Poe’s sonnet “To Zante,” Holmes’s “Last Leaf,” Lowell’s “Zekle’s Courtin’” and a manuscript volume containing nearly all of Bayard Taylor’s “Poems of the Orient.” His library of English poets contains many now scarce first editions—Drayton’s Poems, 1619; Lord Sterling’s “Monarchic Tragedies,” 1602; Brooke’s “Alaham Mustapha,” 1631; Milton’s Poems, 1645; the early editions of Suckling, etc.
The most precious of all Mr. Stoddard’s literary relics is a lock of light brown or golden hair—the veriest wisp,—that came to him from his friend and brother poet Mr. George H. Boker of Philadelphia. Mr. Boker had it from Leigh Hunt’s American editor, S. Adams Lee, to whom it was given by Hunt himself. It was “the distinguished physician Dr. Beatty” who gave it to the English poet; and it was Hoole, the translator of Tasso, who gave it to Beatty. The next previous owner to Hoole was Dr. Samuel Johnson. Further back than this, Leigh Hunt could not trace it; but he believed it to be a portion of the lock attached to a miniature portrait of Milton known to have existed in the time of Addison and supposed to have been in his possession. That it came from the august head of the poet of “Paradise Lost” had never been doubted down to Dr. Beatty’s day; so at least wrote Hunt, in a manuscript of which Mr. Stoddard preserves a copy, in Lee’s handwriting, in a volume of Hunt’s poems edited by that gentleman. There is a fine sonnet of Hunt’s on these golden threads, written when they passed into his possession; and Keats’s poem, “On Seeing a Lock of Milton’s Hair,” has made the relic still more memorable. It is smaller now than it was when these great spirits were sojourning on earth, for Leigh Hunt gave a part of it to Mrs. Browning. “Reverence these hairs, O Americans! (as indeed you will),” he wrote, “for in them your great Republican harbinger on this side of the Atlantic appears, for the first time, actually and bodily present on the other side of it.” A companion locket holds a wisp of silver hairs from the head of Washington.
It would be a serious oversight to ignore any member of the little Stoddard household—to make no mention of that gifted woman who caught the contagion of writing from her husband, and has won not only his cordial “Well done,” but the admiration of such authoritative critics as Hawthorne and Stedman, to name but these two; or of that son who is now an only child, and therefore trebly dear to both his parents. Mrs. Stoddard is known and admired as a poet; the bound volumes of Harper’s Monthly bear abundant testimony to her skill as a writer of short stories; and her powers as a novelist are receiving fresh recognition through the republication, by Cassell & Co., of “Two Men,” “The Morgesons” and “Temple House.” The son, Lorimer, a youth of twenty-four, has chosen the stage as his profession, and in that very popular piece, “The Henrietta,” has made his mark in the character of the young nobleman. In speaking of the home of the Stoddards, some reference to the long-haired little terrier, Œnone, may be pardoned. She has been an inmate of the house for many years; and she trots here and there about it, upstairs and down, as freely and with as few misadventures as if she were not stone-blind.
The blindness of Œnone reminds me that her master (whom rheumatism once robbed of the use of his right hand for many years) is gradually losing the use of his eyes. I found him this summer, on his return from a few weeks’ sojourn in the Adirondacks, reading and writing with the aid of a powerful magnifying-glass. He said the trip had done him little good in this respect; and the glare of the sunlight upon the salt water at Sag Harbor, whither he was about to repair for the rest of the season, was not likely to prove more beneficial. This seashore town, where his friend Julian Hawthorne long since established himself, has of late years taken Mattapoisett’s place as the Stoddards’ summer home.
A personal description of Mr. Stoddard should be unnecessary. At this late day few of his readers can be unfamiliar with his face. It has been engraved more than once, and printed not only with his collected poems, but in magazines of wider circulation than the books of any living American poet. It is not likely to disappoint the admirer of his work, for it is a poet’s face, as well as a handsome one. The clear-cut, regular features are almost feminine in their delicacy; but in the dark eyes, now somewhat dimmed though full of thought and feeling, there is a look that counteracts any impression of effeminacy due to the refinement of the features, or the melodious softness of the voice. The hair and beard of snowy whiteness make a harmonious setting for the poet’s ruddy countenance. Though slightly bowed, as he steps forward to meet you (with left hand advanced) Mr. Stoddard still impresses you as a man of more than middle height. His cordial though undemonstrative greeting puts the stranger at his ease at once; for his manner is as gentle as his speech is frank.
Joseph B. Gilder.
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
IN HARTFORD
Until Mrs. Stowe’s health began to fail, twice a day regularly she walked abroad for an hour or more, and between times she was apt to be more or less out of doors. The weather had to be unmistakably prohibitory to keep her housed from morning till night. Not infrequently her forenoon stroll took her to the house of her son, the Rev. Charles E. Stowe, two miles away, in the north part of the city. So long as the season admitted of it, she inclined to get off the pavement into the fields; and she was not afraid to climb over or under a fence. As one would infer from her writings, she was extremely fond of wild flowers, and from early spring to late autumn invariably came in with her hands full of them. To a friend who met her once on one of her outings, she exhibited a spray of leaves, and passed on with the single disconsolate remark, “Not one flower can I find,” as if she had failed of her object. As a general thing she preferred to be unaccompanied on her walks. She moved along at a good pace, but, so to speak, quietly, with her head bent somewhat forward, and at times so wrapped in thought as to pass without recognition people whom she knew, even when saluted by them. Yet she would often pause to talk with children whom she saw at their sports, and amuse both herself and them with kindly inquiries about their affairs—the game they were playing or what not. One day she stopped a little girl of the writer’s acquaintance, who was performing the then rather unfeminine feat of riding a bicycle, and had her show how she managed the mount and the dismount, etc., while she looked on laughing and applauding. It was very much her way, in making her pedestrian rounds, to linger and watch workingmen employed in their various crafts, and to enter into conversation with them—always in a manner to give them pleasure. She said once: “I keep track of all the new houses going up in town, and I have talked with the men who are building most of them.” A number of years ago her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, sent her a letter which he had received from a friend in Germany, condoling with him on the supposed event of her decease, a rumor of which had somehow got started in Europe; and this letter afforded her no little entertainment, especially its closing with the expression “Peace to her ashes.” “I guess,” she observed with a humorous smile, and using her native dialect, “the gentleman would think my ashes pretty lively, if he was here.” To what multitudes was her continued presence in the world she blessed a grateful circumstance!
Mrs. Stowe resided in Hartford after 1864, the family having removed thither from Andover, Massachusetts, upon the termination of Prof. Stowe’s active professional career. Her attachment to the city dated back to her youth, when she passed some years there. It was also the home of several of her kindred and near friends. She first lived in a house built for her after her own design—a delightful house, therefore. But its location proved, by and by, for various reasons, so unsatisfactory that it was given up; and after an interval, spent chiefly at her summer place in Florida, the house where she lived until her death in 1896, was purchased. It is an entirely modest dwelling, of the cottage style, and stands about a mile west of the Capitol in Forest Street, facing the east. The plot which it occupies—only a few square rods in extent—is well planted with shrubbery (there is scarcely space for trees) and is, of course, bright with flowers in their season. At the rear it joins the grounds of Mark Twain, and is but two minutes’ walk distant from the former home of Charles Dudley Warner. The interior of the house is plain, and of an ordinary plan. On the right, as you enter, the hall opens into a good-sized parlor, which in turn opens into another back of it. On the left is the dining-room. In furnishing it is altogether simple, as suits with its character, and with the moderate circumstances of its occupants. Yet it is a thoroughly attractive and charming home; for it bears throughout, in every detail of arrangement, the signature of that refined taste which has the art and secret of giving an air of grace to whatever it touches. The pictures, which are obviously heart selections, are skilfully placed, and seem to extend to the caller a friendly greeting. Among them are a number of flower-pieces (chiefly wild) by Mrs. Stowe’s own hand.