Another delightful dinner of this winter was one given in her honor by her niece, Mrs. Richard Aldrich (Margaret Chanler), in New York. Among the guests were Kneisel, the violinist, and Schelling, the pianist. Mrs. Aldrich demanded "Flibbertigibbet," and our mother played and recited it in such a manner that the two musicians were inspired to play, as the people in the story were to dance. Kneisel flew home for his violin, Schelling sat down at the piano, and the two played Bach for her and to her delight.
"The occasion was memorable!" she says.
Returning from New York, she was able to attend the Whittier Centennial at Haverhill.
"December 17. ... Sanborn came to take me.... I have been praying to be well for this occasion, my last public engagement for some weeks. I am thankful to have been able, at my advanced age, to read this poem at the Whittier Celebration and to be assured by one present that I had never been in better voice, and by others that I was generally heard without difficulty by the large audience."
"December 31. Oh, blessed year 1907! It has been granted me to write four poems for public occasions, all of which have proved acceptable; also three fatiguing magazine articles, which have for the time bettered my finances. I have lived in peace and goodwill with all men, and in great contentment with my own family, to which this year added a promising little great-grandson, taking away, alas! my dear son-in-law, David Prescott Hall. I found a very competent and friendly young musician who has taken down nearly all my songs.... A word was given me to speak, namely, 'Thanks for the blessed, wonderful year just past.'"
CHAPTER XV
"MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY OF THE COMING OF THE LORD"
1908-1910; aet. 89-91
I have made a voyage upon a golden river,
'Neath clouds of opal and of amethyst.
Along its banks bright shapes were moving ever,
And threatening shadows melted into mist.
The eye, unpractised, sometimes lost the current,
When some wild rapid of the tide did whirl,
While yet a master hand beyond the torrent
Freed my frail shallop from the perilous swirl.
Music went with me, fairy flute and viol,
The utterance of fancies half expressed,
And with these, steadfast, beyond pause or trial,
The deep, majestic throb of Nature's breast.
My journey nears its close—in some still haven
My bark shall find its anchorage of rest,
When the kind hand, which ever good has given,
Opening with wider grace, shall give the best.
J. W. H.
The grandchildren were her chief playmates when Maud was in Europe. To them, the grave tone of the Journal, the tale of her public work, is almost unbelievable, recalling, as they do, the household life, so warm, so rich, so intimate, it seemed enough in itself to fill the cup to overflowing. She had said of herself that in social activities she "bled at every pore": but in these later years it was light and warmth that she shed around her, kindling whatever she touched. At her fire, as at Uncle Sam's, we warmed our hands and our hearts. When she entered a room, all faces lighted up, as if she carried a lamp in her hand.
Day in, day out, she was the Guter Camerad. The desire not to irritate had become so much a second nature that she was the easiest person in the world to live with. If the domestic calm were disturbed, "Don't say anything!" was her word. "Wait a little!"
She might wake with the deep depression so often mentioned in the Journal. Pausing at her door to listen, one might hear a deep sigh, a plaintive ejaculation; but all this was put out of sight before she left her room, and she came down, as one of the grandchildren put it, "bubbling like a silver tea-kettle."
Then came the daily festival of breakfast, never to be hurried or "scamped." The talk, the letters, some of which we might read to her, together with the newspaper. We see her pressing some tidbit on a child, watching intently the eating of it, then, as the last mouthful disappeared, exclaiming with tragic emphasis, "I wanted it!" Then, at the startled face, would come peals of laughter; she would throw herself back in her chair, cover her face with her hands, and tap the floor with her feet.
"Look at her!" cried Maud. "Rippling with sin!"
How she loved to laugh!
"One day," says a granddaughter, "the house was overflowing with guests, and she asked me to take my nap on her sofa, while she took hers on the bed. We both lay down in peace and tranquillity, but after a while, when she thought I was asleep, I heard her laughing, until she almost wept. Presently she fell asleep, and slept her usual twenty minutes, to wake in the same gales of mirth. She laughed until the bed shook, but softly, trying to choke her laughter, lest I should wake.
"'What is it about?' I asked. 'What is so wonderful and funny?'
"'Oh, my dear,' she said, breaking again into laughter, 'it is nothing! It is the most ridiculous thing! I was only trying to translate "fiddle-de-dee" into Greek!'"
This was in her ninety-second year.
But we are still at the breakfast table. Sometimes there were guests at breakfast, a famous actor, a travelling scholar, caught between other engagements for this one leisure hour.
It was a good deal, perhaps, to ask people to leave a warm hotel on a January morning; but it was warm enough by the soft-coal blaze of the dining-room fire. Over the coffee and rolls, sausages and buckwheat cakes, leisure reigned supreme; not the poet's "retired leisure," but a friendly and laughter-loving deity. Everybody was full of engagements, harried with work, pursued by business and pleasure: no matter! the talk ranged high and far, and the morning was half gone before they separated.
Soon after breakfast came the game of ball, played à deux with daughter or grandchild; the ball was tossed back and forth, the players counting meanwhile up to ten in various languages. She delighted in adding to her vocabulary of numerals, and it was a good day when she mastered those of the Kutch-Kutch Esquimaux.
Then came the walk, gallantly taken in every weather save the very worst. She battled with the west wind, getting the matter over as quickly as might be. "It is for my life!" she would say. But on quiet, sunny days she loved to linger along Commonwealth Avenue, watching the parade of babies and little children, stopping to admire this one or chat with that.
This function accomplished, she went straight to her desk, and "P. T." reigned till noon. It was a less rigorous "P. T." than that of our childhood. She could break off in a moment now, give herself entirely, joyously, to the question of dinner for the expected guest, of dress for the afternoon reception, then drop back into Aristotle or Æschylus with a happy sigh. It was less easy to break off when she was writing; we might be begged for "half a moment," as if our time were fully as precious as her own; but there was none of the distress that interruption brought in earlier years. Perhaps she took her writing less seriously. She often said, "Oh, my dear, I am beginning to realize at last that I shall never write my book now, my Magnum Opus, that was to be so great!"