CHAPTER V
Frances E. Willard—Walt Whitman—Lady Henry Somerset—Mrs. Hannah Whitehall Smith—A Teetotaler for Ten Minutes—Olive Thorne Miller—Hearty Praise for Mrs. Lippincott (Grace Greenwood).
I was looking over some letters from Frances E. Willard last week. What a powerful, blessed influence was hers!
Such a rare combination of intense earnestness, persistence, and devotion to a "cause" with a gentle, forgiving, compassionate spirit, and all tempered by perfect self-control.
Visiting in Germantown, Pennsylvania, at the hospitable home of Mrs. Hannah Whitehall Smith, the Quaker Bible reader and lay evangelist, and writer of cheerful counsel, I found several celebrities among her other guests. Miss Willard and Walt Whitman happened to be present. Whitman was rude and aggressively combative in his attack on the advocate of temperance, and that without the slightest provocation. He declared that all this total abstinence was absolute rot and of no earthly use, and that he hated the sight of these women who went out of their way to be crusading temperance fanatics.
After this outburst he left the room. Miss Willard never alluded to his fiery criticism, didn't seem to know she had been hit, but chatted on as if nothing unpleasant had occurred.
In half an hour he returned; and with a smiling face made a manly apology, and asked to be forgiven for his too severe remarks. Miss Willard met him more than half-way, with generous cordiality, and they became good friends. And when with the women of the circle again she said: "Now wasn't that just grand in that dear old man? I like him the more for his outspoken honesty and his unwillingness to pain me."
How they laboured with "Walt" to induce him to leave out certain of his poems from the next edition! The wife went to her room to pray that he might yield, and the husband argued. But no use, it was all "art" every word, and not one line would he ever give up. The old poet was supposed to be poor and needy, and an enthusiastic daughter of Mrs. Smith had secured quite a sum at college to provide bed linen and blankets for him in the simple cottage at Camden. Whitman was a great, breezy, florid-faced out-of-doors genius, but we all wished he had been a little less au naturel.
To speak once more of Miss Willard, no one enjoyed a really laughable thing more than she did, but I never felt like being a foolish trifler in her presence. Her outlook was so far above mine that I always felt not rebuked, but ashamed of my superficial lightness of manner.
Just one illustration of the unconscious influence of her noble soul and her convincing words:
Many years ago, at an anniversary of Sorosis in New York, I had half promised the persuasive president (Jennie June) that I would say something. The possibility of being called up for an after-dinner speech! Something brief, terse, sparkling, complimentary, satisfactory, and something to raise a laugh! O, you know this agony! I had nothing in particular to say; I wanted to be quiet and enjoy the treat. But between each course I tried hard, while apparently listening to my neighbour, to think up something "neat and appropriate."
This coming martyrdom, which increases in horror as you advance with deceptive gayety, from roast to game, and game to ices, is really one of the severest trials of club life.
Miss Willard was one of the honoured guests of the day, and was called on first. When she arose and began to speak, I felt instantly that she had something to say; something that she felt was important we should hear, and how beautifully, how simply it was said! Not a thought of self, not one instant's hesitation for a thought or a word, yet it was evidently unwritten and not committed to memory. Every eye was drawn to her earnest face; every heart was touched. As she sat down, I rose and left the room rather rapidly; and when my name was called and my fizzling fireworks expected, I was walking up Fifth Avenue, thinking about her and her life-work. The whole experience was a revelation. I had never met such a woman. No affectation, nor pedantry, nor mannishness to mar the effect. It was in part the humiliating contrast between her soul-stirring words and my silly little society effort that drove me from the place, but all petty egotism vanished before the wish to be of real use to others with which her earnestness had inspired me.
One lady told me that after hearing her she felt she could go out and be a praying band all by herself. Indeed she was
A noble woman, true and pure,
Who in the little while she stayed,
Wrought works that shall endure.
She was asked who she would prefer to write a sketch of her and her work and she honoured me by giving me that great pleasure. The book appeared in 1883, entitled Our Famous Women.
Once when Miss Willard was in Boston with Lady Henry Somerset and Anna Gordon, I was delighted by a letter from Frances saying that Lady Henry wanted to know me and could I lunch with them soon at the Abbottsford. I accepted joyously, but next morning's mail brought this depressing decision: "Dear Kate, we have decided that there will be more meat in going to you. When can we come?" I was hardly settled in my house of the Abandoned Farm. There was no furnace in the house, only two servants with me. And it would be impossible to entertain those friends properly in the dead of the winter, and I nearly ready to leave for a milder clime. So I told them the stern facts and lost a rare treat.
This is the end of Miss Willard's good-bye letter to me when returning to England with Lady Henry:
Hoping to see you on my return, and hereby soliciting an exchange of photographs between you and Lady Henry and me,
I am ever and as ever
Yours,
FRANCES WILLARD.
While at Mrs. Smith's home in Germantown, both she and Miss Willard urged me to sign a Temperance Pledge that lay on the table in the library. I would have accepted almost anything either of those good friends presented for my attention. So after thinking seriously I signed. But after going to my room I felt sure that I could never keep that pledge. So I ran downstairs and told them to erase my name, which was done without one word of astonishment or reproof from either.
I wish I knew how to describe Hannah Whitehall Smith as she was in her everyday life. Such simple nobility, such tenderness for the tempted, such a love for sinners, such a longing to show them the better way. She said to me: "If my friends must go to what is called Hell I want to go with them." When a minister, who was her guest, was greatly roused at her lack of belief in eternal punishment and her infinite patience with those who lacked moral strength, he said: "There are surely some sins your daughters could commit which would make you drive them from your home." "There are no sins my daughters could commit which would not make me hug them more closely in my arms and strive to bring them back." Wherewith he exclaimed bitterly: "Madam, you are a mere mucilaginous mess." She made no reply, but her husband soon sent him word that a carriage would be at the door in one hour to convey him to the train for New York.
"If you do not love the birds, you cannot understand them."
I remember enjoying an article on the catbird several years ago in the Atlantic Monthly, and wanting to know more of the woman who had observed a pair of birds so closely, and could make so charming a story of their love-affairs and housekeeping experiences, and thinking that most persons knew next to nothing about birds, their habits, and homes.
Mrs. Olive Thorne Miller, who wrote that bird talk, is now a dear friend of mine, and while spending a day with me lately was kind enough to answer all my questions as to how and where and when she began to study birds. She is not a young woman, is the proud grandmother of seven children; but her bright face crowned with handsome white hair, has that young, alert, happy look that comes with having a satisfying hobby that goes at a lively pace. She said: "I never thought of being anything but a housekeeping mother until I was about thirty-one and my husband lost all his property, and want, or a thousand wants, stared us in the face. Making the children's clothes and my own, and cooking as well, broke down my health, so I bethought me of writing, which I always had a longing to do."
"What did you begin with?"
"Well, pretty poor stuff that no one was anxious to pay for; mostly in essay form expressing my own opinions on various important subjects. But it didn't go. I was complaining of my bad luck to a plain-spoken woman in charge of a circulating library, and she gave me grand advice. 'No one cares a snap for your opinions. You must tell something that folks want to know.'"
"Did you then take up birds?"
"O no; I went into the library, read some of Harriet Martineau's talks on pottery, and told children how a teacup was made and got one dollar for that. But those pot-boilers were not inspiring, and about ten years later a second woman adviser turned my course into another channel."
"How did that come about?"
"I had a bird-loving friend from the West visiting me, and took her to Prospect Park, Brooklyn, to see our birds. She pointed out several, and so interested me in their lives that from that day I began to study them, especially the wood-thrush and catbird. After I had studied them for two years, I wrote what I had seen. From that time my course has seemed marked out for me, and my whole time has been given to this one theme. I think every woman over forty-five ought to take up a fad; they would be much happier and better off."
"You told me once that three women had each in turn changed your career. Do give me the third."
"Well, after my articles and books had met with favour (I have brought out fifteen books), invitations to lecture or talk about birds kept pouring in. I was talking this over with Marion Harland (Mrs. Terhune), declaring I could never appear in public, that I should be frightened out of my wits, and that I must decline. My voice would all go, and my heart jump into my mouth. She exclaimed, 'For a sensible woman, you are the biggest fool I ever met!' This set me thinking, and with many misgivings I accepted an invitation."
"And did you nearly expire with stage fright?"
"Never was scared one bit, my dear. All bird-lovers are the nicest kind of folks, either as an audience or in their own homes. I have made most delightful acquaintances lecturing in fifteen different States; am now booked for a tour in the West, lecturing every day and taking classes into the fields and woods for actual observation. Nesting-time is the best time to study the birds, to know them thoroughly."
"Do you speak about dead birds on hats?"
"Yes, when I am asked to do so. Did you ever hear that Celia Thaxter, finding herself in a car with women whose head-gear emulated a bird-museum, was moved to rise and appeal to them in so kindly a way that some pulled off the feathers then and there, and all promised to reform? She loved birds so truly that she would not be angry when spring after spring they picked her seeds out of her 'Island Garden.'"
"Have you any special magnetic power over birds, so that they will come at your call or rest on your outstretched finger?"
"Not in the least. I just like them, and love to get acquainted with them. Each bird whose acquaintance I make is as truly a discovery to me as if he were totally unknown to the world."
We were sitting by a southern window that looks out on a wide-spreading and ancient elm, my glory and pride. Not one bird had I seen on it that cold, repellent middle of March. But Mrs. Miller looked up, and said: "Your robins have come!" Sure enough I could now see a pair.
"And there are the woodpeckers, but they have stayed all winter. No doubt you have the hooting owls. There's an oriole's nest, badly winter-worn; but they will come back and build again. I see you feed your chickadees and sparrows, because they are so tame and fearless. I'd like to come later and make a list of the birds on your place."
I wonder how many she would find. Visiting at Deerfield, Massachusetts, I said one day to my host, the artist J.W. Champney: "You don't seem to have many birds round you."
"No?" he replied with a mocking rising inflection. "Mrs. Miller, who was with us last week, found thirty-nine varieties in our front yard before breakfast!" Untrained eyes are really blind.
Mrs. Miller is an excellent housekeeper, although a daughter now relieves her of that care. But, speaking at table of this and that dish and vegetable, she promised to send me some splendid receipts for orange marmalade, baked canned corn, scalloped salmon, onion à la crème (delicious), and did carefully copy and send them.
She told me that in Denmark a woman over forty-five is considered gone. If she is poor, a retreat is ready for her without pay; if rich, she would better seek one of the homes provided for aged females who can pay well for a home.
Another thing of interest was the fact that when Mrs. Miller eats no breakfast, her brain is in far better condition to write. She is a Swedenborgian, and I think that persons of that faith have usually a cheerful outlook on life. She was obliged to support herself after forty years of age.
I would add to her advice about a hobby: don't wait till middle age; have one right away, now. Boys always do. I know of one young lady who makes a goodly sum out of home-made marmalade; another who makes dresses for her family and special friends; another who sells three hundred dozen "brown" eggs to one of the best groceries in Boston, and supports herself. By the way, what can you do?
Mrs. Lippincott had such a splendid, magnetic presence, such a handsome face with dark poetic eyes, and accomplished so many unusual things, that, knowing her as I did, I think I should be untrue to her if I did not try to show her as she was in her brilliant prime, and not merely as a punster or a raconteur, or as she appeared in her dramatic recitals, for these were but a small part of the many-sided genius.
When my friend, Mrs. Botta, said one evening to her husband: "Grace writes me that she will be here tomorrow, to spend the Sabbath," and then said to me, "Grace Greenwood, I mean; have you ever met her?" my heart beat very quickly in pleasant anticipation of her coming. Grace Greenwood! Why, I had known her and loved her, at least her writings, ever since I was ten years old.
Those dear books, bound in red, with such pretty pictures—History of My Pets and Recollections of My Childhood, were the most precious volumes in my little library. Anyone who has had pets and lost them (and the one follows the other, for pets always come to some tragic end) will delight in these stories.
And then the Little Pilgrim, which I used to like next best to the Youth's Companion; and in later years her spirited, graceful poetry; her racy magazine stories; her Haps and Mishaps of a Tour in Europe; her sparkling letters to the Tribune, full of reliable news from Washington, graphic descriptions of prominent men and women, capital anecdotes and atrocious puns;—O how glad I should be to look in her face and to shake hands with the author who had given me so much pleasure!
Well, she came, I heard the bell ring, just when she was expected, with a vigorous pull, and, as the door opened, heard her say, in a jolly, soothing way: "Don't get into a passion," to the man who was swearing at her big trunk. And then I ran away, not wishing to intrude, and waited impatiently for dinner and an introduction to my well-beloved heroine.
Grace—Mrs. Lippincott—I found to be a tall, fine-looking lady, with a commanding figure and a face that did not disappoint me, as faces so often do which you have dreamed about. She had dark hair, brown rather than black, which was arranged in becoming puffs round her face; and such eyes! large, dark, magnetic, full of sympathy, of kind, cordial feelings and of quick appreciation of fun. She talked much and well. If I should repeat all the good stories she told us, that happy Saturday night, as we lingered round the table, you would be convulsed with laughter, that is, if I could give them with her gestures, expressions, and vivid word-pictures.
She told one story which well illustrated the almost cruel persistent inquiries of neighbours about someone who is long in dying. An unfortunate husband was bothered each morning by repeated calls from children, who were sent by busy mothers to find out "Just how Miss Blake was feeling this morning." At last this became offensive, and he said: "Well, she's just the same—she ain't no better and she ain't no worse—she keeps just about so—she's just about dead, you can say she's dead."
One Sunday evening she described her talks with the men in the prisons and penitentiaries, to whom she had been lately lecturing, proving that these hardened sinners had much that was good in them, and many longings for a nobler life, in spite of all their sins.
No, I was not disappointed in "G.G." She was just as natural, hearty, and off-hand as when some thirty years ago, she was a romping, harum-scarum, bright-eyed schoolgirl, Sara Clarke, of western New York, who was almost a gypsy in her love for the fields and forests. She was always ready for any out-door exercise or sport. This gave her glorious health, which up to that time she had not lost.
Her nom de plume, which she says she has never been able to drop, was only one of the many alliterative names adopted at that time. Look over the magazines and Annuals of those years, and you will find many such, as "Mary Maywood," "Dora Dashwood," "Ella Ellwood" "Fanny Forrester," "Fanny Fern," "Jennie June," "Minnie Myrtle," and so on through the alphabet, one almost expecting to find a "Ninny Noodle." Examining one of Mrs. Lippincott's first scrapbooks of "Extracts from Newspapers," etc., which she had labelled, "Vanity, all is Vanity," I find many poems in her honour, much enthusiasm over her writings, and much speculation as to who "Grace Greenwood" might really be. The public curiosity was piqued to find out this new author who added to forceful originality "the fascination of splendid gayety and brilliant trifling." John Brougham, the actor and dramatist, thus expressed his interest in a published letter to Willis:
The only person that I am disposed to think, write or talk about at present is your dazzling, bewitching correspondent, "Grace Greenwood." Who is she? that I may swear by her! Where is she? that I may fling myself at her feet! There is a splendour and dash about her pen that carry my fastidious soul captive by a single charge. I shall advertise for her throughout the whole Western country in the terms in which they inquire for Almeyda in Dryden's Don Sebastian: "Have you seen aught of a woman who lacks two of the four elements, who has nothing in her nature but air and fire?"
And here is one of the poetical tributes:
If to the old Hellenes
Thee of yore the gods had given
Another Muse, another Grace
Had crowned the Olympian heaven.
Whittier at that time spoke most cordially of her "earnest individuality, her warm, honest, happy, hopeful, human heart; her strong loves and deep hates."
E. P. Whipple, the Boston critic and essayist, when reviewing her poems, spoke of their "exceeding readableness"; and George Ripley, then of the New York Tribune, said:
One charm of her writings is the frankness with which she takes the reader into her personal confidence. She is never formal, never a martyr to artificial restraint, never wrapped in a mantle of reserve; but, with an almost childlike simplicity, presents a transparent revelation of her inmost thoughts and feelings, with perfect freedom from affectation.
She might have distinguished herself on the stage in either tragedy or comedy, but was dissuaded from that career by family friends. I remember seeing her at several receptions, reciting the rough Pike County dialect verse of Bret Harte and John Hay in costume. Standing behind a draped table, with a big slouch hat on, and a red flannel shirt, loose at the neck, her disguise was most effective, while her deep tones held us all. Her memory was phenomenal, and she could repeat today stories of good things learned years ago.
Her recitation was wonderful; so natural, so full of soul and power. I have heard many women read, some most execrably, who fancied they were famous elocutionists; some were so tolerable that I could sit and endure it; others remarkably good, but I was never before so moved as to forget where I was and merge the reader in the character she assumed.
Grace Greenwood probably made more puns in print than any other woman, and her conversation was full of them. It was Grace Greenwood who, at a tea-drinking at the New England Woman's Club in Boston, was begged to tell one more story, but excused herself in this way: "No, I cannot get more than one story high on a cup of tea."
Her conversation was delightful, and what a series of reminiscences she could have given; for she knew, and in many cases intimately, most of the leading authors, artists, politicians, philanthropists, agitators, and actors of her time in both her own land and abroad. In one of her letters she describes the various authors she saw while lounging in Ticknor's old bookstore in Boston.
Here, many a time, we saw Longfellow, looking wonderfully like a ruddy, hearty, happy English gentleman, with his full lips and beaming blue eyes. Whittier, alert, slender and long; half eager, half shy in manner; both cordial and evasive; his deep-set eyes glowing with the tender flame of the most humane genius of our time.
Emerson's manner was to her "a curious mingling of Athenian philosophy and Yankee cuteness."
Saxe was "the handsome, herculean punster," and so on with many others.
She resided with Miss Cushman in Rome, and in London she saw many lions—Mazzini, Kossuth, Dickens and Talfourd, Kingsley, Lover, the Howellses, Miss Mitford, Mrs. Muloch Craik, George Eliot, etc.
She was the first Washington correspondent of her sex, commencing in 1850 in a series of letters to a Philadelphia weekly; was for some years connected with the National Era, making her first tour in Europe as its correspondent, and has written much for The Hearth and Home, The Independent, Christian Inquirer, Congregationalist, Youth's Companion; also contributing a good deal to English publications, as Household Words and All the Year Round.
She was the special correspondent from Washington of the New York Tribune, and later of the Times. Her letters were racy, full of wit, sentiment, and discriminating criticism, plenty of fun and a little sarcasm, but not so audaciously personal and aggressive as some letter-writers from the capital. They attracted attention and were widely copied, large extracts being made for the London Times.
She lectured continually to large audiences during the Civil War on war themes, and subjects in a lighter strain; was the first woman widely received as a lecturer by the colleges and lyceums. With a commanding presence, handsome face, an agreeable, permeating voice, a natural offhand manner, and something to say, she was at once a decided favourite, and travelled great distances to meet her engagements. She often quoted that ungallant speech from the Duke of Argyle: "Woman has no right on a platform—except to be hung; then it's unavoidable"; and by her eloquence and wit proved its falsity and narrowness. Without the least imitation of masculine oratory, her best remembered lectures are, "The Heroic in Common Life," and "Characteristics of Yankee Humour." She always had the rare gift of telling a story capitally, with ease, brevity, and dramatic effect, certain of the point or climax. I cannot think of any other woman of this country who has caused so much hearty laughter by this enviable gift. She can compress a word-picture or character-sketch into a few lines, as when she said of the early Yankee: "No matter how large a man he was, he had a look of shrinking and collapse about him. It looked as if the Lord had made him and then pinched him." And a woman who has done such good work in poetry, juvenile literature, journalism, on the platform, and in books of travel and biography, will not soon be forgotten. There is a list of eighteen volumes from her pen.
She never established a salon, but the widespread, influential daily paper and the lecture hall are the movable salon to the women of genius in this Republic.
This is just a memory. After all, we are but "Movie Pictures," seen for a moment, and others take our place.