Title: Harriet Beecher Stowe: a biography for girls
Author: Crow, Martha Foote
Language: English
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[Illustration: HARRIET BEECHER STOWE IN 1862]



  HARRIET
  BEECHER STOWE

  A BIOGRAPHY FOR GIRLS


  BY
  MARTHA FOOTE CROW

  [Illustration]

  NEW YORK AND LONDON
  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
  1913



  COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY
  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY


  Printed in the United States of America



  TO
  E. L. F.



PREFACE


Thanks are very heartily due to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin and Company,
the publishers of the works of Mrs. Stowe, for their kind permission
to quote freely from her books, and from the biographies of Mrs.
Stowe written by her son, Rev. Charles E. Stowe, and by her grandson,
Mr. Lyman Beecher Stowe. The same publishers have given permission
to make an abstract of “Cleon,” the play by Harriet Beecher, which
is found in the “Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe” by Annie
Fields, of which they are the publishers. Messrs. Harper and Brothers
have also been good enough to allow quotation from the “Autobiography
and Correspondence of Lyman Beecher.” To Miss E. N. Vanderpoel, the
compiler of “Chronicles of a Pioneer School,” the author wishes to
acknowledge her indebtedness for some interesting passages.

The author has also greatly appreciated the permission given by Mr.
John R. Howard to quote a short passage about childhood experiences in
the Beecher home found in his valuable sketch of the Rev. Henry Ward
Beecher.

To Mr. Charles E. Stowe, the author hereby makes grateful
acknowledgment for much helpful advice, and for material not hitherto
published. From many friends in Litchfield, Guilford, Hartford and
elsewhere, the writer of this book has received invaluable help and
would be glad to acknowledge each one’s contribution if there were
space to do so. The frontispiece is made from an old _carte de visite_
kindly lent by Mrs. Hannah C. Partridge, of Hartford, Connecticut.

Without these bountiful sources of information and these privileges
so graciously allowed, a book of this kind could, of course, not have
been written. Where-ever possible the language of Mrs. Stowe herself
has been quoted or adapted from the rich treasury of her correspondence
and autobiographical writings, or from stories of her own. Among these
the “Lyman Beecher Autobiography” fixes forever a composite portrait
of the Beecher family and is an almost inexhaustible storehouse of
material. Among Mrs. Stowe’s books, the childhood experiences of _Tina_
in “Oldtown Folks” and of _Dolly_ in “Poganuc People” have been a
veritable panorama of the young life of Harriet herself. Indeed, so
largely do her books reflect not only her ideas and emotions but even
the objective incidents of her life, that many of them are almost
autobiographic in their character.



CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE OF MRS. STOWE’S LIFE


    1811, June 14. Harriet Elizabeth Beecher was born in
    Litchfield, Connecticut, daughter of Rev. Dr. Lyman Beecher.

    1816. Death of her mother, Roxana Foote Beecher.

    1816-1818. Harriet attends Dame School.

    1817. Arrival of Harriet’s stepmother, Harriet Porter Beecher.

    1823. Harriet’s essay on Immortality read at school exhibition.

    1816, 1822, 1825, 1826, 1827. Visits to Foote homestead at Nut
    Plains, near Guilford, Connecticut.

    1824-1832. Harriet as pupil and afterwards as teacher at her
    sister Catherine’s school in Hartford.

    1825. Harriet writes a drama in blank verse called “Cleon.”

    1825. Harriet becomes a member of the First Church in Hartford.

    1826-1832. Pastorate of Dr. Beecher at Hanover Street Church in
    Boston. Harriet’s vacations at Boston and Guilford.

    1832-1852. Dr. Beecher head of Lane Theological Seminary at
    Cincinnati, Ohio. Residence of family at Walnut Hills, suburb
    of Cincinnati.

    1832-1834. Catherine and Harriet found a school at Cincinnati.

    1833. Harriet a member of the Semi-colon Club.

    1834. Harriet receives a prize for her first short story.

    1833. Harriet visits a plantation in Kentucky and sees slave
    life.

    1836, January. Marriage of Professor C. E. Stowe and Harriet
    Beecher.

    1836, September. Birth of Mrs. Stowe’s twin daughters, Harriet
    Beecher and Eliza Tyler.

    1838, January. Birth of her third child, Henry Ellis.

    1840, May. Birth of her fourth child, Frederick William.

    1843. Death of her brother, George, by accidental shooting.

    1836-1850. Years of sickness, poverty and struggle.

    1843, July. Birth of her fifth child, Georgiana May.

    1843. Publication of her first book of stories.

    1846-1847. Resort to a sanatorium in Vermont for her health.

    1848, January. Birth of her sixth child, Samuel Charles.

    1849. Cholera epidemic in Cincinnati; death of her youngest
    child.

    1850-1852. Residence of the Stowe family in Brunswick, Maine.
    Professor Stowe at Bowdoin College.

    1850, July. Birth of her seventh child, Charles Edward.

    1850. The Fugitive Slave Law and slavery agitation.

    1850, Mrs. Stowe’s vision of _Uncle Tom’s_ death; writes first
    chapter.

    1851, June-1852, April. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” appears as a serial
    in “National Era.”

    1852, March 10. Publication of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in book form.

    1852-1853. 300,000 copies sold in United States.

    1852, August. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” selling in England at rate of
    1,000 a week.

    1852. Mrs. Stowe in New York aiding escaped slaves.

    1852-1863. Residence of Stowe family in Andover, Mass.
    Professor Stowe in Andover Theological Seminary.

    1853, April-August. Professor and Mrs. Stowe traveling in
    England and Scotland.

    1853, May. Meeting at Stafford House, London. “Address” of
    500,000 English women, and the “shackle-bracelet” presented to
    Harriet Beecher Stowe.

    1855-1856. Harriet Beecher Stowe aiding in the anti-slavery
    campaign in United States.

    1856, July-1857, June. Traveling in England, France and Italy.

    1856, August. Professor and Mrs. Stowe meet Queen Victoria.

    1857, June. Death by drowning of their son, Henry Ellis.

    1859, August-1860, July. Traveling in Switzerland and Italy.

    1861, June. Visits her son’s regiment at Jersey City.

    1862, November. Visit to Washington. The Contraband Dinner.
    Visit to Abraham Lincoln.

    1863, July 11. Battle of Gettysburg. Her son, Fred, struck by a
    fragment of a shell.

    1863-1870. Residence of the Stowe family in Hartford,
    Connecticut.

    1864. Mrs. Stowe becomes an attendant of the Episcopal Church.

    1869-1870. The Lady Byron Defence.

    1867-1886. Spends the winters in Mandarin, Florida.

    1872-1874. Giving public readings from her own works in New
    England and the west.

    1882, June 14. Garden party given by her publishers at the
    residence of ex-Governor and Mrs. Claflin at Newtonville,
    Mass., in honor of her birthday.

    1886. Death of Professor Stowe, of her brother, Henry Ward
    Beecher, and of her daughter, Georgiana May.

    1896, July 1. Death of Harriet Beecher Stowe, aged eighty-five,
    at Hartford, Connecticut.



CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE

      I. THE EARLY HOME OF HARRIET BEECHER STOWE              1

     II. WORK AND PLAY IN THE BEECHER PARSONAGE              16

    III. HARRIET BEECHER’S SCHOOLING                         32

     IV. EDUCATION IN THE HOME                               51

      V. THE BOOKS SHE READ                                  70

     VI. DRAMATIC VENTURES                                   83

    VII. STUDIES AND TEACHERS                                96

   VIII. SOME STEPS FORWARD                                 110

     IX. A PILGRIMAGE                                       122

      X. THE WESTERN HOME                                   133

     XI. THE FOUNDERS OF A SCHOOL                           146

    XII. THE SEMI-COLONS                                    158

   XIII. MRS. STOWE THE HOME-MAKER                          171

    XIV. UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR A WORK                 188

     XV. THE GREAT INSPIRATION                              204

    XVI. “UNCLE TOM’S CABIN” AND ITS INFLUENCE              215

   XVII. WANDERING IN FOREIGN LANDS                         223

  XVIII. A UNIQUE JUBILEE                                   243

    XIX. A VISIT TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN                         258

     XX. WRITING STORIES OF OLD NEW ENGLAND LIFE            274

    XXI. A SERENE OLD AGE                                   294



Harriet Beecher Stowe



CHAPTER I

THE EARLY HOME OF HARRIET BEECHER STOWE


In a little saucer-like valley of the lower Berkshires, where the hills
stand about in a wide circle, lies that most beautiful of Connecticut
villages, Litchfield. Here Harriet Beecher Stowe was born. There was
not a day when she and her brothers and sisters did not run to the
window to see that blue rim of hills, and even when they were grown
into women and men they did not forget the charm of their early home in
the mountains. From the door of the house where they lived there was an
extended view. Here Harriet often stood and looked over to the distant
horizon, where Mt. Tom reared its round, blue head against the sky,
and the Great and Little Ponds gleamed out amid a steel-blue expanse
of distant pine groves. Turning to the west, she saw a rounded height
called Prospect Hill, and many a pensive, wondering hour she sat on
the stone threshold of that doorway, watching the splendor of the
sunsets that burned themselves out beyond that hill. Harriet often said
that her home was at the precise point of the country where the hills
were most inspiring and vivacious, reminding one of the Psalm, “The
little hills rejoice on every side.” Mountains are grand, she thought,
and sometimes even dreary; but these half-grown hills uplift one like
the waves of the sea.

Once when Harriet returned by stage-coach from a visit to her relatives
down in Guilford, she could not restrain her raptures on beholding
her mountains again. As the quaint old coach went lumbering along the
winding road, the keen-eyed little girl leaned out of the window,
peering in every direction, determined to let no bluebird’s flight
escape her and no columbine flower pass unadmired. She took in all the
sweeping bends of the beautiful brown river and watched the curves of
water as they flowed over the shining rocks. After a while the coach
wound up amid hemlock forests whose solemn shadows were all aglow with
pink clouds of blossoming laurel. Presently they entered into great
vistas of mountains whose cloudy, purple heads stretched and veered
around the path like moving forms in a dream. There were the hills
which meant home. Writing about this years afterward, she cried out,
“Can there be anything on earth as beautiful as these mountain rides
in New England?” So she gave to her childhood’s home the name of
Cloudland, and its inheritance of clear air and height and spaciousness
became a part of her nature.

Any one would have loved the quiet village in 1811, the year when
Harriet Beecher was born, with the large Green in the center on which
stood the meeting-house where her honored father, Dr. Lyman Beecher,
preached. From here extended to the four points of the compass the
four spacious avenues, North, South, East, and West Streets, all of
them thickly planted with double rows of fine elm trees, through which
one could see the stately colonial mansions that had been there since
before the days of the Revolution.

These mansions had looked upon many a thrilling scene, for in those
Revolutionary days the town of Litchfield had been a place of great
activity. The direct state road from Boston across to West Point and
thence down the river to the city of New York passed at that time
through the town, making connection with the station for military
stores that were kept there. So on training days there would be
dramatic episodes on the ample Green, while on many a dark night that
great message-bearer, Paul Revere, would ride swiftly and mysteriously
through the town.

In fact, the town of Litchfield, in the days of the Beecher family,
fairly bristled with traditions of that ancient, eventful era. It is
certain that the little Harriet would be told about the time when the
service of war had claimed all the men in the patriotic township of
Litchfield except eight, who were too old or too young to go out and
fight. It must also have been impressed upon her that the women of her
native town shared in an especial degree this lofty patriotism, for
it is related that when the leaden statue of King George was knocked
off its pedestal in Bowling Green, in New York City, the shattered
pieces were conveyed to the military storehouse at Litchfield and there
hidden away. Then when the great need arose, the aristocratic ladies
of Litchfield melted the broken fragments of that rejected statue and
with their own hands molded the lead into bullets. Harriet’s heart
swelled with pride as she heard this story or as she passed the very
house where the lead was molded over or perhaps was shown the precious
memorandum that indicated how many thousand bullets each helper had
made. Litchfield, indeed, a very storehouse of patriotic tradition, was
a fitting home for Harriet Beecher Stowe whose soul was to be a perfect
flame of patriotic feeling by virtue of which she was to perform a
great and permanent work.

In Harriet’s own childhood, too, Litchfield was a very busy place.
There were some forty mills along the streams, not one of which remains
to-day, and there was a famous law school, the first one in America,
and a celebrated school for young ladies. The society in the village
was singularly good; it was a place where piety, intelligence, and
refinement were united. Mrs. Stowe, remembering the history that lay
back of it in Colonial and Revolutionary days, spoke of it as “burning
like live coals with all the fervid activity of an intense, newly
kindled, peculiar and individual life.”

Perhaps one would realize this somewhat better on a Sunday than on a
week day. Then from the fine old residences that adorned the principal
street the families of comfortable means and impressive traditions
proceeded in a dignified manner and solemnly entered the little church.
From the outlying population for miles around came also processions
of wagons, bearing the well-dressed wives, stalwart sons and blooming
daughters of the well-to-do farmers, all punctual as a clock to the
ringing of the second-bell. They were alert-minded, independent people;
it was a highly intelligent audience that gathered to hear Dr. Beecher
expound problems of theology, which his hearers were quite ready to
debate with him if they thought he bent a little too far to the one
side or to the other in some hair-splitting argument.

The parsonage where Dr. Beecher lived, and where seven of his thirteen
children were born, was a roomy edifice that seemed to have been
built by a succession of afterthoughts. It was first a model New
England house, built around a great brick chimney which ran up like
a lighthouse in the center of the square roof; but various bedroom
additions had been gradually made and a new kitchen had been built
on, and out of the kitchen a sinkroom, and out of the sinkroom a
woodhouse, and out of the woodhouse a carriage house, and so on through
a gradually lessening succession of out-buildings, until it might seem
as if the house has been constructed on the model of a telescope. And
besides all this, there were four great attics! What a wonderful house
in which to play tag or blind-man’s bluff!

The house stood at the highest point on North Street in the midst of
a colony of noble elms that gathered about the plain, old-fashioned
parsonage like classic pillars, giving it a grand air of scholarly
retirement. The surroundings of this rambling old house were
delightful. There was the tall well-sweep, and a gate that swung with
a chain and a great stone. From the pantry window could be seen a
whole neighborhood of purple-leaved beets and feathery parsnips; the
gooseberry bushes were rolled up by the fence in billows, and here and
there stood an aristocratic quince tree. Far off in one corner a little
patch penuriously devoted to ornament flamed with marigolds, poppies,
snappers and four-o’clocks. Then there was a little box by itself with
one rose geranium in it, which looked around the garden in a frightened
way, as much a stranger as a French dancing master would be in a Yankee
meeting-house. The little foreigner, however, received delicate
attention at the hands of Harriet’s beauty-loving mother.

But, although the house was a big one, there was not too much room for
the Beecher family. Besides the father and mother, there were, when the
last arrival completed the magic number, thirteen children in all. Then
there was sometimes an aunt, or a grandmother, or a cousin; there were
generally a number of students as boarders, and these, together with
one Rachel and one Zillah, both black, completed the household circle.

Rich in children was this New England family, but not in other wealth.
Economy in the Beecher family was a necessity, but economy was also a
law of New England life. Dr. Beecher in one of his reminiscences tells
of an old parishioner of his who was so steeped in the prevailing
spirit of economy that he boasted of having kept all of his accounts
for thirty years with one quill pen; that he knew exactly how to lean
his arm on the table so as not to take the nap off the sleeve; and how
to set down his foot with the least possible wear to the sole of his
shoe. It stands to reason that when the minister has to deal with such
deacons as this the minister’s wife will turn a dress several times,
and must be forgiven if she requires even the smallest children of
her family to overcast the long seams of the linen sheets and to hem
interminable towels. This is what the little Harriet had to do, and
perhaps it did not cause her any harm.

In spite of this rather narrowed way of living, the children in this
family did not feel poor. Once there was sent from Boston to the
Litchfield parsonage a barrel of dishes embellished with figures which
you could worship without worshiping the image of anything either in
the heaven or upon earth--so Henry said; but the children thought them
the very embodiment of beauty. When the barrel was unpacked, one of
the boys said, “Oh, mother, what rich people we must be to have such
wonderful dishes!” Wealth, it seems, consists more in the way one feels
than in what one really possesses.

An establishment such as this, as any one may see, afforded occupation
for a number of hands. Little Harriet was a great worker. Her brother
wrote that before he was ten years old he had learned to sew, knit,
scour knives, wash dishes, set and clear the table, cut and split
and bring in wood, break tumblers and--earn whippings! There can
be no doubt that his sister next older shared these exercises with
him--except the last! We are not going to believe that Harriet ever
deserved that.

Harriet Beecher said once that work, thrift and industry are the
incessant steam-power of Yankee life; certainly none of her family
seems to have been in any degree scared by the prospect of hard work.
Harriet’s brother Edward makes light of the labor in a very jolly
letter which he sent in 1821 to his stepmother. “And what shall I
say more? Shall I speak of our orchard, from which the gale blew
off apples enough for twenty barrels of cider, and whereon are yet
cider and winter apples without number? Or of our cellar wherein are
barrels small and great, moreover bins, boxes, cupboards, which I have
arranged, having cleansed the cellar with bezom, rake, and wheelbarrow?
Or of our garden, in which were weeds of various kinds, particularly
pig; yea, also beets, carrots, parsnips and potatoes, the like of which
was never seen?”[1] And Dr. Beecher himself, writing to one of the boys
in July, 1819, tells how he has weeded the parsnips and beets, has
planted potatoes in the orchard, plowed the yard and carried out the
stones. With some help he has got out in two days a pile of stones as
big as the salt mountain in Louisiana! After that they set to and tore
down a useless eighty-year-old barn. The garden, he went on to say, was
waving with corn, canteloupes, cabbages and pumpkins. The peas were
some of them big enough to eat but had politely waited for the younger
brethren around them to come to maturity so that they might all have
the pleasure of being eaten together! The raspberries were so thick
that one could not see between them, nor even stick between them a
sharp-pointed knife. “Can you not find out by algebra,” he asks, “how
many there will be?” So he goes on through the list--lettuce, radishes,
pepper-grass, carrots, etc. “The garden gates shut,” he continues, “as
regularly as they open, and no creature can get in except the hens,
which are now about tired of coming, as they are sure to be saluted
quite unexpectedly with a charge of powder, ‘speaking terror from the
gun muzzle.’ Do you know,” he asks his son, “from whom the quotation is
made? Some poet, you perceive.” So the wise father mixed instruction
with gossip and made a game of work.

He was an interesting man, gifted with tremendous enthusiasm and
untiring energy. And he had an individual way of doing things and
a salty wit which can only be described as Beecher-ish. He knew
instinctively just when to praise and when to blame. When he and the
boys were splitting wood and carrying it into the shed, he sometimes
said, “I wish, Harriet, that you were a boy, for, if you had been, you
would have done more than any of them.” Then would Harriet run and
put on a little black coat she had, and work like all possessed to
outdo the others in her enthusiasm. The clever suggestion to Harriet
also glanced sidewise and hit the lagging boys, who then bestirred
themselves until the wood was all split and piled in the woodshed and
the chips swept up. To make the work go faster and more cheerfully,
Dr. Beecher sometimes made the children vie with each other to see who
could tell the most Bible stories, or name the most Bible characters;
or he started a discussion on some theological question, often taking
the weaker or wrong side himself and telling the children what point
to bring forward, saying, the argument is thus and so! Now, if you will
take this position, you will be able to trip me up! So he strengthened
their reasoning powers.

The task done, the reward was a fishing excursion or a nutting party.
Here again the father challenged the children in feats of climbing
the trees and of gathering the nuts. Although not a man of special
physical strength himself, he came from a line celebrated for vigor.
His grandfather had been six feet tall and could easily lift a barrel
of cider and drink from the bung. His father, not quite so tremendous,
had been only strong enough to lift a barrel of cider and toss it
easily into the cart! The descendant of these giant-like men was more
celebrated for his intellectual feats than for his merely physical
exploits. But no Highlanders ever gloried more proudly in the prowess
of their chief than did the Beecher children in that of their father!
The most difficult trees were climbed by the Doctor himself; sometimes
to reach a branch that hung out over the cliff, he endangered his life
to get the fruit. They were certain that no tree grew in so exalted a
place that he could not climb it. Oh, those were great days! At noon a
fire was made and the abundant luncheon was spread on a broad flat rock
around which a white foam of moss made a soft seat. And here again the
father was the hero, for around the fire no companion could be more
jolly than he. It is not strange that the children remembered their
father rather as a playmate than as a stern disciplinarian.

Yet discipline in this home circle there must have been to keep order
in so large and intensely active a family. Aunt Esther sometimes found
a want of subordination among the troops. The very cleverness of the
children made the problem great. For instance, if she told the boys
that they should not be so boisterous, they would be likely to answer
by complaining that she did not also try to keep the girls from being
so girlsterous. And under cover of this witticism the boys would escape
punishment. At one time she wrote to one of the children in a merry
mood, “Your father and mother have been gone a fortnight and the crew
at home are beginning to grow somewhat mutinous, and I am not sure but
I shall be obliged to condemn and hang a half score of them before the
return of your father.” In February, 1822, while Harriet was visiting
her aunt at Guilford, her older sister, Catherine, wrote to her: “We
all want you home very much, but hope you are now where you will learn
to stand and sit straight and hear what people say to you, and sit
still in your chair, and learn to sew and knit well, and be a good girl
in every particular; and if you don’t learn this while you are with
your Aunt Harriet, I am afraid you never will.” Then, to offset this
rather strenuous piece of advice, Catherine, in relenting mood, added,
very much as her father might have done: “Old Puss is very well and
sends his respects to you; and Mr. Black Trip has come out of the barn
to live, and says that if you ever come into the kitchen he will jump
up and lick your hand and pull your frock, just as he serves the rest
of us.” This elder sister of Harriet’s was so full of fun that she was
the life and joy of the house. Writing to their brother Edward in 1819,
she said: “Apropos--last week we interred Tom, Junior, with funeral
honors, by the side of old Tom of happy memory. What a fatal mortality
there is among the cats of the parsonage! Our Harriet is chief mourner
always at their funerals. She has asked for what she calls an ‘epithet’
for the gravestone of Tom, Junior, which I gave as follows:

  “Here died our kit
  Who had a fit,
    And acted queer.
  Shot with a gun,
  Her race is run,
    And she lies here.”

Catherine’s father must have been looking over his daughter’s shoulder
as she wrote this, for he added a postscript saying that, as every man
must eat his pound of dirt, so he supposed every one must write his
quire of nonsense, but that he hoped that soon none but letters so
solid and weighty as to earn their postage would be passing to and fro.
After this Catherine put on still another postscript and said: “Never
mind this, Ned, for Papa loves to laugh as well as any of us, and is
quite as much tickled at nonsense as we are.”

There was, then, a merry side in the life at Litchfield Parsonage.
Catherine wrote at one time, quite seriously, that her little sister
was a very good girl, had been to school all summer and had learned to
read very fluently, and that she had committed to memory twenty-seven
hymns and two long chapters in the Bible; that she had a remarkably
retentive memory and would make a very good scholar. Still, considering
the spirit of fun that races through every book Harriet wrote, we
cannot believe she was always sitting still in a chair, learning to
sew and knit well, and being a good girl in every particular. We think
of her also as having something in her of the fascinating little
_Tina_ in “Oldtown Folks,” one of Mrs. Stowe’s most powerful stories
of New England life. We can even believe it to have been as difficult
in Harriet’s case as it was in _Tina’s_ to get her to go to bed at
the proper hour. As night drew on, the little one’s tongue no doubt
ran on with increasing fluency, and her powers of entertainment waxed
more dazzling. On a drizzling, freezing night when the wind howled
lonesomely around the corners of the house, who could have the heart
to extinguish the candle at exactly eight or even at nine? Then little
Harriet was ballet and opera to the household group, mimicking the dog,
the cat, the hens, and the tom-turkey, or talking and flying about
the room in lively imitation of some member of the family. She stirred
up butter and exclaimed, “Pshaw!” just like one of the grown-ups; she
invented imaginary scenes and conversations and improvised unheard-of
costumes out of strange old things she rummaged out of the garret,
until nine o’clock sounded inexorably from the old family timepiece and
put a stop to the fun for that night.



CHAPTER II

WORK AND PLAY IN THE BEECHER PARSONAGE


In the Beecher household there was naturally a necessity that every one
should be up and doing: Monday, because it was washing day; Tuesday,
because it was ironing day; Wednesday, because it was baking day;
Thursday, because to-morrow was Friday, and so on through the week.
Daily life began at four o’clock in the morning when the tapping of a
pair of imperative heels on the stair and an authoritative rap on the
door dispelled the slumbers of the children. On winter mornings the
door was opened and a lighted candle was set inside. The sleepy eyes of
little girl Harriet could then watch the forest of glittering frostwork
made by her breath as it froze on the threads of the blanket. She saw
rainbow colors on this frostwork, and she then floated off into dreams
and fancies about it which would perhaps end in a doze. Very soon,
however, her cold little fingers managed the fastenings on her own
clothes as well as on those of her little brother, and she was at her
breakfast with the large family circle.

The breakfast! It was not like the five-course banquet we have to-day.
The bread was that black compound of rye and Indian meal which the
economy of New England made the common form because it could be most
easily raised on a hard and stony soil; but Mrs. Stowe in later life
informed all whom it might concern that rye and Indian bread, smoking
hot, together with savory sausage, pork and beans formed a breakfast
fit for a king, if the king had earned it by getting up in a cold
room, washing in ice-water, tumbling through snow-drifts and foddering
cattle. The children in the Beecher home no doubt partook of this form
of nourishment with thorough cheerfulness, dividing their portions with
the dog and the cat of the establishment in a contentment pleasant to
behold.

After breakfast came family prayers. They read the Bible through in
course, without note or comment. At that time the very letter of the
Bible was one of the forces that formed the minds of the children,
since it was for the most part read twice a day in every family of
any pretensions to respectability. It was also used as a reading book
in every common school. If the children understood, well; if not, the
mental stimulant of constant contact with the Book was left to make
what impression it would. It was wonderful to hear the Doctor read the
Bible at family prayers in the morning, for he read it in such an
eager, earnest tone of admiring delight, with such an indescribable
air of intentness and expectancy, as if the Book had just been handed
him out of Heaven! The joy of his soul in every new ray of Heaven’s
glory was manifest to each member of the home circle and had its effect
on the impressionable children so that they could hardly fail to
partake with him of that hunger and thirst after the knowledge of God.
The reading of the chapter was followed by an earnest prayer by Dr.
Beecher, and sometimes by what they called a “concert of prayer,” when
every member of the family would offer an extemporaneous petition, long
or short, according to ability and experience. These sacred hours were
remembered by the children as long as life lasted.

After this ceremony, the first thing to do was to get the children off
to school. It was not a small matter when the list included William
Henry, Edward, Mary Foote, George, Harriet Elizabeth, Henry Ward and
Charles. Later on were added the names of Isabella Holmes, Thomas
Kennicut and James. Now the dinner for each child was packed in a small
splint basket, and after much business was gone through all were away
to Academy or Dame School, according to age and ability. In winter
William and Edward had their sleds--not gayly painted ones from the
emporium as modern boys have, but rude fabrics made on rainy days out
of odds and ends of old sleigh runners and any rough boards that could
be fashioned with saw and hatchet. Such as they were, they served the
Beecher family well, and happy was the day when big brother William or
Edward would take the little sister to school on the sled, drawing her
swiftly over the snow, her little charge, the younger brother, closely
clasped in her arms.

On Sunday mornings strenuous exertions were required, for besides going
through the usual routine, Sunday clothes had to be donned; also, it
was to be made quite certain that the catechism had been successfully
and permanently drilled into the mind of each child. In her account of
the life of her distinguished brother, Henry Ward Beecher, Mrs. Stowe
records an early experience of hers in trying to teach him his grammar,
and if she had equal difficulties in making him learn the catechism,
she certainly had her hands full.

“Now, Henry,” she would say, “_A_ is the indefinite article, you see,
and must be used only with a singular noun. You can say _a man_, but
you can’t say _a men_, can you?”

“Why, yes, I can say Amen, too,” was the ready rejoinder. “Father says
it at the end of his prayers.”

“Come, Henry, now don’t be joking; now decline _he_.”

“Nominative, _he_; possessive, _his_; objective, _him_.”

“Yes,” said the young teacher. “You see, _his_ is possessive. Now you
can say, _his book_, but you cannot say _him book_.”

“Yes, I do say hymn-book, too,” said the incorrigible scholar, with a
quizzical twinkle. Each one of his sallies produced from the teacher a
laugh, which was the victory he wanted.

“But now, Henry, seriously. Just attend to the active and passive
voice. Now _I strike_ is active, you see, because if you strike you do
something. But _I am struck_ is passive, because if you are struck you
don’t do anything, do you?”

“Yes, I do; I strike back again.”

When Harriet was old enough to become the instructor of a frisky pupil
like this she may well have found that the New England Catechism
occasionally brought her to her wit’s end.

The church to which the Beecher children were regularly led was one of
those square, bald structures of which but few have come down to us
from the old times. It was wide, roomy, and of a desolate plainness.
During the long hours of the sermon the youngsters, perched in a row
on a low seat in front of the pulpit, attempted occasionally sundry
small exercises of their own, such as making their handkerchiefs into
rabbits, or exhibiting slyly the apples and gingerbread they had
brought for the Sunday dinner, or pulling the ears of some discreet,
meeting-going dog, who now and then soberly pit-a-patted through
the broad aisle. But woe be to them, says Harriet, if during those
contraband sports they should see the sleek head of the Deacon
dodge up from behind the top of his seat. Instantly all the apples,
gingerbread and handkerchiefs would vanish and the whole row of
children would be seen sitting there with their hands folded looking as
demure as if they understood every word of the sermon and more, too.

Mrs. Stowe says that her book, “Poganuc People,” consists of chapters
taken right out of her own life, and so we may read the name “Harriet”
in the place of “Dolly” all the way through. We may believe, then,
that Harriet was disposed of in all those shorthand methods by which
children were taught to be the least possible trouble. She was told
to come when called, and to do as she was bid without question or
argument, to be quiet in bed at the earliest possible hour of the
night, and, in the presence of her elders, to speak only when spoken
to. All this was a great repression to Harriet, who was by nature a
lively, excitable little thing, bursting with questions that she longed
to ask, and with comments and remarks that she burned to make. Perhaps
it never distinctly occurred to her to murmur at her lot in life, yet
at times she must have sighed over the dreadful insignificance of being
only a little girl in a great family of grown-up people. For even the
brothers nearest her own age were studying at the Academy and spouting
scraps of superior Latin at her to make her stare and wonder at their
learning. They were tearing, noisy, tempestuous boys, good-natured
enough and willing to pet her at intervals, but prompt to suggest that
it was time for her to go to bed when her questions or her gambols
interfered with their evening pleasures.

Moreover, since Harriet was a robust, healthy little creature, she
received none of the petting which a more delicate child might have
claimed. The general course of her experience impressed her with the
mournful conviction that she was always likely to be in the way. But if
she was it was because of her childish curiosity, and of her burning
desire to see and hear all that interested the grown people about her.

At that time there were no amusements especially provided for children,
no children’s books, and no Sunday schools to teach bright little
songs and to give children picnics and presents. It was a grown
people’s world. The toys of the period were so poor and so few that,
in comparison with our modern profusion, they could scarcely be said
to exist. Harriet was, however, not without some home-made toys, and
we are glad to believe that a doll baby, though perhaps only a rag
one, was, in the course of providential events, assigned to little,
human-hearted Harriet Beecher.

We know that Harriet’s older sister Catherine was a master hand at
making dolls. With scissors, needle, paint and other materials she
could make dolls of all sizes, sexes and colors, and surround them
with all sorts of droll contrivances. For instance, she once made a
Queen of Sheba with a gold crown, seated her in a chariot made of half
a pumpkin drawn by four prancing steeds fashioned out of crook-necked
squashes, whose ears and legs she whittled out and fastened securely in
their proper places. Then she manufactured a negro driver and placed
him above with the reins in hand. Her care and artistry were rewarded
by the admiration and amusement of the whole family. It was certainly
worth a great deal to the little Harriet to have a sister like that,
and we believe that the exercise of Catherine’s talents was not wholly
selfish.

In “Poganuc People,” Mrs. Stowe, remembering her own childhood well,
gives to the young heroine a gorgeous wooden doll with staring glass
eyes. This precious treasure was the central point in all _Dolly’s_
arrangements. To this companion _Dolly_ showed her stores of chestnuts
and walnuts, gave jay-bird feathers and bluebird’s wings, and a set of
tea cups made out of the backbone of a codfish. She brushed and curled
the doll’s hair till she took all the curl out of it, and washed all
the paint off its cheeks in her motherly zeal.

Besides her doll and its excellent codfish backbone tea-set--and no one
who has not tried to make them, by the way, can know how beautiful and
delicate such tea cups can be--Harriet had in her earliest play days an
unfailing source of occupation and delight in the gigantic woodpile in
the back yard where the fuel for the season was laid up in long rows
eight or ten feet high. Here was a world of marvels. The child skipped
and sung and climbed among its intricacies, finding and collecting
wonderful treasures, green velvet mosses, little white trees of lichen
that seemed to have tiny apples upon them, fine scarlet cups and
fairy caps. From these materials she constructed miniature landscapes
in which the mosses made the fields, little sprigs of spruce and
ground pine the trees, and bits of broken glass the lakes and rivers,
reflecting the overshadowing banks.

With such delights as these, Harriet was busy, healthy and happy. When
her brothers came home from the Academy in the evening and tossed her
up in their long arms, her laugh rang out gay and loud as if there
were no such thing as disappointment in the world. Sometimes the other
children joined her in the magic field of the woodpile. Then they
made themselves houses, castles and fortresses. They played at giving
parties and entertainments at which the dog and the cat assisted. They
held town meetings also, and had voting days with speeches against the
Democrats. (The word did not mean then what it does now.) They held
religious meetings, too, sung hymns and preached sermons, and on these
occasions Harriet was known to exhort and recite texts of Scripture
with a degree of fervor that seemed to produce a great effect upon her
auditors. Thus the woodpile became a great forum of debate as well as
a studio of art, and Harriet was the first to welcome the time when
its stores should be reinforced at that great event of the year, the
wood-spell.

A wood-spell is an old-fashioned sort of donation party. The pastor
used to be settled with the understanding that he should receive a
certain sum of money as salary, _and his wood_, just as in Easthampton,
Long Island, Dr. Beecher’s first pastorate, one-fourth of the whales
that were stranded on the beach was assigned to the minister as a part
of his yearly payment. In Litchfield a day was set apart in the winter
about the time when the sleighs were running most smoothly over the
pressed snow, and on that day every parishioner was to bring to the
minister a sled-load of wood. This was built up in the back yard of the
parsonage into a mighty woodpile for the year’s use. When Harriet was
five years old, partly because sorrow had visited the Beecher family
that year, and partly because of a quickened religious enthusiasm
throughout the community, the wood-spell of that winter was more
than usually interesting and the number of loads very generous. With
her father’s rejoicing approval, Harriet’s elder sister, Catherine,
now sixteen years old, was allowed to take the whole responsibility
of preparing the banquet for the occasion. This meant a great deal.
Everything in the house must be spick and span; dozens of doughnuts
must be cooked; and, above all, the wood-spell cake must be made.

For nearly a week the kitchen was as busy as an ant-hill. The fat was
prepared to fry the doughnuts, the spices were pounded, the flour was
sifted, the materials for the flips were collected. Catherine was
assisted by eleven-year-old Mary; William, Edward and George split and
brought in an incredible amount of wood for the oven, and the girls sat
all the evening about the kitchen fire stoning raisins, with the best
story-teller in the midst to make the time pass--and she, we are sure,
could have been none other than Harriet.

Then came the baking of the cake. For two days beforehand the fire was
surrounded by a row of earthen jars in which the spicy compound was
rising to the necessary lightness. At exactly the quivering instant for
perfection each loaf was shoved into the little black door of the brick
oven.

At last all the wood-spell loaves came out victorious, while each
helper merrily claimed merit for the baking.

The frying of the doughnuts was also a matter of the greatest delicacy,
requiring experience and the nicest art; but this also was a triumph.
Catherine said, “Were I to tell how many loaves I have put in and taken
out of the oven, and how many bushels of doughnuts I have boiled over
the kitchen fire, I fear my credit for veracity would be endangered.”

Finally all was finished. A mighty cheese was brought; every shelf in
the closet and all the dressers of the kitchen were crowded with the
abundance. The delicious stores of food were indeed a sight to behold,
calling in admiring visitors, and Catherine’s success was a matter of
universal congratulation. But may we not give Harriet some credit,
too? For though her part may have been largely the care of the younger
children, still, without her help, Catherine would not have been free
to do the work.

The auspicious day for the coming of the farmers arrived. It was a
jewel of a morning, one of those sharp, clear, sunny, winter days when
the sleds squeak over the flinty snow and the little icicles, falling
from the trees, tingle along on the glittering crust. The breath of the
slow-pacing oxen steamed up like a rosy cloud in the morning sun and
then fell back condensed in globes of ice on every hair.

All the children were astir early, full of life and vigor. The boys
were at home for the day. There was a holiday at the Academy, for the
teacher had been asked to come over to the minister’s to chat and
tell stories with the farmers and give them high entertainment. There
was enough work for all to do, for the three big boys and for the two
sisters. Besides all the rest, there was little Henry Ward, aged three,
and Charles, aged but one, to be cared for and kept out of mischief.
Eager, lively, little Harriet could take care of herself, and do a
great deal of helping besides.

Pretty soon the first load came squeaking up the village street, and
the boys clapped their hands and shouted, “Hurrah for Heber!” as his
load of magnificent oak, well-bearded with gray moss, came scrunching
into the yard.

“Well, Mr. Atwood,” said the Doctor, “you must have had pretty hard
work on that load; that’s no ordinary oak, I can tell you.”

And now the loads began to arrive thick and fast. Sometimes two and
three, sometimes four and five, came stringing along in unbroken
procession. For every load the minister had an appreciative word,
noticing and commending the especial points, and the farmers
themselves, shrewdest of observers, looked at every pile and gave it
their verdict. The loads were of the best, none of your crooked-stick
makeshifts. Good, straight, shagbark hickory was voted none too good
for the minister.

Before long the yard, street, and the lower rooms of the house were
swarming with cheerful faces. Then Aunt Esther began to cut the first
loaf of wood-spell cake. The flip-irons were taken out of the fire and
thrust into the foaming bowl. The little folks were as busy as bees
in waiting on the kind farmers. They handed around the good things to
eat, the cider and doughnuts, the cheese and the cake. The teacher and
the minister were in the midst of merry chatting circles; their best
stories were told, and roars of laughter resounded.

Meantime such a woodpile was arising in the yard as never before
was seen in ministerial domains! And how fresh and woodsy it smelt!
Harriet eyed it with a view to future plays. There was the black birch
whose flavored bark she prized as a species of confectionery. There
were also gleaming logs of white birch, from the bark of which she
could cut strips for her woodland parchment. Then there were massive
trunks of oak affording veritable worlds of supplies for her woodsy
palette.

And now the sun was going down. The sleds had ceased to come, the
riches of woodland treasure were all in, the whole air was full of a
trembling, rose-colored light. All over the distant landscape there was
not a fence to be seen, nothing but waving hollows of spotless snow,
glowing with the rosy radiance and fading away into purple and lilac
shadows. And the evening stars began to twinkle, one after another,
keen and clear, through the frosty air, as the children all sat
together in triumph on the highest perch of the woodpile.

In the town where the Beechers had their home there were other unique
expressions of social feeling calculated to influence the mind of a
growing child, as for instance, the Fourth of July, the apple bee, and
the sleighing party. But perhaps Thanksgiving Day was the one most
noted in the calendar. When this characteristic Yankee festival came
around there was again an opportunity for the parishioners to show the
grace of generosity toward the minister. In 1818 Dr. Beecher writes to
his son at college: “We had a pleasant Thanksgiving dinner and, they
say, a good sermon. We had presents piled up yesterday at a great
rate. Mr. Henry Wadsworth sent 6 lbs. of butter, 6 lbs. lard, 2 lbs.
Hyson tea, 5 dozen eggs, 8 lbs. sugar, a large pig, a large turkey and
four cheeses. The governor sent a turkey; Mrs. Thompson, do.; and, to
cap it all, Mr. Rogers sent us a turkey!” Under such circumstances as
these it is rather fortunate that the Beecher family had a considerable
number of mouths to be filled.

Again the kitchen was fragrant with the smell of cinnamon, cloves and
allspice which the children were set to pound to a most wearisome
fineness in the great lignum-vitæ mortar. Again there was the stoning
of raisins, the cutting of citron, the slicing of orange-peel. Again
the fire was built up more architecturally than usual and roared
and crackled up the wide chimney, brightening with its radiance the
farthest corner of the ample room. Then a tub of rosy-cheeked apples,
another of golden quinces, and a bushel basket full of cranberries were
set in the midst of the circle of happy children who were being led in
the ways of industry, sorting and cutting, to the tune of the snapping
fire.

But who shall do justice to the dinner? Who shall describe the turkey,
the chicken, with the confusing series of vegetables, the plum puddings
and the endless variety of pies? After dinner the father of the house
conformed to the old Puritan custom by recounting the mercies of God
in his dealings with the family. He recited a sort of family history,
closing with the time-honored text that expressed the hope that as
years went by every member of the house circle might so number his days
as to apply his heart unto wisdom. Then with the national hymn of the
Puritans,

  Let children hear the mighty deeds
    Which God performed of old,

sung to the venerable tune of St. Martin’s, the ceremonies closed.

So it was in the noble old New England days! Amid scenes like this
a child was growing up in whose character love of home and love of
country were to be corner stones.



CHAPTER III

HARRIET BEECHER’S SCHOOLING


Away down West Street in the village of Litchfield was a square pine
building standing at the edge of the highway where no tree gave shade
and no bush or fence took off the cold hard look. In this Dame School,
kept by Ma’am Kilbourne, Harriet Beecher’s school education began.
Before the door in winter was a pile of wood for fuel, and in summer
all the chips of the winter’s wood still lay there outspread upon the
ground. Inside the appearance was even less attractive than without.
The benches were simple slabs with legs. The desks were slabs set up
at an angle; they were cut, hacked, and scratched; each year’s edition
of jack-knife literature overlay its predecessor’s, until in the days
of the Beecher children the desks already possessed carvings two or
three inches deep. But if a child cut a morsel, or stuck in a pin, or
pinched off a splinter, the sharp-eyed little mistress was on hand,
and one look from her eyes was worse than a sliver in the foot, and
one nip from her fingers was equal to the jab of a pin; each boy knew,
for every one of them had tried both. The teacher in this school for
children was a sharp, precise person possessed of many ingenious ways
for fretting little ones. At any rate this was the way one little boy
remembered her, and we may suppose that a little girl would realize
some of her disagreeableness, even so obedient a child as Harriet.

Every morning, then, during both summer and winter little Harriet and
her brother two years younger than herself, reinforced by a hearty
breakfast and a more hearty session of morning prayers at home, and
bearing the precious splint basket that contained their mid-day lunch
of brown bread and apples, trudged down to the place of all-day work
and perhaps of discipline.

Harriet and her brother Henry were inseparable companions. Together
they were hurried off from the house, together they went down the
village street, together they entered the dismal school, subdued for
the moment into quiet. Together they endured the long day and envied
the flies and the birds that could go about so freely. The windows
were so high that they could not see the grassy meadows--only the
tantalizing tops of the trees came above the window ledges, and above
that the far, deep, bounteous, blue sky. There flew the bluebirds;
there went the robins, and there followed the longing thoughts of the
children. Long before they knew what was written in Scripture they
cried out, O that we had the wings of a bird! As for learning, it was
Henry’s opinion in his mature life, that the sum of all they got at
the village school would scarcely cover the first ten letters of the
alphabet. One good, kind, story-telling, Bible-rehearsing aunt at home
with apples and gingerbread premiums was worth all the school ma’ams
that ever stood to see poor little fellows roast in those boy-traps
called district schools! Such an aunt the Beecher children had at home,
and beloved she was!

But that was a boy’s view; and boys’ views of teachers are well known
to be entirely unreliable. Ma’am Kilbourne was highly respected in
the community and her curriculum, though not wide, is known to have
gone very deep. In fact we may say that in her school the character
and influence of the teacher, together with the “New England Primer,”
formed the main body of the instruction.

“Come here and learn your Primer,” the teacher said, and Harriet’s
curly head bent over the little book as she spelled out the words,

  “The cat doth play,
  And after slay.”

“You see the picture?” Her teacher pointed out the right one in its
little square on the page, a wood-cut of the feline musician with
fiddle in hand. Here Henry crowded forward to see, too, and, finding
some great joke in the matter, he nudged and coughed and could not be
made to stand still. The Dame continued:

  “’Tis youth’s delight
  To fly their kite--”

a self-evident truth not needing proof. The next item is more learned.

  “Whales in the sea
  God’s voice obey--”

she pronounced “sea” as “say,” as was the custom in those days;

  “The deluge drowned
  The world around--”

continued these instructions in history and science. Biblical example
was thus enforced for the benefit of Harriet:

  “Young pious Ruth
  Left all for truth;”

and, for Henry’s sake, this:

  “Young Obadias,
  David, Josias,
  All were pious.”

That great New England classic, comprised in a mere booklet, three
by four inches in size, contained also the “Alphabet of Lessons for
Youth,” which Ma’am Kilbourne did not fail to enforce. She taught them
to read from the printed page what they already knew in the better
way--by heart, the immortal prayer, “Now I lay me,” and the hymns,
“Hush, my dear,” and “Give ear, my children,” and other hymns and
prayers. There were also “Moral Precepts for Children in Words of One
Syllable.” They were tedious, but think of the glory of really knowing
them by heart!

          Speak the truth and lie not.
          Live well that you may die well.
          Ill words spread strife.
          Do not be proud.
          Scorn not to be poor.
          Give to them that want.
          Learn to love your book.
              Good children must
  Fear God all day        Love Christ alway
  Parents obey            In secret pray
  No false thing say      Mind little play
  By no sin stray         Make no delay
                In doing good.

These foundation principles, we may be sure, were well rubbed in.

The Dame School was an English inheritance that came with the Puritans
from their home across the Atlantic--such a school as the poets
Cowper and Shenstone have beautifully described in their poetry. In
New England a special exercise for Saturday was added; then the little
ones were required to learn and recite the answers in the Westminster
Assembly’s Shorter Catechism, wherein the profoundest problems of
Calvinism were thoroughly set forth. When Harriet was asked the first
question: “What is the chief end of man?” and was taught to say: “The
chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever,” she
thought the answer difficult. It was long and had words of more than
one syllable in it. She liked far better the Church Catechism that her
grandmother down in Guilford had her study which began simply with
“What is your name?” This was more within her range; it was a good easy
start, and the answer could be shouted out in a voice loud and clear.

Another custom of the New England Dame School was perhaps also an
innovation--that of requiring the children to bring a piece of sewing
from home for the boys and girls to work on at odd moments so that no
precious interval of time might be lost. At recess after the lunch had
been unceremoniously made away with there were long uninteresting towel
seams to be ripped up on one side and sewed down on the other by the
industrious little fingers of Harriet and of her robust and perhaps
rebellious brother, Henry Ward. In these early New England schools,
as in New England life in general, the chief note was industry. Our
heroic ancestors, when they left their comfortable homes in the mother
country and came to this untraveled land, did not include in their
plan a smooth and easy life. Since Harriet belonged to a supremely
self-sacrificing family, she came to share this severe understanding
of life, and her patriotic heart warmly responded to it. Perhaps when
she was a little girl she did not realize that her school provided few
means of healthful enjoyment for the children. But then, on the rare
occasion when one of the children had a treat of nuts and raisins, or a
little cake trimmed with caraway sugar plums to share with the others,
her joy was all the greater because of the rarity of the festival; and
if besides there were added some of those wonderful candies brought
from Boston, heart-shaped and hard as pebbles, but inscribed with
romantic mottoes, why, that was bliss indeed!

From these rather severe foundations Harriet passed on into lessons in
the reading of the Bible and in the “Columbian Orator.” She learned to
write from “set copies,” and to do “sums” from Daboll’s Arithmetic.

Soon the whole company of Beecher boys and girls were together in a
schoolroom which was bare to the point of meanness with a vestibule
where hats and dinner baskets were hung. The heating apparatus was a
big stove whose long black pipe stuck out of the window. But if any
Beecher child complained of want of comfort, his father cut him short
by saying, “Why, when I was a boy the fireplace in the schoolhouse,
though big enough to take in logs of wood cart length and capable of
making heat enough to roast an ox, did not carry the warmth much beyond
the andirons. Only the biggest and smartest boys were able to get near
the fire; the little fellows must do the best they could. I had to take
my ink-bottle to the fire to thaw out the ice in it many times a day.”
In this way he put their complaints to silence.

In New England the boys and girls were educated together in one school.
As Mrs. Stowe said later in life, “If a daughter of Eve wished like
her brother to put forth her hand to the tree of knowledge there was
neither cherubim nor flaming sword to drive her away!” And how they did
study! What industry! What rivalry! In English grammar, for instance,
the school was parceled out into a certain number of divisions,
each under a leader, and at the close of the term there was a great
examination which was like a tournament. It was known that when the
day came, the most difficult specimens of English literature would be
given out for parsing and the most abstruse problems in grammar would
be gathered together for use in the test. For a week the boys and girls
spoke and dreamed of nothing but English grammar, and each division
sat in solemn assembly, afraid lest one of its mighty secrets should
possibly take wing and be plundered by some of the scouts of another
division. In the end the division that could not be puzzled by any
doubtful phrase would be proclaimed victorious and would be crowned
with laurels as glorious as those of the old Olympian games.

In due time Harriet was ready to enter the institution that she was
looking forward to with longing eyes--the Litchfield Female Academy.
This school was one of many seminaries for the higher culture of the
New England daughters, which sprang up throughout the vigorous young
states, and which testify to the enthusiasm for education of our
Puritan fathers. Among them the original Mt. Holyoke Seminary and
the Emma Willard School are perhaps the most noted. Some of these
early schools have developed into strong colleges, and all of them in
their times served a valuable purpose in our educational life. It was
fortunate for the Beecher family that Litchfield contained an academy
of this sort, and here under the training of the cultivated ladies,
Miss Sally and Miss Mary Pierce, Harriet’s education was now conducted.

Miss Sally Pierce was the real head of the school. According to her
picture in Miss Vanderpoel’s delightful book of reminiscences of
the famous school, Miss Pierce was a very handsome woman with eyes
that suggest sensibility, and a mouth that could smile charmingly.
But we suspect also that the little stiff curls might bob warningly
and the lips settle down into a very firm line, while the tall cap
standing up over the brow might strike terror to the heart of any
child doubtful about the correctness of her examples, or nervous lest
a half or a one-tenth of a “miss” should be counted against her. The
truth is, however, that Miss Sally was very much beloved and so greatly
admired that she must have been in danger of vanity. John Pierpont,
a considerable poet in his day and not forgotten now, celebrated her
worth in a passage in his Centennial Poem in 1851. He becomes almost
eloquent.

            Pierce, an honored name!
  Yea, thrice and four times honored,

he cries. Then he contrasts her glories with those of the warrior.

  Bloodless the garland on her temples laid.
  To them, reproachful, no poor widow turns;
  No sister’s heart bleeds, and no mother mourns
  To see them flourish. Ne’er shall they be torn
  From off her honored brows. Long be they worn
  To show the world how a good Teacher’s name
  Out-weighs, in real worth, the proudest warrior’s fame!

The Academy was held in an insignificant house thirty by sixty feet.
There was a small closet at each end, one for the piano and one for
bonnets. There were desks of the plainest pine, long plank benches,
a small table and an elevated chair for the teacher--that was all.
Upon the modest throne sat Miss Sally Pierce, the principal. She
probably resembled Miss Titcomb, in Mrs. Stowe’s novel, “Oldtown
Folks,” a thoroughbred, old-fashioned lady whose views of education
were formed by Miss Hannah More and whose style like Miss Hannah More’s
was profoundly Johnsonian, which means that her ideas were expressed
in very grand and dignified language. The set of rules that she made
for the conduct of her school required of the pupils absolute moral
perfection. It was written there that persons truly polite would
invariably treat their superiors with reverence, their equals with
exact consideration, and their inferiors with condescension. Also,
under the head of manners, they were warned not to consider romping as
indicative of sprightliness or loud laughter as a mark of wit. When
these rules were read to the pupils on a Saturday morning, we can
imagine that there was some suppressed excitement, for these children
with mountain air stirring in their veins were doubtless somewhat given
to romping and loud laughter!

Dr. Beecher, who took a great interest in the school, came nearly every
Saturday and talked with the girls about religious subjects. The young
ladies also attended the church and were expected to report on the
sermons they heard. Besides that, they wrote of their own accord long
outlines of these mild entertainments in their diaries and commonplace
books. Some of these old commonplace books have been preserved and
give testimony to the accurate attention of these girls of old New
England. Said one: “Dr. Beecher visited the school. I was very much
pleased; his doctrine is plain and easy to understand.” Another, after
hearing him both morning and evening and stating the chapter and
verse used on each occasion, went home and went to her room thinking
seriously of what he had said. “He wished,” she said, “to have us all
be good Christians!” The same good child once had an afternoon holiday,
but came to school just the same. She was rewarded by being present
when, at about sunset, Dr. Beecher “came down to see us. He talked very
affecting,” she said. “He said he could not make a very long visit with
us at present, but if we wished he would come in some time and pray
with us. We all joined in the request. I should be very glad to have
him come, for I like to hear religious instruction.”

Another girl wrote: “He said that we must repent and believe and
explained how we should repent and believe, but my memory is so poor
that I cannot remember it.”

An unusually independent young mind conceived the following critical
passage: “Mr. Beecher preached a very good sermon quite as good as he
usually does, though I do not think he is one of the best preachers.”
Here is the record of one Saturday’s exercise: “Dr. Beecher came in and
gave us a lecture on the first question in the catechism. ‘What is the
chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ He said that
in order to glorify God we must love Him and become acquainted with Him
and likewise endeavor to acquaint our companions with His goodness, as
we would if we had a friend at home who was very amiable, and tell our
companions how amiable she is. It would be glorifying her.”

Thus the great preacher made his influence felt as the adviser and
helper of Miss Pierce and of her girls. Mrs. Beecher, too, though
the most shy and retiring of women, acted, with other ladies of the
village, on the committee for awarding prizes at the end of the term.

When the middle of June came there were important exercises, and
on this occasion all was dignity and decorum. A long procession of
schoolgirls came marching down North Street, walking under the lofty
elms to the music of the flute and flageolet. The girls were gaily
dressed and in the most joyous spirits. At the church each proud
graduate received her diploma, a document printed elegantly upon white
satin and bound with blue ribbon. Upon the refined surface was a
beautiful picture, representing a lofty hill, on the top of which was
a temple surrounded by rays of light. A clearly marked but steep and
difficult path led up the side of this mountain. At the foot stood a
lady who reached out her arm and pointed with a meaning finger to a
bulky geographical globe that rested upon a pile of books. She seemed
to say that only by means of most severe study would you be able to
climb this hill to the radiant temple of learning. The meaning of the
picture was well understood by the young graduate. Above the design
amid the most wonderful flourishes of penmanship was inscribed the
title “Litchfield Female Academy,” and below were printed the words:

  Miss ---- ----

    has completed with honor the prescribed course of
    study--Grammar, Geography, History, Arithmetic, Rhetoric,
    Natural and Moral Philosophy, Chemistry, Logic, and the
    Principles of Taste.

Several of these little diplomas, now yellowed with age, are preserved
in the Town Museum at Litchfield. I do not know that Harriet Beecher
came into possession of one of them; she probably went away to be a
teacher herself before she reached that point.

We learn, however, from this little certificate what was the course
of study in the Litchfield Female Academy. But no such list of titles
can give us any real idea of what the days at the Academy meant to
Harriet. Miss Pierce was a woman of great ability. She herself had made
an “Abridgment of Universal History” in four volumes which was used
as a text-book in her school; and after plodding through this ample
work the students followed it by Russell’s “Modern Europe,” Coot’s
“Continuation,” and Ramsey’s “American Revolution,” and accompanied the
study with map-drawing. They made historical charts in which the names
of kings and queens were set in little sequins strung along a “riband”
or skein of sky-blue silk. Within the charmed enclosure of this design
were the royal genealogical patterns from Saxon to Brunswick with
roses of red and of white appropriately interspersed. Nothing could be
clearer. Mrs. Stowe thought so much of Miss Pierce’s method that when
she had her own little family to bring up she wrote to ask Miss Pierce
for a copy of the book she had used in childhood from which to instruct
her children.

In Miss Pierce’s school Harriet Beecher laid the foundations for her
understanding of the history and principles of our national government
which in due time made it possible for her to write the biographies of
a number of our most distinguished statesmen, and to talk with Abraham
Lincoln in 1862 with some comprehension of his problems.

Harriet must have been a brilliant little student. Writing
compositions, which is such a burden to most young scholars, she seems
to have found only a delight. To this work she must have been trained
from her earliest days, for her mother had always maintained a sort
of home school in the family; and when Dr. Beecher was off on some
ministerial quest he did not fail to send home on time the lists of
composition subjects and outlines that he had agreed to arrange for
Mrs. Beecher to use in her work with these pupils. Here are some of
the subjects: The Difference between the Natural and Moral Sublime,
The Comparative Merits of Milton and Shakespeare, The Comparative
Merits of the Athenian and Lacedaemonian Systems of Education, and, Can
the Benevolence of Deity be Proved by the Light of Nature? Profound
subjects! But when the young people were sharpening up their wits on
such whetstones as these, it is not so strange that a little girl of
twelve, who was filled with the spirit of aspiration and fired with
curiosity about everything in the universe, should try her pen at the
most difficult among them.

Her question was phrased in this way: Can the Immortality of the Soul
Be Proved by the Light of Nature? And her essay, when handed in, was
thought to be quite wonderful. And indeed it was wonderful; for even
if the ideas were overheard by her in the classes of older pupils or
in the table talk of her father at home, to set them down in order and
arrange them effectively was a great achievement. This precious essay
has been preserved and is reproduced in full in the “Life of Mrs.
Stowe,” by her son, published in 1889. The learned subject is treated
in the most systematic manner; the introduction, the point of view and
arrangement of thought under separate heads.

The exhibition day came. The hall was crowded with all the literati
of Litchfield. Before this distinguished audience all the compositions
were read aloud. Harriet’s father was present and was sitting on
high by the side of the teacher. When they read Harriet’s piece she
was closely watching her father’s face, and she saw that it visibly
brightened. He looked really interested, and at the close she heard
him say, “Who wrote that composition?” “Your daughter, sir.” was the
answer. It was the proudest moment of Harriet’s life. She could not
mistake the expression of her father’s face when he was listening to
the essay; she knew that he was pleased, and to have him interested was
the greatest triumph that her heart could ask.

The teacher that answered Dr. Beecher was a nephew of Miss Pierce,
Mr. J. P. Brace, who assisted her in the work of the school. He must
have been one of those strong and spicy old New England schoolmasters
that Mrs. Stone speaks of in “Men of Our Times.” A well-informed and
cultivated man, a writer of romances himself, and especially gifted in
conversational power, he must have been a stimulating and inspiring
instructor. An enthusiast in botany, mineralogy, and the natural
sciences generally, he filled the students with an enthusiasm that
made gathering specimens and making herbariums an easy task. He kept
up a constant conversation on a great variety of subjects, better
calculated to develop the mind and to inspire love of literature than
any mere routine could have been. Harriet afterward declared that she
gained more from hearing the recitations and discussions in the classes
of the older pupils than from her own work. There from hour to hour
she listened with eager ears to historical criticisms and discussion
of such works as Paley’s “Moral Philosophy,” Blair’s “Rhetoric,” and
Alison on “Taste.”

In composition Mr. Brace excelled all teachers she ever knew. The
constant interest that he aroused in the minds of his pupils, the wide
and varied regions of thought into which he led them, formed a perfect
preparation for their work in composition. He made them feel that they
had something which they wanted to say, and this is the main requisite
for success in writing.

Those were very busy, happy days for Harriet, probably the days she
had in mind when she wrote in “Oldtown Folks”: “Certainly of all the
days that I look back upon, this Academy life in Cloudland was the
most perfectly happy.... It was happy because we were in the first
flush of belief in ourselves and in life. Oh, that first belief!
those incredible first visions! when all things look possible, and
one believes in the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and sees
enchanted palaces in the sunset clouds! What faith we had in one
another, and how wonderful we were in one another’s eyes!... We
believed that we had secrets of happiness and progress known only to
ourselves. We had full faith in one another’s destiny; we were all
remarkable people and destined to do great things!”



CHAPTER IV

EDUCATION IN THE HOME


The account of Harriet’s education may sound somewhat meager to those
who do not look beneath the surface. But it must be remembered that her
own family formed an educational institution in itself. New England was
celebrated, as Mrs. Stowe afterwards said, for “crisp originalities
of character.” And even against this background the Beecher family
stood out as a “sharp-cut and peculiar set.” These highly individual
qualities in her parents and in her brothers and sisters made a
constant current of life beneath the roof of the Beecher parsonage. It
was an education to hear her father discuss things, whether at dinner
or at wood-sawing or on a picnic; for he was like a high-mettled horse
in a pasture, as Mrs. Stowe said of one of her characters in her novel,
“My Wife and I”; he enjoyed once in a while having a free argumentative
race all round the theological lot. But this discussion was by no means
left to the leader alone; all the children were expected to take
part. The home circle thus became a great lyceum of thought. The rule
of these debates was that each one should contribute his thought and
bear his part with boldness, independence and originality. In this way
the father trained the children in toughness, tenacity and endurance.
Harriet’s father would have disowned any child that refrained in
fair argument from putting forth every atom of logical strength he
possessed. Every boy was expected, in supporting his opinions, to exert
himself to the utmost, but without sophistry or unfairness. Against
a refusal to argue or a resort to evasion or trick, the father’s
anger burned like fire. And no child was allowed to find fault if his
arguments were roughly handled, or to grumble and get angry if he were
bruised or floored in fair debate. A stranger looking upon some hotly
contested discussion might have said that the doctor and his children
were angry with each other. Never! They were only in earnest. Moreover,
the great household was filled with a spirit of active service, carried
out with cheerfulness and even hilarity. Or if perchance the will for
obedience deflected a little from perfection, the father’s sharp call,
“Mind your mother. Quick! No crying! Look pleasant!” was sufficient to
bring stragglers into line at once.

The work and plans and interests of the household went on like a
great well-balanced machine, in which one little cog, that good child
Harriet, was taking its part according to its ability. Harriet was
also getting ready to perform a greater part, for all these home
experiences were turning in a direction that gave her a special
preparation for her life-work.

At this time Harriet’s older sister, Catherine, was considered by far
the more promising daughter. She did become a most efficient woman, who
wrote a long list of educational books and who had a great influence
on the schools of her time throughout the country. When Harriet was
in the early teens, however, Catherine was simply a brilliant young
woman, efficient, sparkling and full of life. She caused a breath of
mirth to flow through the home every minute, even the stern father
being indulgent toward her pranks and jokes. She made every occurrence
the subject of a bit of composition in prose or in verse, like the
“epithet” for the kit. Everything was turned into literary expression;
the disappearance of a favorite calf inspired a threnody; if a precious
brown-edged platter was smashed, an epic poem was forthwith composed;
if a marriage took place among the cousins, a ballad appeared into
which the names of all the guests were woven and which was learned by
heart by every one and was quoted for months.

In such an atmosphere as this it is not strange that the bent of
Harriet’s mind toward writing should have been strengthened. The wonder
is not that she developed in that direction, but that she did not
begin to write even earlier than she did. We shall see that the reasons
for that were sufficient.

A great deal has been said about Harriet’s father, but her mother must
have a special word also. It could be said of her, as it has been of
another ideal woman of history, that to know her was in itself an
education. Roxana Foote Beecher belonged to the old Guilford Foote
family, so conspicuous for intellectual and social attainments in
the early New England days. One of Harriet’s sisters, in writing to
her daughter of the Foote homestead at Nut Plains near Guilford,
said: “These Footes are a people by themselves in their literary
accomplishments, their good sense and fine breeding. Their homestead
almost talks to you from its very walls of the days gone by. I never
felt more sure of spirit companionship of the highest order, and your
father thinks few parlors in all the land have gathered a more noble
company. The place is full of rich and inspiring associations.”

In this Foote family there were traditions that must have been
especially inspiring to a child like Harriet Beecher. One of the
stories centered about a young girl named Lucinda Foote, who was born
in Chester, Connecticut, only a few years before Roxana Beecher’s time.
She displayed great taste for study and attained a distinction that
not many other girls of her time gained. She was the daughter of the
Reverend John Foote, the minister in Chester, a man distinguished for
his scholarship.

Little Lucinda Foote studied the “learned languages,” as they were
called, that is, Latin and Greek, and when she was only twelve years
old she was examined in them by the President of Yale College, the
great Ezra Stiles. He testified in a parchment which is one of the
precious treasures among her descendants that she had shown commendable
progress in these studies, giving the meaning of passages in the
Æneid of Virgil, the select Orations of Cicero and also in the Greek
Testament, and that she was “fully qualified except in regard to sex
to be received as a pupil in the freshman class in Yale University.”
It may satisfy a natural curiosity to add that this child afterwards
privately pursued a full collegiate course, including Hebrew, under
President Stiles; was married at the age of eighteen; had ten children
and lived to be sixty-two years old! In fact, as the elderly Mrs.
Cornwall, wife of the physician in Chester, Harriet Beecher may
possibly have seen her as she passed through the village in the stage
coach on her way to visit her aunts in Guilford.

The traditions of this highly intellectual family were carried
on excellently by Roxana Foote. Even in her girlhood, when the
spinning-wheel was her daily companion, it was a habit of hers to adorn
one end of the wheel beam with the pile of fleecy rolls ready for the
spinning and then to lay on the other end an open book which, with
its face down, waited for the minute when her conscience would allow
her to leave her work and pore for a while over its pages. Roxana’s
grandfather, General Ward, used to tell a story about his three
granddaughters. He said that when the three girls came down in the
morning Harriet Ward’s voice would be heard briskly calling, “Here!
take the broom; sweep up; make a fire; make haste!” Betsy Chittenden
would say, “I wonder what ribbon it’s best to wear at that party?” But
Roxana Foote would say, “Which do you think was the greater general,
Hannibal or Alexander?”

Roxana took advantage of every opportunity for culture. From a French
gentleman who, after the massacres at San Domingo had taken refuge in
this country and settled in Guilford, she learned French and became
able to speak it fluently. He lent her the best French authors, which
she studied as she spun flax, tying the book, face forward, to the
distaff. She had a brother who went into business in New York; while
visiting him she studied drawing and painting with water colors and
in oils; afterwards when any problem in perspective puzzled her she
flew to the encyclopedia and was not content till she had overcome the
difficulty. She was highly gifted in artistic execution of many kinds.
She painted miniature portraits upon ivory for various members of her
family and for her pupils and rarely failed to get a good likeness.
Her needlework was a marvel in its delicacy and complexity; bobbin
lace and cobweb stitch like hers have now passed out of memory. The
house was full of works of ingenuity devised by her which adorned wall
and furniture and drapery. Her famous Russian stove, made with the aid
of a mason from the description in her encyclopedia, warmed six rooms
with less fuel than many of her neighbors used for a single fire.
In fact, the second Mrs. Beecher declared that this wonderful stove
entirely annihilated the winter indoors.

Under her mother’s guidance, Catherine, at about fourteen, decorated
with landscapes a new chamber set of beautiful white wood, the bureau,
dressing-table, candlestand, washstand and bedstead. She surrounded
the pictures with garlands of flowers and fruits, and then varnished
them according to a recipe in the same encyclopedia. Once Dr. Beecher
sent home a whole bale of cotton which he bought just because it was
cheap. Roxana found a use for this commodity. She conceived the idea
of making a carpet of it--a thing unheard of in the little Long Island
town where they began their housekeeping together. In that primitive
place they still covered their floors with sand dampened and smoothed
over, marking this smooth surface with the broom in zig-zag lines if
they wanted decoration. But Mrs. Beecher’s artistic mind took a higher
flight. She carded and spun the bale of cotton, had it woven, cut and
sewed it to fit the parlor, and then stretched it on the garret floor
to begin the operations. Here she brushed it over with thin paste to
make a stiff foundation. Meantime she had sent to her brother in New
York for paints and had learned from the invaluable encyclopedia how to
use them. She painted flowers and leaves in groups on this background,
taking for models the plants in her own garden. The carpet, when it
was done, was the admiration of the whole town, but the deacons, when
they came to the door, did not dare to step on anything so splendid;
they also thought it a sin to make the room so magnificent that the
splendors of Heaven would lose their attractiveness! “Do you think,”
said one of them, “that you can have all of this and Heaven besides?”

It is difficult to say what her chief interests were, she was so full
of activities. She loved works on philosophy and on science, and was
ingenious in making devices for experiments in natural philosophy. She
was intensely interested in all the new books of poetry. Writing to
her sailor brother Samuel, she besought him to come up to Litchfield
to visit them. “Just pack yourself into the chaise,” she said, “and
come up here and see how pleasant it is in winter. You might fancy
yourself at sea now and then when we have a brisk breeze, with the help
of a little imagination. You might find sundry other things to amuse
you. I have a new philosophical work you may study and some new poems
you may read.” This was in November, 1814, when Harriet was two years
old; while her mother was writing Harriet was clinging about her neck
praying her to stop writing and make her a doll baby!

Mrs. Beecher was modest and retiring in the highest degree, so that she
could not speak with a stranger or a guest without having the beautiful
color sweep over her face; and she was so shy that she could never
lead the weekly “female prayer-meeting”; yet she had so much tact that
she never angered her impetuous husband, and she was the life and the
center of the Beecher home.

But details like these, after all, give us very little insight into her
real character. We may perhaps judge what sort of woman she was by the
influence she had upon her children.

From what Harriet said of her we can see that she must have been the
very quintessence of womanliness, of motherliness. Harriet said:
“Mother was one of those strong, restful, yet widely sympathetic
natures, in whom all around seemed to find comfort and repose. She was
of a temperament peculiarly restful and peace-giving. Her union of
spirit with God, unruffled and unbroken even from very early childhood,
seemed to impart to her an equilibrium and healthful placidity that
no earthly reverses ever disturbed.” In almost every book that Mrs.
Stowe wrote she pays tribute to her mother in her pictures of motherly
feeling. All the mother influence upon St. Clair in “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin” is Harriet’s offering upon the altar of her own mother’s memory.

Harriet’s brother, Henry Ward Beecher, said that the loss of his mother
was like a cheating of his heart’s best possession. All his life long
he felt that there was a moral power in his memory of her--one of those
invisible blessings that faith comprehends, but that cannot be weighed
or estimated.

We may come a little nearer yet to an understanding of Roxana Foote’s
character if we take a quotation from one of her letters written to
Dr. Beecher before their marriage. Old-time love-letters were of a
more serious kind than those of to-day. When the prevailing thought
of a time dwelt upon religious questions it was but natural that the
spiritual condition of the one beloved should be of the deepest concern
to the lover. With such a thought we may read this passage which is
given as a light upon the inner impulses and character of Harriet’s
mother.

Roxana’s lover had, it seems, asked her certain perplexing questions
as to her religious experience. In answer she said: “You ask, when I
feel a degree of joy, whether it arises from anything I perceive in
the character of God that charms me, or from anything that I perceive
in myself that I think will charm God? I think the former.... In
contemplating the character of God, His mercy and goodness are most
present to my mind, and as it were swallow up His other attributes.
The overflowing goodness that has created multitudes of human beings
that He might communicate to them a part of His happiness, and which
openeth His hand and filleth all things with plenteousness, I can
contemplate with delight.... I can not now describe what have been my
feelings before, but on Sunday night I experienced emotions which I can
find no language to describe. I seemed carried to Heaven and thought
that neither height nor depth nor things present, nor things to come,
should be able to separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ
Jesus. Yet, if I feel a degree of joy, I fear to indulge it and tremble
at every emotion of pleasure. Last night I was almost in Heaven, but
sunk to earth again by fears that I should rejoice without cause, but
when I prayed my fears seemed to remove.”[2]

When we read such a love-letter as this we can a little understand how
every son of that mother should become a notable minister of the Gospel
and each daughter a source of wide influence for good.

It is also a matter beyond dispute that a mother with such tastes
and accomplishments as Mrs. Beecher possessed would see to it that
the education of her daughters on the artistic side should not be
neglected. And in fact there was need--at any rate we should think
so to-day. In the Litchfield Female Academy there was indeed some
instruction in art. Painting, embroidery and the piano were at that
time considered the essential things in the proper education of a young
lady. The description that _Aurora Leigh_ gives of the instruction she
received at the hands of her English aunts in the first book of Mrs.
Browning’s great poem, “Aurora Leigh,” belongs to about the same period
and will be considered sufficiently laughable by the girls of to-day.
Ideas in New England were not very different from these. In the Academy
in Litchfield they painted flowers that were delicate and stiff; they
worked samplers and coats of arms in chenille and floss; pastoral
pieces were in great favor, representing fair young shepherdesses
sitting with crooks in their hands on green chenille banks, tending
animals of uncertain description which were to be received by faith
as sheep. There were mourning pieces with a willow tree by a family
monument and weeping mourners with faces artfully concealed by flowing
pocket-handkerchiefs. The sweet confiding innocence, said Mrs. Stowe
with gentle irony in “Oldtown Folks,” which regarded the making of
objects like these as more suited to the tender female character than
the pursuit of Latin and mathematics was characteristic of the ancient
régime. Did not Penelope embroider, and all sorts of princesses,
ancient and modern? And was not embroidery a true feminine grace?[3]
We may well doubt if Harriet took much interest in these beasts of
floss and chenille and probably preferred, as we should think she
would, her childhood landscapes of gray and brown mosses. But when she
was older and could follow her home instruction in painting she gained
a skill that made sketching landscapes and other work in water color a
resource to her all her life.

In music, too, Harriet was not without opportunities for culture. Her
mother, Roxana, played the guitar from her girlhood. Her father was
devoted to the violin which always lay near him in the attic study to
be taken up whenever the strain of his work made him feel the need of
relaxation. Under the influence of such parents it is not strange that
every member of the Beecher family began singing at a very early age.
One of Harriet’s sisters said that she learned to read music by note
as soon as she learned to read print. Dr. Beecher must have had the
soul of music within him. He once said that if he could play what he
heard inside his soul he would beat Paganini. But not being able to do
that he had to content himself with “Merrily O” and other melodies of
a simple sort. But whatever he may have lacked in execution he managed
at every church he served as minister to infuse into the singing a
portion of his own buoyant enthusiasm. In earlier days the Puritan
singing had been of a plaintive and minor kind. Lyman Beecher called
forth a song of a bolder, livelier, more triumphant character, and
uniting his endeavors with those of Lowell Mason, the great leader in
later New England hymnology, he worked a great change in the psalmody
of his country.

We do not think of the New England meeting-house as being the home of
music, but to Harriet Beecher the singing in the Sabbath service must
have meant a great deal. The Puritan music, with its solemn undertone
of deep emotion, had a mysterious power over her. When the “wild
warble” of “St. Martin’s,” which ran like this:

[Music: St. Martin’s]

or “China” with its weird yet majestic movement of which this first
line may remind us:

[Music: China]

when these old beloved tunes swelled and reverberated through the
church they expressed to her a solemn assurance of victory. In the old
fuguing tunes, too, there was a wild freedom and energy of motion that
came from the heart of a people who had been courageous in combat and
unshaken in endurance. They were like the ocean when it is aroused by
stormy winds when deep calleth unto deep in tempestuous confusion, from
which at last is evolved peace and harmony. Whatever a trained musician
might say of such a tune as old “Majesty,” no person of imagination and
sensibility could ever hear it well rendered by a large choir without
deep emotion. So thought Harriet; and when back and forth from every
side of the church came the different parts shouting

  On cherubim and seraphim,
    Full royally He rode,
  And on the wings of mighty winds,
    Came flying all abroad,

there was at least one young heart in the audience that could scarcely
contain its rapture and that held itself quite still until the tempest
sank away to peace in the words:

  He sat serene upon the floods,
    Their fury to restrain,
  And He, as sovereign Lord and King,
    Forevermore shall reign.

Stirred to the depths by songs such as this on Sunday, Harriet came
home to a family that were making the rafters ring with music all
the week. A fine-toned upright piano, which some lucky accident had
brought within the means of the poor minister, had been early brought
all the way from New Haven; Harriet said that never was ark of the
covenant brought into the tabernacle with such gladness as when this
magical instrument came into their abode. Then indeed was the house
filled with music. Catherine and Harriet had regular instruction from a
charming and beautiful performer. Edward and William learned to play on
the flute. Dr. Beecher brought out his fiddle, and many evenings were
given to concerts in which piano, violin, flute and voice united, and
Scotch ballads and hymns and chorals resounded through the house.

Sunday evening was a particularly pleasant time in the Beecher home.
Something of the old law about Sunday observance ending at sundown
still held in New England. And when the boys, who were closely
watching, had at last seen the required three stars come out--why, that
decided the matter; it was really evening, the Sabbath was over, and
playing could now begin without making their consciences prick. When
the preaching was done for the day, Dr. Beecher would join the family,
and music would be in order. Never was the father so entertaining as
at this time. He was lively, sparkling, jocose. He got out the old
yellow music book and his faithful friend, the violin, and played
“Auld Lang Syne,” “Bonnie Doon,” “Mary’s Dream” and other favorites.
On week day evenings a concert like this ended with “Money Musk” and
“College Hornpipe,” and perhaps after the mother had gone to bed the
father would exhibit the wonders of a double shuffle remembered from
the corn-huskings of his youth; but it is said that the results on the
feet of his stockings made the female authorities frown on them to such
a degree that after a while the exhibition became a rare treat.

But there were other ways in which the high spirits of this sometimes
frisky parent amused the family. For instance, in pursuance of a
sort of dare the musical father went through the house before the
housekeeper was up, energetically playing “Yankee Doodle.” At another
time when he was tired of theological study he began to play the fiddle
under the schoolroom (in the days when they had a school in the home),
much to the delight of the pupils; but the mother came downstairs, took
the instrument gently from his hands, carried it upstairs, and laid it
on the desk in the schoolroom. This closed that incident and gave us an
example of the mother’s tact in managing a rather difficult situation.

But not to dwell upon the jocose side of things which kept the life in
the Beecher home from becoming too serious and dull for the welfare of
a company of little ones who were full of activity that needed outlet,
it is plain that there were many broadening educative influences about
Harriet Beecher in her own immediate home.

These were also supplemented by others of a still wider character. When
Harriet stayed at the Foote homestead in Nut Plains down near Guilford
she slept in a bed that was hung with curtains of printed India linen
on which bloomed strange mammoth plants with endless convolutions of
branches in whose hollows appeared Chinese summer houses adorned with
countless bells which gay Chinese attendants were ever in the act of
ringing with a hammer. There were also sleepy-looking mandarins, and
birds bigger than the mandarins. Drowsy little girl Harriet wondered
why the bells did not ring when struck, and why the mandarins never
came out of their summer houses.

These Oriental treasures were brought by a famous sea-faring uncle
of Harriet’s, Uncle Samuel Foote. He had been a sailor at sixteen, a
commander of a ship at twenty-one. And he, of course, was Harriet’s
hero of romance. He it was that brought the frankincense from Spain,
the mementos of the Alhambra and of the ancient Moors. He sent mats and
baskets, almonds and raisins from Mogadore, Oriental caps and slippers,
South American ingots of silver and hammocks wrought by the Southern
Indian tribes. And when he came speaking French and Spanish and full
of the very atmosphere of a great and wonderful world that lay beyond
the rims of the mountains, what stories of adventure the children
could hear! What discussions about the respective value of Turk and
Christian! What keen observations upon all life everywhere!

And this uncle always brought a box of books, the newest thing,
the latest. He it was that sent up into the hills the wonderful
“Salmagundi” of Irving the minute it was printed. He kept track of
everything that Roxana might desire and saw to it that she received the
last word in philosophy, art and poetry.

Still other opportunities were given to the acutely observing little
girl to know the great outside world, its interests, its burdens. There
was, for instance, Aunt Mary Hubbard who, returning from San Domingo,
opened a vista into a life full of romance and tragedy. This admired
aunt braids strangely into the pattern of Harriet’s life, as we shall
see in a later chapter. Then Harriet’s father was always off for some
tour of theological interest, bringing back a refreshing atmosphere
of the outside world. We must also remember that Litchfield was full
of young men who came to attend the Law School and who made the town
more or less breezy. Among them was a French count who remembered the
Beecher family to his latest days. These students and the young ladies
of the Academy came from all parts of the country, each adding to the
enlargement of life that such a collection of personalities always
brings.



CHAPTER V

THE BOOKS SHE READ


It was not a retired and quiet life that Harriet lived during her most
formative years. She was on an intellectual highway and at a crossroads
where many influences of the richest inspiration were felt.

The town attracted fine and interesting people from everywhere; and
from all of them she was receiving liberalizing influences that were
helping to make of her the great woman that she afterwards became.

In such a home circle as that of the Beechers, books were the very
breath of life. From 1799, when Lyman Beecher and Roxana Foote were
married, they had taken the _Christian Observer_, a paper conducted by
Macaulay, Wilberforce and Hannah More, and they had always procured as
many books as they could afford of those that were mentioned in that
paper. A valuable encyclopedia came to the household as a gift from an
English gentleman whose daughters had boarded with the family. This
bulky and useful work was not, as is often the case in our day when the
public library is just around the corner, left to fall to pieces on
the dusty shelf, but it was made a constant source of reference in all
their lively discussions.

It may be thought that Harriet would have a constant resource in her
father’s library. This attic study did indeed afford her a harbor, but
his tastes and necessities were naturally for theological works and
the walls of his room were fairly choked with tall volumes for his own
use. Searching through such a library as this Harriet’s despairing
and hungry glances found only such titles as these: Bell’s “Sermons,”
Bogue’s “Essays,” Monnet’s “Inquiries,” Toplady on “Predestination,”
Housley’s “Tracts”--not such books as would do much toward feeding the
beauty-loving instinct of a gifted child.

One of the heroines in a book written by her when she was a woman is
described in this way: “She was well-read, well-bred, high-minded,
high-principled, a little inclined to be ultra-romantic, maybe.” We may
surely think of Harriet as fitting this definition, even including the
romantic inclination--that is, she was fond of stories of adventure,
and was full of high feelings and enthusiasms. It would not be strange
if the story-loving side of her nature bloomed a little shyly, since it
had been almost starved. But it could not die.

This spirit of lofty enthusiasm is illustrated by what she felt when
as a little girl she first heard the Declaration of Independence read.
She had but a vague idea of what it meant, but she gathered enough from
the recital of the abuses and injuries that had driven her nation to
revolt to feel herself swelling with indignation and ready with all
her little mind and strength to applaud what seemed the resounding
majesty of the Declaration. She was as ready as any one to pledge her
life, fortune and sacred honor for such a cause. The heroic element
was strong in her. It had come down from a line of Puritan ancestors;
when the little girl heard that document read the spirit of her father
swelled her little frame and brightened her cheeks and made her long
to do something, she scarce knew what, to fight for her country or
to make some declaration on her own account. This spirited child
needed food for the imagination and fancy. She needed contact with the
genius-lighted minds of the past. She had the power to assimilate a
great amount of intellectual food, and she was hungry for it.

The first satisfaction she had for her intense longing for what she
would call interesting reading was in the “Pilgrim’s Progress” of
Bunyan. We know how deeply this sank into her heart from the fact that
in the books she wrote she often illuminates her thought by some apt
illustration from the Pilgrim’s adventures. That her mind began very
early to be haunted by those memories of the Pilgrim we know from one
story about her youth.

It is related that sometimes when she was prowling about in the back
attic she would timidly open a little door that she found in the
side of the chimney and would peer into the dark abyss that yawned
within. Looking into that smoky and fearsome place, she was reminded
of the door that the Pilgrim found in the walls of a certain valley,
an opening which was the way that hypocrites go in at, whence issued
the scent of brimstone together with a rumbling noise as of fire. As
this thought came to Harriet she would shut to the little door in the
chimney with a bang and run away to a more friendly part of the house,
seeking some room that might perhaps be called a “Chamber of Peace.”

This name could certainly be applied to her father’s study. Harriet
loved that attic of her father’s with its quiet and its rows of
books. There she would cuddle down in a corner and watch her father
as he sat in his great writing chair with his Bible and his Cruden’s
“Concordance” and now and then whispered out his rapidly forming
sermon. She looked about upon those mysterious books with awe. To her
father there was evidently good magic in them, but to her their charm
was unrevealed. To be sure, from Harmer’s work on “Solomon’s Song”
and from a book called “The State of the Clergy during the French
Revolution,” she could gain some food for her hungry fancy. There was
also Cotton Mather’s “Magnalia,” that wonderful account of how this
plantation of New England was made so considerable in a space of time
so inconsiderable, a work that was a perfect storehouse of tales of
these strange old days. These were wonderful stories indeed! And they
were all about her own country, too, and made her feel that she herself
trod upon ground that was consecrated by some special dealings of God’s
Providence.

Nevertheless the story-loving side of little Harriet could never be
convinced that there were no more lively bits to be found among all
those unpromising black books. She sought perseveringly, and her
efforts were rewarded. In a side closet full of documents there was a
weltering ocean of pamphlets in which she dug and toiled for hours, to
be repaid by disinterring a delicious morsel of “Don Quixote” that had
once been a book, but was now lying in forty or fifty broken scraps
amid Calls and Appeals, Essays, Replies and Rejoinders. The turning up
of such a fragment, she thought, was like the rising of an enchanted
island out of an ocean of mud. Further searches in certain barrels of
old sermons brought to her a battered but precious copy of the “Arabian
Nights.” She was now happy; such books as these could be read and
re-read forever without ever palling.

We must remember that there were in those days no books written
specially for children and so arranged as to be interesting at each
step of the child’s growth. Harriet had to grow to the great books,
but as she had a very precocious and devouring mind she was fully
ready by the time that she discovered the Oriental story-book in the
bottom of the barrel, to read all the big words in _Scheherazade’s_
long-winded, fascinating tales.

It was Harriet Beecher’s good fortune that no silly or trashy
books were thrown in her way, to the injury or ruin of her mental
development. Under all these encouraging influences she grew with
astonishing rapidity, but in a perfectly simple and normal way.

Mrs. Stowe herself tells us in “The Minister’s Wooing” what was thought
to be the proper selection for the personal library of a well-taught
young lady of those times. Upon the snowy cover of the small table
under her looking-glass should lie “The Spectator,” “Paradise Lost,”
“Shakespeare” and “Robinson Crusoe.” Beside them of course the Bible
should rest. There should also be the works of Jonathan Edwards. Laid a
little to one side, as perhaps of doubtful reputation, might be found
the only novel which the stricter people in those days allowed for the
reading of their daughters, that seven-volumed, trailing, tedious,
delightful old bore, “Sir Charles Grandison”--a book whose influence
was almost universal and might be traced even in the epistolary style
of some grave divines.

A story is told of a certain young lady of Litchfield, probably a
devourer of such books as this, who was once going in the stage from
Litchfield to Hartford and happened to have Miss Sally Pierce, the
principal of the Female Academy, for traveling companion. Miss Pierce
recommended to the young lady the purchase of “Wilberforce’s View.” The
young lady took this advice, paying the sum of six shillings for the
work. Miss Pierce also suggested the “Memoirs of Miss Susanna Anthony”
which could be bought for three and six, and a book called “Reflections
on Death” which she declared to be very interesting as well as
instructive. We are not told that the young lady did not slip in also
“The Lady of the Lake,” which was just then becoming a fashionable book
in the hill towns of Connecticut, or even perhaps volume one of that
great romance, “Sir Charles Grandison.”

Harriet no doubt had books of the same solemn and metaphysical kind
recommended to her by her beloved teacher, but decidedly not the
seven-volume novel. We do not know that Harriet had a little room to
herself and a small library of her own. But she must have read that
classic novel some time, or how could she have pronounced it a bore?
Besides this, we know that once when she was almost an old lady she
stood on her feet with bonnet on and read a chapter of “Sir Charles”
through to the end, oblivious of the fact that she was keeping a dinner
party waiting for her to come.

Fortunately for Harriet with her strong literary instincts, the tastes
of her mother were more catholic than were those of her theological
father; she included philosophical, scientific and poetic books among
her favorites. In one of her letters to her sister-in-law she said:
“May has, I suppose, told you of the discovery that the fixed alkalies
are metallic oxyds. I first saw the notice in the _Christian Observer_
and have since seen it in the _Edinburgh Review_.” Her eager mind led
her to add: “I think this is all the knowledge I have obtained in the
whole circle of the arts and sciences of late; if you have been more
fortunate, pray let me have the benefit.”

To Mrs. Beecher a new interesting book was an event, heard of across
the ocean, watched for as one watches for the rising of a new planet;
and while the English packet was slowly laboring over, bearing it to
our shores, expectation in the family was rising. When the book was to
be found in the city book stores an early copy generally found its way
to the family circle in Litchfield. Miss Edgeworth’s “Frank” came, and
was read aloud to their great edification. Many a box of books appeared
through the thoughtfulness of Uncle Samuel, who always selected the
latest and most interesting things. “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” and
“Marmion” made an epoch by their arrival; they were read in the home
with wild enthusiasm, and afterwards spouted in glorious hours by the
children. Can we take ourselves back to the freshness of a time when
a letter from the mountains to a New Haven sister could contain this
message: “John brought ‘The Vision of Roderick,’ a poem by Scott. Do
tell me about Scott.” There was an eager, unjaded appetite in that
mountain town that would give a rapturous welcome to such a poem as
the “Lady of the Lake,” such a novel as “Ivanhoe.” These were the days
when the heart of the world was being periodically agitated by the
appearance of a new Waverley novel; it was the time, too, of Moore,
Southey, Wordsworth, and, above all, of Byron.

Ah, Byron! It was the day of Byron, too. Over the sea came the rolling
rhythms, the bravado and the mockery of the wonderful living poet. Over
the sea came, too, the Byronic melancholy and the loose, waving Byronic
necktie. The sensitive young attendants of the Law School suffered from
the one and wore the other. We know that they suffered from the Byronic
melancholy, for Dr. Beecher preached against it; and this time he did,
as he used to say, take hold without mittens. He preached cut and
thrust, hip and thigh, and did not ease off. His sermon was closed with
an eloquent lamentation over the wasted life and misused powers of the
great poet.

Meantime Harriet, then eleven years old, had found a stray volume
of Byron’s “Corsair.” Her aunt had given it to her one afternoon to
appease her craving for something to read. This poem astonished and
electrified her. She kept calling to her aunt to hear the wonderful
things she found in it and to ask what they meant. “Aunt Esther, what
does this mean: ‘One I never loved enough to hate’?” “Oh, child, it’s
one of Byron’s strong expressions,” said her aunt. That day Harriet
went home full of dreaming about Byron, and after that she listened
to everything that was said about him at the table. She heard her
father tell about his separation from his wife, and one day he said,
“My dear, Byron is dead--gone!” Then after a minute he added, “Oh, I
am sorry that Byron is dead. I did hope he would live to do something
for Christ. What a harp he might have swept!” That afternoon Harriet
took her basket and went up to the strawberry field on Chestnut Hill.
But she was too dispirited to do anything. She lay in the daisies and
looked up into the blue sky and thought of the great eternity into
which Byron had entered, and wondered how it might be with his soul.

It is interesting to recall that Harriet’s great English contemporary,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who afterward became the greatest of women
poets and was one of Mrs. Stowe’s dear friends, at almost the same time
was also mourning in a beautiful poem that “’midst the shriekings of
the tossing wind,” “the dark blue depths” he sang of were then bearing
all that remained of Byron to his native shore.

Harriet would probably know by instinct that no novel would be
approved by her father for the children. So we can imagine her joy when
one day he brought a novel of Scott’s to her brother George, saying
that, though he generally disapproved of such books as trash, yet in
these he could see that there were real genius and real culture and
therefore he would remove his ban upon them.

In that summer Harriet and her brother read “Ivanhoe” through seven
times, and they were both able to recite many scenes _verbatim_ from
beginning to end. They dramatized it all. They named the rocks and
glens and rivers about Litchfield by names borrowed from “The Lady of
the Lake”; they clambered among the rocks of Benvenue and sailed on the
bosom of the Loch Katrine, using Chestnut Hill and the Great and Little
Pond for the purpose. In the reading circles among the law students and
among the young ladies they discussed Scott’s treatment side by side
with that of Shakespeare, and compared the poetry of Scott and Byron.

In the family all this great new poetry was read aloud--which is indeed
the best and only way to get the good of poetry. And though Harriet’s
father was necessarily most interested in theological argument and
discussion, he, too, was fond of poetry and read it with wonderful
expression. Harriet thought it the greatest possible treat to hear
him read passages from that world-poem, “Paradise Lost.” Especially
was she moved when he read the account of _Satan’s_ marshaling of his
forces of fallen angels. The courage and fortitude of Milton’s _Satan_
enlisted her in his favor, and when her father came to the passage
beginning

  Millions of spirits for his fault amerced
  Of Heaven,

and ending with the lines,

          Attention held them mute.
  Thrice he essay’d, and thrice, in spite of scorn,
  Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth,

her father himself burst into tears and the reading was ended for that
day. Perhaps that poem was a favorite with Dr. Beecher because Milton’s
confessed object in writing had been to “justify the ways of God to
man,” and this was a theme that would appeal strongly to the great
preacher.

Of course, if one were to speak of the books that were read by the
future author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” one would have to name first
and foremost the one that was the daily and almost hourly study and
reading and talk of all members of the Beecher home, the Bible. What
Harriet Beecher Stowe thought of that book is written at large in all
her works. Especially in the novel, “My Wife and I,” she takes occasion
to speak of what she thinks it means to a young man to have a thorough
knowledge in the mind and the heart of that world-embracing book. It
may be said also that her own books express in their content the spirit
of the Bible. When later in life Mrs. Stowe traveled in the mountains
of Switzerland, she said that she rejoiced every hour while among those
scenes in her familiarity with the language of the Bible, for there
alone could she find vocabulary and images to express her feelings of
wonder and awe!



CHAPTER VI

DRAMATIC VENTURES


We are accustomed to think of the early New England life as offering
few expressions of artistic beauty, and there is much truth in this
view, for the thoughts of our forefathers were directed chiefly toward
theology. But we must never forget that those first adventurers came
from England during the greatest age of artistic expression that
England ever had, the time of Sidney and Spenser and Shakespeare. When
the New Englanders had become settled in their new home, had become
somewhat unified, that “fervid activity of an intense, newly-kindled,
peculiar and individual life” resulted in all sorts of out-croppings
of that desire for beauty invincible in the human soul. We should be
surprised to see how general were attempts in dramatic form. In all
the schools, in the homes, in the societies and lyceums everywhere,
original dialogues and plays were the order; and the Sunday school,
when invented, threw a generous mantle of charity over various
colloquies, symbolisms, moralities, and other kinds of dramatic
presentation.

In Miss Pierce’s school there were many exercises of this character.
Miss Pierce herself was devoted, like her nephew, to the English
classics; she was a good reader, given to quoting long passages of
poetry and making her pupils do likewise. To the compositions for gala
days, declamations, colloquies and dramatic sketches were added. Then

  My name is Norval; on the Grampian hills
  My father fed his flocks, etc.,

was invariably spouted. “The Will, or The Power of Medicine,” is the
subject of one play on record; also a colloquy on “Improvements in
Education.” A play called “The Country Boy” was given, in which the
characters were _John Hickory_ and _Hotspur_. In one called “The
Curfew,” the hero is a robber disguised as a minstrel. “The Combat,”
from “The Lady of the Lake,” was another favorite. Miss Pierce herself
wrote some very respectable dramas which the pupils presented in the
exhibitions at the close of school. On these occasions a stage was
erected, scenery was painted and hung in true theatrical style, while
all the wardrobes of the community were ransacked for stage dresses.
When the principal’s favorite, “Jephtha’s Daughter,” was given, the
Biblical hero, adorned with a helmet of gilt paper, surmounted by
waving ostrich plumes, strode grandly in, declaiming,

  “On Jordan’s banks proud Ammon’s banners wave.”

There was a procession of Judæan maidens, bearing the body of
_Jephtha’s_ daughter on a bier after the sacrifice, and there was also
a procession of sympathizing youths. For this part of the program
the young students from the Law School came in very handy; and,
judging by the diary of one of them which has been lately exhumed and
published,[4] the young gentlemen of a hundred years ago were not so
different from those of to-day.

If one desired to know the type of a young man to be found in the
town of Litchfield during the time that Harriet Beecher and her two
sisters, Catherine and Mary, were a part of the social life there, one
may have recourse to this published journal. George Younglove Cutler
is the name of the writer, and, judging by the fascinating pages he
indited, the name was not wholly inappropriate. He had a vivid way
of writing, as if he were directly addressing the person to whom he
was speaking, and he writes in his vehemence with a sublime disregard
of punctuation. For instance, he says: “Miss M., you were becomingly
dressed last night because there was less _fix_ about you than common.
I like richness of dress but hate ribbons & bows & knots & ruffles &
rigmaroles generally speaking I dislike ornaments of any kind. To see
ladies loaded with as many kickshaws as are put on now-a-days looks
more like burlesque than reality!” Again he harps on the same string
when he says: “It is a very pretty thing, no doubt, to see a young
lady dressed with Parisian flowers & Parisian gauzes & an Indian fan &
the whole &c of fashionable array. But I question after all, the style
in which a young man of any understanding sees a young lady with most
danger to his peace.” Extremely critical as he is of the Litchfield
young ladies, Mr. Younglove himself betrays a touch of vanity. There
is a great deal of talk in his diary about his “adonizationizing” of
himself in his toilet--by which manufactured word he means “frushing
up,” “furbishing,” “making fix,” or “prigging.” Once he takes pains to
say: “It being Sunday, I wore pumps and white stockings to meeting.”
Again he records the sad news: “Tore my Angola pantaloons!” On one date
he sets it down with an outburst of enthusiasm: “To begin this great
day was powdered. Huzza!”

We may not know by what logic we reach the conclusion, but I believe
all will agree that the sort of young man self-depicted in this
long-buried, old diary could never have been averse to coming on
the stage as a robber in the disguise of a minstrel, or as a proud
_Jephtha_ in a gilt paper helmet declaiming in stentorian voice,

  “On Jordan’s banks proud Ammon’s banners wave;”

and if George Younglove ever became in any way unruly, there was always
the overwhelming Miss Pierce, more powerful than any warrior, to bring
order out of chaos. The discipline that she gave to one youth of
George’s class is recorded. He gazed for something more than a minute
at one of the sacred members of her household, and the worst happened!
He was exiled. Surely not very frequently did anything take place to
bring so dire a fate upon a Litchfield youth!

But to come back to the play by Miss Pierce and the actors that
took part in it. They certainly did all the honor they could to the
dramatist. The costumes were copied out of the “Bible Dictionary”--with
the single exception, perhaps, of the nose-jewels--and the stabbing to
the heart and the chorus of wailing maidens were done to the life. In
this play the part of _Bethulah_, wife of _Jephtha_, was taken by “C.
Beecher,” as the list of actors shows, and she is on the stage most
of the time. Catherine also took a prominent place in the dramatic
representation of the beautiful story of Ruth. The story of Esther
the Queen was also enacted. Her majesty had a dress of old flowered
brocade from somebody’s wedding chest; _Mordecai_ and _Ahashuerus_
were appropriately enrobed, and the part of _Haman_--who was to be
hanged--was taken by the dog. At least this is the way Mrs. Stowe tells
about it, long afterward, in “Oldtown Folks,” but perhaps by that
time she may have forgotten some of the particulars as to the death
of _Haman_. For the plots of their plays, the young ladies in Miss
Pierce’s Seminary analyzed the stories in “Plutarch’s Lives,” and found
treasures there for dramatic representation from Romulus and Remus
down to Julius Cæsar. History in their own country came in for a share
of attention. Bunker Hill was done with a couple of old guns to give
effect to the scene and with the rolling of a cannon ball across the
floor behind the curtains to make the cannonades of battle. Harriet,
like _Tina_, a past master in getting up a cave of banditti, borrowed
suggestions from the “Mysteries of Udolpho,” and delighted one audience
with a playlet of the purest romance.

Those dramatic representations seem to have awakened no unfavorable
comment in the Beecher family so long as they were carried on under
the supervision of the Academy. But on an unlucky day Harriet’s
brilliant sister Catherine lighted upon a thrilling story in Miss
Edgeworth’s “Moral Tales,” called “The Unknown Friend,” which tells
how an attractive sixteen-year-old young lady was cured of a foolish
sentimentality. In this story _Angelina_, the heroine, reads a book
written by an unknown lady by the name of _Araminta_. This book speaks
extravagantly, and as it seems to _Angelina_ alluringly, of the charms
of friendship, and on the theory that one who wrote so feelingly of the
beautiful and romantic must be herself the embodiment of those traits,
_Angelina_ sets out to find this paragon, believing that in her she
will gain such a friend as she has dreamed of. After wandering futilely
for a time, she reaches a hut in the Welch mountains, where the writer
of the sentimental book has taken refuge. She finds in _Araminta_ a
disheveled, unlovely, forbidding person. Every sense of taste and
propriety is shocked, and they do not get on well together at all.
The story shows _Angelina’s_ complete disillusionment and the sorrows
that will come to one who disregards the practical side of life. The
incidents in this tale of Miss Edgeworth’s are ludicrous and the story
is not a bit tame. It might afford amusement even to-day.

The clever Catherine conceived the idea of making it into a play and
giving a happy surprise to the whole family by setting up the little
drama in the house itself. There were characters enough for every one
of the Beecher children to have one to himself--and that is saying
a good deal! There was also variety. The dialects used included
Welsh, Scotch, and broad Irish. The _Lady Diana Chillingworth_ and
her sister, the _Lady Frances Somerset_, trailed about in finery
extracted from mother’s band-boxes and chests. A palace, a mountain
top, a shop, afforded changes of scene that were easily designated in
true Elizabethan fashion by the use of a parlor table, or a kitchen
chair, or a set of shelves; and costumes were delightfully relied upon
to give aid to the imagination. Rehearsals were carried on in the
strictest secrecy for some weeks. The appointed evening came. Father
and mother wondered why a fire was built in the large parlor or why
so many neighbors and students happened to come in at about the same
moment; but before any questions could be asked, the door to the dining
room was suddenly thrown open and a mysterious drapery was seen at the
farther end of the room. The curtain rose and forthwith the actors
appeared and completed the whole drama amid thunders of applause--at
least so runs the account by an eye witness. The next day, however,
Catherine was told with some severity that while it was very good, they
must not do so any more!

When Catherine Beecher, the tragedy queen and star actress in all Miss
Pierce’s plays, went away to Hartford, she left a great vacancy in the
society of Litchfield; and when Harriet, author of the essay that had
astonished Dr. Lyman Beecher, departed, she carried with her a secluded
little ambition of which she spoke to no one. For in those days Harriet
was full of poetry and shyly entertained a dream that she herself might
join the glorious band of immortal poets. She was soon trying her hand
at blank verse, and she planned out a drama that should be written in
that form.

When at the age of about thirteen she was filled with her first
enthusiasm for classic lore, the subject of “Cleon” attracted her
dramatic instinct. Cleon was an historical person whose character and
problem were, not so very long after Harriet’s attempt, made the basis
of a noble poem by Robert Browning.

The story of Cleon is this: He was a Greek, living at the court of
Nero. This fixes the date for us as the first century of the Christian
era. He was a follower of the Greek gods, but he heard about Christ and
after much searching and doubting he at last came to a true knowledge
of Christianity. This transformation is the theme of Harriet’s play.

The scene opens in a street in Rome. Some Roman patricians, dressed
in their flowing togas, come upon the stage and discuss the lavish
entertainment that this wealthy Greek, _Cleon_, has been giving.

  We shall live twice as fast while he is here,

says one of them.

  By Bacchus, then we shall be lived to death;
  I’m almost out of breath with living now,

declares the other. The first speaker continues the conversation,
describing _Cleon_ as one who has a thirst for pleasure so ravenous
that he works with hand and foot and soul, both night and day, to gain
diversion, and is so lavish of money that the Emperor Nero with all his
waste seems parsimonious compared to _Cleon_.

This is the picture of _Cleon_ given in the opening scene of the play.
In the next scene we find him reclining upon a luxurious couch in his
palatial apartment. Enter his old friend and teacher, _Diagoras_, who
has come from Athens to visit him. _Diagoras_ is amazed to see the
lavish richness and splendor of the house and the room. When _Cleon_
asks him politely to sit down, he answers that he cannot, for he does
not see any seat! _Cleon_ cries out that he thinks that _Diagoras_ must
have lost his eyes, and points out that there is in the room a fair
choice among some thirty different kinds of couches--couches of the
Phrygian and of the Grecian pattern, and many other kinds. _Diagoras_
is astonished when told that these beds adorned with pearls and gold
are made to sit on; he is, he says, a simple man, used to plain things,
and begs the pardon of _Cleon_ if he has been unappreciative. _Cleon_
thinks that behind this excuse his old teacher is displeased with him;
but, as it is, there is no choice between two evils: either _Diagoras_
must rest his philosophic feet upon that most profanely glittering
floor which is all inlaid with gems, or he must rest himself upon one
of those rich beds. _Cleon_ perceives that this jesting way of speaking
is giving pain to his good master, who should have known of old the
reckless tongue of _Cleon_. He assures _Diagoras_ of a hearty welcome
and begs him to sit down that they may have a long visit.

_Diagoras_ thereupon is made to recline upon one of the couches. He
proceeds to tell the cause of his disappointment in his pupil. He
has heard that _Cleon_ is the common talk of the city on account of
his evil ways, his rioting and his luxuriousness. He has heard that
his former pupil has become the companion of the very dross and dregs
of all mankind. _Cleon_ interposes, and asks if _Diagoras_ means by
the “dross and dregs” the Emperor Nero. _Diagoras_ will not answer
directly, but assures him that this is the tale that he has heard about
him. He exclaims:

  Is this the Athenian Cleon, is this he
  Who drank philosophy and worshiped virtue?
  This he who triumphed in the Olympian race
  Followed by wondering eyes?...
  Rememberest thou the glory of those days?

he asks.

_Diagoras_ succeeds in calling the soul of _Cleon_ back from the
downward path that it is following. At last _Cleon_ exclaims that it
has been only a curse to him to have had so much wealth; he has striven
desperately to satisfy himself with the things that satisfy the common
crowd, but he has not succeeded.

As the play goes on _Cleon_ passes through a spiritual crisis and
becomes a Christian. Now this, we must remember, is the time of the
most extreme persecutions of the Christians. _Cleon_ is brought to
the supreme test that the followers of Christ were subjected to under
the persecuting monarch _Nero_. An on-looker describes the scene, and
tells us that _Cleon_ bore the ordeal with courage; he was steady and
undismayed; he declared his fixed purpose, saying that he was willing
to abide by whatever should come to him. The one who tells the story
says that _Cleon_ would have fared better if he had given a fiery
answer to the Emperor, for his very composure made _Nero_ mad and he
stamped his foot as a signal to the slaves to bring in the torture.

In the next scene _Cleon_ is led in by two soldiers. Though he is weak
and faint from the torture he has endured, he insists upon standing on
his feet. Harriet Beecher follows the historical tradition of _Nero’s_
character, in making him cause his friend _Cleon_ to suffer these
frightful agonies. The unspeakable Emperor now apologizes for the
severity of the torture, and assures _Cleon_ that he has only loving
intentions toward him. He gives him permission to keep his religion
if he will but consent to worship--privately! “Suppose you do call
yourself a Christian,” he says, “why need you let everybody know it?
Only be quiet about it and I will not interfere; worship in any way you
will, only let it be--out of my sight.” _Cleon_ then asks the Emperor
what he shall do if he is questioned about his faith. The Emperor
suggests that he should under those circumstances make up some “smooth,
decoying phrase” that would turn off the inquiry. _Cleon_ receives this
proposal with the shock that shows the inner truth of his nature. He
exclaims:

  My lord, I scarce may trust myself to answer,
  Since I have heard such degradation named.
  In place of open bold apostasy
  Thou dost propose an hourly, daily lie.

_Cleon’s_ whole nature revolts against anything so base. He declares
that it is his settled purpose while he lives to leave nothing undone
or untried to win everybody to the reverence for Christ that he has
learned to enjoy within himself. Thus he defies the Emperor and all the
world.

This drama which has many elements of nobility in it and which shows
a great deal of skill, filled Harriet’s waking thoughts and her
dreams at night, and for a long time she was joyously filling blank
book after blank book with the flowing lines. But the play was never
finished. Her sister Catherine pounced down upon her one day and told
her that she should not waste any more time writing poetry, but that
she should discipline her mind by the study of Butler’s “Analogy.” So
the obedient Harriet laid aside her loved play and began to write out
abstracts of the “Analogy.” Thus her dramatic aspirations were for the
time arrested. Catherine snuffed out the little light of her sister’s
budding poetic genius; or, rather, perhaps we should say that she
turned those powers in another direction; she saved and stored that
intellectual energy for a purpose of which neither of them had at that
time the remotest dream.



CHAPTER VII

STUDIES AND TEACHERS


After the death of Mrs. Beecher in 1816 the care of the younger ones
fell to a large extent upon the elder daughter, Harriet’s capable and
energetic sister Catherine, who was some twelve years older than she.
So the traditions of the mother Roxana were carried on in the household
until a second mother, another highly cultivated lady, came to take the
headship of the home.

It is natural that this strong and brilliant Catherine should have a
great influence upon the sensitive younger sister, and that the various
steps in Catherine’s career and in her soul-history should be followed
by Harriet with interest and sympathy almost as great as if she had
been a responsible part in the story. And if disturbing experiences
came to Catherine, a reflected tumult would naturally pass through the
life of Harriet. This is exactly what did happen. Harriet’s days were
shaded by the sorrows of Catherine through all the early years of her
young womanhood.

Catherine Beecher was destined to be a remarkable woman, author
of many books, a trainer of teachers and a founder of educational
institutions. The range of her thought seems to have been almost
unlimited. She wrote on education, on slavery, on the evils suffered by
American women and on the duties of American women to their country.
She wrote on all subjects connected with the home. In one book only
she treats of the following topics: The dignity and importance of
woman’s work, the Christian family, scientific domestic ventilation,
stoves, furnaces and chimneys, home decoration, health, exercise, food,
cookery, early rising, domestic manners, system and order, charity and
economy, care of infants, management of children, care of the aged,
of servants, of the sick, accidents and antidotes, fires and lights,
care of rooms, of yards and gardens, cultivation of plants, and care of
domestic animals--and of all these things she writes with the object of
dignifying domestic employment and increasing the wages paid for it. As
if this were not enough to fill a single volume, she adds twenty-five
more chapters on recipes of all kinds, meats and breads, preserving
fruits, setting table, washing, ironing and cleaning; and finally she
adds a chapter of “miscellaneous advice.”

In other books she takes still higher flights. Her “Elements of
Mental and Moral Philosophy Founded on Experience, Reason, and
the Bible,” published at Hartford in 1831, and her “Letters on
Difficulties of Religion,” and her “Appeal to the People as the
Authorized Interpreters of the Bible,” are examples of her excursions
into philosophical and theological realms. In the large collection
of Beecher writings that would be ours if we should gather all the
writings of the family into one library, an ample shelf would have to
be given to this talented favorite daughter of Dr. Lyman Beecher.

A curious story is told in connection with one of Catherine Beecher’s
philosophical essays. In 1840 she wrote an article called “Free
Agency,” which was published in the _Biblical Repository_. This is a
theological term, meaning “free will,” and Catherine’s object was to
answer the arguments on the subject of the human will that had been
given out by Jonathan Edwards, one of the most profound scholars of
New England. The story is that a New England preacher in talking with
a professor of theology in Germany once mentioned this essay of Miss
Beecher’s, calling it the ablest refutation of Edwards that had yet
been written. “Do you mean to say that you have in your country a woman
who can write the ablest refutation of Edwards on the will?” exclaimed
the German professor. “Then may God forgive Christopher Columbus for
discovering America!” This story had a good point in its day. But now
that women have proved by their achievements in all branches of science
and in literature and the arts that they needed only education and
opportunity to attain distinction, it is only amusing that such a
remark could ever have been made--even in Germany.

When Harriet was nine years old--about the time when she was writing
essays on the “Difference Between the Natural and Moral Sublime”--her
sister Catherine was away at Boston studying music and drawing, and
preparing herself in general to be a teacher. Because of her remarkable
powers of mind, she made such progress that in a short time she was
able to take a position as teacher in a young ladies’ school in New
London, Connecticut.

While in this place she met a young man of brilliant prospects and of
great personal charm, a professor at Yale College. They became engaged
and were most happy; but their joy was short-lived. Professor Fisher,
commissioned to go to Europe to buy books for his department, set sail
in the ship _Albion_, which encountered a severe storm and was dashed
to pieces on the rocks of the Irish coast.

Catherine faced her grief bravely as her lover had faced death
bravely. But added to her natural grief for the loss of her lover
was a tormenting fear for the welfare of his soul, for she feared
lest the spiritual conditions that she had been accustomed to regard
as essential had not been met by her lover. Her disturbance was
not quieted when she went to live for some years with the parents
of her lost lover and while there listened to one of the strictest
of the early theologians. Almost crushed in her grief, her strong
original mind nevertheless grappled with the problems of death and
the after-life. She used her great power in metaphysical analysis in
endless discussion, exchanging many long letters with her father, whose
loving sympathy was a tower of strength to her in this crisis. After a
long period of darkness and struggle, Catherine took the wisest course
that the profoundest philosophy could suggest: she determined to find
happiness in living to do good. This thought she clung to and in it she
found comfort.

She looked about her to see what use she could make of her life.
Writing to her father, she said that she did not see any very extensive
sphere of usefulness for a single woman except in teaching, and asked
his advice about starting a school or seminary, something like the
Litchfield Female Academy, perhaps in Hartford.

Her father answered with characteristic energy that if she were going
to have a school it should be a good one. She should not engage in it
listlessly, expecting to superintend, and do a little, and have the
weight of the school come on others. He would be ashamed, he said, to
have her keep only a commonplace, middling sort of a school. Unless she
was willing to put her talents and strength into it, it would be better
not to begin. He called the spent energies of the daughter into line
and made them march. He himself went straight to Hartford to look over
the ground and see whether there was a good opening for a school there.

Catherine felt that her own enthusiasms would rise to the occasion.
She went to Hartford, canvassed the ground, gathered a company of
pupils, and was eager to start. She resolutely prepared a text-book on
chemistry, one on natural philosophy, and one on logic. Arithmetic and
algebra and a part of geometry she also thoroughly reviewed. Under such
a character as this Harriet was now to be trained.

When Harriet entered her sister’s school in the fall of 1824, there
were but twenty-five pupils. Later there were hundreds. At the
beginning the school was situated in an upstairs apartment on Main
Street, nearly opposite to Christ Church. The lower floor was used for
a harness shop and the shopkeeper had set up a dummy white horse on
each side of the entrance. Harriet thought them beautiful and invested
them with the glories of Castor and Pollux; and many a pupil of the
hundreds that came to that school will remember through life the Sign
of the White Horses that guided them to that quiet retreat. In another
year the school was so prosperous that they put up a building for
their own use; the stock was easily taken and a fine prospectus of the
full-fledged Hartford Female Seminary was sent out.

On her arrival, Harriet was at once placed in the care of a delightful
family named Bull, who, as a convenient exchange, were sending a
daughter to the Litchfield Academy to make her home, while there, at
the Beecher homestead. Mrs. Bull was so good a housekeeper that even
Harriet’s orderly stepmother was satisfied. She was a motherly woman
and took Harriet to her heart at once in the place of the absent
daughter. Harriet was given a charming little hall chamber with a
beautiful outlook from the window over the Connecticut River valley.
We may believe that this was the first time in her life when she had
a room all her own. The little single bed assigned to her was the
object of her special delight, and she took daily care of it with a
satisfaction mingled with awe; and though the room was small as a nun’s
apartment, it was, like that of one of Harriet’s heroines, as dainty in
its neatness as the waxen cell of a bee.

At the Bulls, as in the Litchfield home, Harriet was surrounded with
music. The eldest daughter had a fine soprano voice and was a leading
singer in one of the church choirs. Also the brothers in the family
were endowed with rich voices. So there were quartettes and there was
also flute playing.

The next year Harriet and her elder sisters, together with two of the
brothers, were established as a family with their father’s sister, the
energetic and well-informed Aunt Esther, at the head. This was the
wonderful aunt who, Harriet’s brother Henry said, would spend ages in
Heaven wondering how it happened that she ever got there, while the
angels would always be wondering why she had not been there from all
eternity![5] Besides being as good as gold, Aunt Esther had a memory
that was well-nigh infallible, especially in the field of natural
history. She could tell nineteen rat stories all in a string, and when
asked how she happened to know so much about every sort of thing,
answered: “Oh, you know the Bible says the works of the Lord are great,
sought out of all them that have pleasure therein. Now I happened to
have pleasure therein, and so I sought them out.” It must have been a
happy home that was gathered about Aunt Esther at the Hartford School.
Besides the immediate members of the family, several teachers of the
school shared the home and helped to give a rare and fascinating
atmosphere to the table talk.

The group of young ladies that came as the first students to this new
school were of rather unusual caliber and mental power. Miss Beecher
said some twenty years later if she were to make a list of the most
gifted minds that she ever met, either male or female, among the
highest on the list would stand five maidens, the earliest students
grouped around her in that dawning experience of a teacher’s life.

All these influences furnished a new and wonderfully developing sort
of discipline to Harriet Beecher. She possessed the combination of
qualities that would to-day make her the best kind of college girl.
She responded at once to these new inspirations, and was ready for the
joyous and educating friendships that form one of the most valuable
assets in school and college life.

Some of the leading girls had written welcoming letters to her before
she started from Litchfield, and she had of course sent enthusiastic
answers by the first post. Among these new friends were Catherine
Ledyard Cogswell, daughter of a physician of Hartford, and Georgiana
May, a girl from another fine family. These two became her lifelong
friends and Harriet’s affection for them was boundless. Catherine
Cogswell was one of the popular girls, and her time was greatly in
demand, but she valued the fine qualities of Harriet and saw to it that
her new friend should always come in for a share of her time. Georgiana
was of a gentle nature, and between her and Harriet there continued
through life a communion of a peculiarly close and comforting kind.
They understood each other perfectly.

Harriet loved her friends absorbingly. There mingled with her
friendly feelings nothing of the personal vanity that spoils so many
friendships. But by reason of the very superiority of her mind, most of
those she saw passed her by without moving her deeply. When they were
present, she enjoyed them; when they were gone, she forgot them. But
with those she really loved, it was different. From them a separation
meant much. In time she learned to take refuge in the thought that
there is a heaven, a world of love; as she once said, “Love is, after
all, the life-blood of existence, the all in all of mind.” This
thought, coming to her early in life, was a great comfort to her
through many years.

As the school increased in size, more teachers were added to the
faculty, and among these Harriet found valuable companionship. The
enlarging effect of such association cannot be overestimated. To compel
one’s self to stand the comparison with people of like capacity and
like advantages is in the highest degree stimulating. Harriet found
it so. One of her fellow teachers, a young woman of fine mind and of
unconquerable energy of character, became specially inspiring to her.
From early childhood this teacher had been determined to obtain a
higher education than was usual among the young women of that time.
We must remember that this was before the day of colleges for girls,
and that to have such an ambition was rare and to pursue it with grim
resoluteness was rarer. It was the more inspiring when this ambition
was realized only after a mighty struggle against difficulties.
Harriet, looking upon this example of resolute endeavor, coolly
observed, “Where persons are determined to be anything, they will be!”

When Harriet arrived at her sister’s school her two friends,
Catherine Cogswell and Georgiana May, were already reading Virgil. She
therefore--now twelve years old--began the study of Latin alone, but
before the first year was over she was translating Ovid into English
verse. The result of her work was considered so creditable that it
was read at the final exhibition of the school. Soon she herself was
carrying classes of young ladies through Virgil’s Æneid and Bucolics,
the best parts of Ovid, and Cicero’s Orations. She also began the study
of both French and Italian with a good teacher.

Harriet was a hard worker. She began at nine in the morning and
worked until after dark, with only a half hour’s intermission at noon
to swallow a little dinner--a very bad plan, by the way. She blamed
herself for being absent-minded and making mistakes. No wonder she did
these things! She was in school all day, either as pupil or as teacher.
After a hastily snatched supper she read and made out exercises for
her class for half an hour, and the rest of the evening she spent in
preparing French and Italian lessons of her own. Sister Catherine
was certainly a disciplinarian. She was also entirely original in
her methods. There were no normal schools to teach her, and she had
to develop her own ways of working. No one who does not know the
educational situation of that day can imagine how daring it was in her
to attempt all this. Many of her thoughts are a prophecy of present day
ideals. She emphasized physical exercise, and this was by many thought
dangerous, if not impious. She gave prizes for composition in verse.
The girls were so enthusiastic in this work that they wrote their
poetical effusions at night and rehearsed them to each other in the
morning. They were then written out and brought to the teacher to have
the ruthless knife of criticism applied. This work fell to the hands of
Harriet and was a labor of love to her.

Harriet had also a painting and drawing master and worked faithfully at
these subjects. After a while she wrote to her grandmother in Guilford
that she would send her a dish of fruit of her own painting, and begged
her not to devour it in anticipation lest she should find it sadly
tasteless in reality. But if she did find it so, she must excuse the
defects for the sake of the poor young artist.

Her painting made her think of her dear mother, who would have been
most interested in her daughter’s efforts in this direction. Whatever
artistic powers Harriet had, she wished to cherish for that mother’s
sake. She told her grandmother that she was thinking more about that
dearest of all earthly friends now that she was older and could
understand her character better and appreciate her more. She thought
that, had her mother lived, she might herself have been better and
happier than she now was.

By this we see that a shadow seemed to be coming over Harriet’s
spirit. But in her mental powers the young student must have been
advancing with great swiftness, for when she was only seventeen years
old she thought of taking charge herself of a school in Groton where
she went to visit her brother George. After consulting her father,
and especially Catherine, however, she decided not to undertake the
responsibility, and abandoned the project.

Again in the following year--1829--when the Hartford school was for a
time deprived of the headship of Miss Catherine, Harriet took entire
charge of things, turning the school for the nonce into a republican
form of government by means of a system of “Circles,” called Circles
of Order, of Neatness, of Punctuality, of Benevolence, etc. With
profound cleverness she put the most fun-loving girls into the Circle
of Benevolence. Then she gathered all together in a central body,
called the “Senate of the Skies.” By this means she engaged the girls
in a system of self-government, prophetic of methods used to-day. To
Catherine, away at the Water-cure, Harriet wrote:

  “DEAR SISTER:

    “This morning I delivered a long speech on ‘Modes of Exerting
    Moral Influence,’ showing the ways in which an evil influence
    is unknowingly exerted and the ways in which each and all can
    exert a good one. The right spirit is daily increasing. Miss
    Brigham says all her classes seem so anxious to do right and
    are so interested in their studies that she loves them better
    and better every day. The other teachers also say they never
    saw the classes form in more perfect order and go and return
    with so little noise. I feel as if we are holding the helm, and
    can turn the vessel the right way. The force of moral influence
    seems equal to that of authority, and even stronger. When the
    girls wish what is against my opinion, they say, ‘Do, Miss
    Beecher, allow just this.’ ‘Allow you?’ I say; ‘I have not the
    power; you can do so if you think best.’ Now, they cannot ask
    me to give up my opinion and belief of right and wrong, and
    they are unwilling to act against it.”

“Your absence,” she added, “is doing me good, for I never before felt
so confident to go forward and act.” In another letter she said: “I
shall become quite an orator if you do not come too soon. The school
has never been more orderly than it is now, and I think all the young
ladies, though some slowly, are realizing more than ever before that
they must not live unto themselves.”

Again she said: “The girls are all anxious to have you stay as long as
you can.”

Let us take this not only as an expression of loyalty to the Principal,
but as an unconscious testimonial to the excellence and charm of the
younger sister, then but eighteen years old.



CHAPTER VIII

SOME STEPS FORWARD


The spirit of obedience was one of Harriet Beecher’s characteristic
traits. So she resolutely devoted herself at Catherine’s command to the
critical analysis of Butler’s “Analogy,” a book on the works of God
as shown both in nature and in the spiritual realm. It sounds rather
profound for a girl in the early teens; but when we recall the titles
she chose for the essays she wrote at the school in Litchfield, we
are not surprised that she found interest in such a book. Indeed, she
discovered a real pleasure in subjects of this kind. At the time when
she was improving her mind with the “Analogy,” she was reading also
another famous book of spiritual import, Baxter’s “Saints’ Rest.” No
other book she ever read moved her so profoundly. It filled her with a
sort of exaltation that made her wish as she walked the street that the
pavements might sink beneath her if only she might thus find herself in
Heaven.

In this mood of spiritual elevation she went to Litchfield for one of
her early vacations. While there a sermon preached by her father made a
strong appeal to her mind and heart. Dr. Beecher’s text on that Sunday
was this: “I call you not servants, but friends,” and his subject was
Jesus as a soul-friend offered to every human being.

Forgetting all about theology for the time, Dr. Beecher spoke that
day with all simplicity of the faithful, unwearied love of Christ,
how He tenderly cares for the soul’s wants through all its wanderings
and sorrows, until He brings it through the darkness of earth to the
perfection of Heaven.

Even a child could have understood him. Harriet sat absorbed, her eyes
gathering tears as she listened; and when the doctor said, “Come, then,
and trust your soul to this faithful Friend,” her heart throbbed, “I
will.” For a moment she was discouraged by the thought that she had not
had any “conviction of sin,” but like a flash came the thought that
Jesus could give her that as well as anything else, and that she could
trust Him for the whole. And so her earnest young soul went out to the
wonderful Friend. She sat through the sacramental service that followed
with swelling heart and tearful eyes, and walked home filled with a new
joy. She went up to her father’s study in the attic room and, falling
into his arms, whispered: “Father, I have given myself to Jesus and He
has taken me.” The doctor held her silently to his heart a moment, and
his tears dropped on her head. “Is it so?” he said. “Then has a new
flower blossomed in the Kingdom this day.”

In this simple and natural way began Harriet’s distinctive religious
experience. But we must not think of it as going on always like
the flow of a calm river. There were many doubts and tremblings to
be mastered, many puzzles to unravel as she went along, especially
during the years from twelve to twenty. We may say, however, that the
experience of happy trust in God became in the end so much the law of
her life that it could never be torn away from her by any of the events
of her mature days, whether of suffering or of prosperity.

It seems the greatest pity that the earlier stages of her religious
experience should not have gone on smoothly, as that of her wonderful
mother had done. Perhaps, however, others with difficulties like hers
may be glad to look over the record of her struggles and may take
courage from her victories.

We have seen in the last chapter that Harriet had not been many years
at Hartford before a shadow seemed to be settling down upon her spirit.
There were certainly good reasons for this.

In the first place she was very much overworked as pupil and teacher
in the Hartford Female Seminary. Translating Ovid into English verse
at thirteen years of age, teaching Virgil and Rhetoric at fourteen,
studying French and Italian and drawing and painting, taking a
niggardly half hour for the mid-day dinner, and snatching a bit of
supper as she could, doing her share and more to keep the domestic
wheels of the large household at Hartford running smoothly, and living
excitedly in the midst of this company of complex personalities, having
no outdoors, no rest, no play--this way of life was enough to interfere
with the physical well-being of any growing girl, even with that of a
robust one fresh from the Litchfield mountains!

Harriet’s father understood perfectly well the relation between our
mental activity and our supply of physical energy. We know this because
we so often found him relieving the overstrain by periods of devotion
to the woodpile and the garden; and it is interesting to see how he
accompanied a prescription for spiritual ills with one enjoining
obedience to the laws of the body. None could have given better advice
also than he did in regard to the steadying of religious emotionalism
during revival among the students in Catherine’s school, to keep them
from undue excitement and to make the revival season reasonable in its
excitement and permanent in its effects. But it is one thing to advise
and another to make people put the counsel into practice.

Catherine probably did not see the rocks ahead either for Harriet or
for herself. She was indeed using up her own energies so fast that she
was to face a breakdown later on in the very midst of a useful career.
Then indeed she did have to listen to the monitors; but only after a
period of ill health did she regain strength for work. During all her
life thereafter she preached obedience to the laws of health, and found
the truth of the old adage, “‘Had I but known!’ is very poor comfort.”

Then we must remember, too, that Harriet had also drained her own
spiritual energy in watching the soul-struggles of her sister Catherine
during the sensitive years of her early girlhood. Catherine’s grief
colored Harriet’s thoughts and wonderings in the years when everything
in her own situation looked like a question.

So poor little Harriet fell into a disconsolate mood. She thought that
she did nothing right, that she yielded to temptation almost as soon as
it assailed her. What most commonly beset her, she believed, was pride;
she could trace all her sins back to that fault. She thought she was
not fit for anything, and she wanted to die young.

What young growing soul has not been assailed by moods like this?
This half child, half grown woman was developing mentally with great
swiftness, and could not understand the meaning of the tumults that
were sweeping through her soul. Not being able to answer certain lofty
questions, she decided at once that they were unanswerable and that
therefore the universe must be all a disastrous affair. Who has not
sometime made the same mistake?

Little things had great power over her. If she met something that
crossed her feelings she was unhappy for days. She wished she could
bring herself to be perfectly indifferent to the judgments of others.
She believed there never had been a person more dependent on the good
and evil opinions of others than she was. This desire to be loved
formed, she feared, the great motive for all her actions. Alas, she was
in a parlous state!

That young mourner for the death of Byron and author of the dramatic
poem, “Cleon,” found her love of literature a snare in her spiritual
pathway. Of course, she could not know that those very powers that were
shown by her tastes and inclinations were to be trained and used for
the most important and world-influencing work.

It is unfortunate that her father did not think to say to her what
he wrote in a letter some twenty years later: “Too long, quite too
long, has the devil held in his exclusive possession the fine arts.”
He came to the conclusion in the end that ministers would make their
sermons more interesting if they would add to their “leaden prose” some
of the untrammeled fire that gives charm to poetry and fiction. That
Dr. Beecher had an open mind on this subject is shown by his attitude
toward Byron and also toward the novels of Sir Walter Scott. It could
never have been a pain to him to know that a daughter of his would
become the author of a shelf full of novels, all strongly uplifting in
their tendency.

But Harriet did not confide her deepest thoughts to him. If she had he
might have recalled that his own early days had been checkered with
despondency and shamefacedness and jealous feeling. He had imagined
in his sensitive humility that everybody could see the interior of
his mind and find the emptiness and vanity that he believed must be
there. Yet he had a good cure for such moods, one that he could have
recommended to his daughter. He resisted all this, he once said, as if
it were a physical lying disease, representing things that were not as
if they were, and saying to such feelings, “Get thee behind me, Satan,
for thou savorest not the things that be of God!” But at the time of
Harriet’s greatest despondency her father seems not to have remembered
the cravings and perplexities of his own youth.

Harriet made up her mind to live a far better life. She would regulate
it and improve it. She gave herself a strict set of rules, a regular
system of things for every hour of the day. But she found that she
could not live up to all this and the derelictions gave her sleepless
nights. Her feelings were not always equable. She was absent-minded and
made mistakes. Terrible faults, these! How like a page from the life
of everybody! The trouble in Harriet’s case was that she took these
variations of mood for a serious breakdown of her religious stability.
She suffered intensely, yet for a long time she kept her suffering to
herself. Her naturally buoyant spirits did much to help her, but often
she was reproved for laughing so much when she was feeling worst.

It was difficult for Harriet to speak of these inner feelings to
others. The reason for this was that she was too humble-minded to speak
of so weighty matters at all. Besides this, she felt that she should
understand them better than she did, and did not know that every human
being is beset by the same questions that puzzled her. Fortunately,
Harriet at the age of fourteen had a brother who had just graduated
at Yale and was studying theology at Andover. This strong and tender
brother to whom she opened her heart just as Catherine had opened hers
to her father, unraveled many of her difficulties for her.

The year 1829, when Harriet was sixteen years old, was a period of
especial despondency. Catherine, worried about her state of health,
sent her to spend a summer at Nut Plains. There at the Foote homestead,
the rest in the beautiful country, and we may imagine, the regular
meals and the abundance of good sleep, did wonders for tired Harriet.

In that year the Beecher home was moved from Litchfield to Boston,
where Dr. Beecher had been called to the pastorate of the Hanover
Street Church. Now the atmosphere of any house in which Lyman Beecher
dwelt would perforce be stirred by theological controversy. As
Harriet’s brother Henry said, “Theology was the food we ate, and the
milk we drank, and the air we breathed, and the ground we trod, from
our earliest years.” But the new surroundings into which Dr. Beecher
now came caused him to strike out more vigorously than ever in defense
of his favorite beliefs. In this atmosphere Harriet whenever she came
to her home must thrive as she could. Her son, who wrote a book about
her life in 1911, says that the atmosphere of mental excitement and
conflict in which her father lived and preached at this time drove her
already over-stimulated mind to the point of distraction. “Too much
mental strain and too little exercise had,” he says, “brought her to
her seventeenth year without the strength which should have been the
heritage of her robust childhood.”

It would not be possible in our short space to follow all the steps in
her soul’s progress and the degrees by which, under the guidance of her
brother Edward, she gained at last a comfortable view of her relation
to God. But a glimpse here and there may be allowed to us.

Above all things, Harriet could not understand how a God of infinite
perfection could stand toward imperfect human beings in any but the
most severe attitude. She could not see that One of infinite power and
infinite wisdom must have infinite love; and toward a realization of
this truth she moved but slowly. How far along she had come in 1828
is shown in the following passage from a letter to Edward. “After
all,” she said, “God is a being afar off. He is so far above us that
anything but the most distant reverential affection seems almost
sacrilegious. It is that affection that can lead us to be familiar that
the heart needs.... The language of prayer is of necessity stately
and formal, and we cannot clothe all the little minutiæ of our wants
and troubles in it.... I sometimes wish that the Saviour were visibly
present in this world, that I might go to Him for a solution of some of
my difficulties.”

Later on we see that she is making great progress though she herself
may not realize that she is. She says in another letter: “It matters
little what service He has for me.... I do not mean to live in vain. He
has given me talents, and I will lay them at His feet, well satisfied,
if He will accept them. All my powers He can enlarge. He made my mind,
and He can teach me to cultivate and exert its faculties.”

At last in the character of Jesus Christ she finds a revelation of God
as merciful and compassionate as He is powerful--in fact, she found in
Him just such a God as she needed. The next summer she writes again
to the same brother and says: “I cannot express to you, my brother,
I cannot tell you, how that Saviour appears to me. To bear with one
so imperfect, so inconsistent as myself, implied long-suffering and
patience more than words can express. I love most to look on Christ
as my teacher, as one who, knowing the utmost of my sinfulness, my
waywardness, my folly, can still have patience, can reform, purify, and
daily make me more like himself.”

In these three selections from her letters we see the passage of her
mind from the attitude of fear to the attitude of love. In fact, she
has come about again to that child-like mood that was hers when she ran
to her father’s study and made the beautiful confession of her earliest
conscious faith.

Now she began to realize that the very best cure for a disappointing
religious condition within us is to put our religion into practice in
the world without us by means of a kind spirit instantly made real in
kindly acts. Harriet caught this good idea, perhaps from the example of
her sister Catherine who in her great sorrow had done this at last.

In a different way Harriet felt that she must come out of herself more
than she had. Not that she thought her love of solitude and of going
her own way wrong in itself, but that she knew that if she indulged it
too much she would miss the joy of knowing that she was helping to make
others happy.

She noticed one of her companions engaged in being particularly
attentive to a particularly disagreeable elderly man, and as a
result Harriet conceived the idea that it was a proof of grace to
say something to people who were not agreeable, and to manage to say
something or other even if one had nothing to say. She resolved to
follow the example of the friend who could sacrifice her own taste and
comfort in order to make a “forlorn old daddy” happy and comfortable.

Writing to her great friend, Georgiana May, in 1832, Harriet told her
of a sun-dial inscription that her Uncle Samuel Foote, who was sitting
by her side as she wrote, has just been quoting for her benefit. It ran
thus: _Horas non numero nisi serenas_--I count the fair hours only.
This she said she was taking for her own motto. She had determined, she
told her friend, to come out of herself more, to cultivate a general
spirit of kindliness toward everybody, to hold out her hand to the
right and to the left. To what good purpose she now put this resolution
into effect is shown by the fact that her pupils at Hartford remember
her to this day as one who took the greatest interest in each one’s
affairs, laying aside her own matters and talking over the likes and
aims of others. And perhaps she did not find it so hard after all to
keep from shrinking into a corner. Perhaps she found a pleasure in
meeting new and strange people and in trying to be friendly with them.
She seems to have found that these social contacts, though not having
any great meaning in themselves, yet could form a very pretty flower
border to the way of life.

A wonderful discovery for one to make whose nature, did she but know
it, was one great tide of loving impulses, whose heart was vast in its
all-including kindliness!



CHAPTER IX

A PILGRIMAGE


In 1832, when Harriet Beecher was twenty-one years old, a great change
took place in her fortunes. She was transplanted from her New England
environment into the more dynamic life of the great, growing west.
But of course we must not expect to find the west of eighty years ago
very much like the west of to-day. In 1832 the middle of Ohio seemed
separated by vaster distances and was more difficult of access than
any part of our country this side of the Pacific Coast seems to-day.
This alteration in our point of view has come about because there never
has been a time or place in the history of the world when the growth
of a region has been so swift or so picturesque as in that part of our
country that we now call the “middle west.”

Of those wonderful things that were to take place in the advancement
of our country’s resources and welfare, the building of schools,
churches, libraries and institutions of all kinds, and the development
of national spirit, Harriet Beecher’s father seems to have had a
prevision. He saw the great possibilities in the growing western
country, and felt a burning desire to have a share in upbuilding
the best things there. His feeling in regard to this great work is
illustrated in one little page of his biography.

In order to impress the full meaning of prayer upon his mind and heart,
Dr. Beecher would sometimes write it out in his diary; and in one of
these prayers written at about this time he said: “If there be anything
which by living I can do, or by dying I can do, to mitigate on earth
the miseries of sin and to save my country and to save the world, then
speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.”

About this time also he wrote a letter to Catherine, in which he said:
“I have thought seriously of going over to Cincinnati, that London of
the west, to spend the remnant of my days in that great conflict, and
in consecrating all my children to God in that region who are willing
to go. If we gain the west, all is safe; if we lose it, all is lost....
This is not with me a transient flash of feeling, but a feeling as if
the great battle is to be fought in the valley of the Mississippi, and
as if it may be the will of God that I shall be employed to arouse and
help marshal the host for the conflict.... These are only my thoughts,
but they are deep, and yet withal, my ways are committed to God.”[6]

It was in this spirit that he received a call to become the head of
Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio. Catherine sympathized
with her father in his enthusiasm for the intellectual and spiritual
development of the west, and she decided to go with him into the new
work. In fact he had said to her, “If _I_ go, it is part of my plan
that _you_ go.”

Harriet had now to leave her many friends in Hartford and the relatives
in Litchfield and Nut Plains. Her two brothers, William and Edward,
were now established preachers, and Henry Ward and Charles were in
college. The sister next older than herself, Mary, was married and was
living in Hartford. To separate from all these loved ones and go out
into a far distant land was very hard.

The journey west occupied many days and had something of the
fascination of a wild adventure. They were going into a new land, into
a great missionary field; their hearts were high and their courage
was good. They chose the most expeditious way of going, which at that
time was by way of New York City, Philadelphia, over the mountains to
Wheeling, and then down the Ohio River to Cincinnati. This, we must
remember, was before the through railroad lines to the west had been
built.

There were many pauses by the way for the Beecher cavalcade, since the
fame of Dr. Lyman Beecher as the greatest of the pulpit speakers of New
England had been carried everywhere, and the people in the large towns
through which they passed wished him to stay long enough at least to
preach to them--a request that he was anxious to grant.

The first stopping place was New York. Here they paused long enough
for Dr. Beecher to preach several times and to see many of his friends
among the ministers and to make more. Harriet found life in that great
city of New York, as she said, “too scattering.” She believed it would
“kill her dead” to live long in the way they were living there. It
seemed to her like a sort of “agreeable delirium”! She began to be
thirsty for the waters of quietness. But her father, she said, was
in his element--dipping into books, consulting authorities for his
orations, going around here, there, and everywhere, begging, borrowing,
and spoiling the Egyptians, delighted with past success and confident
for the future.

Dr. Beecher had also another object in view, which was to do some
energetic begging for the foundation of the Biblical professorship in
the Theological Seminary of which he was about to take charge. Harriet,
in writing back to friends in Hartford about it, said casually: “The
incumbent of this foundation is to be C. Stowe.” This is the first time
that we hear the name of the one who is to bear so large a part in the
story of Harriet Beecher’s life.

From New York the Beecher company went by steamboat to Philadelphia.
Here they had the great misfortune to lose track of all their baggage.
They had to wait for a time in Philadelphia until it could be traced to
another wharf. It was finally recovered and brought on, but not till
after the ladies of the family, usually the very pink of perfection in
their starched and snowy collars and lace edgings, had suffered extreme
discomfort because of the limp and dusty condition of their frills.
The comfort of the family was at last restored and the mother and Aunt
Esther were supplied with fresh caps and ruffles. Great was the joy!
Dr. Beecher struck an attitude as the boxes were brought in, swung his
hat, and called for three cheers. “So should a man do,” cried Harriet,
“whose wife has not had a cap or a ruffle for a week!”

The delay in Philadelphia was not specially unwelcome. Here the party
was separated into two sections: the father and mother with Aunt Esther
and the baby, went to one friend’s house, and the older children to
another. Their hosts were rich, hospitable folks and their visits were
full of enjoyment. There was much to be seen by the young people, and
the father’s energies were taken up with conferences and preaching
and with prayer-meetings held specially for the success of the great
missionary object that was calling him into what seemed to them all a
very far-away country.

By all this business they were kept so long that Mrs. Beecher and Aunt
Esther demurred at the delay. Dr. Beecher told them that they were in
the hands of Providence, but they said that they would much prefer to
trust Providence by the way!

At last they were all ready to take the plunge into the actual west.

If their journey had but been a few years later, a railroad train would
have taken them as far as Columbia, Pennsylvania; then a canal would
have carried them along the east bank of the Susquehanna River as far
as the entrance to the Juniata. At this point the canal would have
crossed that great river by means of an aqueduct and they would have
followed the blue Juniata to Hollidaysburg. There the problem how to
get over the forbidding mountain ridge that faced them would have been
solved by the exciting method of a portage which by means of pulleys
drew the cars up to fourteen hundred feet above that town, using three
levels for separate short journeys from level to level. The descent to
Johnstown on the other side of the ridge would have been made by the
same method reversed, and the canal packet boat from that place would
have used the Kiskiminetos River along to Pittsburgh, where the great
Ohio River would have brought them to Cincinnati. All this could have
been done in 1836. But this was 1832; and none of these things were
under way at the time, though they were being more or less seriously
thought of. The only method of traveling in the year 1832 was by the
time-honored daily or tri-weekly stages.

Of these stage-coach lines an elaborate system was at their service;
for the largest part of the journey, the family availed themselves of
this method, sometimes, however, finding it more economical for so
large a party to charter a coach and have it all to themselves.

We may imagine them climbing into a big old-fashioned stage, drawn by
four great horses, and starting out for Wheeling, a city that lies
right in the line from New York to the southern part of Ohio, if you
make the line curve a little bit to the south in order to make the
easiest cut through the mountains.

The company included Dr. and Mrs. Beecher and Aunt Esther; and for
children, there were Catherine, Harriet, Isabella, George, Thomas
and James; some of these names have been added to the list since the
Litchfield days. As for this company of young folks, it may be safely
said that they enjoyed every inch of the way; no badness of the roads,
no threat of tempest, no weariness of unsupported backs, could subdue
their skipping spirits. There was plenty of room in the coach with
three on a seat. Besides that, George sat with the driver on the box,
and as the journey progressed, and new drivers took their places at the
points where horses were exchanged, he acquired every little while a
new set of stories which he faithfully shouted back to the occupants
behind. George was also a great singer, and led the choir of the whole
coachful in singing hymns and songs. Whenever they passed through a
town or along by a small wayside village, he let loose a packet of
tracts and snowed them all along the road for the inhabitants to pick
up after the cavalcade had gone by. And woe be to any wayfaring people
that came along the road if they did not love tracts, for these snowy
batteries were discharged regularly upon the head of each one they met!
Harriet called out to him, “George, you are peppering the country with
moral influence.”

The first day was full of enjoyment; they had an obliging driver, good
roads, good spirits, a good dinner, fine scenery. Harriet pronounced
it all good. That day they went about thirty miles and reached
Downingtown, Pennsylvania. Here, as Harriet said, they were dropped
down like Noah and his wife and his sons and his daughters, with the
cattle and creeping things. And here they had the first night’s rest of
their real pilgrimage.

Wherever they stopped was home for the time being. To bring about
this magical transformation of things that mean nothing, into things
that mean “home,” was a special gift of Harriet’s, acquired in her
own home circle. On this journey into the wilds there was always a
gathering of the children for singing and prayer in the little parlor
of whatever inn might be their stopping place for the time. On such
an evening we can see them sitting around the table in the candle
light, the father reading and studying. Catherine writing to Mary
at Hartford, and Harriet to her loved friend, Georgiana May, Thomas
working at his journal, and Isabella keeping her little record, too,
while George is only waiting for a chance to sit up to the table and
take his pen. In her letter Harriet is saying this: “As for me, among
the multitude of my present friends, my heart still makes occasional
visits to the absent ones, visits full of pleasure and full of cause
for gratitude to Him who gives us friends. I have thought of you often
to-day, my Georgiana.... This afternoon as we were traveling, we struck
up ‘Jubilee.’ It put me in mind of the time when we used to ride along
the rough North Guilford roads and make the air vocal as we went along.
Pleasant times, those! Those were blue skies, and that was a beautiful
lake, and noble pine-trees and rocks they were that hung over it. But
those we shall look upon ‘nae mair.’ Well, my dear, there is a land
where we shall not love and leave. Those skies shall never cease to
shine, the waters of life we shall never be called upon to leave. We
have here no continuing city, but we seek one to come. In such thoughts
as these I desire ever to rest, and with such words as these let us
‘comfort one another and edify one another.’”

The next stopping place was Harrisburg. Here they had another homelike
evening, gathering in Catherine’s room for a “sing” before going to
bed. Then followed a good restful sleep in preparation for the long,
slow journey up the Appalachian range that was to begin in the morning.
In this part of the pilgrimage they were not so fortunate as they had
hitherto been. The horses were poor and the roads very bad. It took
them eight days to do what the mail-stage was accustomed to accomplish
in two. But good company makes a long journey short. The children’s
spirits were equal to the need, though they may have been by this time
a little weary. They flung their songs upon the breeze and their tracts
upon the traveler whenever they met one, and left a trail of gladness
upon the mountain heights.

When they reached the city of Wheeling the family were again
distributed among the homes of the people who were desirous that they
should remain so that they might hear Dr. Beecher preach. At this
place the family had expected to take the canal boat down the Ohio.
But either because the water was too low or because of a rumor that
cholera was becoming prevalent down the river, they decided against the
great waterway as a means of travel. And if the canal boat experience
would have been like that described by Dickens in his “American Notes”
or even like the short sketch that Harriet Beecher made in her little
story, “The Canal-boy,” the Beecher party had little to regret in being
compelled to go a roundabout way, in a comfortably airy stage-coach,
even though the journey by this method did take longer.

After a busy week in Wheeling, they chartered a coach again and went
on westward. This time they verged a little northward and took in
Granville, Ohio, where they stayed a while to attend a protracted
meeting. Here there was more and more preaching. For the rest of the
way there was a corduroy road, made of logs laid crosswise. George
said, “They make the roads this way for the benefit of the dyspeptics
out here.” But never mind! That corduroy road led over the most
beautiful rolling prairie, and down along pleasant river courses, till
it came in view of a wide valley through which the great Ohio, La Belle
Rivière, swept with a great curve, leaving a charmed space for the
building of a city. Here the stage-coach swung along through streets
between rows of neat red brick houses surrounded by abundant gardens,
and paused at last for rest after the long pilgrimage. Here the Beecher
home was to be for eighteen years.



CHAPTER X

THE WESTERN HOME


On arriving in this western metropolis, the Beechers were not entirely
like strangers in a strange land. The Doctor, accompanied by Catherine,
had made a tour of inspection the year before, and had made many
acquaintances with whom they had talked over their educational plans.
Besides this, Harriet had two prosperous uncles in Cincinnati, who
were taking part in all the most vital concerns of the city; one was
that fascinating Uncle Samuel Edmonds Foote, and the other was Mr.
John Parsons Foote, brother of Uncle Samuel, who was also a highly
cultivated gentleman. These uncles welcomed the wanderers and made them
at home in their comfortable residences on the heights where the view
of the whole city was spread out beneath their windows. Uncle John and
Uncle Samuel, said Harriet, were the “intelligent, sociable, free, and
hospitable sort of folk that everybody likes and everybody feels at
home with.”

In the city they also found a large number of old Litchfield and
Guilford friends, who had come out before them and had already become
a part of the thriving intellectual and social life of the town and
region. For in our thought of the western city, far removed from what
were then the centers of national activity, we must not imagine too
severe a picture of simplicity and wilderness life. The pioneering
period had in fact passed entirely by. In 1833 the famous Buckeye
Dinner celebrated the forty-fifth anniversary of the first settlement
of the city, and this means a long time in the history of a western
town in the United States where the growth is like that of a mushroom
in the night. When the Beechers came there in 1832, there was a court
house, a banking house, a medical college with a hospital and some
asylums; there were fifteen churches, several Bible societies, several
public libraries, a theater, a humane society and a museum. There
were large markets, twenty-one foundries and factories, and a great
steamboat business with large imports and exports. At the wharves there
was room for thirty steamboats at one time, and the country all about
Cincinnati was threaded with post roads. Before the Beechers left
the city in 1850 there were railroad facilities in some directions,
a Society of Fine Arts with thirty-three active working painters and
sculptors in its circle, an Academy of Music, and forty-three churches.
The population in 1833 was twenty-seven thousand. It increased with
amazing rapidity. During one year of the Beechers’ stay eleven hundred
houses were built.

A place that was making such a record as this was certain to receive
a great deal of notice. As the city was built on the banks of the
Ohio River, the one possible thread of travel at that time from the
Atlantic coast to the remoter west, travelers of an investigating turn
of mind--of whom there has always been a constant procession to this
country--had to pass Cincinnati on their way; they usually paused for a
time to see this wonderful city grow. It grew so fast that they could
fairly see the process going on! During the time that Harriet Beecher
lived in Cincinnati many noted writers stayed for a longer or shorter
time in the city, observing things more or less closely, and afterward
wrote about what they saw. Among them were Fenno Hoffman, Godfrey de
Vigne, Chevalier, Harriet Martineau, Captain Marryat, Professor Frank
Hall, Buckingham, Mrs. Steele, Charles Dickens, Sir Charles Lyell,
who spoke chiefly of the geological formation; the Honorable Charles
Augustus Murray, the Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley and Mary Howitt,
who wrote most of her book in a quiet valley in the suburbs of the
city. Captain Marryat said: “It is a beautiful, well-kept, clean town,
reminding you of Philadelphia.... Situated on a hill on the banks of
the Ohio, it is surrounded by a phalanx of other hills; so that, look
up and down the streets whichever way you will, your eye reposes upon
verdure and forest trees in the distance.”

Other visitors noted also the “pretty gardens and ornamental
shrubberies,” and some declared, with expressions of amazement, that
every comfort and convenience was to be found in the city. Mrs. Steele
called Cincinnati the “Queen of the West.” “We have explored it
thoroughly by walking and riding, and we pronounce it wonderful,” she
said. She was astonished that such a city could have come from what
was so lately a wilderness. There were rows of handsome dwellings,
surrounded by shade trees. An accidental opening among the trees gave
you a glimpse of a pavilion where, among groves and gardens, the ladies
and children of the family might enjoy the fresh air.

But it is not to be supposed that all the distinguished visitors to
this mid-country city of the United States should be thus pleasantly
impressed. One went so far as to laugh at the idea of calling it the
“Empire City of the West,” and substitutes for this proud title the
obnoxious one, “Empire City of Pigs!” for this writer claimed that
the pigs ran in the street with perfect comfort to themselves though
perhaps not to the members of the human family. We find, however, that
Harriet Beecher’s little brother enjoyed this Cincinnati custom hugely,
for he would frequently be found walking soberly along by the side of
a pig with his arm around its neck, or even sitting astride one of the
monsters, gallantly riding it--at least for a few minutes!--to the
great amusement of the populace.

It was six years before the coming of the Beechers that the famous
Mrs. Trollope visited Cincinnati and thereafter wrote her ill-natured
comments on the ambitious western metropolis. Harriet Martineau,
coming in 1834, was possessed of a more genial spirit. She found the
city so full of ambition that they were meditating on the place where
the capitol building should stand when the center of the national
government should be removed from Washington to the city of Ohio which
was so much nearer to the center of the country. She thought this a
very good idea. It seemed to her absurd for senators from Missouri
and Louisiana to go so far as Washington when they might, by the
mere removal of the seat of government, stop at Cincinnati. But we
are most interested in hearing what Charles Dickens had to say about
Cincinnati, which he visited in 1840. To this stirring city he assigned
a chapter in his “American Notes,” where he gave it perhaps a more
fair, certainly a more favorable, treatment than he did to some other
cities that he saw. He says: “Cincinnati is a beautiful city; cheerful,
thriving, and animated. I have not often seen a place that commends
itself so favorably and pleasantly to a stranger at the first glance
as this does, with its clean houses of red and white, its well-paved
roads, and footways of bright tile.” He goes on to speak of the
amphitheater of hills, the comfortable houses, the elegant residences.
Then he describes a great temperance convention held there on the day
after his arrival. There was a procession with dramatic and symbolic
floats; there was much speech-making and the school children sang in
chorus. The main thing, however, was the conduct and appearance of the
audience throughout the day, and that was admirable and full of promise.

I do not know that this particular city was specially given to
processions or that the parade is a matter of western taste. Perhaps
it is a national or even an Anglo-Saxon mode of expressing exuberant
vitality. However that may be, we have another description of a
Cincinnati pageant that may interest us, as it is one of the things
that took place while Harriet Beecher was living in the city. It is
reported for us by Harriet Martineau, who saw it while she was there
in 1834. It was a wonderful parade of school children--two thousand in
number! Miss Martineau thought it one of the most beautiful sights that
she ever saw.

Can it be that our Harriet did not see that wonderful procession of
two thousand Cincinnati school children? We do not believe it. And is
it not strange to think that these two great Harriets of the Old and
the New World should have stood together to watch this flaming sign of
promise for the future of the English-speaking people, and should not
have looked into each other’s eyes to know each other? At any rate,
Harriet of America forgot all about the visit of her British sister;
but a long time after, Harriet of England sent an invitation to her
American contemporary to visit her in her English home. She remembered
the older Beecher girl, Catherine, very well; she had a clear
recollection of Dr. Lyman Beecher; but--“Did I see you,” she asked, “in
a white frock and a black silk apron?... I believe and hope you were
the young lady in the black silk apron.” Of such unseen links as this
is history made; the lives of the actors and leaders of thought cross
each other and interweave, making a continuous onflow of life.

Before we leave the more general things that were happening in
Cincinnati during the years that Harriet Beecher lived there, we
must recur once more to that Buckeye Dinner that took place the year
after she came. I do not know whether any of the theologues from the
Seminary were present or not; but if they were, they heard a wonderful
speech from one of the great men of the nation’s history. That was
General Harrison, son of a patriot of Revolutionary fame, and himself a
conspicuous patriot. A French guest of the city relates that he saw in
the hotel a noticeable man of about fifty years old, of medium height,
and of muscular build, with an open and cheerful countenance and with
a certain air of command; and when he asked who that was he was told
that that was General Harrison, Clerk of the Cincinnati Court of Common
Pleas. “What! General Harrison of the Tippecanoe and the Thames?” he
cried. The answer was: “The same; the ex-Governor, the conqueror of
Tecumseh and Proctor; the avenger of our disasters of the Raisin and at
Detroit; the ex-Governor of the Territory of Indiana; the ex-Senator in
Congress, and the ex-Minister to one of the South American Republics.
He has grown old in the service of his country,” continued the
informant; “he has passed twenty years of his life in those fierce wars
with the Indians, in which there was less glory to be won but more
danger to be encountered than at Rivoli and Austerlitz. He is now poor
with a numerous family, and is neglected by the Federal Government,
although yet vigorous, because he has the independence to think for
himself. His friends got the place of clerk as a sort of retiring
pension. So we have him as clerk of an inferior court.” This great man,
then, was living at Cincinnati. In the Roman and the American fashion
he was in retirement after a time of political activity and was living
as a farmer; but he was to be recalled in a few years to the nation’s
highest place of honor, a position that he was to hold, however, but
one month before he was to pass away in the midst of his work. As time
went on, General Harrison was intimately connected in various ways
with the lines of life in the Beecher and Stowe households, and was
venerated by them heartily.

There were many other distinguished people that passed a part of their
lives in this city during the years that interest us, but we must not
stay to name them. Suffice it to say that life was by no means dull in
Cincinnati. Besides processions and banquets, there was an occasional
flood on the river to enliven things, or a steamboat explosion. There
were passages of wild excitement over various public questions, there
were hangings and bank mobs and negro mobs. All these events of a
public nature were to be part of the warp and woof of the life of this
family that were living there and were working eagerly for the best
interests of the city and country. Harriet tells us that while they
lived at Walnut Hills the favorite subjects of conversation at the home
table changed. While the former subjects of free will and regeneration,
of Heaven and the destiny of man were still discussed, new subjects
were now added. The United States Constitution came into the debate,
and--the fugitive slave laws. Is it any wonder? They must have talked
over Harrison’s speech and all the other patriotic speeches, whether
given in connection with the peaceful gatherings of white-robed school
children in churches, or more passionately uttered when mobs swept
through the town and burned and slew. Of all this we shall hear later
on.

The house that the Beechers were obliged to live in when they first
came to Cincinnati was, Harriet said in a letter to Hartford, the most
inconvenient, ill-arranged, good-for-nothing and altogether execrable
affair that ever was put together. The kitchen was so arranged that
their mother could not go into it without putting on a bonnet and
cloak; the parlor had one window, and that opened upon a porch and
had its lower half painted to keep out what little light there was.
It was built, she averred, by a bachelor who of course acted up to
whatever light he had, though that left little enough for his tenants.
In this merry way Harriet made the best of everything and turned their
difficulties and inconveniences into pleasantry. Nevertheless, it is
to be feared that Harriet had some slight touch of homesickness. Not
a day passed that she did not engineer the sending of somebody to the
post office, and when the reply repeatedly came, “No letters,” her
heart sank within her. Therefore, when the first letter did come to
the circle at Cincinnati, Harriet was so overjoyed that she cut up all
manner of capers expressive of thankfulness, went up three stairs at
a time to get to the study to begin an answer, wishing devoutly that
the path of duty led in the direction of writing a long letter instead
of in the direction of darning the heels of George’s stockings! The
possession of this letter was a secret from all but Catherine and
herself, and they decided to keep it till supper time and then spring
it as a surprise. This method had its disadvantages; it seemed too bad
to keep it from mother and Aunt Esther for a whole afternoon, but the
girls had the satisfaction of thinking that they were planning for
their greatest happiness on the whole, which, Harriet considered, was
true metaphysical benevolence.

Supper time came. There was a suppressed excitement in the air. At last
Catherine held up her hand and said, “We have a dessert that we have
been saving all the afternoon. See here! This is from Hartford!” she
cried, and then Harriet held up the Hartford letter. How all the people
stared! Mrs. Beecher’s pale face was all one smile, Aunt Esther’s eyes
were very bright and the father’s were almost tearful as he looked at
the familiar and beloved handwriting. Harriet read the letter to an
enraptured audience and every allusion was appreciated to the full.
“Mrs. Parsons stopped in the midst of her pumpkins pies to think of
us!” cried Harriet. “Seems to me I can see her now--that bright,
cheerful face! She is making the pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving.”

This turned the conversation to the subject of Thanksgiving. And amid
smiles and sighs they talked over the plan of keeping that sacred New
England festival here in the far west. “But how can we sing the Lord’s
song in a strange land?” quoted Harriet amid a hush all around the
table.

In due time the family moved to the house prepared for them at Walnut
Hills where the Theological Seminary was situated. This was about two
miles from the center of the city as it was then, and the drive to and
from the church and the markets passed up hill and down dale through
the most lovely succession of undulations, where the velvety richness
of the turf and the groupings of the grove and forest made the scene,
as Catherine said, nothing short of Arcadian. The “straight, beautiful
shafts of the trees as one looked up the cool, green recesses of the
woods seemed,” she said, with a flight of eloquence rather unusual
for her practical nature, “as though they might form very proper
columns for a Dryad temple.” Over this road the Beechers’ little
horse “Charley” went many times a day, carrying messages and bringing
supplies.

There were fine trees about the Seminary also. The ample two-story
house had a long ell that ran back into the primeval forest. To this
a classic grove of superb foliage gave shade in summer and protection
from wind in winter. On these wonderful trees the adventurous little
sister Isabelle climbed and swung on the upper branches in the wind.
A dangerous feat! We fancy that the care of the Beecher children did
not grow less as the number increased, even though the older ones were
all the time moving away and becoming dignified ministers of churches.
Mrs. Beecher and Aunt Esther, with the family of thirteen, including
servants, had their hands full; so did Harriet and Catherine, who were
going to town every day to look after their school. Harriet’s memory
of the years passed in Walnut Hills was of a time full to the brim of
life and animation. There was an electric current passing every moment
through the house. Things were being done; thoughts were passing like
wildfire; not for an instant could there be stagnation in any part of
the work. Everybody was carried along to the fullest use of his powers
in such a home as that.



CHAPTER XI

THE FOUNDERS OF A SCHOOL


While the family were getting settled in the new home, Catherine and
Harriet were making their plans about their school. In this somewhat
formidable endeavor the Beecher daughters were not without rivals.
There was already an academy in Cincinnati whose curriculum was said
to “embrace an extensive circle of female education,” which included
French, needlework and penmanship. I dare say they also taught their
scholars how to depict tombstones and weeping willows in chenille and
silk embroidery, but history does not inform us on this point. There
were also other schools for “female education” to the number of perhaps
fifteen. But none of these things were allowed to discourage them, for
this was the land of initiative and of experiment. Besides, the new
institution was to be far superior to anything yet dreamed of.

Catherine’s scheme was indeed an ambitious one. It included a young
ladies’ school for fifty or sixty pupils, with a primary department
for about the same number of little girls, and also a primary school
for little boys. These were to be the practice schools in her scheme
for the training of teachers, exactly as we conduct our normal schools
to-day. The school work was to be on the basis of that in a college;
and they believed so thoroughly in woman’s teaching power, that they
thought instruction in this country would never be well done until
women were trained directly for that service. This was what these two
young educators intended to do--to train perfect teachers for schools
that were sure to arise and that were already sadly needed all over the
central west and, indeed, throughout the country. They cherished the
thought that women by their motherly instincts and by the qualities
that housewifely lore and home-making and family life had fixed in
the very fiber of their being, would be specially adapted to the work
of teachers. The outcome in the next few decades of our national life
proves not only that these two young theorists were able to look over
the whole situation in the country and to see what was most needed and
the best means to attain the desired ends, but also that they were
far-sighted as to what the future was sure to bring forth. For the
New England migration was to pass over the vast space of the prairies
of all our middle states, making possible everywhere schools in which
almost the whole burden of the work was to fall to the hands of women.
They saw that the gigantic burden of subduing the land was to be the
special work of men. It turned out to be so. They saw that men of tact,
versatility, talent, and piety, as Harriet put it, qualities absolutely
necessary to successful teaching, would be constantly called away to
missionary and ministerial and patriotic duties. If such a man were
put to the work of teaching, he would be, said Harriet Beecher, like
a Hercules with a distaff in hand ready to spring at the first call
of the trumpet. The question of salaries also came in, for a man must
have enough to support wife and family. But we can hardly realize how
it seemed in 1832 when two young women urged forward the idea that if
young women were to be well prepared for the work of teaching, were to
be placed in responsible positions and were to devote themselves to
this work, adequate provision really must be made for their support.
Catherine spent a good part of her life and wrote chapters in her books
maintaining that side by side with the many well-endowed institutions
for men, there should be also a well-endowed provision for the
education of women. Those days were not so very long ago; but things
have happened at a wild rate since then. Yet Catherine Beecher has by
no means had her meed of praise for the work she did in training the
public mind toward the good things that we now take for granted almost
as much as if we had had them since the beginning of time. To be sure,
it is not at all certain that it is the best possible scheme for an
ideal country that nearly all teaching in its common schools should be
done by women; but in the transition of a swiftly expanding people the
great crisis was this: either the work of teaching had to be done by
women or it could not be done at all. In this hour of need thousands of
women arose to devote their lives to this work, receiving in payment a
poor wage, always less than would be given to a man for the same work,
and in the great majority of cases suffering the denial of that which
is most precious to the woman, the home-making instinct.

Of course it cannot be asserted that Catherine saw all this; but she
felt the immediate need of the situation. She believed that a woman’s
nature was adapted to the precious occupation of training children, and
being herself deprived of the place in life where her large, motherly
nature could have its full fruition, she chose to aid her country in
that day of need by helping to provide teachers for the swiftly forming
schools all through the middle states.[7] To this work the American
girls of 1830 were called by the voice of Catherine Beecher; aided by
her capable sister she took in hand the training of women for the work.
They hoped to be able soon to say to many hundreds of young women,
“Here is a place where you may qualify yourselves to be first-rate
teachers and receive help in finding a location in one of the many
flourishing towns and villages of the west where such services are
sorely needed.”

In doing all this for the sake of the nation’s welfare, Catherine
and her sister were following an instinct that had been developed in
the great body of New England women who shared with their fathers
and husbands and sons the passionate interest in what a late writer
has called its “adventure of democracy.”[8] Our hazardous experiment
in putting national control into the hands of the people was now on
trial before the monarchical governments of the European world, from
which our forefathers had run away in order to find a place in this
wilderness where they might worship in peace and govern themselves
according to their own ideas of justice and right. But the New England
mothers were made to see that they also had a part to perform in the
state. These early statesmen said: “Our women must concur in all plans
for education for young men or no laws will ever render them effectual.
To qualify our women for this purpose they should be instructed not
only in the usual branches of female education, but should also be
taught the principles of government and liberty, and the obligations
of patriotism should be inculcated in them.”[9] Hence these early
statesmen advised their wives to see to it that their sons were
instructed in the “divine science of politics.” These words naturally
fired the women with a desire to fulfill this great ideal so that they
should not be found wanting when the republic called to them plainly.
But they must be ready. They saw that. To prepare them for the task
that was theirs they must do more than the Spartan mother did when
she gave the shield to her son, saying, “Return either with it, or
upon it!” They must have something more than a haphazard training in
the mere rudiments such as had been their part in the country school.
It came into the mind of such women as Emma Willard and Mary Lyon to
build up schools where the training could be obtained that would give
the women what they needed in order to fit their sons for citizenship
in the republic. And they all had the same idea. The subjects must be
advanced--not chenille and samplers only--and the teaching must be
excellent.

While Roxana Foote Beecher was training her daughter in philosophy
and perspective, and Lucinda Foote was privately studying Greek with
President Stiles of Yale College, Mrs. Emma Willard was struggling
to gain a foothold for her seminary for the daughters of well-to-do
families, and Mary Lyon was as resolutely pressing forward her effort
to provide a school for those who must gain an education, if at all, in
some more economical way. Mrs. Willard’s Female Seminary at Troy was
finally founded in 1821, and Mt. Holyoke in 1837. But these were only
two out of many. In New York State alone twelve academies for girls
were founded between 1827 and 1839, and in New England and also further
south the schools and academies for girls were multiplying so fast that
there was soon opportunity for nearly every valley to offer some chance
for further culture than the country school afforded to the young women
of the region.

The great difficulty lay in getting the teachers for these schools;
that was what pressed most deeply on the mind of Catherine Beecher.
They could not call upon men for this work nor would it be well to
do so if they could. “If men have more knowledge,” reasoned Harriet,
“they have less talent in communicating it, nor have they the patience,
the long-suffering and the gentleness necessary to superintend the
formation of the child’s character.” Then with a touch of that passion
for reform that was an essential part of the Beecher character wherever
we find it she added: “We intend to make these principles understood,
and ourselves to set the example of what females can do in this way!”
In other words, she intended to be the best possible teacher, to be
as near to perfection as she could compel herself to be. That she
should make a declaration like this was not a piece of self-conceit;
it was merely the expression of her ideal. This saying of Harriet
Beecher makes one think of what Joan of Arc said when she was asked by
what charm or magic she made the soldiers go into battle. She simply
answered, “I called to them to come on into the battle and then I went
right on into the battle myself!” This is the principle that is at the
basis of all the charm that lures human beings into glorious heroism;
it is the very reason for the existence of leaders and prophets.

In 1833, then, and for some years thereafter, the two sisters
labored for the success of the school in Cincinnati. Harriet, with
characteristic energy, threw herself into the work. As the work of the
school increased she lived a life of incessant labor. What she tried to
do was enough to wreck the health of the most sturdy. Her whole time
was absorbed with her efforts for the new school. Even when on Sunday
she took advantage of the day of rest to lay aside her cares, the ill
feelings that disturbed her took away the rest and filled the hours
with misery. She had everything but good health. She felt as if she
were scarcely alive, and there was great danger that the old morbid
feelings would return. Again we find her mind and heart suffering from
the state of her health and physical ability threatened by excessive
overwork.

About this time she was reading the life of Madam de Staël and
“Corinne.” The work moved her intensely. It is interesting to see
how she accounted for the great effect it had upon her emotions. She
placed herself at once in the environment of her nation and saw how she
herself illustrated a national characteristic. The effect of republican
government, she reasoned, is to demand rigid forms of conduct. The
emotions thus constantly repressed burn inwardly all the more. They
burn to the very soul, leaving only dust and ashes, she thought. At
any rate this seemed to her to be the case with herself. Tired to the
bone, she felt that her soul was withered and exhausted. She wrote
to Georgiana, her beloved friend, with whom she still shared all her
deepest thoughts: “All that is enthusiastic, all that is impassioned,
in admiration of nature, of writing, of character, in devotional
thought and emotion, or in the emotions of affection, I have felt with
vehement and absorbing intensity, felt till my mind is exhausted, and
seems to be sinking into deadness. Half of my time I am glad to remain
in a listless vacancy, to busy myself with trifles, since thought is
pain, and emotion is pain.”

It is sad to see this young spirit so misunderstanding itself. What
Harriet Beecher needed was to run away from those cares for even a
short time. Just one little breathing spell, a little freedom from
care and responsibility would have freshened her and made it possible
for her to carry on her work far more thoroughly, though that perhaps
could hardly have been--but at any rate, with as much again of
buoyancy and joy. Now she heard little girls recite and told them
fairy tales beginning in the immemorial way with “once upon a time”
and spinning them out as she went along to the utmost delectation of
her young-hearted audience; now she took up the more serious subjects
of history and grammar, and the philosophy of taste. After school
hours she had to attend the teachers’ meeting, where such subjects as
scattering the quill pens and the copy-books on the floor, forming
classes, drinking in the entry (drinking water, of course), giving
leave to speak, ringing the recess-bell, and such details were solemnly
discussed.

During this time Dr. Beecher was supplying the pulpit in one of the
churches of Cincinnati. On Sundays the pupils in the school went to
hear him preach, and on Mondays they were called together to make
reports on the sermon. A devotional character was given to the meeting
of this class; it was conducted by Harriet and she gave to the service
a quiet fervor that was most beautiful and helpful.

Very soon a rather important piece of work was put into Harriet’s
hands. The school needed a geography for the younger scholars, and
Harriet was appointed to make it. She went to work and produced a
“New Geography for Children,” which was published in Cincinnati, and
was used not only in the Beecher School, but also in all the primary
schools of the city. Her geography was not at all like the books of
that name that we now use. It belonged with the class of instructive
treatises represented by the “Present Condition of the Terraqueous
Globe,” written by “Jedediah Morse, D.D.,” which he “Dedicated and
Devoted to the Young Gentlemen and Ladies of America with the Most
Ardent Wishes for Their Improvement,” and which was reprinted almost
every year from 1784 to 1850. The Peter Parley and Malte Brun books
belong in the same group. It was the era of a sort of pious compendium
written generally in the kindly letters of a father or an uncle. In one
number of the _Western Magazine_, a magazine published in Cincinnati
during that time, there is a scathing review of several of these small
attempts at giving young people some knowledge of the world they lived
in. The editor mentions the manual of Peter Parley and that of Malte
Brun and complains that these would-be purveyors of natural history
take liberties with fact. The anaconda, they informed the children,
was so big that it could crush a house; the buffaloes of America were
domestic and harmless. “This,” said the editor, “is the way they
are teaching the young idea how to shoot, but we should call it bad
shooting!” Miss Beecher had no domestic buffaloes and no house-crushing
anacondas in her book, and it seems to have been clear enough of
inanities to displace that of Malte Brun in the city’s list of school
books in 1834. It was a modest little book, but it represented a great
deal of work. She begins with the simplest but clearest directions
for drawing a map of the schoolroom and then leads up gradually to
the subject of the cape, isthmus, continent, etc. There are pictures
of interesting places, descriptions of the products of the countries,
the manners, costumes, religions and laws of the people. The book is
written like a story, with frequent affectionate addresses to the young
learner and admonitions that are to encourage him on his way where the
study seems difficult or dry. The personal character of the writer
has an opportunity to show itself in a book like this, and, if the
reprint of 1852 was a facsimile of the original work, as seems likely,
that Harriet Beecher, the teacher in the Cincinnati school in 1833, in
a very earnest chapter on the subject of slavery, has shown clearly
what her opinion would be when that great subject should come up for
discussion. She also clearly points out the part that the English bore
in the early history of our country in forcing the system of slavery
upon their colonial subjects on this side of the sea. She takes good
opportunity to urge the reasons why the New England forefathers left
their native land and sought the inhospitable shores of New England and
speaks feelingly of their sufferings in the early years of settlement.
None of these passages was toned down when the little book was
reprinted in England in 1852 for the use of the English schools.



CHAPTER XII

THE SEMI-COLONS


Soon after the Beechers were settled at Cincinnati the circle of old
New England friends exiled together in this western land formed a
literary club that met alternately at Uncle Samuel Foote’s and Dr.
Drake’s. They called this society the “Semi-colon Club,” and gave the
following explanation of the name: The Spanish name of Columbus was
Colon; if the discoverer of a continent may be called a “Colon,” the
discoverers of a new pleasure should at least be allowed the honor of
being called “Semi-colons.” This new pleasure consisted in the delight
they got out of the interchange of thought at weekly meetings.

The society of Semi-colons grew out of what Harriet called “Uncle Sam’s
soirée,” the social assemblies that that genial host gathered about
him in his house on the heights. The house where most of the meetings
were held and which should be called “the home of the Semi-colon Club”
was on the corner of Vine and Third Streets. It was a mansion with
a stately colonnade of pillars across the portico. In the company
that assembled beneath that friendly roof were several that were
destined to become known to the world besides Catherine, Harriet and
other members of their family. There were judges, generals, poets,
professors, editors, and, as Harriet might have said, some human
beings! Salmon P. Chase was there, a young man about twenty-five years
old, afterwards the great statesman who met Mrs. Stowe at Washington
and led her into the room where Abraham Lincoln greeted and talked with
her. Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz was one of the company; she had been the
author of a poem, a play, and a novel before she was twelve years old,
and had lately received from the Arch Street Theater in Philadelphia
the five-hundred-dollar prize for her play, “De Lara, or the Moorish
Bride.” Then there was Christopher Pearse Cranch, the poet, and
Worthington Whitridge, the artist. There was Judge James Hall, editor
of the _Western Monthly Magazine_, author of many letters, souvenirs,
addresses, sketches and romances, who was then in the midst of a long
and valuable literary career. Dr. Daniel Drake, a man some forty-five
years old, had a national reputation in the field of medical research.
The circle also included others in various fields of artistic activity.
It is plain that the meetings of a company such as this must have been
a great incitement to the genius of Harriet Beecher. We must not
forget to mention that the young and handsome professor of Biblical
history, Professor C. E. Stowe, was also a member of the Club.

In natural reaction from the strenuousness of her daily tasks Harriet
could not resist the impulse to loosen the reins of her whimsical
fancy at the meetings and to be the very soul of merriment in this
intimate circle. The first thing she wrote as a Semi-colon was a letter
purporting to have come from Bishop Butler, composed, as Harriet
said to Georgiana May, in his “outrageous style of parenthesis and
foggification.” Her next essay was a satirical piece on the modern uses
of languages. We can hardly imagine how this subject could be made
interesting, yet we feel that we could trust Harriet Beecher to turn
any prosy matter into mirth. This essay was so well received by the
audience that the editor of the _Western Magazine_ requested permission
to publish it in his magazine. Elated by this success, she undertook a
larger task, planning a series of letters that were to take up a number
of different subjects. She liked to write in a slightly satirical
manner. There had been some random talk in the social hours of the
Club meetings on the antiquated jokes about old maids and bachelors.
Harriet thought she would touch upon this and call for some fresh
pleasantries to take the place of those worn-out ones. She wrote a list
of legislative enactments solemnly forbidding the merest mention of the
word “old maid” or “bachelor” in the future and forever more. This was
indeed a playing with fire, but the letters made no hard feelings, as
there was a courteous spirit beneath the satire.

She followed this with an attempt at more serious writing, though here
again her passion for fun made her resort to the device of a practical
joke. Putting what she had to say this time into the form of letters,
she carried out her idea with a wealth of incident and of particulars
that made the letters give the feeling of a group of real people. The
letters appeared to be written from a house in the country, where the
hosts and their guests were pious, literary, and agreeable. By having
the letters come apparently from different people who showed their
various characteristics, the author had the opportunity to bring in
different points of view and a lively interchange of ideas.

We can see how her story-making sense was developing. In these letters
she was taking a hint from a certain plan which the Beecher family had
been making use of since the members had been so widely scattered.
They sent a circular letter around from one member of the family to
another, each adding a letter to the collection that came to him, until
all had read it. In this circular letter the different characteristics
of the family were brought into a pleasant contrast, just as Harriet
planned to bring them out in the imaginary family that she created.
The first one of this series she surrounded with particulars intended
to carry out the deception. Her one idea at this time seems to have
been to conceal her budding tendency toward authorship, and yet she
could not resist the fertility of invention and the pleasure it gave
her. When she had finished the letter she smoked it to turn it yellow
and tore the edges to give it the look of age; she wrote and re-wrote
the direction, imitated a postmark by means of smears of ink, sealed
the letter with wax and then broke the seal open again, all in order
to give the letter the appearance of a really old letter. Then she put
it into another envelope on which she placed the address in different
handwriting and directed it to “Mrs. Samuel E. Foote.” At the same
time she sent another letter to her cousin directing her to be on the
lookout for the coming of a letter and to aid her in the deception. The
family, including even that wary and clever Uncle Samuel, were taken in
by the joke. The erased names and dates were deciphered and the whole
epistle was subjected to criticism, but it was believed in as a real
letter. So much for Harriet’s practical joke.

It is a little difficult to understand why this young author should
have surrounded with so much mystery her earliest attempts in the
work that was to become the business of her life. She seems to have
had a strange sense of shrinking from publicity as though there were
perhaps a lack of dignity about the appearance of one’s name in
print. How little idea she had even by this time of her own powers
is shown by the fact that her first published piece was, quite to
Harriet’s satisfaction, attributed to Catherine. In fact she said
that she did not know that she would have let it go if it had been
assigned to its own author. She had no idea, she said, of appearing
_in propria persona_. However, when the potent charm that lies in
literary expression had once taken a firm hold of her genius those
false scruples faded away; and we cannot believe that it was not a
source of intense pleasure to her when she won the prize offered by the
editor of the _Western Monthly Magazine_ for the best story. This story
appeared in the number for April, 1834, under the heading “The Prize
Tale,” with the modest sub-title “A New England Sketch.” Her story was
as different from the other articles in the magazine as black is from
white. The contents of this heavy periodical consisted as a general
thing of essays on the antiquities of America, the Indians and their
customs, didactic tales related in trotting tetrameters, or perhaps a
long-winded story of impossible adventure and sentiment in the Charles
Brockton Brown manner. Harriet Beecher’s racy description of New
England characteristics, the realness of the scenes, the actuality of
the people, the easy simple flow of the discourse, the conversational
quality of the language that the speakers used, the clever management
of the incidents were all totally unknown to the readers of the
magazine. It must have been like a sudden invitation to a feast of
good nourishing food to those who had been living for a long time upon
chaff. The story was welcomed with intense delight.

It is not remarkable that the heart of this young writer, who was still
homesick enough to find it impossible to sing any kind of a song in the
strange land, should turn for its inspiration to the old New England
home. This is the way she began:

“And so I am to write a story,” she said, “but of what and where?
Shall it be radiant with the sky of Italy or eloquent with the _beau
idéal_ of Greece? Shall it breathe odor and languor from the Orient, or
chivalry of the Occident; gaiety from France, or vigor from England?
No, no; these are all too old, too romance-like, too obviously
picturesque for me. No, let me turn to my own land--to my own New
England; the land of bright fires and strong hearts; the land of deeds
and not of words; the land of fruits and not of flowers; the land often
spoken against yet always respected; ‘the latchet of whose shoes the
nations of the earth are not worthy to unloose.’”

Having relieved her mind by this outburst of emotion, she apologizes
for the bit of rodomontade, as she calls it, and proceeds to describe
the Connecticut town that she was to picture under so many different
names from the beginning to the end of her career--the beloved
Litchfield-in-the-Hills, called in this story Newbury in New England.
It rested in a green little hollow wedged in like a bird’s nest
among the high hills that kept off the wind in winter and kept out
foreigners. Here life was so perfect that the people never died, but
only kept growing old till they could not grow any older and then they
stood still and lasted from generation to generation. The houses in
this village were red, brown, or yellow, and the people that lived
there all had Biblical names. They did all the things they ought to
do, lived in neighborly charity with one another, read their Bibles,
feared God, and were content with such things as they had which the
author said is the best philosophy after all. We are told that the hero
is _Master James Benton_; the chief person in the story, however, is
James’s old uncle, who afterwards gave a title to the story, “Uncle
Tim.” _Timothy Benton_ was a character photographed directly from life;
he was suggested by Harriet’s own Uncle Lot Benton of New Haven, who
was celebrated for that very contrariousness that is the queerness and
the chief charm of the uncle in the story, who was just like a chestnut
burr, briars without but substantial goodness within. The following
incident from the story will illustrate this:

“‘Uncle Tim, father wants to know if you will lend him your hoe
to-day?’” says a little boy, making his way across the corn-field.

“‘Why don’t your father use his own hoe?’

“‘Ours is broke.’

“‘Broke! How came it broke?’

“‘I broke it yesterday trying to hit a squirrel.’

“‘What business had you to be hittin’ squirrels with a hoe?’

“‘But father wants to borrow yours.’

“‘Why don’t he have that mended? It’s a great pester to have everybody
usin’ a body’s things.’

“‘Well, I can borrow one somewheres else, I suppose,’” says the
suppliant. After the boy has stumbled across the ploughed ground and is
fairly over the fence _Uncle Tim_ calls:

“‘Halloo there, you little rascal! What are you goin’ off without the
hoe for?’

“‘I didn’t know as you meant to lend it.’

“‘I didn’t say I wouldn’t, did I? Here, come and take it--stay,
I’ll bring it; and do tell your father not to be a-letting you hunt
squirrels with his hoes next time.’”

Another time _Uncle Tim’s_ daughter, _Grace_, wants two candlesticks
for her party. After long dallying and much coaxing and palavering he
stumps off to the village store and brings back a package. He hands
_Grace_ one candlestick. _Grace_ says:

“‘But father, I wanted two.’

“‘Why, can’t you make one do?’

“‘No, I can’t; I must have two.’

“‘Well, then, there’s t’other’--taking the second candlestick out of
his pocket, and adding, ‘and here’s a fol-de-rol for you to tie round
your neck.’”

It is not difficult to see that when the young _James_ wishes to
get into the good graces of this prickly old gentleman he will have
a hard time. _Uncle Tim_ did not “‘see why the boys need to be all
the time a-coming to see Grace, for she was nothing extraordinary
after all.’” In this opinion _Master James_ did not at all concur; he
thought _Grace_ the most wonderful girl in the world, and he had an
idea in regard to her that he was determined to carry out. Moreover, he
was of the joyous, buoyant variety of youth who cannot see why their
plans should fail. We understand perfectly who stood as model for this
earnest, clean, optimistic, merry-hearted young man. Harriet could not
have had any one in her mind but the brother that she had so loved and
worshiped ever since the days when she led him by the hand down to the
Dame School.

“‘Why, James,’ said his companion and chief counselor, ‘do you think
Grace likes you?’

“‘I don’t know,’ said our hero with a comfortable appearance of
certainty.

“‘But you can’t get her, James, if Uncle Tim is cross about it.’

“‘Fudge! I can make Uncle Tim like me if I have a mind to try.’

“‘Well, then, Jim, you’ll have to give up that flute of yours, I tell
you, now.’

“‘Fa, sol, la--I can make him like me, and my flute, too.’

“‘Why, how will you work it?’

“‘Oh, I’ll work it,’ said our hero.

“‘Well, Jim, I tell you now, you don’t know Uncle Tim if you say so,
for he’s just the settest critter in his way that you ever saw.’

“‘I _do_ know Uncle Tim though, better than most folks; he is no more
cross than I am; and as to his being _set_, you have nothing to do but
make him think he is in his own way when he is in yours--that is all.’

“‘Well,’ said the other, ‘but you see I don’t believe it.’

“‘And I’ll bet you a gray squirrel that I’ll go there this very
evening, and get him to like me and my flute both,’ said James.”

It is needless to say that the clever _Jim_ carried this out to the
letter. He went there that evening; he drove _Uncle Tim’s_ sheep out of
the garden, praised the old man’s bell-flower apples, told stories at
the table, proved that it was not irreverent to use the flute even in
church, and made _Uncle Tim_ admit it; in short he made himself here,
as everywhere, the great favorite. The story turns out as it should,
and the Uncle is filled with joy at the outcome.

This was the substance of the first real story that Harriet Beecher
wrote. It was a simple little story, but it gave promise of the
abilities that she later showed not only in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” but
in the long series of even more artistic, if not more influential,
works in which she has enshrined for us the fading memories of old New
England traditions and customs.

Perhaps when we see the lively quality of this story, and of other
sketches of this period of Harriet Beecher’s life, we may wonder
what has happened to her, and may exclaim how she has changed from
the profound theological discussions of the Litchfield days! Is this
romantic and blithesome spirit the same one that shivered and was so
stoical in the chillness of the Litchfield Hills! How shall we account
for it?

Well, she has come out into the great boundless west whose free spirit
has set her free--that is one way to account for the change. Then,
those earlier studies and tastes may be considered as her attempts to
find her way in the philosophies of the human mind, a struggle from
which she gradually desisted after she had hit upon a practical and
satisfying view of her own, which by showing her how to discharge
each day’s duty, fulfilled her needs. We must recall, too, who were
her favorites among the few great romantic writers that she was able
to find in her father’s sermon-barrels. “The Arabian Nights,” “Don
Quixote,” and above all, Sir Walter Scott were her great discoveries
in Dr. Beecher’s garret. We must remember how well she loved Byron and
how many times she read “Ivanhoe” through in one summer! Thinking of
all this, we realize how she was being prepared to use the novel as the
best expression for her thought when the time should come when she
felt she must speak out something God had given to her to say.

Meantime she wrote many little sketches and stories and sent them to
various magazines: the _Western Monthly_, the _New York Independent_,
the _Godey’s Ladies’ Book_, printed them and paid for them. In this way
her training in the art of composing a story was going on steadily.



CHAPTER XIII

MRS. STOWE THE HOME-MAKER


In January, 1836, Harriet Beecher and Calvin Edward Stowe were quietly
married. A few days later they took a brief wedding journey, going
by stage as far as Columbus; but the roads in an Ohio midwinter were
not much to boast of, and, as a pleasant journey, the trip was not a
success. They were happier when they returned to their own fireside and
sat down there peacefully together. Mrs. Stowe was rather astonished
to find that such a “wisp of nerve” as herself could pass through the
wedding experience with a happiness that was tranquil and serene rather
than overwhelming.

If she had been able to look into the future, however, she must have
been appalled by the view. The darkest period of her life was before
her, a time to try the stoutest soul, a stretch of fourteen years of
struggle with narrowing means and increasing cares. The Seminary that
her father had come into the west to found, and in which Professor
Stowe was the chief pillar of scholarship, did not for various reasons
unconnected with either of these noble self-sacrificing men, increase
in size and financial support as they had hoped it would. Students
became fewer and salaries more and more meager. At last Professor
Stowe, convinced that he could no longer carry the forlorn hope of that
western work with any justice to his family, accepted one of several
offers that came to him to enter upon more advantageous professional
work in the east and removed to Bowdoin College, his own alma mater, in
Brunswick, Maine.

In this period, then, between her marriage in 1836 and the removal
to Maine in January, 1850, we see our brave little woman putting up
the stiffest kind of fight against the most disheartening odds. Under
household conditions that grew less and less encouraging for the
housekeeper, she toiled on. Sickness visited various members of the
family and the burdens grew heavier than the little mother was able to
bear. Her knowledge was deepening, and her heart was enlarging, but
her strength was too sorely tired. Her struggle was tragic; it is sad
to reflect upon, but it is also inspiring! Many who read the pathetic
record of these years of privation and suffering will lose sight of the
great author in their sympathetic interest in the woman, the wife, and
the mother; through her heroism and sweetness and nobility of character
during this crucial time she is endeared to us as no fame and glory
could ever endear her. Her entry into the profession of literature
came through the welcome prospect of a “_douceur_ that might eke out a
domestic accommodation.” Her literary training was gained when she was
“a young mother and housekeeper in the first years of her novitiate,
amid alternate demands from an ever dissolving ‘kitchen cabinet’ and
from the two, three and four occupants of her nursery.” And if she
had not been what Sam Lawson would call “one of these ’ere facultized
persons,” she never could have accomplished the prodigies of work that
came from her hands.

During these years of poverty in Cincinnati six children came to add
their cares and their loves to Mrs. Stowe’s life. First twin daughters
arrived and were named Eliza Taylor and Harriet Beecher. Two years
later Henry Ellis was born. Then came Frederick William, named for the
Prussian King for whom his father had a great admiration. Georgiana
May followed and Samuel Charles was the next. This, omitting the last
little one whose life was sacrificed in the cholera epidemic, made the
circle of five who went with the little mother when she preceded her
husband to the new home in Maine. Soon after her arrival there her
seventh child was born and was named Charles Edward. This son survived
to write in two noble transcriptions the chronicles of her happy and
her tragic experiences.

Her children were the very heart of her life. “When I can stop and
think long enough to discriminate my head from my heels, I must say,”
she said, “that I think myself fortunate in both husband and children.
My children I would not change for all the ease, leisure and pleasure
I could have without them.” To Mrs. Stowe motherhood was literally a
religion. She knew in her heart what the love of a mother could be,
and she said, “God invented mothers’ hearts, and He certainly has the
pattern in His own.” So she found within herself a proof of the love
of God, a beautiful path to spiritual attainment that is open to every
woman that learns in any way to understand the meaning of a mother’s
love.

Mrs. Stowe was a hard working woman, constantly beset by trials of
housekeeping and home-making. Her husband was rich in Greek and Hebrew
and Latin and Arabic, and, alas! rich in nothing else. But then, she
said, she was abundantly enriched with wealth of another sort--meaning
the children from the curly-headed twin daughters down. She considered
that her first and best mission lay in this circle; and she maintained
that to feel the importance of order and system and to carry it out
through the family requires very much the same kind of talent which a
good prime minister needs. She was the kind of housekeeper that she
has shown us in the _Aunt Betsey_ of “The Mayflower,” who was “the
neatest and most efficient piece of human machinery that ever operated
in forty places at once. She was always everywhere, supervising
everything.”

Mrs. Stowe’s dowry consisted of eleven dollars’ worth of china. That
served her for two years. But when her brother, Edward, with his bride,
came to visit her, she found that she could not set the table with the
plates and tea cups she possessed. So she bought an additional set for
ten dollars, and this supply lasted her for many years. Mrs. Stowe
seems to have inherited all the cleverness of her mother, Roxana, in
making and making over, in fitting and polishing up all sorts of things
for the household. While she was getting settled in Maine she wrote
to a sister, “Mrs. Mitchell and myself made two sofas and lounges, a
barrel chair, divers bedspreads, pillow-cases, pillows, bolsters and
mattresses; we painted rooms; we revarnished furniture; we--what didn’t
we do?”[10] She could nail a carpet in the corner and tack gimp on to
mended furniture; she could make a loose screw firm, and, I am certain,
drive in a nail without hitting her fingers. While she was as feminine
as any woman that ever lived, she had the simple practical efficiency
that is--or was--supposed to be characteristically masculine. She could
lay the cloth on the floor and cut out a dress for herself without any
pattern; “I guess I know my own shape,” she said to one who caught her
doing this. She made her husband’s coats and her own shoes. In the
days when the congress gaiters were in fashion, she made very pretty
ones for herself, fitting them nicely; she was an excellent cobbler
and could cut the leather soles and nail on the heel with perfect
art, and when she found the elastic on the sides difficult to set in
she invented a way of lacing the shoe up behind, thus overcoming the
trouble and giving a dainty and trim effect to the foot-gear.

In the winter of 1839 the Belle Rivière was choked up with ice;
provisions could not be brought in and a famine was threatened;
consequently there was a stiff rise in prices. Coarse salt was three
dollars a bushel, rice was eighteen cents a pound, coffee was fifty
cents a pound, white sugar the same; brown sugar was twenty cents a
pound, molasses was one dollar a gallon and potatoes were one dollar a
bushel. What was to be done? They simply did without these things. For
months the diet consisted of bread and bacon, and happy they were to
get that!

In spite of her blithe resistance, Mrs. Stowe’s health for a time gave
way entirely, and she was obliged to go to a water-cure in Vermont.
Her sister Catherine was there at the same time and for much the
same reason; so the two sisters had many hours of communion, and, no
doubt, some fun. While she was there Harriet’s husband, who was rather
inclined to look on the dark side, wrote her a most melancholy letter.
She answered that she wished he could be with her at Brattleboro to
coast down hill on a sled, or go sliding and snowballing by moonlight.
“I would snowball every bit of the hypo out of you,” she said. Then
to amuse him she copied a poem that Kate had just been writing on the
cheerful subject of tombstones. It was accompanied by two pictures of
tombstones they had drawn. On one was inscribed “_Eheu me miserum =
Hic jacket_,” and over the stone on the branch of a tree was hung--a
jacket! The poem, in two cantos, was written, she said, for the
edification of certain dolorous individuals in the Semi-colon.


CANTO I

  In the Kingdom of Mortin
  I had the good fortin
  To find these verses
  On tombs and on hearses,
  Which I, being jinglish,
  Have done into English.


CANTO II

  The man that’s so colickish
  When his friends are all frolickish
  As to turn up their noses
  And to turn on their toeses
  Shall have only verses
  On tombstones and hearses.

The letter closes with an exhortation to him to be patient and bear
trouble as if it were the toothache or a driving rain or anything else
that one cannot escape--which is good sound advice.

Her own power to put this advice into practice and to control her moods
of depression is shown in a letter she once wrote to him when he was
away in search of health.

“It is a dark, sloppy, rainy, muddy, disagreeable day, and I have been
working hard all day in the kitchen, washing dishes, looking into
closets, and seeing a great deal of that dark side of domestic life
which a housekeeper may who will investigate after a girl who keeps all
clean on the outside of cup and platter, and is very apt to make good
the rest of the text in the inside of things.... I am sick of the smell
of sour milk, and sour meats, and sour everything; and then the clothes
will not dry, and no wet thing does, and everything smells mouldy; and
altogether I feel as if I never wanted to eat again.” After enlarging
upon her troubles further in the same whimsical vein, she added
gravely, “Yet do I rejoice in my God, and know in whom I have believed,
and only pray that the fire may consume the dross; as to the gold, that
is imperishable. No real evil can come to me, so I fear nothing for
the future, and only suffer in the present tense. God, the mighty God,
is mine, of that I am sure, and I know that He knows that though heart
and flesh fail, I am all the while desiring and trying for His will
alone.” As to money, for which there was imminent necessity, she said:
“Money, I suppose, is as plenty with Him now as it always has been,
and if He sees it is really best, He will doubtless help me.” At one
time her husband wrote that he was sick a-bed and all but dead; he did
not ever expect to see his family again; wanted to know how she would
manage in case she was left a widow; he knew she would get into debt
and never get out; he wondered at her courage, thought she was very
sanguine, warned her to be prudent, as there would not be much to live
on in case of death, etc., etc. This letter Mrs. Stowe read and poked
into the fire. Then she proceeded with her writing. “You are not able
just now to bear anything, my dear husband,” she replied; “therefore,
trust all to me; I never doubt or despair. I am already making
arrangements to raise money.”

Now, how was the little woman to “raise money”? Of course by writing.
Certain of her friends, pitying her trials, copied and sent a number of
her sketches to some liberally paying _Annuals_ with her name. With the
money earned in this way she bought a feather-bed! This was considered
a profitable investment, and if the Shakespearean fashion of mentioning
a treasured bed in the codicil of a will were to be followed, it might
be suggested that here would be found the article most deserving of
mention as an heirloom in successive testaments!

After this Mrs. Stowe thought that she had discovered the
philosopher’s stone! So when a new carpet or mattress was going to be
needed or when at the close of the year it began to be evident that
her accounts, like _Dora’s_, “wouldn’t add up,” she used to say to her
faithful friend and factotum, the governess, who shared all her joys
and sorrows, “Now, Anna, if you will keep the babies and attend to the
house for one day, I will write a piece and then we shall be out of the
scrape.” She began to make overtures to various editors. She wrote her
husband: “I have sent some pieces to W. If he accepts them and pays you
for them, take the money and use it as you see necessary; if not, be
sure to send the pieces back to me. I am strong in spirit; and God, who
has been with me in so many straits, will not desert me now. I know Him
well; He is my Father, and though I may be a blind and erring child, He
will help me for all that. My trust through all errors and sins is in
Him. He will help us, and His arms are about us, so we shall not sink,
my dear husband.”

Her early successes filled the heart of Professor Stowe with pride and
with the desire that she should adopt a literary career. It was so
written, he declared, in the book of fate, and she should make all her
calculations accordingly. She must get a good stock of health and brush
up her mind. She should drop the “E” out of her name because it only
encumbered the name and interfered with its flow and harmony. “Harriet
Beecher Stowe” it should be, a name euphonious and flowing and full of
meaning. “Then my word for it,” he said enthusiastically, “your husband
will lift up his head in the gate, and your children will rise up and
call you blessed.”

Of the tremendous odds under which Mrs. Stowe for a time pursued
her literary labors, her sister Catherine gives an amusing account.
Harriet had promised that she would get at a certain story when the
house-cleaning was done and when baby’s teeth were through! Catherine
said that the house-cleaning could be deferred one day longer and as to
baby’s teeth, she did not see that there would ever be any end to them;
she must have the manuscript that day, she said, for she had promised
it to the editor. “Come, my dear,” she said, “in three hours you can
finish the courtship, marriage, catastrophe, and all, and this three
hours of your brains will earn enough to pay for all the sewing your
fingers can do for a year to come. Two dollars a page, my dear, and you
can write a page in fifteen minutes!” But Harriet called her sister’s
attention to the fact that there was a baby in her arms and two pussies
by her side, a great baking in the kitchen to be done, and a green girl
to help--it was clearly out of the question for that day at least.
Catherine would not take “no” for an answer.

“‘No, no; let us have another trial. You can dictate as easily as you
can write. Come, I can set the baby in this clothes-basket and give him
some mischief or other to keep him quiet; you shall dictate and I will
write. Now this is the place where you left off; you were describing
the scene between _Ellen_ and her lover; the last sentence was, “Borne
down by the tide of agony, she leaned her head on her hands, the tears
streamed through her fingers, and her whole frame shook with convulsive
sobs.” What shall I write next?’

“‘Mina, put a little milk into this pearlash,’ said Harriet.

“‘Come,’ said I. ‘“The tears streamed through her fingers and her whole
frame shook with convulsive sobs.” What next?’

“Harriet paused and looked musingly out of the window as she turned her
mind to her story. ‘You may write now,’ she said, and she dictated as
follows:

“‘“Her lover wept with her, nor dared he again to touch the point so
sacredly guarded.” Mina, roll that crust a little thinner! “He spoke in
soothing tones.” Mina, poke the coals in the oven.’

“‘Here,’ said I; ‘let me direct Mina about these matters, and write a
while yourself.’

“Harriet took the pen and patiently set herself to the work. For
a while my culinary knowledge and skill were proof to all Mina’s
investigating inquiries, and they did not fail till I saw two pages
completed.

“‘You have done bravely,’ said I as I read over the manuscript; ‘now
you must direct Mina a while. Meantime dictate and I will write.’

“Never was there a more docile literary lady than Harriet. Without a
word of objection she followed my request.

“‘I am ready to write,’ said I. ‘The last sentence was: “What is this
life to one who has suffered as I have?” What next?’

“‘Shall I put in the brown or white bread first?’ said Mina.

“‘The brown first,’ said Harriet.

“‘“What is this life to one who has suffered as I have?”’ said I.

“Harriet brushed the flour off her apron and sat down for a moment in a
muse. Then she dictated as follows:

“‘“Under the breaking of my heart I have borne up. I have borne up
under all that tries a woman--but this thought--oh, Henry!”’

“‘Ma’am, shall I put ginger into this pumpkin?’ queried Mina.

“‘No, you may let that alone just now,’ replied Harriet. She then
proceeded:

“‘“I know my duty to my children. I see the hour must come. You must
take them, Henry; they are my last earthly comfort.”’

“‘Ma’am, what shall I do with these egg shells and all this truck
here?’ interrupted Mina.

“‘Put them in the pail by you,’ answered Harriet.

“‘“They are my last earthly comfort,”’ said I. ‘What next?’

“She continued to dictate:

“‘“You must take them away. It may be--perhaps it must be--that I shall
soon follow, but the breaking heart of a wife still pleads, ‘a little
longer, a little longer.’”’

“‘How much longer must the gingerbread stay in?’ inquired Mina.

“‘Five minutes,’ said Harriet.

“‘“A little longer, a little longer,”’ I repeated in a dolorous tone,
and we burst into a laugh.

“Thus we went on, cooking, writing, nursing and laughing till I finally
accomplished my object. The piece was finished, copied, and the next
day sent to the editor.”

Some writer of to-day has complained that this tale of Mrs. Stowe’s
habit of writing with the bread board in her lap had a great influence
for harm on later writers in that it seems to furnish proof that a
woman who is compelled to combine housekeeping and writing can do the
writing any time and anywhere, right amid the business of the kitchen.
This, of course, Mrs. Stowe would have been the first to deny. In fact,
when it was found that she could write acceptably, and her husband said
she was born for that work and must fulfill her destiny, she sent this
appeal to him: “If I am to write I must have a room to myself which
shall be my room. I have, in my own mind, pitched on Mrs. W.’s room.
I can put the stove in it. I have bought a cheap carpet for it ... and
I only beg in addition that you will let me change the glass door from
the nursery into that room and keep my plants there, and then I shall
be quite happy. All last winter I felt the need of some place where I
could go and be quiet and satisfied.... We can eat by our cooking-stove
and the children can be washed and dressed and keep their playthings
in the room above.... You can study by the parlor fire, and I and my
plants, etc., will take the other room. I shall take my work and all
my things there, and feel settled and quiet.” That she should feel so
was absolutely necessary if she was to do any real work in writing. Her
husband was most responsive. He wrote in reply: “And now, my dear wife,
I want you to come home as quick as you can. The fact is that I cannot
live without you, and if we were not so prodigious poor I would come
for you at once. There is no woman like you in this wide world. Who
else has so much talent with so little self-conceit; so much reputation
with so little affectation; so much literature with so little nonsense;
so much enterprise with so little extravagance; so much tongue with so
little scold; so much sweetness with so little softness; so much of so
many things and so little of so many other things?”

In answer to this beautiful love-making Mrs. Stowe could say: “If you
were not already my dearly-loved husband I should certainly fall in
love with you.” And we do not wonder!

Thus far we have seen the heroine of this life story tried and
disciplined by toil and narrowed means; but the light of love has been
about her and her faith and her buoyancy of spirit have not failed. How
will it be if a great sorrow comes, one that bereaves her of one of her
greatest treasures? It seems that while she had the children about her
she felt that all losses were turned into blessings. In January, 1849,
she writes to her friend Georgiana May to tell her that for six months
after she came home from the water-cure she had had neuralgia in the
eyes so that she could not have any daylight in the room, and that she
had been so burdened and loaded with cares as to drain her dry of all
capacity of thought, feeling or memory; yet, in spite of all that she
cried out with the greatest buoyancy, “Well, Georgy, I am thirty-six
years old! I am glad of it. I like to grow old and have six children
and cares endless. I wish you could see me with my flock all around me.
They sum up my cares, and were they gone I should ask myself, What now
remains to be done? They are my work, over which I fear and tremble.”

The words seemed almost like a premonition of what was to come to her
in the desolate summer of 1849. A malignant epidemic of cholera broke
out in the city and spread alarmingly. One hundred and twenty deaths
occurred sometimes on one day. The Seminary was turned into a hospital
for the care of the sick students. The gloom and sorrow of the time had
to be borne by her alone, for Professor Stowe was himself at this time
at Brattleboro on account of the failure of his own health. At last
her own children were attacked and, after a period of acute suspense,
little Samuel Charles succumbed to the disease. Broken-hearted over
this crushing sorrow, Mrs. Stowe could yet give loving sympathy to
those around her who were suffering as she. “I write as if there were
no sorrow like my sorrow,” she said to her husband, “yet there has been
in this city ... scarce a house without its dead. This heartbreak, this
anguish, has been everywhere, and where it will end God only knows.”
It was her only prayer to God that such anguish as hers might not be
suffered in vain. She felt that she never could be consoled unless the
crushing of her own heart might enable her to work out some great good
to others. This deep prayer was to be fulfilled in a way of which she
had not yet dreamed.



CHAPTER XIV

UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR A WORK


When Mrs. Stowe was teaching in the Hartford School she was not without
pupils that were full of mischief. One of these, being very fond of
animals and bugs of all kinds, used to bring her favorites and install
them in the desk, shutting down the wide cover as a door to their
prison until she should get a chance to show them to her best-loved
teacher, Miss Harriet Beecher, who could look unappalled into the desk
with its nests of spiders or its families of toads, for there was not a
creature that God could create that Harriet did not love. Nearly every
novel that she ever wrote includes in its characters some favorite
dog or cat; they were characters, too, for they were as different
and as individual as people. Then there is her book called “Queer
Little People,” where she tells tales about the Nutcracker family of
Nutcracker Lodge, about _Tip-top_, _Toddy_, and _Speckle_ of the Robin
family, about that fascinating _Hum_, son of _Buz_, the humming-bird
that was blown in at the window on a chilly day at the seashore, about
the _Squirrels_ that lived in a house, about the _Mrs. Magpie_ that put
on such airs and could not be cut, and about all the congregation of
_Carlos_ and _Rovers_ and _Princes_, including the wonderful high-bred
_Giglio_ who was destined to an early demise, and the aristocratic
Italian dog _Florence_ who as they were one day riding along through
the streets of Rome barked a familiar greeting to the Pope. Aunt
Esther’s wonderful power in telling stories about animals, nineteen in
a row on rats only, seems to have been handed down to her clever niece.

Well, this mischievous pupil at Hartford had one morning only one
small katydid in her desk. It was very interesting in its fine dress
of green and silver, with wings of point lace from Mother Nature’s
finest web. It perked itself and stood up airily as if it knew that it
was about to be immortalized in a human story. Harriet’s fancy saw the
possibilities. She said to the student, “You write a story about it.”

“I? Write a story? I couldn’t do it for my life.”

“Yes, you can. Come; you write one and I will write one, too; then we
will read them to each other.”

Harriet wrote that story and the copy of it in her own hand is to-day
one of the treasures of that same pupil. The tale was also published
later in “Queer Little People.” Strangely enough this story may serve
to prove what Harriet Beecher Stowe’s feeling was even in her early
life on the great matter that she made the theme of her greatest book.

The story is this: _Miss Katydid_ consulted her cousin, the gallant
_Colonel Katydid_, about the invitations to a grand party that
she wanted to give. She was to ask only the higher circles, the
_Fireflies_, of course, and the _Butterflies_; also the _Moths_, even
though they were rather dull people, indelicately ate up ermine capes
and got indigestion thereby. Then they must have that worthy family,
the _Bees_, of course; the _Bumblebees_, too, who were so dashing and
brilliant; the spiteful _Hornets_, just because they were so spiteful
and must not be offended, and the plebeian _Mosquitoes_ since they were
becoming literary and had very sharp pens, and--the _Crickets_--should
they be asked? The _Locusts_, of course, a very old and distinguished
family, and the _Grasshoppers_, though they were not of much account,
but the _Crickets_--no! One must draw the line somewhere.

“I thought they were nice, respectable people,” said _Colonel Katydid_.

“O yes--very good people. But you must see the difficulty.”

“My dear cousin, I am afraid you must explain.”

“Why, their color, to be sure. Don’t you see?”

“Oh, that’s it, is it? Excuse me, but I have been living in France
where these distinctions are wholly unknown, and I have not yet got
myself in the train of fashionable ideas here.”

“Well, then, let me teach you. You know we republicans go for no
distinctions except those created by Nature herself, and we found our
rank upon color, because it is clearly a thing that none has any hand
in but our Maker. You see?”

“Yes, but who decides what shall be the reigning color?”

“I’m surprised to hear the question. The only true color--the only
proper one--is _our_ color, to be sure. A lovely pea-green is the
precise shade on which to found aristocratic distinction.... Society
would become dreadfully mixed if it were not fortunately ordered
that the _Crickets_ are as black as jet. The fact is that a class to
be looked down upon is necessary to all elegant society, and if the
_Crickets_ were not black, we could not keep them down, because, as
everybody knows, they are often cleverer than we.... Their being black
is a convenience, because, as long as we are green and they black, we
have a superiority that never can be taken from us. Don’t you see now?”

The _Colonel_ saw. The party was held; the _Crickets_, being very
musical, were asked to play for the dancing and came in concourses to
do so. The ball went on until daybreak, so that it seemed that every
leaf in the forest was alive. In fact those dissipated _Katydids_ kept
up this sort of thing till _Parson To-whit_ preached against it and
even till the celebrated _Jack Frost_ epidemic occurred in the month of
September.

Plainly Harriet had made up her mind that color was never a fit basis
for social distinctions. One could, perhaps, even further back in
her life, find sources for the conviction that to hold any person in
a subject state because of the color of his skin was the greatest
injustice. She had in Litchfield heard her father preach sermons on the
subject of slavery and offer prayers for the slaves that had made her
heart throb and ache. And when her Aunt Mary, spoken of in an earlier
chapter, came from San Domingo and told of the sufferings of slaves as
she had witnessed them there, her feeling was deepened and intensified.

As early as 1837 Catherine Beecher published a small book called
“An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism with Reference to the Duty of
American Females.” It was written in answer to a movement to induce
women to join the Abolition Society. She opposed this movement
strongly. She agreed with the members of the society in thinking
slavery an evil, but she was most disinclined to any radical measures
against it. Indeed she spent most of her time in criticizing the unwise
and hasty measures of the abolitionists, their undue urgency and
sledgehammer methods.

Sister Catherine, however, showed some foresight when she said, “It
is my full conviction that if insurrection does burst forth, and there
be the least prospect to the cause of the slave, there will be men
from the North and West,[11] standing breast to breast, with murderous
weapons, in opposing ranks.” She counseled calm, rational Christian
discussion as the only proper method of securing the ends of safety and
peace. It seems that Catherine, with all her acumen, did not in the
least realize that this was to be a case where benignity, urbanity,
meekness and benevolence would not serve; and while she touches the
idea of a possible “standing breast to breast with murderous weapons in
opposing ranks,” the very fact that she can speak of it so calmly shows
that it is now a matter of rhetoric with her rather than of shuddering
prophecy. In her serene unconsciousness that the forces of war were
even then forming, Catherine Beecher was not by any means alone. Almost
to the last minute many, or perhaps most, of our great statesmen
did not in the least imagine that sections of a people speaking one
language, consecrated in their close relationship by like struggles
in the past and united by like ideals and hopes for the future, could
be separated by the sword over a mere difference of opinion as to the
matter of holding slaves. We must try to remember that no one was
really aware of this beforehand or we shall fail to understand why the
formation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s thought on this subject was so
gradual. No doubt she was influenced by such a statement of views as
her sister made in her book; as a result of this, and perhaps of other
influences of like kind, she was for years trying to keep the subject
of slavery as much as possible out of her mind. To her it was a horror
in a distant part of the world that she could do nothing to mitigate,
and if she should let her mind dwell upon it, she would be unable to
do the duties that lay at hand. It seemed a subject “too painful to
inquire into, and one that advancing light and civilization would live
down.”[12]

Meantime she was being quietly prepared in one corner of the world
for a fit and not inconspicuous part in the thrilling drama of
emancipation. She seems to have had a real human interest in the
negroes as the expression of a certain individual and racial character.
Nearly every novel she wrote had first or last a negro character. These
dusky people of her imaginary world if placed by themselves would form
a collection of highly individualized portraits, all taken from her
picture gallery of actual memories. At Easthampton, Dr. Beecher had
preached to an adjacent colony of colored people and when the family
moved to Litchfield “one Dinah” and “one Zillah” came with the caravan
and formed a very necessary part of the household at the parsonage.
There were always colored servants to help about the work in the big
Beecher home. One of these, whose name was Candace, a portly old black
washerwoman, would sometimes take the little Harriet aside and tell
her with tears about the saintly virtues of her departed mother. When
Harriet visited her aristocratic relatives in Guilford and was taught
the catechism by her Aunt Harriet, black Dinah, along with Harry, the
bound boy, ranged at a respectful distance behind her, was taught also.
“Dine” was a great friend of Harriet’s; they had many frolics together
and the black playmate told the little girl many stories and made
herself very interesting.

When the Beechers came to live in Litchfield they found colored people
still living there who had been born slaves. “Old Grimes,” famous
in song and story, was a Litchfieldian slave; his character was
sufficiently notorious for his death to be chronicled in the affecting
lines:

  Old Grimes is dead, that good old soul,
    We ne’er shall see him more;
  He used to wear an old blue coat
    All buttoned down before.

This happened in the early days, but we would fain believe that the
song was a favorite by the Parsonage fireplace.

The Beechers considered their dark-skinned household helpers as members
of the family, and absent children invariably included them when they
sent messages of affection back to the home. When the Beecher party
were pausing in New York on their way to Ohio, the faithful Zillah came
to call upon them; Harriet said that she was quite unchanged, her voice
soft as ever, as she told them that she was now in very comfortable
circumstances. Harriet said that she would be glad if she were quite
sure to fill up her chink in this mortal life as well as Zillah did!

All of these negroes were the descendants of the slaves of an earlier
period, long since freed, who had lived for many generations on terms
of equality and industrial exchange among gentle, high-born people.
Harriet had known and met them on terms of mutual respect. It would
have been inconceivable to her to enter into relations as owner and
slave with that companionable “Dine” or that soft-voiced, ladylike
Zillah.

As a result of her experience, she approached the slave question not as
a mere theorist. It is evident that it cannot with truth be said that
her study of it dated from the time of her settlement in Cincinnati;
but it is certain that when she did come to live in Ohio, further
opportunities were given her to know the conditions in her own country
in regard to this matter. In New England she had been in a land of
theories of human freedom; now she was to come into contact with facts;
she was to have her heart bleed for the human misery and oppression
which she saw.

The Belle Rivière was the dividing line between slave country and free
country, Kentucky on the south being a slave state and Ohio on the
north being ardently anti-slavery. And after the movement for freeing
the slaves began, there was formed an “underground railroad”--that is,
a series of farmhouses and homes that served as stations, at convenient
distances from each other, where friendly people lived with whom the
escaping slaves could find shelter, from Cincinnati all across the
state to Canada. By this means any fugitive could be taken by night
on horseback or in a covered wagon from station to station, until he
passed beyond the Canadian boundaries where he was under the protection
of the British power.

It is evident that there was at that time scarcely a spot in the United
States where the excitement and irritation of the slavery agitation ran
so high. People in Cincinnati had “property” (consisting of slaves)
over the line in Kentucky and people in Kentucky were seeking their
“property” that was running off to Ohio.

Negroes were negotiable currency; they were collateral security on half
the contracts that were at that time being made between the thriving
men of Cincinnati and the planters of the adjoining slave states. It
was natural that when the structure of business included this kind of
property and no one was willing to open the case of the rightfulness
of keeping possession in that form at all, the excitement of the
discussion should rise to a great pitch. It did reach such a height at
last that there were mobs in the streets and danger to the lives of all
about the city and the region.

Meantime Mrs. Stowe’s family were pursuing the even tenor of their
way in the Walnut Hills suburb. Her husband was busied with Biblical
exegeses, and she was giving her attention chiefly to pinafores and
dishwashing; but each of them took the liveliest interest in what was
going on. Mrs. Stowe’s brother Henry was one of the editors of the
_Cincinnati Journal_ and he took a great part in the activities of the
hour; Mrs. Stowe also did some writing for his paper. Yet all this is
in the very midst of the period in her life when, as she afterward
said, she was trying her best not to think of the workings of slavery
at all, because she did not see what could be done about it and could
not bear to think about a wrong that she could do nothing to prevent!

Meantime the circle of friends about Mrs. Stowe must have thrashed out
the whole subject, trying, as were many people elsewhere, to decide
what was the right course to pursue. Good people felt that something
ought to be done but were divided as to what was the wisest step
to take first. There were extremists on both sides and many angry
differences of opinion. Mrs. Stowe thought that no one could have the
system of slavery brought home to him without an irrepressible desire
to do something; but what was there to be done?

For a time she, with many others, believed that the solution must lie
in some intermediate position, in some scheme like the proposal of the
Colonization Society to send the negroes back to Africa, or perhaps in
some segregation plan. That a civil war could be the outcome of the
disagreement was not imagined.

Among the students in the Theological Seminary was a young enthusiast
named Theodore Weld who, in a lecturing tour through the southern
states, had seen much of slavery and slave owners, and who, as a
result, held the strongest views against the system, which he did not
hesitate to declare. He had converted to his views Mr. J. G. Birney,
of Huntsville, Alabama, who then proceeded to free his slaves and
become an ardent supporter of the doctrine. Together with Dr. Bailey of
Cincinnati he founded a paper called _The Philanthropist_. His strong
anti-slavery utterances in this paper aroused much question in that
city in the summer and fall of 1836.

As matters grew more serious the excitement increased. The printing
establishment was mobbed and when Mrs. Stowe saw her brother Henry
putting pistols in order, declaring, with set face, that he stood ready
to fight if need be, she could see how critical was the time. The mobs
even threatened the houses of all that professed abolition sentiments
and there was danger that the Theological Seminary might be attacked.
From her home at Walnut Hills, Mrs. Stowe could see the light of the
burning houses upon the sky for many nights. What was right to think or
do, she could not see, but whatever the outcome was she thought that
the rule of mob was wrong. While she believed the cause was a just
one, she deplored the excesses of the excited people. As for herself,
she was not afraid. They were protected, she said afterward in her
funny way, by the distance of the Seminary from the city and by the
providential depth and adhesiveness of the Cincinnati mud. She was,
however, excited, indignant, and thoroughly aroused. She hoped that Mr.
Birney would stand his ground in his fireproof building and assert his
rights. If she were a man, she cried, she would go and she believed she
could take good care of at least one window.

By this time Mrs. Stowe had gained some practical knowledge of what
the slavery system really meant. When she had been but one year in
Cincinnati she had gone with friends to visit a plantation across the
river. Here she had seen a happy prosperous slave life, under owners
that seemed to be the sincere well-wishers of the negroes who served
them. There was little to shock or distress her in what she saw. Most
of the day she moved about as one in a dream. She sat apart, heeding
not the antics and gambols of the little darkies. But we know that the
scenes she saw that day were unconsciously laid up in her memory to be
recalled when the building of the book had come into her mind and she
needed the material for her great purpose. Years afterward, when the
friend who accompanied her on that Kentucky visit read the account of
the doings on the Shelby Farm as Mrs. Stowe depicted them in the “Uncle
Tom’s Cabin,” she saw in the description an exact correspondence to the
events of that day as she remembered them.

Here was, then, a picture of the slave system at its best. Perhaps
her gravity and absorption during the picnic merriment of the day was
caused by the thought that the owners of the happy plantation had it in
their power to separate any husband and father there from his family
or any little girl from her mother, and, if he needed the money, sell
them to slave traders who would carry them “down the river” to be lost
to their own forever. Of what such a fate might mean Mrs. Stowe learned
from her brother Charles, who acted for some months as collecting agent
for a New Orleans commission house. On one of the trips up the Red
River he had come upon a plantation where the slaves were treated with
a brutality almost indescribable. Of this he tried to draw a faithful
picture in his next letter to his sister, and she had thus placed in
her storehouse another chapter for the book she was unconsciously
preparing to write. Almost incredible as it may seem, the Legree
plantation was, therefore, a scene taken directly from life. In another
letter Charles Beecher told how from the deck of a steamer on which he
was traveling he had seen a slave mother seek death by springing into
the river with her child clasped to her bosom. She preferred death for
herself and her child rather than to allow her little girl to enter the
life into which she knew she would be sold.

Still other ways of seeing the under side of the movement that was
going on were being afforded the quiet little woman in the Cincinnati
suburb. Every month there was something happening. A press that
printed abolition matter was destroyed, a house was mobbed, a free
negro was kidnapped, the shop of an abolitionist was riddled, or
a negro schoolhouse razed to the ground. And in the mobs of 1840
there was a general attack upon the negro population in the midst of
which rescued slaves were caught and hurried back across the line to
their plantations. Houses were battered down by cannon, violence and
crime naturally followed in the wake of mob law. The smoke of the
conflagration could be seen from the house where Mrs. Stowe lived and
the sorrowful processions of colored people with what remained of
their possessions starting out for Canada, passed by her door; mothers
passed with children in their arms or toddling along by their side, and
discouraged men, bearing heavy burdens. Sometimes at night she heard
the rattle of a big covered wagon in which she would be sure was an
escaping woman being helped to the border.

In such ways as these Mrs. Stowe was unconsciously trained for a
special work. So far the preparation had been mostly by hearsay.
The practical demonstrations that followed it were to be even more
effective.



CHAPTER XV

THE GREAT INSPIRATION


That charming writer and whole-souled man, Colonel T. W. Higginson,
somewhere tells us that all the things he ever heard or read about
slavery did not fix in his soul such a hostility to it as a single
scene in a Missouri slave market that he once saw. He says that as
he sat here, a purchaser came in to buy a little girl to wait on his
wife. Colonel Higginson saw three little sisters brought in who were
from eight to twelve years old; they were mulattoes, with sweet, gentle
manners; they had evidently been taken good care of, and their pink
calico frocks were clean and whole. He saw the gentleman choose one of
them and heard him ask her, good-naturedly enough, if she did not wish
to go with him. She burst into tears and said, “I would rather stay
with my mother.”[13] But her tears were as powerless, of course, as so
many salt drops from the ocean.

That was the story. All the horrors of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” he said,
all the stories told him by fugitive slaves, the scarred backs he
afterward saw by dozens among colored recruits, did not impress him
as did that hour in the gaol. The whole probable career of that poor,
wronged, motherless, shrinking child passed before his mind. It seemed
to him that a man must be utterly lost to all manly instincts who would
not give his life to overthrow such a system; and he thought that a
woman who could tolerate, much less defend it, could not herself be
true, could not be pure, or must be fearfully and grossly ignorant.

Of such ignorance as this no one can accuse Mrs. Stowe. The personal
touch that should fire knowledge into passion and make her keenly feel
what had been hitherto but a part of her theory she also was to receive.

From her earliest housekeeping she had had “help” from the colony of
Cincinnati colored people. In the year 1839 a certain colored girl came
to work for her who had been a slave, but who had been brought by her
mistress into Ohio and left there, and thus by the laws of Ohio made
free. But by this time a new national requirement was under discussion
called the Fugitive Slave Law; by this law the people of such a state
as Ohio were to be commanded to give back to their masters all colored
persons found in their territory, unless they had been set free by
special papers stating the fact and showing that payment had been made
to the former owners. By this law the master of the girl that worked
for Mrs. Stowe could come over the line and if he could find his former
slave could reclaim her. And all people were to be required to aid the
owners to gain possession of their runaway slaves. People who did not
believe in the justice of such a law as this thought it right to evade
it; and among these was the Beecher family. So when it was known that
the former master of the girl was in the city looking for his property,
Professor Stowe and Henry planned to conceal the girl from him. They
put the fugitive in a carriage and together drove out into the country
in the darkest hours of a dismal, stormy night. Following along Mill
Creek to the first “station” in the underground railway, they put
her in the care of the sturdy Quaker farmer, Mr. John Vanzandt, who
protected her until she could be taken further on her way to Canada.

This is the law that is referred to in Chapter IX of “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin” by _Mrs. Bird_, that timid, blushing little woman who was about
four feet in height, had mild blue eyes and a peach-blow complexion,
and the gentlest, sweetest voice in the world; as for her courage, a
moderate-sized cock turkey had been known to put her to rout at the
very first gobble, and a stout house dog of moderate capacity would
bring her into subjection merely by a show of his teeth. And yet when
she heard of this new law she stood up before her husband (who was
a Senator and had voted for it!) and cried out, “Now, John, I want
to know if you think such a law as that is right and Christian?” Her
husband, the Senator, tried to argue her out of her prejudice, but did
not succeed; and then, as every one remembers, this same sound-hearted
Senator was the first to let his heart have sway when one of the poor
runaways came distressed and hunted to the door asking for rescue.

It was _Eliza_, who had made her way across the river, springing from
ice-block to ice-block, in the way so often pictured, and, strange to
say, so true also to the fact. Kind _Mrs. Bird_ made her comfortable
on a settle by the fire. After this _Eliza_ told the pathetic story
of her escape and gave the real deep reason why she desired to leave
her home in Kentucky. It was not merely a passion for freedom, though
that intensely American trait was no doubt the fundamental cause why
many colored people were willing to leave owners that gave them good
homes and had not been specially unkind to them to launch out upon a
hazardous attempt to win support in commercial lines for which they had
no training. Let us read this passage, and find in it the aspect that
most appealed to the soul of Harriet Beecher Stowe.

“‘Were you a slave?’ said Mr. Bird.

“‘Yes, sir; I belonged to a man in Kentucky.’

“‘Was he unkind to you?’

“‘No, sir; he was a good master.’

“‘And was your mistress unkind to you?’

“‘No, sir--no! My mistress was always good to me.’

“‘What could induce you to leave a good home, then, and run away, and
go through such dangers?’

“The woman looked up at Mrs. Bird with a keen, scrutinizing glance, and
it did not escape her that she was dressed in deep mourning.

“‘Ma’am,’ she said suddenly, ‘have you ever lost a child?’

“The question was unexpected, and it was a thrust on a new wound; for
it was only a month since a darling child of the family had been laid
in the grave.

“Mr. Bird turned around and walked to the window, and Mrs. Bird burst
into tears; but, recovering her voice, she said:

“‘Why do you ask that? I have lost a little one.’

“‘Then you will feel for me. I have lost two, one after another, ...
and I had only this one left.... And, ma’am, they were going to take
him away from me--to _sell_ him--sell him down south, ma’am, to go all
alone--a baby that had never been away from his mother in his life! I
couldn’t stand it, ma’am.... And when I knew the papers were signed,
and he was sold, I took him and came off in the night; and they chased
me--the man that bought him and some of Mas’r’s folks--and they were
coming down right behind me, and I heard ’em. I jumped right on to the
ice; and how I got across I don’t know--but, first thing I knew, a man
was helping me up the bank.’”

This picture, then, shows us what it was that seemed most terrible to
the mother heart of Mrs. Stowe. When _Mrs. Bird_ came to hunt for some
clothing that she could give to _Eliza_ and her child, she sought the
drawer where the precious treasures of her own lost baby were sacredly
stored. She “opened the little bedroom door adjoining her room, and,
taking the candle, set it down on the top of the bureau there; then
from a small recess she took a key, and put it thoughtfully in the lock
of a drawer, and made a sudden pause, while two boys, who, boylike, had
followed close on her heels, stood looking with silent, significant
glances at their mother....

“Mrs. Bird slowly opened the drawer. There were little coats of many
a form and pattern, piles of aprons, and rows of small stockings; and
even a pair of little shoes, worn and rubbed at the toes, were peeping
from the folds of a paper. There was a toy horse and wagon, a top, a
ball--memorials gathered with many a tear and many a heartbreak. She
sat down by the drawer, and, leaning her head on her hands over it wept
till the tears fell through her fingers into the drawer; then suddenly
raising her head she began with nervous haste selecting the plainest
and most substantial articles and gathering them into a bundle.

“‘Mamma,’ said one of the boys, ‘are you going to give away _those_
things?’

“‘My dear boys,’ she said softly and earnestly, ‘if our dear, loving
little Henry looks down from Heaven he would be glad to have us do
this. I could not find it in my heart to give them away to any common
person--to anybody that was happy; but I give them to a mother more
heart-broken and sorrowful than I am; and I hope God will send his
blessings with them!’”

Mrs. Stowe herself had learned what it means to the mother to have her
child taken from her. In the depths of her own sorrow, when her most
beautiful and beloved boy was lying on his dying bed, she had prayed
that her anguish might not be suffered in vain. Her prayer was being
answered in the great comprehension coming to her that the separation
of the family tie was the most poignant wrong in the system of slavery.
This feeling she embodied supremely in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” the very
epic of human compassion. At the time of writing this great book her
mind was full, her hand was trained, her soul was aflame. When the
great inspiration came she was not disobedient to the heavenly vision,
but asking no question how or why, she wrote as she was moved to write.
How this happened is now to be told.

In the year 1850 the Stowe family were having their first taste of a
drizzling, inexorable, northeast storm in the State of Maine. It was
while they were getting settled in this new home that the news came
to them of the final passing of the Fugitive Slave Act--an event that
sent sweeping across the north a furore of indignation. On her way to
the new home in Brunswick, Maine, Mrs. Stowe stayed for ten days in
Boston at the home of her brother Edward. Here she was in the very
hotbed of the abolitionists; and as she heard of the sufferings of the
slaves that were risking all to reach the Canada line beyond which they
were safe, and of the cruelties inflicted upon those so hapless as to
be taken back to their former owners, she cried, “It is incredible,
amazing, mournful! I feel as if I should be willing to sink with it,
were all this sin and misery to sink in the sea!” The cry of this
great sorrow followed her after she was settled in her new home; she
remembered all these things and pondered them in her heart; and when
she bent over her own new child as he lay sleeping beside her at night,
and thought of the slave mothers whose babies had been taken away from
them, her tears fell thick upon his sleeping face.

Time went on and things did not get any better. Mrs. Stowe was writing
to people everywhere north and south to gather unimpeachable testimony
on all phases of the slave system, but nothing she heard in any way
modified her opinion or her feeling. One day her sister-in-law, Mrs.
Edward Beecher, in Boston, wrote her: “Now, Hattie, if I could use
a pen as you can I would write something that would make this whole
nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is.” This touched Mrs.
Stowe to the quick. She determined that she would heed the call. “I
will write something--I will if I live,” she said as she rose with
a determined gesture. She wrote to thank her sister-in-law for the
letter. She said: “As long as the baby sleeps with me nights I cannot
do anything, but I will do it at last. I will do that thing if I live.”

About this time her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, came to visit her.
They sat up all night talking over the thrilling question of the hour.
She confided to him that she intended to write something. He told
her to do this, and he would scatter the book as thick as leaves of
Vallombrosa!

Soon after this, as she was sitting among the worshipers at the Sabbath
morning communion service, a vision passed before her mind, showing
in minutest detail one whole scene of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Even as
Colonel Higginson, in the passage quoted a few pages back, saw in
his imagination the inevitable life of that little girl in the slave
market, so she realized with the vividness of a dream, the central
climax of her book. It was the death scene of the wonderful old negro,
_Uncle Tom_, who in the midst of his lowly state is always made to
preserve a certain dignity and even charm. She has pictured him as a
man for whose character only the highest reverence can be felt. His
spirit was of a meekness so Christ-like that no outrage, no suffering,
could ruffle its calm, nor could the steadfastness of his faith be
shaken. Yet the effect is not of softness, but rather of a stern and
commanding strength. After a life that illustrated nearly all of the
ups and downs of slavery, a final misfortune came to him in the fact
that he chanced to know about the plans for escape that some of his
fellow-slaves had made. To compel him to yield up these secrets he was
at the command of his master brutally whipped all one night long, and
he died the next day as the result of this punishment. Yet toward this
merciless master he cherished no ill feeling. Like his Lord and Master,
he returned blessing for cursing; he was anxious only for the salvation
of his enemies. “‘He ain’t done me no real harm--only opened the gate
of the kingdom for me; that’s all!’ he said.” His last words were,
“‘Who--who--who shall separate us from the love of Christ?’” And with a
smile he fell asleep.

The description of this scene Mrs. Stowe wrote down at white heat,
and when the first draft was made she called her children and had
them stand about her while she read it to them. As she read the tears
streamed down their faces, and one of them, a boy ten years old,
clinched his fists and cried, “Oh, mamma, slavery is the most cruel
thing in the world!” After a while their father came in and he read and
cried, too. He said to her, “You must do something with this,” and she
answered quietly, “I mean to.” From then on, as she had opportunity,
amid extraordinary household duties, the care of six children and a
new baby, with various guests, with unskilled help, and with myriad
distractions, she wrote on until the great book was finished. Her mind
was so full of the subject and her vision of the incidents for the
story was so clear that the words came rushing to her brain faster than
she could write them down. She had the feeling that the story was in
possession of her and not she in possession of the story; or rather as
if some divine power were urging her on and giving her the words to set
down. This strange experience was remembered by her as a time when the
Lord Himself used her as an instrument of His purpose.



CHAPTER XVI

“UNCLE TOM’S CABIN” AND ITS INFLUENCE


“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was dispatched chapter by chapter, almost before
the ink was dry, to the editor of _The National Era_, an anti-slavery
paper published in Washington, in which the story ran from June, 1851,
to April, 1852. The modest author who was accustomed to think of
herself as a mere household drudge with very few ideas beyond babies
and housekeeping, did not dream what was in store for her. In fact,
she had at first a profound feeling of discouragement; she feared the
book would fall to the ground unnoticed and do no good for the cause.
That this might not happen, she sent copies to significant persons in
England and in her own country to call their attention to the work and
to win their interest if possible. Charles Dickens, Prince Albert,
Macaulay, Charles Kingsley, Lord Carlisle and the Earl of Shaftsbury
received copies and acknowledged them in courteous and feeling letters.

But Mrs. Stowe found that far from needing help from the great to make
it find its way, her book of love and pity had struck a chord in the
universal heart. It can almost be said of her as it was of Byron that
she awoke one morning and found herself famous. No book in American
literature ever achieved so immediate and so wide a popularity. There
was an unprecedented call for it. Three thousand copies went off the
first day, and soon eight power presses were kept busy night and day
to supply the demand. It swept over the country, and people everywhere
were reading it into the small hours of the night, weeping and sobbing
over the death of little _Eva_ and over the heroism of _Uncle Tom_.
Before the year was over, more than three hundred thousand copies
had been sold. As Emerson said, it “found readers in the parlor, the
nursery and the kitchen of every household.”

The daughter of William Lloyd Garrison, Mrs. Henry Villard, in a
passage recently written, said: “I read it as a little child with tears
and sobs, as did many an older person, thrilled by its recital of the
horrors of slavery, and touched by the kindness of those who were
slaveholders, contrary to their wishes and the dictates of conscience.
A moral whirlwind followed in its path, the anti-slavery agitation
which preceded it having prepared the way for its wonderful reception
in the north.”

Mrs. Stowe was now called the greatest of American women; her book was
declared “a work of undoubted genius”; it was “epoch-making”; Julia
Ward Howe called it an “offering on the altar of a heavenly intuition,
destined to go down to posterity as of supreme desert and of undying
memory.” The poet Whittier wrote: “What a glorious work Harriet
Beecher Stowe has wrought! Thanks for the Fugitive Slave Law! Better
for slavery that law had never been enacted, for it gave occasion for
‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’”

Yet not all the breezes that blew were balmy. There were many
astonished outcries, some execrations. But these things influenced the
mind of the author very little. She knew that they would not change the
heart of her friends toward her, and they could not change the truth.
So what had she to fear?

Very soon editions began to appear in England, and within a year a
million and a half copies had been sold in that country. Through France
and Germany, Italy and Sweden, too, the book went like wildfire. That
good, friendly soul, Frederika Bremer, wrote to Mrs. Stowe that “Uncle
Tom’s Cabin” had been translated and read and praised in Sweden as no
book ever was before, adding that she had an unwavering faith in the
“strong humanity of the American mind.” She said: “It will ever throw
out whatever is at war with that humanity; and to make it fully alive,
nothing is needed but a truly strong appeal of heart to heart, and that
has been done in ‘Uncle Tom.’” In France George Sand wrote a notable
review of the book in which she said that it was no longer permissible
to those that could read not to have read it. The people devour it, she
said; they cover it with tears. In a short time there were few places
in Italy also where “Il Zio Tom” could not be found.

Soon the pebble that had been thrown into the water began to make wider
circles. Florence Nightingale wrote to Mrs. Stowe that the British
soldiers amid the hardships of far eastern campaigns read the story of
heroism. The book was printed at Venice by a fraternity of Catholic
Armenian monks so that in the Armenian language it now was carried
in all the wanderings of that intelligent people, in the towns and
villages along the banks of the Euphrates, through southern Russia, and
in the farthest confines of Persia. At last it reached Bengal, and,
in their own language, became a household book among the Bengalese.
Flying across the straits into Siam, it reached the royal group, where
a member of the family liberated her own slaves to the number of one
hundred and thirty as a result of its influence, and always signed her
own name “Harriet Beecher Stowe,” because of her admiration for the
author of the book. Professors Lin Shu and Wei-I of Peking together
made a translation into Chinese, and Professor Takenobu of the Waseda
University, Tokio, translated it into Japanese.

A poem by Dr. Holmes sums up, in his characteristic merry vein, the
tale of the nations that learned to recognize the author of “Uncle
Tom.” If we should call the roll,

  Briton and Frenchman, Swede and Dane,
  Turk, Spaniard, Tartar of Ukraine,
    Hidalgo, Cossack, Cadi,
  High Dutchman and low Dutchman, too,
  The Russian serf, the Polish Jew,
  Arab, Armenian, and Mantchoo,
    Would shout, “We know the lady!”

Of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” Germany has nine separate translations and
France thirteen, besides dramas and abridgments, and chansons, and
Russia has five. In Welsh and in Italian there are three; Finnish and
Flemish must now be included and Hungarian and Illyrian, Portuguese,
Modern Greek and Servian; Wallachian and Wendish and Yiddish are not
in Dr. Holmes’ list, but should be. By 1913 there were sixty-six
translations of this almost universal book, not counting abridgments or
dramas. Of English editions there are forty-three, and in this country,
how many? We have lost count. It would be also quite impossible to add
up the dramatic versions of Eliza’s fateful adventure.

All of this goes to show that Whittier was hardly stretching the truth
when he wrote his poem

  To her who world-wide entrance gave
  To the log-cabin of the slave,
  Made all his wrongs and sorrows known,
  And all earth’s languages his own!

It was a long time before people could look at the book fairly and
judge of its literary rank; and even to this day there are writers
who call “Uncle Tom” merely a colossal piece of journalism. It was
indeed written at white heat and with the swiftness of a bird’s flight.
“Hurry! help! hurry! help!” must have been ringing in her ears as she
wrote.

During the winter that she wrote the book she had been running through
with her children the novels of Scott, and Scott is the writer to whom
she is the nearest of kin in the art of writing. There was a time when
the tireless hand of that great story-teller was seen by an observer in
a window across the way, to go back and forth, back and forth, through
the evening and the night and into the wee sma’ hours. This makes us
think of Mrs. Stowe’s smooth fluent script and the lightning swiftness
of her little hand. She wrote like the wind, listening not for the
cackle of literary critics, but to the inner voice that kept saying,
“Write!”

So it happens that its lapses of style, its carelessness of technical
laws have been a stumbling block to some good souls that have fed on
other traditions and theories. The truth is that words grow from age to
age; laws of style perish and new laws blossom out of their graves; but
a torch of human sympathy once truly set alight will burn on forever.

Mr. Howells in “My Literary Passions” says that he felt the greatness
of the book when he first read it; and as often as he has read it since
he has seen more and more clearly that it is a very great novel. He
says that the art in it is very simple and perhaps primitive, yet it is
still a work of art. Its power, however, is to him inexplicable.

This is one of the greatest things that could be said about the book.
It does possess that consummate quality which supreme works of art
always have, namely, that their power over us is great, but that we do
not see why it should be so great. Their charm is inexplicable. Mrs.
Stowe’s fellow genius, George Sand, said that in art there is but one
rule--to paint and to move. By this law, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is a great
work of art. It painted; it made a great people see; and it moves the
whole world. The same generous critic said that Mrs. Stowe may not have
“talent, but she has genius as humanity feels genius. And we ought
to feel,” she said, “that genius is heart, that power is faith, that
talent is sincerity, and success is sympathy, since this book overcomes
us, since it penetrates the breast, pervades the spirit, and fills us
with a strange sentiment of mingled tenderness and admiration for a
poor negro ... gasping on a miserable pallet, his last sigh exhaled
toward God.”

Time alone can pass final judgment on “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Let a
few centuries move by and if as an Epic of Compassion, dissevered
from variable historical associations, it continues to console and to
strengthen, then its place among masterpieces will be secure.

For “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is not a story of slavery; the system of
slavery only happened to be the material out of which the story was
made. It has a far wider meaning as a story of human love and pity. As
such its mission is to carry comfort to any souls that are in doubt
and sorrow. It makes us feel that to have faith is possible and it
reinforces our belief that God will help in time of need. A reading
of “Uncle Tom” has led myriads of distraught souls to a rereading of
the Bible, that book so beloved by the black hero because it gave
him strength to bear his sore trials. In his “Life” of his mother,
published by her son in 1889, Mr. Charles E. Stowe says that “Uncle
Tom’s Cabin” shows that “under circumstances of utter desolation
and despair, the religion of Christ can enable the poorest and most
ignorant human being, not merely to submit, but to triumph--that the
soul of the lowest and weakest, by its aid, can become strong in
superhuman virtue, and rise above every threat and terror and danger in
a sublime assurance of an ever-present love and an immortal life.”



CHAPTER XVII

WANDERING IN FOREIGN LANDS


When “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” had been some four months in the hands of
the people, the publishers sent Mrs. Stowe a check for ten thousand
dollars! Professor Stowe held this magical piece of paper in his hands
and looking helplessly at his wife, said, “Why, Harriet, I never saw so
much money in my life!” He had hoped that the book would be successful
enough in the financial way to buy for her what she very much needed,
a new silk dress. The returns from the sale, however, besides
accomplishing that modest result, also brought within reach many
comforts hitherto unknown in the house of the professor’s family. More
than this, they assured the opportunity for foreign travel and for the
beneficial meeting with people in England and elsewhere who sympathized
with the cause to which Mrs. Stowe had dedicated her heart.

In the spring of 1853, then, we find her starting out for her first
sea voyage. This new experience with that “restless, babbling giant,”
the ocean, was described in her first letter home in her accustomed
merry vein. If you are going to sea, she wrote to her children, you
must have everything ready; you must set your house--that is, your
stateroom--in order as if you were going to be hanged, for you may be
sure that in half an hour after sailing an infinite desperation will
seize you in which the grasshopper will be a burden. Her voyage she
declared gave her a new sympathy for babies who are rocked at home
without so much as a “by your leave”; she thought it no wonder there
are so many stupid people in the world! There were moments, however,
when she could conquer the nervous horror she always had of that “rude,
noisy old servant” of the Lord, and could feel that the ocean was
always obedient to His will, and could not carry her beyond His power
and love, wherever and to whatever it might bear her. At one time on a
later journey she had this faith put to the test when her ship was run
into by another, and she found that it did not fail her, but kept her
calm and serene throughout the ordeal.

When Mrs. Stowe, together with her husband and brother, reached England
a great surprise awaited them. She had had no realization of the real
significance of having written a book of universal pity and love that
would awaken a response in every heart among rich and poor. She was
dazed that so many people came to the boat to meet her, that she
walked up the wharf through a long lane of kindly, welcoming faces,
and that wherever she went in England, and especially in Scotland, her
carriage was run after by wild flocks of sympathetic people anxious to
catch one glimpse of the author of “Uncle Tom.”

She felt, she said, like a child who had set fire to a packet of
gunpowder. And if on the approach to some cathedral door her way was
blocked by the crowd waiting to see her as she passed in, she could
only, in her amazement, quote the words, “What went ye out for to see?
A reed shaken with the wind?” “It seems to me so odd,” she wrote home
from England, “so odd and dreamlike that so many persons desire to see
me; and now I cannot help thinking that they will think when they do,
that God hath chosen the weak things of this world!”

Evidently Mrs. Stowe had very little conceit about herself. She was
always a quiet, unostentatious little body, “a little bit of a woman,”
as she described herself, “just as thin and dry as a pinch of snuff.”
She must have been utterly wanting in vanity, for when she began to be
famous and everybody was desiring to see her, she thought it all simply
wonderful and declared that she was “never very much to look at” in her
best days.

There have been so many things to say about Harriet Beecher that too
little attention has perhaps been given in this book to her personal
appearance. Let us make up for that at one stroke. When the Beecher
children’s stepmother came to live with them she said that the four
youngest children--George, Harriet, Henry and Charles--were all very
pretty, and that Harriet and Henry were as lovely children as she
ever saw. Harriet combined the aquiline Foote brow with the stronger
lines of the Beecher family. She was small in figure and quick in her
movements. Her hands were plastic and mobile, the most controlled and
manageable hands in the world; their motion made a language in itself.
Her dark-brown hair that never lost a warmness of tone until the snow
began to fall upon it, curled about her face, and, in the fashion that
prevailed during her young ladyhood, was allowed to fall in ringlets
on each side. Her eyes were of the blue-gray that takes on all colors
as emotion moves the soul; they had often a far-away dreamy expression
that came from her complete absorption in thought. For instance, at
a luncheon in her honor she did not join in the flow of conversation
at all, but sat absorbed in her own thoughts, explaining afterward
that she had been making the scheme of a new book and thinking out
the characters for it, and had forgotten where she was. In this
respect she was like Tennyson who, under similar conditions, is said
to have remarked only that he had eaten “too much, much too much!” At
other times, however, Mrs. Stowe delighted her fellow guests at some
dinner table by her interest in the subject discussed; her heightened
color, and her shining eyes, together with the ardor and good sense
of her talk, the vivacity of her expression, and the nobility that
characterized her points of view, charmed all that came within her
circle. After such a time the hostess might go away and complain, as
one did, that she had not been told beforehand how beautiful Mrs. Stowe
was! The printed pictures that appeared in the English papers never did
her justice. But she had too little vanity to mind that. When she saw
them she was amazed at the loving kindness of her English and Scottish
friends who could keep up such a warm affection for such a Gorgon.
She thought that the Sphinx at the British Museum must have sat for
most of them. She planned to make a collection of them to carry home
to her children--they would be useful, like the Irishman’s signboard,
to show where the road did not go! These monstrous pictures, however,
did her this service, that everybody was surprised and relieved when
they came to her and found that she was not such a perfect Gorgon after
all! There was one picture made of her about this time, however, that
is worthy of preservation, a beautiful drawing by Richmond. Although
Mrs. Stowe said when she saw it, “I shall look like that when I am in
heaven!”--still many that knew her in earlier years thought it a good
likeness.

Mrs. Stowe found not only curiosity but also friendly welcome among
the English people. One typically pleasant English home was opened to
them at once. The morning after her arrival she was asked to breakfast
at the sister-in-law’s of her host, and on running over in the most
informal way found forty people sitting with bonnets on waiting for
a chance to meet the lion; all of which would have been embarrassing
had not the friendly warmth and cordiality of the circle been made
evident by their smiling faces. As she traveled along, friends arose
everywhere. Now she rested in some delightful, homelike room by a
cheerful fire that flickered on pictures, statuettes, bookcases and all
comfortable things, with an armchair drawn up before it and a pot of
moss on the table set in the center of a round pin-cushion; or if in
the vicissitudes of travel she found herself in the middle of the night
in the street with baggage thrown about her and a vociferous circle of
cabmen declaring they could do no more to discover a lost address, she
would be sure to find shelter in a quiet house which would turn out to
be the very place friends had prepared for her and her party. But it
was not only in the quiet homes that she found welcome; she saw the
routine in a ducal castle from morning prayers on through the joyous
drives and visiting of the day to the putting out of the last candle
at night. With the Queen herself she had what Professor Stowe called
the “pleasantest little interview that ever was.” He described her as a
“real nice little body, with exceedingly pleasant, agreeable manners!”
And four royal children stared their eyes almost out looking at the
author of “Uncle Tom” while the interview was going on.

Mrs. Stowe’s first visit to England was made on the invitation of the
Anti-Slavery Society of Glasgow, and the occasion became therefore
semi-official in its character. Not only was there a great deal of
interest in her personality, but there was also so much enthusiasm
for the cause she was held everywhere to represent that associations
as well as individuals were anxious to meet her and to do honor to
her. Deputations came to greet her from the cities through which she
passed and others that were in the vicinity. Every community seemed
bent upon putting itself on record. At Glasgow there were deputations
from Paisley, Greenock, Dundee, Edinburgh; and not to be outdone by
the mother island, Belfast sent one over from Ireland. At the entrance
to Edinburgh the magistracy of the city met her and made approaches
to her. She was carried through long passages made in the masses of
the people and conducted to a gallery where she took her tea with a
thousand people and thought the teapot of Hadji Baba, the father of
all teakettles, must have been there to go around so large a company.
Enthusiastic meetings were held and speeches were made. For the
quiet little figure on the platform the answer was always given by
her husband whose handsome face and fine presence won everybody to
admiration and regard; and when he said that he could not imagine how
any sort of a written book could have brought forward such expressions
of friendliness as they were showing, that he thought the book had
not been written at all, that he “’spected it grew,” the vociferous
applause of the audience testified not only to their delight in his
sally of wit, but to the fact that they knew by heart their “Uncle
Tom,” and especially their excellent _Topsy_.

They made a practical expression of their sympathy with the cause
Mrs. Stowe represented in wonderful gifts. At Edinburgh a national
penny offering, summed up in a thousand gold sovereigns, was presented
to her on a silver salver; Belfast sent a bogwood casket lined with
gold, carved with national symbols and containing an offering for the
cause; at Surrey Chapel in London she received an inkstand, which
was a beautiful piece of silver work, carved into a group of figures
representing _Religion_ with a Bible in her hand giving liberty to the
slave. A band of children gave her a gold pen, and she made her only
public speech in talking a little to them. Above all other gifts in
interest was that presented by the Duchess of Sutherland at Stafford
House in London, a bracelet made in the form of a slave’s shackle of
ten links and a clasp. On one of the links was inscribed the date of
the abolition of the slave trade March 25, 1807, and of slavery in the
English colonies August 1, 1834. On the clasp was written the number
of signatures to an Address that was presented to Mrs. Stowe on the
occasion of that meeting at Stafford House. The number was 562,448. Of
this Address we shall hear more after a while. On the other links of
the bracelet it was suggested that Mrs. Stowe should have placed the
date of the freeing of slaves in our own country; but Mrs. Stowe did
not at that time believe that she should live to see the day when that
happy event should come about. She was, however, as we know, to have
that good fortune within a dozen years, and to record it upon the other
links of the historic bracelet.

Many of these meetings were marked by tremendous excitement, such
meetings as England has been famous for throughout modern days and
such as have brought about many reforms. Attending such a meeting and
realizing the strength of the feeling that flowed under the outward
expression, Mrs. Stowe said: “I do not believe that there is in all
America more vehemence of democracy, more volcanic force of power, than
comes out in one of these great gatherings in our old fatherland. I saw
plainly enough where Concord, Lexington, and Bunker Hill came from; and
it seems to me there is enough of this element of indignation at wrong,
and resistance of tyranny, to found half a dozen republics as strong as
we are.”

In such ways as these Mrs. Stowe was becoming acquainted with the very
heart of the English and Scottish people. But it was not only the
great and titled that came forward to represent the leading thought
in greeting this woman who stood to them for so much. In the villages
through which they drove and along the roadsides, the so-called common
people were ready with their greetings also. In the doorways everywhere
people stood bowing and smiling, and sometimes running out to offer
flowers; and little boys ran after her carriage crying out that they
knew her by the curls! She wrote: “The butcher came out of his stall
and the baker from his shop, the miller dusty with flour, the blooming,
comely young mother with her baby in her arms, all smiling and bowing
with that hearty intelligent friendly look as if they knew we should
be glad to see them.” Then there were in various cities meetings
especially for the working men; and as her train went along, even at
night, friendly faces were waiting at the stations, good souls watching
through the dark to catch one glimpse of the writer or perhaps to grasp
her hand; then as the train moved away, saying, “Good night!” with
the unmistakable Scotch accent, making her think that she had felt
a throb of the living Scotch heart. Mrs. Stowe felt the spirit that
prompted this reverential tribute, a spirit that makes one blood of
all the families of earth. She, in fact, considered herself altogether
inadequate and disproportionate as an object to call forth such
outbursts of applause; she was most modest in her reception of them,
and believed them to be, as she afterward said to a friend, but the
expression of a great spirit of universal brotherhood, surging forward
in a huge sympathetic wave. Beneath the weight of these honors the New
England simplicity of her character remained unimpaired.

Everything that happened to her she enjoyed to the utmost, and she only
wished that she had a relay of bodies and could slip from a tired one
into a rested one now and then! She began to be so talked out and worn
out that there was hardly a chip of her left. To breakfast with forty
people, lunch with three hundred, take tea with a thousand, and go to
an evening mass meeting and perhaps to more receptions the same night,
would be rather trying to a delicate woman who had come abroad chiefly
to seek rest after the strain of writing a great book. Mrs. Stowe began
to feel a weariness that made seeing people a burden. For besides
answering innumerable letters of invitation and congratulation, besides
all the receptions and dinners and the babble of innumerable voices,
she found that she could not lay her pen entirely aside, but must write
full accounts of everything she saw and enjoyed and heard to send to
her children at home. It is said that the most valuable document of
his time is the “Diary of John Wesley,” because, I suppose, it is so
full of unprejudiced and minutely truthful accounts of things that the
dignified historians have no time to busy themselves with. In the same
way, the series of letters that Mrs. Stowe wrote, afterward published
in two volumes, called “Sunny Memories,” contain observations of men
and things that scarcely another person of her time would have had the
opportunity to gain or to give; these volumes, besides being amusing
and enlightening, will have for the future a distinct historic value.

There were many good times to be enjoyed as they went along on their
journeys. They kept a bright lookout for ruins and all things that
would touch into life their memories of English romance and poetry.
They saw that “city of colleges,” Oxford, which seemed to them a
veritable mountain of museums, colleges, halls, courts, parks, chapels,
and lecture rooms. They took dinner at the White Hart Inn, where the
scene of Shakespeare’s “Merry Wives” was laid; they wandered through
chambers hung with tapestries woven to tell the tale of _Medea_ and
_Jason_; they had a pleasant drive in Hyde Park as Harriet had read
of the heroines of romance doing in old novels; they felt sincere
“dispositions to melancholies” beside the churchyard where the “Elegy”
was composed, and found out only later that their tears had been shed
at the wrong churchyard! They rode on the coach top and listened to the
stories told by the driver just as they would have done in their own
country; they visited the fishing ground of old Isaak Walton; they went
through the great palace at Windsor, and there, above all the splendors
they were chiefly interested in one little wicker baby-carriage they
happened to see standing waiting for its occupant! All the great
works of art Mrs. Stowe saw moved her tremendously; they satisfied a
lifelong hunger. How the lofty arches of the cathedrals touched her
heart! She realized at once that these triumphs of architectural art
give aspiration its noblest symbol, and she found a preparation of mind
for religious emotions in the dusky choirs and the flame-like arches
gorgeous with evening light. Then when she crossed to the continent
and entered the galleries and saw the paintings there and on the walls
of the churches, she was again astonished, delighted, and satisfied as
never before. She was especially overcome when she saw the “Descent
from the Cross” by Rubens. She said: “Art has satisfied me at last. I
have been conquered and that is enough.” This was said before she went
to Italy, where further enjoyments awaited her in later journeys. A
young student of life wishing to make a visit to the great storehouses
of delight in art and history in the European world and not able to
cross the ocean for the purpose, could not do better than read these
perfectly sincere and vital comments upon art, history and things in
general found in Mrs. Stowe’s “Sunny Memories.”

In these “Sunny Memories” we see how much it meant to her to come into
friendly relations with many people whose names had been well known to
her through their books. To a writer the companionship of other writers
means much. Mrs. Stowe had here her great opportunity. It would not
be possible to go over the large circle of great names she came to
know by more than the printed letters. John Ruskin, George Eliot,
Charles Kingsley were among them, besides the long lists of people
whose titles were not their only claim to interest. In Paris there
was another circle of great people, and when she came to Italy, there
were the Brownings with whom a warm friendship arose, and many other
very congenial people. Then on one of her return journeys she had the
pleasure of having for companions Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne and
Mr. and Mrs. James T. Fields.

Among the happiest times that Mrs. Stowe had were the social gatherings
in England with some of these literary friends. Seated at dinner where
there were perhaps thirty or more at the table, with Macaulay at her
right and Milman at her left, she was sometimes embarrassed with
riches; she wanted to hear what they were both saying; but by the use
of the faculty by which we play the piano with both hands, she got on,
she said, very comfortably.

We can quite imagine that in these conversations it must have been
sometimes a little startling to have this fresh vivid intelligence
turned upon the customs that have in England had the benefit of long
settled tradition. At one dinner she said that it had always seemed
to her a curious thing that in the height of English civilization one
vestige of savagery should remain, namely, sending a whole concourse of
strong men out to hunt a single poor little fox or hare, creatures so
feeble and insignificant who can do nothing to defend themselves; to
her it hardly seemed consistent with manliness. Now, she said, if you
had some of our American buffaloes, or a Bengal tiger, the affair would
be something more dignified and generous. The gentlemen who heard this
only laughed and went on to tell more stories about fox hunting!

Mrs. Stowe was of course confronted with the traditional question as to
how the English ladies compared with those of America in beauty. When
her turn came she said within herself, “Now for it, patriotism!” Then
she assured the questioner that she had never seen more beautiful women
anywhere than she had in her own country. But she had to admit that the
English ladies held their beauty longer than did those of this country.
Why was it? Was it the sea coal and fog that made the women of England
preserve their glowing, radiant, blooming freshness till long past
fifty? Tell us, Muses and Graces! she cried. Then she suggested various
reasons: our close-heated rooms, our hot biscuits and hot corn cakes
made with saleratus, our worry over maid service, our climate, and so
on. The American woman is possessed, she thought, with the ambition to
do the impossible, which is the cause of the death of a third of the
women of this country, and by the impossible she means that they try to
play not only the head of the family but the head, hand, and foot, all
at once! Certainly the undaunted bravery of the American woman in her
difficult home arrangements can never be enough admired. Speaking of
stoves, she said that she never saw one in England. (This was in 1853.)
Bright coal fires in grates of polished steel were still the lares and
penates of old England. If there was one thing in her own country that
she was inclined to mourn, it was the closing up of the cheerful open
fire, with its bright lights and dancing shadows, and the planting on
our domestic hearth of that sullen, stifling gnome, the air-tight. She
agreed with Hawthorne in thinking the movement fatal to patriotism; for
who would fight for an air-tight?

One of the things that Mrs. Stowe noticed in England was that the
distinguished people live so remarkably public a life. English
newspapers told a great deal more about the concerns of the notable
people than American papers tell: where the nobility were staying now,
where they would go next, what they had for dinner, what they wore--all
these things the English newspapers deemed important. And Mrs. Stowe
was surprised also to have them take somewhat the same interest in her,
even recording it when she had a dress made, and complaining that she
sent it to a dress-maker of whom they did not approve!

When Mrs. Stowe came to France she noticed the ready enthusiasm of
the French for all things beautiful, and she compared this with the
Puritan distrust of beauty for its own sake which she had seen and
felt in New England. She was, of course, not the only one who has felt
this about our serious forefathers and their view of life. Now she had
found a people that could be equally enthusiastic about a barrel of
potatoes and the adorning of a room. She observes: “But did not He that
made the appetite for food make also that for beauty? and while the
former will perish with the body, is not the latter immortal?” By this
we see how far the soul of Harriet Beecher has progressed since the
days when she found her love of literature a snare in the way of her
spiritual progress.

Mrs. Stowe was delighted with Paris. She was released from care; she
was unknown and unknowing. She employed herself in wandering about
the shops, the streets and boulevards, seeing and hearing the life of
Paris. She wished the children at home could see these Tuileries with
their statues and fountains, these family groups under the trees, the
men and women chatting, reading aloud or working muslin, the children
driving hoops, playing ball, all chattering volubly. Afterwards she
was able to give the children the opportunity to see all this when she
brought the whole company to spend a winter in Paris to study French.

But the relief from the necessity of seeing people, which would have
been so great a pleasure to her if she had not been too tired for it,
did not stay with her very long in France, nor in Switzerland whither
they next went. Here also the fame of the author had gone before her.
All knew the book; they stood in rows to see the author and to ask her
to write another that should while away their long winter evenings as
“Uncle Tom” had done. “Remember,” they said, “our winter nights here
are very long!”

At last they came to Italy. Here every day opened to her a new world
of wonders. And when she reached Rome she cried out, “Rome is a world!
Rome is an astonishment! Rome is an enchantress! Think of strolling
leisurely through the Forum, of seeing the very stones that were laid
in the time of the Republic, of rambling over the ruined Palace of
the Cæsars, of walking under the Arch of Titus, of seeing the Dying
Gladiator, and whole ranges of rooms filled with the wonders of art,
all in one morning!... In the Palace of the Cæsars, where the very
dust is a _mélange_ of exquisite marbles, I saw for the first time an
acanthus growing, and picked my first leaf!”

It was during her second visit to Europe that Mrs. Stowe met the
Brownings. That was in April, 1857. Mrs. Browning said of this visit
that she and her husband had been charmed by Mrs. Stowe’s simplicity
and earnestness, her gentle voice and refinement of manner. Never, said
Mrs. Browning, did lioness roar so softly![14] After that and till the
end of the life of Mrs. Browning, correspondence was carried on between
the two great women, in which the chief subject discussed was the
possibility of spiritual communications between us and those that have
passed into the other life. Both these great thinkers believed that
such communications were within the range of possibility if we were
able to realize them spiritually, but not through any material means
then known. The same warm and permanent kind of friendship existed
between Mrs. Stowe and George Eliot.

Mrs. Stowe was in Europe first in 1853, again in 1856-7, and the third
time in 1859-60. In the intervals she was very hard at work in her
home in Brunswick, Maine, and afterwards in a new home in Andover,
Massachusetts, whither her husband had been called to the Theological
Seminary. First she was writing the “Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” a
compendium of the facts and materials she had used in writing the
novel. Following this was the second anti-slavery work, a novel
entitled “Dred.” This was an even more passionate treatment of the
subject of slavery than was “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” though it did not
have the concentration and the pathos of the latter. Just as a novel,
however, it marked an advance in method and handling, and if one
should look behind the preaching one would find a distinct promise for
finer workmanship to come in later books. This promise was fulfilled
in “The Minister’s Wooing,” “The Pearl of Orr’s Island,” and “Agnes
of Sorrento,” three novels that belong to this time of quickening by
contact with the old world.

But these years between the time of her first novel and the beginning
of the sixties were the days of the drawing tighter and tighter of the
cords, the bursting of which was to produce our Civil War. To every
varying of the needle she was sensitive. To every pang in her country’s
agony she was sharply responsive. She wrote to a friend in England:
“Sudden, sharp remedies are mercy.” Hating war, she yet said, if by
war, then war it must be.



CHAPTER XVIII

A UNIQUE JUBILEE


One day twenty farmers came to the Stone Cabin in Andover where the
Stowes lived and sat down with Professor Stowe to ask the question,
Will it be a long war? And he had answered buoyantly, Oh, no, short and
decisive it will certainly be!

A year passed and it was not yet over; 1862 came in and the fierce
battles of Shiloh, Cedar Mountain, Manassas and Antietam formed the
bitter record of that one summer alone. In the very heart of the
country soldiers by the thousand from the north and from the south
stood glaring at each other, pressing forward, warding off, moving
warily even upon the critical spaces about the city of Washington,
while occasionally the Confederate raiders slipped through and ran
almost up to the city itself. The resistance of the Confederate army
was proving much more stubborn than had been dreamed possible, and by
November of 1862 long streets of tents full of soldiers waiting for
orders were making white cities for miles and miles throughout the
surroundings of Washington. The people began to fear the horror of a
long, devastating war.

Almost worse than this was the feeling of criticism into which
discouragement was concentrating. Grief at the defeats of the army
of the Potomac was reacting in troubles among President Lincoln’s
advisers. The northern abolitionists could not understand why he was
so slow--why he did not stop the war at once. And he, poor man, in
the midst of the most harassing executive difficulties, with personal
sorrow for the recent death of his little son eating at his heart
and national sorrow for the loss in deadly battle of many hundreds
of soldiers overshadowing him, did not know which way to turn for
strength, wisdom and good generalship. “I cannot create generals,” he
said.

As the month for Thanksgiving Day, 1862, approached it would seem that
no one could have the heart to celebrate. On the farms of New England
and Ohio and Nebraska the women were beginning to have to carry the
whole burden of home and town. In a New Hampshire countryside, not far
from where the Stowes were living, fourteen strong daughters of the
mountains went one night after their own farm work was done to the barn
of an aged neighbor whose three sons had gone to the war, and before
morning had husked for him one hundred bushels of corn. This sort of
thing was being done everywhere.

As for the homesick soldiers in their distant camps, certainly the
approach of the time for the giving of thanks was not specially
welcomed, for they did not know what a day might bring forth of new
horror and disaster. They, too, together with statesmen and citizens
everywhere, were beginning to realize distinctly that the war was no
little quarrel to be lightly settled, but a fierce interlocking of
stubborn wills. That it was the wills of brothers thus conflicting
added to the poignancy of their grief.

Under circumstances so depressing as these, what could the governors
of states think of to say in their Thanksgiving Day proclamations? Yet
in the midst of the national dismay they had the courage and faith
to send out their appeals. They called upon the people to come away
and praise God even in the midst of the gloom. They found heart to be
glad for something. The war, for instance, had not been followed by
pestilence--that they could say; they begged the people to reflect that
these national chastisements might possibly be blessings in disguise;
they besought them not to think of the vacant chairs and the silent
voices by the home firesides, but instead to remember that strength was
being given to endure; they pointed out that if the people would give
thanks in the right spirit, it would be for the exalted patriotism,
the heroic courage, the fortitude and humanity, of the soldiers. “Let
the high praises of God be in our mouth,” they quoted, “and--the
two-edged sword in our hand!”

In the Stone Cabin at Andover there was one in whose heart the whole
terrible drama was being enacted as if it were an oppressive and
unbearable nightmare. “It is our agony,” she said. “We tread the wine
press alone. We are in the throes and ravings of the exorcism.” The
heart of Mrs. Stowe had been broken by the loss of her eldest son by
the accident of drowning. Now she was called upon to make another
supreme sacrifice in giving up a son to the service of her country.
Could she rejoice and give thanks?

With a sad patience she accepted an invitation to come to Washington
and join in helping people even more stricken than herself to a little
Thanksgiving cheer. The response in the capital city to the appeal
for Thanksgiving testimonials had been as generous as the limited
and disastrous circumstances would allow. For the city itself was at
this time one great hospital of wounded soldiers; the churches and
public buildings were all filled with the maimed, the sick and the
suffering, who had been brought there after the battles of the summer
and fall. Not every one, however, was in hospital and those that were
well made the sufferers have a happy day. There were banquets for the
convalescents, and banquets for the men in temporary hospitals in the
Patent Office, the Church of the Ascension, the Armory, the Marine
Barracks and elsewhere.

The regiments of Union soldiers were not the only special guests of
the season that were gathered in large numbers in and near the city.
Many hundreds of negroes who had heard the call of freedom on the
plantations of the south and had managed to escape from their masters
and to make their way through the military cordons had come to the
city as to a harbor of refuge. When the last Thursday in November drew
near good friends planned to give to those desolate people a homelike
Thanksgiving dinner that would gladden their hearts and give them a
foretaste of what freedom was to mean to them. Encouraging speeches
were to be made and distinguished people from various parts of the
country were invited to come. It was to this sorrowful-happy banquet
that Mrs. Stowe had been asked, and she was the more willing to make
the journey, since she hoped to have an opportunity to see her son,
Frederick, who was staying near the city with his regiment, the First
Massachusetts Infantry. She had also another great purpose in coming,
as will soon appear.

The Contraband Dinner, as the dinner of the freed men was called,
was held on November 27, 1862, in the church that had been used as
a hospital and place of rendezvous for the freedmen’s camp at the
end of Twelfth Street East. As Mrs. Stowe entered the room she saw
that a great deal of affectionate pains had been spent in decorating
it for the occasion. Garlands of evergreen had been hung all about,
and wreaths encircled the portraits of great people who had been
working for the cause of the down-trodden. Back of the platform were
the picture of the President with the mottoes, “God bless Abraham
Lincoln,” and “Liberty to the Captive.” Upon the walls were arranged
the portraits of various sympathizers and philanthropists: Senator
Pomeroy and Professor Stowe, Horace Greeley and General Wadsworth were
in one group, and the professors from Oberlin--Finney, Morgan, Dascomb
and Coles, with Thomas Clarkson and Horace Mann were in another circle.
Another group, whose connection will perhaps be a puzzle, contained
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Queen Hortense, Mary Queen of Scots, Charles
V, General Cavaignac and General Havelock. Elsewhere on the walls were
also Mrs. Elizabeth Fry, John Bunyon, John Knox, Hugh Miller, Peter
Melanchthon, Mozart and Haydn. Under this array of inspiring portraits
tables with a comfortable supply of good things to eat were spread for
some hundreds of guests.

Mrs. Stowe was accompanied by a daughter and by her little son, Charles
Edward. To greet them at the foot of the platform stood the Rev. John
Pierpont with Bishop Payne, Senator Pomeroy, Dr. Channing and other
celebrities. Mrs. Stowe’s thoughts, however, were more with the
wonderful audience that was beginning to gather than with the speakers
who were to make the addresses. It was a marvelous sight that greeted
her eyes as she took her seat and looked out over the white expanse of
the tables that filled the audience room of the church. Already the
long procession of strange guests was filing in; from the platform
they looked like rivers of inky blackness flowing through the aisles
and around the table. To the eyes of Mrs. Stowe it was a tragic scene,
for she knew that these poor people had made their escape with untold
sufferings. She saw that many were still in the tattered garments they
had worn as they crept through the swamp; some had no jacket or coat at
all but only a hempen sack with holes cut through for head and arms.
But the look in their eyes was something wonderful to see!

The guests took their places at the tables which were loaded with
meat, cake and fruits. One table also held a great pyramidal cake with
an inscription that read, “To the Contrabands, from the Contraband
Relief Association,” and the banquet began. At the beginning prayer
was offered by Bishop Payne and then the contrabands were invited to
fall in, and the food began to disappear rapidly. When one tableful had
been well supplied the Superintendent said, “Men, you who have been
eating, take something in your hands and give place to others. There,”
he added, “don’t take the plates!” At this point the disappearance of
drumsticks, et cetera, was marvelous to behold.

After some two thousand contrabands had been fed the company on the
platform adjourned to an improvised speakers’ stand where the addresses
were made. Dr. Channing presided and Senator Pomeroy repeated once more
to these poor freedmen the heavenly news that they had a good right to
be where they were, and that universal freedom was at hand. This was a
story that they could not hear told too often; it made every swarthy
face in the room glow with broad delight and every voice break forth
into shouts of joy. No wonder that from every throat burst that one
great song, that psalm of their modern exodus, “Go Down, Moses.”

  When Israel was in Egypt Land--
    Let my people go!
  Oppressed so hard they could not stand--
    Let my people go!
  Go down, Moses,
  ’Way down in Egypt Land;
  Tell ol’ Pharaoh
    To let my people go!
      Stand away dere,
      Stand away dere,
    Let my people go!

This most famous of negro melodies had so strange a moving power that
the negroes all through the south had been forbidden to use it because
it made them so wild for freedom that nothing could restrain them. But
these freedmen had come through fire and water to reach a place where
they could shout it out freely; and the rich and vital tones of those
negro voices rang out the twenty-five stanzas of the hymn as their
hearts rose in the exaltation of the hour. When they came to the line,

  Stand away dere, stand away dere,
  And let my people go!

the emotional impulse of the great appeal made an uncontrollable sob
rise to the throats of those that heard it. The agony and the faith and
the triumph of a whole people seemed to breathe forth from that great
company of rescued slaves in the minor swell of this solemn chorus.
Here is the simple music that went with this wonderful primitive song;
but no notes can give any idea of the weird and mystically yearning
effect of it as it was sung by the negroes themselves.

[Music:
  When Israel was in Egypt’s land:
    Let my people go!
  Oppressed so hard they could not stand:
    Let my people go!
  Go down, Moses
  ’Way down in Egypt land,
  Tell ole Pha-roah
    To let my people go!
      Stand away dere!
      Stand away dere!
    And let my people go!]

The words of the song went on to record in a sort of ballad fashion
the dealings of the Lord with the Children of Israel; under this Old
Testament symbolism the negroes always pictured themselves as a nation
and felt they were telling their own sorrows as they followed the Bible
story.

  When Israel was in Egypt’s Land--
    Let my people go!
  Oppressed so hard they could not stand--
    Let my people go!
  Go down, Moses,
  ’Way down in Egypt Land,
  Tell ol’ Pharaoh--
    Let my people go!
      Stand away dere,
      Stand away dere,
    Let my people go!

The Red Sea incident follows:

  The Lord told Moses what to do
  To lead the children of Israel through.

  O come along Moses, you’ll not get lost,
  Stretch out your rod and come across.

  As Israel stood at the water side
  At the command of God it did divide.

  When they had reached the other shore
  They sang a song of triumph o’er.

The story of the destruction of Pharaoh they must have sung with
special gusto:

  Pharaoh said he would go across
  But Pharaoh and his host were lost.

Then comes a song of hope for the Israelites:

  O Moses, a cloud shall cleave the way,
  A fire by night, a shade by day.

  You’ll not get lost in the wilderness
  With a lighted candle in your breast.

A general application follows:

  O let us all from bondage flee,
  And let us all in Christ be free.

  We need not always weep and moan
  And wear these slavery chains forlorn.

An exhortation:

  O brethren, brethren, you’d better engage,
  For the devil he’s out on a big rampage.

  The devil he thought he had me fast
  But I thought I’d break his chains at last.

Then comes the cheering prospect of Heaven:

  O take your shoes from off your feet
  And walk into the golden street!

And this concluding stanza:

  I do believe without a doubt
  That a Christian has a right to shout!

As the concluding strain of this psalm of praise and of prayer sank
away into silence they carefully led a very old colored man to the
platform. This was Old John the Baptist, as the negroes affectionately
called him; he was looked up to as a sort of patriarch in Israel on
account of his goodness and spirituality. The whiteness of his matted
hair and the deep furrows in his face testified to the many, many years
in which the pain of slavery had been burned into his soul. As they
assisted him up the steps it could be seen that he was blind, and a
deep hush fell upon the room as he raised his hands and lifted up his
voice in prayer. He gave thanks for the joy of this day of emancipation
and for their escape from the woe of slavery; he prayed for the friends
and relatives so tenderly beloved that they had left behind, and, above
all, he prayed that their feelings of joy and triumph at their own
escape might not lead them into vainglorious pride and arrogance. The
chief burden of his prayer was that humility might dwell in the hearts
of his people. “O God, keep us humble, keep us humble,” he repeated.
“Let not thy people be puffed up with pride and then forget the God
that brought them out of Egypt into Canaan’s land!”

During these simple, but most impressive, ceremonies Mrs. Stowe sat
on the platform, her heart throbbing with the tragedy of the scene.
There was a deep, absorbed, dreamy look in her eyes as she sat there
pondering on all this great national matter. As she looked out over the
vast assemblage, a fragment only of the great exodus from slavery, she
grew more and more assured in her mind that the steps that had been
taken were right. She thought over what had already been done. It was
right to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia and to exclude it
from the territories of the United States; it had been a good stroke
for the United States to make that treaty with Great Britain for the
suppression of the slave trade, making it legal to hang a convicted
slaver as a pirate. And it was clear to her that the government offer
of compensation to the slave owners in the southern states, to whom the
negro was property, was a just and fair offer. She believed in release
from slavery as a growth rather than as a sudden cut-off, and thought
that this offer had been a move in the right direction.

Therefore, she thought, it is right and sensible to lead up by these
steps to the promise of full freedom to all--which the President had
promised--or perhaps one should say, threatened, in the important
document, the Emancipation Proclamation, which he had given out some
four weeks before. “Oh, if he only will hold firm to this!” she prayed,
“and if the Cabinet and the army and the country will only stand by
him!”

Then she thought of her soldier son and she remembered the other
mothers who had given their boys to the country’s need. With a gush of
agony came the reflection that for the mothers to go themselves and to
give their own lives would have been so much easier!

As these heavy thoughts were passing through her mind a thousand men
just out of slavery were looking toward the quiet little woman on the
platform who in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” had so marvelously told their
story. There were many among the freedmen present who had been able
to acquire the valuable and dangerous art of reading printed words,
and who had read the wonderful story Mrs. Stowe had written. There
were others who had listened breathlessly behind closed doors in their
little cabins while the book was being read in low tones to them. So a
great glow of grateful love was being poured out in the direction of
that inconspicuous member of the distinguished company, for they felt
that they knew her heart. As the last strains of “Go down, Moses” were
fading away and the company was dispersing, an aged negress met Mrs.
Stowe in the doorway and, lifting up her hands in blessing, cried out,
“Bressed be de Lord dat brought me to see dis first happy day of my
life! Bressed be de Lord!”

At this time Mrs. Stowe must have looked very much like the picture
which is reproduced as the frontispiece to this book, which is taken
from a _carte de visite_ made in 1862. At this meeting we may imagine
her as this picture shows her, but we must add perhaps some kind of
shawl or drapery for warmth, a pair of black silk mitts of ornamented
net, and a bonnet tied with wide ribbons in a double bow knot under
the chin. This bonnet must have concealed the abundant hair coiled
up at the back, but not the soft wavy brown folds that came down on
either side of the beautiful, refined face. The large breast-pin in the
picture was made from a piece of softly clouded lava; the ring, worn in
the fashion of the day on the first finger, had belonged to her son who
was drowned while in college; this ring she wore and jealously guarded
for his sake. Many people who knew Mrs. Stowe pronounce it one of the
best likenesses of her that we possess.



CHAPTER XIX

A VISIT TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN


Mrs. Stowe spent the next day after the freedmen’s jubilee in driving
frantically from fort to fort in search of the proper officer to give
her permission to extract her son Fred for a time from the military
harness. She was afraid they would not let him come with her; at last,
however, she succeeded, and she was never happier than when he sprang
into the carriage, free for forty-eight hours. He, too, was filled with
uncontrollable delight. “Oh!” he exclaimed in a sort of rapture, “this
pays for a year of hard fighting and hard work!” A year ago she had
bade him farewell at Andover, and, after the trip of his regiment to
New York, she had again seen him for an hour. At that time she found
him even in the two days’ experience of soldierly life mysteriously
changed--an expression of gravity and care marking his face. “It is
thus that our boys,” she said in her heart, “come to manhood in a day!”
But what she felt at that time was as nothing to the feelings that
were now hers when this war-worn man came to her arms! For he was a
lieutenant, having been promoted for bravery on more than one field.

That evening in a quiet little parlor, by a bright coal fire, she sat
with three children around her, the young lieutenant, a daughter, and
the little son who lives now to remember the events of this Washington
visit. Her cup was as full of joy as any mother’s could be who yet must
think what the fortune of war might mean to many a mother’s breaking
heart.

It is now time to refer to the matter that Mrs. Stowe had in mind as
one of the reasons for coming to Washington. During all these days she
was carrying one special burden--something that seemed to her to be of
national importance and also a matter of personal responsibility. To
understand what this was we must recall the “Affectionate and Christian
Address” which had been signed by those five hundred thousand women
of Great Britain and Ireland, by duchesses, countesses, wives of
generals and ambassadors, savants and men of letters, as well as by
hands evidently unused to hold the pen. This “Address” had been sent
to “their sisters, the women of the United States of America,” through
that most representative of American women, Harriet Beecher Stowe,
appealing to them to aid in the removal of slavery from the Christian
world.

“We acknowledge with grief and shame,” they said, “our heavy share in
this great sin. We acknowledge that our forefathers introduced, nay,
even compelled the adoption of slavery in those mighty colonies. We
humbly confess it before Almighty God; and it is because we so deeply
feel and unfeignedly avow our own complicity that we now venture to
implore your aid to wipe away our common crime and our common dishonor.”

Mrs. Stowe knew that her answer to this important letter would be a
national matter--she could not make it otherwise. She must review the
intricate history of the slave system and face its present problems,
not one of the least of which was the fact that, in spite of letters
and addresses to the contrary by an illuminated few, the great body
of English sympathy was now being given to that party in this country
that favored slavery. Therefore, the international situation was in
a specially critical state. It seemed even possible that England as
a nation would give aid to the forces that were trying to tear our
republic apart. Mrs. Stowe saw that now in the fall of 1862 this was
one of the greatest causes of apprehension. That this state of feeling
should follow the outburst of enthusiasm for freeing the slaves that
she herself had witnessed all over England and Scotland, seemed to her
incomprehensible and heart-breaking, and it made her feel that she must
not let the answer to the “Address” remain in the logic of events
only, but that it now called for some direct expression from the one to
whom it had been intrusted.

Under the circumstances what she should say in her public letter was
a very delicate matter. She might describe the various important
preparatory steps that the President had already taken; and she might
describe the proclamation just given out, that document we now consider
to have ushered in the political regeneration of the American people,
in which the President had made solemn announcement that unless by the
following January the states now in rebellion laid down arms to signify
that they abandoned the system of slavery, the emancipation of all
slaves in those states would at once be enforced.

So far, so good. She could tell what had been already done; but how
much might happen between now and January 1, 1863! What battles and
conquests and losses might be written upon our scroll! What a test the
national spirit might be put to! What failures were perhaps possible!
As Mrs. Elizabeth Browning in an anxious hour said in one of her last
letters: “What I feared most was that the north would compromise; and
I fear still that they are not heroically strong on their legs on the
moral question (meaning slavery). I fear it much. If they can but hold
up it will be noble.” And this expresses the better side of England’s
interest in our national problem.

Mrs. Stowe’s heart cried, “We cannot, we must not fail!” But she had
the wisdom to see that her opinion needed to be bolstered up by some
more weighty judgment. So she said to herself, “When I go to Washington
I will try to see the heads of departments and satisfy myself that I
may refer to the Emancipation Proclamation as a reality, for I should
be sorry to call the attention of my sisters in Europe to an impotent
conclusion. And I mean to have a talk with Father Abraham himself if
possible.”

For her to gain an interview with President Lincoln was comparatively
easy, for one member of the President’s Cabinet, Mr. Salmon P. Chase,
now Secretary of the Treasury, was an old Ohio friend of hers. Years
back, in Cincinnati, he had been a member of the Semi-colon Club. It
was natural that this former friend should now find it easy to arrange
for Mrs. Stowe to call upon President Lincoln and to have a quiet
conversation with him. Her son, Charles Edward, twelve years old, who
still remembers the distinguished event of that day as though it had
happened yesterday, and her grown-up daughter, Harriet, accompanied
her. It was a wonderful experience for them. The White House with its
Ionic pillars seemed to young Charles a palace of dreamland; as they
passed through the halls and caught a glimpse through an open door
of the wonderful East Room where the carpet, selected for that room
by Mrs. Lincoln, was of a pale green tapestry worked with flowers,
it must have seemed to him that the gleaming transparent waves of
the ocean were tossing roses to his feet. They were conducted up a
staircase and taken to the President’s reception parlor, then called
the Red Room, where the interview was to be held. Though the room was
richly furnished, it seemed like a quiet and cozy place to the little
boy. Perhaps this was because it was a dark chilly day and there was a
bright wood fire burning in the fireplace.

The President was sitting before the fire as they entered. His gaunt
figure was bowed in a melancholy attitude, and he was warming his hands
by turning them first the palms toward the flame and then the backs,
seemingly just for the sheer enjoyment of the genial warmth.

Overcome by a natural feeling of reverence for the great man into whose
presence they were being ushered, Mrs. Stowe and her little group held
back for a moment and waited; but Mr. Chase led them forward and told
the President that he had brought Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe to visit
him. With that awkwardness which is one of our most appealing memories
of him, Mr. Lincoln rose quickly from his chair, revealing his whole
six feet and four inches of height, and came forward eagerly. “Why,
Mrs. Stowe,” he exclaimed, holding out his hand, “I’m right glad to see
you!” Leading her to a chair, he added with a mischievous twinkle in
his eye, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this
great war.” With this pleasantry they sat down together before the fire.

The first thing he said was, “I do love an open fire; I always had one
to home.” The homely phrase “to home!” How near it seemed to bring him!
Like all the other common expressions he used, it only made us love
him more! His advisers used sometimes to try to get him to write in a
more polished manner, but he would say, “Well, it may not be so elegant
or classical, but the people will understand it, the people will
understand it!” And they always did. Mrs. Stowe could hardly have been
more effectually made to feel “to home” than she was.

In response to the President’s humorous remark about her book, Mrs.
Stowe no doubt answered, as she so many times did, by disclaiming any
intention to do anything except to obey the inner voice that commanded
her to write. “I did not write it, not I myself alone,” she always
said. “It seemed to me that God himself made me write it, that I wrote
it at his dictation.” And Lincoln, from the depths of his profoundly
reverent nature, probably answered that he could understand how that
could be said with all simplicity and true worship.

Gazing into that homely, noble, pain-marked face, and knowing so well
how many reasons there were for its look of inexpressible sadness, her
heart was touched with a great pity for him as a man. After they had
talked for a few moments, some one came through the room and spoke with
him for a little while; then in passing out the visitor said casually,
“Where do you dine?” The President answered, “Well, I don’t dine;
I just browse around a little now and then.” To the woman that sat
there waiting and letting nothing escape her eye, there was something
irresistibly pathetic in the tone in which this was spoken. Where
indeed could President Lincoln find an hour of rest in the midst of his
overweighted days? The whole city was one hospital of wounded soldiers,
the borders outside were one vast camp looking for battle. Even the
Emancipation Proclamation, that one firm stone in the wide morass of
despondency on which the wearied man at last had set firm foothold,
did not just now seem to lead toward the land of promise. Struggling
with an extraordinarily difficult problem, he was at that moment
misunderstood on all sides. People criticized him for what he did and
for what he did not do. He was too hasty, he was too slow. They called
him stupid blockhead, satyr, ape, gorilla. They named his military
plans imbecility; his humor they took for irreverence. But Mrs. Stowe
understood him, and she somehow struck the note at the beginning which
made them at home with each other. If this had not been the case, he
would never have said the things to her that we know he did say.

Of her interview with the President, however, Mrs. Stowe never gave
any full account. I suppose it would not have been right for her to
do so. It must, however, have been a very illuminating hour, for her
sketch of Lincoln in a volume called “Men of Our Times,” which she
wrote six years later shows a certainty of impression and an intimacy
of view that could only have come from personal knowledge. Moreover,
she tells us definitely of several things that were said; and from
these as well as from references in that sketch, and from the influence
of this conversation upon the “Reply” to the English “Address” which
she was writing on the evening of the day when she saw the President,
and from what we know was dwelling in the mind of the President and
in hers in this month of November in 1862, we may to some extent
reorganize that hour of vital converse between two souls that were
sharing in the heavy woe of the national conflict.

As early in the conversation as possible, she called his attention
to the “Address” on the part of the five hundred thousand women of
England who had spoken to the women of America through her, and of the
necessity that was upon her now to answer.

“They have called upon us,” she said, “in the name of a common origin,
a common faith, and a common cause. They have said: ‘We appeal to you
as sisters, as wives, and as mothers, to raise up your voices to your
fellow-citizens, and your prayers to God, for the removal of this
affliction and disgrace from the Christian world.’ Now,” she continued,
“in this eight years we have been answering this appeal. Step after
step has been taken; chain after chain has fallen; now the day of
emancipation has been set. Mr. President, it is of that that I must
speak with you to-day.” Thus Mrs. Stowe brought forward the question
that was pressing upon her mind. “Mr. Lincoln,” she said, “I feel that
I must ask you about your views on emancipation.” At this point the
President withdrew with her to the embrasure of a window-seat, where
they sat together for an hour or more in uninterrupted conversation.

Mrs. Stowe had much to tell him about the condition of thought in
England which she had learned from observation during her visits there
and through the letters she constantly received from people of weight
and importance who were watching with intense interest the progress of
our bitter conflict. He on his part was able to interpret to her his
border state policy which had been a burden of misunderstanding upon
her mind; he explained the reasons why it had been necessary for him
to proceed slowly and why the time for a more decided step had come at
last. We know comparatively little about the conversation that went on
by the window, but we do know that these were its subjects. She said
that she desired, if possible, to have it made clear to her that the
government was not to take any steps backward in the course on which
it had started out, before she could with dignity write the answer to
the “Address.”

Abraham Lincoln made it clear. He set her mind quite at rest on that
point. Before they parted he said in effect what he afterwards repeated
in the Second Inaugural: “If this struggle were to be prolonged till
there was not a home in the land where there was not one dead, till all
the treasure amassed by the unpaid labor of the slave should be wasted,
till every drop of blood drawn by the lash should be atoned by blood
drawn by the sword, we could only bow and say, ‘Just and true are thy
ways, thou King of Saints!’”

This was indeed a passage from his inmost soul. Sometimes a great
man has an hour in which he finds it comforting to open his heart to
the compassionate ear of a woman. Without disrespect to his revered
memory we may believe that President Lincoln did on this day find such
a relief in talking with a woman whose book with its key and whose
letters and articles had proved not only the sensitive sympathy and
flame-like patriotism of her soul, but also the statesman-like grasp of
her mind.

Then perhaps in this interview with its high emotional tension there
may have come a moment when personal things could be mentioned, for
I do not know how otherwise to account for the great confidence he
reposed in her in one of the things that he said in that interview.
Perhaps the way may have been opened by her saying something about
her own feelings in writing “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” She may have told him
how acutely she suffered when she was working on that book. Elsewhere
she has said, “Many times, in writing ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ I thought
my health would fail me utterly, but I prayed earnestly that God would
help me till I got through, and still I was pressed beyond measure and
above strength.” Something of this sort she doubtless told Mr. Lincoln.
To this the President must have listened with full understanding.
“It lies like lead on my heart,” she would continue. “It shadows my
life with sorrow. The more so since I feel for the south as for my
own brothers, and am pained for every horror I have been obliged to
describe, as one who is forced by an awful oath to disclose in court
some family disgrace. Many times I have thought I must die, and yet I
pray God that I may live to see the end of this struggle.”

These are the words of Mrs. Stowe; if she used the same words in
speaking with President Lincoln it would surely be in response that
he must have said what we know he did say in some part of this
conversation, that he did not think that it would be given to him to
rejoice in the successful outcome of the great rebellion. “Whichever
way it ends, I have the impression that I shan’t last long after it
is over,” was what he said. Mrs. Stowe afterwards said that she felt
that no man had suffered more or more deeply than he, although it was
a dry, weary, patient pain that seemed to some like insensibility,
but was not--Oh, never was at all! After he was gone his countrymen
understood this perfectly. Mrs. Stowe understood it then. She said,
“When we have passed through this trouble we shall think that no
private or individual sorrow can ever make us wholly comfortless. If
my faith in God’s presence and living power in the affairs of men ever
grows dim, that thought shall make it impossible for me to doubt.”

With her sensitive sympathy, Mrs. Stowe probably knew that Lincoln’s
mind was dwelling upon his own painful loss in the death of his dear
young son the spring before; and she, for her part, was reminded of
the day when, as she stood by the grave of the most beautiful and most
beloved of her seven children, she learned the woe a slave mother feels
when her child is torn away from her. She thought also of the crushing
sorrow that came to her at Andover in the loss by drowning of her
first-born son, Henry Ellis. Perhaps in this hour of quiet, intimate
conversation she was able, in order to give comfort to the man before
her, to speak of these things, for it is by showing to those in deep
suffering that we suffer with them that we comfort them most.

And then perhaps she told the President that she, too, had a son at
Washington, and saw the smile that she remembered so well all her life
afterwards, light up that homely-beautiful face as he said, “One of
the twenty thousand encamped about the city?” and she answered that he
was one of that vast company and that he had been made lieutenant for
honorable service on several battlefields. And then she no doubt told
how he was one of the first to volunteer when the First Massachusetts
Infantry was formed. He had been a student of medicine under Dr.
Holmes, who had tried to persuade him not to become a soldier, but to
finish his studies and then go into the army as a surgeon. The boy
would not hear of this; he threw his hat on the floor and cried, “I
could not look my fellowmen in the face if I did not enlist. People
shall never say that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s son is a coward!” And if
in telling this she took a motherly pride, who shall blame her?

With this the interview ended. Mrs. Stowe was rejoined by her son and
daughter, and the guests took their departure. That evening Mrs. Stowe
wrote the greater part of her “Reply,” and it was soon on its way to
Great Britain.

This “Reply” she wrote far more boldly and confidently than would have
been possible if she had not talked with the President. She courteously
acknowledged the compliment of the “Address” and its great weight with
her and with the American people. She spoke of its influence upon
north and upon south; and then she recounted the history of affairs in
this country up to the Proclamation of Emancipation which was to take
effect in the following January. She spoke frankly of the things that
were filling her with pain and solicitude, especially of the lack of
English sympathy toward us in our struggle for union. “Alas, then, is
it so? In this day of great deeds and great heroisms ... do we hear
such voices from England?” She went on to tell the story of the Jubilee
she had witnessed the day before and of the psalm of the modern exodus,
“Go down, Moses,” sung by that strange company with all the barbaric
fire of the Marseillaise and the religious fervor of the old Hebrew
prophet. Giving free rein to her impassioned eloquence, she said:
“Sisters (in your ‘Address’), you have spoken well; we have heard you;
we have heeded; we have striven in the cause, even unto death. We have
sealed our devotion by desolate hearths and darkened homesteads, by
the blood of sons, husbands and fathers.... Now we beg leave in solemn
sadness to return to you your own words: we appeal to you, as sisters,
as wives, as mothers, to raise your voices to your fellow-citizens and
your prayers to God, for the removal of this affliction and disgrace
from the Christian world.”

Mrs. Stowe’s “Reply” was published widely in Great Britain, and was one
of the most powerful agents in changing the public sentiment from a
hostile to a friendly attitude. Meetings were held all over England and
the tone of the speeches and of the newspapers and of the discussions
in Parliament was no longer favorable to the division of our country
into two separate governments, a north and a south, but was for union
and abolition. John Bright wrote to Mrs. Stowe stating that such had
been the happy result of the outspoken and appealing home-thrust in
her “Reply.” All this, we must remember, happened before the Battle of
Gettysburg, which was the crisis following the 1862 phase of the war.

This assistance that Harriet Beecher Stowe was so fortunate as to be
able to give in one of the epoch-making crises of our history, was one
of her great services to our country. In the next chapter we are to see
how she performed another real service, for which we owe her another
debt of gratitude.



CHAPTER XX

WRITING STORIES OF OLD NEW ENGLAND LIFE


Harriet Beecher Stowe did for her country more than one inestimable
service that should win for her the gratitude of her countrymen. “Uncle
Tom’s Cabin,” besides being a clarion call to the world, happened also
to be a book that was to become immortal. This was incidental; but
it was not a small thing to do--thus to focus the attention of the
whole world upon one American book. And it was no small service to the
literary life and hopes of this country to write a book that should,
as Sir Arthur Helps said, “insist on being read when once begun.” On
the wave of a great enthusiasm of pity and love, her name was carried
around the globe. Therefore, it is not too much to say that it was
because of her that the famous British taunt, “Who reads an American
book?” has now been answered, “Everybody!”

But “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” although the most famous, was not the only
book that Mrs. Stowe wrote. On the contrary, it was one of a long
series of novels, some of which are to be specially valued for their
historical import and some to be read for the sheer enjoyment of the
pictures of life drawn in them. Mrs. Stowe was a great story-teller,
a true raconteur. The story flows from her pen with a delightful
smoothness and ease. In her later books she turned with a very glad and
loving heart to the portrayal of scenes such as she had known in her
girlhood and of the native and unique spirit of that life which was as
the very marrow of her bones. We cannot be sufficiently thankful that
the old-fashioned Thanksgiving, the quilting-bee, and the wood-spell
survived to the year when the seeing eye and the recording memory came
to the Connecticut parsonage in the person of Harriet Beecher. To
every one that values those elements of our national character that
were formed in the struggles of the heroic Pilgrim fathers and mothers
in the wilderness and their inspired successors, this part of Mrs.
Stowe’s writing ought to be doubly precious. Her work in the books that
describe early New England life is a gift that every impulse in us of
patriotic reverence should leap to acknowledge.

It will be remembered that in her first book of stories, “The
Mayflower,” she drew from the rich field that was her native heath.
_Uncle Tim_, the hero of her very first story, was a living, breathing
expression of the New England spirit, and the town, the church, the
ways, the turns and queernesses of speech were of immortal simplicity
and truth to life. Scattered through the stories in that book are
found little character sketches of amazing vividness. How she makes
us see these solemn and important brethren in the church! Here they
are, _Deacon Enos Dudley_, solemn as an ancient Israelite, and, for
contrast, the brisk little _Deacon Abrams_, who came to a meeting to
manage things and to see that everything went off rightly!

“The services Deacon Enos offered to his God were all given with the
exactness of an ancient Israelite. No words could have persuaded him of
the propriety of meditating while the choir were singing, or of sitting
down, even through infirmity, before the close of the longest prayer
that ever was offered. A mighty contrast was he to his fellow-officer,
Deacon Abrams, a tight, little, tripping, well-to-do man, who used to
sit beside him with his hair brushed straight up like a little blaze,
his coat buttoned up trig and close, his psalm-book in hand, and his
quick, gray eyes turned first on one side of the broad aisle, and then
on the other, and then up into the gallery like a man who came to
church on business and felt responsible for everything that was going
on in the house.”

The observant child Harriet, sitting on the bench in the children’s row
from Sabbath to Sabbath in the Litchfield church, must have watched
these grave deacons that seem so much like story-book people as she
gives her accurate memories of them.

“At this instant Deacon Enos Dudley’s mild and venerable form
arose before me, as erst it used to rise from the deacon’s seat, a
straight close slip just below the pulpit. I recollect his quiet and
lowly coming into meeting, precisely ten minutes before the time,
every Sunday, his tall form a little stooping, his best suit of
butternut-colored Sunday clothes, with long flaps and wide cuffs, on
one of which two pins were always to be seen stuck in with the most
reverent precision. When seated, the top of the pew came just to his
chin, so that his silvery placid head rose above it like the moon
above the horizon. His head was one that might have been sketched for
a St. John--bald at the top, and around the temples adorned with a
soft flow of bright, fine hair.... He was then of great age, and every
line of his patient face seemed to say, ‘And now, Lord, what wait I
for?’ Yet still, year after year, he was to be seen in the same place
with the same dutiful regularity.” Those two pins set precisely upon
the deacon’s cuff ought to be immortalized along with the two-pronged
stick in Defoe’s famous “Journal.” In either case it was not in the
least necessary to mention the slight circumstance; yet by the very
casualness of the reference is given the precious air of verisimilitude
that the artist most desires.

Mrs. Stowe was one of the earliest among us to choose our own ancestral
life as a field for story-telling. To fix her place in the literary
procession, we must recall that it was only in 1849 that Longfellow’s
“Kavanagh” appeared, and that that great book, “The Scarlet Letter”
of Hawthorne and that popular one, “The Wide, Wide World,” by Sarah
Warner, were being written at the same time that Mrs. Stowe was writing
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” “The Blithedale Romance” and “Queechy” and “The
Lamplighter” came in the early fifties. The true literary descendants
of Mrs. Stowe in the realm of New England tales are Mary Wilkins
Freeman, Sarah O. Jewett and Kate Douglas Wiggin. It will perhaps be a
help to remember, too, that at the same time when Mrs. Stowe was giving
us our racy _Mary Scudder_, George Eliot was introducing _Mrs. Poyser_
in “Middlemarch” to the British public.

In this New England field Mrs. Stowe had therefore a unique
opportunity. She had seen that life; having been separated from it, it
grew precious to her, and, as her artistic instinct developed, seemed
worthy of preservation. No one else has reproduced as she has done the
first Christmas of New England, the days in the harbor of Cape Cod,
the first day on shore, Christmas tide in Plymouth Harbor, and Elder
Brewster’s Christmas sermon. These were the first fruits of the seed
planted when little Harriet, unperceived in a dim corner of the garret
study of Dr. Lyman Beecher, began to peer into the pages of Cotton
Mather’s “Magnalia” and thought it an excellent story-book.

Finally the more and more highly developed artistic skill of the
novelist and the widened taste of the woman, and the deep and
ineradicable religious nature of her soul united in the production of
the novel, “The Minister’s Wooing,” a book in which Mrs. Stowe lets
her passionate interest in old New England life have full sway. It
is a story built solely upon religious feeling. Nothing like it had
been done before, though since she led the way myriads of novels like
it in this respect have been attempted. It was a torch borne onward
into the dark. Mrs. Stowe maintained the right of the soul’s interests
to a place among themes fit for artistic treatment in the novel as
Elizabeth Barrett Browning did in poetry. Both were pioneers in this
field of artistic endeavor. But people were totally unaccustomed to
think of the novel in the terms of theology, and they at once classed
“The Minister’s Wooing” as a theological treatise. This was not in
the least true. It was a novel pure and simple, however seriously it
dealt with the effects on certain souls of certain kinds of theological
speculation. Gladstone appreciated the true position of the book. In
a letter to Mrs. Stowe he called it a “beautiful and noble picture of
Puritan life,” “exhibited upon a pattern felicitous beyond example as
far as my knowledge goes.” Our knowledge also goes no farther, even to
this day.

The “pattern” shows us the problem of a pure, young New England girl,
_Mary Scudder_ by name, whose mind is formed by religious aspiration,
of the power of which her lover has no understanding. He reveres her
and she stands to him as a religion, as often happens with a sincere
and questioning soul. The lover goes to sea and after a while _Mary_
hears that his ship has gone down and that he is lost. When a long time
has gone by the _Minister_ wooes her and, believing that the lover
is forever gone, _Mary_ consents to marry this man whom she reveres,
though she does not give him the love she gave the lost lover. Shall
I tell how the story comes out? I certainly will not, for that might
destroy the charm that this novel will have for its reader. And the
story must be read to be enjoyed. For who could give any idea of the
charm of the heroine and the manliness of the lover? There are historic
characters, Aaron Burr and Dr. Hopkins and President Stiles, delineated
with genius. Like Shakespeare, Mrs. Stowe, while disregarding dates and
sequences of events, has been loftily true to the spirit of things. One
may look in this book for a true picture, if not for actual events in
their exact order.

The scene of “The Minister’s Wooing” was laid at Newport. Mrs. Stowe’s
next New England story, “The Pearl of Orr’s Island,” gives a picture
of the Maine coast, not far from Brunswick, near Harpswell, and deals
with a later time. Both, however, undertake the difficult task of
representing life a century or so back. Whittier called “The Pearl”
the “most charming New England idyl ever written.” He liked it far
better than the “Minister’s Wooing.” Its plot is simpler and there are
fewer characters; but it has the clear background of a whole town with
its quiet life streaked with tragedy, as life especially is along the
sea coast where the waves take their annual toll regardless of human
loves and ties. _Mara Lincoln_, the heroine, dies in the midst of the
story, but her loyal friend, _Sally Kittridge_, takes her place in our
interest; and after many sea-yarns, some ministrations by _Aunt Ruey_
and _Aunt Roxy_, typical characters of the town, a touch of far-away
Gothicism in the fact that the body of a beautiful woman floated
ashore tightly holding a handsome Spanish boy to her breast, and the
unraveling of the puzzle about her, we are allowed a happy wedding-bell
ending to the story at last.

“Oldtown Folks,” published in 1869, Mrs. Stowe considered more than a
story; it was her “résumé of the whole spirit and body of New England.”
In writing it, she tried, she said, to make her “mind as still and
passive as a looking-glass, or a mountain lake,” and then to give
“the images reflected there.” We are not, then, to take any of the
opinions expressed in the book as conclusively Mrs. Stowe’s opinions,
but to think of her as reporting impartially the point of view taken
by the Calvinists, Arminians, High Church Episcopalians, skeptics and
simple believers in the story. It has been said of Mrs. Stowe that
she remained without change the Calvinist, the old New Englander, the
Beecher, to the end of life. A close study of her work and spirit will
reveal that she made the most amazing progress in thought, in spirit
and in art. She herself knew this. One of her old friends who met her
at one time rather late in her life was afraid of what would happen if
she should be told that her friend did not hold exactly the same views
as of old. “Why,” exclaimed Mrs. Stowe, “I should be ashamed to believe
the same this year that I did last!” For “Oldtown Folks” Mrs. Stowe
gathered her “images” in large part from scenes reported to her by
her husband as he remembered them from his own boyhood. Together they
went to the home of his youth, South Natick, Massachusetts, and there
studied the places where the “visionary boy,” who was none other than
Professor Stowe himself, passed through the lonely and dream-haunted
experiences of his youth. From Professor Stowe’s account of the people
and customs in the old village, and from her own memories, Mrs. Stowe
organized a picture of the time a generation before her own.

The consummate masterpiece in the work is the character of _Sam
Lawson_, a literary grandson of the _Vicar of Wakefield_, an own
cousin to _Ichabod Crane_, and a sort of stepfather to _Huckleberry
Finn_. _Sam Lawson_ was a “tall, shambling, loose-jointed man, with a
long, thin visage, prominent, watery blue eyes, very fluttering and
seedy habiliments, who occupied the responsible position of first
do-nothing-in-ordinary in our village of Oldtown.” Why is it that
such a character invariably endears itself to our whole country? Mrs.
Stowe gives us a sort of explanation of the strange phenomenon. She
says that the lovable, lazy genius and factotum of the town was a
necessary appendage of every New England village; for Yankee life was
so “harried by work and thrift and industry,” that society would “burn
itself out with the intense friction if it were not for the lubricating
power of a decided do-nothing!” But that, perhaps, was not all. _Sam_
was the undeveloped artist and had a touch of the artist’s charm. He
was a great singer; he could sing all parts, bass, tenor, counter,
soprano, going from one to another at any point in the midst of the
hymn; and as a story-teller he was beyond compare. “‘Why, didn’t you
ever hear ’bout that?’” he would begin. “‘Want to know! Wal, I’ll
tell ye, then. I know all ’bout it.’” And with this the story started
out and the blissful listening of boys by the roadside or of friends
around some fireside--not his own--would begin. He was a New England
_Scheherazade_, with stories enough to last for a thousand and one
long, lonely, winter nights. _Sam Lawson_ “filled this post with ample
honor.” He would leave any work that ought to be done for his wife and
large family of children and spend hours tinkering some boy’s knife,
tending a dog’s sprained leg, or baiting hooks for a troop of boys in
their fishing. He was a soft-hearted old body and would knock the fish
in the head to put it out of torment. “‘Why, lordy massy!’” he would
say, “‘I can’t bear to see no kind o’ critter in torment. These ’ere
pouts ain’t to blame for bein’ fish, and ye ought to put ’em out of
their misery. Fish has their rights as well as any of us.’” When _Sam_
was engaged to put a clock in order, he would get it all to pieces
about the kitchen and then go away to start in on some other body’s
job, saying that “‘Some things can be druv and then agin some things
can’t, and clocks is that kind. They’s jest got to be humored. Now this
’ere’s a ’mazin’ good clock; give me my time on’t and I’ll have it so
’twill keep straight on to the millennium.’” Speaking of the millennium
starts a theological argument and under cover of this he leaves the
kitchen with the clock wheels scattered all over, and goes off fishing.
_Sam Lawson’s_ philosophy of life is summed up in this: “‘It’s all
fuss, fuss and stew, stew, till we get somewhere; and then it’s fuss,
fuss and stew, stew, to get back agin; jump here and scratch your eyes
out, and jump there and scratch ’em in agin--that ’ere’s life.’”

_Sam_ loved nothing so much as to “‘kind o’ go along and sort o’ see
how things turn out’” with the boys. He told them tales that made their
eyes stand out, constantly interspersing the incidents with moral
persuasions and advice. “‘So, boys,’” he would say, “‘you just mind and
remember and allers see what there is in a providence afore you quarrel
with it.’” With this lofty moral altitude, an intellectual superiority
in _Sam_ combined to make him a popular favorite. For forty years in
the village there had not been a marriage or a birth or a burial or
a slight beginning of a love-making which he did not know all about.
This knowledge made his charm and also his power. A great intellect
had been really wasted in this shiftless fellow. The variety of his
accomplishments was amazing. His work shop was filled with cracked
china, lame tea-pots, rickety tongs and decrepit andirons, and any
one of these would afford opportunity for hours of conversation if a
neighbor came in and if--important consideration!--the sharp, black
eyes of _Hepsy_, his wife, were not at the minute upon him. _Hepsy_ was
a “gnarly, compact, efficient little pepper-box of a woman.” Of course
if she came in his fun was over. “‘You’re always everywhere but where
you’ve business to be,’” her scolding voice would cry out, “‘helpin’
and doin’ for everybody but your own. For my part, I think that charity
ought to begin at home.’” _Hepsy_ was a “great talker.” She frequently
was so bad in this respect that _Sam_, who was not a specially silent
person, could not “get in a word edgeways, nor crossways, nor noways.”
At such times no one could blame _Sam_ if he did “‘go Indianing around
the country a spell till she kind o’ come to.’”

The main interest in “Oldtown Folks” is, however, in a little boy
and girl, _Henry_ and _Eglantine Percival_, or _Harry_ and _Tina_
for short, who are left orphaned and are distributed among the homes
in the Calvinistic and theological town. As _Sam Lawson_ said, they
“‘was real putty children, as putty behaved as ever he see.’” _Harry
Percival_ is a fine, manly little boy and _Tina_, his sister, is the
little witch whose buoyancy and charm can never be crushed out of her
even by a _Miss Asphyxia_. Ah, _Miss Asphyxia_! Every creature in her
service--horse, cow and pig--knew at once the touch of _Miss Asphyxia_;
and when it was she that said, “Get up!” the beast would make the wagon
spin. Into her hands fell the hapless and whimsical _Tina_. _Miss
Asphyxia_ was past fifty and her hair was well streaked with gray; but
this would not matter only that when she did it up, she tied it in a
very tight knot and fastened it with a horn comb; then she gave it a
shake to see if it would certainly stay all day and went about her
work. Her one idea in regard to the little fairy _Tina_ was to give her
efficient discipline. She put a brown towel into her hands and said,
“‘There, keep to work.’” And when _Tina’s_ fingers refused to bend to
the unusual task, _Miss Asphyxia_ rapped her promptly on the head with
the thimble, saying, “‘Keep to work.’” When _Tina_ began to cry _Miss
Asphyxia_ displayed a long birch rod. At night when deluged with soapy
water and rubbed with bony hands, _Tina_ was so suppressed that she
could only breathe out long sighs and whisper “‘Oh, dear!’” But she was
helpless in the hands of _Miss Asphyxia_. Having despoiled the bright
little head of its curls by means of her great shears, she rubbed some
camphor on vigorously to keep the child from taking cold; then, after
dropping the golden curls on the fire, she opened the door into a small
bedroom and, pointing, said to the child, “‘Now go to bed.’” _Tina_
crept in under the blue checked coverlet, thankful to be free of the
dreadful woman. In a moment, however, her tormentor opened the door
again. _Miss Asphyxia_ had forgotten something. “‘Can you say your
prayers?’ she demanded. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ faltered the child. ‘Say ’em,
then,’ said _Miss Asphyxia_; and bang went the door again. ‘There, now,
if I h’ain’t done up my duty to that child, then I don’t know,’ said
_Miss Asphyxia_.”

_Miss Asphyxia_ and her contemporaries thought that a child was
“‘pretty much dead loss the first three or four years; but after that
they’d more’n pay, if they’s fetched up right.’” _Miss Asphyxia_
intended that _Tina_ should be “‘fetched up right.’” Good old _Sol_,
her hired man, suggested that perhaps _Tina_ cried at night because
she was lonesome. “‘All sorts of young critters is,’” he argued;
“‘Puppies is; kittens mew when ye take ’em from the cats. Ye see they’s
used to other critters; and it’s sort o’ cold like, bein’ alone is.’”
_Miss Asphyxia_ gave a sniff of contempt. “‘Well, she’ll have to get
used to it. I guess ’twon’t kill her.’”

When poor _Tina_ broke a saucer and failed to make quick confession,
that is, to speak with accuracy, when she did really and truly let a
lie slip over her lips, we can imagine what an awful thing it seemed
to _Miss Asphyxia_. She proceeded to cure her of lying by scouring out
her mouth. Putting some soap and sand on a rag and grasping the child’s
head under her arm, she rubbed the mixture through her mouth with the
energy of an insulted prophetess. “‘See now if you will tell me another
lie,’” she said, pushing the child from her, and feeling that her own
conscience was quite clear, whatever might be the spiritual condition
of the culprit.

But things were coming to a crisis. Explaining the final fuss, _Sam_
said: “‘Wal, ye see, the young un was spicy; and when Miss Sphyxy was
down on her too hard, the child, she fit her,--ye know a rat’ll bite,
a hen will peck, and a worm will turn,--and finally it come to a fight
between ’em.’”

_Tina’s_ brother did not fare much better than did the little girl.
His cruel master would not allow him to go to visit his sister any
more than _Miss Asphyxia_ would have allowed him to come in if he
had arrived, for she would “‘Just as soon have the red dragon in the
Revelations come into her house as a boy!’” Finally _Harry_ ran away,
went to _Tina’s_ window in the night and told her to come with him.
They went off together, wandering in search of some good people to
give them a home, an event in which they had a firm faith. They went
along the roads and through the fields, playing that they were _Hansel_
and _Gretel_ in the story. They had the adventure of coming upon an
Indian encampment with a little tent and an old woman weaving baskets.
With her they dipped succotash with a clean clam-shell from a wooden
trough and were content and comforted. _Harry_ knelt in prayer before
lying down in the tent and this act made the eyes of the Indian woman
shine, for she, it seems, was the relic of a long since Christianized
tribe. When he was through she said: “‘Me praying Indian; me much love
Jesus.’” The next morning, however, the heathen husband came and drove
the children away.

The children took up their wandering and soon came to an old stately
mansion with an avenue of majestic trees. This, we were told, was the
Dench House, home of a Tory family of pre-revolutionary days and now
deserted with all its furnitures and its mysteries until it could be
decided properly to whom, under the new order, it really belonged.
In this beautiful place they found no giant waiting to execute fell
purpose upon them, so they built a fire, gathered berries, and slept,
until a very human and kind-hearted giant came along in the form of
_Sam Lawson_ himself, who bore them to Oldtown, where the home and the
loving hearts they had had faith would appear, were awaiting them.

So _Tina_ and _Harry_ came to the home of _Horace Henderson_, the
writer, as Mrs. Stowe portrays it, of these annals. _Horace_ and
_Harry_ became the friends of a lifetime. _Tina_ was passed into the
care of _Miss Mehitable Rossiter_, a plain-faced and true-hearted old
maid. When _Tina_ stood at her knee and looked up into her homely face,
_Miss Mehitable_ said: “‘Well, how do you like me?’” _Tina_ considered
attentively, looking long into the honest, open eyes. “‘I do like
you,’ she said, putting out her hands; ‘I think you are good.’” _Miss
Mehitable_ said that it was well that she did, for otherwise, as she
was a fairy, she might turn her into a mouse or a kitten. “‘I like you,
and I will be your kitten,’” said _Tina_. That night _Tina_ slept in
a big four-poster bed with hangings of India linen, on which Oriental
pagodas and peacocks and mandarins mingled together like the phantasms
of a dream. In this pretty little bit of description we have a memory
of Mrs. Stowe’s own childhood when she visited the old Foote homestead
at Nut Plains, and went to sleep behind the famous bed-hangings that
her Uncle Samuel Foote had brought home, and wondered why the mandarins
on the printed India linen did not ring the little bells in the
pagodas and why the birds did not pick off the golden fruits and eat
them.

Thus the children were safely landed on the shores of “quality,”
where they belonged. They became a part of that best of New England
connections, the Rossiter family. They came to know _Parson Lothrop_,
his wig and cocked hat and, above all, his old shay. They paid
reverence to his wife also, the great lady, and to her lady’s maid, who
had “grown up and dried in all the most sacred and sanctified essences
of genteel propriety.” Everywhere _Tina_ went she did more good than
harm. Even to _Lady Lothrop’s_ lonely grandeur she was a blessing.
_Tina_ had been told that in the presence of that great personage she
must not talk. So the active child sat still as long as she could keep
the dismal silence and then burst forth in several long, loud sighs.

“‘What’s the matter, little dear?’ said _Lady Lothrop_.

“‘O dear!’ said _Tina_, ‘I was just wishing that I could go to church.’

“‘Well, you are going to-morrow, dear.’

“‘I just wish I could go now and say one prayer.’

“‘And what is that, my dear?’

“‘I just want to say, “O Lord, open thou my lips,”’ said _Tina_ with
effusion.... ‘I am _so_ tired of not talking. But I promised _Miss
Mehitable_ that I wouldn’t talk unless I was spoken to,’ she added
with an air of virtuous resolution.”

The irresistible child was given permission to talk all she wanted,
and from then on she rattled and sparkled and went on with a verve and
gusto that waked everybody up. The icy chains of silence being thus
broken, everybody talked and _Lady Lothrop_ looked from one to another
in a sort of pleased surprise, for the childless woman had a loving
heart beneath her decorous breast.

All this is but the beginning of the story. Would it be possible
to guess what is going to happen? The old Dench House with its
secret drawers should afford a suggestion to a good guesser, and the
“visionary boy,” who is the teller of the whole story, will think a
great deal about _Tina_, we may be sure. A first-class, fascinating
rascal will be introduced as new material, and the threads of the plot
will work up into tragic crises. Far be it from me, however, to make
known how it is to come out!

When “Oldtown Folks” was published, the reading world was so charmed
with _Sam Lawson_ that they cried out for more. Like Shakespeare with
“Merry Wives,” the writer had to exhibit a favored hero under new
conditions. More, more of _Sam Lawson’s_ stories, they said. For the
garrulous fellow kept up his story-telling habit to the very end of the
book, telling his very best story last of all; therefore, the thought
of the lazy, delightful _Sam_ was in the mind even while the reader
was sighing over the woes of _Tina_. Hence, after a while Mrs. Stowe
wrote another book called “Sam Lawson’s Oldtown Fireside Stories,” in
which she gathered some tales of adventure, ghostly and otherwise,
and let _Sam_ tell them in his inimitable way. To be sure, everybody
does not care for such a character as _Sam Lawson_; but, as he himself
says, “‘Wal, you know there an’t no pleasin’ everybody; and ef Gabriel
himself, right down out o’ Heaven, was to come.... I expect there’d be
a pickin’ at his wings, and sort o’ fault-findin’.’”

As Mrs. Stowe’s first book had been a reflection of her love for old
New England, and her two greatest, considered purely from the artistic
point of view, had also come from the same source, so the last novel
that she wrote, “Poganuc People,” is again an echo from this music of
her youth. The _Tina_ of “Oldtown Folks” is said to be modeled upon her
own daughter, Georgiana May; if this is so, the _Dolly_ of “Poganuc
People” must be Harriet herself. In fact, a copy of “Poganuc People”
exists with Mrs. Stowe’s marginal notes, telling where it is “exact”
in its delineation, “my own experience,” “my own childish experience,”
“the whole chapter drawn from life,” etc. This book has a pathetic
and joyous interest as the very tender memoranda of the child’s life
recalled by that all-remembering mind in declining years.



CHAPTER XXI

A SERENE OLD AGE


In 1863 Mrs. Stowe removed from Andover to Hartford, Connecticut,
where, in a lovely wooded suburb on the bank of a river, she built a
house that was her home until the end of her life. Up to the death of
her husband in 1886 she spent the winters at Mandarin, Florida, called
thither by the condition of her son Frederick, who, at the close of
the war, came back to her in a state of broken health resulting from a
wound in the head received at Gettysburg. In the end that dear son was
a sacrifice, one of thousands that mothers were called upon to make for
their country all over the land from farthest north to farthest south.

The earlier years of this later period, while burdened with family
cares and sorrows, were a time of great literary activity to Mrs.
Stowe. In that time she lengthened the list of her books from ten to
thirty. Among these works there were three novels of importance, “Pink
and White Tyranny,” “My Wife and I,” and “We and Our Neighbors,” all
studies in the conditions of her own time, especially in New York City.
Of “My Wife and I” Mrs. Stowe said that she wrote it for the many dear,
bright young girls whom she numbered among her choicest friends; if
they liked the book, it was no matter what the critics said of it! Then
there were many stories for children, “Little Pussy Willow,” “Betty’s
Bright Idea,” “The Dog’s Mission,” and many more, all as good to-day as
they were thirty years ago. In conjunction with her sister Catherine
she published several books of household papers, wise thoughts on
house economy, on the beautiful in the house, on home religion, etc.
Several books were purely religious in their character; of these
“Bible Heroines” is, strangely enough, not reprinted in her complete
works.[15] A volume of poems among the number reminds us of Harriet’s
passion for poetry in her childhood and of her young ambition to join
the band of immortal poets, so carefully extinguished by her eldest
sister. In spite of Catherine, however, Mrs. Stowe indulged her desire
for poetic expression every now and then all through her life, as she
did also her love for drawing and sketching, and one of her poems, “The
Other World,” has been a favorite with many.

Beloved in her private life and honored as one of the great in our
literature, Mrs. Stowe lived on in her quiet home at Hartford until her
death in July, 1896. On her seventy-first birthday, June 14, 1882,
she was tendered by her publishers, Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin and
Company, a tribute in the form of a garden party to which many of the
literary people of the country were invited. It was held at the country
residence of the Honorable and Mrs. William Claflin, at Newtonville,
near Boston, Massachusetts. This beautiful place, “The Old Elms,” was
never more lovely than on this perfect day. The majestic elms stood
proudly, as if they, too, felt the responsibility. The friends that
came bore the most honored names among the living writers of the land.
There were Whittier and Holmes, Louise Chandler Moulton and Elizabeth
Stuart Phelps, Lucy Larcom and Thomas Bailey Aldrich and A. Bronson
Alcott and Julia C. R. Dorr. Of Mrs. Beecher’s family there were a
goodly number: her three brothers, Charles, Edward and Henry Ward, and
her sister Isabella (Mrs. Hooker), her daughter Mrs. Allen and her son
Charles, being among the number.

After a time spent in delightful converse, the company gathered in a
tent on the lawn and listened to an address by Mr. H. O. Houghton.

After a tender word for the memory of Longfellow and of Emerson;
Mr. Houghton said that the garden party was being held in honor of
a birthday--but what the number of the birthday was we would not
inquire. If we estimated it by the amount of work accomplished by the
beloved guest of the day we must rank her with the antediluvians;
but if we judged by the vigor and freshness of her writings, by her
universal sympathy with young and old, we should have to say that
she had discovered the fountain of perpetual youth! Then he spoke
of “Uncle Tom,” calling it the “great epic of our age”; his trials,
and the victories he wrought for this epoch were to be our Iliad and
our Æneid for centuries to come. He then ran over the events of Mrs.
Stowe’s life, showing how it had all been a preparation for the work
she did; the New England youth, the western years on the borders of
a slave state, the trials and the disciplines. With such a training,
he said, “who can wonder that, while sitting at the communion table
and meditating on the infinite sorrows and ignominy of Him who gave
Himself for the redemption of humanity, she should have been inspired
with the vision of another life of suffering and sacrifice, by which
a race should be redeemed; and that while she mused the fire burned,
and from the white heat came forth the vivid picture of the death of
that other man of sorrows, so like its great prototype, as like as a
human copy can be to a divine original?” Mr. Houghton then spoke of the
widespread interest and the many translations of the book, telling how
“crowned heads, statesmen, scholars, and the people alike, have read,
wept over, and applauded the simple story.” He also referred to Mrs.
Stowe’s service to American literature in writing the tales of New
England life. Although these alone, he said, were sufficient to make
the reputation of any author, they were, in his opinion, eclipsed by
the glory of “Uncle Tom.”

He thought that her friends through all the world ranked her with the
Deborahs and Miriams and Judiths of old, and when she sang the refrain,
“Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously,” they would
respond, “The Almighty Lord hath disappointed them by the hand of a
woman!” With a heartfelt blessing and benediction, the address closed.

After this an address was made by that beloved and devoted brother of
Mrs. Stowe’s, to whom she had been so loyal a sister and friend ever
since the days when she took him by the hand and led him to Ma’am
Kilbourne’s school. Henry Ward Beecher was introduced and made a speech
full of witticisms and good feeling. He said that people accused him
at first of being the real author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”; that he then
wrote his novel “Norwood,” and that killed this rumor dead! He told
how he first read the book and with what tears. Then he gave a most
wonderful tribute to his father and his mother, saying of him that,
while his father thought he was great by his theology, everybody else
knew that he was great by his religion; and of his mother, that the
daughter Harriet was most like her in graces and excellences, though
perhaps not in bodily presence.

Following this came some beautiful poems written for the occasion.
Mr. Whittier’s was the most beautiful of these: there was one also
by Dr. Holmes which was full of his exquisite humor, and there were
others by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Mr. J. T.
Trowbridge, Mrs. Fields, and one by Mrs. Stowe’s daughter, Mrs. Allen.
This one at least must be copied here.

  A child came down to earth
    Just seventy years ago,
  And round its form the angels trod,
    Whispering low,
  “’Tis an instrument
  To be played by the hand of God.”

  Time sped its steadfast way;
    The child grew rosy and strong;
  Unconscious she sweetly played,
    With music right
    And discord wrong
  The song that God had made.

  The notes of the instrument rose
    Sweeter and better each day,
  Till it sung in clearest trumpet-tones
    “Cast off the bond,
    Release the slave;
  ’Tis thy brother who bleeds and groans!

  “Oh, hear the cry of the wronged,
    The hapless children of God!
  With folded hands and tearful eyes,
    Hopeless they stand;
    Patient and meek,
  They bow and kiss the rod.”

  O’er sea and mountain and shore,
    The music thundered and roared,
  Till the angels in heaven reëchoed its strain,
    And the love of man,
    With the mercy of God,
  Revived in our hearts again.

  Though the instrument’s feebler grown,
    ’Twill sound loud and full until death,
  Like the harp with its strings Æolian-blown,
    Rising and falling,
    Whispering and calling,
  With the strength of God’s own breath.

Among other speeches was one by her brother Edward, on the subject of
the favorable influence of the works of his sister on woman suffrage.

Then it was announced that Mrs. Stowe would say a few words. She arose
and with one movement the whole audience arose, too, in reverence to
the “little wisp of a woman” who stood there, slightly bowed and with
the snowy touch upon the waves of her hair. The audience listened with
eager interest, and this is what she said: “I wish to say that I thank
all my friends from my heart--that is all. And one thing more--and that
is, if any of you have doubt or sorrow or pain, if you doubt about this
world, just remember what God has done; just remember that the great
sorrow of slavery has gone, gone forever.” Then she told how happy the
negroes were that she was seeing all the time about her in her home
in Mandarin in Florida. They were working, building for themselves
little houses; and they were happy--they knew how to be happy even
better than white folks, she said. To be sure, they had faults--we must
have patience with them. But they were doing as well as possible, and
were justifying the confidence placed in them. Then she added those
significant words: “Let us never doubt; everything that ought to happen
is going to happen.” And as the audience dispersed they carried the
echo of these brave words with them, as the summing up of the whole
life’s thought of the good and great woman they had come there to honor.

An old age more serenely beautiful than that of Harriet Beecher Stowe
could scarcely be imagined. Honored throughout the world, happy in the
beautiful companionship of children in the Hartford home, she passed
on through the years, living in a dream world full of happy, loving
thoughts. At one time she said: “I thank God that there is one thing
running through my life from the time I was thirteen years old. It
is the intense unwavering sense of God’s educative guiding presence
and care.” She refers, of course, to that Sabbath when at the age
of thirteen, she went to her father in his study and told him about
her new sacred hope. It is not given to every one to find that “one
unceasing purpose” has run all through his life. To her was given the
insight to realize this. She thought so much about the life of the
spirit that at last it seemed as if she lived even more in the spirit
world than she did in this. Wonderful dreams visited her soul in which
she “knew of a certainty” something of a “vivid spiritual life where
the enthusiasm of love is the calm habit of the soul, where without
demonstrations of affection heart beats to heart, soul answers to soul,
we respond to the Infinite Love and we feel His answer in us and there
is no need of words.” This was, she said, “but a glimpse” yet it had
“left a strange sweetness in her mind.”

When Mrs. Stowe was about seventy years old she made a visit to
Wellesley College. The first time that I ever saw her she was sitting
in the seat of honor in the gallery of the old chapel. To me she
seemed like a little fairy godmother needing but the wings of gauze
to be made into a real vision. But there was a look in her eyes that
no soulless fairy ever had. As she leaned upon the railing and looked
out over the audience of young college girls, gathered there from all
parts of the world and throbbing with vivid life, a look of wistful
longing came over her face. It was almost as though she said, “Ah, if
this had but happened to me!” As she viewed that college life so wisely
and broadly organized, apparently so rich in opportunity, she may have
felt with some yearning that these young women were realizing powers
and opportunities furnished with an ease that had been denied to her.
But it is more likely that without any sadness or any reflection upon
the difficulties of her own youthful experience, she enthusiastically
rejoiced in the vigor, the happiness and the promise of power she
saw in that college group, and that, with her characteristic wistful
maternal tenderness, she yearned only for the fruition of that
promise. And we may question whether she would have had a larger life
or a greater influence if she had lived at a later time and had had
the training that is given to young women now. As it was she used
what she had to the full. Her industry was incessant. Her growth was
constantly forced by the fire of her own passion for attainment. Then
came the country’s crisis, and the crisis made the woman. But it would
never have made the woman if she had not stood ready to be made. That
preparation we have seen develop step by step in this story of her life.

It is, therefore, for the spirit of the woman behind the worker that we
are most sharply indebted; for, after all, it is an even greater thing
to live a great life than to write a great book. Harriet had courage;
she had initiative. She was overwhelmingly magnanimous, she was utterly
true. She was true to that part in us that grows, as well as to the
part that inherits the teaching of the past. She was wise enough to
know that the human mind and soul must be always impressionable, always
open to the truth as well as staunch in defending it. She had faith
in herself and she had faith in God. Moreover, it was because of her
faith in God that she had that faith in herself. After all, then,
it was her perfect confidence in God that was the key-note of her
character. “Let us never doubt,” she said; “everything that ought to
happen is going to happen.” This was the supreme note in the harmony of
her life.



A LIST OF MRS. STOWE’S BOOKS


    1833. A PRIMARY GEOGRAPHY.

    1843. THE MAYFLOWER.

    1852. UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.

    1853. A KEY TO UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.

    1853. A PEEP INTO UNCLE TOM’S CABIN (for children).

    1854. SUNNY MEMORIES OF FOREIGN LANDS, 2 Vols.

    1855. THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE. Dramatization of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

    1855. A GEOGRAPHY FOR MY CHILDREN. Published in London.

    1856. DRED, A TALE OF THE GREAT DISMAL SWAMP.

    1858. OUR CHARLEY AND WHAT TO DO WITH HIM.

    1859. GOLDEN FRUIT IN SILVER BASKETS. Selection from her works,
    published in England.

    1859. THE MINISTER’S WOOING.

    1862. THE PEARL OF ORR’S ISLAND, A STORY OF THE COAST OF MAINE.

    1862. AGNES OF SORRENTO.

    1863. REPLY ON BEHALF OF THE WOMEN OF AMERICA TO THE CHRISTIAN
    ADDRESS OF MANY THOUSAND WOMEN OF GREAT BRITAIN.

    1864. HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.

    1865. LITTLE FOXES.

    1866. NINA GORDON (formerly DRED).

    1867. QUEER LITTLE PEOPLE.

    1867. DAISY’S FIRST WINTER AND OTHER STORIES.

    1868. THE CHIMNEY CORNER.

    1868. MEN OF OUR TIMES.

    1869. OLDTOWN FOLKS.

    1869. THE AMERICAN WOMAN’S HOME (WITH CATHERINE BEECHER).

    1870. LITTLE PUSSY WILLOW.

    1870. LADY BYRON VINDICATED.

    1871. THE HISTORY OF THE BYRON CONTROVERSY.

    1871. PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY.

    1871. SAM LAWSON’S OLDTOWN FIRESIDE STORIES.

    1872. MY WIFE AND I.

    1873. PALMETTO LEAVES.

    1873. LIBRARY OF FAMOUS FICTION.

    1875. WE AND OUR NEIGHBORS.

    1876. BETTY’S BRIGHT IDEA AND OTHER TALES.

    1876. FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER.

    1878. BIBLE HEROINES.

    1878. POGANUC PEOPLE.

    1881. A DOG’S MISSION.



INDEX


  “Address” to Women of America, 230, 259, 266, 271, 272.

  Allen, Mrs., _see_ Stowe, Georgiana May.

  Anti-Slavery Society of Glasgow, 299.

  “Arabian Nights,” 74, 169.


  Baxter’s “Saints’ Rest,” 110.

  Beecher family, ix-xii, 11, 153, 226, 298.

  Beecher, Catherine, 12, 22, 96-109, 146-152, _et seq._

  Beecher, Charles, 18, 27, 124, 136, 201, 226, 296.

  Beecher, David, 11.

  Beecher, Dr. Edward, 8, 18, 19, 117, 124, 296, 300.

  Beecher, Mrs. Edward, 212.

  Beecher, Esther, 12, 28, 34, 79, 102-103, 126, 128, 143, 144, 189.

  Beecher, George, 18, 128, 130, 226.

  Beecher, Harriet Elizabeth, _see_ Stowe, Harriet Beecher.

  Beecher, Harriet Porter, 126, 128, 143, 144, 226.

  Beecher, Henry Ward, 18, 19, 27, 33, 34, 35, 37, 60, 102, 117, 124,
      167, 198, 206, 212, 226, 296, 298.

  Beecher, Isabella (Mrs. Hooker), 18, 128, 296.

  Beecher, James, 18, 128.

  Beecher, Dr. Lyman, 1, 3, 5, 14, 17, 25, 28, 30, 39, 42-43, 48, 63,
      66, 71, 73-74, 78, 80, 81, 98, 100, 111, 113, 115, 117, 123, 126,
      131, 155, 192, 278, 298.

  Beecher, Mary (Mrs. Perkins), 18, 124, 130.

  Beecher, Roxana Foote, 7, 44, 52, 54, 56, 57-62, 70, 77, 96, 107, 151,
      175, 298.

  Beecher, Thomas K., 18, 128.

  Beecher, William Henry, 18, 19, 124.

  Bible, 10, 14, 17, 73, 75, 81, 82, 87, 103, 295.

  _Biblical Repository_, 98.

  Border State Policy, Lincoln’s, 268.

  Bowling Green, N. Y., 4.

  Brace, J. B., 48.

  Bracelet, shackle, 230.

  Bright, John, 273.

  Browning, E. B., 62, 79, 240, 241, 261, 279.

  Bunyan’s Pilgrim, 72.

  Butler’s “Analogy,” 95, 110, 160.

  Byron, 78, 79, 115, 169, 306.


  Carpet, the painted, 58.

  Chase, S. P., 159, 262.

  _Christian Observer_, 70, 77.

  Cincinnati, 122, 133-143, 146-152, 186, 197, 200, 202.

  Civil War, 193, 242-273.

  Claflin, Hon. and Mrs., 296.

  “Cleon” (unfinished drama), vii, 90, 115.

  Colonization Society, 199.

  “Columbian Orator,” 38.

  Cutler, George Younglove, 86.


  Dame School, 18, 32, 34, 36-37, 298.

  Dickens, 131, 135, 137, 215.

  “Don Quixote,” 74, 169.


  Easthampton, 25, 58, 194.

  Edgeworth’s, Miss, “Frank,” 77.

  Edwards, J., 75, 98.

  Eliot, George, 236, 241, 278.

  Emancipation Proclamation, 255-271.

  Emerson, 216, 296.

  Emma Willard School, 40, 151, 152.

  England, relations of U. S. with, 157, 260, 261, 271, 273.


  Fisher, A. M., 99.

  Fields, Mrs., vii, 236, 299.

  Foote, Rev. John, 55.

  Foote, J. P., 133.

  Foote, Lucinda (Mrs. Cornwall), 54, 151.

  Foote, Roxana, _see_ Beecher, Roxana Foote.

  Foote, Samuel E., 68, 77, 121, 133, 158, 162.


  Garrison, 211, 216.

  Gladstone, 279.

  “Go down, Moses,” 250-251, 272.

  Guilford, Conn., viii, 2, 12, 37, 54, 68-69, 117, 124, 130, 134, 195,
      290.


  Harrison, Gen., 139-140.

  Helps, Sir Arthur, 274.

  Holmes, Dr., 219, 271, 296.

  Houghton, Mifflin Co., vii, 296.

  Howe, J. W., 217.

  Howells, W. D., 221.

  Hubbard, Mrs. Mary, 69, 192.


  Irving, W., 69.


  “Jephtha’s Daughter,” 84-86.

  Jesus Christ, 119, 289, 297, 306.

  “John the Baptist, Old,” freedman, 254.


  Kilbourne, Ma’am, _see_ Dame School.

  Kingsley, Charles, 215, 236.


  Lane Theological Seminary, 124, 143, 171, 199.

  _Lawson, Sam_, 173, 282-293.

  Lincoln, Abraham, 46, 159, 244, 258-273

  Litchfield, Conn., 1-6, 20, 69, 70, 85, 124, 133, 164, 192, 195, 276.

  Litchfield Female Academy, 40-43, 45, 62, 84.


  Macaulay, 70, 215, 236.

  “Magnolia,” 278.

  Martineau, H., 135, 137, 138.

  May, Georgiana, 104, _et seq._

  Milton, 75, 81.

  Mt. Holyoke Seminary, 40.


  _National Era, The_, 215.

  New England life, 1-8, 25, 39, 274-293, 275.

  Novels, 80, 115.


  Ohio, 106.

  Ohio River, 127, 132, 176.


  Partridge, Mrs. H. C., viii.

  Pierce, Miss Sally, 40, 76.

  Phelps, E. S., 296, 299.

  Plays in Litchfield, 84-87.

  Plutarch’s Lives, 88.

  Primer, New England, 35.


  “Queen Esther,” 87.


  “Reply” to English “Address,” 260, 266, 271, 272.

  “Robinson Crusoe,” 75.

  Ruskin, 236.

  “Ruth,” 87.


  Sabbath in New England, 5, 19, 60, 276.

  Sand, George, 217, 218, 221.

  San Domingo, 56, 192.

  Scott, 76-78, 80, 84, 169, 220.

  Semi-colon Club, 158, 159.

  Shaftesbury, Earl of, 215.

  Shakespeare, 75, 83, 292.

  “Sir Charles Grandison,” 75.

  Slavery, 188-222, 255.

  Spiritualism, 241.

  Stiles, President Ezra, 55, 280.

  Stowe, Rev. C. E., vii, 47, 118, 173, 211, 222, 248, 262, 296.

  Stowe, Eliza Taylor, 173.

  Stowe, Frederick William, 173, 247, 256, 258, 271, 294.

  Stowe, Georgiana May (Mrs. Allen), 173, 293, 296, 299.

  Stowe, Harriet Beecher, portraits of, viii, 225-227, 257;
    chronological outline of life of, xi-xii;
    early home of, 1-31;
    character of, 4, 8, 38, 72, 102, 104, 115, 120, 121, 134, 177, 188,
         225, 227, 232, 236, 268, 303;
    family of, 7, 18, 21, 72;
    religious influences of, 17, 18, 110-121, 301, 302;
    education of, 32-109;
    in Cincinnati, _see_ Cincinnati;
    literary life of, 161-184;
    literary art of, 162, 169, 220, 264, 275, 281;
    as a homemaker, 171-184;
    in Brunswick, 172, 175, 211, _see also_ “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and
         Slavery;
    travels of, 223-243;
    at Andover, 241;
    services of, 273, 274, 278, 297;
    at Hartford, 294-300;
    in Florida, 294, 300;
    public honors tendered to, 295;
    serene old age of, 294-304;
    works of, 70-82, 305-306.

  Stowe, Harriet B., 173, 248, 262.

  Stowe, Henry Ellis, 173, 246, 257, 270.

  Stowe, Lyman Beecher, vii.

  Stowe, Samuel Charles, 173, 187, 270.

  Suffrage, Woman’s, 300.

  Sun-dial inscription, 121.


  Tarbell, Ida, 150.

  Thanksgiving, 30, 143, 244-246.


  “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” 188-214, 222, 264, 269, 274, 278, 296-298;
    influence of, 216-219, 256.

  Underground railway, 197.


  Vanderpoel, Miss E. N., 40, 63, 85.

  Vanzandt, 206.

  Victoria, Queen, 228.

  Villard, Mrs. Henry, 216.


  Washington in 1862, 243-244, 265.

  Weld, Theodore, 199.

  Wellesley College, 303.

  Wesley, J., 233.

  West, the, in 1832, 123.

  _Western Monthly Magazine_, 159, 163, 170.

  Whittier, 217, 219, 280, 296.

  Woman suffrage, 300.

  Women, New England, 150, 151.

  Women of U. S., 237.

  Woodspell, 25-29.



FOOTNOTES:

[1] From Lyman Beecher’s “Autobiography,” 1866, Vol. I, pp. 464-474.

[2] From Lyman Beecher’s “Autobiography,” 1866, Vol. I, pp. 85-86.

[3] See the productions of the wonderful lace and embroideries done by
pupils of the Litchfield Female Academy in “Chronicles of a Pioneer
School,” by Emily Noyes Vanderpoel, 1903.

[4] By Miss E. N. Vanderpoel, in her charming book, “Chronicles of a
Pioneer School.”

[5] Any one that would like to know more about this Aunt Esther, may
well read the essay of Mrs. Stowe’s called “The Cathedral.” It is found
in her book entitled “The Chimney Corner.” If Harriet could build a
cathedral to suit herself she would have a place therein for “Saint”
Esther.

[6] From Lyman Beecher’s “Autobiography,” 1866, Vol. II, p. 224.

[7] See a very interesting article by Benjamin R. Andrews, Ph.D.,
in _The Journal of Home Economics_ for June, 1913, entitled, “Miss
Catherine Beecher, The Pioneer in Home Economics.” Appended is a long
list of her books.

[8] See Miss Ida Tarbell’s essays on “The American Woman,” in _The
American Magazine_, Dec. 1909, Vol. 69, p. 206.

[9] Quoted by Miss Tarbell, p. 206.

[10] By a queer freak of circumstance, this account of Mrs. Stowe’s
life is now being written on the very table that adorned her parlor at
Walnut Hills. It is a beautiful piece of rosewood and mahogany veneer,
in a quaint old pattern which is now so rare as to be highly valued by
collectors. It must have been one of her household treasures. Together
with the rest of her furniture, it was sold when the family moved to
Maine.

[11] By west, she meant what was then to her the southwest, Kentucky,
Missouri, etc., practically, the south.

[12] See “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Chap. XLV.

[13] Col. T. W. Higginson’s “Common Sense about Women.” 4th Ed., 1891,
Swan Sonnenschein, London, p. 238.

[14] Dowden’s “Life of Robert Browning,” p. 206.

[15] A list of Mrs. Stowe’s works will be found on page 305.



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