Louise Chandler Moulton, Poet and Friend. Lilian Whiting

      Dear Mrs. Moulton: I am greatly disappointed in not meeting the benediction of thy face when I called last month; but I shall seek it again sometime. It just occurs to me that I may yet have the pleasure of seeing thee under my roof at Amesbury. We have so many friends in common that I feel as if I knew thee through them.

      How much I thank thee for thy kind note. It reaches me at a time when its generous appreciation is very welcome and grateful.

      Dear Mrs. Moulton: I accept with pleasure and gratitude your very kind and sympathetic letter,—seeing beneath its delicate and cordial words the sincere heart of a comrade in literature, and the regard of a nature kindred with my own. I wish I could think that your praise is deserved. It has often seemed to me of late that there is no cheer in my newspaper work.... I am aware, however, that the sympathy of a bright mind and a tender heart and the approval of a delicate taste are not won without some sort of merit, and so I venture to find in your most genial and spontaneous letter a ray of encouragement. You will scarcely know how grateful this is to me at this time. I thank you and I shall not forget that you were thoughtful and delicately kind.

      To-day I have received a copy of Stedman's poems, which I want to read again with great care. A man who has missed poetic fame himself may find great satisfaction in the success of his friend, and I do feel exceedingly glad in the recognition that has come to Stedman. Your article on the book in the Tribune was excellent.

      "When you say it depends on me whether I will be looked upon as a real judicial authority by people of culture throughout the land, you fire me with ambition, but my springing flame is quenched by the realization that I am not cultured enough to rely on my judgment as a certainty, a finality, and that while I may feel that my intuitions are keen, they are apt to be warped by my strong emotions. I'll try. A very few persons are really my public, and I think how my letters will strike them, rather than how the world will receive them. I wonder how you will like my review of…? Much of the book is 'splendidly null,'—perfect enough in execution, but without that subtle something that sets the heart-chords quivering, and fills the eyes with tender dew; that subtle minor chord of being, to which we are all kin, by virtue of our own pain...."

      "… I am impatient to see your article on Browning. I am so struck by your calling him the greatest of love poets. I, too, have often thought something like that of him. If 'The Statue and the Bust' means anything, it means that Browning thought the Duke and the Lady were fools to let 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would.' But, au contraire, I think 'Pippa Passes' gives one the impression that he considers illegal love a great sin and the natural temptation to still greater sins. Don't you think so? I wish I could have a talk on social questions with you, for I think your ideas are more fixed, more developed in thought and less chaotic than mine...."

      My dear friend Louise Chandler Moulton: I thank thee from my heart for thy letter. I think some good angel must have prompted it, for it reached me when I needed it; needed to know that my words had not been quite in vain. And to know that they have been comfort or strength to thee is a cause for deep thankfulness. I do not put a very high estimate upon my writings, in a merely literary point of view, but it has been my earnest wish that they might at least help the world a little. I read thy notice of my book in the Tribune, in connection with Dr. Holmes' last volume, and while very grateful for thy praise, I was saddened by a feeling that I did not fully deserve it. In fact, I fear the world has treated me far better than I had any reason to expect; and I have been blessed with dear friends, whose love is about me like an atmosphere.

      I have read the little poem enclosed in thy letter with a feeling of tenderest sympathy. God help us! The loneliness of life, under even the best circumstances, becomes at times appalling to contemplate. We are all fearfully alone; no one human soul can fully know another, and an infinite sigh for sympathy is perpetually going up from the heart of humanity. But doubtless this very longing is the pledge and prophecy and guarantee of an immortal destination. Perfect content is stagnation and ultimate death.

      Why does thee not publish thy poems? Everywhere I meet people who have been deeply moved by them.

      Thy letter dates from Pomfret, and I direct there to thee. I was in that place once so long ago that thee must have been a mere child. I rode over its rocky hills, bare in the chill December, with the late William H. Burleigh. I think it must be charming in summer and autumn. But something in thy poems and in thy letter leads me to infer that thy sojourn there has not been a happy one. Of course I do not speak of unalloyed happiness, for that can only come of entire exemption from sin and weakness. A passage which I have been reading this morning from Thomas à Kempis has so spoken to my heart that I venture to transcribe it:

      "What thou canst not amend in thyself or others, bear with patience until God ordaineth otherwise. When comfort is taken away do not presently despair. Stand with an even mind, resigned to the will of God, whatever may befall; for after winter cometh the summer, after the dark night the day shineth; and after the storm cometh a great calm."