No, I was not disappointed in "G.G." She was just as natural, hearty,
and off-hand as when some thirty years ago, she was a romping,
harum-scarum, bright-eyed schoolgirl, Sara Clarke, of western New
York, who was almost a gypsy in her love for the fields and forests.
She was always ready for any out-door exercise or sport. This gave her
glorious health, which up to that time she had not lost.
Her _nom de plume_, which she says she has never been able to drop,
was only one of the many alliterative names adopted at that time. Look
over the magazines and Annuals of those years, and you will find many
such, as "Mary Maywood," "Dora Dashwood," "Ella Ellwood" "Fanny
Forrester," "Fanny Fern," "Jennie June," "Minnie Myrtle," and so on
through the alphabet, one almost expecting to find a "Ninny Noodle."
Examining one of Mrs. Lippincott's first scrapbooks of "Extracts from
Newspapers," etc., which she had labelled, "Vanity, all is Vanity," I
find many poems in her honour, much enthusiasm over her writings, and
much speculation as to who "Grace Greenwood" might really be. The
public curiosity was piqued to find out this new author who added to
forceful originality "the fascination of splendid gayety and brilliant
trifling." John Brougham, the actor and dramatist, thus expressed his
interest in a published letter to Willis:
The only person that I am disposed to think, write or talk
about at present is your dazzling, bewitching correspondent,
"Grace Greenwood." Who is she? that I may swear by her! Where
is she? that I may fling myself at her feet! There is a
splendour and dash about her pen that carry my fastidious
soul captive by a single charge. I shall advertise for her
throughout the whole Western country in the terms in which they
inquire for Almeyda in Dryden's _Don Sebastian_: "Have you
seen aught of a woman who lacks two of the four elements, who has
nothing in her nature but air and fire?"
And here is one of the poetical tributes:
If to the old Hellenes
Thee of yore the gods had given
Another Muse, another Grace
Had crowned the Olympian heaven.
Whittier at that time spoke most cordially of her "earnest
individuality, her warm, honest, happy, hopeful, human heart; her
strong loves and deep hates."
E.P. Whipple, the Boston critic and essayist, when reviewing her
poems, spoke of their "exceeding readableness"; and George Ripley,
then of the New York _Tribune_, said:
One charm of her writings is the frankness with which she takes
the reader into her personal confidence. She is never formal,
never a martyr to artificial restraint, never wrapped in a
mantle of reserve; but, with an almost childlike simplicity,
presents a transparent revelation of her inmost thoughts and
feelings, with perfect freedom from affectation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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