IT is curious to see how promptly time begins to apply to the
memory of remarkable persons, as to their tombstones, an effacing
process that soon makes all inscriptions look alike. Already we see
the beginnings of this tendency in regard to the late Mrs. Helen
Jackson. The most brilliant, impetuous, and thoroughly individual
woman of her time, — one whose very temperament seemed
mingled of sunshine and fire, — she is already being portrayed
simply as a conventional Sunday-school saint. It is undoubtedly
true that she wrote her first poetry as a bereaved mother and her last
prose as a zealous philanthropist; her life comprised both these
phases, and she thoroughly accepted them; but it included so much
more, it belonged to a personality so unique and in many respects so
fascinating, that those who knew her best can by no means spare her
for a commonplace canonization that takes the zest out of her
memory. To describe her would be impossible except to the trained
skill of some French novelist; and she would have been a sealed
book to him, because no Frenchman could comprehend the curious
thread of firm New England texture that ran through her whole
being, tempering waywardness, keeping impulse from making
shipwreck of itself, and leading her whole life to a high and
concentrated purpose at last. And when we remember that she
hated gossip about her own affairs, and was rarely willing to
mention to reporters any fact about herself, except her birthday, —
which she usually, with characteristic willfulness, put a year earlier
than it was, — it is peculiarly hard to do for her now that work which
she held in such aversion. No fame or publicity could ever make
her seem, to those who knew her, anything but the most private and
intimate of friends; and to write about her at all seems the betrayal
of a confidence.
