Maud Howe Elliott

“ She always read her letters and the newspapers (history in the making) immediately after breakfast. Then came the morning walk, a bout of calisthenics, or a game of ball; after this she settled to the real serious business of the day; ten o’clock saw her at her desk. She began the morning with study, took up the hardest reading she had on hand. In her youth she read Goethe; in her middle life, when she was deep in the study of German philosophy, Kant, Fichte or Hegel. ”

“ Occasionally she got a poem all whole, in one piece, like The Battle Hymn. This was rare though; as a rule she toiled and moiled over her manuscripts. In the afternoon she was at her desk again, unless there was some outside{60} engagement—answering letters, reading books in a lighter vein, Italian poetry, a Spanish play, a book of travels or, best of all, a good French novel.
Each day opened with the stern drill of the Greek or German philosophy, by which her mind was exercised and at the same time stored with the thoughts of the wise, the labors of the good, the prayers of the devout. ”

“ After the morning plunge into Greek or German philosophy “to tone up her mind,” she took up whatever literary task she was at work upon, “put the iron on the anvil,” as her phrase was, “and hammered” at it till luncheon. She was a most careful and conscientious writer, writing, rewriting, and “polishing” her work with inexhaustible patience. ”

“ Her power of keeping abreast of the times is felt in the Fulton poem, where she rounds out her eulogy of Fulton’s invention of the steamboat with a tribute to Peary. Only a few days before the news of our latest arctic triumph had flashed round the world, her world, whose business was her business as long as she lived in it; so into the fabric of the poem in honor of Fulton, she weaves an allusion to this new victory.
On her ninety-first birthday a reporter from a Boston paper asked her for a motto for the women of America. ”

“ Certain things, she held, we must sacrifice, selfish personal ends, comfort, pleasure, ease, but if we are to fight the good fight we must not make the fancied sacrifice of letting our arms rust while we lay them down to fight another’s battle—nine times out of ten an easier thing to do than to fight our own. ”

“ Though keenly aware of the manner in which Margaret had{42} laid herself open to ridicule by this high-sounding phrase, without herself formulating it (her sense of humor could never have allowed that) , she practically did “accept the universe,” was always conscious of a sort of universal citizenship that made the affairs of every oppressed people her affairs. No hand, however dirty, was ever stretched out to her that she did not take it in her own and in taking it recognize the God in the man. ”

“ The general culture of the “little old New York” of that time was far broader than that of Boston; the narrow swaddling bands of Puritan provincialism never bound her free and vaulting spirit. From world citizenship to universal citizenship, to other world citizenship is a far cry. There are men and women with a truly cosmopolitan spirit who never attain that wider universal citizenship. ”

“ The poem on Abraham Lincoln written for the Lincoln Centenary and read by her at the meeting in Symphony Hall, Boston, February{12} 12th, 1909, is perhaps the best of the innumerable memorial poems she composed. As one by one the centenaries of this and that member of the band of great men and women who made our country illustrious in the 19th Century were celebrated, it came to be considered as a matter of course that she, almost the last survivor of that noble company, should write a poem for the occasion. ”

“ Her training, from her very start in life, made her a cosmopolitan; one of the factors of this world citizenship was her very early study of foreign languages. French, Italian and Latin she knew almost from the time she could speak, so that she gathered into her spirit the essence of the race genius of the Latins. Later came the Teutonic baptism, for she only learned German at fourteen, when her adored{40} brother, Sam Ward, came home from Heidelberg, brimming over with the songs, the poetry, the philosophy of Germany. ”

“ For years Kant was the most intimate companion of her thought. In the early sixties, when she was in the forties, her diary was filled with Kan{55}t’s philosophy. Sometimes she differs with his conclusions, sometimes amplifies them, oftenest endorses them.
“One chosen lover, one chosen philosopher!” was her motto. While she owed much to Spinoza and records in her journal that Kant does not do him justice, her philosopher par excellence was Immanuel Kant. On her seventieth birthday the Saturday Morning Club of Boston gave her a beautiful jewel with seven moonstones and one topaz. ”

“ Live your poem, and its music will turn{70} the lives of those with whom you live from prose to poetry, change life’s water into wine.
She very rarely talked with her children on religious matters. Both she and my father had a dread of giving us the very narrow religious training they themselves had received. Conscious of the mistakes of such a bringing up, she shunned them and, though we all knew how devout a person she was, it was chiefly through her writings and her poems that we received a sense of the religious side of her nature. ”

“ From first to last she kept her mind in the same state of high training that the athlete keeps his body, strove for that perfect balance of power in all the different functions of the brain that an all-round athlete aims for in his physique. I never remember a time when she relaxed the mental gymnastics that kept her mind strong, supple, active.
Once, at a crucial moment, when beset by perplexities, I asked for advice, her answer, stamped on my memory as long as it shall hold together, was given in three Latin words:{53}
“Posce fortem animum.” Ask for a strong mind! ”

“ In her youth there were still cultivated French people living in New York, who had taken refuge there during the reign of terror. She remembered one of these gentlemen in exile who gave her French lessons, another who came to the house when there was a dinner party to mix the salad, a third who came to dress her hair for a ball. Then there were a group of Italian political exiles who were made welcome at her father’s house, and the Greek boy (a fugitive{41} from the unspeakable Turk) , Christy Evangelides, adopted by him, who till the day of his death spoke of her as his sister Julia. ”

“ Her keen wit, her power of hitting the nail on the head, were never used to better purpose. The hearing had been long and tedious. There had been many speeches, the farmers who produce the milk, the dealers who sell it, worthy citizens who were trying to improve the quality of the milk supply, experts whose testimony showed the far from ideal conditions under which the milk of the great city is brought to its consumers. ”

“ Her{43} reserve of soul was impenetrable; only her poems, and occasionally a page in her diary, give us any insight into her spiritual nature—glimpses of a certain high companionship with the stars and the planets.
We hear much of the dual nature of man. The term misleads. Man, or at least woman has a triple nature, is made up of flesh, mind and spirit. How did she use these three different natures—the physical, the intellectual, the spiritual?
In her youth the views of health were very different from what they are now. ”

“ Two lines of hers have always seemed to me to express above all others her life’s philosophy:
In the house of labor best
Can I build the house of rest!
Of all her labors, heavy and varied as those of Hercules, her poetry was what she loved best. But she lived in an age when there are few who can take their spiritual meat in verse. The age of steel is an age of prose, and so she labored in season and out to give her message in prose as well as in poetry, with the spoken word as{17} well as the written. ”

“ For we are not discussing points of taste and pleasure, but matters of life and death. There are various parties concerned in the desired settlement, but to my mind the party most nearly concerned is the infant who comes into this world relying upon a promise which we are bound to fulfil, the promise that he shall at least enjoy the conditions of life. I learn from men of science that no possible{26} substitute exists for good milk in the rearing of infants. ”

“ She never knew the pathos of doing old-age work, such as is provided in every class for those inveterate workers to whom labor is as necessary as bread or breath. The old ploughman sits by the wayside breaking stones to mend the road others shall travel{4} over; the old prima donna listens to her pupils’ triumphs; the old statesman gives after-dinner speeches, or makes himself a nuisance by speaking or writing, ex cathedra, on any question that needs airing, whether it is his subject or not ”

“ It seems to me that the theme of this hearing is one which should commend itself to all good citizens. I think that even our patient American public is tired of the delay, for although we are in many ways a happy people, I do think that our public is a long suffering one. ”

“ More hearty healthy people are killed every year by the sentence: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten,” than by any four diseases you like to name. Even her radiant health, her buoyant temperament felt its depressing influence ”

“ Though she knew the value of money, and practised the most touching little economies so that she might have more to give away, she cared very little about money and was always too busy with more important matters to think much of it. ”

“ If you want a strong mind or a strong body there is only one way to get it, by faithful exercise. There is no royal road, no easy short cut to either goal.{54} The wise friend, the good physician can point out the way, you yourself must tread it! ”

“ Arthur Dehon Hill, the Counsel for the Association, led her from the room he said:
“Mrs. Howe, you have scored our first point.”
The friend, who had called in her help, was one of the strongest{30} “Anti-Suffragists.” This was a very characteristic happening. Whenever any great question of public interest, not connected with Woman Suffrage, came up, the “antis” were continually coming to ask her help. If the cause was a good one she always gave it. She was no respecter of persons ”

“ Clarke’s fiftieth birthday and with those celebrating his seventieth birthday, this latest poem is to me the best. The opening lines bite right into the heart of the matter; as she read them standing in the pulpit a thrill passed through the congregation{11} of her fellow disciples gathered together in memory of their founder.
Richer gift can no man give
Than he doth from God receive. ”

“ Just as some persons’ first{69} action is to open the window and fill the lungs with fresh air, or to drink a glass of cold water, hers was to open wide the door of her soul and let the breath of the Spirit blow through it. ”

“ The capacity for work like everything else grows by cultivation. She started life with a rarely active mind and{38} temperament. So do many people. It was the habit of study, of concentration, of work, carefully cultivated from the first, held on to in spite of difficulties—she had plenty of them—that wrought what seemed to some of her contemporaries a miracle. She could say like Adam in Shakespeare’s play “As You Like It:”
“My age is as a lusty winter ”

“ In all your business and necessities.”
“Let me go with you!” This is what Age is forever saying to Youth. “Do not leave me behind—I can still serve!” So long as Age makes good the claim, heydey, headlong, good-natured Youth lets the veteran march in its glorious ranks. Youth{39} does not crowd him out, as the veteran too often thinks, he drops out because he “cannot keep the pace!” The reason she did not drop out was because she made good her claim. The children and grandchildren of those with whom she first enlisted, were content to have her march with them, still in the van. ”

“ In spite of a too sedentary youth, she started life with an uncommonly good body. After her marriage to my father she received many new and valuable ideas on matters hygienic, and while never a great pedestrian she always walked twice a day till the very end of her life. ”

“ In December, 1909, the last December she was to see, she wrote a poem called “The Capitol,” for the first meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Letters at Washington. The poem, published in the Century Magazine for March, 1910, is as good as any she ever wrote, with one exception—the Battle Hymn; and that, as she has told us, “wrote itself.” She had arranged to go to Washington to read her poem before the Association. ”

“ She had done so much “free gratis” work all her life that it seemed fitting this poem should at least earn her, her travelling expenses.
“Let this be a lesson,” she said, “never print a poem or a speech till it has been delivered; always give the eleventh hour its chance!”
It may be interesting here to recall that the Atlantic Monthly paid her five dollars for the Battle Hymn of{7} the Republic, the only money she ever received for it. ”

“ We have heard a great deal about the farmers’ and the dealers’ side of this case. We want the matter settled on the ground of justice and mercy; it ought not to take long to settle what is just to all parties: justice to all! Let us stand on that. There is one deeply interested party however, of whom we have heard nothing. ”