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Louise Chandler Moulton (April 10, 1835 - August 10, 1908) was an American poet, story-writer and
critic A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as art, literature, music, cinema, theater, fashion, architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social or governmen ...
. Contributing poems and stories of power and grace to the leading magazines, ''
Harper's Magazine ''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. (''Scientific American'' is older, b ...
'', '' The Atlantic'', '' The Galaxy'', the first '' Scribner's'', she also published a half-dozen very successful books for children, ''Bedtime Stories'', ''Firelight Stories'', ''Stories Told at Twilight'', and others that were considered popular in their day. She collected a few of her many adult tales into volumes, ''Miss Eyre of Boston'' and ''Some Women's Hearts''. It is in Boston that she did the greater part of her work, including her books of travel, ''Random Rambles'' and ''Lazy Tours'', published her four volumes of poetry, and edited and prefaced biographies, ''A Last Harvest'' and ''Garden Secrets'', and the ''Collected Poems'' of Philip Bourke Marston, as well as a selection from Arthur O'Shaughnessy's verses.


Childhood and education

Ellen Louise Chandler was born April 10, 1835, in Pomfret, Connecticut, the only child of Lucius L. Chandler and Louisa R. (Clark) Chandler. Moulton's imagination was fostered during her childhood. Her parents clung to the strictest Calvinistic principles. Games, dances, romances, were forbidden; and, as playmates were few, the child lived in a world of fancy. "I was lonely," she said, "and I sought companions. What was there to do but to create them?" Indeed, before she was eight years old, her active mind was creating a world of its own in a little unwritten play, which it pleased her fancy to call a Spanish drama, and with which she spent all summer, filling it with personages. The rigid Calvinism of the family had undoubtedly a very stimulating effect on the emotions of the sensitive child, and to its far-reaching influence may be ascribed the tinge of melancholy found in many of her pages. As a child, Moulton also exhibited a great vitality, especially when she was not burdened with the terrors of "damnation". Running in the face of a great wind was one of her joys, and she realized the reverse of such emotion in listening to the sound of the wind through an outer keyhole, which seemed to her the calling of trumpets, the crying of lost souls. She was sent to school at an early age, eventually becoming the pupil of the Rev. Roswell Park, at that time rector of the Episcopal church in Pomfret, and also the head of a school called Christ Church Hall. It was a school for boys as well as girls; and one of her schoolmates here, for a season, was James Abbott McNeill Whistler. She kept the pictures that he drew for her in those days. At the age of 15, Moulton began to publish the work which she had written for the past eight years. It would be difficult to say what it was that inclined her to a literary life as she had no literary friends. She felt her movements had to be secret as if she were committing a crime when she sent off her first verses to a daily paper published in
Norwich, Connecticut Norwich ( ) (also called "The Rose of New England") is a city in New London County, Connecticut, United States. The Yantic, Shetucket, and Quinebaug Rivers flow into the city and form its harbor, from which the Thames River flows south to Long ...
. It was on her way from school one day that she happened to take the paper from the office; and, when she opened it, there were the lines she had written. Three years later, Messrs. Phillips, Sampson and Company, of Boston, published for her "This, That, and the Other," a collection of stories and poems which had appeared in various magazines and newspapers. Directly after the publication of this first book, Moulton went for a final school-year to Emma Willard's
Troy Female Seminary The Emma Willard School, originally called Troy Female Seminary and often referred to simply as Emma, is an independent university-preparatory day and boarding school for young women, located in Troy, New York, on Mount Ida, offering grades 9– ...
in August 1854, finishing in 1855.


Career


Early years

Six weeks after leaving the Troy Female Seminary, on August 27, 1855, she married a Boston publisher, William Upham Moulton (d. 1898), under whose auspices her earliest literary work had appeared in '' The True Flag''. In 1855, she published, ''Juno Clifford'', a story issued anonymously ("By A Lady"; 1855), and by ''My Third Book'' followed in 1859.


Post American Civil War

Her literary output was interrupted until 1873 when she resumed activity with ''Bed-time Stories'', the first of a series of volumes, including ''Firelight Stories'' (1883) and ''Stories told at Twilight'' (1890). Meanwhile, she had taken an important place in American literary society, writing regular critiques for the ''
New York Tribune The ''New-York Tribune'' was an American newspaper founded in 1841 by editor Horace Greeley. It bore the moniker ''New-York Daily Tribune'' from 1842 to 1866 before returning to its original name. From the 1840s through the 1860s it was the domi ...
'' from 1870 to 1876. Serving as the paper's Boston literary correspondent, she wrote a series of interesting letters concerning the literary life of Boston, giving advance reviews of new books and telling of the affairs of the Radical Club. In all the six years during which these letters appeared, she never made in them any unkind statement, or wrote a sentence that could cause pain. Through all her critical work, she has exercised a tender regard for the feelings of others, as well as great generosity of praise, preferring rather to be silent than to utter an unkindness. Her first voyage to Europe was made in January 1876. Pausing in London long enough to see Queen Victoria open Parliament in person for the first time after the Prince Consort's death, she hastened through Paris on her way to Rome to view old palaces, gardens, and galleries, touched to tears by
Pope Pius IX Pope Pius IX ( it, Pio IX, ''Pio Nono''; born Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti; 13 May 1792 – 7 February 1878) was head of the Catholic Church from 1846 to 1878, the longest verified papal reign. He was notable for convoking the First Vatican ...
's benediction, enjoying the hospitality of the studios of Elihu Vedder, John Rollin Tilton, and others, and of the gracious and charming social life of Rome. Her descriptions of all this, overflowing with the sensitiveness to beauty which was a part of her nature, made her ''Random Rambles'' interesting reading. After Rome, she visited Florence, and then
Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400  ...
, and then again Paris, and again London and the London season. Entertained by
Lord Houghton Lord Houghton or Baron Houghton may refer to: * Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton (1809–1885), or his descendants, the Barons Houghton *Douglas Houghton, Baron Houghton of Sowerby Arthur Leslie Noel Douglas Houghton, Baron Houghton ...
, she met
Robert Browning Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings ...
and
Algernon Charles Swinburne Algernon Charles Swinburne (5 April 1837 – 10 April 1909) was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He wrote several novels and collections of poetry such as ''Poems and Ballads'', and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition ...
, George Eliot, Alexander William Kinglake,
Theodore Watts-Dunton Theodore Watts-Dunton (12 October 1832 – 6 June 1914), from St Ives, Huntingdonshire, was an English poetry critic with major periodicals, and himself a poet. He is remembered particularly as the friend and minder of Algernon Charles Swinbu ...
, and others, seeing especially a great deal of Browning who said, "Her voice, wherein all sweetnesses abide," having as much to do with all this as her literary excellence. In the winter of 1876, the Macmillans brought out her first volume of ''Poems'' (renamed ''Swallow flights'' in the English edition of 1877), which was highly praised by the critics. '' The Examiner'' spoke of the power and originality of the verses, of the music and the intensity as surpassing any verse of George Eliot's, declaring that the sonnet entitled "One Dread" might have been written by Sir Philip Sidney. '' The Athenaeum'' also dwelt on the vivid and subtle imagination and delicate loveliness of these verses and their perfection of technique. '' The Academy'' spoke warmly of their felicity of epithet, their healthiness, their suggestiveness, their imaginative force pervaded by the depth and sweetness of perfect womanhood. ''The Tattler'' pronounced her a mistress of form and of artistic perfection, saying also that England had no poet in such full sympathy with woods and winds and waves, finding in her the one truly natural singer in an age of aesthetic imitation. "She gives the effect of the sudden note of the thrush," it said. "She is as spontaneous as Walther von der Vogelweide. ''The Times'', '' The Morning Post'', the ''Literary World'', all welcomed the book with equally warm praise, and '' The Pall Mall Gazette'' spoke of her lyrical feeling as like that which gave a unique charm to
Heinrich Heine Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (; born Harry Heine; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was a German poet, writer and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of '' Lied ...
's songs. She had met very few of these critics, and their cordial recognition was as surprising to her as it was delightful. Among the innumerable letters which she received, filled with admiring warmth, were some from Matthew Arnold, Henry Austin Dobson, Frederick Locker, and
William Bell Scott William Bell Scott (1811–1890) was a Scottish artist in oils and watercolour and occasionally printmaking. He was also a poet and art teacher, and his posthumously published reminiscences give a chatty and often vivid picture of life in the ...
. Her songs were set to music by Francesco Berger and Lady Charlesmont, and later on by
Margaret Ruthven Lang Margaret Ruthven Lang (November 27, 1867 – May 29, 1972) was an American composer, affiliated with the Second New England School. Lang was also one of the first two women composers (along with Amy Beach) to have compositions performed by Amer ...
, Arthur Foote,
Ethelbert Nevin Ethelbert Woodbridge Nevin (November 25, 1862February 17, 1901) was an American pianist and composer. Early life Nevin was born on November 25, 1862, at Vineacre, on the banks of the Ohio River, in Edgeworth, Pennsylvania.Mulkearn, Lois, p. 62 ...
, and many others. Marston wrote her, "Much as we all love and admire your work, it seems to me we have not yet fully realized the unostentatious loveliness of your lyrics, as fine for lyrics as your best sonnets are for sonnets. 'How Long' struck me more than ever. The first verse is eminently characteristic of you, exhibiting in a very marked degree what runs through nearly all of your poems, the most exquisite and subtle blending of strong emotion with the sense of external nature. It seems to me this perfect poem is possessed by the melancholy yet tender music of winds sighing at twilight, in some churchyard, through old trees that watch beside silent graves. Then nothing can be more subtly beautiful than the closing lines of the sonnet, 'In Time to Come':— "'Which was it spoke to you, the wind or I? I think you, musing, scarcely will have heard.'" Marston wrote her again concerning "The House of Death" that it was one of the most beautiful, the most powerful poems he knew. "No poem gives me such an idea of the heartlessness of Nature. The poem is Death within and Summer without—light girdling darkness—and it leaves a picture and impression on the mind never to be effaced." The poem of "The House of Death" is unequalled in its tragic beauty and sweetness. It was apropos of this volume that in one of his letters to her Robert Browning said he had closed the book with music in his ears and flowers before his eyes, and not without thoughts across his brain. And it was concerning a later poem, "Laus Veneris," inspired by a painting of his own, that Edward Burne-Jones said it made him work all the more confidently and was a real refreshment. One of Moulton's most appreciative, scholastic, and discriminating critics was Professor John Meiklejohn. He has said with authority that she deserved to be classed with the best Elizabethan lyricists in her lyrics,—with Robert Herrick and Thomas Campion and Shakespeare,—while in her
sonnet A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, ...
s she might rightly take a place with
John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem '' Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and political ...
and William Wordsworth and Christina Rossetti. "I cannot tell you how keen and great enjoyment (sometimes even rapture)," he wrote her, "I have got out of your exquisite lyrics." In a series of "Notes," following the poems, line by line, he asserted that the poet won her success by the simplest means and plainest words, as true genius always does, and that her pages were full of emotional and imaginative meaning, Nature and Poetry uniting in an indissoluble whole; and Shelley himself, he said, would have been proud to own certain of the lines. The poem "Quest" he found so beautiful that, in his own words, it was "difficult to speak of it in perfectly measured and unexaggerated language." Of the poem "Wife to Husband" he said that "the tenderness, the sweet and compelling rhythm, are worthy of the best Elizabethan days." The sonnet, "A Summer's Growth," "unites," he says, the "passion of such Italian poets as Dante with the imagination of modern English." This was in relation to her first volume, "Swallow Flights"; and in conclusion he said: "This poet must look for her brothers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries among the noble and intense lyrists. Her insight, her subtlety, her delicacy, her music, are hardly matched, and certainly not surpassed by Herrick or Campion or Crashaw or Carew or
Herbert Herbert may refer to: People Individuals * Herbert (musician), a pseudonym of Matthew Herbert Name * Herbert (given name) * Herbert (surname) Places Antarctica * Herbert Mountains, Coats Land * Herbert Sound, Graham Land Australia * Herbert, ...
or Vaughan."


Later years

She wrote a weekly literary letter for the Sunday issue of the ''
Boston Herald The ''Boston Herald'' is an American daily newspaper whose primary market is Boston, Massachusetts, and its surrounding area. It was founded in 1846 and is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States. It has been awarded eight Pulit ...
'' from 1886 to 1892. Thenceforward, she spent the summers in London and the rest of the year in Boston, where her
salon Salon may refer to: Common meanings * Beauty salon, a venue for cosmetic treatments * French term for a drawing room, an architectural space in a home * Salon (gathering), a meeting for learning or enjoyment Arts and entertainment * Salon (P ...
was one of the principal resorts of literary talent. In 1889, another volume of verse, ''In the Garden of Dreams'', confirmed her reputation as a poet. Of the poems in this volume, "In the Garden of Dreams," Meiklejohn affirmed that the perfect little gem, "Roses," was worthy of Goethe, and that "As I Sail" had the firmness and imaginativeness of Heine, the perfect simplicity containing magic. "Wordsworth never wrote a stronger line," he said of one in "Voices on the Wind." In "At the Wind's Will" again the same critic recognized the strong style of the 16th century, noble and daring rhythms, the "quintessence of passion," successes gained by the "courage of simplicity," rare specimens of compression as well as of sweetness. "The Gentle Ghost of Joy" he thought "a wonderful voluntary in the best style of Chopin." In a line of one of the sonnets, "Yet done with striving and foreclosed of care," he finds something as good as anything of Drayton's. He pronounced the two sonnets called "Great Love" worthy of a "place among Dante's and Petrarch's sonnets," and of the sonnet, "Were but my Spirit loosed upon the Air," he wrote, "It is one of the greatest and finest sonnets in the English language." She also wrote several volumes of prose fiction, including ''Miss Eyre from Boston and Other Stories'', and some descriptions of travel, including ''Lazy Tours in Spain'' (1896). She was well known for the extent of her literary influence, the result of a sympathetic personality combined with fine critical taste.


Personal life

Her home in Boston, after her marriage, was soon a centre of attraction; and, surrounded by friends, she exercised there a gracious hospitality, and met the men and women who made the Boston of that epoch famous. Here was born her daughter, Florence, who later married William Schaefer, of South Carolina. Here her husband died, and here she remained through the days of her widowhood till the house became historic. With the exception of the two years immediately following Mr. Moulton's death, when she remained at home and in seclusion, Moulton went abroad every summer. Every winter, she was back in Boston, where her house was a centre of literary life. She was the friend of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and
John Greenleaf Whittier John Greenleaf Whittier (December 17, 1807 – September 7, 1892) was an American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. Frequently listed as one of the fireside poets, he was influenced by the Scottish poet ...
and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. in their lifetime, the acquaintance of George Henry Boker, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and James Russell Lowell, and John Boyle O'Reilly, and of Sarah Helen Whitman (the fiancée of Edgar Allan Poe), of
Rose Terry Cooke Rose Terry Cooke (February 17, 1827 – July 18, 1892) was an American author and poet. Some of her earliest contributions were published in ''Putnam's Magazine''; and the ''Atlantic Monthly'', in which she wrote the leading story in the first n ...
and Nora Perry, of Stedman and Stoddard, Julia Ward Howe, Arlo Bates, Edward Everett Hale, William Dean Howells, William Winter, Anne Whitney, Alice Brown,
Alicia Van Buren Alicia Keisker Van Buren (5 March 1860 – 11 April 1922) was an American composer, singer, painter, and poet. Van Buren was born in Louisville, Kentucky, Louisville, Kentucky, where she attended public and unspecified private schools. She married ...
, and
Louise Guiney Louise Imogen Guiney (January 7, 1861 – November 2, 1920) was an American poet, essayist and editor, born in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Biography The daughter of Gen. Patrick R. Guiney, an Irish-born American Civil War officer and lawyer,' ...
. She was on pleasant terms with Sir Walter Besant, William Sharp, Dr. Horder, Mathilde Blind, Holman Hunt, Lucy Clifford, Rosa Campbell Praed,
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, John Davidson, Kenneth Grahame,
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, Anthony Hope, Robert Smythe Hichens, William Watson, George Meredith,
Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Word ...
, and
Alice Meynell Alice Christiana Gertrude Meynell (née Thompson; 11 October 184727 November 1922) was a British writer, editor, critic, and suffragist, now remembered mainly as a poet. Early years and family Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson was born in ...
, as well as Christina Rossetti, William Morris, Jean Ingelow, and
William Black William is a masculine given name of Norman French origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conques ...
. After a lengthy illness, she died in Boston on August 10, 1908.Chisholm, 1911 Lilian Whiting's biography (''Louise Chandler Moulton, Poet and Friend''. Illustrated. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1910) was direct and clear in its method, chronological and narrative rather than critical, compiled largely from the letters of Moulton and from the journal that was kept faithfully from age eight to the last days of failing health. With due acknowledgment of Moulton's gifts of personal charm and poetic sentiment and refinement, few discriminating readers ascribed to her verses that quality of genius. So it was considered unfortunate that Whiting began her biography with this word, as one of the implied characteristics of her subject. In her general treatment of Moulton's poetry, however, Whiting showed justice and reserve as well as sympathetic appreciation.


References


Attribution

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Bibliography

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External links


UNCG American Publishers' Trade Bindings: Louise Chandler Moulton
* *
Poems by Louise Chandler Moulton
{{DEFAULTSORT:Moulton, Louise Chandler 1835 births 1908 deaths American women short story writers American literary critics Women literary critics American women poets 19th-century American poets 19th-century American women writers People from South End, Boston 19th-century American short story writers Writers from Boston Poets from Massachusetts People from Pomfret, Connecticut Poets from Connecticut American women non-fiction writers Emma Willard School alumni American women critics American salon-holders