I came to Washington soon after the conclusion of the war, and heard that Count Gurowski was seriously ill at the home of his good friend. I hastened thither to inquire concerning him, and learned that his life was almost despaired of. Mr. Eames told me this, and said that his wife and a lady friend of hers were incessant in their care of him. He promised that I should see him as soon as a change for the better should appear. Instead of this I received one day a message from Mrs. Eames, saying that the count was now given up by his physician, and that I might come, if I wished to see him alive once more. I went to the house at once, and found Mrs. Eames and her friend at the bedside of the dying man. He was already unconscious, and soon breathed his last. At Mr. Eames's request I now gave up my room at the hotel and came to stay with Mrs. Eames, who was prostrated with the fatigue of nursing the sick man and with grief for his loss. While I sat and talked with her Mr. Eames entered the room, and said, "Mrs. Howe, my wife has always had a menagerie here in Washington, and now she has lost her faithful old grizzly."
I was intrusted with some of the arrangements for the funeral. Mrs. Eames said to me that, as the count had been a man of no religious belief, she thought it would be best to invite a Unitarian minister to officiate at his funeral. I should add that her grief prevented her from perceiving the humor of the suggestion. I accordingly secured the services of the Rev. John Pierpont, who happened to be in Washington at the time. Charles Sumner came to the house before the funeral, and actually shed tears as he looked on the face of his former friend. He remarked upon the beauty of the countenance, saying in his rather oratorical way, "There is a beauty of life, and there is a beauty of death." The count's good looks had been spoiled in early life by the loss of one eye, which had been destroyed, it was said, in a duel. After death, however, this blemish did not appear, and the distinction of the features was remarkable.
Among his few effects was a printed volume containing the genealogy of his family, which had thrice intermarried with royal houses, once in the family of Maria Lesczinska, wife of Louis XV. of France. Within this book he had inclosed one or two cast-off trifles belonging to Mrs. Eames, with a few words of deep and grateful affection. So ended this troublous life. The Russian minister at Washington called upon Mrs. Eames soon after the funeral, and spoke with respect of the count, who, he said, could have held a brilliant position in Russia, had it not been for his quarrelsome disposition. Despite his skepticism, and in all his poverty, he caused a mass to be said every year for the soul of his mother, who had been a devout Catholic. To the brother whose want of faith added the distresses of poverty to the woes of exile, Gurowski once addressed a letter in the following form: "To John Gurowski, the greatest scoundrel in Europe." A younger brother of his, a man of great beauty of person, enticed one of the infantas of Spain from the school or convent in which she was pursuing her education. This adventure made much noise at the time. Mrs. Eames once read me part of a letter from this lady, in which she spoke of "the fatal Gurowski beauty."
It was in the early years of this decade (1850-1860) that I definitively came before the world as an author. My first volume of poems, entitled "Passion Flowers," was published by Ticknor and Fields, without my name. In the choice and arrangement of the poems James T. Fields had been very helpful to me. My lack of experience had led me to suppose that my incognito might easily be maintained, but in this my expectations were disappointed. The authorship of the book was at once traced to me. It was much praised, much blamed, and much called in question. From the highest literary authorities of the time it received encouraging commendation. Mr. Emerson acknowledged the copy sent him, in a very kind letter. Mr. Whittier did likewise. He wrote, "I dare say thy volume has faults enough." For all this, he spoke warmly of its merits. Prescott, the beloved historian, made me happy with his good opinion. George Ripley, in the "New York Tribune," Edwin Whipple and Frank Sanborn in Boston, reviewed the volume in a very genial and appreciative spirit. I think that my joy reached its height when I heard Theodore Parker repeat some of my lines from the pulpit. Miss Catharine Sedgwick, in speaking of the poems to a mutual friend, quoted with praise a line from my long poem on Rome. Speaking of my first hearing of the nightingale, it says:—
"A note
Fell as a star falls, trailing sound for light."
Dr. Francis Lieber quoted the following passage as having a Shakespearean ring:—
"But, as none can tell
Among the sunbeams which unconscious one
Comes weaponed with celestial will, to strike
The stroke of Freedom on the fettered floods,
Giving the spring his watchword—even so
Rome knew not she had spoke the word of Fate
That should, from out its sluggishness, compel
The frost-bound vastness of barbaric life,
Till, with an ominous sound, the torrent rose
And rushed upon her with terrific brow,
Sweeping her back, through all her haughty ways,
To her own gates, a piteous fugitive."
I make mention of these things because the volume has long been out of print. It was a timid performance upon a slender reed, but the great performers in the noble orchestra of writers answered to its appeal, which won me a seat in their ranks.
The work, such as it was, dealt partly with the stirring questions of the time, partly with things near and familiar. The events of 1848 were still in fresh remembrance: the heroic efforts of Italian patriots to deliver their country from foreign oppression, the struggle of Hungary to maintain her ancient immunities. The most important among my "Passion Flowers" were devoted to these themes. The wrongs and sufferings of the slave had their part in the volume. A second publication, following two years later, and styled "Words for the Hour," was esteemed by some critics as better than the first. George William Curtis, at that time editor of "Putnam's Magazine," wrote me, "It is a better book than its predecessor, but will probably not meet with the same success." And so, indeed, it proved.
I had always contemplated writing for the stage, and was now emboldened to compose a drama entitled, "The World's Own," which was produced at Wallack's Theatre in New York. The principal characters were sustained by Matilda Heron, then in the height of her popularity, and Mr. Sothern, afterwards so famous in the rôle of Lord Dundreary. The play was performed several times in New York and once in Boston. It was pronounced by one critic "full of literary merits and of dramatic defects." It did not, as they say, "keep the stage."