"I see your gentle ghosts arise."
There were signed photographs of Robert Barrett Browning's "Dryope," a gift from the artist; a painting of singular beauty from the artist, Signor Vertunni, of Rome; and from William Ordway Partridge three sculptures,—the figure of a child in Carrara marble, a head tinted like old ivory, and a portrait bust of Edward Everett Hale, a speaking likeness. There was that wonderful drawing by Vedder, "The Cup of Death" (from the Rubaiyat), which the artist had given to Mrs. Moulton in memory of her sonnet on the theme, the opening lines of which are:
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She bends her lovely head to taste thy draught, O thou stern "Angel of the Darker Cup," With thee to-night in the dim shades to sup, Where all they be who from that cup have quaffed. |
And among the rare books was a copy of Stéphane Mallarmé's translation of Poe's "Raven," with illustrations by Manet, the work being the combined gift to Mrs. Moulton of the poet-translator and the artist.
The Library in Mrs. Moulton’s Boston Home,
28 Rutland Square
Page 109
Many were the rare books in autograph copies given to Mrs. Moulton by her friends abroad—copies presented by Lord Houghton, George Eliot, Tennyson, Jean Ingelow, Christina Rossetti, Oswald Crawfurd, George Meredith, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur O'Shaughnessy, and several, too, which were dedicated to her,—the "Wind Voices" of Philip Bourke Marston, inscribed: "To Louise Chandler Moulton, true poet and true friend," and another by Herbert L. Clarke of London. The rooms were magnetic with charming associations.
A correspondent from a leading New York daily, commissioned to write of Mrs. Moulton's home, described her drawing-room as