Wellesley College - Legenda Yearbook (Wellesley, MA)

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Love is still a child immortal, And his wings will soon expand, As we near the shadowy portal To that other promised land. Whether born in joy or sorrow, Whether crowned with thorns or flowers, Love looks forward to a morrow In a brighter world than ours. Past the sleep that knows no waking. Past the night that turns to day. There the dawn of love is breaking, There the shadows pass away. Their Boston home was located, first, on the corner of Bowdoin and Allston vStreets. In iS6o they removed to 77 Mt. Vernon Street, and in 1S6S to Mrs. Durant ' s present residence, 30 Marlborough Street. The Wellesley estate was purchased the year after the marriage, and here the summers were spent in what is now known as the farmhouse. The young wife delighted in putting to use her domestic accomplishments. In these first summers at Welles- ley she used herself to skim every pan of milk that came into the house, and make all the preserves and delicacies. She loved the grounds, and knew each tree by name. She was interested in raising fowls, and was so proud of nineteen baby turkeys, of a choice breed from Brandywine, that on a stormy night she and her husband both rose to the rescue of that pre- cious brood. While Mr. Durant groped about in the thunderstorm, and hunted down, by the flashes of lightning, one aflrighted turkevkin after another, until all the nineteen had been caught, Mrs. Durant made a fire in the kitchen stove, and tenderly taking each little gobbler as it was triumphantly presented by its dripping deliverer, put a drop of wine down its throat and deposited it in a basket in the oven, to dream co .ily of Thanksgiving Day until it had recovered from its chill. In the spring of 1855 g ' ' eat joy befell them in the birth of their only son, Henry Fowle Durant, Jr., and in the fall of 1S57 ' I ' ttle Pauline Cazenove gladdened the household for a brief six weeks. The death of this infant was a poignant sorrow to the parents. Added to her maternal mourning was Mrs. Durant ' s keen disappointment that the pain of this loss did not turn her husband ' s heart to the Divine comforter. She had herself united with the Presby- terian church when a schoolgirl, in 1S47, and was as unswerving in her Christian faith as she had ever been untiring in Christian service. Mr. Durant was a man of essentially religious nature. An extract from a letter written soon after his twenty-first birthdav to a college friend is evidence enough of this, although other evidence, as his admiration for the Bible, or his pleasure in the church service, is not wanting. The letter runs : —

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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.

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Dearest Holker : I have but one word to write to you, and that is immortality. It is all I have learned tor a year, and yet the time has been well spent. Henceforward there is nothing to fear in life. It came at the right time. Sick with labor and sorrow, in the cold winter night I stood by the great river, and from the wind among the treetops, and the bright stars, and the ceaseless voice of the waters, I heard the one word that gives life and strength, and from that time there is no need of sorrow or of weariness. But with all his delicate instincts and noble aspirations, Mr. Durant had never yielded his will to God. He now sought escape from sorrow in the rapid rereading of the VVaverley novels, replying to his wife ' s entreaties, You must take yoiu- medicine in your way, and I must take mine in mine. Tlie father and mother, thus bereaved, lavished their love all the more abundantly upon their boy, an exquisite child of rare intellectual promise. Generous-hearted, atVectionate, and fearless, inheriting the beauty and high spirit of his parents, this cherished son, The hyacinthine boy, for whom Morn well might break and April bloom, — The gracious boy, who did adorn The world whereinto he was born, delighted his father ' s pride and stimulated his father ' s ambition, giving impetus to every toil and significance to all the future. He was his mother ' s close companion and daily joy. Before her his childish heart lay as an open volume, white of leaf. A friend wrote: One incident which occurred only a few days before he was taken ill, I recall at this moment. Willie, of whom he was very fond, said, ' Harry, I ' ll tell you something if you wont tell any- body. ' ' I ' ll tell my mamma, ' answered the dear child ; ' I always tell my mamma everything I know. ' In his ninth year Harry suddenly sickened and died, and through that illness and that death the father ' s life was consecrated to God. This was the mother ' s consolation, — a joy even deeper than her unutterable sorrow. Ever sacred to Wellesley College must be the prayer written at this time by Mr. Durant for their use together, antl daily repeated by them for many years : — O Eternal and Holy Jesus, because we humbly lielieve that out of th ' great and tendei mercy toward us thy servants, thou hast not been willing to spare to us the life of our beloved boy, but hast taken him as a little lamb gently up in thine arms to bear him to sweet and sacred pastures in thine own Emmanuel ' s land, therefore we do beseech thee to make this great sorrow to be to us a means of salvation, a fountain of immortal hopes and consolations.