Miss Alcott to Mrs. Moulton
"I have not the least objection to your writing a sketch of L.M.A. I shall feel quite comfortable in your hands. I have little material to give you; but in 'Little Women' you will find the various stages of my career and experience. Don't forget to mention that I don't like lion hunters, that I don't serve autophotos and biographies to the hundreds of boys and girls who ask, and that I heartily endorse Dr. Holmes' views on this subject."
To this volume the sketch of Mrs. Moulton herself was written by the graceful pen of Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford, who wrote with the sympathetic appreciation of the poet and close friend.
While on a visit to Spain in 1883,—and "Spain," she wrote, "is a word to conjure with,"—Mrs. Moulton made the acquaintance of Oswald Crawfurd the novelist, when he was in the diplomatic service. From his letters then and afterward might be taken many interesting passages, of which the following may serve as examples:
"There is another writer whose acquaintance I have made, through his books, I mean, for such interesting creatures as authors seldom come to Portugal. We have to put up with royalties, rich tourists, and wine merchants. For me, the writers, the manipulators of ideas, the shapers of them into human utterance, are the important people of the age, as well as the most agreeable to meet, in their books or in life. This particularly pleasant one I have just met is Frank Stockton. You will laugh at the idea of my discovering what other people knew long ago, but it happens that I have only just read his books. The three notes that strike me in him are his perfect originality, his literary dexterity, and his new and delicate humor. I cannot say how he delighted me."
"We are going to give you Andrew Lang to take you in [at the dinner] on Friday, and on the other side you will have either James Bryce or Mr. Chapman, the 'enterprising young publisher' mentioned by Dickens. Regarding Lang, I know no man who does so many things so very well,—journalist, philologist, mythological researcher,—and to the front in all these characters. To almost any one but yourself I should call him a poet also. His face is very refined and beautiful."
"I have been reading your poems again. You are as true a lyric artist as Landor or Herrick. I admire your sonnets,—they have a particular charm for me, and I am glad that you do not despise the old English form with the two last lines in rhyme. Shakespeare's, indeed, are so. I am almost inclined to think that for our rhymeless language, for an ear not attuned to the Italian perception for delicate rhyme of sounds, the strong emphasis on the ending couplet is right and good."
"I honestly like and admire the genius of Howells. I like his novels immensely, but his theories not at all."