Reminiscences, 1819-1899

by Julia Ward Howe

I once spoke to Parker of my wish to be heard, to commend my own thoughts with my own voice. He found this not only natural, but also in accordance with the spirit of the age, which, he said, "called for the living presence and the living utterance." I did not act at once, or even very soon, upon this prompting; the difficulties to be overcome were many. My husband was himself averse to public appearances. Women speakers were few in those days, and were frowned upon by general society. He would have been doubly sensitive to such undesirable publicity on my account. Meantime, the exigencies of the time were calling one woman after another to the platform. Lucy Stone devoted the first years of her eloquence to anti-slavery and the temperance reform. Anna Dickinson achieved a sudden and brilliant popularity. I did not dream of trying my strength with theirs, but I began to weave together certain essays which might be read to an invited audience in private parlors. I then commissioned certain of my friends to invite certain of their friends to my house for an appointed evening, and began, with some trepidation, my course of parlor lectures. We were residing, at this time, in the house in Chestnut Street which was afterwards made famous by the sittings of the Radical Club. The parlors were very roomy, and were well filled by those who came to hear me. Among them was my neighbor, Rev. Dr. Lothrop, who, in speaking of these occasions at a later day, once said, "I think that they were the best meetings that I ever knew. The conversation that followed the readings was started on a high plane." This conversation was only informal talk among those who had been listeners. My topics, so far as I can recall them, were as follows: "How not to teach Ethics;" "Doubt and Belief, the Two Feet of the Mind;" "Moral Triangulation, or the Third Party;" "Duality of Character;" "The Fact Accomplished." My audience consisted largely of my society friends, but was by no means limited to them. The elder Agassiz, Dr. Lothrop, E. P. Whipple, James Freeman Clarke, and William R. Alger attended all my readings. After the first one, Mr. Clarke said to me, "You have touched too many chords." After hearing my thesis on "Duality of Character," he took my hand in his, and said, "Oh! you sweet soul!"

Mr. Emerson was not among my hearers, but expressed some interest in my undertaking, and especially in my lecture on "The Third Party." Meeting me one day, he said, "You have in this a mathematical idea." This was in my opinion the most important lecture of my course. It really treated of a third element in all twofold relations,—between married people, the bond to which both alike owed allegiance; between States, the compact which originally bound them together. The civil war was then in its first stage. The air was full of secession. Many said, "If North and South agree to set aside their bonds of union, and to become two republics, why should they not do it?" Then the sacredness of the bond possessed my mind. "Was an agreement, so solemnly entered into, so vital in its obligations, to be so lightly canceled?" I labored with all my might to prove that this could not be done. I remember too that in one of my lectures I gave my own estimate of Auguste Comte, which differed from the general impression concerning him. I am not sure that I should take the same ground in these days.

Whether my hearers were the wiser for my efforts I cannot say, but of this I am sure, that they brought me much instruction. I learned somewhat to avoid anti-climax, and to seek directness and simplicity of statement. On the morning of the day on which I was to give my lecture, I would read it over, and a curious sense of the audience seemed to possess me, a feeling of what it would and of what it would not follow. My last corrections were made in accordance with this feeling.

A general regret was expressed when my little course was ended, and Dr. Lothrop wrote me quite an earnest letter, requesting me to prolong it if possible. I could not do this at the time; but while the war was at its height, I made a second visit to Washington, where through the kindness of friends a pleasant place was found in which I repeated these lectures, having among my hearers some of the chief notabilities then present at the capital. In my journal of this time, never published, I find the following account of a day in Washington:—

"To the White House, to see Carpenter's picture of the President reading the emancipation proclamation to his Cabinet. An interesting subject for a picture. The heads of Lincoln, Stanton, and Seward nearly finished, and good portraits.

"Dressed for dinner at Mrs. Eames's, where Secretary Chase and Senator Sumner were expected. Mr. Chase is a stately man, very fine looking and rather imposing. I sat by him at dinner; he was very pleasant. After dinner came Mrs. Douglas in her carriage, to take me to my reading. Senator Foster and Mr. Chase announced their intention of going to hear me. Mr. Chase conducted me to Mrs. Douglas's carriage, promising to follow. 'Proteus, or the Secret of Success,' was my topic. I had many pleasant greetings after the lecture. Mr. Chase took me in his carriage to his house, where his daughter had a party for Teresa Carreño. Here I was introduced to Lord Lyons, British minister, and to Judge Harris. Spoke with Bertinatti, the Italian minister. Mr. Chase took me in to supper.

"Mr. Channing brought me into the room, which was well filled. People were also standing in the entry and on the stairs. I read my lecture on 'The Third Party.' The audience proved very attentive, and included many people of intelligence. George W. Julian and wife, Solomon Whiting, Admiral Davis, Dr. Peter Parker, our former minister to China, Hon. Thomas Eliot, Governor Boutwell, Mrs. Southworth, Professor Bache,—all these, and many more, were present. They shook hands with me, very cordially, after the lecture."

I had announced "Practical Ethics" as the theme of my lectures, and had honestly written them out of my sense of the lapses everywhere discernible in the working of society. Having accomplished so much, or so little, I desired to go more deeply into the study of philosophy, and, having greedily devoured Spinoza, I turned to Kant, whom I knew only by name. I fed upon his volumes with ever increasing delight and yet endeavored to obey one of his rules, by having a philosophy of my own. Among my later productions was an essay entitled "Distinctions between Philosophy and Religion." This was suggested by a passage in one of Spinoza's letters, in which he says to his correspondent, "I thought that we were to correspond upon matters of philosophy. I find that instead of these you propose to me questions of religion." On reading this sentence I felt that, in the religious teaching of our own time, the two were apt to be confounded. It seemed to me that even Theodore Parker had not always distinguished the boundary line, and I began to reflect seriously upon the difference between a religious truth and a philosophical proposition.

I confess that my nearer acquaintance with the philosophers, ancient and modern, inspired me at this time with the desire of contributing something of my own to the thought of the ages. The names of certain essays of mine, composed after the series just mentioned, and never put into print, will serve to show the direction in which my efforts were tending. Of these, "Polarity" was the first, "Limitation" the second. Then followed "The Fact Accomplished," "Man a priori and a posteriori," and finally, "Ideal Causation," which marked my last step in this progress. These papers were designed to interest the studious few who appreciate thought for thought's sake.

The paper on "Polarity" was read before the Boston Radical Club. Armed with "Man a priori," I encountered an audience of scientists at Northampton, where a scientific convention was in progress. Finally, being invited to speak before the Parker Fraternity on a certain Sunday, and remembering that Parker, in his day, had not feared to let out the metaphysical stops of his organ pretty freely, I took with me into the pulpit the paper on "Ideal Causation," which had seemed to me the crown of my endeavor hitherto.