Part 15

Chapter 153,586 wordsPublic domain

Since I am here engaged upon a mere sketch of Mrs. Howe, not a formal memoir, I have felt free to postpone until this time the details of her birth and parentage. She was the daughter of Samuel and Julia Rush (Cutler) Ward, and was born at the house of her parents in the Bowling Green, New York city, on May 27, 1819. She was married on April 14, 1843, at nearly twenty-four years of age, to Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, whom she had met on visits to Boston. They soon went to Europe,—the first of many similar voyages,—where her eldest daughter, Julia Romana, was born during the next spring. This daughter was the author of a volume of poems entitled “Stray Clouds,” and of a description of the Summer School of Philosophy at Concord entitled “Philosophiæ Quæstor,” and was the founder of a metaphysical club of which she was president. She became the wife of the late Michael Anagnos, of Greek origin, her father’s successor in charge of the Institution for the Blind, and the news of her early death was received with general sorrow. Mrs. Howe’s second daughter was named Florence Marion, became in 1871 the wife of David Prescott Hall, of the New York Bar, and was author of “Social Customs” and “The Correct Thing,” being also a frequent speaker before the women’s clubs. Mrs. Howe’s third daughter, Mrs. Laura E. Richards, was married in the same year to Henry Richards, of Gardiner, Maine, a town named for the family of Mr. Richards’s mother, who established there a once famous school, the Gardiner Lyceum. The younger Mrs. Richards is author of “Captain January” and other stories of very wide circulation, written primarily for her own children, and culminating in a set of nonsense books of irresistible humor illustrated by herself. Mrs. Howe’s youngest daughter, Maud, distinguished for her beauty and social attractiveness, is the wife of Mr. John Elliott, an English artist, and has lived much in Italy, where she has written various books of art and literature, of which “Atalanta in the South” was the first and “Roma Beata” one of the last. Mrs. Howe’s only son, Henry Marion, graduated at Harvard University in 1869 and from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1871, is a mining engineer and expert, and is a professor in the School of Mines at Columbia University. His book on “The Metallurgy of Steel” has won for him a high reputation. It will thus be seen that Mrs. Howe has had the rare and perhaps unequaled experience of being not merely herself an author, but the mother of five children, all authors. She has many grandchildren, and even a great-grandchild, whose future career can hardly be surmised.

There was held, in honor of Mrs. Howe’s eighty-sixth birthday (May 27, 1905), a meeting of the Boston Authors’ Club, including a little festival whose plan was taken from the annual Welsh festival of the Eistedfodd, at which every bard of that nation brought four lines of verse—a sort of four-leaved clover—to his chief. This being tried at short notice for Mrs. Howe, there came in some sixty poems, of which I select a few, almost at random, to make up the outcome of the festival, which last did not perhaps suffer from the extreme shortness of the notice:—

BIRTHDAY GREETINGS, LIMITED

Why limit to one little four-line verse Each birthday wish, for her we meet to honor? Else it might take till mornrise to rehearse All the glad homage we would lavish on her!

JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE.

THE “NONNA” OF MAGNA ITALIA

Within the glow shed by her heart of gold, Warm Southern sunshine cheers our Northern skies, And pilgrim wanderers, homesick and a-cold, Find their loved Italy in her welcoming eyes.

VIDA D. SCUDDER.

FIVE O’CLOCK WITH THE IMMORTALS

The Sisters Three who spin our fate Greet Julia Ward, who comes quite late; How Greek wit flies! They scream with glee, Drop thread and shears, and make the tea.

E. H. CLEMENT.

Hope now abiding, faith long ago, Never a shadow between. White of the lilacs and white of the snow, Seventy and sixteen.

MARY GRAY MORRISON.

In English, French, Italian, German, Greek, Our many-gifted President can speak. Wit, Wisdom, world-wide Knowledge grace her tongue And she is _only_ Eighty-six years young!

NATHAN HASKELL DOLE.

How to be gracious? How to be true? Poet, and Seer, and Woman too? To crown with Spring the Winter’s brow? Here is the answer: _this_ is Howe.

MARY ELIZABETH BLAKE.

If man could change the universe By force of epigrams in verse, He’d smash some idols, I allow, But who would alter Mrs. Howe?

ROBERT GRANT.

Lady who lovest and who livest Peace, And yet didst write Earth’s noblest battle song At Freedom’s bidding,—may thy fame increase Till dawns the warless age for which we long!

FREDERIC LAWRENCE KNOWLES.

Dot oldt Fader Time must be cutting some dricks, Vhen he calls our goot Bresident’s age eighty-six. An octogeranium! Who would suppose? My dear Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, der time goes!

YAWCOB STRAUSS (CHARLES FOLLEN ADAMS).

You, who are of the spring, To whom Youth’s joys _must_ cling, May all that Love can give Beguile you long to live— Our Queen of Hearts.

LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.

H ere, on this joyous day of days, O deign to list my skill-less praise. W hate’er be said with tongue or pen E xtolling thee, I cry “Amen.”

BEULAH MARIE DIX.

Mrs. Howe was not apprised of the project in advance, and certainly had not seen the verses; but was, at any rate, ready as usual, and this sketch may well close with her cheery answer:—

MRS. HOWE’S REPLY

Why, bless you, I ain’t nothing, nor nobody, nor much, If you look in your Directory you’ll find a thousand such. I walk upon the level ground, I breathe upon the air, I study at a table and reflect upon a chair.

I know a casual mixture of the Latin and the Greek, I know the Frenchman’s _parlez-vous_, and how the Germans speak; Well can I add, and well subtract, and say twice two is four, But of those direful sums and proofs remember nothing more.

I wrote a poetry book one time, and then I wrote a play, And a friend who went to see it said she fainted right away. Then I got up high to speculate upon the Universe, And folks who heard me found themselves no better and no worse.

Yes, I’ve had a lot of birthdays and I’m growing very old, That’s why they make so much of me, if once the truth were told. And I love the shade in summer, and in winter love the sun, And I’m just learning how to live, my wisdom’s just begun.

Don’t trouble more to celebrate this natal day of mine, But keep the grasp of fellowship which warms us more than wine. Let us thank the lavish hand that gives world beauty to our eyes, And bless the days that saw us young, and years that make us wise.

XXI

WILLIAM JAMES ROLFE

The “man of one book” (_homo unius libri_) whom St. Thomas Aquinas praised has now pretty nearly vanished from the world; and those men are rare, especially in our versatile America, who have deliberately chosen one department of literary work and pursued it without essential variation up to old age. Of these, Francis Parkman was the most conspicuous representative, and William James Rolfe is perhaps the most noticeable successor,—a man who, upon a somewhat lower plane than Parkman, has made for himself a permanent mark in a high region of editorship, akin to that of Furnivall and a few compeers in England. A teacher by profession all his life, his especial sphere has been the English department, a department which he may indeed be said to have created in our public schools, and thus indirectly in our colleges.

William James Rolfe, son of John and Lydia Davis (Moulton) Rolfe, was born on December 10, 1827, in Newburyport, Massachusetts, a rural city which has been the home at different times of a number of literary and public men, and is still, by its wide, elm-shaded chief avenue and ocean outlook, found attractive by all visitors. Rolfe’s boyhood, however, was passed mainly in Lowell, Massachusetts, where he was fitted for college in the high school. He spent three years at Amherst College, but found himself unable to afford to remain any longer, and engaged in school-teaching as a means of immediate support. A bankrupt country academy at Wrentham, about twenty-five miles from Boston, was offered to him rent free if he would keep a school in it, and, for want of anything better, he took it. He had to teach all the grammar and high school branches, including the fitting of boys for college, and his pupils ranged from ten years old to those two or three years older than himself. He was the only teacher, and heard from sixteen to twenty classes a day. Besides these, which included classes in Latin, French, Greek, and German, he had pupils out of school in Spanish and Italian, adding to all this the enterprise, then wholly new, of systematically teaching English with the study of standard writers. This was apparently a thing never done before that time in the whole United States.

So marked was the impression made by his mode of teaching that it led to his appointment as principal of the pioneer public high schools at Dorchester, Massachusetts. He there required work in English of all his pupils, boys and girls alike, including those who had collegiate aims. At this time no English, as such, was required at any American college, and it was only since 1846 that Harvard had introduced even a preliminary examination, in which Worcester’s “Elements of History and Elements of Geography” were added to the original departments of Latin, Greek, and mathematics. Rolfe’s boys enjoyed the studies in English literature, but feared lest they might fail in the required work in classics unless they were excused from English. To relieve their anxiety and his own, their teacher wrote to Professor Felton, afterwards President of Harvard, telling him what his boys were doing in English, and asking permission to omit some portion of his Greek Reader then required for admission. Professor Felton replied, in substance, “Go ahead with the English and let the Greek take care of itself.” As a result, all four of the boys entered Harvard without conditions, and it is worth noticing that they all testified that no part of their preparatory training was more valuable to them in college than this in English. It is also noticeable that the late Henry A. Clapp, of Boston, long eminent as a lecturer on Shakespeare, was one of these boys.

In the summer of 1857 Mr. Rolfe was invited to take charge of the high school at Lawrence, Massachusetts, on a larger scale than the Dorchester institution, and was again promoted after four years to Salem, and the next year to be principal of the Cambridge high school, where he remained until 1868. Since that time he has continued to reside in Cambridge, and has devoted himself to editorial and literary work. His literary labors from 1869 to the present day have been vast and varied. He has been one of the editors of the “Popular Science News” (formerly the Boston “Journal of Chemistry”), and for nearly twenty years has had charge of the department of Shakespeareana in the “Literary World” and the “Critic,” to which he has also added “Poet-Lore.” He has written casual articles for other periodicals. In 1865 he published a handbook of Latin poetry with J. H. Hanson, A. M., of Waterville, Maine. In 1867 he followed this by an American edition of Craik’s “English of Shakespeare.” Between 1867 and 1869, in connection with J. A. Gillet, he brought out the “Cambridge course” in physics, in six volumes. In 1870 he edited Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice” with such success that by 1883 he had completed an edition of all the plays in forty volumes. It has long been accepted as a standard critical authority, being quoted as such by leading English and German editors. He was lately engaged in a thorough revision of this edition, doing this task after he had reached the age of seventy-five. He has also edited Scott’s complete poems, as well as (separately) “The Lady of the Lake” and “The Lay of the Last Minstrel”; an _édition de luxe_ of Tennyson’s works in twelve volumes, and another, the Cambridge Edition, in one volume. He has edited volumes of selections from Milton, Gray, Goldsmith, Wordsworth, and Browning, with Mrs. Browning’s “Sonnets from the Portuguese.” He is also the author of “Shakespeare the Boy,” with sketches of youthful life of that period; “The Satchel Guide to Europe,” published anonymously for twenty-eight years; and a book on the “Elementary Study of English.” With his son, John C. Rolfe, Ph. D., Professor of Latin in the University of Pennsylvania, he has edited Macaulay’s “Lays of Ancient Rome.” He has published a series of elementary English classics in six volumes. He has also supervised the publication of the “New Century _édition de luxe_” of Shakespeare in twenty-four volumes, besides writing for it a “Life of Shakespeare” which fills a volume of five hundred and fifty pages, now published separately. It is safe to say that no other American, and probably no Englishman, has rivaled him for the extent, variety, and accuracy of his services as an editor.

This work may be justly divided into two parts: that dealing mainly with Shakespeare, and that with single minor authors whose complete or partial work he has reprinted. In Shakespeare he has, of course, the highest theme to dwell on, but also that in which he has been preceded by a vast series of workmen. In these his function has not been so much that of original and individual criticism as of judiciously compiling the work of predecessors, this last fact being especially true since the printing of the Furness edition. It is in dealing with the minor authors that he has been led to the discovery, at first seeming almost incredible, that the poems which most claimed the attention of the world have for that very reason been gradually most changed and perverted in printing. Gray’s “Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” for instance, has appeared in polyglot editions; it has been translated fifteen times into French, thirteen into Italian, twelve times into Latin, and so on down through Greek, German, Portuguese, and Hebrew. No one poem in the English language, even by Longfellow, equals it in this respect. The editions which appeared in Gray’s own time were kept correct through his own careful supervision; and the changes in successive editions were at first those made by himself, usually improvements, as where he changed “some village Cato” to “some village Hampden,” and substituted in the same verse “Milton” for “Tully” and “Cromwell” for “Cæsar.” But there are many errors in Pickering’s edition, and these have been followed by most American copies. It may perhaps be doubted whether Dr. Rolfe is quite correct in his opinion where he says in his preface to this ode, “No vicissitudes of taste or fashion have affected its popularity”; it is pretty certain that young people do not know it by heart so generally as they once did, and Wordsworth pronounced its dialect often “unintelligible”; but we are all under obligation to Dr. Rolfe for his careful revision of this text.

Turning now to Scott’s “Lady of the Lake,” which would seem next in familiarity to Gray’s “Elegy,” we find scores of corrections, made in Rolfe’s, of errors that have crept gradually in since the edition of 1821. For instance, in Canto II, l. 685, every edition since 1821 has had “I meant not all my _heart_ would say,” the correct reading being “my _heat_ would say.” In Canto VI, l. 396, the Scottish “_boune_” has been changed to “_bound_” and eight lines below, the old word “_barded_” has become “_barbed_”; and these are but a few among many examples.

When we turn to Shakespeare, we find less direct service of this kind required than in the minor authors; less need of the microscope. At any rate, the variations have all been thoroughly scrutinized, and no flagrant changes have come to light since the disastrous attempt in that direction of Mr. Collier in 1852. On the other hand, we come to a new class of variations, which it would have been well perhaps to have stated more clearly in the volumes where they occur; namely, the studied omissions, in Rolfe’s edition, of all indecent words or phrases. There is much to be said for and against this process of Bowdlerizing, as it was formerly called; and those who recall the publication of the original Bowdler experiment in this line, half a century ago, and the seven editions which it went through from 1818 to 1861, can remember with what disapproval such expurgation was long regarded. Even now it is to be noticed that the new edition of reprints of the early folio Shakespeares, edited by two ladies, Misses Clarke and Porter, adopts no such method. Of course the objection to the process is on the obvious ground that concealment creates curiosity, and the great majority of copies of Shakespeare will be always unexpurgated, so that it is very easy to turn to them. Waiving this point, and assuming the spelling to be necessarily modernized, it is difficult to conceive of any school edition done more admirably than the new issue of Mr. Rolfe’s volumes of Shakespeare’s works. The type is clear, the paper good, and the notes and appendices are the result of long experience. When one turns back, for instance, to the old days of Samuel Johnson’s editorship, and sees the utter triviality and dullness of half the annotations of that very able man, one feels the vast space of time elapsed between his annotations and Dr. Rolfe’s. This applies even to notes that seem almost trivial, and many a suggestion or bit of explanation which seems to a mere private student utterly wasted can be fully justified by cases in which still simpler points have proved seriously puzzling in the school-room.

It has been said that every Shakespeare critic ended with the desire to be Shakespeare’s biographer, although fortunately most of them have been daunted by discouragement or the unwillingness of booksellers. Here, also, Mr. Rolfe’s persistent courage has carried him through, and his work, aided by time and new discoveries, has probably portrayed, more fully than that of any of his predecessors, the airy palace in which the great enchanter dwelt. How far the occupant of the palace still remains also a thing of air, we must leave for Miss Delia Bacon’s school of heretics to determine. For myself, I prefer to believe, with Andrew Lang, that “Shakespeare’s plays and poems were written by Shakespeare.”

XXII

GÖTTINGEN AND HARVARD A CENTURY AGO

“Whene’er with haggard eyes I view This dungeon that I’m rotting in, I think of those companions true Who studied with me at the U- niversity of Göttingen, niversity of Göttingen.”

To the majority of Harvard graduates the chief association with Göttingen is Canning’s once-famous squib, of which this is the first verse, in the “Anti-Jacobin.” But the historical tie between the two universities is far too close to be forgotten; and I have lately come into possession of some quite interesting letters which demonstrate this. They show conclusively how much the development of Harvard College was influenced, nearly a century ago, by the German models, and how little in comparison by Oxford and Cambridge; and as the letters are all from men afterwards eminent, and pioneers in that vast band of American students who have since studied in Germany, their youthful opinions will possess a peculiar interest.

The three persons through whom this influence most came were Joseph Green Cogswell, Edward Everett, and George Ticknor, all then studying at Göttingen. It happens that they had all been intimate in my father’s family, and as he was very much interested in the affairs of the college,—of which he became in 1818 the “Steward and Patron,” and practically, as the Reverend A. P. Peabody assures us,[22] the Treasurer,—they sent some of their appeals and arguments through him. This paper will consist chiefly of extracts from these letters, which speak for themselves as to the point of view in which the whole matter presented itself.

It will be well to bear in mind the following details as to the early history of these three men, taking them in order of age. Cogswell was born in 1786, graduated (Harvard) in 1806, was tutor in 1814-15 (having previously tried mercantile life), and went abroad in 1816. Ticknor was born in 1791, graduated (Dartmouth) in 1807, went to Germany in 1815, and was appointed professor of Modern Languages at Harvard in 1817. Everett was born in 1794, graduated (Harvard) in 1811, and went abroad on his appointment as Greek professor (Harvard) in 1815.

The first of these letters is from George Ticknor, and is a very striking appeal in behalf of the Harvard College Library, which then consisted of less than 20,000 volumes, although the largest in the United States, with perhaps one exception.

GÖTTINGEN, May 20, 1816.