William Dean Howells was one of the noted people who came to see us in Boylston Place. Sister Julia and I fancied that he looked like an amiable Richard III. His black hair was parted in the middle—a thing not usual in the ’Sixties. Although cut short, it strayed over his forehead in a way to suggest the close-cropped hair of the medieval knight, while his dark complexion, short, compact figure, and something unusual about his face, suggested this resemblance to us. The comparison was not invidious, because we admired Edwin Booth in the rôle of Richard III.
We were interested in Mr. Howells’s india-rubbers, they were so small! Mr. and Mrs. Frank Leslie, with Mrs. Squiers, also spent an evening with us. Both ladies were in full evening dress, doubtless supposing the occasion would be a formal one. Mrs. Squiers was a striking-looking person whose face did not recommend itself to me. After the death of the first wife, she became the second Mrs. Frank Leslie. All suffragists owe her a debt of gratitude for her generous gift of her fortune to our cause.
One of our delightful visitors in these days was our cousin-german Frank, known later as Marion Crawford, the novelist. He was sent to this country to receive his early education, spending several years at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire. He was now about ten years old, a handsome, freshfaced boy, very much interested in locomotives. He brought a number of engravings of these, which I politely examined, in spite of my perfect indifference to engines of all sorts. In later years my youngest son, discovering with pain this trait in his mother’s character, observed, reflectively:
“It must be strange not to be interested in locomotives.”
“No, Jack, it is not strange at all!”
Young Crawford was as full of fun as other boys of his age. With brother Harry he performed various antics at the house of my aunt, Mrs. Mailliard, in Bordentown, New Jersey. Her family were surprised, when walking in the garden, to see the stand of the lost rocking-horse protruding from the chimney!
Dear old Mr. Joseph Greene Cogswell, who had been the first librarian of the Astor Library, was sitting quietly by the fire when boots suddenly came down the chimney. With perfect gravity he picked these out of the fire with the tongs, causing great amusement to the naughty boys watching above.
Sister Julia was ten years older than Frank, but they were great chums. During one of our periodical stays at the Institution for the Blind they bought cream-cakes with the money given them for car fare, and walked the two or more miles from Boston to South Boston with cheerful hearts!
During our residence in Boylston Place my father did some of his writing in the house and asked us to make no noise near his room. We were so young and thoughtless as to think this request unreasonable. True, we knew, in a general way, that he was writing the report for the Massachusetts Board of State Charities, but this meant little to us. In later years we came to understand what labor and fatigue the task involved, for the board was the pioneer body of its kind in the United States. My father’s wide experience made it inevitable that he should be summoned to sit on it. “The Nestor and Achilles of public charities in Massachusetts” soon became the chairman. In a series of annual reports he advocated a system of dealing with the dependent classes which was accepted and still remains in force, not only in Massachusetts, but in many other states and in some European countries.
Public institutions, he declared, should be built only in the last resort. The dependent classes should be diffused through the community, not gathered together. Children should be cared for in families, not in institutions. Defectives should be brought together only for purposes of instruction. They should not live together in homes, as their peculiarities thus become more strongly developed, but with normal people.