Julia Ward Howe Part 3

This was scarcely cheering for Henry, aged ten; as a matter of fact, he was to have half a century in which to make his preparations.

Some of the nursery recollections were the reverse of merry. When Julia was still a little child, the old housekeeper died. The children loved her, and Auntie Francis did not wish them to be saddened by the funeral preparations; she gave them a good dose of physic all round and put them to bed for the day.

Julia was a beautiful child, but she had red hair, which was then considered a sad drawback. She could remember visitors condoling with her mother on this misfortune, and the gentle lady deploring it also, and striving by the use of washes and leaden combs to darken the over-bright locks. Still, some impression of good looks must have reached the child's mind; for one day, desiring to know what she really was like, she scrambled up on a chair, then on a dressing-table, and took a good look in the mirror.

"_Is that all?_" she cried, and scrambled down again, a sadly disappointed child.

Her first lessons were from governesses and masters; when she was nine years old, she was sent to a private school in the neighborhood. She was placed in a cla.s.s with older girls, and learned by heart many pages of Paley's "Moral Philosophy"; memorizing from textbooks formed in those days a great part of the school curriculum. She did not care especially for Paley, and found chemistry (without experiments!) and geometry far more interesting; but history and languages were the studies she loved.

She had learned in the nursery to speak French fluently; she soon began the study of Latin. Hearing a cla.s.s reciting an Italian lesson, she was enchanted with the musical sound of the language; listened and marked, day after day, and presently handed to the amazed princ.i.p.al a note correctly written in Italian, begging permission to join the cla.s.s.

At nine years old she was reading "Pilgrim's Progress," and seeking its characters in the people she met every day. She always counted it one of the books which had most influenced her. Another was Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," which she read at seventeen.[9]

[9] In later life she added to these the works of Spinoza, and of Theodore Parker.

She began at an early age to write verse. A ma.n.u.script volume has been preserved in which some of these early poems were copied for her father.

The t.i.tle-page and dedication are here reproduced:--

Poems Dedicated to Samuel Ward esq By His affectionate daughter Julia Ward.

_LET ME BE THINE!_ Regard not with a critic's eye.

New York 1831.

To Samuel Ward.

Beloved father,

Expect not to find in these juvenile productions the delicacy and grace which pervaded the writings of that dear parent who is now in glory. I am indeed conscious of the many faults they contain, but my object in presenting you with these (original) poems, has been to give you a little memorial of my early life, and I entreat you to remember that they were written in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth years of my life.

Your loving daughter JULIA.

The t.i.tles show the trend of the child's thought: "All things shall pa.s.s away"; "We return no more"; "Invitation to Youth" (1831!); "To my dear Mother"; "Mine is the power to make thee whole"; "To an infant's departing spirit"; "Redeeming Love"; "My Heavenly Home," etc., etc.

At Newport, in 1831, she wrote the following:--

MORNING HYMN

Now I see the morning light, s.h.i.+ning bright and gay.

G.o.d has kept me through the night; He will, if He thinks it right, Preserve me through this day.

Let thy holy Spirit send Of heavenly light a ray; Thy face, oh! Lord, I fain would seek, But I am feeble, vain and weak; Oh, guide me in thy way!

Let thy a.s.sistance, Lord, be given, That when life's path I've trod, And when the last frail tie is riven, My spirit may ascend to heaven, To dwell with thee, My G.o.d.

We cannot resist quoting a stanza from the effusion ent.i.tled "Father's Birthday":--

Louisa brings a cus.h.i.+on rare, Anne Eliza a toothpick bright and fair; And O! accept the gift I bring, It is a _daughter's_ offering.

Julia's mind was not destined to remain in the evangelical mould which must have so rejoiced the heart of her father. In 1834, at the ripe age of fifteen, she describes her

"Vain Regrets

written on looking over a diary kept while I was under serious impressions":--

Oh! happy days, gone, never to return At which fond memory will ever burn, Oh, Joyous hours, with peace and gladness blest, When hope and joy dwelt in this careworn breast.

The next poem, "The Land of Peace," breaks off abruptly at the third line, and when she again began to write religious verse, it was from a widely different standpoint.

It may have been about this time that she tried to lead her sisters into the path of poesy.

Coming one day into the nursery, in serious mood, she found the two little girls playing some childish game. Miss Ward (she was always Miss Ward, even in the nursery!) rebuked them for their frivolity; bade them turn their thoughts to graver matters, and write poetry.

Louisa refused point-blank, but little Annie, always anxious to please, went dutifully to work, and produced the following lines:--

He feeds the ravens when they call, And stands them in a pleasant hall.

"Mitter Ward" (to give him his nursery t.i.tle) treasured these tokens of pious and literary promise. He even responded in kind, as is shown by some verses which are endorsed:--

"From my dearest Father.

JULIA EUPHROSYNE WARD [_sic_]."

His letters are full of playful affection. He would fain be father and mother both to the children who were now his all. Under the austere exterior lay a tenderness which perhaps they hardly comprehended at the time. It was in fact this very anguish of solicitude, this pa.s.sionate wish that they should not only have, but be everything desirable and lovely, that made him outwardly so stern. This sterner note impressed itself so deeply upon the minds of his children that the anecdotes familiar to our own generation echo it. We see the little Julia, weary with long riding in the family coach, suffering her knees to drop apart childwise, and we hear Mr. Ward say: "My daughter, if you cannot sit like a lady, we will stop at the next tailor's and have you measured for a pair of pantaloons!"

Or we hear the child at table, remarking innocently that the cheese is strong; and the deep voice replying, "It is no more so than the expression, Miss!"

The family was still at 16 Bond Street, when all the children had whooping-cough severely, and were confined to the house for many weeks.

Mrs. Mailliard writes of this time:--

"I remember the screened-off corner of the dining-room, which was called the Bower, where we each retired when the spasms came on, and the promises which we vainly gave each other each morning to choke rather than cough whilst Uncle Doctor made his visit to the nursery; for the slightest sound from one of us provoked the general order of a dose all round."

It was after this illness that Julia Ward first went to Newport. A change of air was prescribed for the children, and they were packed off to the farmhouse of Jacob Bailey, two or three miles from the town of Newport. Here they spent a happy summer, to be followed by many others.

They slept on mattresses stuffed with ground corncobs; the table was primitive; but there was plenty of cream and curds, eggs and b.u.t.ter, and there was the wonderful air. The children grew fat and hearty, and scampered all over the island with great delight.

(But when they went down to the beach, Julia must wear a thick green worsted veil to preserve her ivory-and-rose complexion.

"Little Julia has another freckle to-day!" a visitor was told. "It was not her fault, the nurse forgot her veil!")

Julia recalled Newport in 1832 as "a forsaken, mildewed place, a sort of intensified Salem, with houses of rich design, no longer richly inhabited." She was to watch through many years the growth of what was always one of the cities of her heart.

But we must return to Bond Street, and take one more look at No. 16. The Wards were soon to leave it for a statelier dwelling, but many a.s.sociations would always cling about the old house. Here it was that the good old grandfather, Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel Ward, used to come from No. 7 to talk business with his son or to play with the children.

Our mother had a vivid recollection of once, when still a little child, sitting down at the piano, placing an open music-book on the rack (though she could not yet read music), and beginning to pound and thump the keys with might and main. The Colonel was sitting by, book in hand, and endured the noise patiently for some time. Finally he said in his courtly way, "Is it so set down in the book, little lady?" "Yes, Grandpapa!" said naughty Julia, and went on banging; the Colonel, who indeed had little music, made no further comment. But when a game of "Tommy-come-tickle-me" was toward, the children must step in to No. 7 to share that excitement with their grandfather, since no cards were permitted under Mr. Ward's roof.

The year of the first Newport visit, 1832, was also the terrible "cholera year." Uncle Ben Cutler, at that time city missionary, writes in his diary:--

"The cholera is in Quebec and Montreal. This city is beginning to be alarmed; Christians are waking up. My soul, how stands the case with thee?"

And later:--