CHAPTER VI

A STAY AT THE WHITE HOUSE

The year 1867 brought changes. Hellas once more called my father to her aid. The insurrection of the Cretans against the Turk in 1866 was one of the most courageous struggles for freedom the world has seen. The American hero of the Greek Revolution kept in close touch with all that concerned Greek freedom. With Byron he had “dreamed that Greece might yet be free”; during his long life he never lost the vision, never failed to lend a hand to every effort for emancipation. The failure of the insurrection brought awful suffering upon the Cretan refugees, largely women and children. My father raised a considerable sum of money to invest in clothing and provisions, and in the winter of 1867 sailed for Greece, once again as Boston’s almoner to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. My mother, Julia, and Laura went with him, leaving Harry, a sophomore at Harvard, Florence, and myself at home.

The only kind of rest my father ever knew was change of activity; he took his rare vacations strenuously. We went to East Boston to see the travelers off on the _Asia_, one of those small Cunarders of the sixties that took thirteen days to cross the ocean. Having never seen an ocean steamer, I examined minutely every part open to an inquisitive child.

I was left in the charge of Flossie, who having lately become engaged to David Prescott Hall, elected to stay at home, yielding to Laura the opportunity of going to Europe. Flossie’s task was no easy one, for I bitterly resented being left behind; her devotion was the beginning of a close bond between us.

The next seven months brought strange experiences. I had never been separated from my parents and supposed them indispensable to my very life. For the first few weeks I mourned passionately. Gradually there came a dawning sense of individuality; I found I could live without either parent and get through the days not too uncomfortably. I began to understand my mother’s dictum,

“We come into the world alone, we go out of the world alone; there is nothing to us but ourselves!”

When after seven months’ absence the travelers returned we went down the harbor to meet them. The passage had been a severe one; the red funnels of the _Asia_ were caked with salt from the spray that had constantly dashed over them. I found my father on deck, warming his back against the smokestack, and remember his showing me the hole burnt in his new London overcoat by the heat. When they saw me, my father and mother exchanged a significant glance: they had left me a child, they found me a half-grown girl.

The unpacking of the trunks was attended with breathless interest. There was a pink silk dress made in Paris for Laura, a charming silk of a shade called Bismarck, with crystal trimming, for Julia, and a blue silk for Florence. There was no Paris dress for me. I was still growing rapidly, and outgrew my frocks every few months. In our family silk dresses must last a long time, and it would have been the height of folly to order one for me, but girls of thirteen are not always reasonable.

Laura, the “comforter”, soon consoled me, and also I was too happy to have the dear ones back to brood long over my disappointment.

Two large new trunks contained the spoils of the family’s pilgrimage,--photographs of Greece and Italy, ancient vases from Athens, a bronze lamp from the Roman catacombs. These things set my imagination rioting, were a part of my education, worth more than twenty silk dresses!

I remember something of my elders’ talk of affairs in Europe. They had seen the Paris Exposition of 1867, where William Hunt’s pictures were prominent, and works by Bierstadt, Church, and Kensett. Both parents loved France; my father had been the friend and helper of Lafayette in the Polish Relief Work of 1831; my mother from her childhood had been much in touch with the French. At her father’s house several French exiles were employed, a hairdresser, a teacher, a marquis who came to dress the salad for dinner parties. There was a sort of sorrowful apprehension for the future of France in all the travelers said. I heard of the follies of the beautiful Empress Eugénie, of the political crimes of Louis Napoleon, of the lowering of standards in taste and manners. People said, “Go to the theater, but do not take your daughters!” In writing of this period later my mother says:

“In Bismarck’s mind even then the despoiling of France was pre-determined.”

This was the mating season for my sisters and brother, the serious business of life for the young. That day, when I went down the harbor to meet the returning family, I saw for the first time Michael Anagnostopoulos, the young Greek my father brought from Athens as his secretary. I see now the dark bearded face, the brilliant oriental eyes of Anagnos, so we afterwards called him, as he stood on the deck of the steamer, wrapped in a black and white plaid shawl after the fashion of his country. Pale from the long voyage, the dreadful seasickness, his great eyes dwelt pensively now on the fast approaching shore, now on the face of Julia. There was no one in our circle wise enough to foresee what the next few years were to bring about. Anagnos taught my mother Greek, served my father faithfully, ended by marrying “our eldest”, and becoming the assistant and successor of my father as Director of the Institution for the Blind. While he became an American citizen, he ranked as leader among the Greeks of Boston.

Flossie’s engagement was a boy-and-girl affair. When David Hall was fourteen he declared he would marry Flossie Howe. The news of their engagement was broken to me during the family’s absence. I took it hard, as Flossie now represented home, family, all I held dear. In the shock of discovery, I felt a desperate sense that I had lost my last friend, but as I was very fond of David, I soon made up my mind to accept the new order. As long as he lived he was my stanch friend, one of the people I leaned upon, one who never failed me in any difficult moment.

In the winter of 1868 we were living in our Boylston Place house, Number 19, when the family fire occurred on the coldest night of the year. All the household had gone to bed save Mama, who, just as she was about to put out her light, “thought she smelt smoke.” She roused my father; he soon discovered that this time the house really was on fire. Harry now came in from a dance and ran out in his dress suit, without an overcoat, to give the alarm. Laura and I dressed quickly and came down from our room at the top of the house. There came a violent ringing of the doorbell; Laura ran to answer it. I can see her now flying down the stairs, her long dark hair, a dusky veil, hanging about her. She opened the door to find our neighbors, the five Richards brothers, who, having smelt the smoke, came to give the alarm. They were all fine looking men, Frank the paper miller, George the lawyer, John the soldier, Robert the scientist, and Henry the youngest, a Harvard student in our own Harry’s class.

What follows is confused. I see one of the Richards brothers whirling an ax above his head, smiting asunder the dividing wall; see all of them serviceable and energetic in saving our house and their own from destruction. I remember best the boyish face of Henry the youngest. It is impressed upon my memory that the night he and his brothers put out our fire, a flame was kindled in his heart that has kept it warm and tender from that day to this.

Among the pleasures of this time were frequent journeys with my father to the public institutions which, as Chairman of the Massachusetts Board of State Charities, it was his duty to visit. I have slept in almost every poorhouse and insane asylum in the State. Our visits were unannounced. As his days were so busy, we left Boston when work was over, took an afternoon train, arriving at our destination in the early evening. This gave my father the chance to see the institution in its lying down and getting up, a time when shortcomings are more evident than during hours when trustees and visitors may safely be expected. I have the pleasantest recollection of these trips and the institutions visited. Tewkesbury Almshouse was a source of a good deal of worry to my father; we were there often and at the Asylum for the Insane at Taunton. While Papa was inspecting buildings and talking with the inmates, I was left with the matron. I knew every scholar at the School for the Blind, was on familiar terms with all the inmates of the School for Idiots, of which my father was director. He kept me from contact with the inmates of these other institutions, for two reasons, I fancy. First, for their own sakes, he would have shielded them from a child’s frank brutal curiosity; secondly he would avoid my receiving any painful impression from forlorn paupers or tragic lunatics. It was different with the idiots: they were his special charge; that was a family matter. When people who know little of my father ask me to tell them about him, I hesitate and stammer; there is so much to tell, the story of his life and his service to God’s weakest creatures is almost phenomenal! Of all his manifold services to humanity, for me the greatest was his care for the feeble-minded children of New England, a care from which only death released him.

Among certain faded old papers I came lately upon a sheet in my own immature handwriting, kept all these years by Laura; it proved to be the first article I ever wrote for publication. I am quite sure, however, that it never saw the light. The article is an appreciation of a certain English opera company playing in Boston during the season of 1867.

I think it must have been in the year 1871 that I spent a week at the White House during the presidency of General Grant. At this time my father was much in Washington to consult with the President touching the proposed annexation of the Republic of Santo Domingo to the United States. The proposal of annexation had come from the Dominican President, Baez, in the year 1869. Grant favored the plan and appointed a commission to visit the island and report to Congress upon its condition and the feeling of the people about the proposed annexation. The three Commissioners were my father, the Honorable Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, and Andrew D. White, President of Cornell University. My father was the leading spirit of the trio, and it was he who wrote the interesting report of their investigations.

I had accompanied my parents to Washington, and Mrs. Grant kindly invited me to stay at the White House, where I played happily with Nellie Grant, who was about my age. The experience was deeply interesting. Unfortunately I have preserved no notes of this visit and have only my memory to depend upon. What comes back to me was the kindness and simplicity of General Grant, the simple wholesome family life I found at the White House. Nellie was a pretty and charming girl. I have only the pleasantest memories of her. A day at Mt. Vernon was one of the interesting experiences. General Horace Porter was at that time the President’s private secretary; he was very kind in helping to arrange various expeditions which I greatly enjoyed.

My clearest memory of General Grant is of one rainy evening which he passed quietly at home. He sat at a desk smoking a big cigar, and I noticed that he kept continually writing what seemed a short sentence on a series of cards which he placed in a box before him. Mrs. Grant explained to me that whenever he had a spare moment he wrote his name, so that his secretary always had a good supply of autographs to send to people who asked for them. He was very tired that night; his strong, kind, shy face showed lines of deep fatigue; faithful even in little things, he wrote card after card for the relentless autograph fiends.

The honest collector is a useful person, but let all distinguished people, especially in old age, beware of the dishonest one. During my mother’s last years she was systematically “worked” for signed verses of her “Battle Hymn”, which I have since seen offered for sale. When I remember the labor with which she painfully wrote out the verses in the years when her waning strength was so precious, I grow savage against the whole sponging tribe.

Shortly after my father arrived in Washington, Charles Sumner arranged a large dinner party in his honor. A few days before the dinner an invitation came for the same evening to dine at the White House. The letter was brought to my father at Mr. Sumner’s house. I remember my surprise when the great Massachusetts senator said,

“You must go to the White House; I shall have to excuse you. An invitation to dine with the President cannot be declined.”

While my father was working for the Dominicans, my mother was making her appeal to women throughout the world to hold a great International Peace Congress. She wrote an appeal, had it translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Swedish, and sent it far and wide. Some of the correspondence of this time has been preserved. A letter from William Henry Channing has a fresh interest to-day.

London, February 8th, 1871.

Dear Mrs. Howe;

The truth is that this horrible war has made me ill, soul and body, and for the first time in my existence I have lost hope for humanity.

The prospect brightens, doubtless some sort of a treaty will be patched up between Germany and France, and no immediate attack on Belgium will probably compel Great Britain to interfere. The atmosphere of Europe will be temporarily serene. Yet, I hold that the present so-called “Peace” will prove to be a very transient one. You see how very low my hope for Europe is. For the time being, Militarism is rampant. If Germany with all her past illumination, culture, aspiration, can be guilty of such absolutely infernal cruelty as she is perpetrating against fallen France, where can we look on the Continent of Europe for any stable policy of peace? The one encouraging sign of the times,--and gloriously encouraging it is,--is the overflowing charity that is now seeking to alleviate in some degree the indescribable suffering occasioned by this devastating contest. But when, on the other hand, one reads the reply of the Göttingen Professors to the appeal of Dublin University, or the letters of Strauss and Mommsen, or consider what is implied in the treatment of Jacoby,--is not there the strongest ground for apprehending that Continental Europe is to pass under a sway of a mightier military despotism than the world has seen since the days of Macedon and of Rome?

More and more I feel that the hope for Humanity in this age has made its home in our Republic. And it lies with you, women of our Free and United Nation, to open the new era for our Race!

In the year 1871 my three sisters were married and my brother left home; after graduating from Harvard and the Institute of Technology, he went out into the world and began his long service to Science, which from the first called him to her ranks.

[Illustration: DR. HENRY MARION HOWE AND HIS SISTERS

From an old tintype]

He became a student in the steel works at Troy, and here he met his fate. Our cousin, Mary Ward, gave him a letter of introduction to Mr. Willard Gay, a leading banker of Troy. The Gays received him hospitably at their pleasant home over the bank where Mr. Gay was the presiding genius. It soon became evident to him that young Howe and his elder daughter, Fannie, had become interested in each other. Mr. Gay wrote to his kinsman, Doctor Gay of Boston for advice. Doctor Gay answered somewhat in this fashion.

“I don’t know the young man, but I know his father. If Doctor Howe’s son wanted to marry my daughter, I should say ‘yes.’”

Speaking of my brother at this time, Doctor Rossiter Raymond said in a recent address, “His father was Doctor Samuel G. Howe, famous for his service for Greece in her war for independence, from 1824 to 1830, and later for his labors in the instruction of the blind. His mother was Julia Ward Howe, author of the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ and leader in many reforms. It was a good stock on both sides, making him heir to intellectual keenness and refinement, the capacity for both enthusiasm and perseverance, a passion for the pursuit of knowledge, and a gift of clear and felicitous statement.”

In 1874 Harry Howe and Fannie Gay were married and have lived happily together ever since.[2] Our parents held that the only “prudent” marriage is a love match, and were well satisfied with their children’s choice of life partners. At this time the husband of an unattractive daughter of a rich man said to me:

“Take my advice, Maud, marry for love. You may get something out of it. If you marry for money,--you won’t!”

We all married for love, and we all have got as much happiness out of life as our several natures allowed. The third generation followed the same rule. To-day there is not a criminal, a degenerate, or a slacker among my parent’s descendants; not one who is not straight and sound in wind and limb.

In 1871, when I was left the only bird in the nest, I was seventeen. For several years Florence had relieved Mama of housekeeping duties; these cares now devolved upon me. We kept open house for relatives, friends, and distinguished travelers, few of whom came to Boston without breaking our bread. No one can have as keen a sense of my shortcomings as a housekeeper as I have myself; I did the best I could with the means at my disposal, and however conscious of my defects our guests were, I do not think my dear mother was troubled by them.

My father, for whose sake I learned to make bread, to care for the milk, and make the butter for the table, did his best to help me. While I wanted to be a good daughter, to make my parents happy, mine was a pleasure-loving nature. Mama was indulgent, accepted her youngest as she was. A sentence at this time expressed her attitude:

“Maud, you are frivolous; but your salads are divine.”

My poor father was much troubled by my frivolity. His letters are full of warning lest by late hours and close rooms I should lose the first bloom of youth which to loving parents is apparently so much more precious than to young people themselves. Besides arranging for my lessons in cooking, he had me taught bookkeeping. While I was not altogether successful with double entry, I learned enough about keeping accounts to be of great use to me in later life. He writes to me on August 1, 1871:

I enclose some bills for you and Mama to look over and approve, if right. You are not aware of the amount of care and perplexity occasioned by the habit of having things charged instead of settling for them on the spot. The habit is not only a source of perplexity and often of dispute, but it involves trouble to both parties and is in some sense demoralizing, because it tempts one to buy things which would not be bought if one had to pay cash.

I know that you, dear child, are without that practice in the stern training which is so very important for every girl who intends to become the responsible head of a family. You must, my darling, reflect, and shape the course of your practical education to a high and noble end; remembering ever that while you ought to have a reasonable amount of the pleasures which youth and high spirits crave, you are to prepare for the stern duties of this life and for those of the life to come, for even heaven will have its serious work and its stern duties.

Don’t phoo, phoo, my precious darling, because the time is close at hand when your loving Papa can neither praise nor scold you; though he trusts he will be blest with spiritual vision enough to watch over you and to rejoice in your joys and mourn for your sorrows.

A small precious packet of letters in my father’s neat handwriting has somehow survived the endless movings of my wandering life. I choose one to close this rambling chapter, because it shows him so exactly as he was, “A Knight like Bayard, without reproach or fear.”

Hall’s Hall 208 Second Ave., New York.

My dear Maud;

I was much gratified by hearing from Mama that you had declined to attend a pigeon-shooting match upon grounds of humanity.

There are few phases of my life upon which I look back with so much of self-reproach as upon that during which I was a sort of sportman. Several incidents came to my knowledge which finally made me leave it off entirely. After shooting game it happened that I ran up and found the poor wounded bird or rabbit, bleeding, struggling, and looking up with fear and trembling as I approached to extinguish its life and its pain. Three days after a hunting party on an island, a splendid deer was found dying beside a brook, with a bullet through his jaw which had prevented his eating, and he had lingered in starving agony all that time. I could never shoot a deer after that and I finally renounced all sporting, all shooting and fishing for mere recreation. It changes matters somewhat if one pursues sport for mere purposes of health; though it is hardly conceivable that the same end could not be gained without killing animals.

I was no better than other men; but I was led to reflect, and concluded that all and every kind of sporting for mere amusement is selfish, cruel and demoralizing in its tendencies. The sentiment of kindness and good will to others should be cultivated and extended as widely as possible, and not restricted to our own race. These sentiments are violated and stunted by indulging in any pursuit for our own pleasure, which carries terror, pain and death to any animal.

Stick to your resolution, dear Maud. Cultivate in every possible way those sentiments which are to the human character what wild flowers are to the earth. They adorn, beautify, and refine a woman and add a fragrance to life which without them is comparatively blank....

Papa.