Your loving
Mother.
Much work was on hand this summer: a poem for Old Home Week in Boston, another for the Cooperstown Centennial, a paper on the "Elegant Literature of Fifty Years Since," one for the "Delineator" on "The Three Greatest Men I Have Known." These were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker, and Dr. Howe. She spent much time and pains on this article. She read Elliot Cabot's "Life of Emerson," which she thought "certainly a good piece of work, but deficient, it seems to me, in the romantic sympathy which is the true interpretation of Emerson and of all his kind."
She "hammered" hard on the two poems, with good results.
"July 14. I can hardly believe it, but my miserable verses, re-read to-day, seemed quite possible, if I can have grace to fill out their sketchiness. Last word ton-ight: I think I have got a poem. Nil desperandum!"
"July 24. Difficult to exaggerate the record of my worry this morning. I feel a painful uncertainty about going to Boston to read my poem for Old Home Week. Worse than this is my trouble about two poems sent me while in Boston, with original music, to be presented to the committee for Home Week, which I have entirely forgotten and neglected. To do this was far from my intention, but my old head fairly gave out in the confusion of the various occasions in which I was obliged to take an active part."
She yielded to entreaty and stayed at home, and was rewarded by "a most gratifying letter from Edward Everett Hale, telling me that Josiah Quincy read my poem with real feeling, and that it was warmly received."
"My prayer is answered. I have lived to see my dear girl again.... I give thanks earnestly and heartily, but seem for a time paralyzed by her presence."
With the early autumn came a great pleasure in a visit to the new "Green Peace," the house which her son had built at Bedford Hills, New York. She was delighted with the house and garden; the Journal tells of all manner of pleasant gayeties.
"September 12. Fannie had a luncheon party even pleasanter than yesterday's. Rev. Mr. Luquer is a grandson of Dominick Lynch, who used to come to my father's house in my childhood and break my heart by singing 'Lord Ullin's Daughter.' I remember creeping under the piano once to hide my tears. He sang all the Moore melodies with great expression.... This, his descendant, looks a good deal like him. Was bred a lawyer. My good Uncle Cutler twice asked him whether he would study for the ministry. He said, 'No.' My uncle said the second time, 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?' This word, he told me, came back to him. ... Worked a good deal on my poem. At least thought and thought much, and altered a little."
This was the poem which prefaces this chapter and which was written for the forthcoming Unitarian Convention in Boston. She had been at work on it for some time, first "trying to try for it," and later "hammering" and polishing with great care. "It came to me like a flash," she says, "but had to be much thought over and corrected." And again, "It was given to me something as was my 'Battle Hymn.'..."
"October 25. Wrote to a very bumptious child, thirteen years old, who proffers me her friendship and correspondence, claiming to have written poems and magazine contributions praised by 'noted authors.' I sent her back her letter, with three or four corrections and a little advice, kindly meant, but which may not be so taken.... She will probably turn and rend me, but I really felt it might do her good."
"November 14. Gardiner. A good meditation. The sense of God in the universe seems to be an attribute of normal humanity. We cannot think of our own personal identity without at the same time imagining a greater self from which we derive. This idea may be crude and barbarous, great minds have done much to make it otherwise; Christ most of all with His doctrine of divine love, providence, and forgiveness. The idea of a life beyond this one seems also to appertain to normal humanity. We had best accept this great endowment which philosophy seeks to analyze much as a boy will take a watch to pieces, but cannot put it together again so that it will work."
"November 15. Another long sitting and meditation. What have individual philosophers done for religion? As I recall what I could learn of the Kantian philosophy, I think that it principally taught the limitations of human knowledge, correcting thereby the assumptions of systems of thought and belief to absolute authority over the thinker and believer. He calls conscience 'the categorical imperative'; but that term in no wise explains either the origin or authority of the moral law. His rule of testing the rectitude of the act by the way in which, if it were made universal, it would affect the well-being of society, is useful, but simply pragmatic, not in William James's sense. The German idealism, the theory by which we evolve or create all that occupies our senses and our mind, appears to me a monstrous expanse of egotism. No doubt, dialectics serve as mental athletics, and speculative thought may be useful as an exercise of the mental powers; but processes which may be useful in this way might be very unfit to be held as permanent possessions of persuasion. It occurs to me that it might be more blessed to help the souls in hell than to luxuriate with saints in heaven."
"November 20. Boston. Began my screed on the 'Joys of Motherhood' for the 'Delineator.' Wrote currente calamo...."
"November 23. Rather an off day. Found T. W. Higginson's little volume of verses, presented to me on my seventieth birthday, and read a good deal in it. When the Colonel gave it to me, he read a little poem, 'Sixty and Six,' very charmingly. Seems to me that I ought to have read this little book through long before this time. One of the sweetest poems in it is about the blue-eyed baby that they lost after some six weeks' happy possession. I sent a pretty little baby wreath for it, feeling very sorry for them both."
"November 28. Much troubled about my Whittier poem."
"December 3. Thanks be to God! I have written my Whittier rhyme. It has cost me much labor, for I have felt that I could not treat a memory so reverend with cheap and easy verses. I have tried to take his measure, and to present a picture of him which shall deserve to live."[150]
Mr. and Mrs. Cobden-Sanderson, the English suffragists, were in Boston this winter. They dined with her, and proved "very agreeable. Mrs. Sanderson's visit ought to help suffrage mightily, she is in such dead earnest for it. After dinner I proposed that each one should name his favorite Browning poem. I named 'Pippa,' Mrs. Sanderson 'Paracelsus,' Mr. S., 'The Grammarian's Funeral,' etc., etc. The talk was so good that we could not stop it to hear the Victor, which I regretted."