Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/570

Rh out falsifying either inanimate or human nature, she transmutes their ruggedness into pure gold, and arranges a harmony without one jarring note."

The scene of "The Tory Lover," Miss Jewett's latest work, is laid in the neighborhood of her own town of South Berwick. The famous Paul Jones is one of its personages, and other figures are drawn with due regard to historic facts and probabilities. The story is told with all the grace and skill which characterize her literary workmanship.

In 1901 Miss Jewett received from Bowdoin College the degree of Doctor of Literature, she being the first woman thus honored by that institution.

RS. L. E. ORTH was born in Milford, N.H., July 6, 1858. Her father, James Blood, was descended from Peter Blood, who was one of the first settlers of Dunstable, Mass. Her mother, Emeline Wheeler Blood, was the daughter of Major James Wheeler, of Hollis, N.H., whose ancestors were English, and his wife, Dorcas Mooar, daughter of Jacob Mooar, who was of Scottish descent.

In 1775 Jacob Mooar, Mrs. Orth's great-grandfather, was sixteen years of age; and, when the bell of the Hollis meeting-house was rung to call the minute-men to arms, he was hoeing in his grandfather Nevin's field, three miles away. Hearing the bell, he dropped h's hoe upon the nearest boulder, and ran to answer the summons. The boulder upon which his hoe rested was a few years ago removed to the centre of Hollis, and now stands on the green near the old meeting-house from whose belfry the summons rang. Jacob Mooar fought in the battle of bennington.

Mrs. Emeline W. Blood was the leading soprano in the village choir, and always took a prominent part in the local musical conventions. The daughter, Lizzie, inherited musical tendencies from her mother, and began the study of the piano at the age of ten. Later, when living in Springfield, Mass., she continued her studies under Professor F. Zuchtmann, at that time the foremost musician in Central Massachusetts. Her musical talent showed such promise that, urged by her advisers, she planned t« go to Germany for study in June, 1877. On a visit to friends in Boston in February of that year she met the pianist, John Orth, who but two years before had returned with much eclat from five years' study in Germany with the foremost masters of that time—Kullak, Liszt, Deppe, Lebert, and Pruckner—in piano playing, and Kiel, Paisst, Weitzmann, and P. Scharwenka in theory.

Coming to Boston to live in May, 1877, loi" five years she studied the piano with Mr. Orth. During the latter part of this period she taught large classes of i)ui)ils, and made many successful public appearances in concerts and recitals. She also studied harmony with the late Charles L. Capen.

In May, 1883, she was married to John Orth, her teacher. One of the happiest experiences of her wedding trip abroad was a stay of three weeks in Weimar, made memorable by many delightful afternoons in the salon of Liszt, who with his wonderful and never to be forgotten graciousness welcomed back his former pupil.

Here Mrs. Orth met many aspiring students who have since become world famous, among them Alexander Siloti, Alfretl Reisenauer, and Arthur Friedheim. Arthur Bird, the American com])oser, was one of the " Lisztianer." The beautiful Mary F. Scott-Siddons, the English actress, was of the coterie, with her son, Henry A'aller, the pianist. While in Stuttgart Mr. and Mrs. Orth went with friends of the sculptor Donsdorf to see his statue of Bach, just then completed and ready to be taken to Eisenach, the great master's birthplace, where in the following year it was unveiled. The genial sculptor later .sent to Mrs. Orth in Boston a cast from the small model of the Bach statue, dcnibtless the only one in this country. Donsdorf also sent a cast of his large medallion heail of Robert Schumann, which forms part of the pedestal of the Beethoven monument at Bonn. At that time the sculptor had made but one other cast, which he had presented to Madame Clara Schumann.

From her marriage, in May, 1883, until May, 1895, Mrs. Orth's musical activity was confined to teaching her own and other children. While