I heard Lowell lecture two or three times that first year—conversational talks and readings from the early English dramatists. I liked his scholarly face and voice, and felt the charm of his manner, but recall almost nothing of his talks. In reading he pronounced ocean “o-ce-an.”
One day in walking down Tremont Street, as we halted at Miss Thorndike’s boarding-house, we saw a stout, middle-aged woman in the window, who nodded pleasantly to Miss Thorndike: “That is the poet, Lucy Larcom,” she whispered, to our awed surprise.
We used to go to King’s Chapel just to see Dr. Holmes, who always sat in the same place in the gallery—the little old man, looking somewhat sleepy and very remote, but very fitting in that quaint old meeting-house. I first read his books in Boston, and it was such a delight in walking across the Common to realize that it was amid these very scenes that he had written the “Autocrat” and the “Professor.”
It was a notable day when we went to Cambridge and visited Harvard University, the Old Craigie House, the Washington Elm, and Mount Auburn. Then there were the trips to Charlestown and Bunker Hill, and the Navy Yard—these soon after our arrival there—it all seemed like stepping out of real life into a novel. What a glamour there was over everything! I remember my awed feeling on gaining admission to Longfellow’s home, when, standing in the darkened study, we saw his table, his books and papers, they said, just as he had left them. I had then scarcely emerged from the spell of his poems, and, as we looked on the River Charles that afternoon, and thought of the poet standing in the very places where we stood; then, on returning to Boston across the long bridge, saw the lights reflected in the dark waters, and the stream of people hurrying to and fro, it all seemed a beautiful, sacred experience, linked as it was, with the Sunday afternoons at home, when I used to sing Father to sleep with “The Bridge” and “The Day Is Done.” “The Bridge” may have meant London Bridge, but to me it will ever be that long bridge spanning the Charles, over which we returned to Boston after our pilgrimage to the poet’s home.
Mary A. Livermore’s lecture on Harriet Martineau was an event of that annus mirabilis; I sent reports of it home to our village paper, having previously written up several of our noteworthy excursions in and around Boston. This had begun by Brother letting the editor of the paper read one of my home letters, which he subsequently published, my first intimation of it being its discovery in the paper.
I heard Joseph Cook lecture on the Indians, and heard Will Carlton read some of his own poems, and tried to be impressed with each, but was not. But I heard Beecher and was impressed without trying. He lectured on the Conscience; he said some persons’ consciences were like livery horses—they kept them all saddled and bridled and ready to let, but never used them themselves.
My first play in Boston was Booth in “Hamlet,” and I was a bit disappointed, having expected to be swept off my feet; instead, I found myself coolly watching it all, interested, but calmly, almost critically so, if a girl at her first real play can be critically interested. But when I saw J. Wilson Barrett in “The Poet Chatterton” I was moved, and forgot everything but the woes of that ill-fated youth whose suffering and tragic death Barrett made so real. My throat ached and the tears fell fast as the frenzied poet on his knees before an old chest frantically destroyed his rejected manuscripts. I wonder if the same thing would not seem melodramatic now.
Toward the close of our first year several of the students were invited to Cambridge to visit the Agassiz Museum, and take supper with one of our class-mates. It was the first time I had been in a home in all that year, and I shall never forget the feeling that came over me after those months spent in a large institution with its huge dining room, and a hundred or more girls at table: to sit down in a real home once more, and see a real mother pouring tea; to hear “Anna” called by her given name, and see all the intimate home life, was a precious experience. Until then I had not realized how homesick I had been. I wondered if they knew how beautiful it all was—they seemed so calm about it, so unconcerned, while in spite of all I could do my tears were crowding fast. No one but Belle had called me by my given name since I had left home, eight long months before; that “Anna” in the mother’s voice made me hungry to hear my own name. I recall how odd it sounded to hear them speak of “Mr.” Longfellow, and “Mr. Agassiz,” as they recounted every-day things about them. From their talk one would think they came and went around Cambridge like ordinary persons! It seemed as if this casual manner of speaking of these great men must be assumed.
Among the revelations of that first year were the vehement women friendships we saw in Boston. Of course I had known of extravagant girl friendships, schoolgirls, but these were women, and they acted like lovers. There was something unpleasant in it to me, even before I learned, as I did in later years, that such companionships sometimes degenerate into perverted associations. Not that this was the case in any of the women I knew, but I had no liking for the peculiar, absorbing feminine intimacies I saw at the College, at the Association, and wherever I had near views of the lives of New England women. Even “Our Caddie” had a beautiful senior student who adored her—a tall, dark dignified maiden. They were said to be inseparable outside of college precincts; a strange contrast, this pair! There were several “pairs” in the senior class, and among the “middlers,” and even with the juniors they sprang up like mushrooms. They gazed at each other soulfully; they lived and thought in unison, communicating by glances rather than by the crudity of the spoken word. I felt inclined to ridicule them, yet there were some who were restrained in conduct, and who seemed so unmistakably congenial that their attention for each other, singular as it was to me, commanded respect. Still I was wont to say that if ever I did fall in love, it would be with a man.