These days of seclusion were hard for her, and every effort was made to bring the "mountains" to her, since she could not go to them.
A club was formed among her friends in Boston for the study and speaking of Italian: this became one of her great pleasures, and she looked forward eagerly to the meetings, delighted to hear and to use the beautiful speech she had loved since childhood.
"February 22. The new club, Il Circolo Italiano, met at our house. Count Campello had asked me to say a few words, so I prepared a very little screed in Italian, not daring to trust myself to speak extempore in this language. We had a large attendance; I thought one hundred were present. My bit was well received, and the lecture by Professor Speranza, of New York, was very interesting, though rather difficult to follow. The theme was D'Annunzio's dramas, from which he gave some quotations and many characterizations. He relegates D'Annunzio to the Renaissance when Virtù had no real moral significance. Compared him with Ibsen. The occasion was exceedingly pleasant."
To Laura
I had hoped to go to church to-day, but my Maud and your Julia decided against it, and so I am having the day at home. It is just noon by my dial, and Maud is stretched in my Gardiner chair, comfortably shawled, and reading Lombroso's book on "The Man of Genius," with steadfast attention. Lombroso's theory seems to be that genius, almost equally with insanity, is a result of degeneration....
"March 1. The first day of spring, though in this climate this is a wintry month. I am thankful to have got on so far in this, my eighty-second year. My greatest trouble is that I use so poorly the precious time spared to me. Latterly I have been saying to myself, 'Can you not see that the drama is played out?' This partly because my children wish me to give up public speaking."
"March 4.... To New England Woman's Club; first time this year, to my great regret and loss. I was cordially welcomed.... A thought suddenly came to me, namely, that the liberal education of women would give the death-blow to superstition. I said, 'We women have been the depositaries of religious sensibility, but we have also furnished the impregnable storehouse of superstition, sometimes gracious, sometimes desperately cruel and hurtful to our race.' No one noticed this, but I hold fast to it...."
"March 8.... To Symphony Concert in afternoon, which I enjoyed but little, the music being of the multi-muddle order so much in vogue just now. An air of Haydn's sounded like a sentence of revelation in a chatter...."
It may have been after this concert that she wrote these lines, found in one of her notebooks:—
Such ugly noises never in my life
My ears endured, such hideous fiddle-strife.
A dozen street bands playing different tunes,
A choir of chimney sweeps with various runes,
The horn that doth to farmer's dinner call,
The Chinese gong that serves in wealthier hall,
The hammer, scrub brush, and beseeching broom,
While here and there the guns of freedom boom,
"Tzing! bang! this soul is saved!" "Clang! clang! it isn't!"
And mich and dich and ich and sich and sisn't!
Five dollar bills the nauseous treat secured,
But what can pay the public that endured?