"To woodman's hut one evening there came
A physician and a dancing-master:
The wind did blow, io, io,
And the rain poured faster and faster."
Edgar Allan Poe said of Dr. Francis that his conversation was "a sort of Roman punch, made up of tragedy, comedy, and the broadest of all possible farce."
In those days "The Raven," newly published, was the talk of the town. Dr. Francis, meeting Poe, invited him to come to his house on a certain evening, and straightway forgot the matter. Poe came at the appointed time. The Doctor, summoned to the bedside of a patient, left the drawing-room hastily, and in the anteroom ran into a tall, cadaverous figure in black. Seizing him in his arms, he carried him into the drawing-room and set him down before his wife. "Eliza, my dear—the Raven!" and he departed, leaving guest and hostess (the latter had never heard of "The Raven"!) equally petrified.
Mrs. Francis adored her husband, yet he must sometimes have tried her patience sorely. One evening they had a dinner party, eighteen covers, a state occasion. Midway in the repast the Doctor rose, and begging the guests to excuse him and his wife for a moment, led her, speechless with amazement, into the next room. Here he proceeded to bleed her, removing twelve ounces of blood; replying to her piteous protestations, "Madam, I saw that you were on the point of apoplexy, and I judge it best to avert it."
In strong contrast with "Uncle Doctor" was "Uncle Ben," the Reverend Benjamin Clarke Cutler, for many years rector of St. Anne's Church, Brooklyn. This uncle was much less to Julia's taste: indeed, she was known to stamp her childish foot, and cry, "I don't care for old Ben Cutler!" Nevertheless he was a saintly and interesting person.
He was twelve years old at the time of his father's tragic death, and was deeply influenced by it. His youth was made unhappy by spiritual anguish, duty to his widowed mother and the call to the ministry fighting within him. The latter conquered. In his twenty-first year he drew up, signed, and sealed "An Instrument of Solemn Surrender of Myself, Soul and Body, to God!" This document was in the form of a testament, in which he solemnly ("with death, judgment and eternity in view") gave, covenanted, and made over himself, soul and body, all his faculties, all his influence in this world, all the worldly goods with which he might be endowed, into the hands of his Creator, Preserver, and Constant Benefactor, to be his forever, and at his disposal. He goes on to say: "Witness, ye holy angels! I am God's servant; witness, thou, Prince of Hell! I am thy enemy, thy implacable enemy, from this time forth and forevermore."
That this covenant was well kept, no one who reads his memoirs and the testimony of his contemporaries can doubt.
There are many anecdotes of Uncle Ben. Once, during his early ministry, he was riding in a crowded stagecoach. One of the passengers swore profusely and continuously, to the manifest annoyance of the others. Presently Dr. Cutler, leaning forward, addressed the swearer.
"Sir," he said, "you are fond of blasphemy; I am fond of prayer. This is a public conveyance, and for the remainder of our journey, as often as you swear aloud, I shall pray aloud, and we will see who comes off best." The swearing stopped!
In his later years, he met one day a parishioner clad in deep mourning for a near relative. The old clergyman laid his hand on the crape sleeve. "What!" he said sternly. "Heathen mourning for a Christian saint!"
But of all the uncles (and there were many) the beloved Uncle John Ward was always first. Of him, through many years Julia's devoted friend and chief adviser, we shall speak later on.
We have dwelt upon the generation preceding our mother's, because all these people, the beautiful mother so early lost, so long loved and mourned, the sternly devoted father, the vivacious aunts, the stalwart uncles, were strong influences in the life of Julia Ward.
The amusements of the little Wards were few, compared with those of children of to-day. As a child of seven, Julia was taken twice to the opera, and heard Malibran, then Signorina Garcia, a pleasure the memory of which remained with her through life. About this time Mr. Ward's views of religious duty deepened in stringency and in gloom. There was no more opera, nor did Julia ever attend a theatre until she was a grown woman. In Low Church circles at that time, the drama was considered distinctly of the devil. The burning of the first Bowery Theatre and of the great theatre at Richmond, Virginia, were spoken of as "judgments." Many an Evangelical pastor "improved" the occasions from the pulpit.
The child inherited a strong dramatic sense from the Marion Cutlers. She had barely learned to read when she found in an "Annual" a tale called "The Iroquois Bride," which she dramatized and presented to the nursery audience, with herself for the bride, her brother Marion for the lover, and a stool for the rock they ascended to stab each other. The performance was not approved by Authority, and the book was promptly taken away.
Her first written drama was composed at the age of nine, but even the name of it is lost.
Mr. Ward did not encourage intimacies with other children. He felt strongly that brothers and sisters were the true, and should be the only, intimates for one another; indeed, the six children were enough to make a pleasant little circle of their own, and there were merry games in the wide nursery. Sam, the eldest born, was master of the revels in childhood, as throughout his life. It was his delight, in the early morning, to wrap himself in a sheet, and bursting into the room where the little sisters slept, leap from bed to bed, announcing himself as a ghost come to haunt them; or, when the three ladies, Mrs. Mills, Mrs. Brown, and Mrs. Francis (otherwise known as Julia, Louisa, and Annie) were playing with their dolls, to whisper in their ears that they must on no account venture near the attic stairs, as an old man in red was sitting there. Of course the little Fatimas must needs peep, and the old man was always there, a terrible figure, his face hidden. In "Bro' Sam's" absence it was Marion who played the outlaw and descended like a whirlwind upon the unhappy ladies, who were journeying through dense and dreadful forests.
Mrs. Mills, Mrs. Brown, and Mrs. Francis were devoted mothers, and reared large families of dolls. They kept house in a wide bureau drawer, divided into three parts. Our Aunt Annie (Mrs. Adolphe Mailliard) writes: "Mrs. Mills' (Julia) dolls were always far more picturesquely dressed than ours, although I can say little for their neatness. Oh! to what numberless parties they went, and how tipsy they invariably got! I can see distinctly to-day the upset wagon (boxes, on spools for wheels), and the muddy dresses, for they always fell into mud puddles."
Marion was as pious as he was warlike. His morning sermons, delivered over the back of a chair, were fervent and eloquent; he was only seven years old when he wrote to his Cousin Henry Ward, who was ill with some childish ailment:—
"Do not forget to say your prayers every morning and evening. I hope that you trust in God; and, my dear cousin, do not set your mind too much on Earthly things! And my dear cousin, this is the prayer."