"Mrs. Moulton seems to have gathered up the poetic threads of European life which were too fine for other visitors to see or get, to have caught and given expression to the impalpable aromas of the various places she visited, so that the reader feels a certain atmospheric charm it is impossible to describe."
The little book was deservedly successful. Mrs. Moulton's writings seemed always to conform to the standard set by Mr. Aldrich, who once said to her: "Literature ought to warm the heart; not chill it." Her readers were conscious without fail of a current of sympathetic humanity.
It was this quality no less than her real critical power, or perhaps even more than that, which made authors so grateful for her reviews of their work. In reference to a newspaper letter in which she had spoken of Wilkie Collins, the novelist wrote to her:
Mr. Collins to Mrs. Moulton
"90 Gloucester Place, Portman Square, W.
March 30, 1880.
"I have read your kind letter with much pleasure. I know the 'general reader' by experience as my best friend and ally.... When I return to the charge I shall write with redoubled resolution if I feel that I have the great public with me, as I had then (for example) in the case of 'The New Magdalen.' 'Her Married Life,' in the second part, will be essentially happy. But the husband and wife—the world whose unchristian prejudices and law they set at defiance will slowly undermine their happiness, and will, I fear, make the close of the story a sad one."
The letter referred to was one of a long series which Mrs. Moulton contributed to the New York Independent. Many of these papers were of marked literary value. A typical one was upon Mme. Desbordes-Valmore, founded upon Sainte Beuve's memoir of that interesting and unhappy French poet. Mrs. Moulton characterizes Mme. Desbordes-Valmore as "the sad, sweet nightingale among the singers of France, and as a tender, elegiac poet" without equal. She closes with these words:
"Mme. Valmore passed away in July of 1859. 'We shall not die,' she had said. In that hour a gate was opened to some strange land of light, some new dawning of glory, and the holy saints, to whose fellowship she belonged, received her into the very peace of God."