Julia Ward Howe - Richards Laura E. - Страница 146
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"October 25. Wrote to a very bumptious child, thirteen years old, who proffers me her friendship and correspondence, claiming to have written poems and magazine contributions praised by 'noted authors.' I sent her back her letter, with three or four corrections and a little advice, kindly meant, but which may not be so taken.... She will probably turn and rend me, but I really felt it might do her good."
"November 14. Gardiner. A good meditation. The sense of God in the universe seems to be an attribute of normal humanity. We cannot think of our own personal identity without at the same time imagining a greater self from which we derive. This idea may be crude and barbarous, great minds have done much to make it otherwise; Christ most of all with His doctrine of divine love, providence, and forgiveness. The idea of a life beyond this one seems also to appertain to normal humanity. We had best accept this great endowment which philosophy seeks to analyze much as a boy will take a watch to pieces, but cannot put it together again so that it will work."
"November 15. Another long sitting and meditation. What have individual philosophers done for religion? As I recall what I could learn of the Kantian philosophy, I think that it principally taught the limitations of human knowledge, correcting thereby the assumptions of systems of thought and belief to absolute authority over the thinker and believer. He calls conscience 'the categorical imperative'; but that term in no wise explains either the origin or authority of the moral law. His rule of testing the rectitude of the act by the way in which, if it were made universal, it would affect the well-being of society, is useful, but simply pragmatic, not in William James's sense. The German idealism, the theory by which we evolve or create all that occupies our senses and our mind, appears to me a monstrous expanse of egotism. No doubt, dialectics serve as mental athletics, and speculative thought may be useful as an exercise of the mental powers; but processes which may be useful in this way might be very unfit to be held as permanent possessions of persuasion. It occurs to me that it might be more blessed to help the souls in hell than to luxuriate with saints in heaven."
"November 20. Boston. Began my screed on the 'Joys of Motherhood' for the 'Delineator.' Wrote currente calamo...."
"November 23. Rather an off day. Found T. W. Higginson's little volume of verses, presented to me on my seventieth birthday, and read a good deal in it. When the Colonel gave it to me, he read a little poem, 'Sixty and Six,' very charmingly. Seems to me that I ought to have read this little book through long before this time. One of the sweetest poems in it is about the blue-eyed baby that they lost after some six weeks' happy possession. I sent a pretty little baby wreath for it, feeling very sorry for them both."
"November 28. Much troubled about my Whittier poem."
"December 3. Thanks be to God! I have written my Whittier rhyme. It has cost me much labor, for I have felt that I could not treat a memory so reverend with cheap and easy verses. I have tried to take his measure, and to present a picture of him which shall deserve to live."[150]
Mr. and Mrs. Cobden-Sanderson, the English suffragists, were in Boston this winter. They dined with her, and proved "very agreeable. Mrs. Sanderson's visit ought to help suffrage mightily, she is in such dead earnest for it. After dinner I proposed that each one should name his favorite Browning poem. I named 'Pippa,' Mrs. Sanderson 'Paracelsus,' Mr. S., 'The Grammarian's Funeral,' etc., etc. The talk was so good that we could not stop it to hear the Victor, which I regretted."
Another delightful dinner of this winter was one given in her honor by her niece, Mrs. Richard Aldrich (Margaret Chanler), in New York. Among the guests were Kneisel, the violinist, and Schelling, the pianist. Mrs. Aldrich demanded "Flibbertigibbet," and our mother played and recited it in such a manner that the two musicians were inspired to play, as the people in the story were to dance. Kneisel flew home for his violin, Schelling sat down at the piano, and the two played Bach for her and to her delight.
"The occasion was memorable!" she says.
Returning from New York, she was able to attend the Whittier Centennial at Haverhill.
"December 17. ... Sanborn came to take me.... I have been praying to be well for this occasion, my last public engagement for some weeks. I am thankful to have been able, at my advanced age, to read this poem at the Whittier Celebration and to be assured by one present that I had never been in better voice, and by others that I was generally heard without difficulty by the large audience."
"December 31. Oh, blessed year 1907! It has been granted me to write four poems for public occasions, all of which have proved acceptable; also three fatiguing magazine articles, which have for the time bettered my finances. I have lived in peace and goodwill with all men, and in great contentment with my own family, to which this year added a promising little great-grandson, taking away, alas! my dear son-in-law, David Prescott Hall. I found a very competent and friendly young musician who has taken down nearly all my songs.... A word was given me to speak, namely, 'Thanks for the blessed, wonderful year just past.'"
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.
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