one 1 Maud with her venturous climbings and tumbles and childish escapes, Maud the delight of the village, the ringing joy of the Hall, Maud with her sweet purse-mouth when my father dangled the grapes, Maud the beloved of my mother, the moon-faced darling of all,— Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1855 When Maud Howe was born in November 1854, her father suggested the Greek name of Thyrza for the beautiful baby girl—but according to older sister Florence Howe Hall, the “good Anglo Saxon name of Maud” prevailed instead.1 Laura Elizabeth Richards, who was nine at her sister’s birth, wrote that Maud’s newborn personality did not immediately evoke more than the nickname “Polly”; it wasn’t until Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem Maud appeared in February 1855 that her name was clinched.In her autobiography Three Generations, Maud Howe Elliott fondly reminisces about her early childhood and the stories she had heard about her birth. In fact, Maud was born at a tumultuous time in her parents’ marriage. Samuel Gridley Howe and Julia Ward Howe, wed since 1843 and the parents already of three daughters and one son, had considered divorce more than once.Howe,an enigmatic,moody,and domineering personality, was adamantly opposed to his wife’s equally determined intention to write and publish poetry and to read it in public. Nevertheless,Julia’s collection of poems,Passion Flowers, was published anonymously in Boston by Ticknor and Fields in 1853. Her mentors in this endeavor included family friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 2 Carrying the Torch and yet Julia had kept her husband completely uninformed. The public immediately recognized the author and the startlingly autobiographical subject matter,which often seemed to cast aspersions on traditional roles of marriage and motherhood and to celebrate woman’s independence. Samuel Gridley Howe (called “Chev”by intimates—short for “Chevalier ”) was enraged. In a letter of February 1854 to her sister, Annie Mailliard ,in Bordertown,New Jersey,Julia wrote how distraught he was:“The Book, you know, was a blow to him, and some foolish and impertinent people have hinted to him that the Miller was meant for himself—this has made him almost crazy. . . . He has been in a very dangerous state, I think, very near insanity.”2 It seems that Maud was the cost of reconciliation. Julia had written again to her sister Annie that she was postponing her visit.“[Chev] was in such a state of mind that it would have been unsafe to leave him. I have been able to calm and sooth him, somewhat, and he now promises that I shall leave on the first of March for any length of time agreeable to you.”3 The resulting pregnancy was documented in a letter to her sister Louisa Crawford, begun in July 1954 and completed five days before Maud’s birth on November 9. I see from your letter that you have learned a fact of which I have not written to you,that of my approaching confinement.You ask whether I am glad or sorry.I can scarcely trust myself to speak of it,so bitter and horrible a distress has it been to me. You recommend ether—my dear Wevie, my mental suffering during these nine months nearly past has been so great; that I cannot be afraid of any bodily torture, however great. Neither does the future show me a single gleam of light. I shall not drag this weary weight about with me, it is true, but I cannot feel that my heart will be any lighter.I dread to see the face of my child,for I know I cannot love it.4 Ironically, Maud became her mother’s adored child and cherished companion. For his part, Dr. Howe believed that bearing children and caring for them was the duty of a married woman, and furthermore, that the long months of pregnancy and pain of childbirth were nature’s way of preparing a woman to be a loving mother. Upon Maud’s birth in the “Doctor’s [44.222.104.49] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14:03 GMT) Chapter One 3 Wing” at the Perkins Institution for the Blind, in South Boston, he wrote to his friend, educator Horace Mann, “We have in fact another daughter; that makes five new banyan branches, binding the old trunk down to earth. The delivery was such as to rejoice the hearts of strongminded women and physiologists. Bravely every day up to the...