Reminiscences, 1819-1899

by Julia Ward Howe

This absence of fashion 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 passed 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 assassination 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 title 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 noble 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 cumbrous encounter of cross-interests,—a church of true worship 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 partnership. 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 passionless, 'Passion 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.

Let me here record my belief that society rarely attains anywhere a higher level than that which all must recognize in the Boston of the last forty years. The religious philosophy of the Unitarian pulpit; the intercourse with the learned men of Harvard College, more frequent formerly than at present; the inheritance of solid and earnest character, most precious of estates; the nobility of thought developed in Margaret Fuller's pupils; the cordial piety of such leaders as Phillips Brooks, James Freeman Clarke, and Edward Everett Hale; the presence of leading authors,—Holmes, Longfellow, Emerson, and Lowell,—all these circumstances combined have given to Massachusetts a halo of glory which time should not soon have power to dim.

Massachusetts, as I understand her, asks for no false leadership, for no illusory and transient notoriety. Where Truth and Justice command, her sons and daughters will follow; and if she should sometimes be found first in the ranks, it will not be because her ambition has displaced others, but because the strength of her convictions has carried her beyond the ranks of the doubting and deliberate.