Julia Ward Howe Part 88

CHAPTER XV

"MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY OF THE COMING OF THE LORD"

1908-1910; _aet._ 89-91

I have made a voyage upon a golden river, 'Neath clouds of opal and of amethyst.

Along its banks bright shapes were moving ever, And threatening shadows melted into mist.

The eye, unpractised, sometimes lost the current, When some wild rapid of the tide did whirl, While yet a master hand beyond the torrent Freed my frail shallop from the perilous swirl.

Music went with me, fairy flute and viol, The utterance of fancies half expressed, And with these, steadfast, beyond pause or trial, The deep, majestic throb of Nature's breast.

My journey nears its close--in some still haven My bark shall find its anchorage of rest, When the kind hand, which ever good has given, Opening with wider grace, shall give the best.

J. W. H.

The grandchildren were her chief playmates when Maud was in Europe. To them, the grave tone of the Journal, the tale of her public work, is almost unbelievable, recalling, as they do, the household life, so warm, so rich, so intimate, it seemed enough in itself to fill the cup to overflowing. She had said of herself that in social activities she "bled at every pore": but in these later years it was light and warmth that she shed around her, kindling whatever she touched. At her fire, as at Uncle Sam's, we warmed our hands and our hearts. When she entered a room, all faces lighted up, as if she carried a lamp in her hand.

Day in, day out, she was the _Guter Camerad_. The desire _not to irritate_ had become so much a second nature that she was the easiest person in the world to live with. If the domestic calm were disturbed, "_Don't say anything!_" was her word. "_Wait a little!_"

She might wake with the deep depression so often mentioned in the Journal. Pausing at her door to listen, one might hear a deep sigh, a plaintive e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n; but all this was put out of sight before she left her room, and she came down, as one of the grandchildren put it, "bubbling like a silver tea-kettle."

Then came the daily festival of breakfast, never to be hurried or "scamped." The talk, the letters, some of which we might read to her, together with the newspaper. We see her pressing some tidbit on a child, watching intently the eating of it, then, as the last mouthful disappeared, exclaiming with tragic emphasis, "_I wanted it!_" Then, at the startled face, would come peals of laughter; she would throw herself back in her chair, cover her face with her hands, and tap the floor with her feet.

"Look at her!" cried Maud. "_Rippling with sin!_"

How she loved to laugh!

"One day," says a granddaughter, "the house was overflowing with guests, and she asked me to take my nap on her sofa, while she took hers on the bed. We both lay down in peace and tranquillity, but after a while, when she thought I was asleep, I heard her laughing, until she almost wept.

Presently she fell asleep, and slept her usual twenty minutes, to wake in the same gales of mirth. She laughed until the bed shook, but softly, trying to choke her laughter, lest I should wake.

"'What is it about?' I asked. 'What is so wonderful and funny?'

"'Oh, my dear,' she said, breaking again into laughter, 'it is nothing!

It is the most ridiculous thing! I was only trying to translate "fiddle-de-dee" into Greek!'"

This was in her ninety-second year.

But we are still at the breakfast table. Sometimes there were guests at breakfast, a famous actor, a travelling scholar, caught between other engagements for this one leisure hour.

It was a good deal, perhaps, to ask people to leave a warm hotel on a January morning; but it was warm enough by the soft-coal blaze of the dining-room fire. Over the coffee and rolls, sausages and buckwheat cakes, leisure reigned supreme; not the poet's "retired leisure," but a friendly and laughter-loving deity. Everybody was full of engagements, harried with work, pursued by business and pleasure: no matter! the talk ranged high and far, and the morning was half gone before they separated.

Soon after breakfast came the game of ball, played _a deux_ with daughter or grandchild; the ball was tossed back and forth, the players counting meanwhile up to ten in various languages. She delighted in adding to her vocabulary of numerals, and it was a good day when she mastered those of the Kutch-Kutch Esquimaux.

Then came the walk, gallantly taken in every weather save the very worst. She battled with the west wind, getting the matter over as quickly as might be. "_It is for my life!_" she would say. But on quiet, sunny days she loved to linger along Commonwealth Avenue, watching the parade of babies and little children, stopping to admire this one or chat with that.

This function accomplished, she went straight to her desk, and "P. T."

reigned till noon. It was a less rigorous "P. T." than that of our childhood. She could break off in a moment now, give herself entirely, joyously, to the question of dinner for the expected guest, of dress for the afternoon reception, then drop back into Aristotle or aeschylus with a happy sigh. It was less easy to break off when she was writing; we might be begged for "half a moment," as if our time were fully as precious as her own; but there was none of the distress that interruption brought in earlier years. Perhaps she took her writing less seriously. She often said, "Oh, my dear, I am beginning to realize at last that I shall never write my book now, my Magnum Opus, that was to be so great!"

She practised her scales faithfully every day, through the later years.

Then she would play s.n.a.t.c.hes of forgotten operas, and the granddaughter would hear her--if she thought no one was near--singing the brilliant _arias_ in "a sweet thread of a voice."

After her practising, if she were alone, she would sit at the window and play her Twilight Game: counting the "pa.s.sing," one for a biped, two for a quadruped, ten for a white horse, and so on.

In the evening, before the "Victor" concert, came the reading aloud: this was one of her great pleasures. No history or philosophy for the evening reading; she must have a novel (not a "problem novel"; these she detested!)--a good stirring tale, with plenty of action in it. She thrilled over "With Fire and Sword," "Kim," "The Master of Ballantrae."

She could not bear to hear of financial anxieties or of physical suffering. "It gives me a pain in my knee!"

We see her now, sitting a little forward in her straight-backed chair, holding the hand of the reading granddaughter, alert and tense. When a catastrophe appears imminent, "Stop a minute!" she cries. "I cannot bear it!"--and the reader must pause while she gathers courage to face disaster with the hero, or dash with him through peril to safety.

She would almost be sorry when the doorbell announced a visitor; almost, not quite, for flesh and blood were better than fiction. If the caller were a familiar friend, how her face lighted up!

"Oh! now we can have whist!"

The table is brought out, the mother-of-pearl counters (a Cutler relic: we remember that Mr. Ward did not allow cards in his house!), and the order for the rest of the evening is "A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigor of the game!"--

It was a happy day when, as chanced once or twice, Mr. Ernest Sch.e.l.ling, coming on from New York to play with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, offered to come and play to her, "all by herself, whatever she wanted, and for as long as she liked." She never forgot this pleasure, nor the warm kindness of the giver.

One day Mr. Abel Lefranc, the French lecturer of the year at Harvard, came to lunch with her. He apologized for only being able to stay for the luncheon hour, owing to a press of engagements and work that had grown overpowering. He stayed for two hours and a half after luncheon was over, and during all that time the flow of poignant, brilliant talk, _a deux_, held the third in the little company absorbed. She was entirely at home in French, and the Frenchman talked over the problems of his country as if to a compatriot.

A few days afterwards a Baptist minister from Texas, a powerfully built and handsome man, came to wait on her. He also stayed two hours: and we heard his "Amen!" and "Bless the Lord for that!" and her gentler "Bless the Lord, indeed, my brother!" as their voices, fervent and grave, mingled in talk.

She never tried to be interested in people. She _was_ interested, with every fibre of her being. Little household doings: the economies and efforts of brave young people, she thrilled to them all. Indeed, all _human facts_ roused in her the same absorbed and reverent interest.

These are Boston memories, but those of Oak Glen are no less tender and vivid. There, too, the meals were festivals, the midday dinner being now the chief one, with its following hour on the piazza; "Grandmother" in her hooded chair, with her cross-st.i.tch embroidery or "hooked" rug, daughters and grandchildren gathered round her. Horace and Xenophon were on the little table beside her, but they must wait till she had mixed and enjoyed her "social salad."

At Oak Glen, too, she had her novel and her whist, bezique or dominoes, as the family was larger or smaller. She never stooped to solitaire; a game must be an affair of companions.h.i.+p, of the "social tie" in defence of which "Bro' Sam," in his youth, had professed himself ready to die.

Instead of the "Victor" concert, she now made music herself, playing four-hand pieces with Florence, the "music daughter," trained in childhood by Otto Dresel. This was another great pleasure. (Did any one, we wonder, ever _enjoy_ pleasures as she did?) These duets were for the afternoon; she almost never used her eyes in the evening. They were perfectly good, strong eyes; in the latter years she rarely used gla.s.ses; but the habit dated back to the early fifties, and might not be shaken.

We see her, therefore, in the summer afternoons, sitting at the piano with Florence, playing, "Galatea, dry thy tears!" "Handel's old tie-wig music," as she called his operas. Or, if her son were there, she would play accompaniments from the "Messiah" or "Elijah"; rippling through the difficult music, transposing it, if necessary to suit the singer's voice, with ease and accuracy. Musicians said that she was the ideal accompanist, never a.s.serting herself, but giving perfect sympathy and support to the singer.

We return to the Journal.

"_January, 1908._ I had prayed the dear Father to give me this one more poem, a verse for this year's Decoration Day, asked for by Amos Wells, of Christian Endeavor belonging. I took my pen and the poem came quite spontaneously. It seemed an answer to my prayer, but I hold fast the thought that the great Christ asked _no sign_ from G.o.d and needed none, so deeply did he enter into life divine. I also thought, regarding Christ and Moses, that we must be content that a certain mystery should envelop these heroic figures of human history. Our small measuring tape or rod is not for them. If they were not exactly in fact what we take them to be, let us deeply reverence the human mind which has conceived and built up such splendid and immortal ideals. Was not Christ thinking of something like this when he made the sin against the Holy Ghost and its manifestations the only unpardonable error? He surely did not mean to say that it was beyond the repentance which is the earnest of forgiveness to every sin."

A day or two after this she met at luncheon "a young Reverend Mr.

Fitch.... He is earnest and clear-minded, and should do much good. I spoke of the cup [of life], but advised him to use the spoon for stirring up his congregation."

She was asked for a "long and exhaustive paper on Marion Crawford in about a week. I wrote, saying that I could furnish an interesting paper on the elder and younger Crawford, but without any literary estimate of Marion's work, saying that family praise was too much akin to self-praise; also the time allotted much too short."

One night she woke "suddenly and something seemed to say, 'They are on the right tack now.' This microscopic and detailed study of the causes of evil on society will be much forwarded by the direct agency of women.

They too will supply that inexhaustible element of hopefulness, without which reforms are a mere working back and forth of machinery. These two things will overcome the evil of the world by prevention first, and then by the optimistic antic.i.p.ation of good. This is a great work given to Woman now to do. Then I caught at various couplets of a possible millennial poem, but feared I should not write it. Have scrawled these on a large pad. This line kept coming back to me, 'Living, not dying, Christ redeemed mankind.'... This my first day at my desk since Sat.u.r.day, March 28. I may try some prose about the present patient a.n.a.lysis of the evil of society, the patient intelligent women a.s.sociated in all this work. To reclaim waste earth is a glory. Why not a greater to reclaim the moral wastes of humanity?"

This midnight vision impressed her deeply, and through the succeeding days she wrote it out in full, bit by bit. On the envelope containing it is written, "An account of my vision of the world regenerated by the combined labor and love of Men and Women." In it she saw "men and women of every clime working like bees to unwrap the evils of society and to discover the whole web of vice and misery and to apply the remedies, and also to find the influences that should best counteract the evil and its attendant suffering.

"There seemed to be a new, a wondrous, ever-permeating light, the glory of which I cannot attempt to put into human words--the light of the newborn hope and sympathy--blazing. The source of this light was born of human endeavor...."

She saw "the men and the women, standing side by side, shoulder to shoulder, a common lofty and indomitable purpose lighting every face with a glory not of this earth. All were advancing with one end in view, one foe to trample, one everlasting goal to gain....