Helen Jackson. ( “H. H.” )
Mlle de Montpensier, grand-daughter of Henri Quatre, is said to have been “so famous in history that her name never appears in it;” she being known only as “La Grande Mademoiselle.” This anonymousness may help the fame of a princess, but it must hurt that of an author. The initials “L. E. L.,” so familiar to some of us in childhood, stood for a fame soon forgotten; and this not so much because her poetry was weak, but because her name was in a manner nameless. However popular might be the poems of “H. H.,” they were still attached to a rather vague and formless personality so long as these initials only were given; to combine with this the still remoter individuality of “Saxe Holm,” was only to deepen the sense of vagueness; and if all the novels of the “No name” series, instead of two of them, had been attributed to the same shadowy being, every one would have pronounced the suggestion quite credible. To take these various threads of mystery, [41] and weave them into a substantial fame, this passed the power of public admiration. At any rate, an applause so bewildered could heartily be heard across the Atlantic; and it is almost exasperating to find that in England, for instance, where so many feeble American reputations have been revived only to die, there are few critics who know even the name of the woman who has come nearest in our day and tongue to the genius of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and who has made Christina Rossetti and Jean Ingelow appear but second-rate celebrities. When some one asked Emerson a few years since whether he did not think “H. H.” the best woman-poet on this continent, he answered in his meditative ay, “Perhaps we might as well omit the woman,” thus placing her, at least in that moment's impulse, at the head of all. He used to cut her poems from the newspapers as they appeared, to carry them about with him, and to read them aloud. His especial favorites were the most condensed and the deepest, those having something of that kind of obscurity which Coleridge pronounced to be a compliment to the reader. His favorite among them all is or was the sonnet entitled [42]The uncontrollableness of thought by will has never been better expressed by words than in this sonnet; and there are others which utter emotion so profoundly, and yet with such artistic quiet, that each brief poem seems the summary of a life. Take this, for instance, describing a love that, having once found its shore, burns its ships behind it, and absolutely cuts off all retreat:--
“H. H.” writes another class of poems, that, with a grace and wealth like Andrew Marvell's, carry us into the very life of external nature, or link it with the heart of man. Emerson's “Humblebee” is not a creation more fresh and wholesome than is
As the most artistic among her verses I should class the “Gondolieds,” in which all Venice seems reflected in the movement and cadence, while the thought is fresh and new and strong. Then there are poems which seem to hold all secrets of passion [45] trembling on the lips, yet forbear to tell them; and others, on a larger scale, which have a grander rhythmical movement than most of our poets have dared even to attempt. Of these the finest, to my ear, is “Resurgam;” but I remember that Charlotte Cushman preferred the “Funeral March,” and loved to read it in public. Those who heard her can never forget the solemnity with which she recited those stately cadences, or the grandeur of her half-glance over the shoulder as she named first among the hero's funeral attendants “Majestic death, his freedman, following.” “H. H.” reaches the popular heart best in a class of poems easy to comprehend, thoroughly human in sympathy; poems of love, of motherhood, of bereavement; poems such as are repeated and preserved in many a Western cabin, cheering and strengthening many a heart. Other women have exerted a similar power; but in the hands of a writer like Alice Cary, for instance, the influence is shallow, though pure and wholesome; she sounds no depths as this later poet sounds them. The highest type of this class of Helen Jackson's verses may be found in the noble poem entitled “Spinning,” which begins:-- [46]
Like a blind spinner in the sunNo finer symbolic picture of human life has ever been framed: Henry Vaughan, had he been a woman, might have written it. If, in addition to her other laurels, Mrs. Jackson is the main author of the “Saxe Holm” tales, she must be credited not only with some of the very best stories yet written in America,--“Draxy Miller's Dowry,” for instance,--but with one of the best-kept of all literary secrets. There has been something quite dramatic in the skill with which the puzzle has been kept alive by the appearance of imaginary claimants — if imaginary they be — to the honor of this authorship: now a maiden lady in the interior of New York; now a modest young girl whose only voucher, Celia Burleigh, died without revealing her name. I do not know whether any of these claimants took the pains to write out whole stories in manuscript,--as an Irish pretender copied out whole chapters of Miss Edgeworth's “Castle Rackrent,” with corrections and erasures, [47] --but it is well known that the editors of “Scribner's Monthly” were approached by some one who professed to have dropped the “Saxe Holm” stories in the street, and demanded that they should be restored to him. He was suppressed by the simple expedient of inviting him to bring in some specimens of his own poetry, that it might be compared with that of “Draxy Miller;” but the modest young girls and the apocryphal rural contributors were less easily abolished, though time has abated their demands. The more Mrs. Jackson denied the authorship, the more resolutely the public mind intrenched itself in the belief that she had something to do with the stories, and that at least the verses therein contained were hers and hers alone. There were coincidences of personal and local details, to connect her with the veiled author; and the fantastic title of one tale, “The Onelegged Dancers,” had previously appeared in her “Bits of Travel.” 5 The final verdict seemed to be that she must have written the books, with enough of aid from some friend to justify her persistent denial; and ingenious critics soon began to see internal traces of a double authorship, while this to other critics seemed altogether absurd. The publication of “Mercy Philbrick's Choice” [48] and “Hetty's strange history” only revived the same questions. The plots of these books showed the hand of “Saxe Holm,” the occasional verses that of “H. H.” Both novels brought a certain disappointment: they had obvious power, but were too painful to be heartily enjoyed. After all, the public mind is rather repelled by a tragedy, since people wish to be made happy. Great injustice has been done by many critics, I think, to “Hetty's strange history.” While its extraordinary power is conceded, it has been called morbid and immoral; yet it is as stern a tale of retribution as “Madame Bovary” or “The scarlet letter.” We rarely find in fiction any severity of injustice meted out to a wrong act done from noble motives. In Jean Paul's “Siebenkas” the husband feigns death in order that his wife may find happiness without him: he succeeds in his effort, and is at last made happy himself. In “Hetty's strange history” the wife effaces herself with precisely the same object,--for her husband's sake: but the effort fails; the husband is not made happy by her absence, and when they are re-united the memory of her deception cannot be banished, so that after the first bliss of re-union they find that complete healing can never come. Only a deep nature could have planned, [49] only a very firm pen could have traced, the final punishment of Hetty's sin. One of the acutest critics in America said of Saxe Holm: “She stands on the threshold of the greatest literary triumphs ever won by an American woman.” It must be owned that she still lingers there: we still wait for any complete and unquestionable victory. Who knows but that versatile imagination may already have sought some other outlet, and she may already be mystifying her public under some new name? And of “H. H.” as a poet it must be said that she seems of late to be half shrinking from her full career, and to be turning rather to the path of descriptive prose. She has always excelled in this: her “German Landlady” is unsurpassed in its way, and her new experiences of Western residence have only added fulness and finish to this part of her literary work. No one has ever written of frontier-life so well as she, in her “Bits of Travel at home ;” with such hearty sympathy, with a tone so discriminating, and with such absence of the merely coarse or melodramatic. All the California writers have not secured for the life of that region such a place in the world of art as she is giving to Colorado; all their work, however brilliant, is encumbered with what is crude, cheap, exaggerated, and therefore temporary; hers [50] is clear and firm and strong; and those who regret her absence from her early home can yet rejoice that she dwells amid scenery so magnificent, and in so absorbing a current of human life.
I tread my days;
I know that all the threads will run
Appointed ways;
I know each day will bring its task,
And, being blind, no more I ask.4
