliss Carman; poems by Clinton Scollard, Arlo Bates, Willis Boyd Allen, Minot J. Savage, Celia Thaxter, the Rev. Bernard Carpenter, Gertrude Hall, Mary Elizabeth Blake, and Hezekiah Butterworth; a silver vinaigrette from Professor James Mills Pierce; a book from Mrs. Clara Erskine Clement Waters; two charming drawings from Winthrop Pierce; with notes from Nora Perry, Colonel T.W. Higginson, and others. Miss Guiney addressed as her "Chief Emigrant and Trans-Atlantic Gadder, Most Ingenious Poet, and Queen of Hearts." Colonel Higginson wrote:

_T.W. Higginson to Mrs. Moulton_

CAMBRIDGE, May 3, 1887.

DEAR FRIEND: I gladly join with others in this mid-ocean
post-bag. I hope you will take your instalments of
friendship in as many successive days. Few American
women,--perhaps none,--have succeeded in establishing such a
pleasant intermedian position before English and American
literature as have you, and as the ocean does not limit your
circle of friends, it seems very proper that we on this side
should stretch our hands to you across it. As one of your
oldest and best friends, I wish you not only "many happy
returns," but one, at least, in the autumn.

Ever cordially,

T.W. HIGGINSON.

On the other side of the Atlantic Philip Bourke Marston and his friend William Sharp greeted her return to London in three sonnets.

_Philip Bourke Marston to Mrs. Moulton_

UNDESCRIED.--TO L.C.M.

When from her world, new world, she sailed away,
Right out into the sea-winds and the sea,
Did no foreshadowing of good to be
Surprise my heart? That memorable day
Did I as usual rise, think, do, and say
As on a day of no import to me?
Did hope awake no least low melody?
Send forth no spell my wandering steps to stay?
Oh, could our souls catch music of the things
From some lone height of being undescried,
Then had I heard the song the sea-wind sings
The waves; and through the strain of storm and tide,--
As soft as sleep and pure as lovely springs,--
Her voice wherein all sweetnesses abide.

_William Sharp to Mrs. Moulton_

ANTICIPATED FRIENDSHIP

Friend of my friend! as yet to me unknown,
Shall we twain meeting meet and care no more?
Already thou hast left thy native shore,
And to thine ears the laughter and the moan
Of the strange sea by night and day unknown,
Its thunder and its music and its roar;
A few days hence the journey will be o'er,
And I shall know if hopes have likewise flown.
As one hears by the fire a father tell
His eager child some tales of fairy land,
Where no grief is and no funereal bell,
But thronging joys and many a happy band;
So do I hope fulfillment will be well,
And not scant grace, with cold, indifferent hand.

AFTER MEETING

Friend of my friend, the looked-for day has come,
And we have met: to me, at least, a day
Memorable: no hopes have flown away.
Bad fears lie broken, stricken henceforth dumb:
In the thronged room, and in the ceaseless hum
Of many voices, I heard one voice say
A few brief words,--but words that did convey
A subtle breath of friendship, as in some
Few scattered leaves the rose still gives her scent.
Thy hand has been in mine, and I this night
Have seen thine eyes reach answer eloquent
To unseen questions winged for eager flight.
And when, at last, our Philip and I went,
I knew that I had won a fresh delight.

The following letter from Mr. Sharp explains itself in this cluster of greetings:

_William Sharp to Philip Bourke Marston_

19 ALBERT STREET, REGENT'S PARK.

DEAR PHILIP: I couldn't be bothered going out anywhere, as
you suggested, and an hour or two ago I was able to complete
a second sonnet for the two on "Anticipated Friendship"
addressed to Mrs. Moulton. I told you how much I liked her,
and what a relief it was to find my hopes not disappointed.
In reading these sonnets (at least, the second one) remember
the dolorous condition I am in, and have mercy on all
short-comings that therein abound; and, please, if you think
the spirit of thankfulness in them not sufficient to
overbalance all deficiencies, throw them in the fire without
showing them to their unconscious inspirer, and thus earn
the future gratitude of

Your loving friend,

WILLIAM SHARP.

In February of 1887 Philip Bourke Marston died. He bequeathed to Mrs. Moulton his books and manuscripts, and many autographs of great interest and value. Among them was the first page of the original manuscript of the first great chorus in "Atalanta in Calydon" corrected in Swinburne's own hand. Marston requested that she should be his literary executor. Speaking of this work some years later, Mrs. Moulton said:

"When I first knew the Marstons they were a group of
five,--dear old Dr. Marston, his son, Philip Bourke Marston,
his unmarried daughter Cecily, his married daughter Mrs.
Arthur O'Shaughnessy, and her husband. I edited a volume of
selections by O'Shaughnessy; and I was named by Mr. Marston,
in his will, as his literary executor. I brought out after
his death a volume whose contents had not been hitherto
included in any book, and which I called 'A Last Harvest.'
Then I put all his flower-poems together (as he had long
wished to do) in a volume by themselves, which was entitled
'Garden Secrets.' Finally I have brought out a collected
edition of his poems, including the three volumes published
before his death, and the ones I had compiled after he
died.

"Ah, you may well call his life tragic. He was only three
years old when he lost his sight. He was educated orally,
but his knowledge of literature was a marvel. The poets of
the past were his familiar friends, and he could repeat
Swinburne's poems by the hour. To recite Rossetti's 'House
of Life' was one of the amusements of his solitary days. But
he longed, beyond all things, to be constantly in touch with
the world--to know what every year, every month, was
producing. 'Can you fancy what it is,' he would say to me
sometimes, 'to be just walled in with books that you are
dying to read, and to have them as much beyond your reach as
if they were the other side of the world?' Yet he had,
despite his sad fate, the gayest humor--the most naturally
cheerful temperament; he could be so merry with his
friends--so happy 'when there was anything to be happy
about.' Of his work 'Garden Secrets' is uniquely charming.
Rossetti once wrote him, in a letter of which I am the
fortunate possessor, that he had been reading these 'Garden
Secrets,' the evening before, to William Bell Scott, the
poet-artist, and adds, 'Scott fully agreed with me that they
were worthy of Shakespeare, in his subtlest lyrical moods.'
Some of the best critics in London declared that the author
of 'Song-Tide' (Marston's first volume) should, by virtue
of this one book, take equal rank with Swinburne, Morris,
and Rossetti. Certainly his subsequent volumes fully
sustained the promise of this first one, and I feel that
when Philip Bourke Marston died, at the age of thirty-seven,
on the fourteenth of February, 1887, England lost one of her
noblest and subtlest poets--one whose future promise it were
hard to overrate. Sometimes I think I care most for some of
his sonnets; then the subtle beauty of his lyrics upbraids
me,--and I hardly know which to choose. Take him all in all,
he seems to me a poet whom future generations will recognize
and remember."

Regarding the death of Mr. Marston, Mr. Whittier wrote to the friend who had brought so much brightness into the life of the blind poet:

_Mr. Whittier to Mrs. Moulton_

CENTRE HARBOR, N.H., 7th month, 1887.

MY DEAR FRIEND, LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON: It was very kind in
thee to send thy admirable little book and most welcome
letter. We have read thy wise and charming essay up here
among the hills, and under the shadow of the pines, with
hearty approval. It was needed, and will do a great deal of
good to young people, in the matter of manners and morals.

It seems a very long time since I had the great pleasure of
seeing thee, or of hearing directly from thee. I meant to
have been in Boston in the early spring, and looked forward
to the satisfaction of meeting thee, but I was too ill to
leave home, and I felt a real pang of regret when I learned
of thy departure. I am now much better, but although I
cannot say with the Scotch poet that

"the years hang o'er my back
And bend me like a muckle pack,"

I must still confess that they are getting uncomfortably
heavy. But I have no complaint to make. My heart is as warm
as ever, and love and friendship as dear.

I was pained by the death of thy friend, Philip Marston. It
must be a comfort to thee to know that thy love and sympathy
made his sad lot easier to be borne. He was one who needed
love, and I think he was one to inspire it also.

My old and comfortable hotel at Centre Harbor, where I have
been a guest for forty years, was burned to ashes a few days
ago, after we came away. But we are now in good, neat
quarters at a neat farm house, with large cool rooms on the
border of the lovely lake.

Good-bye, dear friend! While enjoying thy many friends in
London, do not forget thy friends here.

Ever affectionately thy old friend,

JOHN G. WHITTIER.

Herbert E. Clarke, the warm and intimate friend of Marston, touchingly alludes to his death in this sonnet.

TO LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.

Ah, friend, the die is cast,--life turns to prose.
My way lies onward--dusty, hot, and bare,
Through the wide plain under the noonday glare,--
A sordid path whereby no singer goes;
For yon the cloudy crags--the stars and snows--
Limitless freedom of ethereal air
And pinnacles near heaven. On foot I fare,
Halting foredoomed, and toward what goal who knows?
But though the singer who may sing no more
Bears ever in his heart a smothered fire,
I give Fate thanks: nor these my pangs deplore,
Seeing song gave first rewards beyond desire--
Your love, O Friend, and his who went before,
The sightless singer with his silver lyre.

LONDON, 1st August, 1888.

To Arlo Bates, Mrs. Moulton, reading this, repeated the closing line with a touching tenderness, and then without further word laid the manuscript aside.

In the middle years of the eighties Mrs. Moulton began to send to the _Boston Herald_ a series of literary letters from London, and these she continued for a number of years. She was especially well fitted for the undertaking by her wide acquaintance with English writers, her unusual power of appreciating work not yet endorsed by public approval, and her sympathetic instinct for literary quality. The work, while arduous, gave her pleasure, chiefly because it provided opportunity for her to give encouragement and aid to others, and to help to make better known writers and work not yet appreciated in America. "I am sending a literary letter each week to the _Boston Herald_," she writes Mr. Stedman. "It is hard work, but it gives me the pleasure of expressing myself about the current literature. I believe the letters are accounted a success."

Many were the letters of gratitude which came to her from those of whom she had written. The sympathetic quality of her approval, so rarely found in combination with critical judgment, made her praise especially grateful. Not only did she interest and enlighten her reading public, but she encouraged and inspired those of whom she wrote.

Other letters of grateful recognition came now and then from artists of whose work she had written in verse. After a visit to the studio of Burne-Jones in London she was inspired to write the admirable and subtle lyric "Laus Veneris," upon his picture of that name.

Pallid with too much longing,
White with passion and prayer,
Goddess of love and beauty,
She sits in the picture there,--

Sits with her dark eyes seeking
Something more subtle still
Than the old delights of loving
Her measureless days to fill.

She has loved and been loved so often,
In the long, immortal years,
That she tires of the worn-out rapture,
Sickens of hopes and fears.

No joys or sorrows move her,
Done with her ancient pride;
For her head she found too heavy
The crown she has cast aside.

Clothed in her scarlet splendor,
Bright with her glory of hair,
Sad that she is not mortal,--
Eternally sad and fair,--

Longing for joys she knows not,
Athirst with a vain desire,
There she sits in the picture,
Daughter of foam and fire.

_Page 143_]

It is not to be wondered that the artist wrote in warm acknowledgment:

_Mr. Burne-Jones to Mrs. Moulton_

"I think you must know how glad all workers are of such
sympathy as you have shown me, and I don't know of any other
reward that one ever sets before one's self that can be
compared for a moment with the gratified sense of being
understood. It's like hearing one's tongue in a foreign
land. I do assure you I worked all the more confidently the
day your letter came. Confidence and courage do often fail,
and when all the senses are thoroughly tired with work, and
the heart discouraged, a tribute like the one you sent me is
a real refreshment."

During all these years Mrs. Moulton's mastery of technical form, and especially her efficiency in the difficult art of the sonnet, had steadily increased. George H. Boker wrote to her: "In your ability to make the sonnet all it should be you surpass all your living, tuneful sisterhood." Certainly after the death of Mrs. Browning no woman writing English verse could be named as Mrs. Moulton's possible rival in the sonnet save Christina Rossetti, and no woman in America, if indeed any man, could rank with her in this.

In many of Mrs. Moulton's sonnets is found a subtle, elusive suggestion of spiritual things, as if the poet were living between the two worlds of the seen and the unseen, with half-unconscious perceptions, strange and swift, of the unknown. With this spiritual outlook are mingled human love and longing. The existence of any genuine poet must be dual. He holds two kinds of experience, one that has been lived in outward life; the other, not less real, that has been lived intuitively and through the power of entering, by sympathy, into other lives and varied qualities of experience.

Mrs. Moulton's imaginative work, both in her stories and her poems, suggests this truth in a remarkable degree. Her nature presents a sensitive surface to impressions. She has the artist's power of selection from these, and the executive gift to combine, arrange, and present. Thus her spiritual receptivity gives to her work that deep vitality, that sense of soul in it that holds the reader, while her artistic touch moulds her rare and exquisite beauty of finished design.

In 1889 Mrs. Moulton published another volume of collected tales, the last that she made. It was entitled "Miss Eyre from Boston, and Other Stories." Her natural power and grace in fiction made these charming, but it is by her poetry rather than by her prose that she will be remembered. To her verse she gave her whole heart. To her short stories only, so to say, her passing fancy.

On her way north from a visit to her daughter in Charleston, Mrs. Moulton saw Walt Whitman. Little as she could be in sympathy with his chaotic art-notions, she was much impressed by his personality. Her diary records:

"Went with Talcott Williams to see Walt Whitman, a grand,
splendid old man. He sat in the most disorderly room I ever
saw, but he made it a temple for his greatness. He expounded
his theories of verse; he spoke of his work, of his boyhood;
of his infirmities merely by way of excuse for his
difficulty in moving, and he gave me a book. He was
altogether delightful."

From the diary one gets a curiously vivid impression that Mrs. Moulton's work was done in the very midst of interruptions and almost in an atmosphere so markedly social that it might seem to be utterly incompatible with imaginative production. Of course, a large number of those whom she saw most intimately were concerned chiefly with the artistic side of life, and this in a measure explains the anomaly; but the fact remains that she had an extraordinary power of doing really fine work in scraps and intervals of time which would to most writers have seemed completely inadequate.

"Full of interruptions, but managed to get written an
editorial entitled 'A Post Too Late.'"

"Went to Lady Seton's breakfast-party and sat beside Oswald
Crawfurd. In the morning before I went out at all I wrote a
sonnet commencing,

"Have pity on my loneliness, my own!"

"Finished _Herald_ letter. Mr. F.W.H. Myers called. Lunched
at Walter Pater's and met M. Gabriel Sarrazin, the French
critic, who told me that Guy de Maupassant thought the three
disgraces for a French author were to be _décoré_, to belong
to the Academy, and to write for the _Revue des Deux
Mondes_."

"Jan. 1, 1889. Wrote poem, 'At Dawn,' or whatever better
title I can think of. Spent the time from 8 to 2 in
correcting my 13,000 words story."

"Louise Guiney came in to help me look over my poems. We
worked till night, then went to the Cecilia concert to hear
Maida Lang's quartet."

"Such a busy morning! Polished off a rondel to send to the
_Independent_. Read _Herald_ proof; wrote letters. This
afternoon pleasant guests,--Mrs. Ole Bull, Mr. Clifford,
Percival Lowell, and others."

[In New York.] "Went over to Brooklyn and gave a Browning
reading.... Met the Russian Princess Engalitcheff. Lunched
at Mrs. Field's with the Princess and Mr. and Mrs. Locke
Richardson. Went in the evening to the Gilders'."

"Wrote a little.... Mrs. [John T.] Sargent and sweet Nellie
Hutchinson called in the forenoon; and in the afternoon ten
people, including Stedman."

[In London.] "Worked on poems in forenoon. Had a lovely
basket of flowers from dear old Mr. Greenough. Gave a little
dinner at night at the Grand Hotel, to the Oswald Crawfurds,
Sir Bruce Seton, Mrs. Trubner, and Mr. Greenough."

Extracts of this sort might be multiplied, and they explain why it was that amid so much apparent preoccupation with social affairs Mrs. Moulton kept steadily her place as a literary worker. Her genuine and abiding love for letters was the secret of her ability thus to enter with zest into the pleasures of life without losing her power of artistic production.

Among the records of the year 1889 is this touching entry, with the date April 27, at the close of a visit to her mother:

"Poor mother's last words to me were: 'I love you better
than anything in this world. You are my first and last
thought. Believe it, for it is the _truth_.'"

In London this summer Mrs. Moulton was considering a title for a new volume of poems, and had asked advice of William Winter. He chanced to be in England at the time, and wrote at once:

_Mr. Winter to Mrs. Moulton_

No. 13 UPPER PHILLIMORE PLACE,
HIGH STREET, KENSINGTON,
August 14, 1889.

DEAR LOUISE: Your letter has just come. Business affairs
brought me suddenly to town. I will seek to see you as soon
as they can be disposed of, Saturday or Sunday, perhaps.
But I deeply regret your not coming to the "Red Horse." He
might have led us a glorious fairy race. The only one of
your titles that hits my fancy is "Vagrant Moods," and that
is not good enough. Fancy titles are dangerous things. They
generally have been used before. I once made use of the word
"Thistledown," as a title for a collection of my poems, and
too late found it had been used by an American lady, Miss
Boyle, for a similar purpose. And Miss Boyle, or her
attorneys, threatened me with the terrors of the law for
infringement of copyright. I was also told that Miss Boyle's
book had recently passed through my hands; and this was
true, though I had not the least recollection of the book or
its title. In fact, I had never read a line of it, but only
at the request of a friend of hers turned it over to Bayard
Taylor for review. He wrote a notice of it in _The Tribune_.
And here, only lately, I learn from an Australian paper that
my title of "Shakespeare's England," used by me to indicate
the England of poetry, was used twenty-five years ago by a
writer about the active England of Shakespeare's time.
"Poems, by L.C.M." would be safer than any fancy title.
"Awfully hackneyed," I hear. Well, if you have a fancy
title, why not cull out a Shakespearian phrase? "The
Primrose Path," say? Think a little about this. I will think
further. Only look up clear, and so God bless you and good
night.--What a lonely place this with no one to speak to and
no one to hear.