"Went to Irving's dinner at the New Gallery. Sir Edward Russell, editor of the Daily Post, Liverpool, took me out; and a delightful companion he was."
"Many guests: Mrs. Wilberforce, Lady Henry Somerset, Mrs. Henniker, the Pearsall Smiths, William Watson, Oswald Crawfurd, 'Michael Field' (that is to say Miss Bradley and Miss Cooper), Violet Hunt, Mr. and Mrs. Clement Shorter, Archdeacon and Mrs. Wilberforce, and many more."
As the years went on, bringing her to the verge of seventy, Mrs. Moulton's literary activity naturally grew greatly less. The record of her life for the following years was largely a record of friendships, with the enjoyments and honors which belonged to her place among American writers. She was asked often to write her reminiscences of the many distinguished people she had known, but always declined. "I have, alas! kept no records," she wrote to one editor. She was naturally asked to be present at any literary function of importance. She was a guest at the dinner given by the New England Women's Club in 1905, in honor of Mrs. Howe's eighty-fifth birthday, and notes that it was "a brilliant meeting," and adding: "Mrs. Howe had written a gay little poem in response, wonderful woman that she is." The dinner given in honor of Mark Twain's seventieth birthday was the last great occasion of the kind which she attended. In the following year she returned from Europe just too late to join in the dinner given by the Harpers on the seventieth birthday of Dr. Alden. Not only for her literary standing and as an old friend of Dr. Alden would it have been appropriate for her to be present on this occasion; but she might also have appeared as his first contributor, as some thirty years earlier, Dr. Alden's first official act upon assuming the chair as editor of Harper's Magazine had been to accept a contribution from Mrs. Moulton.
In the letters of this period are to be found the truest records of what most interested Mrs. Moulton and best expressed her personality. Unfortunately she often asked that her letters should be destroyed, so that no selection which may now be brought together does her complete justice. The letters she received, however, reflect in many ways those to which they replied; and extracts from them may be left to speak for themselves.
Louise Imogen Guiney to Mrs. Moulton
"... On an awfully wild and windy day of last week I struck off for Highgate over Hampstead Heath, and got so drenched additionally in the memories of the men who reign over me, Lamb, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and Hunt, that I declare now I must live there a while. Coleridge's tomb I knew to be under the crypt of the Grammar School, and I found the Gilmans' house where he died, thanks to the only knowledge that I seem to have had from everlasting. The tomb is a queer piece of masonry, so placed that you may put your hand within an inch of his coffin. After some exploring and inquiring, George Eliot's grave turned up in the new grounds of Highgate Cemetery, where I suppose poor Philip Marston's must be. Her grave is an entirely unconventional affair, to the memory of Mary Ann Cross. I caught myself wondering whether there were any special reason for laying that great soul (here is some theological inaccuracy!) in so narrow and crowded a space, when suddenly I shifted my position, and saw that she was lying directly at the feet of George Henry Lewes, born August 4, 1817, died December 30, 1878. It gave me a queer sensation, I tell you, for Lewes' marble is half hidden and not visible from the path. If it were George Eliot's wish, honor to Mr. Cross for carrying it out!"
"Some agreeable witchery, sure to be transient, is about me to-day, for I've made a 'pome,' the first since winter, and patched up a trivial old one,—both of which I send you as a slight token that I may get out of Bedlam yet. The sonnet I want you to cherish, it is so abominably pessimistic...."
"I have been luxuriating in 'Atalanta.'... That is my springtime. There is no such music and motion and solemn gladness anywhere in modern verse. In a year or two more I shall know it by heart from cover to cover.... And here is England knee-deep in green and daisies; England piled with ruined Abbey walls."
"I have two refreshments to chronicle,—one is Irving's 'Becket,' and not the stock-still, curiously inefficient play, but just Irving's 'Becket,' otherwise 'St. Thomas of Canterbury,' a flash and a breath from Heaven. Where does that actor get his gift of everything spiritual and supernatural? His charm to me is that he has great moral power,—either inherent from the noble mind ... or else acquired by art so subtle that I never got hold of the like.... Surely, not everybody can see so into a character ... and measure its astonishing depth in humanity and divinity."