Her summers, after the visit to her daughter in Charleston, were still passed in Europe. Rome, Florence, and other southern cities were often visited before she went to England for her annual London season. Often, too, she made a stay in Paris either before or after her sojourn on the other side of the Channel. Among her friends in Paris were Marie Bashkirtseff and her mother, and not infrequently she took tea at the studio. After the death of the artist, a number of letters passed between Mrs. Moulton and the heart-broken mother.
Her friends in London were so many, and the diary records so many pleasant social diversions that it is no wonder that Thomas Hardy should write to her: "Why don't you live in London altogether? You might thus please us, your friends, and send to America letters of a higher character than are usually penned. You would raise the standard of that branch of journalism." Season after season she notes dinners, luncheons, drives, functions of all sorts, and one does not wonder that with this and her really arduous literary work her health began to suffer. A German "cure" came to be a regular part of the summer programme, and yet with her eager temperament and keen interest in the human, she could not bring herself to forego the excitement and enjoyment which probably did much to make this necessary.
Not a little did her voluminous correspondence add to the strain under which she lived. Continually in her diary are entries which show how heavy was the task of keeping up with the flood of correspondence which constantly flowed in at her doors. "Letters, letters, letters to answer. Oh, dear, it seems to me that the whole of my life goes in writing letters. I wrote what seemed necessary letters till one p.m. Oh, what shall I do? These letters are ruining my life!" "Letters all the morning." "Letters till luncheon." Her acquaintance was wide, and her relations with the literary world of her day made it inevitable that she should be called upon for large epistolary labors; but added to this was the burden, already alluded to, of the letters which came to her from strangers. She was too kindly to ignore or neglect these, and she expended much of her strength in answer to calls upon her which were unwarrantably made. Against the greater amount of literary work which she might have accomplished with the force thus generously expended, or the possible days which might have been added to her life, must in the great account be set the pleasure she gave to many, and the balance is not for man to reckon.
It is now well known that the poems published over the name "Michael Field" were written by Miss Bradley and Miss Edith Cooper in conjunction. To Miss Cooper, Mrs. Moulton, in the intimacy of a warm friendship which established itself between them, gave in loving familiarity the name "Amber Eyes." Many letters were exchanged, and from the correspondence of Miss Cooper may be quoted these fragments.
Miss Cooper to Mrs. Moulton
"We have just returned from Fiesole and Orvieto, and such names are poems. I had hoped to send you verses in The Academy, welded by Michael, on some Greek goddess in the British Museum. We very much care for the sympathy and interest of Americans."
"I don't know any poet who is so spontaneously true to himself as you are. I actually stand by you as I read, and see the harmonious movement of your lips, and the half-deprecating, half-shadowed look in your eyes.... Your verses are like music. What is this? You are not able to sing? Is this the effect of Boston on its winter guest? I can sympathize, for I have not written a line since our play was brought out last October."
"The placid hills [in the Lake Country] make one love them as only Tuscan hills besides can do. Some of the greatest ballads belong here. Wordsworth, Scott, and Burns, and many song-writers have given their passion to this country-side, where one has such joy as the best dreams are made of."
"In a cover somewhat like this paper in tone 'Stéphanie' presents herself to you.... We have the audacity to think it is nearly as well woven as one of the William Morris carpets. We have taken ten years over the ten pages."
On one of her visits to the cure at Wiesbaden Mrs. Moulton made the acquaintance of Friedrich von Bodenstedt and visited at his house. She characterized the lyrics of the author of the "Lieder des Mirza-Schaffy" as "warm with the love of life and the life of love, and perfumed with the roses of the East." Her description of his personal appearance is not without interest.