In Kensington, a suburb of London, in a two-story-and-a-half stone house, cream-colored, lives Jean Ingelow. Tasteful grounds are in front of the home, and in the rear a large lawn bordered with many flowers, and conservatories; a real English garden, soft as velvet, and fragrant as new-mown hay. The house is fit for a poet; roomy, cheerful, and filled with flowers. One end of the large, double parlors seemed a bank of azalias and honeysuckles, while great bunches of yellow primrose and blue forget-me-not were on the tables and in the bay-windows.
But most interesting of all was the poet herself, in middle life, with fine, womanly face, friendly manner, and cultivated mind. For an hour we talked of many things in both countries. Miss Ingelow showed great familiarity with American literature and with our national questions.
While everything about her indicated deep love for poetry, and a keen sense of the beautiful, her conversation, fluent and admirable, showed her to be eminently practical and sensible, without a touch of sentimentality. Her first work in life seems to be the making of her two brothers happy in the home. She usually spends her forenoons in writing. She does her literary work thoroughly, keeping her productions a long time before they are put into print. As she is never in robust health, she gives little time to society, and passes her winters in the South of France or Italy. A letter dated Feb. 25, from the Alps Maritime, at Cannes, says, "This lovely spot is full of flowers, birds, and butterflies." Who that recalls her Songs on the Voices of Birds, the blackbird, and the nightingale, will not appreciate her happiness with such surroundings?
With great fondness for, and pride in, her own country, she has the most kindly feelings toward America and her people. She says in the preface of her novel, Fated to be Free, concerning this work and Off the Skelligs, "I am told that they are peculiar; and I feel that they must be so, for most stories of human life are, or at least aim at being, works of art--selections of interesting portions of life, and fitting incidents put together and presented as a picture is; and I have not aimed at producing a work of art at all, but a piece of nature." And then she goes on to explain her position to "her American friends," for, she says, "I am sure you more than deserve of me some efforts to please you. I seldom have an opportunity of saying how truly I think so."
Jean Ingelow's life has been a quiet but busy and earnest one. She was born in the quaint old city of Boston, England, in 1830. Her father was a well-to-do banker; her mother a cultivated woman of Scotch descent, from Aberdeenshire. Jean grew to womanhood in the midst of eleven brothers and sisters, without the fate of struggle and poverty, so common among the great.
She writes to a friend concerning her childhood:--
"As a child, I was very happy at times, and generally wondering at something.... I was uncommonly like other children.... I remember seeing a star, and that my mother told me of God who lived up there and made the star. This was on a summer evening. It was my first hearing of God, and made a great impression on my mind. I remember better than anything that certain ecstatic sensations of joy used to get hold of me, and that I used to creep into corners to think out my thoughts by myself. I was, however, extremely timid, and easily overawed by fear. We had a lofty nursery with a bow-window that overlooked the river. My brother and I were constantly wondering at this river. The coming up of the tides, and the ships, and the jolly gangs of towers ragging them on with a monotonous song made a daily delight for us. The washing of the water, the sunshine upon it, and the reflections of the waves on our nursery ceiling supplied hours of talk to us, and days of pleasure. At this time, being three years old, ... I learned my letters.... I used to think a good deal, especially about the origin of things. People said often that they had been in this world, that house, that nursery, before I came. I thought everything must have begun when I did.... No doubt other children have such thoughts, but few remember them. Indeed, nothing is more remarkable among intelligent people than the recollections they retain of their early childhood. A few, as I do, remember it all. Many remember nothing whatever which occurred before they were five years old.... I have suffered much from a feeling of shyness and reserve, and I have not been able to do things by trying to do them. What comes to me comes of its own accord, and almost in spite of me; and I have hardly any power when verses are once written to make them any better.... There were no hardships in my youth, but care was bestowed on me and my brothers and sisters by a father and mother who were both cultivated people."
To another friend she writes: "I suppose I may take for granted that mine was the poetic temperament, and since there are no thrilling incidents to relate, you may think you should like to have my views as to what that means. I cannot tell you in an hour, or even in a day, for it means so much. I suppose it, of its absence or presence, to make far more difference between one person and another than any contrast of circumstances can do. The possessor does not have it for nothing. It isolates, particularly in childhood; it takes away some common blessings, but then it consoles for them all."
With this poetic temperament, that saw beauty in flower, and sky, and bird, that felt keenly all the sorrow and all the happiness of the world about her, that wrote of life rather than art, because to live rightly was the whole problem of human existence, with this poetic temperament, the girl grew to womanhood in the city bordering on the sea.
Boston, at the mouth of the Witham, was once a famous seaport, the rival of London in commercial prosperity, in the thirteenth century. It was the site of the famous monastery of St. Botolph, built by a pious monk in 657. The town which grew up around it was called Botolph's town, contracted finally to Boston. From this town Reverend John Cotton came to America, and gave the name to the capital of Massachusetts, in which he settled. The present famous old church of St. Botolph was founded in 1309, having a bell-tower three hundred feet high, which supports a lantern visible at sea for forty miles.