Reminiscences, 1819-1899 Part 13

The voyage had been of small service to our friend Parker, who was a wretched sailor. Arrived in Havana, he was able to go about somewhat with Dr. Howe. He had, however, a longer voyage before him, and my husband and I went with him to the Spanish steamer which was to carry him to Vera Cruz, whence he sailed for Europe, never to return. Our parting was a sad one. Parker embraced us both, probably feeling, as we did, that he might never see us again. I still carry in my mind the picture of his serious face, crowned with gray locks and a soft gray hat, as he looked over the side of the vessel and waved us a last farewell.

The following extract from my "Trip to Cuba" preserves the record of our mutual leave-taking.

"A pleasant row brought us to the side of the steamer. It was dusk already as we ascended her steep gangway, and from that to darkness there is at this season but the interval of a breath. Dusk too were our thoughts at parting from Can Grande, the mighty, the vehement, the great fighter. How were we to miss his deep music, here and at home! With his a.s.sistance we had made a very respectable band; now we were to be only a wandering drum and fife,--the fife particularly shrill and the drum particularly solemn.

"And now came silence and tears and last embraces; we slipped down the gangway into our little craft and, looking up, saw bending above us, between the slouched hat and the silver beard, the eyes that we can never forget, that seemed to drop back in the darkness with the solemnity of a last farewell. We went home, and the drum hung himself gloomily on his peg, and the little fife _shut up_ for the remainder of the evening."

To our hotel in Havana came, one day, a lovely lady, with pathetic dark eyes and a look of ill health. She was accompanied by her husband and little son. This was Mrs. Frank Hampton, formerly Miss Sally Baxter, a great belle in her time, and much admired by Mr. Thackeray. When we were introduced to each other, I asked, "Are you _the_ Mrs. Hampton?" She asked, "Are you _the_ Mrs. Howe?" We became friends at once. The Hamptons went with us to Matanzas, where we pa.s.sed a few pleasant days.

Dr. Howe was very helpful to the beautiful invalid. Something in the expression of her face reminded him of a relative known to him in early life, and on inquiry he found that Mrs. Hampton's father was a distant cousin of his own. Mrs. Hampton talked much of Thackeray, who had been, while in this country, a familiar visitor at her father's house. She told me that she recognized bits of her own conversation in some of the sayings of Ethel Newcome, and I have little doubt that in depicting the beautiful and n.o.ble though wayward girl he had in mind something of the aspect and character of the lovely Sally Baxter. In his correspondence with the family he was sometimes very playful, as when he wrote to Mrs.

Baxter thanking her for the "wickled palnuts and pandy breaches," which she had lately sent him.

When we left Havana our new friends went with us to Charleston, and invited us to visit them at their home in Columbia, S. C. This we were glad to do. The house at which the Hamptons received us belonged to an elder brother, Wade Hampton, whose family were at this time traveling in Europe. Wade Hampton called upon Dr. Howe, and soon introduced a topic which we would gladly have avoided, namely, the strained relations between the North and the South. "We mean to fight for it," said Wade Hampton. But Dr. Howe afterwards said to me: "They cannot be in earnest about meaning to fight. It would be too insane, too fatal to their own interests." So indeed it proved, but they then knew us as little as we knew them. They thought that we could not fight, and we thought that they would not. Both parties were soon made wiser by sad experience.

My account of this trip, after publication in the "Atlantic Monthly,"

was issued in book form by Ticknor and Fields. Years after this time, a friend of mine landed in Cuba with a copy of the book in her hand luggage. It was at once taken from her by the custom-house officers, and she never saw it again. This little work was favorably spoken of and well received, but it did not please everybody. In one of its chapters, speaking of the natural indolence of the negroes in tropical countries, I had ventured to express the opinion that compulsory employment is better than none. Good Mr. Garrison seized upon this sentence, and impaled it in a column of "The Liberator" headed, "The Refuge of Oppression." I certainly did not intend it as an argument in favor of negro slavery. As an abstract proposition, and without reference to color, I still think it true.

The publication of my Cuban notes brought me an invitation to chronicle the events of the season at Newport for the "New York Tribune." This was the beginning of a correspondence with that paper which lasted well into the time of the civil war. My letters dealt somewhat with social doings in Newport and in Boston, but more with the great events of the time. To me the experience was valuable in that I found myself brought nearer in sympathy to the general public, and helped to a better understanding of its needs and demands.

It was in the days now spoken of that I first saw Edwin Booth. Dr. Howe and I betook ourselves to the Boston Theatre one rainy evening, expecting to see nothing more than an ordinary performance. The play was "Richelieu," and we had seen but little of Mr. Booth's part in it before we turned to each other and said, "This is the real thing." In every word, in every gesture, the touch of genius made itself felt. A little later I saw him in "Hamlet," and was even more astonished and delighted.

While he was still completing this his first engagement in Boston, I received a letter from his manager, proposing that I should write a play for Mr. Booth. My first drama, though not a success, had made me somewhat known to theatrical people. I had been made painfully aware of its defects, and desired nothing more than to profit by the lesson of experience in producing something that should deserve entire approbation. It was therefore with a good hope of success that I undertook to write the play. Mr. Booth himself called upon me, in pursuance of his request. The favorable impression which he had made upon me was not lessened by a nearer view. I found him modest, intelligent, and above all genuine,--the man as worthy of admiration as the artist. Although I had seen Mr. Booth in a variety of characters, I could only think of representing him as Hippolytus, a beautiful youth, of heroic type, enamored of a high ideal. This was the part which I desired to create for him. I undertook the composition without much delay, and devoted to it the months of one summer's sojourn at Lawton's Valley.

This lovely little estate had come to us almost fortuitously. George William Curtis, writing of the Newport of forty years ago, gives a character sketch of one Alfred Smith, a well-known real estate agent, who managed to entrap strangers in his gig, and drove about with them, often succeeding in making them purchasers of some bit of property in the sale of which he had a personal interest. In the summer of 1852 my husband became one of his victims. I say this because Dr. Howe made the purchase without much deliberation. In fact, he could hardly have told any one why he made it. The farm was a very poor one, and the farmhouse very small. Some necessary repairs rendered it habitable for our family of little children and ourselves. I did not desire the purchase, but I soon became much attached to the valley, which my husband's care greatly beautified. This was a wooded gorge, perhaps an eighth of a mile from the house, and extending some distance between high rocky banks. We found it a wilderness of brambles, with a brook which ran much out of its proper course. Dr. Howe converted it into a most charming out-of-door _salon_. A firm green sod took the place of the briers, the brook was restrained within its proper limits, and some fine trees replaced as many decayed stumps. An old, disused mill added to the picturesqueness of the scene. Below it rushed a small waterfall. Here I have pa.s.sed many happy hours with my books and my babies, but it was not in this enchanting spot that I wrote my play.

I had at this time and for many years afterward a superst.i.tion about a north light. My eyes had given me some trouble, and I felt obliged to follow my literary work under circ.u.mstances most favorable for their use. The exposure of our little farmhouse was south and west, and its only north light was derived from a window at the top of the attic stairs. Here was a platform just large enough to give room for a table two feet square. The stairs were shut off from the rest of the house by a stout door. And here, through the summer heats, and in spite of many wasps, I wrote my five-act drama, dreaming of the fine emphasis which Mr. Booth would give to its best pa.s.sages and of the beautiful appearance he would make in cla.s.sic costume. He, meanwhile, was growing into great fame and favor with the public, and was called hither and thither by numerous engagements. The period of his courts.h.i.+p and marriage intervened, and a number of years elapsed between the completion of the play and his first reading of it.

At last there came a time in which the production of the play seemed possible. Charlotte Cushman and Edwin Booth were both in Boston performing, as I remember, but not at the same theatre. They agreed to act in my play. E. L. Davenport, manager of the Howard Athenaeum, undertook to produce it, and my dream was very near becoming a reality.

But lo! on a sudden, the manager bethought him that the time was rather late in the season; that the play would require new scenery; and, more than all, that his wife, who was also an actress, was not pleased with a secondary part a.s.signed to her. A polite note informed me of his change of mind. This was, I think, the greatest "let down" that I ever experienced. It affected me seriously for some days, after which I determined to attempt nothing more for the stage.

In truth, there appeared to be little reason for this action on the part of the manager. Miss Cushman, speaking of it, said to me, "My dear, if Edwin Booth and I had done nothing more than to stand upon the stage and say 'good evening' to each other, the house would have been filled."

Mr. Booth, in the course of these years, experienced great happiness and great sorrow. On the occasion of our first meeting he had spoken to me of "little Mary Devlin" as an actress of much promise, who had recently been admired in "several _heavy_ parts." In process of time he became engaged to this young girl. Before the announcement of this fact he appeared with her several times before the Boston public. Few that saw it will ever forget a performance of Romeo and Juliet in which the two true lovers were at their best, ideally young, beautiful, and identified with their parts. I soon became well acquainted with this exquisite little woman, of whose untimely death the poet Parsons wrote:--

"What shall we do now, Mary being dead, Or say or write that shall express the half?

What can we do but pillow that fair head, And let the spring-time write her epitaph?--

"As it will soon, in snowdrop, violet, Windflower and columbine and maiden's tear; Each letter of that pretty alphabet That spells in flowers the pageant of the year.

"She hath fulfilled her promise and hath pa.s.sed; Set her down gently at the iron door!

Eyes look on that loved image for the last: Now cover it in earth,--her earth no more."

These lines recall to me the scene of Mary Booth's funeral, which took place in wintry weather, the service being held at the chapel in Mount Auburn. Hers was a most pathetic figure as she lay, serene and lovely, surrounded with flowers. As Edwin Booth followed the casket, his eyes heavy with grief, I could not but remember how often I had seen him enact the part of Hamlet at the stage burial of Ophelia. Beside or behind him walked a young man of remarkable beauty, to be sadly known at a later date as Wilkes Booth, the a.s.sa.s.sin of Lincoln and the victim of his own crime. Henry Ward Beecher, meeting Mary Booth one day at dinner at my house, was so much impressed with her peculiar charm that, on the occasion of her death, he wrote a very sympathetic letter to Mr. Booth, and became thenceforth one of his most esteemed friends.

The years between 1850 and 1857, eventful as they were, appear to me almost a period of play when compared with the time of trial which was to follow. It might have been likened to the tuning of instruments before some great musical solemnity. The theme was already suggested, but of its wild and terrible development who could have had any foreknowledge? Parker, indeed, writing to Dr. Howe from Italy, said, "What a pity that the map of our magnificent country should be destined to be so soon torn in two on account of the negro, that poorest of human creatures, satisfied, even in slavery, with sugar cane and a banjo." On reading this prediction, I remarked to my husband: "This is poor, dear Parker's foible. He always thinks that he knows what will come to pa.s.s.

How absurd is this forecast of his!"

"I don't know about that," replied Dr. Howe.

CHAPTER XII

THE CHURCH OF THE DISCIPLES: IN WAR TIME

I must here ask leave to turn back a little in the order of my reminiscences, my narrative having led me to pa.s.s by certain points which I desire to mention.

The great comfort which I had in Parker's preaching came to an end when my children attained an age at which it appeared desirable that they should attend public wors.h.i.+p. Concerning this my husband argued as follows:--

"The children [our two eldest girls] are now of an age at which they should receive impressions of reverence. They should, therefore, see nothing at the Sunday service which would militate against that feeling.

At Parker's meeting individuals read the newspapers before the exercises begin. A good many persons come in after the prayer, and some go out before the conclusion of the sermon. These irregularities offend my sense of decorum, and appear to me undesirable in the religious education of the family."

It was a grievous thing for me to comply with my husband's wishes in this matter. I said of it to his friend, Horace Mann, that to give up Parker's ministry for any other would be like going to the synagogue when Paul was preaching near at hand. Parker was soon made aware of Dr.

Howe's views, but no estrangement ensued between the two friends. He did, however, write to my husband a letter, in which he laid great stress upon the depth and strength of his own concern in religion.

My husband cherished an old predilection for King's Chapel, and would have been pleased if I had chosen to attend service there. My mind, however, was otherwise disposed. Having heard Parker, at the close of one of his discourses, speak in warm commendation of James Freeman Clarke, announcing at the same time that Mr. Clarke was about to begin a new series of services at Williams Hall, I determined to attend these.

With Mr. Clarke I had indeed some slight acquaintance, having once heard him preach at Freeman Place Chapel, and having met him on divers occasions. It is well known that this, his first pastorate in Boston, was nearly lost to him in consequence of his inviting Theodore Parker on one occasion to occupy his pulpit. The feeling against the latter was then so strong as to cause an influential part of the congregation to withdraw from the society, which therefore threatened to fail for want of funds. Some years later Mr. Clarke resigned his charge and went abroad for a prolonged stay, possibly with indefinite ideas as to the future employment of his life. He was possessed of much literary and artistic taste, and might easily have added one to the number of those who, like George Bancroft, Jared Sparks, and others, had entered the Unitarian ministry, to leave it, after a few years, for fields of labor in which they were destined to achieve greater success.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE

_From a photograph by the Notman Photographic Company._]

Fortunately, the suggestion of such a course, if entertained by him at all, did not prevail. Mr. Clarke's interest in the Christian ministry was too deeply grounded to be easily overcome. Returning from a restful and profitable sojourn in Europe, he sought to gather again those of his flock who had held to him and to each other. He found them ready to welcome him back with unabated love and trust. It was at this juncture that I heard Theodore Parker make the mention of him which brought him to my remembrance, bringing me also very reluctantly to his new place of wors.h.i.+p.

The hall itself was unattractive, and the aspect of its occupants decidedly unfas.h.i.+onable. Indeed, a witty friend of mine once said to me that the bonnets seen there were of so singular a description, as constantly to distract her attention from the minister's sermon.

This absence of fas.h.i.+on rather commended the place to me; for I had had in my life enough and too much of that church-going in which the bonnets, the pews, and the doctrine appear to rest on one dead level of conventionalism.

Mr. Clarke's preaching was as unlike as possible to that of Theodore Parker. While not wanting in the critical spirit, and characterized by very definite views of the questions which at that time were foremost in the mind of the community, there ran through the whole course of his ministrations an exquisite tone of charity and good-will. He had not the philosophic and militant genius of Parker, but he had a genius of his own, poetical, harmonizing. In after years I esteemed myself fortunate in having pa.s.sed from the drastic discipline of the one to the tender and reconciling ministry of the other. The members of the congregation were mostly strangers to me, yet I felt from the first a respect for them. In process of time I came to know something of their antecedents, and to make friends among them.

After some years of attendance at Williams Hall, our society, somewhat increased in numbers, removed to Indiana Place Chapel, where we remained until we were able to erect for ourselves the commodious and homelike building which we occupy to-day.

Our minister was a man of much impulse, but of more judgment. In his character were blended the best traits of the conservative and of the liberal. His ardent temperament and sanguine disposition bred in him that natural hopefulness which is so important an element in all attempted reform. His sound mind, well disciplined by culture, held fast to the inherited treasures of society, while a fortunate power of apprehending principles rendered him very steadfast, both in advance and in reserve. In the agitated period which preceded the civil war and in that which followed it, he in his modest pulpit became one of the leaders, not of his own flock alone, but of the community to which he belonged. I can imagine few things more instructive and desirable than was his preaching in those troublous times, so full of unanswered question and unreconciled discord. His church was like an organ, with deep undertones and lofty, aspiring treble,--the master hand pressing the keys, the heart of the congregation responding with a full melody.

Festivals of sorrow were held in Indiana Place Chapel, and many of them,--James Buchanan's hollow fast, a day of mourning for John Brown, and, saddest and greatest of all, a solemn service following the a.s.sa.s.sination of Abraham Lincoln. We were led through these shadows of death by the radiant light of a truly Christian faith, which our pastor ever held before us. Among the many who stood by him in his labors of love was a lady possessed of rare taste in the disposition of floral and other decorations. We came at last to confer on her the t.i.tle of the Flower Saint. On the occasion last mentioned, when we entered the building, full of hopeless sorrow, we saw pulpit and altar adorned with a rich violet pall, on which, at intervals, hung wreaths of white lilies. So something of the pomp of victory was mingled with our bitter sense of loss. The nation's chief was gone, but with the n.o.ble army of martyrs we now beheld him, crowned with the unfading glory of his work.

Mr. Clarke's life possesses an especial interest from the fact of its having been one of those rare lives which start in youth with an ideal, and follow it through manhood to old age; parting from it only at the last breath, and bequeathing it to posterity in its full growth and beauty. This ideal appeared to him in the guise of a free church, whose pews should not be sold, whose seats should be open to all, with no c.u.mbrous encounter of cross-interests,--a church of true wors.h.i.+p and earnest interpretation, which should be held together by the bond of veritable sympathy. This living church he built out of his own devout and tender heart. A dream at first, he saw it take shape and grow, and when he flitted from its sphere he felt that it would stand and endure.

In marriage Mr. Clarke had been most fortunate. He became attached early in life to a young lady of rare beauty, and of character not less uncommon, to whom he once wrote some charming lines, beginning,--

"When shall we meet again, dearest and best?

Thou going eastward, and I to the west?"

This attachment probably dated from the period of his theological studies at Meadville, Pa. In due course of time the two lives became united in a most happy and helpful partners.h.i.+p. Mrs. Clarke truly attained the dignity of a mother in Israel. She went hand-in-hand with her husband in all his church work. She made his home simple in adornment but exquisite in comfort. She was less social in disposition than he, less excitable, indeed, so calm of nature that her husband, in giving her a copy of my first volume of poems, wrote on the fly-leaf, "To the pa.s.sionless, 'Pa.s.sion Flowers,'" and in the lines that followed compared her to the Jungfrau with its silvery light. This calmness, which was not coldness, sometimes enabled her to render a service which might have been difficult to many. I remember that a young minister, a fresh convert from Calvinistic doctrine, preached one Sunday a rather crude sermon, in Mr. Clarke's absence. After the close of the service Mrs. Clarke went up to the speaker, who was expected to preach that evening at a well-known church in the city, and said, "Mr. ----, if you intend to give the sermon we have just heard at the ---- church this evening, you will do well to omit certain things in it." She proceeded to mention the changes which appeared to her desirable. Her advice, most kindly given, was no doubt appreciated.