Wellesley College - Legenda Yearbook (Wellesley, MA)

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wide-rtwake bo - out of mischief. He was a chivalrous little fellow, with romantic day dreams of his own, and in his boyhood an ambitious class student. But his Harvard educa- tion was largel} ' acquired in the college library. I studied immensely the last part of the time I was in Cambridge, he said, and to great advantage. I had but few recitations, and saw scarcely anyone, so that I had plenty of time. Greek was a favorite study with him, but he devoted much attention to English, reading widely and deeplv, and practicing himself in verse composition, as well as prose. He dreaded the law, being haunted by that horrid dream of a legal profession. But after graduation from Harvard, at nineteen, he tlutifully enteied the law office of his father, Mr. William Smith, in Lowell, the family having removed thither from Hanover, New Hampshire, wheie Mr. Durant was born. Writing to a friend, the young graduate said: I shall studv law for the present, to oblige father; he is in some trouble, and I wish to make him as happ ' as possible. The future course of my life is undetermined, except that all shall yield to hoi} ' poetry. Indeed, it is a sacred duty. 1 have begun studying law ; don ' t be afraid, however, that I intend to give up poetry. I shall always be a worshiper of that divinity, and I hope in a few years to be able to give up everything and be a priest in her temple. One year of Blackstone called out this second confidence : I have not written any poetry this whole summer. Old Mrs. Themis says that I shall not visit any more at the Miss Muses. I ' ll see the old catamaran hanged, though, but what I will, and I ' ll write a sonnet to my old shoe, directly, out of mere desperation. Pity and sympathize with me. After eighteen months of such tyrannical law studies, Mr. Durant, in the spring of 1S43,. his twenty-first birthday hardly passed, was admitted to the bar. Henceforth there was little opportunity for poetry. His legal practice ruthlessly swept him into the current of practical atlairs. It was impossible, he wrote, to imagine a school better fitted than this to develop any latent talent for business, and for breaking up any tendency toward literary tastes. However incompatible legal pursuits may be with writing poetrj ' , they fortunatelv admit of living poetry. But before love in its fullness should reawaken the benumbed spirit of song in the young lawver ' s heart, several years were yet to intervene. For him these were vears of intense mental activity. His genius, which many believed to be of the highest order, was primarily a genius for labor. He removed to Boston, establishing his law oflice in the northeast corner of the old State House, and changing his name, because another Henrv W. Smith was already practicing law in Boston, to Henry Fovvle Durant. In Boston his law partner was !Mr. Joseph Bell, brother-in-law of Rufus Choate, in Lowell his father, and his law business was divided between .Suffolk and Middlesex Counties. Rufus Choate began to 19

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English ladv, wife of a Baptist clergyman. At home, meanwhile, she was thoroiighlj ' trained in music and drawing, fine sewing, elaborate cooking, and all the domestic arts. Oh, yes, a teasing uncle used to say, we shan ' t keep her long. When she comes home from boarding school we ' ll put out a shingle to tell the world that within may be found the yoimg lady who, at the age of thirteen, could make anything that man requires, from a shirt to a loaf of cake. We ' ll not lie bothered with keeping her long. The boarding school chosen was one of the leading institutions of the day, — a French es- tablishment in New York City, under the charge of M. and Mtne. Cauda. The earnest- spirited young Southerner would have preferred Mount Holj ' oke Seminary, but here her mother stood firm. Mrs. Fowle had heard that at Mount Holyoke the custom prevailed of introducing the girls to foreign missionaries who came wife-hunting, and this precious, only daughter could not be so jeopardized. Mrs. Durant gives amusing accounts of the conditions of life in this fashionable lioarding school, where the studies were conducted for one half the day in English, and for the other in French. The girls slept in dormitories, the long dormitory holding thirty of the little iron beds. At the first bell the girls sprang to their feet with military promptitude, sleepilv hurrying on stockings, slippers, and dressing gowns, turning back beds, opening windows,, and betaking themselves with all inconvenient speed to the general dressing room above. Here some sixtv toilets were simultaneously performed, the girls seeking shelter between the open doors of the tall presses that shared the wall space with the rows of washstands. Ablu- tions before these washstands were attended with thrilling perils. If water was spilled upon the floor, the culprit had to copy pages upon pages of French poetry. If the slop was excep- tionally sloppy, the French poetry — for which one feels acutest sympath - — had to be learned by heart. After these appalling toilets the girls flocked back to the dormitories, made their beds, went to the schoolroom for prayers, and hungrily listened for the breakfast bell. Here Mrs. Durant passed the years from fourteen to eighteen, making girlish friendships, and probably learning as much as if she rose later in the morning. The processional prome- nade along Broadway was not to her liking, and she was allowed to substitute for it exercise in one of the earliest gymnasiums of the city. The Sundays were usually spent with an aunt in Brooklyn, to whom Mrs. Fowle, who could not long be absent from her daughter, often came for extended visits. There were occasional trips to Boston, too, bringing renewal of friendshid between the winsome schoolgirl and the brilliant, though reluctant apprentice to the law. ]Mr. Durant had had, as a child, an insatiate love of reading. To lie on the sofa with a book was his delight, in which his parents acquiesced as the surest recipe for keeping their

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employ him as junior counsel, — an association of great and varied benefit to the younger man, who spared no toil to gain the phenomenal success which soon was his. At the Middlesex bar he was always in his place, and always alert. He had few associates, every hour of his time being absorbed by his profession. He apparently took little notice of current questions of the day. Sometimes he was genial, and sometimes icy, often preoccupied, absorbed, in- tense, and perhaps imperious, mysteriously making up a case, presenting it, and then retiring, only to reappear when he had a new case to win ; never reall} ' happ ' imless untiertaking some work of surpassing difficulty, which might fully tax all his powers. It was said of him that he was more frequently employed in what were considered desperate cases than any other lawyer of his time. An eminent man in his profession said of him that ' he was the most persistent, persistent, persistent man he ever saw. ' Meanwhile, his destined wife was ripening in every womanlj- grace. After her four years at boarding school were ended, she visited, with her mother, Trenton Falls, Niagara Falls, and Sharon. Here Mrs. Fowle had a hemorrhage, which determined them on spend- ing the next two winters in the south of Europe. The first of these was passed with Mrs. Wiggin, at the villa of the Marquise de La Valette, in Southern France, and the second in Rome, Florence, and Naples, their summer travels extending into Switzerland, England, and Scotland. On their return home, Mr. Durant, all engrossed with his profession as his asso- ciates supposed him to be, found time to meet them in New York. But his beautiful cousin passed the following winter south, in Augusta, Mobile, and New Orleans, and it was not initil the latter days of November, 1853, that his soul, long turned to hers, — so his poems whispered, — Like a pilgrim to liis shrine, knew its devotion accepted. There was one more winter of separation, in which blithest, sweetest love songs winged their way from the lawyer ' s desk, where the tedious writs and briefs must have marveled at them, to Washington and Alexandria. But Mr. Durant had already a practice of ten thou- sand dollars a year, and the marriage was not delayed. In the following May, her mother ' s wedding month, this younger Pauline wore the bridal veil. Then came household happiness almost unalloyed, love, as the lover had prophesied, deepening with the years. To Pauline. Tell me not that love is fleeting, Every day our love grows dearer, That its brightness fades away; Every night love ' s holy prayer While the hearts within us beating Makes the lofty sky seem nearer, Promise love and truth for aye. While the star of love is there.