Carrying the Torch: Maud Howe Elliott and the American Renaissance

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42 f our I am glad to find that I can do something with literature. With journalism I have more natural sympathy. I like the excitement and stimulus of knowing that the printer’s devil is waiting for me. I have corresponded all summer with the New York Tribune, and have had opportunities of other journalistic engagements. But journalism is wearing to the nerves. I have already suffered for the efforts I have made in it, and though I feel the power in me to rise in that profession, I shall make first a strong push for a footing in literature, as a freer and more agreeable profession. Maud Howe letter to Sam Ward Soon after their arrival back in New England, in July of 1879 Maud and Julia went to Oak Glen, in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where they usually remained well into November. Oak Glen was now a matriarchal house, and Julia referred to herself as “Mistress of the Valley.” Although she still found her “precious time” to work, she also fed, housed, and entertained her growing family. The grandchildren, at present,numbered seven.1 Flossy,who lived in Scotch Plains,New Jersey, regularly brought her brood to Oak Glen for the entire summer; the Richards family came from Maine for shorter visits. Louisa Terry and her daughter, Daisy, on their way to visit third sister Annie Mailliard in California,spent part of the summer at Oak Glen.Samuel Gridley Howe had never appreciated music or dance, but now the house resounded with the sounds of Julia on her Chickering grand piano, brother Harry’s smooth tenor, and Maud’s guitar rhythms.Then they rolled up the rugs Chapter Four 43 and everyone danced.The focal part of summer evenings was the “open air parlor in the shape of a semi circle, set about with a close tall green hedge and shaded by the ancient spreading boughs of an ancient mulberry tree,” referred to as the Green Room. After Maud returned from the Grand Tour, apparently without matrimonial prospects, the extended family seemed to feel that she was destined for spinsterhood, and if that were to be the case, what would she do? Following up on her time with Costa in Rome and some further study in Paris, and likely inspired by the many sketching expeditions in which she had recently participated on the continent, Maud seriously considered becoming an artist. Prior to her leaving for Europe she had been avidly painting on china and tiles,a popular hobby for genteel young ladies at the time. From Laura in Gardiner, Maine, in 1877: And with us at this time is Maud, our Maud the Duchess, who paintith upon china with brushes and with scarlet and blue and purple; in so much that I, being even such as I am, and . . . which being interpreted means the Empress, are moved to do likewise, wherefore there is weeping and lamentations in the household even among the maidens thereof, Bridget weeping for her cups and saucers and would not be comforted because they were all dashed over.2 In 1879 Maud enrolled at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she spent the fall semester mostly studying anatomy under Frederick Crowninshield.3 Art careers for young women of means were acceptable, even encouraged as a profession for those who did not become wives and mothers. Gilded Age women flocked to art schools and by the turn of the century represented one third of those aspiring to professional art careers. But it did not take long for Maud to realize her shortcomings as an artist.“I had learned that it is not enough to feel the love of beauty,the yearning for artistic expression; an artist must have art in his fingers as well as in his soul.” She left a legacy of a few “passable flower paintings.”4 Intermittently, Maud entertained the idea of going on the stage, having been encouraged by the great Italian actors Tomasso Salvini and Adelaide Ristori. Uncle Sam Ward wrote to Julia, “What do you think of her studying Ophelia and Desdemona as Salvini suggests? She is a 44 Carrying the Torch splendid creature,and I doubt her being happy in single cussedness.She has a lively memory and knows how to use her splendid eyes.”5 During the 1880s Maud often was called upon to participate in tableaux vivants, or living pictures...