[CHAPTER V]
1880-1890
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The busy shuttle comes and goes Across the rhymes, and deftly weaves A tissue out of autumn leaves, With here a thistle, there a rose. With art and patience thus is made The poet's perfect Cloth of Gold; When woven so, nor earth nor mould Nor time can make its colors fade.—T.B. Aldrich. |
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And others came,—Desires and Adorations; Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies; Splendors and Glooms and glimmering Incantations Of hopes and fears and twilight fantasies.—Shelley. |
I see the Gleaming Gates and toward them press.—L.C.M.
MR. and Mrs. Moulton when they first set up their household gods established themselves on Beacon Hill. A few years later, however, a new part of the city was developed at the South End, and popular favor turned in that direction. The broad streets and squares with trees and turf were quiet and English-looking, and although fickle fashion has in later years forsaken the region, it remains singularly attractive. Here Mr. Moulton became the owner of a house, and for the remainder of their lives he and his wife made this their home.
The dwelling was a four-story brick house, the front windows looking out upon the greenery of a little park in the centre of the square. At one end of the place was a stone church, defined against the sky and especially lovely with the red of sunset behind it; and an old-world atmosphere of retirement and leisure always pervaded the region. In Rutland Square, No. 28 came to be well known to every Bostonian and to whomever among visitors was interested in things literary. It was the most cosmopolitan centre of social life in the city; and to it famous visitors to this country were almost sure to find their way. For thirty years Mrs. Moulton's weekly receptions through the winter were notable.
The drawing-room and library where groups of charming and famous people assembled were such as to remain pictured in the memory of the visitor. They were fairly furnished, so to speak, with the tributes of friends. There were water-colors from Rollin Tilton of Rome; a vigorous sketch of a famous group of trees at Bordighera by Charles Caryl Coleman; a number of signed photographs from Vedder; sketches in clay from Greenough, Ezekiel, and Robert Barrett Browning; a group of water-colors, illustrating Mrs. Moulton's poem, "Come Back, Dear Days," by Winthrop Pierce,—one of these showing a brilliant sunrise, while underneath was the line,
"The morning skies were all aflame;"
and another, revealing a group of shadow-faces, illustrated the line,