Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe
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Title: Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe
Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe
Compiler: Charles Edward Stowe
Release date: October 1, 2004 [eBook #6702]
Most recently updated: May 3, 2014
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF HARRIET BEECHER STOWE ***
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[Illustration: Richmond, Del. J. & J. Wilson, So.
H.B. Stowe]
LIFE OF
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
COMPILED FROM
Her Letters and Journals
BY HER SON
CHARLES EDWARD STOWE
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1890
Copyright, 1889,
BY CHARLES E. STOWE,
_All rights reserved._
_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S.A._
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
[Illustration: Handwritten letter]
It seems but fitting, that I should preface this story of my life with
a few notes of instruction.
The desire to leave behind me some recollections of my life, has
been cherished by me, for many years past; but failing strength or
increasing infirmities have prevented its accomplishment.
At my suggestion and with what assistance I have been able to render,
my son, Ross Charles Edward Stowe, has compiled from my letters and
journals, this biography. It is this true story of my life, told for
the most part, in my own words and has therefore all the force of an
autobiography.
It is perhaps much more accurate as to detail & impression than is
possible with any autobiography, written later in life.
If these pages, shall help those who read them to a firmer trust in God
& a deeper sense of His fatherly goodness throughout the days of our
earthly pilgrimage I can say with Valiant for Truth in the Pilgrim's
Progress!
I am going to my Father's & tho with great difficulty, I am got
thither, get now, I do not repent me of all the troubles I have been
at, to arrive where I am.
My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage & my
courage & skill to him that can get it.
Hartford Sept 30
1889
Harriet Beecher Stowe
INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT
I DESIRE to express my thanks here to Harper & Brothers, of New York,
for permission to use letters already published in the "Autobiography
and Correspondence of Lyman Beecher." I have availed myself freely
of this permission in chapters i. and iii. In chapter xx. I have
given letters already published in the "Life of George Eliot," by Mr.
Cross; but in every instance I have copied from the original MSS. and
not from the published work. In conclusion, I desire to express my
indebtedness to Mr. Kirk Munroe, who has been my co-laborer in the work
of compilation.
CHARLES E. STOWE.
HARTFORD, _September 30, 1889_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
CHILDHOOD 1811-1824.
DEATH OF HER MOTHER.--FIRST JOURNEY FROM HOME.--LIFE AT NUT
PLAINS.--SCHOOL DAYS AND HOURS WITH FAVORITE AUTHORS.--THE
NEW MOTHER.--LITCHFIELD ACADEMY AND ITS INFLUENCE.--FIRST
LITERARY EFFORTS.--A REMARKABLE COMPOSITION.--GOES TO HARTFORD 1
CHAPTER II.
SCHOOL DAYS IN HARTFORD, 1824-1832.
MISS CATHERINE BEECHER.--PROFESSOR FISHER.--THE WRECK OF THE
ALBION AND DEATH OF PROFESSOR FISHER.--"THE MINISTER'S
WOOING."--MISS CATHERINE BEECHER'S SPIRITUAL HISTORY.--MRS.
STOWE'S RECOLLECTIONS OF HER SCHOOL DAYS IN HARTFORD.--HER
CONVERSION.--UNITES WITH THE FIRST CHURCH IN HARTFORD.--HER
DOUBTS AND SUBSEQUENT RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT.--HER FINAL PEACE 22
CHAPTER III.
CINCINNATI, 1832-1836.
DR. BEECHER CALLED TO CINCINNATI.--THE WESTWARD JOURNEY.--FIRST
LETTER FROM HOME.--DESCRIPTION OF WALNUT HILLS.--STARTING A NEW
SCHOOL.--INWARD GLIMPSES.--THE SEMI-COLON CLUB.--EARLY
IMPRESSIONS OF SLAVERY.--A JOURNEY TO THE EAST.--THOUGHTS
AROUSED BY FIRST VISIT TO NIAGARA.--MARRIAGE TO PROFESSOR STOWE 53
CHAPTER IV.
EARLY MARRIED LIFE, 1836-1840.
PROFESSOR STOWE'S INTEREST IN POPULAR EDUCATION.--HIS DEPARTURE
FOR EUROPE.--SLAVERY RIOTS IN CINCINNATI.--BIRTH OF TWIN
DAUGHTERS.--PROFESSOR STOWE'S RETURN AND VISIT TO
COLUMBUS.--DOMESTIC TRIALS.--AIDING A FUGITIVE
SLAVE.--AUTHORSHIP UNDER DIFFICULTIES.--A BEECHER ROUND ROBIN 78
CHAPTER V.
POVERTY AND SICKNESS, 1840-1850.
FAMINE IN CINCINNATI.--SUMMER AT THE EAST.--PLANS FOR LITERARY
WORK.--EXPERIENCE ON A RAILROAD.--DEATH OF HER BROTHER
GEORGE.--SICKNESS AND DESPAIR.--A JOURNEY IN SEARCH OF
HEALTH.--GOES TO BRATTLEBORO' WATER-CURE.--TROUBLES AT LANE
SEMINARY.--CHOLERA IN CINCINNATI.--DEATH OF YOUNGEST
CHILD.--DETERMINED TO LEAVE THE WEST 100
CHAPTER VI.
REMOVAL TO BRUNSWICK, 1850-1852.
MRS. STOWE'S REMARKS ON WRITING AND UNDERSTANDING
BIOGRAPHY.--THEIR APPROPRIATENESS TO HER OWN BIOGRAPHY.--REASONS
FOR PROFESSOR STOWE'S LEAVING CINCINNATI.--MRS. STOWE'S JOURNEY
TO BROOKLYN.--HER BROTHER'S SUCCESS AS A MINISTER.--LETTERS
FROM HARTFORD AND BOSTON.--ARRIVES IN BRUNSWICK.--HISTORY OF THE
SLAVERY AGITATION.--PRACTICAL WORKING OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE
LAW.--MRS. EDWARD BEECHER'S LETTER TO MRS. STOWE AND ITS
EFFECT.--DOMESTIC TRIALS.--BEGINS TO WRITE "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN"
AS A SERIAL FOR THE "NATIONAL ERA."--LETTER TO FREDERICK
DOUGLASS.--"UNCLE TOM'S CABIN" A WORK OF RELIGIOUS EMOTION 126
CHAPTER VII.
UNCLE TOM'S CABIN, 1852.
"UNCLE TOM'S CABIN" AS A SERIAL IN THE "NATIONAL ERA."--AN
OFFER FOR ITS PUBLICATION IN BOOK FORM.--WILL IT BE A
SUCCESS?--AN UNPRECEDENTED CIRCULATION.--CONGRATULATORY
MESSAGES.--KIND WORDS FROM ABROAD.--MRS. STOWE TO THE EARL OF
CARLISLE.--LETTERS FROM AND TO LORD SHAFTESBURY.--CORRESPONDENCE
WITH ARTHUR HELPS 156
CHAPTER VIII.
FIRST TRIP TO EUROPE, 1853.
THE EDMONDSONS.--BUYING SLAVES TO SET THEM FREE.--JENNY
LIND.--PROFESSOR STOWE IS CALLED TO ANDOVER.--FITTING UP THE NEW
HOME.--THE "KEY TO UNCLE TOM'S CABIN."--"UNCLE TOM" ABROAD.--HOW
IT WAS PUBLISHED IN ENGLAND.--PREFACE TO THE EUROPEAN
EDITION.--THE BOOK IN FRANCE.--IN GERMANY.--A GREETING FROM
CHARLES KINGSLEY.--PREPARING TO VISIT SCOTLAND.--LETTER TO MRS.
FOLLEN 178
CHAPTER IX.
SUNNY MEMORIES, 1853.
CROSSING THE ATLANTIC.--ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND.--RECEPTION IN
LIVERPOOL.--WELCOME TO SCOTLAND.--A GLASGOW TEA-PARTY.--EDINBURGH
HOSPITALITY.--ABERDEEN.--DUNDEE AND BIRMINGHAM.--JOSEPH
STURGE.--ELIHU BURRITT.--LONDON.--THE LORD MAYOR'S
DINNER.--CHARLES DICKENS AND HIS WIFE 205
CHAPTER X.
FROM OVER THE SEA, 1853.
THE EARL OF CARLISLE.--ARTHUR HELPS.--THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF
ARGYLL.--MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER.--A MEMORABLE MEETING AT
STAFFORD HOUSE.--MACAULAY AND DEAN MILMAN.--WINDSOR
CASTLE.--PROFESSOR STOWE RETURNS TO AMERICA.--MRS. STOWE ON THE
CONTINENT.--IMPRESSIONS OF PARIS.--EN ROUTE TO SWITZERLAND AND
GERMANY.--BACK TO ENGLAND.--HOMEWARD BOUND 228
CHAPTER XI.
HOME AGAIN, 1853-1856.
ANTI-SLAVERY WORK.--STIRRING TIMES IN THE UNITED
STATES.--ADDRESS TO THE LADIES OF GLASGOW.--APPEAL TO THE WOMEN
OF AMERICA.--CORRESPONDENCE WITH WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.--THE
WRITING OF "DRED."--FAREWELL LETTER FROM GEORGIANA MAY.--SECOND
VOYAGE TO ENGLAND 250
CHAPTER XII.
DRED, 1856.
SECOND VISIT TO ENGLAND.--A GLIMPSE AT THE QUEEN.--THE DUKE OF
ARGYLL AND INVERARY.--EARLY CORRESPONDENCE WITH LADY
BYRON.--DUNROBIN CASTLE AND ITS INMATES.--A VISIT TO STOKE
PARK.--LORD DUFFERIN.--CHARLES KINGSLEY AT HOME.--PARIS
REVISITED.--MADAME MOHL'S RECEPTIONS 270
CHAPTER XIII.
OLD SCENES REVISITED, 1856.
EN ROUTE TO ROME.--TRIALS OF TRAVEL.--A MIDNIGHT ARRIVAL AND
AN INHOSPITABLE RECEPTION.--GLORIES OF THE ETERNAL CITY.--NAPLES
AND VESUVIUS.--VENICE.--HOLY WEEK IN ROME.--RETURN TO
ENGLAND.--LETTER FROM HARRIET MARTINEAU ON "DRED."--A WORD FROM
MR. PRESCOTT ON "DRED."--FAREWELL TO LADY BYRON 294
CHAPTER XIV.
THE MINISTER'S WOOING, 1857-1859.
DEATH OF MRS. STOWE'S OLDEST SON.--LETTER TO THE DUCHESS OF
SUTHERLAND.--LETTER TO HER DAUGHTERS IN PARIS.--LETTER TO HER
SISTER CATHERINE.--VISIT TO BRUNSWICK AND ORR'S ISLAND.--WRITES
"THE MINISTER'S WOOING" AND "THE PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND."--MR.
WHITTIER'S COMMENTS.--MR. LOWELL ON "THE MINISTER'S
WOOING."--LETTER TO MRS. STOWE FROM MR. LOWELL.--JOHN RUSKIN
ON "THE MINISTER'S WOOING."--A YEAR OF SADNESS.--LETTER TO LADY
BYRON.--LETTER TO HER DAUGHTER.--DEPARTURE FOR EUROPE 315
CHAPTER XV.
THE THIRD TRIP TO EUROPE, 1859.
THIRD VISIT TO EUROPE.--LADY BYRON ON "THE MINISTER'S
WOOING."--SOME FOREIGN PEOPLE AND THINGS AS THEY APPEARED TO
PROFESSOR STOWE.--A WINTER IN ITALY.--THINGS UNSEEN AND
UNREVEALED.--SPECULATIONS CONCERNING SPIRITUALISM.--JOHN
RUSKIN.--MRS. BROWNING.--THE RETURN TO AMERICA.--LETTERS TO DR.
HOLMES 343
CHAPTER XVI.
THE CIVIL WAR, 1860-1865.
THE OUTBREAK OF CIVIL WAR.--MRS. STOWE'S SON
ENLISTS.--THANKSGIVING DAY IN WASHINGTON.--THE PROCLAMATION OF
EMANCIPATION.--REJOICINGS IN BOSTON.--FRED STOWE AT
GETTYSBURG.--LEAVING ANDOVER AND SETTLING IN HARTFORD.--A REPLY
TO THE WOMEN OF ENGLAND.--LETTERS FROM JOHN BRIGHT, ARCHBISHOP
WHATELY, AND NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 363
CHAPTER XVII.
FLORIDA, 1865-1869.
LETTER TO DUCHESS OF ARGYLL.--MRS. STOWE DESIRES TO HAVE A HOME
AT THE SOUTH.--FLORIDA THE BEST FIELD FOR DOING GOOD.--SHE BUYS
A PLACE AT MANDARIN.--A CHARMING WINTER RESIDENCE.--"PALMETTO
LEAVES."--EASTER SUNDAY AT MANDARIN.--CORRESPONDENCE WITH DR.
HOLMES.--"POGANUC PEOPLE."--RECEPTIONS IN NEW ORLEANS AND
TALLAHASSEE.--LAST WINTER AT MANDARIN 395
CHAPTER XVIII.
OLDTOWN FOLKS, 1869.
PROFESSOR STOWE THE ORIGINAL OF "HARRY" IN "OLDTOWN
FOLKS."--PROFESSOR STOWE'S LETTER TO GEORGE ELIOT.--HER REMARKS
ON THE SAME.--PROFESSOR STOWE'S NARRATIVE OF HIS YOUTHFUL
ADVENTURES IN THE WORLD OF SPIRITS.--PROFESSOR STOWE'S INFLUENCE
ON MRS. STOWE'S LITERARY LIFE.--GEORGE ELIOT ON "OLDTOWN FOLKS" 419
CHAPTER XIX.
THE BYRON CONTROVERSY, 1869-1870.
MRS. STOWE'S STATEMENT OF HER OWN CASE.--THE CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER
WHICH SHE FIRST MET LADY BYRON.--LETTERS TO LADY BYRON.--LETTER
TO DR. HOLMES WHEN ABOUT TO PUBLISH "THE TRUE STORY OF LADY
BYRON'S LIFE" IN THE "ATLANTIC."--DR. HOLMES'S REPLY.--THE
CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER 445
CHAPTER XX.
GEORGE ELIOT.
CORRESPONDENCE WITH GEORGE ELIOT.--GEORGE ELIOT'S FIRST
IMPRESSIONS OF MRS. STOWE.--MRS. STOWE'S LETTER TO MRS.
FOLLEN.--GEORGE ELIOT'S LETTER TO MRS. STOWE.--MRS. STOWE'S
REPLY.--LIFE IN FLORIDA.--ROBERT DALE OWEN AND MODERN
SPIRITUALISM.--GEORGE ELIOT'S LETTER ON THE PHENOMENA OF
SPIRITUALISM.--MRS. STOWE'S DESCRIPTION OF SCENERY IN
FLORIDA.--MRS. STOWE CONCERNING "MIDDLEMARCH."--GEORGE ELIOT
TO MRS. STOWE DURING REV. H. W. BEECHER'S TRIAL.--MRS. STOWE
CONCERNING HER LIFE EXPERIENCE WITH HER BROTHER, H. W. BEECHER,
AND HIS TRIAL.--MRS. LEWES' LAST LETTER TO MRS. STOWE.--DIVERSE
MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THESE TWO WOMEN.--MRS. STOWE'S FINAL
ESTIMATE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM 459
CHAPTER XXI.
CLOSING SCENES, 1870-1889.
LITERARY LABORS.--COMPLETE LIST OF PUBLISHED BOOKS.--FIRST
READING TOUR.--PEEPS BEHIND THE CURTAIN.--SOME NEW ENGLAND
CITIES.--A LETTER FROM MAINE.--PLEASANT AND UNPLEASANT
READINGS.--SECOND TOUR.--A WESTERN JOURNEY.--VISIT TO OLD
SCENES.--CELEBRATION OF SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY.--CONGRATULATORY
POEMS FROM MR. WHITTIER AND DR. HOLMES.--LAST WORDS 489
[Illustration]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
PORTRAIT OF MRS. STOWE. From a crayon by Richmond, made in
England in 1853 _Frontispiece_
SILVER INKSTAND PRESENTED TO MRS. STOWE BY HER ENGLISH
ADMIRERS IN 1853 xi
PORTRAIT OF MRS. STOWE'S GRANDMOTHER, ROXANNA FOOTE. From
a miniature painted on ivory by her daughter, Mrs.
Lyman Beecher 6
BIRTHPLACE AT LITCHFIELD, CONN.[A] 10
PORTRAIT OF CATHERINE E. BEECHER. From a photograph taken in
1875 30
THE HOME AT WALNUT HILLS, CINCINNATI[A] 56
PORTRAIT OF HENRY WARD BEECHER. From a photograph by Rockwood,
in 1884 130
MANUSCRIPT PAGE OF "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN" (fac-simile) 160
THE ANDOVER HOME. From a painting by F. Rondel, in 1860, owned
by Mrs. H. F. Allen 186
PORTRAIT OF LYMAN BEECHER, AT THE AGE OF EIGHTY-SEVEN. From a
painting owned by the Boston Congregational Club 264
PORTRAIT OF THE DUCHESS OF SUTHERLAND. From an engraving
presented to Mrs. Stowe 318
THE OLD HOME AT HARTFORD 374
THE HOME AT MANDARIN, FLORIDA 402
PORTRAIT OF CALVIN ELLIS STOWE. From a photograph taken in 1882 422
PORTRAIT OF MRS. STOWE. From a photograph by Ritz and Hastings,
in 1884 470
THE LATER HARTFORD HOME 508
FOOTNOTE:
[A] From recent photographs and from views in the Autobiography of
Lyman Beecher, published by Messrs. Harper & Brothers.
LIFE AND LETTERS OF HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
CHAPTER I.
CHILDHOOD, 1811-1824.
DEATH OF HER MOTHER.--FIRST JOURNEY FROM HOME.--LIFE
AT NUT PLAINS.--SCHOOL DAYS AND HOURS WITH FAVORITE
AUTHORS.--THE NEW MOTHER.--LITCHFIELD ACADEMY AND ITS
INFLUENCE.--FIRST LITERARY EFFORTS.--A REMARKABLE
COMPOSITION.--GOES TO HARTFORD.
HARRIET BEECHER (STOWE) was born June 14, 1811, in the characteristic
New England town of Litchfield, Conn. Her father was the Rev. Dr. Lyman
Beecher, a distinguished Calvinistic divine, her mother Roxanna Foote,
his first wife. The little new-comer was ushered into a household of
happy, healthy children, and found five brothers and sisters awaiting
her. The eldest was Catherine, born September 6, 1800. Following her
were two sturdy boys, William and Edward; then came Mary, then George,
and at last Harriet. Another little Harriet born three years before had
died when only one month old, and the fourth daughter was named, in
memory of this sister, Harriet Elizabeth Beecher. Just two years after
Harriet was born, in the same month, another brother, Henry Ward, was
welcomed to the family circle, and after him came Charles, the last of
Roxanna Beecher's children.
The first memorable incident of Harriet's life was the death of her
mother, which occurred when she was four years old, and which ever
afterwards remained with her as the tenderest, saddest, and most sacred
memory of her childhood. Mrs. Stowe's recollections of her mother are
found in a letter to her brother Charles, afterwards published in the
"Autobiography and Correspondence of Lyman Beecher." She says:--
"I was between three and four years of age when our mother died, and
my personal recollections of her are therefore but few. But the deep
interest and veneration that she inspired in all who knew her were such
that during all my childhood I was constantly hearing her spoken of,
and from one friend or another some incident or anecdote of her life
was constantly being impressed upon me.
"Mother was one of those strong, restful, yet widely sympathetic
natures in whom all around seemed to find comfort and repose. The
communion between her and my father was a peculiar one. It was an
intimacy throughout the whole range of their being. There was no human
mind in whose decisions he had greater confidence. Both intellectually
and morally he regarded her as the better and stronger portion of
himself, and I remember hearing him say that after her death his first
sensation was a sort of terror, like that of a child suddenly shut out
alone in the dark.
"In my own childhood only two incidents of my mother twinkle like rays
through the darkness. One was of our all running and dancing out before
her from the nursery to the sitting-room one Sabbath morning, and her
pleasant voice saying after us, 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it
holy, children.'
"Another remembrance is this: mother was an enthusiastic horticulturist
in all the small ways that limited means allowed. Her brother John
in New York had just sent her a small parcel of fine tulip-bulbs. I
remember rummaging these out of an obscure corner of the nursery one
day when she was gone out, and being strongly seized with the idea that
they were good to eat, using all the little English I then possessed
to persuade my brothers that these were onions such as grown people
ate and would be very nice for us. So we fell to and devoured the
whole, and I recollect being somewhat disappointed in the odd sweetish
taste, and thinking that onions were not so nice as I had supposed.
Then mother's serene face appeared at the nursery door and we all ran
towards her, telling with one voice of our discovery and achievement.
We had found a bag of onions and had eaten them all up.
"Also I remember that there was not even a momentary expression of
impatience, but that she sat down and said, 'My dear children, what you
have done makes mamma very sorry. Those were not onions but roots of
beautiful flowers, and if you had let them alone we should have next
summer in the garden great beautiful red and yellow flowers such as you
never saw.' I remember how drooping and dispirited we all grew at this
picture, and how sadly we regarded the empty paper bag.
"Then I have a recollection of her reading aloud to the children Miss
Edgeworth's 'Frank,' which had just come out, I believe, and was
exciting a good deal of attention among the educational circles of
Litchfield. After that came a time when every one said she was sick,
and I used to be permitted to go once a day into her room, where she
sat bolstered up in bed. I have a vision of a very fair face with a
bright red spot on each cheek and her quiet smile. I remember dreaming
one night that mamma had got well, and of waking with loud transports
of joy that were hushed down by some one who came into the room. My
dream was indeed a true one. She was forever well.
"Then came the funeral. Henry was too little to go. I can see his
golden curls and little black frock as he frolicked in the sun like a
kitten, full of ignorant joy.
"I recollect the mourning dresses, the tears of the older children, the
walking to the burial-ground, and somebody's speaking at the grave.
Then all was closed, and we little ones, to whom it was so confused,
asked where she was gone and would she never come back.
"They told us at one time that she had been laid in the ground, and at
another that she had gone to heaven. Thereupon Henry, putting the two
things together, resolved to dig through the ground and go to heaven
to find her; for being discovered under sister Catherine's window one
morning digging with great zeal and earnestness, she called to him to
know what he was doing. Lifting his curly head, he answered with great
simplicity, 'Why, I'm going to heaven to find mamma.'
"Although our mother's bodily presence thus disappeared from our
circle, I think her memory and example had more influence in moulding
her family, in deterring from evil and exciting to good, than
the living presence of many mothers. It was a memory that met us
everywhere, for every person in the town, from the highest to the
lowest, seemed to have been so impressed by her character and life that
they constantly reflected some portion of it back upon us.
"The passage in 'Uncle Tom' where Augustine St. Clare describes
his mother's influence is a simple reproduction of my own mother's
influence as it has always been felt in her family."
Of his deceased wife Dr. Beecher said: "Few women have attained to
more remarkable piety. Her faith was strong and her prayer prevailing.
It was her wish that all her sons should devote themselves to the
ministry, and to it she consecrated them with fervent prayer. Her
prayers have been heard. All her sons have been converted and are now,
according to her wish, ministers of Christ."
Such was Roxanna Beecher, whose influence upon her four-year-old
daughter was strong enough to mould the whole after-life of the author
of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." After the mother's death the Litchfield home
was such a sad, lonely place for the child that her aunt, Harriet
Foote, took her away for a long visit at her grandmother's at Nut
Plains, near Guilford, Conn., the first journey from home the little
one had ever made. Of this visit Mrs. Stowe herself says:--
"Among my earliest recollections are those of a visit to Nut Plains
immediately after my mother's death. Aunt Harriet Foote, who was with
mother during all her last sickness, took me home to stay with her.
At the close of what seemed to me a long day's ride we arrived after
dark at a lonely little white farmhouse, and were ushered into a large
parlor where a cheerful wood fire was crackling. I was placed in the
arms of an old lady, who held me close and wept silently, a thing at
which I marveled, for my great loss was already faded from my childish
mind.
[Illustration: _Roxanna Foote_]
"I remember being put to bed by my aunt in a large room, on one side
of which stood the bed appropriated to her and me, and on the other
that of my grandmother. My aunt Harriet was no common character. A more
energetic human being never undertook the education of a child. Her
ideas of education were those of a vigorous English woman of the old
school. She believed in the Church, and had she been born under that
_régime_ would have believed in the king stoutly, although being of the
generation following the Revolution she was a not less stanch supporter
of the Declaration of Independence.
"According to her views little girls were to be taught to move very
gently, to speak softly and prettily, to say 'yes ma'am,' and 'no
ma'am,' never to tear their clothes, to sew, to knit at regular hours,
to go to church on Sunday and make all the responses, and to come home
and be catechised.
"During these catechisings she used to place my little cousin Mary
and myself bolt upright at her knee, while black Dinah and Harry, the
bound boy, were ranged at a respectful distance behind us; for Aunt
Harriet always impressed it upon her servants 'to order themselves
lowly and reverently to all their betters,' a portion of the Church
catechism that always pleased me, particularly when applied to them, as
it insured their calling me 'Miss Harriet,' and treating me with a
degree of consideration such as I never enjoyed in the more democratic
circle at home. I became proficient in the Church catechism, and gave
my aunt great satisfaction by the old-fashioned gravity and steadiness
with which I learned to repeat it.
"As my father was a Congregational minister, I believe Aunt Harriet,
though the highest of High Church women, felt some scruples as
to whether it was desirable that my religious education should
be entirely out of the sphere of my birth. Therefore when this
catechetical exercise was finished she would say, 'Now, niece, you
have to learn another catechism, because your father is a Presbyterian
minister,'--and then she would endeavor to make me commit to memory the
Assembly catechism.
"At this lengthening of exercise I secretly murmured. I was rather
pleased at the first question in the Church catechism, which is
certainly quite on the level of any child's understanding,--'What is
your name?' It was such an easy good start, I could say it so loud and
clear, and I was accustomed to compare it with the first question in
the Primer, 'What is the chief end of man?' as vastly more difficult
for me to answer. In fact, between my aunt's secret unbelief and my own
childish impatience of too much catechism, the matter was indefinitely
postponed after a few ineffectual attempts, and I was overjoyed to hear
her announce privately to grandmother that she thought it would be time
enough for Harriet to learn the Presbyterian catechism when she went
home."
Mingled with this superabundance of catechism and plentiful needlework
the child was treated to copious extracts from Lowth's Isaiah,
Buchanan's Researches in Asia, Bishop Heber's Life, and Dr. Johnson's
Works, which, after her Bible and Prayer Book, were her grandmother's
favorite reading. Harriet does not seem to have fully appreciated
these; but she did enjoy her grandmother's comments upon their biblical
readings. Among the Evangelists especially was the old lady perfectly
at home, and her idea of each of the apostles was so distinct and
dramatic that she spoke of them as of familiar acquaintances. She
would, for instance, always smile indulgently at Peter's remarks and
say, "There he is again, now; that's just like Peter. He's always so
ready to put in."
It must have been during this winter spent at Nut Plains, amid such
surroundings, that Harriet began committing to memory that wonderful
assortment of hymns, poems, and scriptural passages from which in after
years she quoted so readily and effectively, for her sister Catherine,
in writing of her the following November, says:--
"Harriet is a very good girl. She has been to school all this summer,
and has learned to read very fluently. She has committed to memory
twenty-seven hymns and two long chapters in the Bible. She has a
remarkably retentive memory and will make a very good scholar."
At this time the child was five years old, and a regular attendant
at "Ma'am Kilbourne's" school on West Street, to which she walked
every day hand in hand with her chubby, rosy-faced, bare-footed,
four-year-old brother, Henry Ward. With the ability to read germinated
the intense literary longing that was to be hers through life. In
those days but few books were specially prepared for children, and
at six years of age we find the little girl hungrily searching for
mental food amid barrels of old sermons and pamphlets stored in a
corner of the garret. Here it seemed to her were some thousands of the
most unintelligible things. "An appeal on the unlawfulness of a man
marrying his wife's sister" turned up in every barrel she investigated,
by twos, or threes, or dozens, till her soul despaired of finding an
end. At last her patient search was rewarded, for at the very bottom
of a barrel of musty sermons she discovered an ancient volume of
"The Arabian Nights." With this her fortune was made, for in these
most fascinating of fairy tales the imaginative child discovered a
well-spring of joy that was all her own. When things went astray with
her, when her brothers started off on long excursions, refusing to take
her with them, or in any other childish sorrow, she had only to curl
herself up in some snug corner and sail forth on her bit of enchanted
carpet into fairyland to forget all her griefs.
In recalling her own child-life Mrs. Stowe, among other things,
describes her father's library, and gives a vivid bit of her own
experiences within its walls. She says: "High above all the noise of
the house, this room had to me the air of a refuge and a sanctuary. Its
walls were set round from floor to ceiling with the friendly, quiet
faces of books, and there stood my father's great writing-chair, on one
arm of which lay open always his Cruden's Concordance and his Bible.
Here I loved to retreat and niche myself down in a quiet corner with my
favorite books around me. I had a kind of sheltered feeling as I thus
sat and watched my father writing, turning to his books, and speaking
from time to time to himself in a loud, earnest whisper. I vaguely felt
that he was about some holy and mysterious work quite beyond my little
comprehension, and I was careful never to disturb him by question or
remark.
[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE AT LITCHFIELD, CONNECTICUT.]
"The books ranged around filled me too with a solemn awe. On the
lower shelves were enormous folios, on whose backs I spelled in black
letters, 'Lightfoot Opera,' a title whereat I wondered, considering
the bulk of the volumes. Above these, grouped along in friendly,
social rows, were books of all sorts, sizes, and bindings, the titles
of which I had read so often that I knew them by heart. There were
Bell's Sermons, Bonnett's Inquiries, Bogue's Essays, Toplady on
Predestination, Boston's Fourfold State, Law's Serious Call, and other
works of that kind. These I looked over wistfully, day after day,
without even a hope of getting something interesting out of them. The
thought that father could read and understand things like these filled
me with a vague awe, and I wondered if I would ever be old enough to
know what it was all about.
"But there was one of my father's books that proved a mine of wealth
to me. It was a happy hour when he brought home and set up in his
bookcase Cotton Mather's 'Magnalia,' in a new edition of two volumes.
What wonderful stories those! Stories too about my own country. Stories
that made me feel the very ground I trod on to be consecrated by some
special dealing of God's Providence."
In continuing these reminiscences Mrs. Stowe describes as follows her
sensations upon first hearing the Declaration of Independence: "I
had never heard it before, and even now had but a vague idea of what
was meant by some parts of it. Still I gathered enough from the recital
of the abuses and injuries that had driven my nation to this course to
feel myself swelling with indignation, and ready with all my little
mind and strength to applaud the concluding passage, which Colonel
Talmadge rendered with resounding majesty. I was as ready as any of
them to pledge my life, fortune, and sacred honor for such a cause.
The heroic element was strong in me, having come down by ordinary
generation from a long line of Puritan ancestry, and just now it made
me long to do something, I knew not what: to fight for my country, or
to make some declaration on my own account."
When Harriet was nearly six years old her father married as his second
wife Miss Harriet Porter of Portland, Maine, and Mrs. Stowe thus
describes her new mother: "I slept in the nursery with my two younger
brothers. We knew that father was gone away somewhere on a journey
and was expected home, therefore the sound of a bustle in the house
the more easily awoke us. As father came into our room our new mother
followed him. She was very fair, with bright blue eyes, and soft auburn
hair bound round with a black velvet bandeau, and to us she seemed very
beautiful.
"Never did stepmother make a prettier or sweeter impression. The
morning following her arrival we looked at her with awe. She seemed to
us so fair, so delicate, so elegant, that we were almost afraid to go
near her. We must have appeared to her as rough, red-faced, country
children, honest, obedient, and bashful. She was peculiarly dainty
and neat in all her ways and arrangements, and I used to feel breezy,
rough, and rude in her presence.
"In her religion she was distinguished for a most unfaltering
Christ-worship. She was of a type noble but severe, naturally hard,
correct, exact and exacting, with intense natural and moral ideality.
Had it not been that Doctor Payson had set up and kept before her a
tender, human, loving Christ, she would have been only a conscientious
bigot. This image, however, gave softness and warmth to her religious
life, and I have since noticed how her Christ-enthusiasm has sprung up
in the hearts of all her children."
In writing to her old home of her first impressions of her new one,
Mrs. Beecher says: "It is a very lovely family, and with heartfelt
gratitude I observed how cheerful and healthy they were. The sentiment
is greatly increased, since I perceive them to be of agreeable habits
and some of them of uncommon intellect."
This new mother proved to be indeed all that the name implies to her
husband's children, and never did they have occasion to call her aught
other than blessed.
Another year finds a new baby brother, Frederick by name, added to
the family. At this time too we catch a characteristic glimpse of
Harriet in one of her sister Catherine's letters. She says: "Last week
we interred Tom junior with funeral honors by the side of old Tom of
happy memory. Our Harriet is chief mourner always at their funerals.
She asked for what she called an _epithet_ for the gravestone of Tom
junior, which I gave as follows:--
"Here lies our Kit,
Who had a fit,
And acted queer,
Shot with a gun,
Her race is run,
And she lies here."
In June, 1820, little Frederick died from scarlet fever, and Harriet
was seized with a violent attack of the same dread disease; but, after
a severe struggle, recovered.
Following her happy, hearty child-life, we find her tramping through
the woods or going on fishing excursions with her brothers, sitting
thoughtfully in her father's study, listening eagerly to the animated
theological discussions of the day, visiting her grandmother at Nut
Plains, and figuring as one of the brightest scholars in the Litchfield
Academy, taught by Mr. John Brace and Miss Pierce. When she was eleven
years old her brother Edward wrote of her: "Harriet reads everything
she can lay hands on, and sews and knits diligently."
At this time she was no longer the youngest girl of the family, for
another sister (Isabella) had been born in 1822. This event served
greatly to mature her, as she was intrusted with much of the care of
the baby out of school hours. It was not, however, allowed to interfere
in any way with her studies, and, under the skillful direction of her
beloved teachers, she seemed to absorb knowledge with every sense.
She herself writes: "Much of the training and inspiration of my early
days consisted not in the things that I was supposed to be studying,
but in hearing, while seated unnoticed at my desk, the conversation
of Mr. Brace with the older classes. There, from hour to hour, I
listened with eager ears to historical criticisms and discussions,
or to recitations in such works as Paley's Moral Philosophy, Blair's
Rhetoric, Allison on Taste, all full of most awakening suggestions to
my thoughts.
"Mr. Brace exceeded all teachers I ever knew in the faculty of teaching
composition. The constant excitement in which he kept the minds of his
pupils, the wide and varied regions of thought into which he led them,
formed a preparation for composition, the main requisite for which is
to have something which one feels interested to say."
In her tenth year Harriet began what to her was the fascinating work
of writing compositions, and so rapidly did she progress that at the
school exhibition held when she was twelve years old, hers was one of
the two or three essays selected to be read aloud before the august
assembly of visitors attracted by the occasion.
Of this event Mrs. Stowe writes: "I remember well the scene at that
exhibition, to me so eventful. The hall was crowded with all the
literati of Litchfield. Before them all our compositions were read
aloud. When mine was read I noticed that father, who was sitting on
high by Mr. Brace, brightened and looked interested, and at the close
I heard him ask, 'Who wrote that composition?' 'Your daughter, sir,'
was the answer. It was the proudest moment of my life. There was no
mistaking father's face when he was pleased, and to have interested him
was past all juvenile triumphs."
That composition has been carefully preserved, and on the old yellow
sheets the cramped childish handwriting is still distinctly legible.
As the first literary production of one who afterwards attained such
distinction as a writer, it is deemed of sufficient value and interest
to be embodied in this biography exactly as it was written and read
sixty-five years ago. The subject was certainly a grave one to be
handled by a child of twelve.
CAN THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL BE PROVED BY THE LIGHT OF NATURE?
It has justly been concluded by the philosophers
of every age that "The proper study of mankind is
man," and his nature and composition, both physical
and mental, have been subjects of the most critical
examination. In the course of these researches many
have been at a loss to account for the change which
takes place in the body at the time of death. By some
it has been attributed to the flight of its tenant, and
by others to its final annihilation.
The questions, "What becomes of the soul at the time
of death?" and, if it be not annihilated, "What is
its destiny after death?" are those which, from the
interest that we all feel in them, will probably
engross universal attention.
In pursuing these inquiries it will be necessary to
divest ourselves of all that knowledge which we have
obtained from the light which revelation has shed over
them, and place ourselves in the same position as the
philosophers of past ages when considering the same
subject.
The first argument which has been advanced to prove
the immortality of the soul is drawn from the nature
of the mind itself. It has (say the supporters of
this theory) no composition of parts, and therefore,
as there are no particles, is not susceptible of
divisibility and cannot be acted upon by decay, and
therefore if it will not decay it will exist forever.
Now because the mind is not susceptible of decay
effected in the ordinary way by a gradual separation of
particles, affords no proof that that same omnipotent
power which created it cannot by another simple
exertion of power again reduce it to nothing. The only
reason for belief which this argument affords is that
the soul cannot be acted upon by decay. But it does not
prove that it cannot destroy its existence. Therefore,
for the validity of this argument, it must either be
proved that the "Creator" has not the power to destroy
it, or that he has not the will; but as neither of
these can be established, our immortality is left
dependent on the pleasure of the Creator. But it is
said that it is evident that the Creator designed the
soul for immortality, or he would never have created it
so essentially different from the body, for had they
both been designed for the same end they would both
have been created alike, as there would have been no
object in forming them otherwise. This only proves that
the soul and body had not the same destinations. Now
of what these destinations are we know nothing, and
after much useless reasoning we return where we began,
our argument depending upon the good pleasure of the
Creator.
And here it is said that a being of such infinite
wisdom and benevolence as that of which the Creator is
possessed would not have formed man with such vast
capacities and boundless desires, and would have given
him no opportunity for exercising them.
In order to establish the validity of this argument it
is necessary to prove by the light of Nature that the
Creator _is_ benevolent, which, being impracticable, is
of itself sufficient to render the argument invalid.
But the argument proceeds upon the supposition that
to destroy the soul would be unwise. Now this is
arraigning the "All-wise" before the tribunal of his
subjects to answer for the mistakes in his government.
Can we look into the council of the "Unsearchable" and
see what means are made to answer their ends? We do
not know but the destruction of the soul may, in the
government of God, be made to answer such a purpose
that its existence would be contrary to the dictates of
wisdom.
The great desire of the soul for immortality, its
secret, innate horror of annihilation, has been brought
to prove its immortality. But do we always find this
horror or this desire? Is it not much more evident
that the great majority of mankind have no such dread
at all? True that there is a strong feeling of horror
excited by the idea of perishing from the earth and
being forgotten, of losing all those honors and all
that fame awaited them. Many feel this secret horror
when they look down upon the vale of futurity and
reflect that though now the idols of the world, soon
all which will be left them will be the common portion
of mankind--oblivion! But this dread does not arise
from any idea of their destiny beyond the tomb, and
even were this true, it would afford no proof that
the mind would exist forever, merely from its strong
desires. For it might with as much correctness be
argued that the body will exist forever because we have
a great dread of dying, and upon this principle nothing
which we strongly desire would ever be withheld from
us, and no evil that we greatly dread will ever come
upon us, a principle evidently false.
Again, it has been said that the constant progression
of the powers of the mind affords another proof of its
immortality. Concerning this, Addison remarks, "Were a
human soul ever thus at a stand in her acquirements,
were her faculties to be full blown and incapable of
further enlargement, I could imagine that she might
fall away insensibly and drop at once into a state
of annihilation. But can we believe a thinking being
that is in a perpetual progress of improvement, and
traveling on from perfection to perfection after having
just looked abroad into the works of her Creator and
made a few discoveries of his infinite wisdom and
goodness, must perish at her first setting out and in
the very beginning of her inquiries?"
In answer to this it may be said that the soul is not
always progressing in her powers. Is it not rather a
subject of general remark that those brilliant talents
which in youth expand, in manhood become stationary,
and in old age gradually sink to decay? Till when the
ancient man descends to the tomb scarce a wreck of that
once powerful mind remains.
Who, but upon reading the history of England, does not
look with awe upon the effects produced by the talents
of her Elizabeth? Who but admires that undaunted
firmness in time of peace and that profound depth
of policy which she displayed in the cabinet? Yet
behold the tragical end of this learned, this politic
princess! Behold the triumphs of age and sickness
over her once powerful talents, and say not that the
faculties of man are always progressing in their powers.
From the activity of the mind at the hour of death has
also been deduced its immortality. But it is not true
that the mind is always active at the time of death. We
find recorded in history numberless instances of those
talents, which were once adequate to the government of
a nation, being so weakened and palsied by the touch
of sickness as scarcely to tell to beholders what they
once were. The talents of the statesman, the wisdom of
the sage, the courage and might of the warrior, are
instantly destroyed by it, and all that remains of them
is the waste of idiocy or the madness of insanity.
Some minds there are who at the time of death retain
their faculties though much impaired, and if the
argument be valid these are the only cases where
immortality is conferred. Again, it is urged that the
inequality of rewards and punishments in this world
demand another in which virtue may be rewarded and vice
punished. This argument, in the first place, takes
for its foundation that by the light of nature the
distinction between virtue and vice can be discovered.
By some this is absolutely disbelieved, and by all
considered as extremely doubtful. And, secondly, it
puts the Creator under an obligation to reward and
punish the actions of his creatures. No such obligation
exists, and therefore the argument cannot be valid. And
this supposes the Creator to be a being of justice,
which cannot by the light of nature be proved, and
as the whole argument rests upon this foundation it
certainly cannot be correct.
This argument also directly impeaches the wisdom of the
Creator, for the sense of it is this,--that, forasmuch
as he was not able to manage his government in this
world, he must have another in which to rectify the
mistakes and oversights of this, and what an idea would
this give us of our All-wise Creator?
It is also said that all nations have some conceptions
of a future state, that the ancient Greeks and Romans
believed in it, that no nation has been found but have
possessed some idea of a future state of existence.
But their belief arose more from the fact that they
wished it to be so than from any real ground of belief;
for arguments appear much more plausible when the mind
wishes to be convinced. But it is said that every
nation, however circumstanced, possess some idea of
a future state. For this we may account by the fact
that it was handed down by tradition from the time of
the flood. From all these arguments, which, however
plausible at first sight, are found to be futile, may
be argued the necessity of a revelation. Without it,
the destiny of the noblest of the works of God would
have been left in obscurity. Never till the blessed
light of the Gospel dawned on the borders of the pit,
and the heralds of the Cross proclaimed "Peace on earth
and good will to men," was it that bewildered and
misled man was enabled to trace his celestial origin
and glorious destiny.
The sun of the Gospel has dispelled the darkness that
has rested on objects beyond the tomb. In the Gospel
man learned that when the dust returned to dust the
spirit fled to the God who gave it. He there found
that though man has lost the image of his divine
Creator, he is still destined, after this earthly house
of his tabernacle is dissolved, to an inheritance
incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, to
a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
Soon after the writing of this remarkable composition, Harriet's
child-life in Litchfield came to an end, for that same year she went
to Hartford to pursue her studies in a school which had been recently
established by her sister Catherine in that city.
CHAPTER II.
SCHOOL DAYS IN HARTFORD, 1824-1832.
MISS CATHERINE BEECHER.--PROFESSOR FISHER.--THE WRECK
OF THE ALBION AND DEATH OF PROFESSOR FISHER.--"THE
MINISTER'S WOOING."--MISS CATHERINE BEECHER'S SPIRITUAL
HISTORY.--MRS. STOWE'S RECOLLECTIONS OF HER SCHOOL
DAYS IN HARTFORD.--HER CONVERSION.--UNITES WITH THE
FIRST CHURCH IN HARTFORD.--HER DOUBTS AND SUBSEQUENT
RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT.--HER FINAL PEACE.
THE school days in Hartford began a new era in Harriet's life. It was
the formative period, and it is therefore important to say a few words
concerning her sister Catherine, under whose immediate supervision she
was to continue her education. In fact, no one can comprehend either
Mrs. Stowe or her writings without some knowledge of the life and
character of this remarkable woman, whose strong, vigorous mind and
tremendous personality indelibly stamped themselves on the sensitive,
yielding, dreamy, and poetic nature of the younger sister. Mrs. Stowe
herself has said that the two persons who most strongly influenced
her at this period of her life were her brother Edward and her sister
Catherine.
Catherine was the oldest child of Lyman Beecher and Roxanna Foote, his
wife. In a little battered journal found among her papers is a short
sketch of her life, written when she was seventy-six years of age.
In a tremulous hand she begins: "I was born at East Hampton, L. I.,
September 5, 1800, at 5 P. M., in the large parlor opposite father's
study. Don't remember much about it myself." The sparkle of wit in this
brief notice of the circumstances of her birth is very characteristic.
All through her life little ripples of fun were continually playing on
the surface of that current of intense thought and feeling in which her
deep, earnest nature flowed.
When she was ten years of age her father removed to Litchfield, Conn.,
and her happy girlhood was passed in that place. Her bright and
versatile mind and ready wit enabled her to pass brilliantly through
her school days with but little mental exertion, and those who knew
her slightly might have imagined her to be only a bright, thoughtless,
light-hearted girl. In Boston, at the age of twenty, she took lessons
in music and drawing, and became so proficient in these branches as
to secure a position as teacher in a young ladies' school, kept by
a Rev. Mr. Judd, an Episcopal clergyman, at New London, Conn. About
this time she formed the acquaintance of Professor Alexander Metcalf
Fisher, of Yale College, one of the most distinguished young men in
New England. In January of the year 1822 they became engaged, and the
following spring Professor Fisher sailed for Europe to purchase books
and scientific apparatus for the use of his department in the college.
In his last letter to Miss Beecher, dated March 31, 1822, he writes:--
"I set out at 10 precisely to-morrow, in the Albion for Liverpool; the
ship has no superior in the whole number of excellent vessels belonging
to this port, and Captain Williams is regarded as first on their list
of commanders. The accommodations are admirable--fare $140. Unless our
ship should speak some one bound to America on the passage, you will
probably not hear from me under two months."
Before two months had passed came vague rumors of a terrible shipwreck
on the coast of Ireland. Then the tidings that the Albion was lost.
Then came a letter from Mr. Pond, at Kinsale, Ireland, dated May 2,
1822:--
"You have doubtless heard of the shipwreck of the Albion packet of New
York, bound to Liverpool. It was a melancholy shipwreck. It happened
about four o'clock on the morning of the 22d of April. Professor
Fisher, of Yale College, was one of the passengers. Out of twenty-three
cabin passengers, but one reached the shore. He is a Mr. Everhart,
of Chester County, Pennsylvania. He informs me that Professor Fisher
was injured by things that fetched away in the cabin at the time the
ship was knocked down. This was between 8 and 9 o'clock in the evening
of the twenty-first. Mr. Fisher, though badly bruised, was calm and
resolute, and assisted Captain Williams by taking the injured compass
to his berth and repairing it. About five minutes before the vessel
struck Captain Williams informed the passengers of their danger, and
all went on deck except Professor Fisher, who remained sitting in his
berth. Mr. Everhart was the last person who left the cabin, and the
last who ever saw Professor Fisher alive."
I should not have spoken of this incident of family history with
such minuteness, except for the fact that it is so much a part of
Mrs. Stowe's life as to make it impossible to understand either
her character or her most important works without it. Without this
incident "The Minister's Wooing" never would have been written, for
both Mrs. Marvyn's terrible soul struggles and old Candace's direct
and effective solution of all religious difficulties find their origin
in this stranded, storm-beaten ship on the coast of Ireland, and the
terrible mental conflicts through which her sister afterward passed,
for she believed Professor Fisher eternally lost. No mind more directly
and powerfully influenced Harriet's than that of her sister Catherine,
unless it was her brother Edward's, and that which acted with such
overwhelming power on the strong, unyielding mind of the older sister
must have, in time, a permanent and abiding influence on the mind of
the younger.
After Professor Fisher's death his books came into Miss Beecher's
possession, and among them was a complete edition of Scott's works. It
was an epoch in the family history when Doctor Beecher came down-stairs
one day with a copy of "Ivanhoe" in his hand, and said: "I have always
said that my children should not read novels, but they must read these."
The two years following the death of Professor Fisher were passed by
Miss Catherine Beecher at Franklin, Mass., at the home of Professor
Fisher's parents, where she taught his two sisters, studied mathematics
with his brother Willard, and listened to Doctor Emmons' fearless
and pitiless preaching. Hers was a mind too strong and buoyant to be
crushed and prostrated by that which would have driven a weaker and
less resolute nature into insanity. Of her it may well be said:--
"She faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them, thus she came at length
To find a stronger faith her own."
Gifted naturally with a capacity for close metaphysical analysis and a
robust fearlessness in following her premises to a logical conclusion,
she arrived at results startling and original, if not always of
permanent value.
In 1840 she published in the "Biblical Repository" an article on Free
Agency, which has been acknowledged by competent critics as the ablest
refutation of Edwards on "The Will" which has appeared. An amusing
incident connected with this publication may not be out of place here.
A certain eminent theological professor of New England, visiting a
distinguished German theologian and speaking of this production, said:
"The ablest refutation of Edwards on 'The Will' which was ever written
is the work of a woman, the daughter of Dr. Lyman Beecher." The worthy
Teuton raised both hands in undisguised astonishment. "You have a woman
that can write an able refutation of Edwards on 'The Will'? God forgive
Christopher Columbus for discovering America!"
Not finding herself able to love a God whom she thought of in her own
language as "a perfectly happy being, unmoved by my sorrows or tears,
and looking upon me only with dislike and aversion," she determined "to
find happiness in living to do good." "It was right to pray and read
the Bible, so I prayed and read. It was right to try to save others,
so I labored for their salvation. I never had any fear of punishment
or hope of reward all these years." She was tormented with doubts.
"What has the Son of God done which the meanest and most selfish
creature upon earth would not have done? After making such a wretched
race and placing them in such disastrous circumstances, somehow,
without any sorrow or trouble, Jesus Christ had a human nature that
suffered and died. If something else besides ourselves will do all the
suffering, who would not save millions of wretched beings and receive
all the honor and gratitude without any of the trouble? Sometimes when
such thoughts passed through my mind, I felt that it was all pride,
rebellion, and sin."
So she struggles on, sometimes floundering deep in the mire of doubt,
and then lifted for the moment above it by her naturally buoyant
spirits, and general tendency to look on the bright side of things. In
this condition of mind, she came to Hartford in the winter of 1824,
and began a school with eight scholars, and it was in the practical
experience of teaching that she found a final solution of all her
difficulties. She continues:--
"After two or three years I commenced giving instruction in mental
philosophy, and at the same time began a regular course of lectures
and instructions from the Bible, and was much occupied with plans for
governing my school, and in devising means to lead my pupils to become
obedient, amiable, and pious. By degrees I finally arrived at the
following principles in the government of my school:--
"First. It is indispensable that my scholars should feel that I am
sincerely and deeply interested in their best happiness, and the more I
can convince them of this, the more ready will be their obedience.
"Second. The preservation of authority and order depends upon the
certainty that unpleasant consequences to themselves will inevitably be
the result of doing wrong.
"Third. It is equally necessary, to preserve my own influence and their
affection, that they should feel that punishment is the natural result
of wrong-doing in such a way that they shall regard themselves, instead
of me, as the cause of their punishment.
"Fourth. It is indispensable that my scholars should see that my
requisitions are reasonable. In the majority of cases this can be
shown, and in this way such confidence will be the result that they
will trust to my judgment and knowledge, in cases where no explanation
can be given.
"Fifth. The more I can make my scholars feel that I am actuated by a
spirit of self-denying benevolence, the more confidence they will feel
in me, and the more they will be inclined to submit to self-denying
duties for the good of others.
"After a while I began to compare my experience with the government of
God. I finally got through the whole subject, and drew out the results,
and found that all my difficulties were solved and all my darkness
dispelled."
Her solution in brief is nothing more than that view of the divine
nature which was for so many years preached by her brother, Henry Ward
Beecher, and set forth in the writings of her sister Harriet,--the
conception of a being of infinite love, patience, and kindness who
suffers with man. The sufferings of Christ on the cross were not the
sufferings of his human nature merely, but the sufferings of the
divine nature in Him. In Christ we see the only revelation of God, and
that is the revelation of one that suffers. This is the fundamental
idea in "The Minister's Wooing," and it is the idea of God in which the
storm-tossed soul of the older sister at last found rest. All this was
directly opposed to that fundamental principle of theologians that God,
being the infinitely perfect Being, cannot suffer, because suffering
indicates imperfection. To Miss Beecher's mind the lack of ability to
suffer with his suffering creatures was a more serious imperfection.
Let the reader turn to the twenty-fourth chapter of "The Minister's
Wooing" for a complete presentation of this subject, especially the
passage that begins, "Sorrow is divine: sorrow is reigning on the
throne of the universe."
In the fall of the year 1824, while her sister Catherine was passing
through the soul crisis which we have been describing, Harriet came to
the school that she had recently established.
In a letter to her son written in 1886, speaking of this period of her
life, Mrs. Stowe says: "Somewhere between my twelfth and thirteenth
year I was placed under the care of my elder sister Catherine, in the
school that she had just started in Hartford, Connecticut. When I
entered the school there were not more than twenty-five scholars in it,
but it afterwards numbered its pupils by the hundreds. The school-room
was on Main Street, nearly opposite Christ Church, over Sheldon &
Colton's harness store, at the sign of the two white horses. I never
shall forget the pleasure and surprise which these two white horses
produced in my mind when I first saw them. One of the young men who
worked in the rear of the harness store had a most beautiful tenor
voice, and it was my delight to hear him singing in school hours:--
[Illustration: Catherine E. Beecher]
'When in cold oblivion's shade
Beauty, wealth, and power are laid,
When, around the sculptured shrine,
Moss shall cling and ivy twine,
Where immortal spirits reign,
There shall we all meet again.'
"As my father's salary was inadequate to the wants of his large family,
the expense of my board in Hartford was provided for by a species of
exchange. Mr. Isaac D. Bull sent a daughter to Miss Pierce's seminary
in Litchfield, and she boarded in my father's family in exchange for
my board in her father's family. If my good, refined, neat, particular
stepmother could have chosen, she could not have found a family more
exactly suited to her desires. The very soul of neatness and order
pervaded the whole establishment. Mr. I. D. Bull was a fine, vigorous,
white-haired man on the declining slope of life, but full of energy
and of kindness. Mr. Samuel Collins, a neighbor who lived next door,
used to frequently come in and make most impressive and solemn calls on
Miss Mary Anne Bull, who was a brunette and a celebrated beauty of the
day. I well remember her long raven curls falling from the comb that
held them up on the top of her head. She had a rich soprano voice, and
was the leading singer in the Centre Church choir. The two brothers
also had fine, manly voices, and the family circle was often enlivened
by quartette singing and flute playing. Mr. Bull kept a very large
wholesale drug store on Front Street, in which his two sons, Albert
and James, were clerks. The oldest son, Watson Bull, had established a
retail drug store at the sign of the 'Good Samaritan.' A large picture
of the Good Samaritan relieving the wounded traveler formed a striking
part of the sign, and was contemplated by me with reverence.
"The mother of the family gave me at once a child's place in her heart.
A neat little hall chamber was allotted to me for my own, and a well
made and kept single bed was given me, of which I took daily care with
awful satisfaction. If I was sick nothing could exceed the watchful
care and tender nursing of Mrs. Bull. In school my two most intimate
friends were the leading scholars. They had written to me before I
came and I had answered their letters, and on my arrival they gave me
the warmest welcome. One was Catherine Ledyard Cogswell, daughter of
the leading and best-beloved of Hartford physicians. The other was
Georgiana May, daughter of a most lovely Christian woman who was a
widow. Georgiana was one of many children, having two younger sisters,
Mary and Gertrude, and several brothers. Catherine Cogswell was one of
the most amiable, sprightly, sunny-tempered individuals I have ever
known. She was, in fact, so much beloved that it was difficult for
me to see much of her. Her time was all bespoken by different girls.
One might walk with her to school, another had the like promise on
the way home. And at recess, of which we had every day a short half
hour, there was always a suppliant at Katy's shrine, whom she found it
hard to refuse. Yet, among all these claimants, she did keep a little
place here and there for me. Georgiana was older and graver, and less
fascinating to the other girls, but between her and me there grew up
the warmest friendship, which proved lifelong in its constancy.
"Catherine and Georgiana were reading 'Virgil' when I came to the
school. I began the study of Latin alone, and at the end of the first
year made a translation of 'Ovid' in verse, which was read at the final
exhibition of the school, and regarded, I believe, as a very creditable
performance. I was very much interested in poetry, and it was my dream
to be a poet. I began a drama called 'Cleon.' The scene was laid in the
court and time of the emperor Nero, and Cleon was a Greek lord residing
at Nero's court, who, after much searching and doubting, at last comes
to the knowledge of Christianity. I filled blank book after blank book
with this drama. It filled my thoughts sleeping and waking. One day
sister Catherine pounced down upon me, and said that I must not waste
my time writing poetry, but discipline my mind by the study of Butler's
'Analogy.' So after this I wrote out abstracts from the 'Analogy,' and
instructed a class of girls as old as myself, being compelled to master
each chapter just ahead of the class I was teaching. About this time I
read Baxter's 'Saint's Rest.' I do not think any book affected me more
powerfully. As I walked the pavements I used to wish that they might
sink beneath me if only I might find myself in heaven. I was at the
same time very much interested in Butler's 'Analogy,' for Mr. Brace
used to lecture on such themes when I was at Miss Pierce's school at
Litchfield. I also began the study of French and Italian with a Miss
Degan, who was born in Italy.
"It was about this time that I first believed myself to be a Christian.
I was spending my summer vacation at home, in Litchfield. I shall
ever remember that dewy, fresh summer morning. I knew that it was a
sacramental Sunday, and thought with sadness that when all the good
people should take the sacrificial bread and wine I should be left
out. I tried hard to feel my sins and count them up; but what with the
birds, the daisies, and the brooks that rippled by the way, it was
impossible. I came into church quite dissatisfied with myself, and as
I looked upon the pure white cloth, the snowy bread and shining cups,
of the communion table, thought with a sigh: 'There won't be anything
for me to-day; it is all for these grown-up Christians.' Nevertheless,
when father began to speak, I was drawn to listen by a certain
pathetic earnestness in his voice. Most of father's sermons were as
unintelligible to me as if he had spoken in Choctaw. But sometimes he
preached what he was accustomed to call a 'frame sermon;' that is, a
sermon that sprung out of the deep feeling of the occasion, and which
consequently could be neither premeditated nor repeated. His text was
taken from the Gospel of John, the declaration of Jesus: 'Behold, I
call you no longer servants, but friends.' His theme was Jesus as a
soul friend offered to every human being.
"Forgetting all his hair-splitting distinctions and dialectic
subtleties, he spoke in direct, simple, and tender language of the
great love of Christ and his care for the soul. He pictured Him as
patient with our errors, compassionate with our weaknesses, and
sympathetic for our sorrows. He went on to say how He was ever near
us, enlightening our ignorance, guiding our wanderings, comforting our
sorrows with a love unwearied by faults, unchilled by ingratitude, till
at last He should present us faultless before the throne of his glory
with exceeding joy.
"I sat intent and absorbed. Oh! how much I needed just such a friend,
I thought to myself. Then the awful fact came over me that I had never
had any conviction of my sins, and consequently could not come to Him.
I longed to cry out 'I will,' when father made his passionate appeal,
'Come, then, and trust your soul to this faithful friend.' Like a flash
it came over me that if I needed conviction of sin, He was able to give
me even this also. I would trust Him for the whole. My whole soul was
illumined with joy, and as I left the church to walk home, it seemed to
me as if Nature herself were hushing her breath to hear the music of
heaven.
"As soon as father came home and was seated in his study, I went up to
him and fell in his arms saying, 'Father, I have given myself to Jesus,
and He has taken me.' I never shall forget the expression of his face
as he looked down into my earnest, childish eyes; it was so sweet, so
gentle, and like sunlight breaking out upon a landscape. 'Is it so?' he
said, holding me silently to his heart, as I felt the hot tears fall on
my head. 'Then has a new flower blossomed in the kingdom this day.'"
If she could have been let alone, and taught "to look up and not down,
forward and not back, out and not in," this religious experience might
have gone on as sweetly and naturally as the opening of a flower in
the gentle rays of the sun. But unfortunately this was not possible
at that time, when self-examination was carried to an extreme that was
calculated to drive a nervous and sensitive mind well-nigh distracted.
First, even her sister Catherine was afraid that there might be
something wrong in the case of a lamb that had come into the fold
without being first chased all over the lot by the shepherd; great
stress being laid, in those days, on what was called "being under
conviction." Then also the pastor of the First Church in Hartford, a
bosom friend of Dr. Beecher, looked with melancholy and suspicious
eyes on this unusual and doubtful path to heaven,--but more of this
hereafter. Harriet's conversion took place in the summer of 1825, when
she was fourteen, and the following year, April, 1826, Dr. Beecher
resigned his pastorate in Litchfield to accept a call to the Hanover
Street Church, Boston, Mass. In a letter to her grandmother Foote at
Guilford, dated Hartford, March 4, 1826, Harriet writes:--
"You have probably heard that our home in Litchfield is broken up.
Papa has received a call to Boston, and concluded to accept, because
he could not support his family in Litchfield. He was dismissed last
week Tuesday, and will be here (Hartford) next Tuesday with mamma and
Isabel. Aunt Esther will take Charles and Thomas to her house for the
present. Papa's salary is to be $2,000 and $500 settlement.
"I attend school constantly and am making some progress in my studies.
I devote most of my attention to Latin and to arithmetic, and hope soon
to prepare myself to assist Catherine in the school."
This breaking up of the Litchfield home led Harriet, under her
father's advice, to seek to connect herself with the First Church of
Hartford. Accordingly, accompanied by two of her school friends, she
went one day to the pastor's study to consult with him concerning the
contemplated step. The good man listened attentively to the child's
simple and modest statement of Christian experience, and then with an
awful, though kindly, solemnity of speech and manner said, "Harriet,
do you feel that if the universe should be destroyed (awful pause)
you could be happy with God alone?" After struggling in vain, in her
mental bewilderment, to fix in her mind some definite conception of the
meaning of the sounds which fell on her ear like the measured strokes
of a bell, the child of fourteen stammered out, "Yes, sir."
"You realize, I trust," continued the doctor, "in some measure at
least, the deceitfulness of your heart, and that in punishment for your
sins God might justly leave you to make yourself as miserable as you
have made yourself sinful?"
"Yes, sir," again stammered Harriet.
Having thus effectually, and to his own satisfaction, fixed the child's
attention on the morbid and over-sensitive workings of her own heart,
the good and truly kind-hearted man dismissed her with a fatherly
benediction. But where was the joyous ecstasy of that beautiful Sabbath
morning of a year ago? Where was that heavenly friend? Yet was not
this as it should be, and might not God leave her "to make herself as
miserable as she had made herself sinful"?
In a letter addressed to her brother Edward, about this time, she
writes: "My whole life is one continued struggle: I do nothing right.
I yield to temptation almost as soon as it assails me. My deepest
feelings are very evanescent. I am beset behind and before, and my sins
take away all my happiness. But that which most constantly besets me is
pride--I can trace almost all my sins back to it."
In the mean time, the school is prospering. February 16, 1827,
Catherine writes to Dr. Beecher: "My affairs go on well. The stock is
all taken up, and next week I hope to have out the prospectus of the
'Hartford Female Seminary.' I hope the building will be done, and all
things in order, by June. The English lady is coming with twelve pupils
from New York." Speaking of Harriet, who was at this time with her
father in Boston, she adds: "I have received some letters from Harriet
to-day which make me feel uneasy. She says, 'I don't know as I am fit
for anything, and I have thought that I could wish to die young, and
let the remembrance of me and my faults perish in the grave, rather
than live, as I fear I do, a trouble to every one. You don't know how
perfectly wretched I often feel: so useless, so weak, so destitute of
all energy. Mamma often tells me that I am a strange, inconsistent
being. Sometimes I could not sleep, and have groaned and cried till
midnight, while in the daytime I tried to appear cheerful and succeeded
so well that papa reproved me for laughing so much. I was so absent
sometimes that I made strange mistakes, and then they all laughed at
me, and I laughed, too, though I felt as though I should go distracted.
I wrote rules; made out a regular system for dividing my time; but
my feelings vary so much that it is almost impossible for me to be
regular.'"
But let Harriet "take courage in her dark sorrows and melancholies," as
Carlyle says: "Samuel Johnson too had hypochondrias; all great souls
are apt to have, and to be in thick darkness generally till the eternal
ways and the celestial guiding stars disclose themselves, and the vague
abyss of life knits itself up into firmaments for them."
At the same time (the winter of 1827), Catherine writes to Edward
concerning Harriet: "If she could come here (Hartford) it might be the
best thing for her, for she can talk freely to me. I can get her books,
and Catherine Cogswell, Georgiana May, and her friends here could do
more for her than any one in Boston, for they love her and she loves
them very much. Georgiana's difficulties are different from Harriet's:
she is speculating about doctrines, etc. Harriet will have young
society here all the time, which she cannot have at home, and I think
cheerful and amusing friends will do much for her. I can do better in
preparing her to teach drawing than any one else, for I best know what
is needed."
It was evidently necessary that something should be done to restore
Harriet to a more tranquil and healthful frame of mind; consequently in
the spring of 1827, accompanied by her friend Georgiana May, she went
to visit her grandmother Foote at Nut Plains, Guilford. Miss May refers
to this visit in a letter to Mrs. Foote, in January of the following
winter.
HARTFORD, _January 4, 1828._
DEAR MRS. FOOTE:--... I very often think of you and
the happy hours I passed at your house last spring.
It seems as if it were but yesterday: now, while I am
writing, I can see your pleasant house and the familiar
objects around you as distinctly as the day I left
them. Harriet and I are very much the same girls we
were then. I do not believe we have altered very much,
though she is improved in some respects.
The August following this visit to Guilford Harriet writes to her
brother Edward in a vein which is still streaked with sadness, but
shows some indication of returning health of mind.
"Many of my objections you did remove that afternoon we spent together.
After that I was not as unhappy as I had been. I felt, nevertheless,
that my views were very indistinct and contradictory, and feared that
if you left me thus I might return to the same dark, desolate state
in which I had been all summer. I felt that my immortal interest,
my happiness for both worlds, was depending on the turn my feelings
might take. In my disappointment and distress I called upon God, and
it seemed as if I was heard. I felt that He could supply the loss of
all earthly love. All misery and darkness were over. I felt as if
restored, nevermore to fall. Such sober certainty of waking bliss had
long been a stranger to me. But even then I had doubts as to whether
these feelings were right, because I felt love to God alone without
that ardent love for my fellow-creatures which Christians have often
felt.... I cannot say exactly what it is makes me reluctant to speak
of my feelings. It costs me an effort to express feeling of any kind,
but more particularly to speak of my private religious feelings. If any
one questions me, my first impulse is to conceal all I can. As for
expression of affection towards my brothers and sisters, my companions
or friends, the stronger the affection the less inclination have I to
express it. Yet sometimes I think myself the most frank, open, and
communicative of beings, and at other times the most reserved. If you
can resolve all these caprices into general principles, you will do
more than I can. Your speaking so much philosophically has a tendency
to repress confidence. We never wish to have our feelings analyzed
down; and very little, nothing, that we say brought to the test of
mathematical demonstration.
"It appears to me that if I only could adopt the views of God you
presented to my mind, they would exert a strong and beneficial
influence over my character. But I am afraid to accept them for several
reasons. First, it seems to be taking from the majesty and dignity
of the divine character to suppose that his happiness can be at all
affected by the conduct of his sinful, erring creatures. Secondly, it
seems to me that such views of God would have an effect on our own
minds in lessening that reverence and fear which is one of the greatest
motives to us for action. For, although to a generous mind the thought
of the love of God would be a sufficient incentive to action, there are
times of coldness when that love is not felt, and then there remains no
sort of stimulus. I find as I adopt these sentiments I feel less fear
of God, and, in view of sin, I feel only a sensation of grief which is
more easily dispelled and forgotten than that I formerly felt."
A letter dated January 3, 1828, shows us that Harriet had returned to
Hartford and was preparing herself to teach drawing and painting, under
the direction of her sister Catherine.
MY DEAR GRANDMOTHER,--I should have written before to
assure you of my remembrance of you, but I have been
constantly employed, from nine in the morning till
after dark at night, in taking lessons of a painting
and drawing master, with only an intermission long
enough to swallow a little dinner which was sent to me
in the school-room. You may easily believe that after
spending the day in this manner, I did not feel in a
very epistolary humor in the evening, and if I had
been, I could not have written, for when I did not go
immediately to bed I was obliged to get a long French
lesson.
The seminary is finished, and the school going on
nicely. Miss Clarissa Brown is assisting Catherine in
the school. Besides her, Catherine, and myself, there
are two other teachers who both board in the family
with us: one is Miss Degan, an Italian lady who teaches
French and Italian; she rooms with me, and is very
interesting and agreeable. Miss Hawks is rooming with
Catherine. In some respects she reminds me very much
of my mother. She is gentle, affectionate, modest, and
retiring, and much beloved by all the scholars.... I
am still going on with my French, and carrying two
young ladies through Virgil, and if I have time, shall
commence Italian.
I am very comfortable and happy.
I propose, my dear grandmamma, to send you by the first
opportunity a dish of fruit of my own painting. Pray
do not now devour it in anticipation, for I cannot
promise that you will not find it sadly tasteless in
reality. If so, please excuse it, for the sake of the
poor young artist. I admire to cultivate a taste for
painting, and I wish to improve it; it was what my
dear mother admired and loved, and I cherish it for
her sake. I have thought more of this dearest of all
earthly friends these late years, since I have been old
enough to know her character and appreciate her worth.
I sometimes think that, had she lived, I might have
been both better and happier than I now am, but God is
good and wise in all his ways.
A letter written to her brother Edward in Boston, dated March 27, 1828,
shows how slowly she adopted the view of God that finally became one of
the most characteristic elements in her writings.
"I think that those views of God which you have presented to me have
had an influence in restoring my mind to its natural tone. But still,
after all, 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. But easy and familiar expressions of attachment and that sort
of confidential communication which I should address to papa or you
would be improper for a subject to address to a king, much less for
us to address to the King of kings. 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 wish I could describe to you
how I feel when I pray. I feel that I love God,--that is, that I love
Christ,--that I find comfort and happiness in it, and yet it is not
that kind of comfort which would arise from free communication of my
wants and sorrows to a friend. 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.... Do you think, my dear brother, that there
is such a thing as so realizing the presence and character of God that
He can supply the place of earthly friends? I really wish to know what
you think of this.... Do you suppose that God really loves sinners
before they come to Him? Some say that we ought to tell them that God
hates them, that He looks on them with utter abhorrence, and that they
must love Him before He will look on them otherwise. Is it right to say
to those who are in deep distress, 'God is interested in you; He feels
for and loves you'?"
Appended to this letter is a short note from Miss Catherine Beecher,
who evidently read the letter over and answered Harriet's questions
herself. She writes: "When the young man came to Jesus, is it not said
that Jesus loved him, though he was unrenewed?"
In April, 1828, Harriet again writes to her brother Edward:--
"I have had more reason to be grateful to that friend than ever
before. He has not left me in all my weakness. It seems to me that
my love to Him is the love of despair. All my communion with Him,
though sorrowful, is soothing. I am painfully sensible of ignorance
and deficiency, but still I feel that I am willing that He should know
all. He will look on all that is wrong only to purify and reform. He
will never be irritated or impatient. He will never show me my faults
in such a manner as to irritate without helping me. A friend to whom I
would acknowledge all my faults must be perfect. Let any one once be
provoked, once speak harshly to me, once sweep all the chords of my
soul out of tune, I never could confide there again. It is only to the
most perfect Being in the universe that imperfection can look and hope
for patience. How strange!... You do not know how harsh and forbidding
everything seems, compared with his character. All through the day in
my intercourse with others, everything has a tendency to destroy the
calmness of mind gained by communion with Him. One flatters me, another
is angry with me, another is unjust to me.
"You speak of your predilections for literature having been a snare to
you. I have found it so myself. I can scarcely think, without tears
and indignation, that all that is beautiful and lovely and poetical
has been laid on other altars. Oh! will there never be a poet with a
heart enlarged and purified by the Holy Spirit, who shall throw all the
graces of harmony, all the enchantments of feeling, pathos, and poetry,
around sentiments worthy of them?... 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."
The following November she writes from Groton, Conn., to Miss May:--
"I am in such an uncertain, unsettled state, traveling back and
forth, that I have very little time to write. In the first place, on
my arrival in Boston I was obliged to spend two days in talking and
telling news. Then after that came calling, visiting, etc., and then I
came off to Groton to see my poor brother George, who was quite out of
spirits and in very trying circumstances. To-morrow I return to Boston
and spend four or five days, and then go to Franklin, where I spend the
rest of my vacation.
"I found the folks all well on my coming to Boston, and as to my new
brother, James, he has nothing to distinguish him from forty other
babies, except a very large pair of blue eyes and an uncommonly fair
complexion, a thing which is of no sort of use or advantage to a man or
boy.
"I am thinking very seriously of remaining in Groton and taking care of
the female school, and at the same time being of assistance and company
for George. On some accounts it would not be so pleasant as returning
to Hartford, for I should be among strangers. Nothing upon this point
can be definitely decided till I have returned to Boston, and talked to
papa and Catherine."
Evidently papa and Catherine did not approve of the Groton plan, for
in February of the following winter Harriet writes from Hartford to
Edward, who is at this time with his father in Boston:--
"My situation this winter (1829) is in many respects pleasant. I room
with three other teachers, Miss Fisher, Miss Mary Dutton, and Miss
Brigham. Ann Fisher you know. Miss Dutton is about twenty, has a fine
mathematical mind, and has gone as far into that science perhaps as
most students at college. She is also, as I am told, quite learned in
the languages.... Miss Brigham is somewhat older: is possessed of a
fine mind and most unconquerable energy and perseverance of character.
From early childhood she has been determined to obtain an education,
and to attain to a certain standard. Where persons are determined to
be anything, they will be. I think, for this reason, she will make a
first-rate character. Such are my companions. We spend our time in
school during the day, and in studying in the evening. My plan of study
is to read rhetoric and prepare exercises for my class the first half
hour in the evening; after that the rest of the evening is divided
between French and Italian. Thus you see the plan of my employment and
the character of my immediate companions. Besides these, there are
others among the teachers and scholars who must exert an influence
over my character. Miss Degan, whose constant occupation it is to make
others laugh; Mrs. Gamage, her room-mate, a steady, devoted, sincere
Christian.... Little things have great power over me, and if I meet
with the least thing that crosses my feelings, I am often rendered
unhappy for days and weeks.... I wish I could bring myself to feel
perfectly indifferent to the opinions of others. I believe that there
never was a person more dependent on the good and evil opinions of
those around than I am. This desire to be loved forms, I fear, the
great motive for all my actions.... I have been reading carefully the
book of Job, and I do not think that it contains the views of God which
you presented to me. God seems to have stripped a dependent creature
of all that renders life desirable, and then to have answered his
complaints from the whirlwind; and instead of showing mercy and pity,
to have overwhelmed him by a display of his power and justice.... With
the view I received from you, I should have expected that a being who
sympathizes with his guilty, afflicted creatures would not have spoken
thus. Yet, after all, I do believe that God is such a being as you
represent Him to be, and in the New Testament I find in the character
of Jesus Christ a revelation of God as merciful and compassionate; in
fact, just such a God as I need.
"Somehow or another you have such a reasonable sort of way of saying
things that when I come to reflect I almost always go over to your
side.... My mind is often perplexed, and such thoughts arise in it
that I cannot pray, and I become bewildered. The wonder to me is, how
all ministers and all Christians can feel themselves so inexcusably
sinful, when it seems to me we all come into the world in such a way
that it would be miraculous if we did not sin. Mr. Hawes always says in
prayer, 'We have nothing to offer in extenuation of any of our sins,'
and I always think when he says it, that we have everything to offer
in extenuation. The case seems to me exactly as if I had been brought
into the world with such a thirst for ardent spirits that there was
just a possibility, though no hope, that I should resist, and then
my eternal happiness made dependent on my being temperate. Sometimes
when I try to confess my sins, I feel that after all I am more to be
pitied than blamed, for I have never known the time when I have not
had a temptation within me so strong that it was certain I should not
overcome it. This thought shocks me, but it comes with such force, and
so appealingly, to all my consciousness, that it stifles all sense of
sin....
"Sometimes when I read the Bible, it seems to be wholly grounded on
the idea that the sin of man is astonishing, inexcusable, and without
palliation or cause, and the atonement is spoken of as such a wonderful
and undeserved mercy that I am filled with amazement. Yet if I give up
the Bible I gain nothing, for the providence of God in nature is just
as full of mystery, and of the two I think that the Bible, with all its
difficulties, is preferable to being without it; for the Bible holds
out the hope that in a future world all shall be made plain.... So you
see I am, as Mr. Hawes says, 'on the waves,' and all I can do is to
take the word of God that He does do right and there I rest."
The following summer, in July, she writes to Edward: "I have never
been so happy as this summer. I began it in more suffering than I
ever before have felt, but there is One whom I daily thank for all
that suffering, since I hope that it has brought me at last to rest
entirely in Him. I do hope that my long, long course of wandering and
darkness and unhappiness is over, and that I have found in Him who died
for me all, and more than all, I could desire. Oh, Edward, you can
feel as I do; you can speak of Him! There are few, very few, who can.
Christians in general do not seem to look to Him as their best friend,
or realize anything of his unutterable love. They speak with a cold,
vague, reverential awe, but do not speak as if in the habit of close
and near communion; as if they confided to Him every joy and sorrow and
constantly looked to Him for direction and guidance. I cannot express
to you, my brother, I cannot tell you, how that Saviour appears to me.
To bear with one so imperfect, so weak, 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."
So, after four years of struggling and suffering, she returns to the
place where she started from as a child of thirteen. It has been
like watching a ship with straining masts and storm-beaten sails,
buffeted by the waves, making for the harbor, and coming at last to
quiet anchorage. There have been, of course, times of darkness and
depression, but never any permanent loss of the religious trustfulness
and peace of mind indicated by this letter.
The next three years were passed partly in Boston, and partly in
Guilford and Hartford. Writing of this period of her life to the Rev.
Charles Beecher, she says:--
MY DEAR BROTHER,--The looking over of father's letters
in the period of his Boston life brings forcibly to
my mind many recollections. At this time I was more
with him, and associated in companionship of thought
and feeling for a longer period than any other of my
experience.
In the summer of 1832 she writes to Miss May, revealing her spiritual
and intellectual life in a degree unusual, even for her.
"After the disquisition on myself above cited, you will be prepared to
understand the changes through which this wonderful _ego et me ipse_
has passed.
"The amount of the matter has been, as this inner world of mine has
become worn out and untenable, I have at last concluded to come out of
it and live in the external one, and, as F---- S---- once advised me,
to give up the pernicious habit of meditation to the first Methodist
minister that would take it, and try to mix in society somewhat as
another person would.
"'_Horas non numero nisi serenas._' Uncle Samuel, who sits by me,
has just been reading the above motto, the inscription on a sun-dial
in Venice. It strikes me as having a distant relationship to what I
was going to say. I have come to a firm resolution to count no hours
but unclouded ones, and to let all others slip out of my memory and
reckoning as quickly as possible....
"I am trying to cultivate a general spirit of kindliness towards
everybody. Instead of shrinking into a corner to notice how other
people behave, I am holding out my hand to the right and to the left,
and forming casual or incidental acquaintances with all who will be
acquainted with me. In this way I find society full of interest and
pleasure--a pleasure which pleaseth me more because it is not old and
worn out. From these friendships I expect little; therefore generally
receive more than I expect. From past friendships I have expected
everything, and must of necessity have been disappointed. The kind
words and looks and smiles I call forth by looking and smiling are not
much by themselves, but they form a very pretty flower border to the
way of life. They embellish the day or the hour as it passes, and when
they fade they only do just as you expected they would. This kind of
pleasure in acquaintanceship is new to me. I never tried it before.
When I used to meet persons, the first inquiry was, 'Have they such and
such a character, or have they anything that might possibly be of use
or harm to me?'"
It is striking, the degree of interest a letter had for her.
"Your long letter came this morning. It revived much in my heart.
Just think how glad I must have been this morning to hear from you. I
was glad.... I thought of it through all the vexations of school this
morning.... I have a letter at home; and when I came home from school,
I went leisurely over it.
"This evening I have spent in a little social party,--a dozen or
so,--and I have been zealously talking all the evening. When I
came to my cold, lonely room, there was your letter lying on the
dressing-table. It touched me with a sort of painful pleasure, for it
seems to me uncertain, improbable, that I shall ever return and find
you as I have found your letter. Oh, my dear G----, it is scarcely
well to love friends thus. The greater part that I see cannot move me
deeply. They are present, and I enjoy them; they pass and I forget
them. But those that I love differently; those that I LOVE; and oh,
how much that word means! I feel sadly about them. They may change;
they must die; they are separated from me, and I ask myself why should
I wish to love with all the pains and penalties of such conditions? I
check myself when expressing feelings like this, so much has been said
of it by the sentimental, who talk what they could not have felt. But
it is so deeply, sincerely so in me, that sometimes it will overflow.
Well, there is a heaven,--a heaven,--a world of love, and love after
all is the life-blood, the existence, the all in all of mind."
This is the key to her whole life. She was impelled by love, and did
what she did, and wrote what she did, under the impulse of love. Never
could "Uncle Tom's Cabin" or "The Minister's Wooing" have been written,
unless by one to whom love was the "life-blood of existence, the all in
all of mind." Years afterwards Mrs. Browning was to express this same
thought in the language of poetry.
"But when a soul by choice and conscience doth
Throw out her full force on another soul,
The conscience and the concentration both
Make mere life love. For life in perfect whole
And aim consummated is love in sooth,
As nature's magnet heat rounds pole with pole."
CHAPTER III
CINCINNATI, 1832-1836.
DR. BEECHER CALLED TO CINCINNATI.--THE WESTWARD
JOURNEY.--FIRST LETTER FROM HOME.--DESCRIPTION
OF WALNUT HILLS.--STARTING A NEW SCHOOL.--INWARD
GLIMPSES.--THE SEMI-COLON CLUB.--EARLY IMPRESSIONS OF
SLAVERY.--A JOURNEY TO THE EAST.--THOUGHTS AROUSED BY
FIRST VISIT TO NIAGARA.--MARRIAGE TO PROFESSOR STOWE.
IN 1832, after having been settled for six years over the Hanover
Street Church in Boston, Dr. Beecher received and finally accepted a
most urgent call to become President of Lane Theological Seminary in
Cincinnati. This institution had been chartered in 1829, and in 1831
funds to the amount of nearly $70,000 had been promised to it provided
that Dr. Beecher accepted the presidency. It was hard for this New
England family to sever the ties of a lifetime and enter on so long
a journey to the far distant West of those days; but being fully
persuaded that their duty lay in this direction, they undertook to
perform it cheerfully and willingly. With Dr. Beecher and his wife were
to go Miss Catherine Beecher, who had conceived the scheme of founding
in Cincinnati, then considered the capital of the West, a female
college, and Harriet, who was to act as her principal assistant. In the
party were also George, who was to enter Lane as a student, Isabella,
James, the youngest son, and Miss Esther Beecher, the "Aunt Esther" of
the children.
Before making his final decision, Dr. Beecher, accompanied by his
daughter Catherine, visited Cincinnati to take a general survey of
their proposed battlefield, and their impressions of the city are given
in the following letter written by the latter to Harriet in Boston:--
"Here we are at last at our journey's end, alive and well. We are
staying with Uncle Samuel (Foote), whose establishment I will try and
sketch for you. It is on a height in the upper part of the city, and
commands a fine view of the whole of the lower town. The city does not
impress me as being so very new. It is true everything looks neat and
clean, but it is compact, and many of the houses are of brick and very
handsomely built. The streets run at right angles to each other, and
are wide and well paved. We reached here in three days from Wheeling,
and soon felt ourselves at home. The next day father and I, with three
gentlemen, walked out to Walnut Hills. The country around the city
consists of a constant succession and variety of hills of all shapes
and sizes, forming an extensive amphitheatre. The site of the seminary
is very beautiful and picturesque, though I was disappointed to find
that both river and city are hidden by intervening hills. I never saw
a place so capable of being rendered a paradise by the improvements
of taste as the environs of this city. Walnut Hills are so elevated
and cool that people have to leave there to be sick, it is said. The
seminary is located on a farm of one hundred and twenty-five acres of
fine land, with groves of superb trees around it, about two miles from
the city. We have finally decided on the spot where our house shall
stand in case we decide to come, and you cannot (where running water
or the seashore is wanting) find another more delightful spot for a
residence. It is on an eminence, with a grove running up from the back
to the very doors, another grove across the street in front, and fine
openings through which distant hills and the richest landscapes appear.
"I have become somewhat acquainted with those ladies we shall have
the most to do with, and find them intelligent, New England sort of
folks. Indeed, this is a New England city in all its habits, and its
inhabitants are more than half from New England. The Second Church,
which is the best in the city, will give father a unanimous call to be
their minister, with the understanding that he will give them what time
he can spare from the seminary.
"I know of no place in the world where there is so fair a prospect of
finding everything that makes social and domestic life pleasant. Uncle
John and Uncle Samuel are just the intelligent, sociable, free, and
hospitable sort of folk that everybody likes and everybody feels at
home with.
"The folks are very anxious to have a school on our plan set on foot
here. We can have fine rooms in the city college building, which is
now unoccupied, and everybody is ready to lend a helping hand. As to
father, I never saw such a field of usefulness and influence as is
offered to him here."
This, then, was the field of labor in which the next eighteen years
of the life of Mrs. Stowe were to be passed. At this time her sister
Mary was married and living in Hartford, her brothers Henry Ward and
Charles were in college, while William and Edward, already licensed to
preach, were preparing to follow their father to the West.
[Illustration: THE HOME AT WALNUT HILLS, CINCINNATI.]
Mr. Beecher's preliminary journey to Cincinnati was undertaken in
the early spring of 1832, but he was not ready to remove his family
until October of that year. An interesting account of this westward
journey is given by Mrs. Stowe in a letter sent back to Hartford from
Cincinnati, as follows:--
"Well, my dear, the great sheet is out and the letter is begun. All our
family are here (in New York), and in good health.
"Father is to perform to-night in the Chatham Theatre! 'positively
for the _last_ time this season!' I don't know, I'm sure, as we shall
ever get to Pittsburgh. Father is staying here begging money for the
Biblical Literature professorship; the incumbent is to be C. Stowe.
Last night we had a call from Arthur Tappan and Mr. Eastman. Father
begged $2,000 yesterday, and now the good people are praying him to
abide certain days, as he succeeds so well. They are talking of sending
us off and keeping him here. I really dare not go and see Aunt Esther
and mother now; they were in the depths of tribulation before at
staying so long, and now,
'In the lowest depths, _another_ deep!'
Father is in high spirits. He is all in his own element,--dipping into
books; consulting authorities for his oration; going round here, there,
everywhere; begging, borrowing, and spoiling the Egyptians; delighted
with past success and confident for the future.
"Wednesday. Still in New York. I believe it would kill me dead to live
long in the way I have been doing since I have been here. It is a sort
of agreeable delirium. There's only one thing about it, it is too
_scattering_. I begin to be athirst for the waters of quietness."
Writing from Philadelphia, she adds:--
"Well, we did get away from New York at last, but it was through much
tribulation. The truckman carried all the family baggage to the wrong
wharf, and, after waiting and waiting on board the boat, we were
obliged to start without it, George remaining to look it up. Arrived
here late Saturday evening,--dull, drizzling weather; poor Aunt Esther
in dismay,--not a clean cap to put on,--mother in like state; all of
us destitute. We went, half to Dr. Skinner's and half to Mrs. Elmes's:
mother, Aunt Esther, father, and James to the former; Kate, Bella, and
myself to Mr. Elmes's. They are rich, hospitable folks, and act the
part of Gaius in apostolic times.... Our trunks came this morning.
Father stood and saw them all brought into Dr. Skinner's entry, and
then he swung his hat and gave a 'hurrah,' as any man would whose
wife had not had a clean cap or ruffle for a week. Father does not
succeed very well in opening purses here. Mr. Eastman says, however,
that this is not of much consequence. I saw to-day a notice in the
'Philadelphian' about father, setting forth how 'this distinguished
brother, with his large family, having torn themselves from the
endearing scenes of their home,' etc., etc., 'were going, like Jacob,'
etc.,--a very scriptural and appropriate flourish. It is too much after
the manner of men, or, as Paul says, speaking 'as a fool.' A number of
the pious people of this city are coming here this evening to hold a
prayer-meeting with reference to the journey and its object. For _this_
I thank them."
From Downington she writes:--
"Here we all are,--Noah and his wife and his sons and his daughters,
with the cattle and creeping things, all dropped down in the front
parlor of this tavern, about thirty miles from Philadelphia. If to-day
is a fair specimen of our journey, it will be a very pleasant, obliging
driver, good roads, good spirits, good dinner, fine scenery, and now
and then some 'psalms and hymns and spiritual songs;' for with George
on board you may be sure of music of some kind. Moreover, George has
provided himself with a quantity of tracts, and he and the children
have kept up a regular discharge at all the wayfaring people we
encountered. I tell him he is _peppering_ the land with moral influence.
"We are all well; all in good spirits. Just let me give you a peep
into our traveling household. Behold us, then, in the front parlor of
this country inn, all as much at home as if we were in Boston. Father
is sitting opposite to me at this table, reading; Kate is writing a
billet-doux to Mary on a sheet like this; Thomas is opposite, writing
in a little journal that he keeps; Sister Bell, too, has her little
record; George is waiting for a seat that he may produce his paper
and write. As for me, among the multitude of my present friends, my
heart still makes occasional visits to absent ones,--visits full of
pleasure, and full of cause of gratitude to Him who gives us friends.
I have thought of you often to-day, my G. We stopped this noon at a
substantial Pennsylvania tavern, and among the flowers in the garden
was a late monthly honeysuckle like the one at North Guilford. I made
a spring for it, but George secured the finest bunch, which he wore in
his button-hole the rest of the noon.
"This afternoon, as we were traveling, we struck up and sang '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 'na 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.'"
"Harrisburg, Sunday evening. Mother, Aunt Esther, George, and the
little folks have just gathered into Kate's room, and we have just been
singing. Father has gone to preach for Mr. De Witt. To-morrow we expect
to travel sixty-two miles, and in two more days shall reach Wheeling;
there we shall take the steamboat to Cincinnati."
On the same journey George Beecher writes:--
"We had poor horses in crossing the mountains. Our average rate for
the last four days to Wheeling was forty-four miles. The journey,
which takes the mail-stage forty-eight hours, took us eight days.
At Wheeling we deliberated long whether to go on board a boat for
Cincinnati, but the prevalence of the cholera there at last decided
us to remain. While at Wheeling father preached eleven times,--nearly
every evening,--and gave them the Taylorite heresy on sin and decrees
to the highest notch; and what amused me most was to hear him establish
it from the Confession of Faith. It went high and dry, however, above
all objections, and they were delighted with it, even the old school
men, since it had not been christened 'heresy' in their hearing. After
remaining in Wheeling eight days, we chartered a stage for Cincinnati,
and started next morning.
"At Granville, Ohio, we were invited to stop and attend a protracted
meeting. Being in no great hurry to enter Cincinnati till the cholera
had left, we consented. We spent the remainder of the week there, and I
preached five times and father four. The interest was increasingly deep
and solemn each day, and when we left there were forty-five cases of
conversion in the town, besides those from the surrounding towns. The
people were astonished at the doctrine; said they never saw the truth
so plain in their lives."
Although the new-comers were cordially welcomed in Cincinnati, and
everything possible was done for their comfort and to make them feel
at home, they felt themselves to be strangers in a strange land.
Their homesickness and yearnings for New England are set forth by the
following extracts from Mrs. Stowe's answer to the first letter they
received from Hartford after leaving there:--
MY DEAR SISTER (Mary),--The Hartford letter from all and sundry has
just arrived, and after cutting all manner of capers expressive of
thankfulness, I have skipped three stairs at a time up to the study
to begin an answer. My notions of answering letters are according
to the literal sense of the word; not waiting six months and then
scrawling a lazy reply, but sitting down the moment you have read a
letter, and telling, as Dr. Woods says, "How the subject strikes you."
I wish I could be clear that the path of duty lay in talking to you
this afternoon, but as I find a loud call to consider the heels of
George's stockings, I must only write a word or two, and then resume
my darning-needle. You don't know how anxiously we all have watched
for some intelligence from Hartford. Not a day has passed when I have
not been the efficient agent in getting somebody to the post-office,
and every day my heart has sunk at the sound of "no letters." I felt a
tremor quite sufficient for a lover when I saw your handwriting once
more, so you see that in your old age you can excite quite as much
emotion as did the admirable Miss Byron in her adoring Sir Charles. I
hope the consideration and digestion of this fact will have its due
weight in encouraging you to proceed.
The fact of our having received said letter is as yet a state secret,
not to be made known till all our family circle "in full assembly meet"
at the tea-table. Then what an illumination! "How we shall be edified
and fructified," as that old Methodist said. It seems too bad to keep
it from mother and Aunt Esther a whole afternoon, but then I have the
comfort of thinking that we are consulting for their greatest happiness
"on the whole," which is metaphysical benevolence.
So kind Mrs. Parsons stopped in the very midst of her pumpkin pies to
think of us? Seems to me I can see her bright, cheerful face now! And
then those well known handwritings! We _do_ love our Hartford friends
dearly; there can be, I think, no controverting that fact. Kate says
that the word _love_ is used in _six senses_, and I am sure in some one
of them they will all come in. Well, good-by for the present.
Evening. Having finished the last hole on George's black vest, I stick
in my needle and sit down to be sociable. You don't know how coming
away from New England has sentimentalized us all! Never was there
such an abundance of meditation on our native land, on the joys of
friendship, the pains of separation. Catherine had an alarming paroxysm
in Philadelphia which expended itself in "The Emigrant's Farewell."
After this was sent off she felt considerably relieved. My symptoms
have been of a less acute kind, but, I fear, more enduring. There! the
tea-bell rings. Too bad! I was just going to say something bright. Now
to take your letter and run! How they will stare when I produce it!
After tea. Well, we have had a fine time. When supper was about half
over, Catherine began: "We have a dessert that we have been saving all
the afternoon," and then I held up my letter. "See here, this is from
Hartford!" I wish you could have seen Aunt Esther's eyes brighten, and
mother's pale face all in a smile, and father, as I unfolded the letter
and began. Mrs. Parsons's notice of her Thanksgiving predicament caused
just a laugh, and then one or two sighs (I told you we were growing
sentimental!). We did talk some of keeping it (Thanksgiving), but
perhaps we should all have felt something of the text, "How shall we
sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" Your praises of Aunt Esther
I read twice in an audible voice, as the children made some noise the
first time. I think I detected a visible blush, though she found at
that time a great deal to do in spreading bread and butter for James,
and shuffling his plate; and, indeed, it was rather a vehement attack
on her humility, since it gave her at least "angelic perfection," if
not "Adamic" (to use Methodist technics). Jamie began his Sunday-school
career yesterday. The superintendent asked him how old he was. "I'm
four years old now, and when it _snows very hard_ I shall be five," he
answered. I have just been trying to make him interpret his meaning;
but he says, "Oh, I said so because I could not think of anything else
to say." By the by, Mary, speaking of the temptations of cities, I
have much solicitude on Jamie's account lest he should form improper
intimacies, for yesterday or day before we saw him parading by the
house with his arm over the neck of a great hog, apparently on the most
amicable terms possible; and the other day he actually got upon the
back of one, and rode some distance. So much for allowing these animals
to promenade the streets, a particular in which Mrs. Cincinnati has
imitated the domestic arrangements of some of her elder sisters, and a
very disgusting one it is.
Our family physician is one Dr. Drake, a man of a good deal of
science, theory, and reputed skill, but a sort of general mark for
the opposition of all the medical cloth of the city. He is a tall,
rectangular, perpendicular sort of a body, as stiff as a poker, and
enunciates his prescriptions very much as though he were delivering
a discourse on the doctrine of election. The other evening he was
detained from visiting Kate, and he sent a very polite, ceremonious
note containing a prescription, with Dr. D.'s compliments to Miss
Beecher, requesting that she would take the inclosed in a little
molasses at nine o'clock precisely.
The house we are at present inhabiting is the most inconvenient,
ill-arranged, good-for-nothing, and altogether to be execrated affair
that ever was put together. It was evidently built without a thought of
a winter season. The kitchen is so disposed that it cannot be reached
from any part of the house without going out into the air. Mother is
actually obliged to put on a bonnet and cloak every time she goes into
it. In the house are two parlors with folding doors between them. The
back parlor has but one window, which opens on a veranda and has its
lower half painted to keep out what little light there is. I need
scarcely add that our landlord is an old bachelor and of course acted
up to the light he had, though he left little enough of it for his
tenants.
* * * * *
During this early Cincinnati life Harriet suffered much from ill-health
accompanied by great mental depression; but in spite of both she
labored diligently with her sister Catherine in establishing their
school. They called it the Western Female Institute, and proposed to
conduct it upon the college plan, with a faculty of instructors. As all
these things are treated at length in letters written by Mrs. Stowe to
her friend, Miss Georgiana May, we cannot do better than turn to them.
In May, 1833, she writes:--
"Bishop Purcell visited our school to-day and expressed himself as
greatly pleased that we had opened such an one here. He spoke of my
poor little geography,[1] and thanked me for the unprejudiced manner
in which I had handled the Catholic question in it. I was of course
flattered that he should have known anything of the book.
"How I wish you could see Walnut Hills. It is about two miles from the
city, and the road to it is as picturesque as you can imagine a road to
be without 'springs that run among the hills.' Every possible variety
of hill and vale of beautiful slope, and undulations of land set off by
velvet richness of turf and broken up by groves and forests of every
outline of foliage, make the scene Arcadian. You might ride over the
same road a dozen times a day untired, for the constant variation of
view caused by ascending and descending hills relieves you from all
tedium. Much of the wooding is beech of a noble growth. The straight,
beautiful shafts of these trees as one looks up the cool green recesses
of the woods seems as though they might form very proper columns for
a Dryad temple. There! Catherine is growling at me for sitting up so
late; so 'adieu to music, moonlight, and you.' I meant to tell you an
abundance of classical things that I have been thinking to-night, but
'woe's me.'
"Since writing the above my whole time has been taken up in the labor
of our new school, or wasted in the fatigue and lassitude following
such labor. To-day is Sunday, and I am staying at home because I think
it is time to take some efficient means to dissipate the illness and
bad feelings of divers kinds that have for some time been growing upon
me. At present there is and can be very little system or regularity
about me. About half of my time I am scarcely alive, and a great part
of the rest the slave and sport of morbid feeling and unreasonable
prejudice. I have everything but good health.
"I still rejoice that this letter will find you in good old
Connecticut--thrice blessed--'oh, had I the wings of a dove' I would be
there too. Give my love to Mary H. I remember well how gently she used
to speak to and smile on that forlorn old daddy that boarded at your
house one summer. It was associating with her that first put into my
head the idea of saying something to people who were not agreeable, and
of saying something when I had nothing to say, as is generally the case
on such occasions."
Again she writes to the same friend: "Your letter, my dear G., I have
just received, and read through three times. Now for my meditations
upon it. What a woman of the world you are grown. How good it would be
for me to be put into a place which so breaks up and precludes thought.
Thought, intense emotional thought, has been my disease. How much good
it might do me to be where I could not but be thoughtless....
"Now, Georgiana, let me copy for your delectation a list of matters
that I have jotted down for consideration at a teachers' meeting to be
held to-morrow night. It runneth as follows. Just hear! 'About quills
and paper on the floor; forming classes; drinking in the entry (cold
water, mind you); giving leave to speak; recess-bell, etc., etc.' 'You
are tired, I see,' says Gilpin, 'so am I,' and I spare you.
"I have just been hearing a class of little girls recite, and telling
them a fairy story which I had to spin out as it went along, beginning
with 'once upon a time there was,' etc., in the good old-fashioned way
of stories.
"Recently I have been reading the life of Madame de Staël and
'Corinne.' I have felt an intense sympathy with many parts of that
book, with many parts of her character. But in America feelings
vehement and absorbing like hers become still more deep, morbid, and
impassioned by the constant habits of self-government which the rigid
forms of our society demand. They are repressed, and they burn inward
till they burn the very soul, leaving only dust and ashes. It seems
to me the intensity with which my mind has thought and felt on every
subject presented to it has had this effect. It has withered and
exhausted it, and though young I have no sympathy with the feelings of
youth. 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."
During the winter of 1833-34 the young school-teacher became so
distressed at her own mental listlessness that she made a vigorous
effort to throw it off. She forced herself to mingle in society, and,
stimulated by the offer of a prize of fifty dollars by Mr. James Hall,
editor of the "Western Monthly," a newly established magazine, for the
best short story, she entered into the competition. Her story, which
was entitled "Uncle Lot," afterwards republished in the "Mayflower,"
was by far the best submitted, and was awarded the prize without
hesitation. This success gave a new direction to her thoughts, gave her
an insight into her own ability, and so encouraged her that from that
time on she devoted most of her leisure moments to writing.
Her literary efforts were further stimulated at this time by the
congenial society of the Semi-Colon Club, a little social circle that
met on alternate weeks at Mr. Samuel Foote's and Dr. Drake's. The name
of the club originated with a roundabout and rather weak bit of logic
set forth by one of its promoters. He said: "You know that in Spanish
Columbus is called 'Colon.' Now he who discovers a new pleasure is
certainly half as great as he who discovers a new continent. Therefore
if Colon discovered a continent, we who have discovered in this club a
new pleasure should at least be entitled to the name of 'Semi-Colons.'"
So Semi-Colons they became and remained for some years.
At some meetings compositions were read, and at others nothing
was read, but the time was passed in a general discussion of some
interesting topic previously announced. Among the members of the club
were Professor Stowe, unsurpassed in Biblical learning; Judge James
Hall, editor of the "Western Monthly;" General Edward King; Mrs.
Peters, afterwards founder of the Philadelphia School of Design; Miss
Catherine Beecher; Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz; E. P. Cranch; Dr. Drake;
S. P. Chase, and many others who afterwards became prominent in their
several walks of life.
In one of her letters to Miss May, Mrs. Stowe describes one of her
methods for entertaining the members of the Semi-Colon as follows:--
"I am wondering as to what I shall do next. I have been writing a
piece to be read next Monday evening at Uncle Sam's _soirée_ (the
Semi-Colon). It is a letter purporting to be from Dr. Johnson. I have
been stilting about in his style so long that it is a relief to me to
come down to the jog of common English. Now I think of it I will just
give you a history of my campaign in this circle.
"My first piece was a letter from Bishop Butler, written in his
outrageous style of parentheses and foggification. My second a
satirical essay on the modern uses of languages. This I shall send
to you, as some of the gentlemen, it seems, took a fancy to it and
requested leave to put it in the 'Western Magazine,' and so it is in
print. It is ascribed to _Catherine_, or I don't know that I should
have let it go. I have no notion of appearing in _propria personæ_.
"The next piece was a satire on certain members who were getting very
much into the way of joking on the worn-out subjects of matrimony and
old maid and old bachelorism. I therefore wrote a set of legislative
enactments purporting to be from the ladies of the society, forbidding
all such allusions in future. It made some sport at the time. I try not
to be personal, and to be courteous, even in satire.
"But I have written a piece this week that is making me some disquiet.
I did not like it that there was so little that was serious and
rational about the reading. So I conceived the design of writing a _set
of letters_, and throwing them in, as being the letters of a friend.
I wrote a letter this week for the first of the set,--easy, not very
sprightly,--describing an imaginary situation, a house in the country,
a gentleman and lady, Mr. and Mrs. Howard, as being pious, literary,
and agreeable. I threw into the letter a number of little particulars
and incidental allusions to give it the air of having been really a
letter. I meant thus to give myself an opportunity for the introduction
of different subjects and the discussion of different characters in
future letters.
"I meant to write on a great number of subjects in future. Cousin
Elisabeth, only, was in the secret; Uncle Samuel and Sarah Elliot were
not to know.
"Yesterday morning I finished my letter, smoked it to make it look
yellow, tore it to make it look old, directed it and scratched out the
direction, postmarked it with red ink, sealed it and broke the seal,
all this to give credibility to the fact of its being a real letter.
Then I inclosed it in an envelope, stating that it was a part of a
_set_ which had incidentally fallen into my hands. This envelope was
written in a scrawny, scrawly, gentleman's hand.
"I put it into the office in the morning, directed to 'Mrs. Samuel E.
Foote,' and then sent word to Sis that it was coming, so that she
might be ready to enact the part.
"Well, the deception took. Uncle Sam examined it and pronounced, _ex
cathedra_, that it must have been a real letter. Mr. Greene (the
gentleman who reads) declared that it must have come from Mrs. Hall,
and elucidated the theory by spelling out the names and dates which
I had erased, which, of course, he accommodated to his own tastes.
But then, what makes me feel uneasy is that Elisabeth, after reading
it, did not seem to be exactly satisfied. She thought it had too much
sentiment, too much particularity of incident,--she did not exactly
know what. She was afraid that it would be criticised unmercifully.
Now Elisabeth has a tact and quickness of perception that I trust
to, and her remarks have made me uneasy enough. I am unused to being
criticised, and don't know how I shall bear it."
In 1833 Mrs. Stowe first had the subject of slavery brought to her
personal notice by taking a trip across the river from Cincinnati into
Kentucky in company with Miss Dutton, one of the associate teachers in
the Western Institute. They visited an estate that afterwards figured
as that of Colonel Shelby in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and here the young
authoress first came into personal contact with the negro slaves of
the South. In speaking, many years afterwards, of this visit, Miss
Dutton said: "Harriet did not seem to notice anything in particular
that happened, but sat much of the time as though abstracted in
thought. When the negroes did funny things and cut up capers, she did
not seem to pay the slightest attention to them. Afterwards, however,
in reading 'Uncle Tom.' I recognized scene after scene of that visit
portrayed with the most minute fidelity, and knew at once where the
material for that portion of the story had been gathered."
At this time, however, Mrs. Stowe was more deeply interested in the
subject of education than in that of slavery, as is shown by the
following extract from one of her letters to Miss May, who was herself
a teacher. She says:--
"We mean to turn over the West by means of _model schools_ in this, its
capital. We mean to have a young lady's school of about fifty or sixty,
a primary school of little girls to the same amount, and then a primary
school for _boys_. We have come to the conclusion that the work of
teaching will never be rightly done till it passes into _female_ hands.
This is especially true with regard to boys. To govern boys by moral
influences requires tact and talent and versatility it requires also
the same division of labor that female education does. But men of tact,
versatility, talent, and piety will not devote their lives to teaching.
They must be ministers and missionaries, and all that, and while there
is such a thrilling call for action in this way, every man who is
merely teaching feels as if he were a Hercules with a distaff, ready
to spring to the first trumpet that calls him away. As for division of
labor, men must have salaries that can support wife and family, and, of
course, a revenue would be required to support a requisite number of
teachers if they could be found.
"Then, if men have more knowledge they have less talent at
communicating it, nor have they the patience, the long-suffering, and
gentleness necessary to superintend the formation of character. We
intend to make these principles understood, and ourselves to set the
example of what females can do in this way. You see that first-rate
talent is necessary for all that we mean to do, especially for the
last, because here we must face down the prejudices of society and we
must have exemplary success to be believed. We want original, planning
minds, and you do not know how few there are among females, and how few
we can command of those that exist."
During the summer of 1834 the young teacher and writer made her first
visit East since leaving New England two years before. Its object
was mainly to be present at the graduation of her favorite brother,
Henry Ward, from Amherst College. The earlier part of this journey
was performed by means of stage to Toledo, and thence by steamer
to Buffalo. A pleasant bit of personal description, and also of
impressions of Niagara, seen for the first time on this journey, are
given in a letter sent back to Cincinnati during its progress. In it
she says of her fellow-travelers:--
"Then there was a portly, rosy, clever Mr. Smith, or Jones, or
something the like; and a New Orleans girl looking like distraction, as
far as dress is concerned, but with the prettiest language and softest
intonations in the world, and one of those faces which, while you say
it isn't handsome, keeps you looking all the time to see what it can
be that is so pretty about it. Then there was Miss B., an independent,
good-natured, do-as-I-please sort of a body, who seemed of perpetual
motion from morning till night. Poor Miss D. said, when we stopped at
night, 'Oh, dear! I suppose Lydia will be fiddling about our room till
morning, and we shall not one of us sleep.' Then, by way of contrast,
there was a Mr. Mitchell, the most gentlemanly, obliging man that ever
changed his seat forty times a day to please a lady. Oh, yes, he could
ride outside,--or, oh, certainly, he could ride inside,--he had no
objection to this, or that, or the other. Indeed, it was difficult to
say what could come amiss to him. He speaks in a soft, quiet manner,
with something of a drawl, using very correct, well-chosen language,
and pronouncing all his words with carefulness; has everything in his
dress and traveling appointments _comme il faut_; and seems to think
there is abundant time for everything that is to be done in this
world, without, as he says, 'any unnecessary excitement.' Before the
party had fully discovered his name he was usually designated as 'the
obliging gentleman,' or 'that gentleman who is so accommodating.' Yet
our friend, withal, is of Irish extraction, and I have seen him roused
to talk with both hands and a dozen words in a breath. He fell into
a little talk about abolition and slavery with our good Mr. Jones, a
man whose mode of reasoning consists in repeating the same sentence at
regular intervals as long as you choose to answer it. This man, who was
finally convinced that negroes were black, used it as an irrefragible
argument to all that could be said, and at last began to deduce from
it that they might just as well be slaves as anything else, and so he
proceeded till all the philanthropy of our friend was roused, and he
sprung up all lively and oratorical and gesticulatory and indignant to
my heart's content. I like to see a quiet man that can be roused."
In the same letter she gives her impressions of Niagara, as follows:--
"I have seen it (Niagara) and yet live. Oh, where is your soul? Never
mind, though. Let me tell, if I can, what is unutterable. Elisabeth,
it is not _like_ anything; it did not look like anything I expected;
it did not look like a waterfall. I did not once think whether it was
high or low; whether it roared or didn't roar; whether it equaled my
expectations or not. My mind whirled off, it seemed to me, in a new,
strange world. It seemed unearthly, like the strange, dim images in the
Revelation. I thought of the great white throne; the rainbow around
it; the throne in sight like unto an emerald; and oh! that beautiful
water rising like moonlight, falling as the soul sinks when it dies,
to rise refined, spiritualized, and pure. That rainbow, breaking out,
trembling, fading, and again coming like a beautiful spirit walking the
waters. Oh, it is lovelier than it is great; it is like the Mind that
made it: great, but so veiled in beauty that we gaze without terror.
I felt as if I could have _gone over_ with the waters; it would be
so beautiful a death; there would be no fear in it. I felt the rock
tremble under me with a sort of joy. I was so maddened that I could
have gone too, if it had gone."
While at the East she was greatly affected by hearing of the death of
her dear friend, Eliza Tyler, the wife of Professor Stowe. This lady
was the daughter of Dr. Bennett Tyler, president of the Theological
Institute of Connecticut, at East Windsor; but twenty-five years of
age at the time of her death, a very beautiful woman gifted with a
wonderful voice. She was also possessed of a well-stored mind and a
personal magnetism that made her one of the most popular members of
the Semi-Colon Club, in the proceedings of which she took an active
interest.
Her death left Professor Stowe a childless widower, and his forlorn
condition greatly excited the sympathy of her who had been his wife's
most intimate friend. It was easy for sympathy to ripen into love,
and after a short engagement Harriet E. Beecher became the wife of
Professor Calvin E. Stowe.
Her last act before the wedding was to write the following note to the
friend of her girlhood, Miss Georgiana May:--
_January 6, 1836._
Well, my dear G., about half an hour more and your old
friend, companion, schoolmate, sister, etc., will cease
to be Hatty Beecher and change to nobody knows who. My
dear, you are engaged, and pledged in a year or two to
encounter a similar fate, and do you wish to know how
you shall feel? Well, my dear, I have been dreading
and dreading the time, and lying awake all last week
wondering how I should live through this overwhelming
crisis, and lo! it has come and I feel _nothing at all_.
The wedding is to be altogether domestic; nobody
present but my own brothers and sisters, and my old
colleague, Mary Dutton; and as there is a sufficiency
of the ministry in our family we have not even to
call in the foreign aid of a minister. Sister Katy is
not here, so she will not witness my departure from
her care and guidance to that of another. None of my
numerous friends and acquaintances who have taken such
a deep interest in making the connection for me even
know the day, and it will be all done and over before
they know anything about it.
Well, it is really a mercy to have this entire
stupidity come over one at such a time. I should be
crazy to feel as I did yesterday, or indeed to feel
anything at all. But I inwardly vowed that my last
feelings and reflections on this subject should be
yours, and as I have not got any, it is just as well to
tell you _that_. Well, here comes Mr. S., so farewell,
and for the last time I subscribe
Your own
H. E. B.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] This geography was begun by Mrs. Stowe during the summer of 1832,
while visiting her brother William at Newport, R. I. It was completed
during the winter of 1833, and published by the firm of Corey, Fairbank
& Webster, of Cincinnati.
CHAPTER IV.
EARLY MARRIED LIFE, 1836-1840.
PROFESSOR STOWE'S INTEREST IN POPULAR EDUCATION.--HIS
DEPARTURE FOR EUROPE.--SLAVERY RIOTS IN
CINCINNATI.--BIRTH OF TWIN DAUGHTERS.--PROFESSOR
STOWE'S RETURN AND VISIT TO COLUMBUS.--DOMESTIC
TRIALS.--AIDING A FUGITIVE SLAVE.--AUTHORSHIP UNDER
DIFFICULTIES.--A BEECHER ROUND ROBIN.
THE letter to her friend Georgiana May, begun half an hour before her
wedding, was not completed until nearly two months after that event.
Taking it from her portfolio, she adds:--
"Three weeks have passed since writing the above, and my husband
and self are now quietly seated by our own fireside, as domestic as
any pair of tame fowl you ever saw; he writing to his mother, and I
to you. Two days after our marriage we took a wedding excursion, so
called, though we would most gladly have been excused this conformity
to ordinary custom had not necessity required Mr. Stowe to visit
Columbus, and I had too much adhesiveness not to go too. Ohio roads
at this season are no joke, I can tell you, though we were, on the
whole, wonderfully taken care of, and our expedition included as many
pleasures as an expedition at this time of the year _ever_ could.
"And now, my dear, perhaps the wonder to you, as to me, is how this
momentous crisis in the life of such a wisp of nerve as myself has
been transacted so quietly. My dear, it is a wonder to myself. I am
tranquil, quiet, and happy. I look _only_ on the present, and leave the
future with Him who has hitherto been so kind to me. 'Take no thought
for the morrow' is my motto, and my comfort is to rest on Him in whose
house there are many mansions provided when these fleeting earthly ones
pass away.
"Dear Georgy, naughty girl that I am, it is a month that I have let
the above lie by, because I got into a strain of emotion in it that I
dreaded to return to. Well, so it shall be no longer. In about five
weeks Mr. Stowe and myself start for New England. He sails the first
of May. I am going with him to Boston, New York, and other places, and
shall stop finally at Hartford, whence, as soon as he is gone, it is my
intention to return westward."
This reference to her husband as about to leave her relates to his
sailing for Europe to purchase books for Lane Seminary, and also as a
commissioner appointed by the State of Ohio to investigate the public
school systems of the old world. He had long been convinced that higher
education was impossible in the West without a higher grade of public
schools, and had in 1833 been one of the founders in Cincinnati of
"The College of Teachers," an institution that existed for ten years,
and exerted a widespread influence. Its objects were to popularize the
common schools, raise the standard of teachers, and create a demand
for education among the people. Professor Stowe was associated in this
movement with many of the leading intellects of Ohio at that time, and
among them were Albert Pickett, Dr. Drake, Smith Grimke, Archbishop
Purcell, President A. H. McGuffey, Dr. Beecher, Lydia Sigourney,
Caroline Lee Hentz, and others. Their influence finally extended to the
state legislature, and it was concluded to authorize Professor Stowe,
when abroad, to investigate and report upon the common school systems
of Europe, especially Prussia.
He sailed from New York for London in the ship Montreal, Captain
Champlin, on June 8, 1836, and carried with him, to be opened only
after he was at sea, a letter from his wife, from which the following
extract is made:--
"Now, my dear, that you are gone where you are out of the reach of my
care, advice, and good management, it is fitting that you should have
something under my hand and seal for your comfort and furtherance in
the new world you are going to. Firstly, I must caution you to set
your face as a flint against the 'cultivation of indigo,' as Elisabeth
calls it, in any way or shape. Keep yourself from it most scrupulously,
and though you are unprovided with that precious and savory treatise
entitled 'Kemper's Consolations,'[2] yet you can exercise yourself to
recall and set in order such parts thereof as would more particularly
suit your case, particularly those portions wherewith you so much
consoled Kate, Aunt Esther, and your unworthy handmaid, while you yet
tarried at Walnut Hills. But seriously, dear one, you must give more
way to hope than to memory. You are going to a new scene now, and one
that I hope will be full of enjoyment to you. I want you to take the
good of it.
"Only think of all you expect to see: the great libraries and
beautiful paintings, fine churches, and, above all, think of seeing
Tholuck, your great Apollo. My dear, I wish I were a man in your place;
if I wouldn't have a grand time!"
During her husband's absence abroad Mrs. Stowe lived quietly in
Cincinnati with her father and brothers. She wrote occasionally short
stories, articles, and essays for publication in the "Western Monthly
Magazine" or the "New York Evangelist," and maintained a constant
correspondence with her husband by means of a daily journal, which was
forwarded to him once a month. She also assisted her brother, Henry
Ward, who had accepted a temporary position as editor of the "Journal,"
a small daily paper published in the city.
At this time the question of slavery was an exciting one in Cincinnati,
and Lane Seminary had become a hotbed of abolition. The anti-slavery
movement among the students was headed by Theodore D. Weld, one
of their number, who had procured funds to complete his education
by lecturing through the South. While thus engaged he had been so
impressed with the evils and horrors of slavery that he had become
a radical abolitionist, and had succeeded in converting several
Southerners to his views of the subject. Among them was Mr. J. G.
Birney of Huntsville, Alabama, who not only liberated his slaves, but
in connection with Dr. Gamaliel Bailey of Cincinnati founded in that
city an anti-slavery paper called "The Philanthropist." This paper
was finally suppressed, and its office wrecked by a mob instigated by
Kentucky slaveholders, and it is of this event that Mrs. Stowe writes
to her husband as follows:--
"Yesterday evening I spent scribbling for Henry's newspaper (the
'Journal') in this wise: 'Birney's printing-press has been mobbed, and
many of the respectable citizens are disposed to wink at the outrage in
consideration of its moving in the line of their prejudices.'
"I wrote a conversational sketch, in which I rather satirized this
inconsistent spirit, and brought out the effects of patronizing _any_
violation of private rights. It was in a light, sketchy style, designed
to draw attention to a long editorial of Henry's in which he considers
the subject fully and seriously. His piece is, I think, a powerful
one; indeed, he does write very strongly. I am quite proud of his
editorials; they are well studied, earnest, and dignified. I think
he will make a first-rate writer. Both our pieces have gone to press
to-day, with Charles's article on music, and we have had not a little
diversion about our _family newspaper_.
"I thought, when I was writing last night, that I was, like a good
wife, defending one of your principles in your absence, and wanted you
to see how manfully I talked about it. Henry has also taken up and
examined the question of the Seminole Indians, and done it very nobly."
Again:--
"The excitement about Birney continues to increase. The keeper of the
Franklin Hotel was assailed by a document subscribed to by many of his
boarders demanding that Birney should be turned out of doors. He chose
to negative the demand, and twelve of his boarders immediately left,
Dr. F. among the number. A meeting has been convoked by means of a
handbill, in which some of the most respectable men of the city are
invited by name to come together and consider the question whether they
will allow Mr. Birney to continue his paper in the city. Mr. Greene
says that, to his utter surprise, many of the most respectable and
influential citizens gave out that they should go.
"He was one of the number they invited, but he told those who came to
him that he would have nothing to do with disorderly public meetings or
mobs in any shape, and that he was entirely opposed to the whole thing.
"I presume they will have a hot meeting, if they have any at all.
"I wish father were at home to preach a sermon to his church, for many
of its members do not frown on these things as they ought."
"Later: The meeting was held, and was headed by Morgan, Neville, Judge
Burke, and I know not who else. Judge Burnet was present and consented
to their acts. The mob madness is certainly upon this city when men of
sense and standing will pass resolutions approving in so many words of
things done contrary to law, as one of the resolutions of this meeting
did. It quoted the demolition of the tea in Boston harbor as being
authority and precedent.
"A large body, perhaps the majority of citizens, disapprove, but I fear
there will not be public disavowal. Even N. Wright but faintly opposes,
and Dr. Fore has been exceedingly violent. Mr. Hammond (editor of the
'Gazette') in a very dignified and judicious manner has condemned the
whole thing, and Henry has opposed, but otherwise the papers have
either been silent or in favor of mobs. We shall see what the result
will be in a few days.
"For my part, I can easily see how such proceedings may make converts
to abolitionism, for already my sympathies are strongly enlisted for
Mr. Birney, and I hope that he will stand his ground and assert his
rights. The office is fire-proof, and inclosed by high walls. I wish he
would man it with armed men and see what can be done. If I were a man
I would go, for one, and take good care of at least one window. Henry
sits opposite me writing a most valiant editorial, and tells me to tell
you he is waxing mighty in battle."
In another letter she writes:--
"I told you in my last that the mob broke into Birney's press, where,
however, the mischief done was but slight. The object appeared to be
principally to terrify. Immediately there followed a general excitement
in which even good men in their panic and prejudice about abolitionism
forgot that mobs were worse evils than these, talked against Birney,
and winked at the outrage; N. Wright and Judge Burnet, for example.
Meanwhile the turbulent spirits went beyond this and talked of
revolution and of righting things without law that could not be righted
by it. At the head of these were Morgan, Neville, Longworth, Joseph
Graham, and Judge Burke. A meeting was convoked at Lower Market Street
to decide whether they would permit the publishing of an abolition
paper, and to this meeting all the most respectable citizens were by
name summoned.
"There were four classes in the city then: Those who meant to go as
revolutionists and support the mob; those who meant to put down
Birney, but rather hoped to do it without a mob; those who felt ashamed
to go, foreseeing the probable consequence, and yet did not decidedly
frown upon it; and those who sternly and decidedly reprehended it.
"The first class was headed by Neville, Longworth, Graham, etc.; the
second class, though of some numbers, was less conspicuous; of the
third, Judge Burnet, Dr. Fore, and N. Wright were specimens; and in
the last such men as Hammond, Mansfield, S. P. Chase,[3] and Chester
were prominent. The meeting in so many words voted a mob, nevertheless
a committee was appointed to wait on Mr. Birney and ascertain what he
proposed to do; and, strange to tell, men as sensible as Uncle John and
Judge Burnet were so short-sighted as to act on that committee.
"All the newspapers in the city, except Hammond's ('Gazette') and
Henry's (the 'Journal'), were either silent or openly 'mobocratic.' As
might have been expected, Birney refused to leave, and that night the
mob tore down his press, scattered the types, dragged the whole to the
river, threw it in, and then came back to demolish the office.
"They then went to the houses of Dr. Bailey, Mr. Donaldson, and Mr.
Birney; but the persons they sought were not at home, having been
aware of what was intended. The mayor was a silent spectator of these
proceedings, and was heard to say, 'Well, lads, you have done well, so
far; go home now before you disgrace yourselves;' but the 'lads' spent
the rest of the night and a greater part of the next day (Sunday) in
pulling down the houses of inoffensive and respectable blacks. The
'Gazette' office was threatened, the 'Journal' office was to go next;
Lane Seminary and the water-works also were mentioned as probable
points to be attacked by the mob.
"By Tuesday morning the city was pretty well alarmed. A regular corps
of volunteers was organized, who for three nights patrolled the streets
with firearms and with legal warrant from the mayor, who by this time
was glad to give it, to put down the mob even by bloodshed.
"For a day or two we did not know but there would actually be war
to the knife, as was threatened by the mob, and we really saw Henry
depart with his pistols with daily alarm, only we were all too full of
patriotism not to have sent every brother we had rather than not have
had the principles of freedom and order defended.
"But here the tide turned. The mob, unsupported by a now frightened
community, slunk into their dens and were still; and then Hammond,
who, during the few days of its prevalence, had made no comments, but
published simply the Sermon on the Mount, the Constitution of Ohio,
and the Declaration of Independence, without any comment, now came
out and gave a simple, concise history of the mob, tracing it to the
market-house meeting, telling the whole history of the meeting, with
the names of those who got it up, throwing on them and on those who
had acted on the committee the whole responsibility of the following
mob. It makes a terrible sensation, but it 'cuts its way,' and all who
took other stand than that of steady opposition from the first are
beginning to feel the reaction of public sentiment, while newspapers
from abroad are pouring in their reprehensions of the disgraceful
conduct of Cincinnati. Another time, I suspect, such men as Judge
Burnet, Mr. Greene, and Uncle John will keep their fingers out of such
a trap, and people will all learn better than to wink at a mob that
happens to please them at the outset, or in any way to give it their
countenance. Mr. Greene and Uncle John were full of wrath against mobs,
and would not go to the meeting, and yet were cajoled into acting on
that committee in the vain hope of getting Birney to go away and thus
preventing the outrage.
"They are justly punished, I think, for what was very irresolute and
foolish conduct, to say the least."
The general tone of her letters at this time would seem to show that,
while Mrs. Stowe was anti-slavery in her sympathies, she was not a
declared abolitionist. This is still further borne out in a letter
written in 1837 from Putnam, Ohio, whither she had gone for a short
visit to her brother William. In it she says:--
"The good people here, you know, are about half abolitionists. A lady
who takes a leading part in the female society in this place yesterday
called and brought Catherine the proceedings of the Female Anti-Slavery
Convention.
"I should think them about as ultra as to measures as anything that has
been attempted, though I am glad to see a better spirit than marks such
proceedings generally.
"To-day I read some in Mr. Birney's 'Philanthropist.' Abolitionism
being the fashion here, it is natural to look at its papers.
"It does seem to me that there needs to be an _intermediate_ society.
If not, as light increases, all the excesses of the abolition party
will not prevent humane and conscientious men from joining it.
"Pray what is there in Cincinnati to satisfy one whose mind is awakened
on this subject? No one can have the system of slavery brought before
him without an irrepressible desire to _do_ something, and what is
there to be done?"
On September 29, 1836, while Professor Stowe was still absent in
Europe, his wife gave birth to twin daughters, Eliza and Isabella, as
she named them; but Eliza Tyler and Harriet Beecher, as her husband
insisted they should be called, when, upon reaching New York, he was
greeted by the joyful news. His trip from London in the ship Gladiator
had been unusually long, even for those days of sailing vessels, and
extended from November 19, 1836, to January 20, 1837.
During the summer of 1837 Mrs. Stowe suffered much from ill health, on
which account, and to relieve her from domestic cares, she was sent to
make a long visit at Putnam with her brother, Rev. William Beecher.
While here she received a letter from her husband, in which he says:--
"We all of course feel proper indignation at the doings of last General
Assembly, and shall treat them with merited contempt. This alliance
between the old school (Presbyterians) and slaveholders will make more
abolitionists than anything that has been done yet."
In December Professor Stowe went to Columbus with the extended
educational report that he had devoted the summer to preparing; and in
writing from there to his wife he says:--
"To-day I have been visiting the governor and legislators. They
received me with the utmost kindness, and are evidently anticipating
much from my report. The governor communicated it to the legislature
to-day, and it is concluded that I read it in Dr. Hodges' church on
two evenings, to-morrow and the day after, before both houses of the
legislature and the citizens. The governor (Vance) will preside at both
meetings. I like him (the governor) much. He is just such a plain,
simple-hearted, sturdy body as old Fritz (Kaiser Frederick), with more
of natural talent than his predecessor in the gubernatorial chair. For
my year's work in this matter I am to receive $500."
On January 14, 1838, Mrs. Stowe's third child, Henry Ellis, was born.
It was about this time that the famous reunion of the Beecher family
described in Lyman Beecher's "Autobiography" occurred. Edward made a
visit to the East, and when he returned he brought Mary (Mrs. Thomas
Perkins) from Hartford with him. William came down from Putnam, Ohio,
and George from Batavia, New York, while Catherine, Harriet, Henry,
Charles, Isabella, Thomas, and James were already at home. It was the
first time they had ever all met together. Mary had never seen James,
and had seen Thomas but once. The old doctor was almost transported
with joy as they all gathered about him, and his cup of happiness was
filled to overflowing when, the next day, which was Sunday, his pulpit
was filled by Edward in the morning, William in the afternoon, and
George in the evening.
Side by side with this charming picture we have another of domestic
life outlined by Mrs. Stowe's own hand. It is contained in the
following letter, written June 21, 1838, to Miss May, at New Haven,
Conn.:--
MY DEAR, DEAR GEORGIANA,--Only think how long it is
since I have written to you, and how changed I am since
then--the mother of three children! Well, if I have
not kept the reckoning of old times, let this last
circumstance prove my apology, for I have been hand,
heart, and head full since I saw you.
Now, to-day, for example, I'll tell you what I had
on my mind from dawn to dewy eve. In the first place
I waked about half after four and thought, "Bless
me, how light it is! I must get out of bed and rap
to wake up Mina, for breakfast must be had at six
o'clock this morning." So out of bed I jump and seize
the tongs and pound, pound, pound over poor Mina's
sleepy head, charitably allowing her about half an
hour to get waked up in,--that being the quantum of
time that it takes me,--or used to. Well, then baby
wakes--quâ, quâ, quâ, so I give him his breakfast,
dozing meanwhile and soliloquizing as follows: "Now I
must not forget to tell Mr. Stowe about the starch and
dried apples"--doze--"ah, um, dear me! why doesn't Mina
get up? I don't hear her,"--doze--"a, um,--I wonder if
Mina has soap enough! I think there were two bars left
on Saturday"--doze again--I wake again. "Dear me, broad
daylight! I must get up and go down and see if Mina is
getting breakfast." Up I jump and up wakes baby. "Now,
little boy, be good and let mother dress, because she
is in a hurry." I get my frock half on and baby by
that time has kicked himself down off his pillow, and
is crying and fisting the bed-clothes in great order. I
stop with one sleeve off and one on to settle matters
with him. Having planted him bolt upright and gone all
up and down the chamber barefoot to get pillows and
blankets to prop him up, I finish putting my frock on
and hurry down to satisfy myself by actual observation
that the breakfast is in progress. Then back I come
into the nursery, where, remembering that it is washing
day and that there is a great deal of work to be done,
I apply myself vigorously to sweeping, dusting, and the
setting to rights so necessary where there are three
little mischiefs always pulling down as fast as one can
put up.
Then there are Miss H---- and Miss E----, concerning
whom Mary will furnish you with all suitable
particulars, who are chattering, hallooing, or singing
at the tops of their voices, as may suit their various
states of mind, while the nurse is getting their
breakfast ready. This meal being cleared away, Mr.
Stowe dispatched to market with various memoranda
of provisions, etc., and the baby being washed and
dressed, I begin to think what next must be done.
I start to cut out some little dresses, have just
calculated the length and got one breadth torn off when
Master Henry makes a doleful lip and falls to crying
with might and main. I catch him up and turning round
see one of his sisters flourishing the things out of
my workbox in fine style. Moving it away and looking
the other side I see the second little mischief seated
by the hearth chewing coals and scraping up ashes with
great apparent relish. Grandmother lays hold upon her
and charitably offers to endeavor to quiet baby while
I go on with my work. I set at it again, pick up a
dozen pieces, measure them once more to see which is
the right one, and proceed to cut out some others, when
I see the twins on the point of quarreling with each
other. Number one pushes number two over. Number two
screams: that frightens the baby and he joins in. I
call number one a naughty girl, take the persecuted one
in my arms, and endeavor to comfort her by trotting to
the old lyric:--
"So ride the gentlefolk,
And so do we, so do we."
Meanwhile number one makes her way to the slop jar and
forthwith proceeds to wash her apron in it. Grandmother
catches her by one shoulder, drags her away, and sets
the jar up out of her reach. By and by the nurse comes
up from her sweeping. I commit the children to her, and
finish cutting out the frocks.
But let this suffice, for of such details as these are
all my days made up. Indeed, my dear, I am but a mere
drudge with few ideas beyond babies and housekeeping.
As for thoughts, reflections, and sentiments, good
lack! good lack!
I suppose I am a dolefully uninteresting person at
present, but I hope I shall grow young again one of
these days, for it seems to me that matters cannot
always stand exactly as they do now.
Well, Georgy, this marriage is--yes, I will speak well
of it, after all; for when I can stop and think long
enough to discriminate my head from my heels, I must
say that I think myself a fortunate woman both in
husband and children. My children I would not change
for all the ease, leisure, and pleasure that I could
have without them. They are money on interest whose
value will be constantly increasing.
In 1839 Mrs. Stowe received into her family as a servant a colored
girl from Kentucky. By the laws of Ohio she was free, having been
brought into the State and left there by her mistress. In spite of
this, Professor Stowe received word, after she had lived with them some
months, that the girl's master was in the city looking for her, and
that if she were not careful she would be seized and conveyed back into
slavery. Finding that this could be accomplished by boldness, perjury,
and the connivance of some unscrupulous justice, Professor Stowe
determined to remove the girl to some place of security where she might
remain until the search for her should be given up. Accordingly he and
his brother-in-law, Henry Ward Beecher, both armed, drove the fugitive,
in a covered wagon, at night, by unfrequented roads, twelve miles back
into the country, and left her in safety with the family of old John
Van Zandt, the fugitive's friend.
It is from this incident of real life and personal experience that Mrs.
Stowe conceived the thrilling episode of the fugitives' escape from Tom
Loker and Marks in "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
An amusing and at the same time most interesting account of her
struggles to accomplish literary work amid her distracting domestic
duties at this time is furnished by the letter of one of her intimate
friends, who writes:--
"It was my good fortune to number Mrs. Stowe among my friends, and
during a visit to her I had an opportunity one day of witnessing the
combined exercise of her literary and domestic genius in a style that
to me was quite amusing.
"'Come Harriet,' said I, as I found her tending one baby and watching
two others just able to walk, 'where is that piece for the "Souvenir"
which I promised the editor I would get from you and send on next week?
You have only this one day left to finish it, and have it I must.'
"'And how will you get it, friend of mine?' said Harriet. 'You will
at least have to wait till I get house-cleaning over and baby's teeth
through.'
"'As to house-cleaning, you can defer it one day longer; and as to
baby's teeth, there is to be no end to them, as I can see. No, no;
to-day that story must be ended. There Frederick has been sitting by
Ellen and saying all those pretty things for more than a month now, and
she has been turning and blushing till I am sure it is time to go to
her relief. Come, it would not take you three hours at the rate you can
write to finish the courtship, marriage, catastrophe, éclaircissement,
and all; and this three hours' labor of your brains will earn enough to
pay for all the sewing your fingers could do for a year to come. Two
dollars a page, my dear, and you can write a page in fifteen minutes!
Come, then, my lady housekeeper, economy is a cardinal virtue; consider
the economy of the thing.'
"'But, my dear, here is a baby in my arms and two little pussies by
my side, and there is a great baking down in the kitchen, and there
is a "new girl" for "help," besides preparations to be made for
house-cleaning next week. It is really out of the question, you see.'
"'I see no such thing. I do not know what genius is given for, if it
is not to help a woman out of a scrape. Come, set your wits to work,
let me have my way, and you shall have all the work done and finish the
story too.'
"'Well, but kitchen affairs?'
"'We can manage them too. You know you can write anywhere and anyhow.
Just take your seat at the kitchen table with your writing weapons, and
while you superintend Mina fill up the odd snatches of time with the
labors of your pen.'
"I carried my point. In ten minutes she was seated; a table with flour,
rolling-pin, ginger, and lard on one side, a dresser with eggs, pork,
and beans and various cooking utensils on the other, near her an oven
heating, and beside her a dark-skinned nymph, waiting orders.
"'Here, Harriet,' said I, 'you can write on this atlas in your lap; no
matter how the writing looks, I will copy it.'
"'Well, well,' said she, with a resigned sort of amused look. 'Mina,
you may do what I told you, while I write a few minutes, till it is
time to mould up the bread. Where is the inkstand?'
"'Here it is, close by, on the top of the tea-kettle,' said I.
"At this Mina giggled, and we both laughed to see her merriment at our
literary proceedings.
"I began to overhaul the portfolio to find the right sheet.
"'Here it is,' said I. 'Here is Frederick sitting by Ellen, glancing at
her brilliant face, and saying something about "guardian angel," and
all that--you remember?'
"'Yes, yes,' said she, falling into a muse, as she attempted to recover
the thread of her story.
"'Ma'am, shall I put the pork on the top of the beans?' asked Mina.
"'Come, come,' said Harriet, laughing. 'You see how it is. Mina is a
new hand and cannot do anything without me to direct her. We must give
up the writing for to-day.'
"'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, pour 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,' said she, 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. Meanwhile dictate and I will write.'
"Never was there a more docile literary lady than my friend. 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 the 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."
The widely scattered members of the Beecher family had a fashion of
communicating with each other by means of circular letters. These,
begun on great sheets of paper, at either end of the line, were passed
along from one to another, each one adding his or her budget of news
to the general stock. When the filled sheet reached the last person
for whom it was intended, it was finally remailed to its point of
departure. Except in the cases of Mrs. Stowe and Mrs. Perkins, the
simple address "Rev. Mr. Beecher" was sufficient to insure its safe
delivery in any town to which it was sent.
One of these great, closely-written sheets, bearing in faded ink the
names of all the Beechers, lies outspread before us as we write. It
is postmarked Hartford, Conn., Batavia, N. Y., Chillicothe, Ohio,
Zanesville, Ohio, Walnut Hills, Ohio, Indianapolis, Ind., Jacksonville,
Ill., and New Orleans, La. In it Mrs. Stowe occupies her allotted space
with--
WALNUT HILLS, _April 27, 1839._
DEAR FRIENDS,--I am going to Hartford myself, and
therefore shall not write, but hurry along the
preparations for my forward journey. Belle, father says
you may go to the White Mountains with Mr. Stowe and me
this summer. George, we may look in on you coming back.
Good-by.
Affectionately to all, H. E. STOWE.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] A ridiculous book from which Mr. Stowe derived endless amusement.
[3] Salmon P. Chase.
CHAPTER V.
POVERTY AND SICKNESS, 1840-1850.
FAMINE IN CINCINNATI.--SUMMER AT THE EAST.--PLANS
FOR LITERARY WORK.--EXPERIENCE ON A RAILROAD.--DEATH
OF HER BROTHER GEORGE.--SICKNESS AND DESPAIR.--A
JOURNEY IN SEARCH OF HEALTH.--GOES TO BRATTLEBORO'
WATERCURE.--TROUBLES AT LANE SEMINARY.--CHOLERA IN
CINCINNATI.--DEATH OF YOUNGEST CHILD.--DETERMINED TO
LEAVE THE WEST.
ON January 7, 1839, Professor Stowe wrote to his mother in Natick,
Mass.: "You left here, I believe, in the right time, for as there has
been no navigation on the Ohio River for a year, we are almost in a
state of famine as to many of the necessities of life. For example,
salt (coarse) has sold in Cincinnati this winter for three dollars a
bushel; rice eighteen cents a pound; coffee fifty cents a pound; white
sugar the same; brown sugar twenty cents; molasses a dollar a gallon;
potatoes a dollar a bushel. We do without such things mostly; as there
is yet plenty of bread and bacon (flour six and seven dollars a barrel,
and good pork from six to eight cents a pound) we get along very
comfortably.
"Our new house is pretty much as it was, but they say it will be
finished in July. I expect to visit you next summer, as I shall deliver
the Phi Beta Kappa oration at Dartmouth College; but whether wife and
children come with me or not is not yet decided."
Mrs. Stowe came on to the East with her husband and children during
the following summer, and before her return made a trip through the
White Mountains.
In May, 1840, her second son was born and named Frederick William,
after the sturdy Prussian king, for whom her husband cherished an
unbounded admiration.
Mrs. Stowe has said somewhere: "So we go, dear reader, so long as we
have a body and a soul. For worlds must mingle,--the great and the
little, the solemn and the trivial, wreathing in and out like the
grotesque carvings on a gothic shrine; only did we know it rightly,
nothing is trivial, since the human soul, with its awful shadow, makes
all things sacred." So in writing a biography it is impossible for us
to tell what did and what did not powerfully influence the character.
It is safer simply to tell the unvarnished truth. The lily builds up
its texture of delicate beauty from mould and decay. So how do we know
from what humble material a soul grows in strength and beauty!
In December, 1840, writing to Miss May, Mrs. Stowe says:--
"For a year I have held the pen only to write an occasional business
letter such as could not be neglected. This was primarily owing to a
severe neuralgic complaint that settled in my eyes, and for two months
not only made it impossible for me to use them in writing, but to fix
them with attention on anything. I could not even bear the least light
of day in my room. Then my dear little Frederick was born, and for two
months more I was confined to my bed. Besides all this, we have had an
unusual amount of sickness in our family....
"For all that my history of the past year records so many troubles, I
cannot on the whole regard it as a very troublous one. I have had so
many counterbalancing mercies that I must regard myself as a person
greatly blessed. It is true that about six months out of the twelve I
have been laid up with sickness, but then I have had every comfort and
the kindest of nurses in my faithful Anna. My children have thriven,
and on the whole 'come to more,' as the Yankees say, than the care of
them. Thus you see my troubles have been but enough to keep me from
loving earth too well."
In the spring of 1842 Mrs. Stowe again visited Hartford, taking her
six-year-old daughter Hatty with her. In writing from there to her
husband she confides some of her literary plans and aspirations to him,
and he answers:--
"My dear, you must be a literary woman. It is so written in the book
of fate. Make all your calculations accordingly. Get a good stock of
health and brush up your mind. Drop the E. out of your name. It only
incumbers it and interferes with the flow and euphony. Write yourself
fully and always Harriet Beecher Stowe, which is a name euphonious,
flowing, and full of meaning. Then my word for it, your husband will
lift up his head in the gate, and your children will rise up and call
you blessed.
"Our humble dwelling has to-day received a distinguished honor of which
I must give you an account. It was a visit from his excellency the
Baron de Roenne, ambassador of his majesty the King of Prussia to the
United States. He was pleased to assure me of the great satisfaction
my report on Prussian schools had afforded the king and members of
his court, with much more to the same effect. Of course having a real
live lord to exhibit, I was anxious for some one to exhibit him to; but
neither Aunt Esther nor Anna dared venture near the study, though they
both contrived to get a peep at his lordship from the little chamber
window as he was leaving.
"And now, my dear wife, I want you to come home as quick as you can.
The fact is 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 letter Mrs. Stowe writes from Hartford:--
"I have seen Johnson of the 'Evangelist.' He is very liberally
disposed, and I may safely reckon on being paid for all I do there. Who
is that Hale, Jr., that sent me the 'Boston Miscellany,' and will he
keep his word with me? His offers are very liberal,--twenty dollars for
three pages, not very close print. Is he to be depended on? If so, it
is the best offer I have received yet. I shall get something from the
Harpers some time this winter or spring. Robertson, the publisher here,
says the book ('The Mayflower') will sell, and though the terms they
offer me are very low, that I shall make something on it. For a second
volume I shall be able to make better terms. On the whole, my dear, if
I choose to be a literary lady, I have, I think, as good a chance of
making profit by it as any one I know of. But with all this, I have my
doubts whether I shall be able to do so.
"Our children are just coming to the age when everything depends on my
efforts. They are delicate in health, and nervous and excitable, and
need a mother's whole attention. Can I lawfully divide my attention by
literary efforts?
"There is one thing I must suggest. 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. Whipple's room. I can put the stove in it. I have bought a
cheap carpet for it, and I have furniture enough at home to furnish it
comfortably, 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. I could not there, for there was all the setting
of tables, and clearing up of tables, and dressing and washing of
children, and everything else going on, and the constant falling of
soot and coal dust on everything in the room was a constant annoyance
to me, and I never felt comfortable there though I tried hard. Then if
I came into the parlor where you were I felt as if I were interrupting
you, and you know you sometimes thought so too.
"Now this winter let the cooking-stove be put into that room, and let
the pipe run up through the floor into the room above. We can eat by
our cooking-stove, and the children can be washed and dressed and keep
their playthings in the room above, and play there when we don't want
them below. You can study by the parlor fire, and I and my plants,
etc., will take the other room. I shall keep my work and all my things
there and feel settled and quiet. I intend to have a regular part of
each day devoted to the children, and then I shall take them in there."
In his reply to this letter Professor Stowe says:--
"The little magazine ('The Souvenir') goes ahead finely. Fisher sent
down to Fulton the other day and got sixty subscribers. He will make
the June number as handsome as possible, as a specimen number for the
students, several of whom will take agencies for it during the coming
vacation. You have it in your power by means of this little magazine
to form the mind of the West for the coming generation. It is just as
I told you in my last letter. God has written it in his book that you
must be a literary woman, and who are we that we should contend against
God? You must therefore make all your calculations to spend the rest of
your life with your pen.
"If you only could come home to-day how happy should I be. I am daily
finding out more and more (what I knew very well before) that you are
the most intelligent and agreeable woman in the whole circle of my
acquaintance."
That Professor Stowe's devoted admiration for his wife was
reciprocated, and that a most perfect sympathy of feeling existed
between the husband and wife, is shown by a line in one of Mrs.
Stowe's letters from Hartford in which she says: "I was telling
Belle yesterday that I did not know till I came away how much I was
dependent upon you for information. There are a thousand favorite
subjects on which I could talk with you better than with any one else.
If you were not already my dearly loved husband I should certainly fall
in love with you."
In this same letter she writes of herself:--
"One thing more in regard to myself. The absence and wandering of mind
and forgetfulness that so often vexes you is a physical infirmity
with me. It is the failing of a mind not calculated to endure a great
pressure of care, and so much do I feel the pressure I am under,
so much is my mind often darkened and troubled by care, that life
seriously considered holds out few allurements,--only my children.
"In returning to my family, from whom I have been so long separated,
I am impressed with a new and solemn feeling of responsibility. It
appears to me that I am not probably destined for long life; at all
events, the feeling is strongly impressed upon my mind that a work is
put into my hands which I must be earnest to finish shortly. It is
nothing great or brilliant in the world's eye; it lies in one small
family circle, of which I am called to be the central point."
On her way home from this Eastern visit Mrs. Stowe traveled for the
first time by rail, and of this novel experience she writes to Miss
Georgiana May:--
BATAVIA, _August 29, 1842._
Here I am at Brother William's, and our passage along
this railroad reminds me of the verse of the psalm:--
"Tho' lions roar and tempests blow,
And rocks and dangers fill the way."
Such confusion of tongues, such shouting and swearing,
such want of all sort of system and decency in
arrangements, I never desire to see again. I was
literally almost trodden down and torn to pieces in
the Rochester depot when I went to help my poor,
near-sighted spouse in sorting out the baggage. You
see there was an accident which happened to the cars
leaving Rochester that morning, which kept us two
hours and a half at the passing place this side of
Auburn, waiting for them to come up and go by us.
The consequence was that we got into this Rochester
depot aforesaid after dark, and the steamboat, the
canal-boat, and the Western train of cars had all been
kept waiting three hours beyond their usual time,
and they all broke loose upon us the moment we put
our heads out of the cars, and such a jerking, and
elbowing, and scuffling, and swearing, and protesting,
and scolding you never heard, while the great
locomotive sailed up and down in the midst thereof,
spitting fire and smoke like some great fiend monster
diverting himself with our commotions. I do think
these steam concerns border a little too much on the
supernatural to be agreeable, especially when you are
shut up in a great dark depot after sundown.
Well, after all, we had to ride till twelve o'clock at
night to get to Batavia, and I've been sick abed, so to
speak, ever since.
The winter of 1842 was one of peculiar trial to the family at Walnut
Hills; as Mrs. Stowe writes, "It was a season of sickness and gloom."
Typhoid fever raged among the students of the seminary, and the house
of the president was converted into a hospital, while the members of
his family were obliged to devote themselves to nursing the sick and
dying.
July 6, 1843, a few weeks before the birth of her third daughter,
Georgiana May, a most terrible and overwhelming sorrow came on Mrs.
Stowe, in common with all the family, in the sudden death of her
brother, the Rev. George Beecher.
He was a young man of unusual talent and ability, and much loved by his
church and congregation. The circumstances of his death are related
in a letter written by Mrs. Stowe, and are as follows: "Noticing the
birds destroying his fruit and injuring his plants, he went for a
double-barreled gun, which he scarcely ever had used, out of regard to
the timidity and anxiety of his wife in reference to it. Shortly after
he left the house, one of the elders of his church in passing saw him
discharge one barrel at the birds. Soon after he heard the fatal report
and saw the smoke, but the trees shut out the rest from sight.... In
about half an hour after, the family assembled at breakfast, and the
servant was sent out to call him.... In a few minutes she returned,
exclaiming, 'Oh, Mr. Beecher is dead! Mr. Beecher is dead!'... In a
short time a visitor in the family, assisted by a passing laborer,
raised him up and bore him to the house. His face was pale and but
slightly marred, his eyes were closed, and over his countenance rested
the sweet expression of peaceful slumber.... Then followed the hurried
preparations for the funeral and journey, until three o'clock, when,
all arrangements being made, he was borne from his newly finished
house, through his blooming garden, to the new church, planned and
just completed under his directing eye.... The sermon and the prayers
were finished, the choir he himself had trained sung their parting
hymn, and at about five the funeral train started for a journey of over
seventy miles. That night will stand alone in the memories of those who
witnessed its scenes!
"At ten in the evening heavy clouds gathered lowering behind, and
finally rose so as nearly to cover the hemisphere, sending forth
mutterings of thunder and constant flashes of lightning.
"The excessive heat of the weather, the darkness of the night, the
solitary road, the flaring of the lamps and lanterns, the flashes of
the lightning, the roll of approaching thunder, the fear of being
overtaken in an unfrequented place and the lights extinguished by the
rain, the sad events of the day, the cries of the infant boy sick with
the heat and bewailing the father who ever before had soothed his
griefs, all combined to awaken the deepest emotions of the sorrowful,
the awful, and the sublime....
"And so it is at last; there must come a time when all that the most
heart-broken, idolizing love can give us is a coffin and a grave! All
that could be done for our brother, with all his means and all the
affection of his people and friends, was just this, no more! After all,
the deepest and most powerful argument for the religion of Christ is
its power in times like this. Take from us Christ and what He taught,
and what have we here? What confusion, what agony, what dismay, what
wreck and waste! But give Him to us, even the most stricken heart can
rise under the blow; yea, even triumph!
"'Thy brother shall rise again,' said Jesus; and to us who weep
He speaks: 'Rejoice, inasmuch as ye are made partakers of Christ's
sufferings, that when his glory shall be revealed, ye also may be glad
with exceeding joy!'"
The advent of Mrs. Stowe's third daughter was followed by a protracted
illness and a struggle with great poverty, of which Mrs. Stowe writes
in October, 1843:--
"Our straits for money this year are unparalleled even in our annals.
Even our bright and cheery neighbor Allen begins to look blue, and
says $600 is the very most we can hope to collect of our salary,
once $1,200. We have a flock of entirely destitute young men in the
seminary, as poor in money as they are rich in mental and spiritual
resources. They promise to be as fine a band as those we have just sent
off. We have two from Iowa and Wisconsin who were actually crowded from
secular pursuits into the ministry by the wants of the people about
them. Revivals began, and the people came to them saying, 'We have no
minister, and you must preach to us, for you know more than we do.'"
In the spring of 1844 Professor Stowe visited the East to arouse
an interest in the struggling seminary and raise funds for its
maintenance. While he was there he received the following letter from
Mrs. Stowe:--
"I am already half sick with confinement to the house and overwork.
If I should sew every day for a month to come I should not be able to
accomplish a half of what is to be done, and should be only more unfit
for my other duties."
This struggle against ill-health and poverty was continued through
that year and well into the next, when, during her husband's absence to
attend a ministerial convention at Detroit, Mrs. Stowe writes to him:--
_June 16, 1845._
MY DEAR HUSBAND,--It is a dark, sloppy, rainy, muddy,
disagreeable day, and I have been working hard (for
me) 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 too curiously into minutiæ in warm, damp
weather, especially 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 meat, 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.
Your letter, which was neither sour nor mouldy, formed
a very agreeable contrast to all these things; the
more so for being unexpected. I am much obliged to
you for it. As to my health, it gives me very little
solicitude, although I am bad enough and daily growing
worse. I feel no life, no energy, no appetite, or
rather a growing distaste for food; in fact, I am
becoming quite ethereal. Upon reflection I perceive
that it pleases my Father to keep me in the fire,
for my whole situation is excessively harassing and
painful. I suffer with sensible distress in the brain,
as I have done more or less since my sickness last
winter, a distress which some days takes from me all
power of planning or executing anything; and you know
that, except this poor head, my unfortunate household
has no mainspring, for nobody feels any kind of
responsibility to do a thing in time, place, or manner,
except as I oversee it.
Georgiana is so excessively weak, nervous, cross, and
fretful, night and day, that she takes all Anna's
strength and time with her; and then the children are,
like other little sons and daughters of Adam, full of
all kinds of absurdity and folly.
When the brain gives out, as mine often does, and one
cannot think or remember anything, then what is to be
done? All common fatigue, sickness, and exhaustion is
nothing to this distress. Yet do I rejoice in my God
and know in whom I believe, and only pray that the
fire may consume the dross; as to the gold, that is
imperishable. No real evil can happen 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 He knows that though flesh and heart fail, I am
all the while desiring and trying for his will alone.
As to a journey, I need not ask a physician to see that
it is needful to me as far as health is concerned, that
is to say, all human appearances are that way, but I
feel no particular choice about it. If God wills I
go. He can easily find means. 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.
That the necessary funds were provided is evident from the fact that
the journey was undertaken and the invalid spent the summer of 1845 in
Hartford, in Natick, and in Boston. She was not, however, permanently
benefited by the change, and in the following spring it was deemed
necessary to take more radical measures to arrest the progress of her
increasing debility. After many consultations and much correspondence
it was finally decided that she should go to Dr. Wesselhoeft's
watercure establishment at Brattleboro', Vt.
At this time, under date of March, 1846, she writes:
"For all I have had trouble I can think of nothing but the greatness
and richness of God's mercy to me in giving me such friends, and in
always caring for us in every strait. There has been no day this winter
when I have not had abundant reason to see this. Some friend has always
stepped in to cheer and help, so that I have wanted for nothing. My
husband has developed wonderfully as house-father and nurse. You would
laugh to see him in his spectacles gravely marching the little troop in
their nightgowns up to bed, tagging after them, as he says, like an old
hen after a flock of ducks. The money for my journey has been sent in
from an unknown hand in a wonderful manner. All this shows the care of
our Father, and encourages me to rejoice and to hope in Him."
A few days after her departure Professor Stowe wrote to his wife:--
"I was greatly comforted by your brief letter from Pittsburgh. When
I returned from the steamer the morning you left I found in the
post-office a letter from Mrs. G. W. Bull of New York, inclosing $50 on
account of the sickness in my family. There was another inclosing $50
more from a Mrs. Devereaux of Raleigh, N. C., besides some smaller sums
from others. My heart went out to God in aspiration and gratitude.
None of the donors, so far as I know, have I ever seen or heard of
before.
"Henry and I have been living in a Robinson Crusoe and man Friday sort
of style, greatly to our satisfaction, ever since you went away."
Mrs. Stowe was accompanied to Brattleboro' by her sisters, Catherine
and Mary, who were also suffering from troubles that they felt might be
relieved by hydropathic treatment.
From May, 1846, until March, 1847, she remained at Brattleboro' without
seeing her husband or children. During these weary months her happiest
days were those upon which she received letters from home.
The following extracts, taken from letters written by her during this
period, are of value, as revealing what it is possible to know of her
habits of thought and mode of life at this time.
BRATTLEBORO', _September, 1846._
MY DEAR HUSBAND,--I have been thinking of all your
trials, and I really pity you in having such a wife. I
feel as if I had been only a hindrance to you instead
of a help, and most earnestly and daily do I pray to
God to restore my health that I may do something for
you and my family. I think if I were only at home I
could at least sweep and dust, and wash potatoes, and
cook a little, and talk some to my children, and should
be doing something for my family. But the hope of
getting better buoys me up. I go through these tedious
and wearisome baths and bear that terrible douche
thinking of my children. They never will know how I
love them....
There is great truth and good sense in your analysis
of the cause of our past failures. We have now come
to a sort of crisis. If you and I do as we should for
_five years_ to come the character of our three oldest
children will be established. This is why I am willing
to spend so much time and make such efforts to have
health. Oh, that God would give me these five years in
full possession of mind and body, that I may train my
children as they should be trained. I am fully aware
of the importance of system and order in a family. I
know that nothing can be done without it; it is the
keystone, the _sine quâ non_, and in regard to my
children I place it next to piety. At the same time it
is true that both Anna[4] and I labor under serious
natural disadvantages on this subject. It is not all
that is necessary to feel the importance of order and
system, but it requires a particular kind of talent to
carry it through a family. Very much the same kind of
talent, as Uncle Samuel said, which is necessary to
make a good prime minister....
I think you might make an excellent sermon to
Christians on the care of health, in consideration
of the various infirmities and impediments to the
developing the results of religion, that result from
bodily ill health, and I wish you would make one that
your own mind may be more vividly impressed with it.
The world is too much in a hurry. Ministers think there
is no way to serve Christ but to overdraw on their
physical capital for four or five years for Christ and
then have nothing to give, but become a mere burden on
his hands for the next five....
_November 18._ "The daily course I go through
presupposes a degree of vigor beyond anything I ever
had before. For this week, I have gone before breakfast
to the wave-bath and let all the waves and billows roll
over me till every limb ached with cold and my hands
would scarcely have feeling enough to dress me. After
that I have walked till I was warm, and come home to
breakfast with such an appetite! Brown bread and milk
are luxuries indeed, and the only fear is that I may
eat too much. At eleven comes my douche, to which I
have walked in a driving rain for the last two days,
and after it walked in the rain again till I was warm.
(The umbrella you gave me at Natick answers finely, as
well as if it were a silk one.) After dinner I roll
ninepins or walk till four, then sitz-bath, and another
walk till six.
"I am anxious for your health; do be persuaded to
try a long walk before breakfast. You don't know how
much good it will do you. Don't sit in your hot study
without any ventilation, a stove burning up all the
vitality of the air and weakening your nerves, and
above all, do _amuse_ yourself. Go to Dr. Mussey's
and spend an evening, and to father's and Professor
Allen's. When you feel worried go off somewhere and
forget and throw it off. I should really rejoice to
hear that you and father and mother, with Professor
and Mrs. Allen, Mrs. K., and a few others of the same
calibre would agree to meet together for dancing
cotillons. It would do you all good, and if you took
Mr. K.'s wife and poor Miss Much-Afraid, her daughter,
into the alliance it would do them good. Bless me!
what a profane set everybody would think you were,
and yet you are the people of all the world most
solemnly in need of it. I wish you could be with me in
Brattleboro' and coast down hill on a sled, go sliding
and snowballing by moonlight! I would snowball every
bit of the _hypo_ out of you! Now, my dear, if you are
going to get sick, I am going to come home. There is no
use in my trying to get well if you, in the mean time,
are going to run yourself down."
_January, 1847._
My dear Soul,--I received your most melancholy
effusion, and I am sorry to find it's just so. I
entirely agree and sympathize. Why didn't you engage
the two tombstones--one for you and one for me?
[Illustration: Ding, dong! Dead and gone!]
I shall have to copy for your edification a "poem
on tombstones" which Kate put at Christmas into the
st
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