"The autographed books, for the most part, however, belong to the years since Mrs. Moulton had won her place as the leading woman-poet of America. Her intimate connection with the literary world in England has brought it about that almost as many English as American names are found written on the fly-leaves of presentation copies. Largely, of course, the sentiments are simple expressions of regard or admiration, and it has not seemed worth while to include these here. Of those which are more full or less conventional the following are examples: Oswald Crawfurd has written in his 'Portugal': 'My friends consider this my best work, and if they are right it is the fittest present I can give to Mrs. Chandler Moulton, the best friend this year, 1887, has brought me.' In the 1896 edition of 'Dawn' the author says: 'To Mrs. Chandler Moulton with the kind regards of H. Rider Haggard. P.S. Her appreciation of this old "three-decker," which he remembers working very hard over, has pleased its antiquated author very much indeed, as he imagined that nowadays it only possessed a prehistoric interest.' In Lloyd Mifflin's 'The Fields of Dawn' is written: 'You who know so well—by having so often encountered them yourself—the almost insuperable difficulties of the sonnet form, will be among the first to pardon the many short-comings of this little volume'; and in 'The Slopes of Parnassus' are quoted with graceful modesty the lines of Tennyson:
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"For though its faults were thick as dust In vacant chambers, I could trust Your kindness. |
Nothing could be more graceful than the inscription of Arthur Sherburne Hardy: 'If the salut Passe Rose sang to Queen Hildegarde (p. 354) had not already been verified for you, I should repeat it here. Faithfully yours, etc.' The salut, as those will remember who are as fond of 'Passe Rose' as I am, was:
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"God give thee joy, And great honor. |
In her 'Brownies and Boggles' Miss Guiney has written:
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"'Of Brownyes and of Boggles fulle is this Beuk. Gawain Douglas, 1474-1522. |
For the "Fairy" Godmother, from her chronicler of elves. L.I.G.' And in 'Goose-Quill Papers': 'To your most gracious hands these weeds and tares.' Clyde Fitch, in a copy of 'The Knighting of the Twins,' mounted from newspaper slips and bound by the author: 'Sweet singer—friendship is a blue, blue sky,—fair, ethereal, interminable, with an horizon made goldy with the sun of love. And your friendship—is a sky still more precious, a heavenly one.' Harriet Prescott Spofford inscribes 'An Inheritance,' 'My dear Louise, with the love of her Hal,' and in turn Mrs. Moulton herself writes in a volume of Mrs. Spofford's 'Poems': 'To Philip Bourke Marston I give these poems of a woman whom I love.' Mrs. Clara Erskine Clement in 'Angels in Art': 'Alas! My pen was not "dropped from an angel's wing," but such things as it writ I send thee with my love.' In a copy of 'Berries of the Briar' I found with amused surprise, as I had not seen it for twenty years or so: 'Louise Chandler Moulton with Christmas greeting from The Briar, 1886.
Anybody could easily place this sort of verse without a date, for at that time, in the eighties, experiments in French forms were notoriously in fashion. In 'Love Lyrics,' in clear, incisive text one reads: 'For Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton these humble lines—herein gathered by another than the author's hand—so doubly poor an exchange for her volume of real poetry entitled "At the Wind's Will." With all hale greetings of your ever grateful friend, James Whitcomb Riley. Christmas of 1899.