Julia Ward Howe (1819 - 1910)

by Laura E. Richards

Footnotes

[1] Born 1756, died 1832. He graduated in 1771 from Rhode Island College (now Brown University) with distinguished honors.

[2] Granddaughter of Simon Ray, one of the original owners of the island. He was "pressed in a cheese-press" on account of his religious opinions.

[3] See Horry and Weems, Life of Marion. General Horry was a most zealous and devoted friend; as a biographer his accuracy is questionable, his picturesqueness never.

[4] We have not found the date of his death, but Horry gives the principal features of his will as he got them from the family. He calls Judith Marion "Louisa," but that is his picturesque way. She may have been "Judith Louisa"! Women's names were not of much consequence in those days.

"After having, in the good old way, bequeathed 'his soul to God who gave it,' and 'his body to the earth out of which it was taken,' he proceeds:—

"'In the first place, as to debts, thank God, I owe none, and therefore shall give my executors but little trouble on that score.

"'Secondly,—As to the poor, I have always treated them as my brethren. My dear family will, I know, follow my example.

"'Thirdly,—As to the wealth with which God has been pleased to bless me and my dear Louisa and children, lovingly have we labored together for it—lovingly we have enjoyed it—and now, with a glad and grateful heart do I leave it among them.

"'I give my beloved Louisa all my ready money—that she may never be alarmed at a sudden call.

"'I give her all my fat calves and lambs, my pigs and poultry—that she may always keep a good table.

"'I give her my new carriage and horses—that she may visit her friends in comfort.

"'I give her my family Bible—that she may live above the ill-tempers and sorrows of life.

"'I give my son Peter a hornbook—for I am afraid he will always be a dunce.'"

General Horry goes on to say that Peter was so stunned by this squib that he "instantly quit his raccoon hunting by night and betook himself to reading, and soon became a very sensible and charming young man."

[5] On first coming to this country, Johannes Demesmaker settled in Hingham, Massachusetts. Later he moved to Boston, where he became known as Dr. John Cutler; married Mary Cowell, of Boston, and served as surgeon in King Philip's War.

[6] Reminiscences, p. 4.

[7] Reminiscences, p. 4.

[8] Reminiscences, p. 8.

[9] In later life she added to these the works of Spinoza, and of Theodore Parker.

[10] Reminiscences, p. 43.

[11] Reminiscences, p. 65.

[12] Longfellow had lent her "Beowulf."

[13] The Late Samuel Ward, by Mr. Charles King.

[14] Reminiscences, p. 53.

[15] This manuscript poem was lost, together with many others of the period, a loss always regretted by our mother.

[16] George S. Hillard.

[17] Longfellow.

[18] Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe.

[19] Memoir of Dr. Samuel G. Howe, by Julia Ward Howe.

[20] Afterward Mrs. Charles H. Dorr. This lady was of no kin to them. She had been betrothed to their brother Henry, and was the lifelong friend of all three sisters.

[21] William Wadsworth, of Geneseo.

[22] Edward Everett was at that time American Minister to England.

[23] S. G. H. to Charles Sumner.

[24] Louisa Ward married Thomas Crawford in 1844, and lived thereafter in Rome.

[25] Before the marriage of the latter to Adolphe Mailliard.

[26] Breakfast.

[27] The nurserymaid.

[28] Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis.

[29] She had had a severe attack of scarlet fever during the winter.

[30] The Five of Clubs. See ante.

[31] James K. Polk.

[32] Female Poets of America.

[33] Formerly part of the Via Sistina.

[34] "The Hero." See Whittier's Poems.

[35] The Commonwealth was a daily newspaper published in the Anti-Slavery interest. Dr. Howe was one of its organizers, and for some time its editor-in-chief. She says, "Its immediate object was to reach the body politic which distrusted rhetoric and oratory, but which sooner or later gives heed to dispassionate argument and the advocacy of plain issues." She helped the Doctor in his editorial work, and enjoyed it greatly, writing literary and critical articles, while he furnished the political part.

[36] Printed in Words for the Hour, 1857.

[37] A German scholar, at this time an habitué of the house.

[38] Of Wilmington, Delaware.

[39] Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe.

[40] Near Newport, of which it is really a suburb.

[41] George William Curtis.

[42] Thomas Gold Appleton.

[43] Vaucluse, at Portsmouth.

[44] In consequence of the assault upon him in the Senate Chamber by Preston Brooks of South Carolina.

[45] This Fair was got up by Mr. Robert C. Winthrop for the benefit of the poor.

[46] Her pet name for Theodore Parker. Vide Dante's Inferno.

[47] The child's faithful nurse.

[48] "Our Orders."

[49] Miss Mary Paddock, our father's devoted amanuensis: one of the earliest and best-loved teachers at the Perkins Institution; often our mother's good helper; the faithful and lifelong friend of us all.

[50] "Hamlet at the Boston," Later Lyrics, 1866.

[51] To Mary Devlin, an actress of great charm.

[52] Lyrical Ventures, by Samuel Ward.

[53] The mother of Charles Sumner.

[54] Dr. Howe raised the money for this statue.

[55] Mrs. Francis and Mrs. McAllister.

[56] No. 19.

[57] Sister of James Freeman Clarke. An artist of some note and a beloved friend of our mother.

[58] Margaret Foley, the sculptor.

[59] The widow of her uncle, William G. Ward.

[60] Andrew Johnson.

[61] Dr. Francis Lieber, the eminent German-American publicist.

[62] Mr. Howells, in his Literary Boston Thirty Years Ago, thus speaks of her (1895): "I should not be just to a vivid phase if I failed to speak of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe and the impulse of reform which she personified. I did not sympathize with this then so much as I do now, but I could appreciate it on the intellectual side. Once, many years later, I heard Mrs. Howe speak in public, and it seemed to me that she made one of the best speeches I had ever heard. It gave me for the first time a notion of what women might do in that sort if they entered public life; but when we met in those earlier days I was interested in her as perhaps our chief poetess. I believe she did not care to speak much of literature; she was alert for other meanings in life, and I remember how she once brought to book a youthful matron who had perhaps unduly lamented the hardships of housekeeping, with the sharp demand, 'Child, where is your religion?' After the many years of an acquaintance which had not nearly so many meetings as years, it was pleasant to find her, not long ago, as strenuous as ever for the faith or work, and as eager to aid Stepniak as John Brown. In her beautiful old age she survives a certain literary impulse of Boston, but a still higher impulse of Boston she will not survive, for that will last while the city endures."

[63] Count Alberto Maggi, an Italian littérateur.

[64] At the Lexington Lyceum for the Monument Fund.

[65] This was evidently a meeting of the "Brain Club."

[66] "Kenyon's Legacy," printed in Later Lyrics.

[67] Formerly Anagnostopoulos. He dropped the last three syllables soon after coming to this country.

[68] The Handel and Haydn Festival.

[69] 1869-1871. He took the course of geology and mining engineering, graduating at the head of his class.

[70] Napoleon III.

[71] "To suckle fools and chronicle small beer." Othello.

[72] Reminiscences, p. 346.

[73] Reminiscences, p. 362.

[74] Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe.

[75] Mrs. Charles C. Perkins.

[76] She had a great regard and admiration for Miss Mitchell. Scientific achievement seemed to her well-nigh miraculous, and roused in her an almost childlike reverence.

[77] Of the Redpath Bureau.

[78] Reminiscences, pp. 411 and 412.

[79] The armless painter. See ante, vol. I, chap. xii.

[80] The Prussian aristocracy.

[81] Reminiscences, p. 423.

[82] Reminiscences, p. 423.

[83] The present King, Victor Emanuel III.

[84] Reminiscences, p. 425.

[85] The favorite wife of the Khedive.

[86] A cousin who was of the party.

[87] Ismail Pasha.

[88] A negro attendant.

[89] A Greek Protestant minister.

[90] Francis Parkman had written an article opposing woman suffrage.

[91] Luther Terry, an American painter who had lived long in Rome, and had been a close friend of Thomas Crawford. He survived his wife by some years.

[92] Dr. H. P. Beach.

[93] The late Richard Sullivan.

[94] Welsh for "glory": a favorite exclamation of hers, learned in childhood from a Welsh servant.

[95] John Howe Hall.

[96] Laura had once been told that she "would not amount to much without her good nature."

[97] Berkeley Chambers, where she and Maud spent this winter.

[98] Michael.

[99] This was a summer school of ten years (1879-88) in which Emerson, Alcott, and W. T. Harris took part.

[100] Reminiscences, p. 440.

[101] These essays were published in a volume entitled Is Polite Society Polite?

[102] Cf. Æschylus.

[103] Miss Sarah J. Eddy, then of Providence, a granddaughter of Francis Jackson.

[104] Boston.

[105] Thomas Davidson, founder of the "New Fellowship" (London and New York) and of the "Breadwinners' College."

[106] Mrs. George Russell, widow of the Doctor's friend and college chum.

[107] Caroline Tappan was Caroline Sturgis, daughter of Captain William Sturgis, and sister of Ellen (Sturgis) Hooper,—member of the inmost Transcendentalist circle, and friend of Emerson, Ellery Channing, and Margaret Fuller.

[108] Song Album. Published by G. Schirmer & Co.

[109] Henry Marion Howe.

[110] The Reverend Antoinette Blackwell.

[111] Ralph Adams Cram, architect and littérateur.

[112] Author of Civil Rights of Women.

[113] Son of Abraham Lincoln.

[114] Lady Battersea.

[115] Sergius Stepniak, a Russian author, then a political exile living in England.

[116] Rosmini-Serbati, a noted philosopher and founder of the order of the Brothers of Charity.

[117] Mrs. Charlotte Emerson Brown was at this time president of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, and had prepared this exhibit, the first of its kind in club history.

[118] Now (1915) a political prisoner in Siberia: she escaped, but was recaptured and later removed to a more remote place of imprisonment.

[119] Mrs. Winthrop Chanler.

[120] Anagnos.

[121] Dr. Wesselhoeft.

[122] Harold Crawford, who was killed in the present war (1915), fighting for the Allies.

[123] Now Cardinal O'Connell.

[124] I.e., Clerical.

[125] Her brother-in-law, Luther Terry.

[126] Elliott was at work upon his Triumph of Time, a ceiling decoration for the Boston Public Library.

[127] In the Reminiscences.

[128] The late John Hays Gardiner, author of The Bible as Literature, The Forms of Prose Literature, and Harvard.

[129] Edwin Arlington Robinson, author of Captain Craig, etc.

[130] The facsimile printed in the Reminiscences contains the discarded stanza.

[131] Julia Ward Richards.

[132] A terrible storm and tidal wave which had nearly destroyed the city.

[133] James Freeman Clarke.

[134] The Triumph of Time, at the Public Library.

[135] Dr. Lawrence J. Henderson.

[136] The bridegroom, Henry Marion Hall.

[137] That is, to have it bought by some public society.

[138] An editor.

[139] Professor Todd, of Amherst, and his wife, Mabel Loomis Todd.

[140] Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe.

[141] Count Mayer des Planches.

[142] Theodore Roosevelt.

[143] St. George's, Newport.

[144] Julia Ward Howe Hall.

[145] Hawthorne's friend of the Democratic Review.

[146] T. W. Higginson, The Outlook, January 26, 1907.

[147] These verses are printed in At Sunset, under the title of "Humanity," and at the head of chapter xi of this volume.

[148] It may be noted that this epidemic of tonsillitis was actually fatal to Miss Susan B. Anthony, who never recovered from the illness contracted in Baltimore.

[149] Mrs. Charles Homans.

[150] This poem appears in At Sunset.

[151] Her man of business and faithful friend. Though of her children's generation, she had adopted him as an "uncle."

[152] Son of Caroline Minturn (Hall) and the Reverend Hugh Birckhead.