The Hawaiian gazette. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1865-1918, 1896-05-29
Splendid Tribute Paid to Memory
of Kate Field.
HER LIFE IN FLORENCE
With Mrs. BrowningSLittle said of II
But Miss Field Never Forgot the
Inspiration = Landor Taught Her.
No stranger in an Alien Land.


frd no welcome, but fewer still come
into more genuine adoption than we
have gladly accorded Kate Field Our
lives were richer for her coming in and
going out among, us, our days were hap
pier for her smiles. our hopes were
stronger for the clear vibrations OF her
voice. and henceforth our days will be
emptier for her dying.
Her death brings afresh to us that in
tolerable sense of waste we feel when
some strong warrior of Truth drops
from the ranks. We are newly filled
with our own helplessness in face of the
lesson Nature would teach us-that her
laws are memorable and inflexible when
they have been strained, even in a
worthy cause.
Not an image of death, however, will
the name of Kate Field suggest to us,
but vision of life; life devoted, strenu-
Gus and wide; life spent in the service
of humanity; life crowned with the
olive wreath of appreciation. For Kate
Field was prominently worker. She
chose to be worker in the busy tur-
MOL of life rather than linger in the
shady byways of art. Yet there was
time in her life, though few of us may
have known it, when she lived in sunny
Italy. in Florence, that Flower of all
cities and city of all flowers" More
than that, she lived with most charm
ing woman, Miss Isabella Blagden, her
self a poet and Mrs. Browning's init
mate among women.
How hnnrl n
this unfolding intellect | can picture
to myself the view from Miss Blagden' S
villa. Bellosguardo-yo find it in
Aurora Leigh, imprisoned like fly in
amber 1t watched over Florence, they
| tell us, it looked across the Arno, it
cleaned towards Fiesole and its villas.
Then what journeys they made to
| Florence. she and Isa-as Miss Field
called her-what rare days they spent
with the Brownings, and what even
| ings with the Trollopes and their coterie
of genius-the Hawthornes, George Ell
lot Mary Somerville, Harriet Hosmer,
Walter Savage Lander and others who
came there Can you not feel the charm
of those tender Italian evenings on Mrs.
Trollope's terrace, where the realest OF
people talked of stirring themes? The
girl among them wrote this description:
Opening upon garden with it's lofty
pillars. it's tessellated marble floor. it's
walls inlaid with terra Gotta, bas-
reliefs, inscriptions by coats-of-arms.
with here and there niche devoted to
some antique Madonna, the terrace
has all the charm of campo santo with
out the chill of a grave upon it; or
were few cowle1 monks to walk with
folded arms along it's space, one might
fancy it the cloister of monastery"
To Kate Field we are indebted for a
fine description of Mrs. Browning in
her home After sketching the drawing
room in Casa Guidi, that especial
haunt of poets" with it's tapestried
walls, it's old pictures of saints and
pieces of Florentine carving, contrasted
with the brightly bound gift books from
brother authors, she says: "Dante's
grave profile, cast of Keats face and
brow taken after death, a pen-an-ink
sketch of Tennyson, the genial face of
John Kenyon, little paintings of the
boy Browning attracted the eye A
quaint mirror and the hundred nothings
that add charm were always massed in
this room. But the glory of it all, and
that which sanctified all, was her form,
with her table strewn with writing al
ways at her side" Here she lay, as her
husband said of her, writing like a
spirit" and on whatever scraps of paper
she had, putting away her work when
anyone entered, only to take it up again
when alone. And so Aurora Leigh was
written. By the light of those Casa
Guidi windows, in that very drawing
room, Mrs. Browning must have read
to Miss Blagden. and her charge por-
lions of Aurora Leigh, which was then
a-writing. / imagine the delight of it
the hearing the voice of that spirit
poet in her own room, reading out her
greatest work. / believe that Kate
Field never forgot the inspiration of
those days, though she told us in Homo
lulu little of that other soft Paradise
beyond the seas
She never cared to speak much of her.
self She seems to have had mastery
way of clearing the decks of her mind
for action, of concentrating every atom
of force on the hostile facts before her.
Consequently her trains of victory
we're enriched by thousands of captive
facts and by glittering spoils wrested
from Sphinxes of pride and prejudice
As matter of course she never forgot
that she came to Honolulu to get strate-
gle points, not to give them.
So far as can learn, she has spoken
of hef life in Italy to only one woman in
Honolulu-would were that fortunate
she! 1t came about very incidentally.
This one, who had met Miss Field often,
knew nothing of her early life until one
day she picked up a recent Bookman
In an article on Mrs. Browning was
description by Kate Field that revealed
to the astonished reader an intimate
knowledge Of the Brownings and their
Florentine circle. When Miss Field was
told of this discovery, her face grew
sad and tender as her thoughts flew