Reminiscences, 1819-1899 Part 8

Soon after reaching London for the second time, we were invited to visit Dr. and Mrs. Fowler at Salisbury. The doctor was much interested in anthropology and kindred topics, and my husband found in him a congenial friend. The house was a modest one, but the housekeeping was generous and tasteful. As Salisbury was a cathedral town, the prominent people of the place naturally belonged to the Anglican Church. At the Fowlers'

hospitable board we met the bishop, the dean, the rector, and the curate.

I attended several services in the beautiful cathedral, and enjoyed very much a visit to Stonehenge, which we made in company with our hosts, in a carriage drawn by two small mules. I inquired why they used mules in preference to horses, and was told that it was to avoid the tax imposed upon the latter. Stonehenge was in the district of Old Sarum, once a rotten borough, as certain places in England were termed which, with little or no population, had yet the right to be represented in Parliament. Dr. Fowler was familiar with the ancient history of the place, which, as we saw it, contained nothing but an area of desolate sand. The wonderful Druidical stones of Stonehenge commanded our attention. They are too well known to need description. Our host could throw no light upon their history, which belongs, one must suppose, with that of kindred constructions in Brittany.

Bishop Denison, at the time of our visit, was still saddened by the loss of a beloved wife. He invited us to a dinner at which his sister, Miss Denison, presided. The dean and his wife were present, the Fowlers, and one or two other guests. To my surprise, the bishop gave me his arm and conducted me to the table, where he seated me on his right. Mrs. Fowler afterwards remarked to me, "How charming it was of the bishop to take you in to dinner. As an American you have no rank, and are therefore exempt from all questions of precedence."

Mrs. Fowler once described to me an intimate little dinner with the poet Rogers, for which he had promised to provide just enough, and no more.

Each dish exactly matched the three convives. Half of a chicken sufficed for the roast. As his usual style of entertainment was very elegant, he probably derived some amus.e.m.e.nt from this unnecessary economy.

We left Salisbury with regret, Dr. Fowler giving Dr. Howe a parting injunction to visit Rotherhithe workhouse, where he himself had seen an old woman who was blind, deaf, and crippled. My husband made this visit, and wrote an account of it to Dr. Fowler.[2] He read this to me before sending it. In the mischief of which I was then full to overflowing, I wrote a humorous travesty of Dr. Howe's letter in rhyme, but when I showed it to him, I was grieved to see how much he seemed pained at my frivolity.

[Footnote 2: This old woman was one of a number of trebly-afflicted persons--deaf, dumb, and blind--whom Dr. Howe found time to visit on this wedding trip, beginning their instruction himself in some cases, and interesting persons in the neighborhood in carrying it on. In his report of the Inst.i.tution for the Blind, written after his return from Europe in 1844, he gives an account of these cases, closing with an eloquent appeal in behalf of these neglected and suffering members of the human family.

"And here the question will recur to you (for I doubt not it has occurred a dozen times already), Can nothing be done to disinter this human soul? It is late, but perhaps not too late. The whole neighborhood would rush to save this woman if she were buried alive by the caving in of a pit, and labor with zeal until she were dug out. Now if there were one who had as much patience as zeal, and who, having carefully observed how a little child learns language, would attempt to lead her gently through the same course, he might possibly awaken her to a consciousness of her immortal nature. The chance is small indeed; but with a smaller chance they would have dug desperately for her in the pit; and is the life of the soul of less import than that of the body?

"It is to be feared that there are many others whose cases are not known out of their own families, who are regarded as beyond the reach of help, and who are therefore left in their awful desolation.

"This ought not to be, either for the good of the sufferers, or of those about them. It is hardly possible to conceive a case in which some improvement could not be effected by patient perseverance; and the effort ought to be made in every one of them.

"The sight of any being, in human shape, left to brutish ignorance, is always demoralizing to the beholders. There floats not upon the stream of life any wreck of humanity so utterly shattered and crippled that its signals of distress should not challenge attention and command a.s.sistance."]

Dear Sir, I went south As far as Portsmouth, And found a most charming old woman, Delightfully void Of all that's enjoyed By the animal vaguely called human.

She has but one jaw, Has teeth like a saw, Her ears and her eyes I delight in: The one could not hear Tho' a cannon were near, The others are holes with no sight in.

Her cinciput lies Just over her eyes, Not far from the bone parietal; The crown of her head, Be it vulgarly said, Is shaped like the back of a beetle.

Destructiveness great Combines with conceit In the form of this wonderful noddle, But benev'lence, you know, And a large _philopro_ Give a great inclination to coddle.

And so on.

CHAPTER VIII

FIRST YEARS IN BOSTON

In the autumn of 1844 we returned from our wedding journey, and took up our abode in the near neighborhood of the city of Boston, of which at intervals I had already enjoyed some glimpses. These had shown me Margaret Fuller, holding high communion with her friends in her well-remembered conversations; Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was then breaking ground in the field of his subsequent great reputation; and many another who has since been widely heard of. I count it as one of my privileges to have listened to a single sermon from Dr. Channing, with whom I had some personal acquaintance. I can remember only a few pa.s.sages. Its theme must have been the divine love; for Dr. Channing said that G.o.d loved black men as well as white men, poor men as well as rich men, and bad men as well as good men. This doctrine was quite new to me, but I received it gladly.

The time was one in which the Boston community, small as it then was, exhibited great differences of opinion, especially regarding the new transcendentalism and the anti-slavery agitation, which were both held much in question by the public at large. While George Ripley, moved by a fresh interpretation of religious duty, was endeavoring to inst.i.tute a phalanstery at Brook Farm, the caricatures of Christopher Cranch gave great amus.e.m.e.nt to those who were privileged to see them. One of these represented Margaret Fuller driving a winged team attached to a chariot on which was inscribed the name of her new periodical, "The Dial," while the Rev. Andrews Norton regarded her with holy horror. Another ill.u.s.trated a pa.s.sage from Mr. Emerson's essay on Nature--"I play upon myself. I am my own music"--by depicting an individual with a nose of preternatural length, pierced with holes like a flageolet, upon which his fingers sought the intervals. Yet Mr. Cranch belonged by taste and persuasion among the transcendentalists.

As my earliest relations in Boston were with its recognized society, I naturally gave some heed to the views therein held regarding the transcendental people. What I liked least in these last, when I met them, was a sort of jargon which characterized their speech. I had been taught to speak plain and careful English, and though always a student of foreign languages, I had never thought fit to mix their idioms with those of my native tongue. Apropos of this, I remember that the poet Fitz-Greene Halleck once said to me of Margaret Fuller, "That young lady does not speak the same language that I do,--I cannot understand her."

Mr. Emerson's English was as new to me as that of any of his contemporaries; but in his case I soon felt that the thought was as novel as the language, and that both marked an epoch in literary history. The grandiloquence which was common at that time now appears to me to have been the natural expression of an exhilaration of mind which carried the speaker or writer beyond the bounds of commonplace speech.

The intellect of the time had outgrown the limits of Puritan belief. The narrow literalism, the material and positive view of matters highly spiritual, abstract, and indeterminate, which had been handed down from previous generations, had become irreligious to the foremost minds of that day. They had no choice but to enter the arena as champions of the new interpretation of life which the cause of truth imperatively demanded.

I speak now of the transcendental movement as I had opportunity to observe it in Boston. Let us not ignore the fact that it was a world movement. The name seems to have been borrowed from the German phraseology, in which the philosophy of Kant was termed "the transcendental philosophy." More than this, the breath which kindled among us this new flame of hope and aspiration came from the same source. For this was the period of Germany's true glory. Her intellectual radiance outshone and outlived the military meteor which for a brief moment obscured all else to human vision. The great vitality of the German nation, the indefatigable research of its learned men, its wholesome balance of sense and spirit, all made themselves widely felt, and infused fresh blood into veins impoverished by ascetic views of life. Its philosophers were apostles of freedom, its poets sang the joy of living, not the bitterness of sin and death.

These good things were brought to us piecemeal, by translations, by disciples. Dr. Hedge published an English rendering of some of the masterpieces of German prose. Longfellow gave us lovely versions of many poets. John S. Dwight produced his ever precious volume of translations of the minor poems of Goethe and Schiller. Margaret Fuller translated Eckermann's "Conversations with Goethe." Carlyle wrote his wonderful essays, inspired by the new thought, and adding to it daring novelty of his own. The whole is matter of history now, quite beyond the domain of personal reminiscence.

I have spoken of the transcendentalists and the abolitionists as if they had been quite distinct bodies of believers. Reflecting more deeply, I feel that both were features of the new movement. In the transcendentalists the enthusiasm of emanc.i.p.ated thought was paramount, while the abolitionists followed the vision of emanc.i.p.ated humanity. The lightning flash which illuminated the heaven of the poets and philosophers fell also on the fetters of the slave, and showed them to the thinking world as a disgrace no longer to be tolerated by civilized peoples.

I recall my first years of life in Boston as nearly touched by the sense of the unresolved discords which existed in its society. My husband was much concerned in some of the changes of front which took place at this time. An ardent friend both of Horace Mann and of Charles Sumner, he shared the educational views of the first and the political convictions of the second. In the year 1845, having been elected to serve on the Boston School Board, Dr. Howe inst.i.tuted so drastic a research into the condition of the public schools as to draw upon himself much animadversion and some ill-will. Horace Mann, on the other hand, characterized this work as "one which only Sam Howe or an angel could have done."

Dr. Howe and Mr. Mann, during their travels in Europe, had become much interested in the system of training, new at that time, by which deaf-mutes were enabled to use vocal speech, and to read on the lips the words of those who addressed them. Soon after his return from Europe, Mr. Mann published a report in which he dwelt much on the great benefit of this new departure in the education of deaf-mutes, and advocated the introduction of the system into our own schools. Dr. Howe expressed the same views, and the two gentlemen were held up to the public as disturbers of its peace. My husband disapproved of the use of signs, which, up to that time, had figured largely in the instruction of American deaf-mutes, and in their intercourse with each other. He felt that the use of language was an important condition of definite thought, and hailed the new powers conferred by the European system as a liberation of its pupils from the greatest of their disabilities, the privation of direct intercourse with their fellow creatures. His advice, privately sought and given, induced a number of parents to undertake themselves the education of their deaf children, or, at least, to have that education conducted at home, and under their own supervision. In after years such parents and children were forward in expressing their grat.i.tude for the advice given and followed. The Horace Mann school in Boston, and the Clarke school in Northampton, attest the perseverance of the advocates of the new method of instruction, and their ultimate success.

I had formerly seen Boston as a petted visitor from another city would be apt to see it. I had found it altogether hospitable, and rather eager to entertain a novelty. It was another matter to see it with its consideration cap on, pondering whether to like or mislike a new claimant to its citizens.h.i.+p. I had known what we may term the Boston of the Forty, if New York may be called the city of the Four Hundred. I was now to make acquaintance with quite another city,--with the Boston of the teachers, of the reformers, of the cranks, and also--of the apostles. Wondering and floundering among these new surroundings, I was often at a loss to determine what I should follow, what relinquish. I endeavored to enter reasonably into the functions and amus.e.m.e.nts of general society, and at the same time to profit by the new resources of intellectual life which opened out before me. One offense against fas.h.i.+on I would commit: I would go to hear Theodore Parker preach. My society friends shook their heads.

"What is Julia Howe trying to find at Parker's meeting?" asked one of these one day in my presence.

"Atheism," replied the lady thus addressed.

I said, "Not atheism, but a theism."

The change had already been great, from my position as a family idol and "the superior young lady" of an admiring circle to that of a wife overshadowed for the time by the splendor of her husband's reputation.

This I had accepted willingly. But the change from my life of easy circ.u.mstances and brilliant surroundings to that of the mistress of a suite of rooms in the Inst.i.tution for the Blind at South Boston was much greater. The building was two miles distant from the city proper, the only public conveyance being an omnibus which ran but once in two hours.

My friends were residents of Boston, or of places still more remote from my dwelling-place, and South Boston was then, as it has continued to be, a distinctly unfas.h.i.+onable suburb. My husband did not desire that I should undertake any work in connection with the Inst.i.tution under his charge. I found its teachers pleasant neighbors, and was glad to have Laura Bridgman continue to be a member of the household.

Dr. Howe had a great fancy for a piece of property which lay very near the Inst.i.tution. In due time he purchased it. We found an ancient cottage on the place, and made it habitable by the addition of one or two rooms. Our new domain comprised several acres of land, and my husband took great pleasure in laying out an extensive fruit and flower garden, and in building a fine hothouse. We removed to this abode on a lovely summer day; and as I entered the grounds I involuntarily exclaimed, "This is green peace!" Somehow, the nickname, jocosely given, remained in use. The estate still stands on legal records as "The Green Peace Estate." Friends would sometimes ask us, "How are you getting on at Green Beans--is that the name?" My husband was so much attached to this place that when, after a residence of many years in the city, he returned thither to spend the last years of his life, he spoke of it as "Paradise Regained."

It partly amuses, and partly saddens me to recall, at this advanced period of my life, the altogether mistaken views which I once held regarding certain sets of people in Boston, of whom I really knew little or nothing. The veil of prejudgment through which I saw them was not, indeed, of my own weaving, but I was content to dislike them at a distance, until circ.u.mstances compelled a nearer and a truer view.

I had supposed the abolitionists to be men and women of rather coa.r.s.e fibre, abounding in cheap and easy denunciation, and seeking to lay rash hands on the complex machinery of government and of society. My husband, who largely shared their opinions, had no great sympathy with some of their methods. Theodore Parker held them in great esteem, and it was through him that one of my strongest imaginary dislikes vanished as though it had never been. The object of this dislike was William Lloyd Garrison, whom I had never seen, but of whose malignity of disposition I entertained not the smallest doubt.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HOME AT SOUTH BOSTON

_From a painting in the possession of M. Anagnos._]

It happened that I met him at one of Parker's Sunday evenings at home. I soon felt that this was not the man for whom I had cherished so great a distaste. Gentle and una.s.suming in manner, with a pleasant voice, a benevolent countenance, and a sort of glory of sincerity in his ways and words, I could only wonder at the falsehoods that I had heard and believed concerning him.

The Parkers had then recently received the gift of a piano from members of their congregation. A friend began to play hymn tunes upon it, and those of us who could sing gathered in little groups to read from the few hymn-books which were within reach. Dr. Howe presently looked up and saw me singing from the same book with Mr. Garrison. He told me afterward that few things in the course of his life had surprised him more. From this time forth the imaginary Garrison ceased to exist for me. I learned to respect and honor the real one more and more, though as yet little foreseeing how glad I should be one day to work with and under him. The persons most frequently named as prominent abolitionists, in connection with Mr. Garrison, were Maria Weston Chapman and Wendell Phillips.

Mrs. Chapman presided with much energy and grace over the anti-slavery bazaars which were held annually in Boston through a long s.p.a.ce of years. For this labor of love she was somewhat decried, and the _sobriquet_ of "Captain Chapman" was given her in derision. She was handsome and rather commanding in person, endowed also with an excellent taste in dress. I cannot remember that she ever spoke in public, but her presence often adorned the platform at anti-slavery meetings. She was the editor of the "Liberty Bell," and was a valued friend and ally of Wendell Phillips.

Of Mr. Phillips I must say that I at first regarded him through the same veil of prejudice which had caused me so greatly to misconceive the character of Mr. Garrison. I was a little softened by hearing that at one of the bazaars he had purchased a copy of my first volume of poems, with the remark, "She doesn't like me, but I like her poetry." This naturally led me to suppose that he must have some redeeming traits of character. I had not then heard him speak, and I did not wish to hear him; but I met him, also, at one of the Parker Sunday evenings, and, after a pleasant episode of conversation, I found myself constrained to take him out of my chamber of dislikes.

Mr. Phillips was ent.i.tled, by birth and education, to an unquestioned position in Boston society. His family name was of the best. He was a graduate both of Harvard College and of its Law School. No ungentlemanly act had ever tarnished his fame. His offense was that, at a critical moment, he had espoused an unpopular cause,--one which was destined, in less than a score of years, so to divide the feeling of our community as to threaten the very continuance of our national life. Oh, to have been in Faneuil Hall on that memorable day when the pentecostal flame first visited him; when he leaped to the platform, all untrained for such an encounter, and his eloquent soul uttered itself in protest against a low and sordid acquiescence in the claims of oppression and tyranny! In that hour he was sealed as an apostle of the higher law, to whose advocacy he sacrificed his professional and social interests. The low-browed, chain-bound slave had now the best orator in America to plead his cause.

It was the beginning of the end. Mr. Phillips, without doubt, sometimes used intemperate language. I myself have at times dissented quite sharply from some of his statements. Nevertheless, a man who rendered such great service to the community as he did has a right to be judged by his best, not by his least meritorious performance. He was for years an unwelcome prophet of evil to come. Society at large took little heed of his warning; but when the evil days did come, he became a counselor "good at need."

I recall now a scene in Tremont Temple just before the breaking out of our civil war. An anti-slavery meeting had been announced, and a scheme had been devised to break it up. As I entered I met Mrs. Chapman, who said, "These are times in which anti-slavery people must stand by each other." On the platform were seated a number of the prominent abolitionists. Mr. Phillips was to be the second speaker, but when he stepped forward to address the meeting a perfect hubbub arose in the gallery. Shrieks, howls, and catcalls resounded. Again and again the great orator essayed to speak. Again and again his voice was drowned by the general uproar. I sat near enough to hear him say, with a smile, "Those boys in the gallery will soon tire themselves out." And so, indeed, it befell. After a delay which appeared to some of us endless, the noise subsided, and Wendell Phillips, still in the glory of his strength and manly beauty, stood up before the house, and soon held all present spellbound by the magic of his speech. The clear silver ring of his voice carried conviction with it. From head to foot, he seemed aflame with the pa.s.sion of his convictions. He used the simplest English, and spoke with such distinctness that his lowest tones, almost a whisper, could be heard throughout the large hall. Yerrinton, the only man who could report Wendell Phillips's speeches, once told my husband that it was like reporting chain lightning.

On the occasion of which I speak, the unruly element was quieted once for all, and the further proceedings of the meeting suffered no interruption. The mob, however, did not at once abandon its intention of doing violence to the great advocate. Soon after the time just mentioned Dr. Howe attended an evening meeting, at the close of which a crowd of rough men gathered outside the public entrance, waiting for Phillips to appear, with ugly threats of the treatment which he should receive at their hands. The doors presently opened, and Phillips came forth, walking calmly between Mrs. Chapman and Lydia Maria Child. Not a hand was raised, not a threat was uttered. The crowd gave way in silence, and the two brave women parted from Phillips at the door of his own house.

My husband spoke of this as one of the most impressive sights that he had ever witnessed. His report of it moved me to send word to Mr.

Phillips that, in case of any recurrence of such a disturbance, I should be proud to join his body-guard.

Mr. Phillips was one of the early advocates of woman suffrage. I remember that I was sitting in Theodore Parker's reception room conversing with him when Wendell Phillips, quite glowing with enthusiasm, came in to report regarding the then recent woman's rights convention at Worcester. Of the doings there he spoke in warm eulogy. He complained that Horace Mann had written a non-committal letter, in reply to the invitation sent him to take part in the convention. Ralph Waldo Emerson, he said, had excused himself from attendance on the ground that he was occupied in writing a life of Margaret Fuller, which, he hoped, would be considered as a service in the line of the objects of the meeting.

This convention was held in October of the year 1850, before the claims of women to political efficiency had begun to occupy the attention and divide the feeling of the American public. When, after the close of the civil war, the question was again brought forward, with a new zeal and determination, Mr. Phillips gave it the great support of his eloquence, and continued through a long course of years to be one of its most earnest advocates.