LITTLE JOURNEYS IN LITERATUEE JULIA WARD HOWE. Helen M. Winslow lllttatratth L-C PAGE- &? COMPANY BOSTON & PUBLISHERS Little Journeys in Literature Copyright, 1902 BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (INCORPORATED) All rights reserved Fifth Impression, October, 1906 COLONIAL PRESS Electrotyped and Printed by C. H, Simonds &* Co. Boston, U.S.A. PS TO 1). Clement WHO NOT ONLY HAS RENDERED THE CAUSE OF LETTERS LONG AND EFFI CIENT SERVICE AS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF OUR LITERARY NEWSPAPER, THE BOSTON EVENING TRANSCRIPT J BUT TO WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT AND AP PRECIATION, DURING MANY YEARS, THE AUTHOR OWES HER CLAIM TO BE A SMALL FRACTION OF "LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY" CONTENTS Chapter Page I. Thomas Bailey Aldrich and Thomas Wentworth Hig- ginson 11 II. Edward Everett Hale and Julia Ward Howe and Her Family 31 III. Mrs. James T. Fields, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Alice Brown 56 IV. Louise Chandler Moulton, Helen Choate Prince, and Edna Dean Proctor 77 V. Margaret Deland, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, Her bert D. Ward, Harriet Pres- cott Spofford 94 VI. John Townsend Trowbridge and Hezekiah Butterworth 118 VII. James Jeffrey Roche, Thomas Russell Sullivan, John T. Wheelwright, Frederic J. Stimson, and Robert Grant 143 VIII. Arlo Bates, Percival Lowell, Justin H. Smith, Henry Cabot Lodge, John Torrey Morse, and Bradford Tor- rey 171 is CONTENTS Chapter Page IX. Eliza Orne White, Agnes Blake Poor, Anna Fuller, Helen Leah Reed, and Evelyn Greenleaf Suther land 190 X. Josephine Preston Peabody, Beulah Marie Dix, Caro line Ticknor, Elizabeth Phipps Train, Mary Tap- pan Wright, Lilian Shu- man, and Geraldine Brooks 206 XI. Mary A. Livermore, Adeline D. T. Whitney, Edna Dow Cheney, Abby Morton Diaz, and Kate Tannatt Woods 226 XII. The Cambridge Set : Charles Eliot Norton, President Eliot, and other Authors Connected with Harvard University, Wellesley Col lege, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, etc. 258 XIII. Charlotte Porter and Helen Archibald Clarke, Editors of Poet-Lore, Louise Imo- CONTENTS Chapter Page gen Guiney, May Alden Ward, and William G. Ward 276 XIV. Nathan Haskell Dole, Charles F. Dole, George Willis Cooke, Sam Wal ter Foss, Charles Follen Adams, and Edward Pay- son Jackson 292 XV. J. L. Harbour, James Buck- ham, Oscar Fay Adams, A s h t o n R. Willard, Charles Felton Pidgin, and Willis Boyd Allen 317 XVI. Kate Sanborn, Alice Free man Palmer, Mary E. Blake, Sophie Swett, Florence Converse, Anna Farquhar, Lilian Whit ing, and Katharine E. Conway 337 XVII. Frank P. Stearns, Henry D. Lloyd, and the Lead ers of the New Thought Movement 368 XVIII. Journalist Authors, Edward H. Clement, Henry Aus- xi CONTENTS Chapter Page tin Clapp, Bliss Perry, Ed win D. Mead, Curtis Guild, Charles E. L. Wingate, Sylvester Baxter, and Ed mund Noble 395 XIX. Literary Boston of the Future 428 xn LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page Julia Ward Howe Frontispiece Thomas Bailey Aldrich 16 Thomas Wentworth Higginson 28 Edward Everett Hale 34 Sarah Orne Jewett 64 Louise Chandler Moulton -84 Homes of Mr. and Mrs. Ward 113 James Jeffrey Roche 145 Arlo Bates 172 Henry Cabot Lodge 182 Mary A. Livermore 226 Charles W. Eliot 264 Charles Follen Adams 310 Kate Sanborn 339 Edward H. Clement 397 Bliss Perry 426 ACKNOWLEDGMENT The author wishes to acknowledge her indebtedness to those who have helped her in preparing this little volume. Thanks are due to Mr. J. L. Harbour and Mrs. Sallie Joy White for editorial assistance; and also to many of the authors who have contributed data and photographs in re sponse to requests for the same; and more especially and heartily for the cordial spirit of cooperation and messages of in terest which accompanied them. Special thanks should be accorded, too, to James Pott & Co., publishers, New York City, for permission to use extracts from the chapter on Mr. Aldrich in their " American Authors and Their Homes," and also to Mr. Erving Winslpiv for ma terial gleaned from " Time and the Hour." LITTLE JOURNEYS IN LITERATURE CHAPTER I. THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH AND THOMAS WENTWORTII HIGGINSON rHE rest of the world will tell you there is no literary Boston of to day. Nothing delights the average New Yorker or Chicagoan more than to point to our past glories and cry, " Boston is no longer the Hub of the Universe." And yet, Mr. Eoswell Field, loaned us for two years from the literary purlieus of Chicago, wrote back to the Evening Post of that city : " Merely as a matter of gen eral statistics and possibly of general 11 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY interest, it may be set down that every family in Middlesex County, Massachu setts, boasts a rubber-tree and an author. In certain instances there are two or three rubber-trees and an author, and in others two or three authors and a rubber-tree, but the average holds good, and we are all very happy and contented ; " a statement that made him the recipient of a small forest of rubber-trees from sympathetic Bostonians, since the Field family had possessed two authors and none of the evergreen tree. Again the attitude of the Chicagoan among us is expressed as follows : " Back in Cook County, where culture is believed to make thirty revolutions a minute, we were accustomed to think that the amal gamated poets and concatenated laureates were tolerably plentiful; but, bless you, their mobilised force would not make a 12 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY respectable escort for the men and women of Boston who have not only written books, but have had them published. However, we do not talk about these things in Bos ton; we accept them as the logical out come of the strenuous intellectual life, and if, perchance, a forlorn and ship wrecked brother has not utilised the ad vantages environment has given him, he can look at our footprints and take heart again. The Boston author impresses me as much less self-assertive than his Western brother. This is probably due to the fact that there are so many more of him. By the same token the Boston terrier is not nearly so arrogant and presumptuous in the Back Bay as in Chicago. I suppose it takes some of the starch cut of the author and the terrier to reflect that they are very numerous, and at the most must divide the attention of the family with the 13 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY rubber-tree and the never-failing picture of Phillips Brooks. So he, the author, not the terrier, is usually a charming gentleman, not wholly unconscious of his individual purpose, but ready to concede that there are others. The whole problem of authorial self-abnegation and renuncia tion of the crown is solved by the phrase 1 there are others/ ' Those were, indeed, halcyon days in Boston literature when its exponents were such men as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Na thaniel Hawthorne, John Greenleaf Whit- tier, and James T. Fields. That was a literary epoch the like of which has scarcely been known since the Elizabethan age. But these men, who established the reputation for Boston as a literary centre, have all passed on to unknown glories, and 14 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY the world says truly that Boston has none to fill their place. But, we ask, has any other city in America, or in the world, men, a group of men, like them ? In what country will you find to-day a match for that delicate and Denial hu mourist, Doctor Holmes ? Where a phi losopher like Emerson ? What town can show us another Hawthorne, or Lowell, or Whittier ? Then let not other cities sneer at Boston until they can hold up such citi zens of their own, and say, " Behold, we are the people ! " No; that is an age past and gone; and we do not claim that Boston can produce it again to-day, nor perhaps ever ; and yet we can show cause for our claim that lit erature is not yet a bygone art in conserv ative, Puritanic, beloved old Boston. We may not have our great men, our literary 15 LITEKARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY geniuses of the past, but " there are oth ers," and of them let us speak. There is still Thomas Bailey Aldrich, who, although no longer editor of the At lantic, is yet a resident of Boston and his beloved Ponkapog. From the day when his " Story of a Bad Boy " made its ap pearance, he has ranked among the leading men of letters. He was the personal friend of each of the galaxy that made Boston famous between 1850 and 1875. Whether it was in story or in verse, his writings were eagerly watched for, and nnquestion- ingly accepted as the best in American literature. Mr. Aldrich is a charming man to meet. Contrary to the general impression, he is small, rather boyish in build, and beardless, except for a slight moustache, which is kept waxed with as tender care as any bestowed on the hirsute adornments of our " jeunesse doree." He 16 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICR LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY has lived for many years in a famous old house on Mt. Vernon Street, with his wife and his twin boys, and when the owner of the house died a few years ago, and left not only the establishment, but a for tune as well, to the Aldrich family, all Boston rejoiced in the good fortune of the " Poet of Ponkapog." He was born November second, 1836, at Portsmouth, N. H., and, although he passed most of his boyhood in Louisiana, he returned to Portsmouth in 1850, and prepared for Harvard. Two years later his father died, and he went into a bank ing-house in New York. This position he occupied three years, and then left for an editorial position on the New York Evening Mirror. He was editor after ward of N. P. Willis's Home Journal and the Illustrated News, and in 1865 came to Boston to take charge of Every Saturday, 17 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY a popular periodical established by James T. Fields. In 1881 he became the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, succeeding Mr. William Dean Howells, a post which he kept until 1890, since when he has de voted himself entirely to literature, al though he has published little during the past few years. We may, however, expect a book of reminiscences from his pen, which is sure to be a valuable and inter esting contribution to literature. Among his books are " The Ballad of Babie Bell and Other Poems," " The Story of a Bad Boy," "Cloth of Gold," "Flower and Thorn," " Mercedes and Later Lyrics," "Marjorie Daw and Other People," "Pru dence Palfry," "The Queen of Sheba," " The Stillwater Tragedy," " From Pon- kapog to Pesth," " Wyndham Towers," " The Sister's Tragedy," " An Old Town by the Sea," " Two Bites at a Cherry and 18 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY Other Stories," " Judith and Holofernes," etc. Says a recent writer in " American Authors and Their Homes " : " From the very crest of Beacon Hill, where stands the almost painfully new marble of the straggling addition to the Bulfinch State-House, there slopes swiftly to the water's edge a street whose coun terpart is not to be found in America. It is lined with the noblest houses of Boston, the most of them at least half a century old. They were built by the courtly gen tlemen of that time, and many are still occupied by descendants of those merchant princes and statesmen who made Mt. Vernon Street a place of extraordinary vogue and exclusiveness ; but the butterflies of fashion have now taken wing to other regions. On the right, as you descend, is a group of eight or ten tall, bow-fronted mansions set considerably back from the 19 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY sidewalk, each with its grass plot and or nate iron fence. This semi-retirement gives an indescribable air of dignity and richness, and strangers always gaze upon them with admiration. " Mr. Aldrich's house, No. 59, is the second of this group. It is particularly noticeable by reason of its doorway of white marble framework and Grecian pil lars set into the brick, a curious and strik ing arrangement. From the steps, one can see the blue waters of the Charles, that omnipresent river in and around Boston, and the long curve of Back Bay houses, whose rear view is that of the water. A son of George Bancroft, the historian, is Mr. Aldrich's next-door neighbour, and beyond him recently has lived ex-Governor Claflin. On the other side of the street, and not quite so far down, is the house of the Honourable Robert Treat Paine. It 20 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY will be seen, therefore, that the neighbour hood still has distinction, even if the blaze of fashion has been extinguished. " The interior of this fine old mansion is entirely in keeping with its outside no bility. If one enters on such an errand as that which called the writer of this chronicle to it, he gets a moment's impres sion of a richly furnished drawing-room, where a fire of logs is burning in a cheer ful blaze, and a gray African parrot is en joying a place of honour, a large hall, a great circular stairway sweeping its broad spiral to the very top of the house, vistas of beautiful rooms at each landing, and, at last, on the fourth floor, the t den ' of the poet, the true abiding-place of an au thor at home. " This room is large, but not too much so to be inviting and comfortable, and it has its fireplace, like all the others. From 21 LITERAEY BOSTON OF TO-DAY its bow-windows a splendid panorama of the southwestern part of Boston, domi nated by the campanile of the Providence Station, greets the eye. At night myriad lights give the view still greater beauty. From the roof of the house, the islands of the harbour can be seen, and even the sea beyond, for at this point one finds him self as high as the dome of the capitol. " The noticeable feature of this snug gery is its antique furniture, escri toires, chairs, and tables that would make a collector green with envy. Nothing here, with the exception of two immense modern, velvet-cushioned rockers and a large centre desk, is of later date than 1812. This furniture forms part of the valuable heritage its owner derived from his grandfather, who lived in Portsmouth, the veritable grandfather of the hero of that delightful classic, ' The Story of a 22 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY Bad Boy,' which (and the reader may take * Tom Bailey's ' word for it) is auto biographic and true in. its essential ele ments. " The centre desk was once owned by Charles Sumner, and was used by him for many years. In various odd corners are half a hundred things picked up all over the world, such as Buddhist deities, Ara bian gems, and a very valuable piece of Moorish tiling from the walls of Alham- bra. There are book-shelves in plenty, of course, and a semi-literary collection of pipes on a curious table at one of the windows. Good pictures hang on the red- toned walls, although to the bookman the most interesting object of that sort is an old print of Doctor Johnson, framed with an autograph letter of that worthy." To quote from Roswell Field once more : " I fancy that one of the pleasantest of 23 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY the surprises that await the pilgrim in Boston is the appearance in the flesh of the poets, novelists, and story-writers whom he has long associated with the silent tomb. It gives you a little shock at first, but you are soon used to it, and I should not be surprised at any time to see old Ben Franklin come out of a bookstore, or to meet Anne Bradstreet at a literary bargain counter. Those of us who are influenced by the sweet teachings of the- osophy, meeting certain authors on the streets of Boston, would be tempted to exclaim : ' What incarnation is this ? ' We remember that far back in the shadowy days of our childhood we read their printed words and exulted in the ebulli tion of their fancy. The years have come and gone, the ancient elms have decayed and fallen, the friends of our youth have been ' tolled out ' by the village church, 24 LITEKARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY and our old authors have been mourned, if not forgotten. Now, to our amazement, down on Cornhill, or in the Old Corner Bookstore, or around the bargain street stalls prances the cheerful instructor of boyhood, a little disfigured, perhaps, by time, but good for half a dozen tomes at short notice." Among these older writers are Colonel Higginson, Mrs. Howe, John T. Trow- bridge, Edward Everett Hale, and Heze- kiah Butterworth. Colonel Higginson was born and nur tured in the literary atmosphere of Cambridge. " My earliest documentary evidence of existence on this planet," says he, in " Cheerful Yesterdays," " is a note to my father in Edward Everett's exquisite handwriting, inquiring after the health of the babe, and saying that Mrs. Everett was putting up some tamarinds 25 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY to accompany the note. The precise ob ject of the tamarinds I have never clearly understood, but it is pleasant to think that I was, at the tender age of seven months, assisted toward maturity by this benefaction by so eminent a man. Pro fessor Andrews, Norton and George Tick- nor habitually gave their own writings; and I remember Doctor J. G. Palfrey bringing to the house a new book, Haw thorne's ' Twice-Told Tales/ and reading aloud ' A Rill from the Town Pump.' Once, and once only, Washington Irving came there, while visiting a nephew who had married my cousin. Margaret Fuller, a plain, precocious, overgrown girl, but al ready credited with unusual talents, used to visit my elder sister, and would some times sit at my mother's feet, gazing up at her with admiration. A younger sis ter of Professor Longfellow was a fre- 26 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY quent guest, and the young poet himself came in the dawning of yet undeveloped fame. My special playmate was Charles Parsons, and I often * tumbled about in a library ' indeed, the very same library where the autocrat had himself performed the process he has recommended. Under these circumstances," adds Colonel Hig- ginson, and I am sure we all agree with him, " it seems very natural that a child thus moulded should have drifted into a literary career." Colonel Higginson has not always lived in Cambridge. He made a distinguished record in the Civil War, gaining the title of the " Fighting Parson." Before that, he was a clergyman, and preached in New- buryport, and presided over a parish in Worcester, but his mind is of too liberal frame to be satisfied with creed and dogma, and he left the ministry many 27 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY years ago, settling in Cambridge, where he owns a picturesque house on Bucking ham Street, filled with books, and in neigh bourly proximity to the best " University set " and the scenes where his happy boy hood was passed. In the summer, he takes his wife and daughter (with whom he lives an exceptionally harmonious life) up to the beautiful town of Dublin, N. H., where he owns another charming home. Mrs. Higginson (who was a niece of Pro fessor Longfellow's first wife) writes oc casionally some excellent verses, which are printed in the leading magazines and have been published in two volumes; and the young daughter, just blossoming into young womanhood, is proving her title to be the intellectual successor of such a father and mother. Colonel Higgin son's best literary work has been done in his later years, as he 28 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGG1NSOX LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY has had more leisure for it. His earlier life was filled with the duties peculiar to the philanthropist and reformer, and in the stress of this work there was little time or opportunity for cultivating the quieter art of letters. The form in which his writings have been presented is a fig urative one, but his memoirs of early days, and his rambles in art, literature, and native lore have been mellow with ripe scholarship and a matured mind. His natural force has hardly abated, but the reminiscent mood is obviously passing upon him, and the gentle afterglow wins us to gather round " old tales to hear." " It is a long career, in our rapid times," writes one of Colonel Higginson, " this span of seventy-five years. The bi ographer of Margaret Fuller Ossoli is the discreet and sympathetic critic of Kipling and Stephen Crane. The dreamy pas- 29 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY torals of ' Oldport Days ' alternate with the passionate advocacy of woman's rights. Minister, soldier, legislator, lecturer, au thor, historian, poet, philanthropist, it would be difficult to find in any great city of our great country a man whose leadership has been so potent for right eousness, for beauty, for truth, as that of Thomas Wentworth Higginson." CHAPTER II. EDWARD EVERETT HALE AND JULIA WARD HOWE AND HER FAMILY y^NOTHER survivor of the great y^f literary epoch of the middle nine teenth century is the venerable and well-beloved Reverend Doctor Edward Everett Hale, who, although an octogena rian, is still mentally keen and active, with powers which give no sign of decadence, and with all the enthusiasm of youth. Erom his years and his wide, eclectic ex periences, Doctor Hale may well be given the position of the dean of Boston's liter ary set. And this not alone from the 31 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY length of life which has been accorded him, and his varied and important achieve ments, but from the sincere and active in terest which he takes in those who are making letters a profession, and his special kindness to beginners. There is no young literary worker, whose good fortune it has been to have Doctor Hale as counsellor and friend in the days when effort was new, and the path of endeavour almost untried, who does not owe a debt of gratitude to the man who never withheld merited en couragement, who was always ready with needed advice, and who softened criticism with kindly suggestion. Time and the Hour, which, during its brilliant but all too short existence, was a component part of literary Boston, said of Doctor Hale: "His is a comfortable, bookish, thor oughly New England home, with many 32 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY interesting family memorials and pictures, especially rich in the records of the life and work of the father whom he loved so reverently, and to whom he attributes so much of his power and resource. A pecu liar genial hospitality not of the cere monious kind, but the heart hospitality of an elder brother greets the guest at that household in old Roxbury, the name to which Doctor Hale has always clung, as indeed have most of the old residents, in spite of annexation, and the effort to make the locality known as c Boston Highlands.' " No host could convey so cordially the sense that a visitor had a right to the de mand which is made upon that valuable time, so valuable that it would be hedged about by most men with the barriers of transmitted cards and the formalities of servant's messages. One feels that shaggy royalty is condescending to his need or 33 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY his desire, yet most unconscious of it, simple, loving, wistfully entreating almost. There is a childish heart under that fine presence which is so leonine, compelling, and impressive." April third, 1822, was the birthday of Edward Everett Hale, Boston boy, Latin School boy, Harvard graduate of 1839. He was no prodigy, but was warmly sand wiched between six brothers and sisters; having the middle place, he was protected from those external influences which may affect the oldest or the youngest, pro tected, yet set in keen competition with a bright family, and having to keep his end up or go under. In his class he kept a similar middle place, ninth among fifteen, and, though he mastered his paradigms at six, and put " Robinson Crusoe " into Latin at nine, he was a healthy boy among boys, leaning 34 EDWARD EVERETT HALE LITERAKY BOSTON OF TO-DAY on others, and drawing from others, as he always has done, the child in the middle reaching out on both sides, having no liking for extremes, mingling the hot Hale blood and the calm Everett strain in a tide which has flowed full and strong, but never boisterous, through its brim ming banks. Doctor Hale served in the ministry in Washington for a year or two, choosing that profession because it offered so much of active moral and philanthropic oppor tunity ; then he was stationed in Worcester for ten years, where he is still gratefully and affectionately remembered in many ways, but particularly as the founder of its public library. It is almost half a century since he was installed pastor of the South Congregational Church of Bos ton, and he is still pastor emeritus, al though the parochial duties are performed 35 LITEKAKY BOSTON OF TO-DAY by his successor in active work, and as the recognised incumbent, the Reverend Doc tor Edward Cummings. But he has not belonged exclusively to the South Congregational Society. He has always stoutly maintained that to give one's self fully to any particular work, to make the gift really great, one must enlarge one's self by the widest service which intensifies the man and makes him able to present a worthy offering. So he has had a planetary influence through his institution of " Ten Times One is Ten," of Wadsworth Clubs and Lend a Hand Clubs all over the world, in every sort of philanthropic work, economic, social, and industrial. Developing a broad humanity through environment, heredity, and training, and animated by the spurring spirit of an in tense moral enthusiasm, it was natural 36 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY that Doctor Hale should be a patriot, and that he should write " A Man Without a Country." He has won international reputation for breadth of view, simplicity of doctrine, and for rare qualities as an organiser and a preacher. Underlying and permeating his varied labours has glowed an intense patriotism which com pletes his merited distinction as a great American. Tested by any standard by which we are accustomed to measure men, Doctor Hale commands our respect and admiration. In his private life, personal character, and public services, he exem plifies the very highest type of manhood. His literary work has been stupendous, reaching to fifty volumes, and ten times fifty volumes in uncollected articles, stud ies, and sermons. He has caught the pop ular fancy, as few purely literary men have, done, with " My Double, and How 37 LITEEAKY BOSTON OF TO-DAY He Undid Me " and " The Man Without a Country," but these are only unconsid- ered trifles in the bibliography of the pro lific author who is delighting everybody with the reminiscences of his rich ac quaintance with men and things, the expression of a ripe mind, full without prolixity, liberal without garrulity, and instructive without pedantry. Previous to settling down to ministerial work, he served his father as secretary, and also an apprenticeship in his news paper office, the old Boston Advertiser, from the work of typesetting to editing. It was a question for a time which profes sion he would choose, and he ultimately took the ministry. The journalistic in stinct has been always strong within him, but he has had to keep it in check, or he would have been compelled to give up everything else for it. 38 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY Before everything else Doctor Hale is a Bostonian of Bostonians, of full value lo cally, a circumstance which makes him not alone the minister, the philanthropist, the author, but the good citizen. And it was as the citizen, beloved and revered, that Boston honoured him on the third of April, 1902, on the occasion of his eighti eth birthday. If Doctor Hale is the dean of literary Boston, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe is the recognised leader and acknowledged sov ereign. She reigns over her kingdom with an undisputed sway, and her subjects are all loyal and loving, giving willing homage to their uncrowned queen. And yet Boston cannot wholly claim her, any more than it can others of its famous ones. As one has said in writing of the group of immortals of whom Mrs. Howe is one : " In reckoning with the 39 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY famous people of Boston, it is striking to note that so many of them are not merely of local importance, but are recognised as leaders by the whole country. And there are few cities in the United States where, if the question were asked in a group of its most intelligent women, who was their representative champion, the reply would not be Julia Ward Howe." Although Mrs. Howe has reached the ripe age of eighty-three, there is none of the suggestion of the decay which years are supposed to bring. With her, youth is perennial, and it is no wonder that, living under the gracious influence of this rich life, her daughter so caught the spirit of it that she remarked, on the occasion of her mother's seventieth birthday, that she was " seventy years young." It was a happy phrase, and it has clung to her ever since, and when any one speaks of Mrs. 40 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY Howe's age, they always count the years by youth and not by age. And so while Mrs. Julia Ward Howe is now eighty-three years " young," she is by no means out of the activities of life, but it still a power and an inspiration, and is an earnest, zealous worker in the great movements of the day. Whether she is holding meetings at her house in the in terest of universal peace, or writing books, she is the same busy, active woman of years ago. Everybody knows something about Mrs. Howe in a general way, for her " Battle Hymn of the Republic " has made her name a household word in America. Thousands have seen her on the platform, and heard her speak on some of the subjects connected with philanthropy or reform, with which she is so closely iden tified. As many more have seen her oc- 41 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY cupying that position familiarly known as " the chair " ; but only the compara tively favoured few know her as she is in private life. Only those who know her well are familiar \vith that delightful spirit of delicate, sparkling humour, and the flashes of pure, kindly, genuine wit, which characterise her intercourse with friends. There is nothing more delightful than to listen to a tilt of words between Mrs. Howe and her old friend, Colonel Higginson, a treat that is now and then vouchsafed to their associates of the Au thors' Club, of which Mrs. Howe is pres ident and Colonel Higginson first vice- president. The members of the famous New Eng land Woman's Club know, too, an alto gether different side of her from that which the general public know. In her capacity as president of that club, she 42 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY feels* as perfectly at home as in her own- parlour; and those who are to be trusted say that in no other place does her woman liness, her ready tact, her brilliant wit, and her versatility of talent shine forth so conspicuously. In her Boston home, Mrs. Howe has welcomed the most noted men and women of the day, both of this and of foreign countries, and her recep tions have always been the meeting-place of the choicest spirits, literary, musical, artistic, and scientific. Outside, her house on Beacon Street, numbered 241, presents a plain, unosten tatious front, like all its neighbours; but once ushered into the little reception-room at the left of the front door, the visitor realises that he is in the home of rare culture and refinement, the residence of one who has travelled much, and who has brought something of value and interest 43 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY from all parts of the world. The atmos phere of plain, almost severe intellectual ity, the fine etchings, rare curios, antique busts and artistic statuettes, the replicas of famous marbles, all testify to this. And if he is fortunate enough to be bidden to the drawing-room up-stairs, or, better yet, to the " den " or music-room back of it, his first impression is deepened. In this room, besides all the treasures gath ered in a lifetime of travel, is a fine bust of Doctor Howe, and Porter's superb painting of Mrs. Howe's youngest daugh ter, Maud Howe, at eighteen. But the charm of this house is the mis tress, and when, presently, the visitor is greeted by the small but self -poised, white- haired woman, who advances with cordial hospitality to meet him, he, like all the rest of those who are privileged to meet her in this intimate, unconventional fash- 44 LITEEARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY ion, succumbs to the rare personal charm of this world-famous woman; so that he goes away with one vital impression, that of a serenely gracious personality endowed with a mellow, musical voice, and a rare charm of manner, an impression which crystallises into a cherished memory. Julia Ward, daughter of Samuel and Julia Rusk (Cutler) Ward, was born on May twenty-seventh, 1819, at her parents' house in the Bowling Green, New York City, a place which carries one back in mind to the old Knickerbocker days, and the rule of gruff old Peter Stuyvesant. Later her father built an elegant and spa cious house at the corner of Broadway and Bond Street, a long way up-town at that time, and there her youth was passed. This delightful home was frequented by the best people in the metropolis, and 45 LITEKARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY there were three beautiful girls in the family to make its hospitality irresistible. In April, 1843, when she was twenty- four years of age, she was married to Doc tor Samuel Gridley Howe, whom she had met during frequent visits to Boston, where she was warmly welcomed into the literary and artistic circle, of which Doc tor Howe was a member. With him she shortly visited Europe. Doctor Howe was at that time the head of the famous Mas sachusetts School for the Blind at South Boston, and his success in teaching Laura Bridgman had made his name well known all over the world, so that, when the young couple arrived in London, they found the doors of the best houses open to them. On the Continent it was the same, for there his fame as a worker among the unfor tunate ones of the world was supplemented 46 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY by his efforts for Greece and the liberties of its people. They passed the winter on the Conti nent, mostly in Rome, where, the next spring, their first child, Julia Romana, was born. This child was baptised by Theodore Parker, who was the warm friend of both Doctor and Mrs. Howe, and she grew up to be a sympathiser with her father in his work for the blind, and, in time, she became a teacher at the insti tution. Later she became a student of philosophy, and was the founder of the Metaphysical Club, of which she was the president, and whose meetings ceased at her death, in March, 1884. She was the author of a volume of poems entitled " Stray Chords," and of a sketch of the Summer School of Philosophy at Concord, Mass., entitled " Quaestor Philosophise." She was married, on the thirtieth of De- 47 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY cember, 1870, to Michael Anagnos, for merly of Greece, who succeeded Doctor Howe as superintendent of the Perkins School for the Blind. When she died, there was universal mourning all through Boston, where she was especially beloved. She was a rarely beautiful woman, with a face from which a pure soul seemed ever shining. On the return of the Howes to Amer ica, they made a home at South Boston, and there the other four of their children were born. But, later, when the eldest of the children were old enough to enter society, they removed to Boston, living for some years at 17 Boylston Place, when that little no-thoroughfare was noted for the famous and brilliant coterie which was found within its pocket-like limits. From there they removed to Mount Vernon Street, when the character 48 UTERATCY BOSTON OF TO-DAY of the place began to change, but since the death of Doctor Howe, Mrs. Howe has made her winter home at her present residence in Beacon Street, of which the equity was given her by her brother, the late Samuel Ward, of New York. She spends her summers at " Oak Grove," near Newport, where far from the bustle and fuss of the ultra fashionable crowd she lives a genuine country life, and rules with a firm hand, as gentle, however, as it is firm, the unique " Town and Coun try Club," which is as delightful a mix ture of swells and idealists as was ever gotten together, and which could only be assimilated by Mrs. Howe. Mrs. Howe's- literary work has been constant, and she is still busy with her pen. She has published four volumes of poems, a life of Margaret Fuller, two or three volumes of essays, two of travel, 49 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY " From the Oak to the Olive " and " A Trip to Cuba," a play, " Leonora," and, latest of all, her delightful " Reminis cences." Her " Battle Hymn of the Re public " is the most widely known of all that she has written, and is one of the few American classics. Those persons who have been so fortunate as to hear her recite it in her clear, exquisitely modu lated voice, and with her absorbed, ear nest, almost inspired air, always feel that they have gained an insight into its pa triotic and religious sentiments not vouch safed to the readers of it. Mrs. Howe was one of the founders of the New England Women's Club in 1868, and has been its president ever since its first ruler, Mrs. Caroline Severance, left Massachusetts for California, early in the seventies. No one else will hold the office so long as Mrs. Howe lives. She was 50 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY one of the first officers for the Association for the Advancement of Women, and has been for a long time its president. She is the honorary president of the Massachu setts Federation of Women's Clubs, and was its first active president. She is also president of the Boston Authors' Club. Her continuous good health she attributes, in part, to her habits of study, and daily, yet never excessive, brain labour. She has visited Europe six times, Cal ifornia and the Pacific coast twice, and made several journeys to the West Indies, and even now she thinks nothing of start ing off West or South on a lecture engage ment, making less fuss over it than many a younger woman would do. Taken as a whole, Mrs. Howe's family is a remarkable one. Her four daughters have all proven literary workers of more than average ability, while her only son 51 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY is a distinguished scientist, and also a clever writer on special lines upon, which he is an acknowledged authority. Mention has already been made of her oldest daughter, Mrs. Anagnos. Her sec ond daughter was Florence Marion Howe, now Mrs. Hall, known in literature and club work as Florence Howe Hall. She is the author of " Social Customs " and " The Correct Thing," and she is a prom inent speaker before women's clubs. She was married November fifteenth, 1871, to David Prescott Hall, a man noted for his public spirit, and a member of the New York Bar. Mrs. Howe's only son was born in 1848, and is named Henry Marion. He grad uated from Harvard University in 1869, and from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1871. He then studied abroad, and lived in Europe, South Amer- LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY ica, and in various mining districts in North America before settling down in New York, where he holds a professorship in the School of Mines of Columbia Uni versity. In his profession of mining en gineer and expert, he has won high honours, and has an international repu tation. His book on " The Metallurgy of Iron and Steel " is an exhaustive work, which has received the highest praise from the scientific world, arid is accepted as authoritative. There are few families where there are children in which " Captain January " has not been read and loved, but not every one knows that the author, Laura E. Rich ards, is the third daughter of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. Mrs. Richards has written some of the most delightful nonsense verses for children that have ever seen light on a printed page, and it is no won- 53 LITEEARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY der that her name is a household word in many families. She was married June seventeenth, 1871, to Henry Richards, and the young couple went to live in Gar diner, Maine, a town named for the fam ily of Mr. Richards's mother. The youngest, by some years, of Mrs. Howe's daughters is Mrs. Maud Howe Elliott, who inherits, to a marked degree, her mother's wit, graciousness of manner, and social gifts, as well as much of her genius of expression. She was, in her girlhood, regarded as a beauty and a belle, and she is a rarely beautiful woman, more than fulfilling the promise of her girl hood. Society did not satisfy her, any more than it had satisfied her mother, and she soon turned her attention to more seri ous pursuits. After studying art for some time, she adopted literature as a career. Her published works are " A Newport 54 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY Aquarelle," " Atalanta in the South," " San Rosario Ranch," " Phyllida," and " Mammon." She has for several seasons given parlour readings with marked suc cess, talking chiefly upon art and litera ture. She was married in February, 18 87, to Mr. John Elliott, an Englishman and an artist. Their home is in Rome, al though they spend much time in Boston with Mrs. Howe. And so Mrs. Howe is not only the fa mous woman of letters, the accomplished speaker, the leader among women, but she is also the happy, proud mother of a group of children who put to naught the old saying that the children of famous parents never amount to much in themselves; and besides these children, she has a number of promising young grandchildren, who are sure, in time, to do honour to their illustrious ancestress. 55 CHAPTEK III. MRS. JAMES T. FIELDS, SARAH ORNE JBWETT, AND ALICE BROWN X^vNE of the houses that often shel- I M tered that rare group of men who made literary Boston famous dur ing the early part of the last half of the century just passed is still the resort of the favoured few, and it is to-day consid ered a mark of high esteem, and an hon our, to be asked to the home of Mrs. James T. Fields. " When the social quarter of Boston was squeezed and pressed upon by the growth of business," said Time and the 56 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY Hour, " so that Summer Street and Frank lin Street, West and Bedford, Winter and Tremont Streets were no longer tolerable for dwelling-places, it was a problem where it should find a new development. At this time, the water-front on the Charles offered itself as a pleasant place for a fresh start, and fine rows of stately mansions were soon built, with a quiet street for a frontage and the river in the rear. Doctor Holmes occupied one of them, and not far away Mr. James T. Fields, his friend and publisher, set up his household gods. " The old settlers, or their children, have almost all migrated to the newer Back Bay now, the district with accom modations for stepping westward to the sunset, and Charles Street has become a thoroughfare for the most heavy, creak ing, rattling traffic of the town, while a 57 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY part of the water view has been cut off by stealing a further strip of land from the river, and interposing Brimmer Street. Not so at 148 Charles Street, however. The uproar and the jangle rage before this house front as well as before all the others in the street, but, when one is admitted into Mrs. James T. Fields's home, and passing up the stairs, is seated in the drawing-room, with its westward windows, he looks over a calm expanse of water be yond a quiet garden, which might be the neighbour of an outlying rural wilder ness. In later spring, perhaps after the evening meal, the company may ramble through its walks and shrubberies, or seek the benches along the water's edge, and quite forget that only a few rods separate them from the sordid sounds and sights- of a busy town. Boccaccio's garden scarcely echoed to more wit and wisdom 58 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY than has that pretty plot of ground, pressed by the feet of Dickens, Thackeray, Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Holmes, Hawthorne, Emerson, and all the immor tals of the last generation." In the midst of treasures of every kind, pictures, autographs, mementoes of fa mous singers and writers, speakers and actors of the time; in the midst of mem ories far more varied and infinitely richer, lives the votaress of this sacred shrine, and ministers to the favoured few who are its intimates with delicate grace. One of the red-letter days of the au thor's own life was marked by a simple luncheon at 148 Charles Street, when the only other guest was Miss Sarah Orne Jewett, and they were served by Mrs. Fields with the rare grace of an old-time gentlewoman. She is as quiet in dress as she is in manner and speech, and with 59 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY smoothly banded hair half concealing her ears, in the fashion which our grand mothers followed half a century ago, she dispenses tea and hospitality, seasoned with conversation that has a flavour unex celled. Gentle, quiet, and reserved as are the motions of her daily life, there is no power in Boston to-day like that of Mrs. Fields ; for influence is still not altogether a matter of shouting, or of fonts of type, but goes out with a power to leaven all things, which will not be understood until, from the other side of the warp and woof, the pattern woven into the life fabric is seen. Mrs. Fields was the wife of James T. Fields, the famous Boston publisher, who was the medium of communication and even of introduction between the galaxy of literary stars in Boston between 1850 and 1880, and who established and pub- 60 LITEEARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY lished The Atlantic Monthly. She is still continuing her literary work, which has always been of a high order, though not at all prolific. She has written " A Shelf of Old Books," " How to Help the Poor,'' " Memoirs of James T. Fields," " Whit- tier: Notes of His Life and Friendship," " Authors and Friends," " Under the Olive," "The Sighing Shepherd and Other Poems." But it is in the world of philanthropic work that she finds her highest pleasure. At the council-table in " Ward Seven's " office in the Chardon Street Charity Build ing of Boston Mrs. Fields has sat since the organisation of the Associated Char ities, and has borne a large part in the general directorship, besides, from the be ginning. If, as has been said, Mr. Robert Treat Paine is the head, so is Mrs. Fields the heart of the great movement, for, in- 61 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY deed, it has a heart, and a warm one. Do the critics, who fancy there is no personal quality left in the statistical development of the Associated Charities, know of the personal family work that is done that never finds a place in formal reports? How surprised those persons who fancy there is only a tabulating engine in Char- don Street would be to know what num bers of personal exigencies by day and by night call for assistance, sympathy, and advice, which is never denied. And all through the long summer, Mrs. Fields takes the long journey to the heated town almost daily from her Manchester-by-the- Sea cottage, in order that she may be al ways ready for the needs of her poor friends. It is a delightful part of this task to recognise that so much of the best work 62 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY in the world is unheralded and unnoted, and yet that the workers will grow " fa mous " while shunning publicity, and fol lowing the path of duty with unconscious steps and a singleheartedness of purpose. One cannot think of Mrs. Fields with out remembering her most intimate friend, Sarah Orne Jewett, whose winters are, for the most part, passed in the Charles Street home. Sometimes in the spring the two go off together in search of a spot not favoured with so many kinds of cli mate as Mark Twain ascribed to New England during one twenty-four hours. And in the summer Miss Jewett is found for some portion of the time at Mrs. Fields's home at Manchester-by-the-Sea. Boston may surely be pardoned for count ing Miss Jewett as belonging to her, since her winter residence is in the classic 63 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY Fields home in Charles Street, while her big dog gives his dumb but sympathetic companionship to the two gentlewomen. Miss Jewett is a woman of the most charming personality. She has a bright, piquant face that lights up wonderfully as she talks, making her positively beau tiful, and a low, pleasant voice that gives the listener the sense of being quiet at night, and listening to the rustle of aspen leaves, soothing and restful. Her black hair shows just the faintest tinge of gray, but the colour in the cheeks and the sparkle of the eye tell the tale of youth. Her friendship with the Fields began when she was a young girl, and is a vital part of her life's history. During her girlhood she met Mr. and Mrs. Fields at a friend's house, where they were visit ing, and then began the intimacy which has grown into such a rare and close 64 SARAH ORXK ,TE\VETT. LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY friendship. As the years went on, and the demand for Miss Jewett's work increased, she found so much visiting and writing incompatible. And so when the invita tions came which made her stay with the Fields less like visiting, and more like being at home, she very gladly accepted the arrangement. Indeed, she would have been most unappreciative had she not ; for to be the favoured guest of a woman like Mrs. Fields is a privilege that can be accorded but to few. Miss Jewett's working hours are in the afternoon, and when she has anything in hand she writes from one until about five. She says that she thinks best in the waning of the day, and finds work easier. She writes on an average between three and four thousand words daily, although she has sometimes gone as high as eight and even nine thousand words in one day. 65 LITEKARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY She usually thinks out her stories quite carefully before beginning to write, so that when it comes to transcribing them she can do it easily and without much rewrit ing, although, of course, some of her sto ries she works at quite laboriously. " There are," she says, " stories that you write, and stories that write them selves in spite of you. And I find that these are the ones that do not need much working over." Fond as she is of her pleasant relations in the Charles Street home, she loves her country life with a true devotion that only a genuine nature worshipper can appre ciate. Says she: " I never feel prouder, or have more the sense of owning and being owned, than when some old resident of Berwick meets me, and says, ' You're one of the doctor's girls, ain't ye ? ' It makes me feel as 66 LITERAEY BOSTON OF TO-DAY though that were really my place in the world." Miss Jewett was born in a fine old colonial mansion that was built in 1740. It is situated in the village of Berwick, Maine, not far from Portsmouth, N. H., and is still her home. Her father, " The Country Doctor," died some years since, and her mother followed him a few years later. She and one sister continue to oc cupy the homestead during most of the year, while a married sister lives close by. Sarah Orne Jewett always lived an out-of-door life, riding, driving, and row ing. When her father was living she went about with him a great deal, and that was the way in which, without realising what the experience was to prove to her, she got her marvellous insight into the lives of the country people of a quarter of a century ago. Before Miss Jewett's day, 67 LITEEARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY no writer could exactly picture the phases of country life which she depicts without making a burlesque of the attempt. It has taken Miss Jewett to show the world that the country dialect and country ways hide some of the noblest hearts. " When I was, perhaps, fifteen," said Miss Jewett, " the first city boarders be gan to make their appearance near Ber wick; and they so misunderstood the country people, and made such game of their peculiarities, that I was fired with indignation. I determined to teach the world that country people were not the awkward, ignorant set that those persons seemed to think. I wanted the world to know their grand, simple lives; and so far as I had a mission, when I first began to write, I think that was it. But now, when every village has its city visitors in the summer, and the relations between 68 LITERAKY BOSTON OF TO-DAY the city and country are so much closer than they used to be, there is no need of my ' mission.' ' Miss Jewett's paternal ancestors were Tories " mistaken but honest," she says. Her grandfather was an old sea- captain, and, as she quaintly puts it, " seemed to me a citizen of the whole geography." Her mother was a Oilman of Exeter, notable people in the neigh bourhood, and with an honourable record in the Revolution. The town of Berwick had plenty of sea-captains when she was a little girl, and, in seeing them, and hear ing them discuss with her grandfather the world in general, she laid up material for many of her delightful character sketches. Her first story for the Atlantic was ac cepted before she was twenty. She had no literary friends at court, and it was her own inimitable work which won for 69 LITEKARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY her the success which has been so marked. She was a delicate child, and could never endure the confinement of the schoolroom, so her education was, for the most part, obtained at home under the wise direction of her father. Miss Jewett says that she has missed a certain logical directness that comes only with training at good schools; but she would not have lost the outdoor life and the close association with her father for anything. Probably her success as a writer was due to her father's advice, constantly repeated, and which she has closely followed, " Don't try to write about people and things; tell of them as they are." A recent reviewer in the Boston Tran script says of her New England idyls: " Who can forget her marsh meadows, her sand-dunes, her pine-grown seashore ? Her people are mostly thriving, unper- 70 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY plexed, cheerful New England people. Somehow the New England type has come to be as novel and conventional as is the figment of ' Uncle Sam/ which has long ceased to have any significance whatever. Nobody ever saw these dreary lunatics, who are said to drag out hard and narrow lives, set to a perpetual minor key, as typ ical of New England villages. Miss Jew- ett shows us youth and love and happiness under the pale blue skies of New England, with quaint peculiarities having the one touch of nature. After all, though we may laugh over sharp wit and droll situa tions and pitiable, grotesque scrapes of all kinds, the sensation which is left on our minds is not happy. Miss Jewett is pro foundly and uniformly cheerful, and makes the reader so. Is not the world, for most of us, too full of inharmonies to permit the mind to be burdened with more 71 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY of them, with no compensating advan tages? Let the artists answer each other with the ghastly products of art for art's sake. But let us be jolly, with Miss Jew- ett's pleasant companions, while we may." Of course, the contrasts referred to are the stories of Miss Wilkins, whose char acters are so decidedly opposite to Miss Jewett's always lovable, sensible, and alto gether natural ones. Miss Wilkins may be depended on to give us interesting peo ple, but are they not exceptional types, odd, queer, unknown characters, the like of whom we seldom see ? For the average New Englander of the country is cheerful and hopeful, an optimist ever. Since, however, Miss Wilkins has now become Mrs. Freeman, and gone to live in New Jersey, Boston can no longer strain a point and claim her, even for pur poses of comparison with Miss Jewett. 72 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY By the way, it is worthy of note that Miss Jewett keeps a sentence from Flaubert pinned up as a motto over her desk : " Ce n'est pas de faire rire, ni de faire pleurer, ni de vous metter en fureur . . . mais d'agir a la f agon de la nature c'est a dire, de faire rever." Another writer along the same lines as Miss Jewett and Miss Wilkins is Miss Alice Brown, the daughter of Reverend Theron Brown, who for many years was one of the editors of. the Youth's Compan ion. Miss Brown's stories are mostly oc cupied with New Hampshire life, and her " Meadow-Grass " was like a whiff of White Mountain air to the city dwellers of country origin. It is said of her that she does not write enough, and that the public buy eagerly what she does publish, and wait for more. Perhaps she is wise in her moderation. She is her own most 73 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY severe critic, and will not publish a story until she is satisfied with it herself. She is always sane and healthy, and, as she is yet of the age described by interviewers as " still young," we may expect many good things from her in future. Miss Brown lives on Pinckney Street, in a very quiet way, and only semi-occasionally does one meet her at social and public functions. She was fortunate in a childhood spent amid the rural beauty of the little New Hampshire town of Hampton Falls. Here she went daily to district school, with rapturous interludes of merry outdoor life ; and says a recent writer : " Those who hold like memories in their heart of hearts may open t Meadow-Grass ' at ' Number Five/ that a waft from Balm of Gilead leaves may return to them, and they may drink once more of fresh un- 74 LITEKARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY speakable delight in the small and simple joys of a country child." Later she studied, and was graduated at the seminary in the neighbouring town of Exeter, taking the long walk to and from home lightly, as forerunner of the glorious English tramps of later days. Like many another New England girl, she first turned to school-teaching as the most natural occupation; but the call toward literary activities would have its way, and she has never wavered in her devotion to the beautiful profession. Miss Brown loves the old streets of Bos ton as well as Madame de Stael did Paris, but there lingers always in her work the still spiciness of the woodland ways, the sympathy with soft-footed, bright-eyed, furry things. Especially is this present in the little book of poems called " The 75 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY Road to Castaly." Witness " Pan," and the dewy-fresh " Morning in Camp." The famous Meadow-Grass stories are probably the best known of Miss Brown's books. " Tiverton Tales " are stories of the same region, humourous, spirited, read able. " King's End " is a delightful story of New Hampshire village life. " By Oak and Thorn " is a pleasant record of leisurely gipsy ish pilgrimages through rural England in company with her friend Louise Imogen Guiney. She has also written a life of Mercy Otis Warren, and a short novel called " The Day of His Youth." Her latest novel, " Margaret Warrener," is a story of Bohemian Bos ton, and a marked departure from the lines laid down by her previous work. 76 CHAPTER IV. rHERE must of necessity be a cen tre, a focus, a point of radiation for every special group, whether of \vorkers in civic affairs, in philan thropy, in art, science, or literature; and for many years the centre of literary Bos ton has been located in the drawing-room in Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton's house in Rutland Square. Rutland Square is in Boston's unfash ionable South End, and is one of the quiet, shaded places, with the typical Bos- 77 LITEEARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY ton swell-front houses, ivy-clad, of which Matthew Arnold said : " Why should Fashion be permitted to wield such an insolent influence against 1 the beautiful spaces with their lovely residences and air of repose and refinement? If these squares were in London, they would be the dwelling-places of the best people, those who would seek them for their beauty, and not be left to the tender mer cies of the lodging-house keepers." Possibly the fact that she passes so much time in London, and in England generally, has brought Mrs. Moulton to the standpoint of the famous Englishman, so that she rises superior to Fashion and her dictates. At any event, she has re mained steadfast in her loyalty to the home which she has occupied since the time when the South End was the fash ionable quarter, before the Back Bay had 78 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY been reclaimed from water and marsh. Possibly, too, she still lingers there with out giving much thought to the matter, because everybody comes to her, so that, as a friend once said : " She, in a manner, creates her own geography, and is more important in herself and her own power of attraction than any mere accident of residence could make her. In brief, a pole of such attraction exists in Mrs. Moulton's parlours that it must be very near the true magnet." Be that as it may, she has seen street after street built up in the section which Fashion now claims for her own, and friend after friend has taken the way westward, while she still remains at No. 28 Rutland Square, a house which is world-famous. Thither all the best of the town, those who have achieved any thing worth while in letters, in art, in 79 LITERAKY BOSTON OF TO-DAY science, those who are young in achieve ment, but full of high courage and worthy ambitions, together with the literary or artistic " stranger within the gates," turn their steps every Friday afternoon of the winter. For she keeps open house then, and the only invitation needed is the cor dial " Come and see me any Friday after noon; I'm always at home," spoken in a most convincing tone, and with an air of sincerity which plainly says : " I ask you because I really want you." And when the invitation is accepted, she greets the visitor with gracious wel coming and a calm, serene, beaming benignity. But the chief charm, the irresistible attraction about her, is the strong personal interest which she shows to every guest. Not every one is asked to come; there are no indiscriminate invitations, and, 80 LITEKAKY BOSTON OF TO-DAY with all the cordial hospitality, there are also reserves. But to those who are of the elect, the hostess has always some special, personal token of consideration. In London, where Mrs. Moulton spends every summer, she receives as she does at home, and shares in the more sober gaie ties of the few weeks of the fullest life on earth, to which everything interesting gravitates as by natural law. She is quite as fully appreciated over there as in her own Boston, and from a literary stand point, even more highly rated if that be possible than she is in her native land. The English magazines are always eagerly in competition with those of America for her exquisite poems and her graceful and kindly, but just and compelling, criti cisms. Her weekly receptions in Gros- venor Square call together all the great literary world of London, the famous 81 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY Americans who are by chance in the city, and many members of England's nobility as well. It is said of her that she has maintained on both sides of the water the nearest approach to the literary salon that is now in existence. Although Boston claims her as a resi dent, and has done so for many years, she is from Connecticut by birth. Among the hills of Eastern Connecticut, in the lovely little town of Pomfret, was one day born, in a pleasant farmhouse, a sweet girl baby, with wonderful blue eyes and golden hair. There was no other baby there ; she had no rival, and she reigned supreme over the home. By and by the baby grew into a girl, dreamy, enthusiastic, and ambitious. She knew that there was a future before her somewhere outside the country home, and she determined to find it. While still a schoolgirl, she was busy with her 82 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY pen, writing little scraps of prose and bits of verse, which found their way into the columns of a little Connecticut paper, published in a town near Pomfret, of which Edmund C. Stedman, then a very young man, giving promise of what he has since attained, was the editor. He took a lively interest in this blue-eyed girl's welfare, and encouraged her to con tinue her literary work, and advised her concerning her future. The friendship thus begun between the young editor and his schoolgirl contributor has always con tinued, and no one has been more pleased with her success and the position which she has attained than this early friend and adviser. Even as a schoolgirl of thirteen, she wrote so delightfully that, on one occasion, her master asked her if the idea, as well as the verse, was really all her own, and 83 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY on her replying, " I can't tell from where I got it. I never knew there was any thing like it in the world. Surely it came from my own mind," his face brightened, as he replied : " Then I sincerely congrat ulate you." At fourteen her first poem was accepted and printed, and she recalls her sensations in first seeing something of her own in print : " I remember how secretly, and al most as if it were a crime, I sent it in ; and when I found the paper one evening, upon calling at the post-office on my way home from school, and saw my lines, my very own lines, it seemed to me a much more wonderful and glorious event than has anything since that time." The name by which the public first knew her was not Louise Chandler Moul- ton, but Ellen Louise Chandler, although the name under which her poems and 84 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY stories appeared was simply " Ellen Lou ise." Possessed of a wonderful imagina tion and a delicate yet vivid power of description, before long she began weaving her fancies into romances that were pub lished in many of the popular magazines and weekly story papers. People read those stories, and wondered who " Ellen Louise " was, but it was not until her first book was published that the world was told. This book, a volume of short stories gathered together by the young writer at the suggestion of friends, was called "This, That, and the Other," and was heralded by her publishers with a loud blast of trumpets. " See what a girl of eighteen can do," was the heading of all their advertisements, and so many persons wanted to see that eighteen thousand copies were speedily disposed of. The 85 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY popular verdict was favourable. To be sure there were extravagances, and a lack of finish due to the youth of the writer, but it was written with all a girl's exu berance and fancy, and was a success, perhaps not so much for what it was, as for what it promised. Soon after its appearance, she was mar ried to Mr. William U. Moulton, the editor and publisher of a Boston paper to which she was a frequent contributor, and after her marriage Boston became her home. She did not lay her pen by, how ever, but continued steadily at work, im proving constantly in her work. She was a careful writer, and a thorough worker; she was annoyed at any seeming awkward ness of expression, and did not rest until she had made it smooth and finished in every particular. With all this pains 86 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY backing up her ability, it is no wonder that she was recognised as one of the lead ing poets of the country. But she was the critic as well as the poet and story-writer. For several years she was the literary correspondent from Boston for the New York Tribune, and her dictum of a book settled its fate. Her opinion was widely quoted, and it was con sidered final. She was the kindliest of critics, for when she could not praise, she was so gentle in her dispraise that it did not hurt, although it might grieve the un lucky writer. At the time she was send ing her brilliant letters to the Tribune, Boston was furnishing her ample material. The " Atlantic group " were all living and active, the famous Radical Club was flourishing, the Lyceum was in the height of its glory, making a centre for all the men and women who made the lecture 87 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY platform one of the most brilliant places in existence. Anna Dickinson was in the full floodtide of her wonderful career. Mrs. Livermore, just from her work in the Sanitary Commission, was talking about the war. Wendell Phillips, Gough, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles Sumner, were all before the public as speakers, and Boston was headquarters for all of them. And nearly all found their way to the pleasant drawing-room in Rutland Square. Later, Mrs. Moulton transferred her work of criticism to the Boston Herald, in which paper her article was for a long time a marked feature. For a few years past she has devoted herself almost entirely to poetry, and has had several volumes pub lished. But there is another side to Mrs. Moul ton from that which she gives to the public. She is a loyal and devoted friend, 88 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY and one of the kindest and most helpful women in all the world of letters. Free from everything which savours in the least of jealousy, she is most hospitable in her welcome to young people who are entering with timid, untried steps the field of literary endeavour. Some years ago a young woman came to Boston to enter upon a life of literary activity. She brought a letter of introduc tion to Mrs. Moulton from a relative of the latter, and presented it with a good deal of timidity. Her reception was most cor dial. Not only did the distinguished woman accord hei* a warm personal wel come, but she arranged that she should meet others who would be of service to her. She examined her work, and gave her the suggestions and advice which proved of the greatest possible service to the ambitious young country girl. TJn- 89 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY doubtedly all this has passed from the mind of Mrs. Moulton, but the woman has never forgotten, and regards her with a feeling of affection and reverence that she accords to no other. This is only one instance out of many. She has met discouragement with cheer, has averted threatened failure, by showing the way which pointed to success. Her purse has been open to those who needed, and her heart has never been closed to the call for sympathy. She has given her service and her substance to all sorts of charity. And so the world not only ad mires her as the graceful story-teller, the keen but kindly critic, the genuine poet, but loves her as the woman, and regards it an honour as well as a pleasure to be bidden to her home, where in her dainty drawing-room she is surrounded with the souvenirs of travel, and the autographed 90 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY photographs of the distinguished persons who are proud to call her friend. We have, too, a granddaughter of a famous ancestor in whom Boston takes pride, although she sends us her books from over the sea, Mrs. Helen Choate Prince. Rufus Choate, who contained within his intense being fire and fancy enough to transmit to a hundred genera tions, had a fine romantic vein, and in the third generation, the Boston maiden, who grew up like the other girls of her circle, and passed on to marriage, and to reside in France, as any of them might have done, bore in her brain an inheritance which was to be developed amidst great conditions, and strengthened and enliv ened by stimulating surroundings to de light a large number of readers. Mrs. Prince's novels have not been merely sketches of character and incident, 91 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY smart dialogue, epigrams, the play of sec ondary or tertiary motives, elaborate efforts to analyse insignificant things. She writes with an old-fashioned motif, but not a moral, which is a different thing. Mrs. Prince brings the American and French types, which she understands so well, into interesting contrast. As some body has said : " It is not the Cook's tour ist and the Parisian cockney whom she sets over against one another. Mrs. Prince's Americans are only Europeans of the same class, vivified and ardent." Mrs. Prince was born in Dorchester in 1857, and educated at private schools in Boston. For the past ten years she has lived in France, with occasional visits to America, extending over several months. Her most famous books have been " A Trans-Atlantic Chatelaine," "The Story 92 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY of Christine Rochefort," and " At the Sign of the Silver Crescent" Although Miss Edna Dean Proctor lives in South Framingham, when she is not travelling abroad, she belongs to the Boston Authors' Club, and is considered a part of literary Boston. Miss Proctor's poems, of which she has published several volumes, have placed her in the very front rank of American poets. Personally she is a charming woman of great beauty and a winning friendliness of manner. It is an honour to know Miss Proctor, and es pecially so to be counted her friend. 93 CHAPTER V. MARGARET DELAND, ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD, HERBERT D. WARD, HAR RIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD ANOTHER name of which the Bos- y~i ton of to-day is very proud is that of Margaret Deland. She is a na tive of Pennsylvania, hut came to Boston as a bride in 1880, and has done all her literary work here. So many romantic stories have been told of the way she came to take up literary work that it may be well to give the tale as the author herself tells it. Just previous to a Christmas in the early eighties, Mrs. Deland went shopping 94 LITERARY BOSTON" OF TO-DAY one morning, and during her expedition purchased a unique trifle to send to a dis tant friend, carrying it with her from the shop to the market, for she has always " looked well to the ways of her house hold," and is a notable housekeeper as well as writer. On the horse-car she fell a-thinking of this friend and of the gift she proposed sending, and thus musing, thought out a little verse to her own astonishment, as she had never attempted to write a rhyme before. Lest she forget it, she scribbled the verse on the bundle she was carrying. On her way to her house, she stopped for a few minutes' chat with her friend, Miss Lucy Derby (now Mrs. Fuller), whose eye happened to fall on the scribbled words on the parcel. "What is this?" asked Miss Derby. Mrs. Deland, in some confusion, con fessed to having perpetrated her first 95 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY poem, whereupon Miss Derby insisted upon reading the verse, and immediately became enthusiastic over this evidence of talent in her friend. She spoke so en couragingly that she fired the young writer with a new purpose, and Mrs. De- land went home to try her hand at verse- making. When she showed her more serious attempts, a few days later, to Miss Derby, the latter felt justified in her ex travagant praise, and, borrowing the poems, carried them home and surrep titiously submitted them to several pub lishers. When, after a few weeks, a check came for fifteen dollars from a prominent New York publisher, Mrs. Deland could scarcely credit her senses, and she would not cash the check for some time, her pride in it was so great. So there you have the whole romantic story in a nutshell. An appreciative publisher, a budding genius, 96 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY a generous press and success. Her book of poems, " An Old Garden and Other Verses," sold very rapidly, and en couraged the young author to set about the serious business of novel-writing. How well she succeeded in this everybody knows, for " John Ward, Preacher," was the result. Whether the sales of this book would have been so great if " Robert Els- mere " had not just made its appearance and aroused a storm of criticism and controversy all over the world, is an open question ; but it is sure that Mrs. Deland's book was distinguished by a thoughtful and earnest spirit and the skilful treat ment of religious subjects that was rather new at the time. The criticism sometimes made that the book was an echo of Mrs. Ward's was unworthy of notice for two reasons: one, that the book was published almost at the same time as the English 97 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY novel, and another that Mrs. Deland had been two years in writing it, never dream ing that, on the other side of the Atlantic, another woman was struggling with the same great question of freedom of relig ious thought. " Old Chester Tales " has been one of the most widely read of her later books. Mrs. Deland takes an active interest in current affairs, especially such as concern Boston and Massachusetts. Although of good Presbyterian stock, she is an Episcopalian, and a constant attend ant at one of the prominent Back Bay churches. Personally she is a charming woman to meet. Of attractive personality and good taste in dress, she is a direct contra diction of the old idea that a literary woman must necessarily be a frump, and in her two houses one sees evidence on every hand of exquisite taste. Her winter 98 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY residence is an old-fashioned, spacious house on Mt. Vernon Street, numbered 76, a street replete with historical inter est and literary association. General Washington himself named the street after his own home in Virginia, and every foot of its surroundings is connected with some incident of colonial days. Mrs. Deland's house combines the old and the new in a way that is possible only to the cultivated modern who has the power of putting the historical into the proper perspective. At the front, a long window extends the whole width of the house, except for the entrance, and here in the winter are grown many pots of jonquils that eager buyers are glad to take away from the sale she holds in February for a pet charity. The writer of " An Old Garden " is essentially a flower lover, and this passion of Mrs. Del and is on evi- 99 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY dence on all sides. In the front vestibule, one is confronted by a gate, or Dutch door, on which is the veritable knocker that was once on the library door at Wendell Phil- lips's, and was grasped by him when he fled from the mob. This Dutch door opens directly into a large reception-room that reminds the caller of a garden, so bright and cheery is it, and so bedecked with flowers. Hospitality, comfort, and noble simplicity of taste are the qualities that are impressed on the mind of the caller, which are emphasised by the great open fireplace and its smouldering wood fire. The furniture is massive and colonial, and, as you go up a winding staircase, you notice dainty little nooks filled with books. At the back of the house, on the second floor, is Mrs. Deland's workroom. Here is another wide window with its blooming pots of hyacinths and jonquils. 100 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY Amidst her flowers and in a flood of sun shine she writes, and their sunny spirit is reflected, even in the serious life of "John Ward." Indeed, Mrs. Deland's friends now claim that her writing is done with a jon-quill. Perhaps it is this bright, cheerful atmosphere, reflected in her own mind, that gives her that horror of relig ious fanaticism for which she is noted. Down at picturesque old Kennebunk- port, Mrs. Deland's flower-embowered cot tage is pointed out to the visitor as one of the features of that summer place. It is an ideal retreat, surrounded by a blaze of colour, for the same riotous love of flowers is shown here, massed in effect ive colours and picturesque arrangement. She attends to all her own gardening, and may often be seen in the early dawn among her posy-beds. Her husband is Mr. Lorin F. Deland, and they lead a singu- 101 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY larly harmonious and happy life together. Doubtless the story that Mrs. Deland started her. literary career by writing ad vertisements for a well-known furniture house came from the fact of Mr. Deland's connection with the advertising agency of which he is the famous head. Mrs. Deland's books, in addition to those mentioned, have been " Philip and His Wife," " Sydney: The Story of a Child," "Florida Days," "The Wisdom of Fools," and " Mr. Tommy Dove and Other Stories." Says one writer in Time and the Hour: " Full of light, through the long, high range of panes, which has superseded the common pair of parlour windows, is the great, square room occupying the whole front house-space. And perhaps a glow of flame from logs in the ample fireplace, which fills almost one side of it, mingles 102 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY with the sun's illumination. Low book cases, a table strewn with books, one or two choice pictures, a long, embrasured settle, a few low chairs, and an open staircase rising to the next floor on the side opposite the fireplace complete the detail of this apartment, hall and par lour and reception-room, the heart of the home. It is clear, free, daintily yet delicately furnished, like the mind of the hostess, who greets you there; hospitable like it, too, in frank and easy access to every genuine approach. But it is flower- like to shrink from unsympathetic touch, and those who know Mrs. Deland have heard her say, ' I hate a fool ' (or a sham) as emphatically as ' Mr. F's aunt.' Posi tive and vigorous is she in feeling and ex pression, as even all her readers must know. " Mrs. Deland is purposeful in her art 103 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY as in her life. ' John Ward ' and ' Philip and His Wife ' are no mere stories, such as some popular novelists turn out by the gross, having acquired the fatal mechan ical facility of the craft. In lighter vein, the authoress might, had she chosen, have taken up the mantle dropped by Mrs. Gaskell so untimely, but she has elected to use her great gifts of observation and expression to enforce burning themes, and to throw herself into the thrilling tide of modern thought. Before Mrs. Deland came to Boston, she had given some years to personal work, even under her own roof, to reform the lives of sinful girls. She has sounded the depths of what is, humanly speaking, hopeless human de pravity, and looks upon evil without sen timentality, as involving a penalty as inevitable in the moral as in the physical sphere. Poet and novelist, yet her truth- 104 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY ful temper cannot palter with the inevi table, and she recognises that real charity has its scientific principles and economic laws. " Bishop Brooks was one of Mrs. De- land's closest friends, yet it is said that her own convictions led her to shape those writings which were submitted to him during his life for his advice, quite inde pendently of his criticism, where it did not coincide with her own strong convic tions. And it is easy to recognise, in a manner which is perfectly considerate, even teachable, the underlying calmness of very positive assurance. I should say, for counsel, for direction, for inspiration, no woman could lean, in any kind of trouble, upon a surer rock than Margaret Deland. Yet the authoress of * The Old Garden,' if not sentimental, has a fund of deep sentiment. Perhaps she will tell 105 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY you, as you sit before the deep fireplace, adorned on the mantel with several por traits of Bishop Brooks, that the great bed of ashes contains all those which had gathered on the hearth of her former home. ' They were so much of a part of the as sociation with him and the other dear friends who had watched the embers glow and crumble, as they sat about the house- place, that one could not bear to have them cast out, so they were brought to the new domestic altar here.' " Early in the summer ' life and thought no longer dwell ' in the Mt. Vernon Street house, and the cottage at Kennebunkport wakes up and becomes animate. As the pressure of city engagements becomes greater, a greater proportion of the au thoress's literary work is done in this retirement. For, though there is the usual hotel life there, the peace and simplicity 106 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY of the cottagers' habits have not been sacrificed to it, and they have perfect leisure to gather up dropped stitches, or merely to rest and renew exhausted nerves, as seems best to them. That even an or dinary interruption of daily life need not hamper her, Mrs. Deland has a sort of ' studio ' in a neighbouring building, and disappears for considerable periods to pur sue a lonely struggle with her successful weapon against the foes whom she scatters with such vigour, determination, and ef fect. It is easy to feel that some of her inspiration consists in the happy union of a sound mind with a sound body, tingling with the shock of the Atlantic waves, or thrilling with the ferruginous breath of its strong breezes. Mrs. Deland's boat has been a prize-winner in some of the annual river carnivals which are the event of Kennebunkport's fete-day, and she usu- 107 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY ally has her guest-chambers full, but one would look for her in vain at the hotels or at the casino." Then, too, there is Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward. Nobody will deny her right to be numbered with the foremost writers in America, and since she came to Newton and settled, from whence she frequently comes forth to appear at occa sional society affairs, Boston claims her as belonging to its literary set. She is both a voluminous and inspiring writer, and has been well called one of the most daring, for is she not caught frequently writing of things beyond the veil that separates us from eternity ? She claims that we are living in the suburbs of the Heavenly City, and she has brightened the life of many a weary traveller in this mundane sphere. Not only with her fa mous " Gates Ajar," " Beyond the Gates," 108 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY and " The Gates Between " has she dared to venture into what had heretofore been considered sacred ground, but in the field of speculative essay, she treats freely sub jects that were once supposed forbidden even to the angels. Whether it is a wise thing for the modern mind that is in clined toward the morbid or the unfathom able, we will not attempt to settle here. Mrs. Ward belongs to the famous Phelps family, which has so long been connected with the old-fashioned theology, and it is probable that this accounts for her bold and aspiring temperament. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps was born in Boston August thirty-first, 1844. When she was four years old her father was appointed professor at the Andover Theo logical Seminary, and the pleasant hill town was her residence until her marriage in 1888. Her first literary essay was a 109 LITEKAKY BOSTON OF TO-DAY magazine article, called u A Sacrifice Con sumed," and she was only twenty -four when her great success was attained in " Gates Ajar." Of this book many more than one hundred thousand copies have been sold. It has been translated into German, Danish, and Italian. Her lit erary career has been exceedingly busy, and her marriage to Mr. Herbert D. Ward, in 1888, opened a new chapter in it. In collaboration with her husband she wrote " The Master of the Magicians," "Come Forth," and ." The Lost Hero," religious novels, in which the outlines of the Scriptural story are clothed and col oured. Her own work can be divided into various groups. Mrs. Ward has done a good deal for juvenile literature, and has done it well. There are the " Trotty " books, and the " Gypsy " books, and " The Boys of Brimstone Court," which are 110 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY favourites with the most thoughtful class of youngsters. Another sphere in which she has tried her wings is the poetical. " Poetic Studies " and " Songs of the Si lent World " are specimens of this side of her wide mind. She has made some nov els, pure and simple, " The Story of Avis " and " Doctor Zay," purposeful, of course, but reasonably progressive bits of genuine narrative. Again, we have a group of realistic tales, like " The Ma donna of the Tubs," " The Supply at St. Agatha's," " Jack the Fisherman," and " A Singular Life," to which we might add the extravaganza, illustrated by " The Old Maid's Paradise," " The Burglar in Paradise," and so on. Finally there are the stories of the Promised Land, " Gates Ajar," " The Gates Between," and " Be yond the Gates." Her " Story of Jesus Christ " is one of 111 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY the most tender biographies of the Christ ever written. Her beautiful, pathetic tale called " Loveliness " is without doubt the best argument against vivisection ever put forth, and none who have read it can feel that its author is wasting a bit of time and strength in the war she is waging against the practice of vivisection. Mr. Herbert Dickinson Ward, her hus band, was born in Waltham, Massachu setts, and is a graduate of Amherst Col lege. He was the son of Doctor William Hayes Ward, editor of the New York Independent. Mr. Ward was " The Bur glar Who Moved Paradise," and married Elizabeth Stuart Phelps at the little cot tage at East Gloucester, which is asso ciated in the minds of so many delighted readers of the " Old Maid's Paradise." Mr. Ward has written several books alone, besides collaborating with his wife in 112 LITERARY BOSTON OF TO-DAY three, and is doing a vast amount of lit erary work for the best magazines and periodicals. He belongs to the University Club, and is treasurer of the Boston Au thors' Club; he has been for several years State Commissioner of Prisons, and is a popular member of many organisations. He is a diligent worker, and possessed of a ready wit, which gives zest to all he says as well as to what he writes. His latest work was a brilliant novel, which was published anonymously, and it has proved that a thoroughly good book may become popular without a well-known name on its title-page. Mr. and Mrs. Ward have a charming home in Newton Centre, where they live surrounded by their books, and half buried in work during the winter months, flitting back to their " Paradise " at East Glouces ter with the first hint of summer. 113 LITEFJLRY BOSTOX OF TO-DAY B*t im SBBHung p o*r famous literary let as wit forget that rarest, wkiek na$ groat oat a Harriet !*! SpoSord it is trae that her real home is *t Xew- witk hteruy Boaloa, and t