INTRODUCTION

USUALLY THE AUTHOR FINDS THE subject and coaxes or compels it, often much against its will, into words, but in rare and happy instances, as here, the subject finds the author and will not let him go. It was not Helen J. Sanborn who proposed to write of Anne of Brittany. It was the imperious shade of the Queen-Duchess that, reaching across five centuries, possessed herself of an American biographer. Miss Sanborn, touring with friends along the straight, white roads of France, was delayed in Brittany by what seemed, at the time, to be an automobile breakdown. While the machine was undergoing prolonged repairs, the Duchess Anne, a mysterious figure then, beckoned to the party and lured them from tower to staircase, from fortress to cathedral, haunting her ancient duchy and her famed châteaux upon the Loire so effectively that the spell held even overseas. Again and again Miss Sanborn, yielding to a subtle fascination, returned to visit the places where this enchanting ghost had lived her short and splendid life, until she came to know Anne of Brittany at every stage of her eventful history,—the baby lifted high in the arms of Duke Francis on the roof of his towered castle at Nantes for the people thronging the courtyard below to see; the dark-eyed child, not yet in her teens, proclaimed on her father’s death Duchess of Brittany; the rosy-cheeked girl-queen of young Charles VIII of France, holding magnificent nuptials in the somber château of Langeais; the widow stretched on the floor in passionate grief amid the adornments of that fatal château of Amboise which Charles had loved to make beautiful for her; the yet youthful queen of Louis XII, graciously reigning over her court of ladies, artists, and scholars in the proud château of Blois, devoutly kneeling before her wondrously illuminated Book of Hours, the central, radiant presence of hall, boudoir, and garden, until, still untouched by the shadow of age, she went forth in death on the last and most majestic of her royal progresses.

It is singular that this vivid personality should have taken so strong a hold on the reserved New England woman, the close of whose life was enriched by this hidden romance of friendship. Often, especially in her later years of illness, Miss Sanborn would escape from pain and weakness to live, with her Duchess Anne, in a dream of gorgeous ceremonies and quaint Breton pilgrimages. Ever staunch in allegiance, she sided with the Duchess in her few quarrels and lamented her many griefs. Points of peculiar sympathy were a reverent devotion to the memory of parents and a persistent distrust of medicine.

The purpose of writing a biography of Anne of Brittany was long in forming and, under the pressure of many other occupations incident to a public-spirited woman of wealth, the work proceeded slowly. Meanwhile a stealthy disease was constantly, and more and more, sapping her strength. Gallantly she labored on, but the approach of death found the manuscript still incomplete. It was the Duchess Anne who, with a characteristic disdain of medical opinion, kept the brave sufferer living for months after the end had been predicted. Miss Sanborn was determined to finish her book and, in effect, carried out her will, even arranging for illustrations and binding. In a sense, the two lives closed together, so that the introduction to this volume sorrowfully becomes a memorial of its author.

The secret of a life may best be sought in its loves and its consecrations. The intimate relation between Miss Sanborn and her father, the late James S. Sanborn, lies at the root of all her service. Born in Maine, in the village of Wales, in 1835, Mr. Sanborn made his first independent business venture in the neighboring town of Lewiston, where he set up a modest trade in coffee and spices. This prospered so well that in 1872 he transferred his business to Boston, establishing his home in Somerville, then a quiet suburb. His family consisted of his wife, the daughter of an Auburn sea-captain, and four children, of whom Helen, born October 6, 1857, in Greene, a few miles from her father’s birthplace, was the eldest. The firm of Chase and Sanborn was formed in 1878, and their teas and coffees came so widely into favor that Mr. Sanborn was enabled to indulge his tastes for nature, animals and travel. His heart was still loyal to Maine and he developed an attractive summer home in Poland, where he interested himself in breeding horses of a fine French strain. Combining business with pleasure, he visited the lands of spice and coffee, the West Indies, Mexico, and Central America, later extending his travels to Europe.

Glad to give his children the educational opportunities his own youth had missed, Mr. Sanborn took pride in Helen’s progress from the Somerville High School through the State Normal School in Salem, where she graduated as valedictorian of the class of 1879. After she had proved her mettle by a year of successful teaching, he entered her at Wellesley College, then in its first decade, from which she duly received, in 1884, the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Her love for this beautiful Alma Mater became a second dominating influence in her life.

A third deep devotion, to the International Institute for Girls in Spain, sprang from that delighted interest in Spanish speech, ways and customs, whose original impulse, again, goes back to her father. Her first book, published in 1886, “A Winter in Central America and Mexico,” opens as follows:

“ ‘Why don’t you take your daughter Helen with you on your southern trip?’

“This question was asked by a friend of the family as we sat chatting together in the library, one evening, about the journey which my father was soon to take through Central America and Mexico.

“My father replied: ‘I should be very glad to take anybody who could speak Spanish.’

“ ‘Oh, will you take me if I will learn Spanish?’ I exclaimed eagerly. ‘I will learn it before you go, if you will only promise to take me!’

“Much to my surprise the challenge was accepted and, although fresh from college and longing for a glimpse of foreign lands, I felt a little dismayed, when I had time for deliberation, at the task I had set myself—to learn a language of which I knew not a word, and make all preparations for a long journey in the short space of less than three months which must intervene before our departure. However, of this I breathed not a syllable to any one, but went to work at once.”

Both this reticence and this diligence are eminently characteristic of the writer, and characteristic, too, the timid pluck and sober humor with which she met the severe hardships and by no means inconsiderable perils of that journey. The five-days jaunt on muleback across the mountains of Guatemala, with only such miserable rest and refreshment for the night as Indian villages could offer, taxed the fortitude of both travelers. Decent Bostonians, they learned to put aside all prejudices as to fleas and dirt, to eat and drink what they could get and be grateful for shelter in a mud hut or even a native jail. At Panama, a deadly place thirty years ago, where they found a lively little revolution adding its terrors to the fever-laden air, courage almost failed, but neither confessed it to the other until they were safe at home again, having carried out their entire itinerary.

This memorable trip, an experience which, the adventurers said, they would not have missed for “the wealth of Ormus and of Ind” nor would repeat for twice that treasure, awoke in Miss Sanborn the joy of travel. She yearned for Europe and, in 1888, toured, with a Wellesley party, Great Britain and the chief countries of the Continent. In 1893 father and daughter made the Mediterranean trip together and explored Spain. Here Miss Sanborn rejoiced anew in those Hispanic courtesies and graces whose charm she had first felt in Spanish America and here, at San Sebastian, she visited Mrs. Gulick’s school, of which, in its Madrid branch, she was to become one of the firmest supporters. In 1904 and 1905 her travels took her through the countries of northern Europe and up into Iceland. From time to time she printed in periodicals accounts of her more novel journeys, but she was already too busy with manifold home, social and educational activities to undertake a second book. She had come to be recognized in her own community as a leader in all work making for human uplift. For three years she served on the Somerville School Board; for seven years she was president of a literary club; she was faithful in labors for the Winter Hill Congregational Church, whose missionary society she organized and directed; and the habit of the helping hand was binding to her many grateful friends.

The new century opened with a swift succession of family bereavements. The tenderly cherished mother, long an invalid, died in 1901. Two years later Miss Sanborn lost her father, that successful merchant whose steadfast integrity was perhaps his daughter’s deepest pride, and in 1905, with an almost rhythmic regularity of blows upon the heart, came the sudden death of the brother next to her in age and peculiarly congenial in character. From the depression caused by these griefs and the loneliness of the great house left desolate she never fully rallied. The younger brother and sister had married and, although their homes were in neighboring towns and they and their children, as well as her own friends, were often with her, she dwelt henceforth in the shadow. Life had ceased to be hope; it had become patience. With...