Down at Caxton's 11

Down at Caxton's 11

on this occasion, by some untoward event, stumbled on a truth when he

informed us, with the air of one who rarely touches earth, that the

book bore signs of promise. The people, by all means a better critic,

were more apt in their judgment of the young singer. A few years

later they asked her to write the memorial poem for the services in

commemoration of General Grant. Thus honored by her native city, in

an easy way she was led to climb the ladder of fame. In 1885 appeared

her first volume of essays, “Goose Quill Papers;” in 1887 a volume

of poems bearing the fanciful name of “White-Sail;” in 1888 a pretty

book for children; in 1892 “Monsieur Henri, a Foot-note to French

History.” It us something to be noted in regard to a “Foot-note to

French history,” that the novelist Stevenson, in his far-off home in

Samoa, was publishing at the same time a work which bore a decided

likeness to her title. Stevenson’s book was published as “A Foot-Note

to History.” In 1893 appeared her latest volume of verse, being a

selection of poems previously published in American magazines. This

selection (the poet has a genuine knack for tacking taking names to

her volumes) is quaintly named “A Wayside Harp,” and dedicated to a

brace of Irish poets, the Sigerson sisters. The graceful dedication

as well as many of its strongest and most artistic poems, were the

outcome of a trip to Great Britain and Ireland. The author travelled

with open eyes, and brought back many a dainty picture of the scenes

she had so lovingly witnessed. This volume fulfils the early promise,

and what is more, gives indubitable signs that the poet possesses a

reserve force. Not a few women poets write themselves out in their

first volume. Not so with Miss Guiney, every additional volume shows

greater strength and more complete mastery of technique. After the

surfeit of twaddle passing current as poetry, such a book as “A Wayside

Harp” should find a waiting audience, Miss Guiney has the essentials of

a poet, which I take to be color, music, perfume and passion. In their

use she is an artist. In her first book an excess of these everywhere

prevailed; it was from this excess, however, that the prudent critic

would have hazarded a doubt as to her fitness to join the company of

the bards. Since then she has been an ardent student. This study has

not only taught her limitations, a thing that saves so much after

pruning, but that other lesson, forgotten by so many bardlets, that

the greatest poetic effects are the result of the masterful mixing of

a few simple colors. It is well that she has learned these lessons at

the outset of her career. Let not the fads and fancies of this _fin de

siècle_ and the senseless worship of those poetasters who scorn sense

while they hug sound lead her from the true road of song. No amount

of meaningless words airily strung together, no amount of gymnastic

rhyming feats can produce a poet. They are the badges of those wondrous

little dunces that pass nature with a frown, alleging in the language

of the witty Bangs that “Nature is not art.” Guiney’s friend and

faithful mentor, O’Reilly, had taught her to abhor all those who spent

their waking hours chiselling cherry stones. To him it was a poet’s

duty to aim high, attune his lyre, not to the petty, but the manly

and hopeful; never to debase the lyre by an utterance of selfishness,

but to consecrate it with the strains of liberty and humanity. If

Guiney follows the teachings of her early friend—teachings which are

substantially sound, she will yet produce poems that the world will

not willingly let die. That Rosetti fad of hiding a mystic meaning

in a poem, now occupying the brains of our teeming songsters, is now

and then to be met with in our poet. It is a trade-trick. Poetry is

sense—common-sense at that, and you cannot rim common-sense things

with mystical hues. Abjuring these trade-tricks, and shaking off the

trammels of her curious and extensive reading and evolving from herself

solely, she has, says Douglas Sladen, a great promise before her. As an

instance of this promise let us quote that fine poem, “The Wild Ride,”

which is full of genuine inspiration, and which may be the means of

introducing to some the most thoroughly gifted Catholic woman writer of

our country.

 

 

THE WILD RIDE.

 

I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,

All day, the commotion of sinewy mane-tossing horses;

All night from their cells the importunate tramping and neighing,

Cowards and laggards fall back but alert to the saddle,

Straight, grim, and abreast, vault our weather-worn galloping legion,

With a stirrup cup each to the one gracious woman that loves him.

The road is thro’ dolour and dread, over crags and morasses!

There are shapes by the way, there are things that appall or entice us!

What odds! We are knights, and our souls are but bent on the riding!

I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,

All day, the commotion of sinewy, mane-tossing horses;

All night from their cells the importunate tramping and neighing,

We spur to a land of no name, outracing the storm wind;

We leap to the infinite dark, like the sparks from the anvil,

Thou leadest! O God! All’s well with thy troopers that follow.

 

It was only natural that the daughter of an Irish patriot should

sing of her father’s land, and that in a style racy of that land.

It was a hazardous experiment, as many an Irish American singer has

learned in sorrow. That Miss Guiney has come out of the trying ordeal

successfully, may be seen in the following little snatch, full of the

aroma of green Erin:

 

 

AN IRISH PEASANT SONG.

 

I try to knead and spin, but my life is low the while;

Oh, I long to be alone, and walk abroad a mile;

Yet when I walk alone, and think of naught at all,

Why from me that’s young should the wild tears fall?

 

The shower-stricken earth, the earth-colored streams,

They breathe on me awake, and moan to me in dreams;

And yonder ivy fondling the broken castle wall,

It pulls my heart, till the wild tears fall.

 

The cabin-door looks down a furze-lighted hill,

And far as Leighlin cross the fields are green and still;

But once I hear a blackbird in Leighlin hedges call,

The foolishness is on me, and the wild tears fall!

 

Miss Guiney possesses a charming personality. Her manner is

“unaffected, girlish and modest.” There is about her none of the

curtness and prudishness of the blue-stocking. Success has not turned

her head, literary homage has not made her forget that they who will

build for time must need work long and patiently, using only the best

material. By so doing may it be written of her work, as she has

written of Brother Bartholomew’s:

 

“Wonderful verses! fair and fine,

Rich in the old Greek loveliness;

The seer-like vision, half divine;

Pathos and merriment in excess,

And every perfect stanza told,

Of love and of labor manifold.”

 

 

 

 

MRS. BLAKE.

 

 

Boston is a charming city. It is the whim of the passing hour to

sneer at the modest dame. Henry James has done so. Is not the author

of “Daisy Miller” and other interminable novels a correct person to

follow? The disciples of the Mutual Admiration Society in American

Letters will vociferously answer “yes.” Old-fashioned people may have

another way. Scattered here and there possibly a few there are who

hold that Hawthorne was a better novelist than Howells is, that Holmes’

poetry is as good as Boyesen’s, and that Emerson’s criticisms are more

illuminative than James’. Be this as it may, Boston is a charming place

to all those who had the good fortune to have been welcomed by its

warm-hearted citizen, Boyle O’Reilly. To those who knew his struggles,

and the earnest striving, until his weary spirit sought its final home,

for Catholic literature in its true sense, the charm but increases.

 

It was owing to his kindness that I found myself one blustery, raw day,

ringing the door-bell of an ordinary well to-do brick house. Houses

now and then carry on their fronts an inkling of their occupants. A

door was opened, my card handed to a feminine hand; the aperture was

not as yet wide enough to catch a glimpse of the face. The card was a

power. “Come in,” said a woman’s voice, and the door was wide open. I

followed the guide, and was soon in a plain, well furnished room, in

presence of a motherly-looking woman. She was knitting; at least that

is part of my memory’s picture. Near her hung a mocking-bird, whose

notes now and then were peculiarly sad. Despite the graceful lines of

the Cavalier Lovelace, iron bars do a prison make for bird and man. And

the songs sung behind these bars are but bits of the crushed-out life.

I was welcomed, and during busy years have held the remembrance of

that visit with its hour of desultory chat and a mocking-bird’s broken

song. The motherly-looking woman, with her strong Celtic face freshly

furrowed by sorrow in the loss of beloved children, was a charming

talker and a good listener, things rarely found in your gentle or fiery

poetess. She had just published, under the initials M. A. B., a volume

of children’s verse, and, as is natural with an author who had finished

a piece of work, was full of it. The pretense of some authors that they

are bored to speak of their own books is a sly suggestion to praise

them for their humility. Mrs. Blake—for that is the motherly-looking

woman’s name—spoke of her work without any hiccoughing gush or false

modesty. Her eyes lit up, and the observer read in them honesty. She

was deeply interested, as all thinking women must be, in the solution

of the social problems that have arisen in our times, and will not be

downed at the biddance of capitalist or demagogue. With her clear-cut

intellect she was able to grasp a salient point, purposely hidden by

the swarm of curists with their panacea remedies, that these problems

must be solved in the light of religion. Man must return to Christ,

not the “cautious, statistical Christ” paraded in the social show, not

 

“The meteor blaze

That soon must fail, and leave the wanderer blind,