Fraternity-Testvériség, 1961 (39. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1961-12-01 / 12. szám
FRATERNITY 9 Other acquaintances remembered Julia Ward Howe as a poet, whose first published book, “Passion Flowers”, had set Boston on its collective ear. This was followed by a short-lived play produced in New York City, which had tongues wagging all the faster. It was about a “fallen woman”! When, at the age of 42, he married the 24-year-old Julia Ward, Dr. Howe was as handsome as a hero of a 19th century novel and devoted to the teaching of blind children. His pupil, Laura Bridgman, was the first blind and deaf child to learn to communicate with the world around her. When news of the fall of Sumter reached Boston, it was like him to write Gov. Andrew: “If I can be of any use . . . (save that of spy), command me.” The doctor was now 60 years old and got no war horse to ride, but he was appointed to the United States Sanitary Commission, forerunner of the American Red Cross. His first assignment was in Washington. One of the high points of the Howes’ stay was an interview with the President. Mrs. Howe recorded a vivid impression of Lincoln seated on a sofa, directly below Stuart’s portrait of George Washington. While the men talked of war and politics, she occupied herself in contrasting Washington’s calm features on the canvas with Lincoln’s furrowed cheek and brow. On November 18, 1861, a picnic was planned across the Potomac River in territory occupied until recently by the Confederates. Carriage after carriage filled with gentlemen in high silk hats and ladies in crinolines drove out of town over the bridge and along the narrow road. To everyone’s dismay, the review was interrupted by the appearance of Southern skirmishers. Mrs. Howe’s coachman wheeled the carriage around and headed for Washington at a gallop — a pace which soon became a crawl as all the other drivers attempted the same thing and troops marched back along the same road. Mrs. Howe remembered that “to beguile the rather tedious drive, we sang from time to time, snatches of the army songs so popular at that time.” One of them was the song she had heard the 12th Massachusetts sing when the Civil War first began: “John Brown’s body lies amoldering in the grave, his soul is marching on.” Julia Ward Howe had a beautiful mezzo-soprano voice. In girlhood she had had musical training equal to that of an opera star, and as she joined in the singing, the soldiers called out: “Good for you, Ma’am.” “Why don’t you write some good words for that stirring tune?” someone asked. That night Julia Ward Howe went to bed at the Willard Hotel and “as usual slept soundly”. Troops marched in the streets below but she was not conscious of hearing them. “I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight”, she recalled, “and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the poem began to twine themselves” in her mind. “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord . . .” — line by line, like the measured cadence of marching feet she had heard so often, the words began to come to her. Intermingled with some
