re
a 57
534

 

 

CORNELL
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME
OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT
FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY

HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE

 
iin
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
THE STORY OF HER LIFE
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

THE STORY OF HER LIFE

BY HER SON
CHARLES EDWARD STOWE

AND HER GRANDSON
LYMAN BEECHER STOWE

WITH PORTRAITS AND
OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS

 

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
Che Viversive Prese Cambridge
1911

¥,
COPYRIGHT, I9I1, BY CHARLES EDWARD STOWE

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published May 1911

A.2536\3
PREFACE

Tus life of Harriet Beecher Stowe is not a
biography in the ordinary sense. It is rather the
story of a real character; telling, not so much
what she did as what she was, and how she be-
came what she was.

Each of the ten chapters is meant to be com-
plete in itself, and to tell how the child grew, how
she became a teacher and writer, a wife and mother ;
and, as the author of “ Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” rose
from obscurity to fame. Then, we see her in the
storm and stress of a war that she had done much
to bring on; in her Southern home; as a delineator
of New England life and character, and, finally,
as she waits the muffled oar beside the silent sea
and gently drifts away with the ebbing tide. She
herself is ever at the centre, and everything else is
subordinated to her and viewed through her con-
sciousness, and we look at the facts of her life as
they were mirrored there. What her critics in the
past thought of her, or what they think of her in
the present, or may think of her in the future, is
not a matter that concerns us.
vi PREFACE

All that interests us is to know and to tell how
the experiences of her life appeared to her, and
how she appeared to herself. We are not so bold
as to assume that our attempt has been entirely
successful, but we are confident that the aim
was well worth the effort.

We wish to express our obligation to Harper &
Brothers for generously permitting us to utilize
material contained in the “ Autobiography and
Correspondence of Lyman Beecher,” and to Mrs.
James T. Fields for her permission to use mate-

rial to be found only in her invaluable “Life and
Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe.”
Cuartes Epwarp Stowe.
Lyman BEECHER STOWE.
New Yorks, March 3, 1911.
CONTENTS

I. How rat Comp Grew. . . -« « «+ Lt
II. ON THE THRESHOLD . . «6 hel et«SB
III. Teacher anD WRITER . .« «© - . 6
IV. Wire AND MoTHER . . - © «© «+ 95
V. How “Uncie Tom’s Canin” was Burt... 124
VI. From Osscuriry TO Fame. we ots - 158
VII. THRoveH Smoke or BatTltE . « 3») eSti «186
VIII. Lire iw rae Sours. ow . . 217

IX. Deureator or New Encuanp Lire anp CHAR-
ACTER ‘ 3 jc . - 1 é . 242

X. Tue Essine Twr . = a . é . . 274.

InpEx : . ; ‘ : . : ‘ : - 803
ILLUSTRATIONS

Harriet BEECHER STowE. Photogravure. .  . Frontispiece
From a photograph taken in 1852.

Mrs. Stowe’s Brrtnpiace, Lironrmip, Conn... . . 6
From a drawing by Charles Copeland.

Carvin Ex.is StowE ce @ © & » « w «HS
- After a photograph taken in 1882.

Mrs. Stowe’s Home, Brunswick, Marne, WHERE “ UNCLE
Tom’s CABIN” WAS WRITTEN. . . . . .~ . 130

FacsimiteE oF Manuscript pace or “Uncie Tom’s
CapIn? oo. 2 os #@ #8 w «© «© w» ww « « 160

Mrs. Stowr, Henry WARD BEECHER, AND THEIR FATHER,
Dr. Lyman BEECHER. . . «© ss «© « «188

Tae Stowe Home at ANDOVER. . . . | -~ » 206
From a painting in 1860, by F. Rondel.

Harriet BeecHER STOWE . . «© «© © « « .« 216
From a photograph taken in 1862.
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
(THE STORY OF HER LIFE

CHAPTER I
HOW THE CHILD GREW

Most of us have some recollections of early
childhood which stand out in our minds as vividly
as the most important events of later life. Harriet
Beecher’s earliest recollections were of her mother,
who died September 25, 1816, when Harriet was
five years old. She says of her mother, in describ-
ing the first of these incidents, “ Mother was an en-
thusiastic horticulturist in all small ways that her
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 ob-
scure corner of the nursery one day when she was
gone out, and being strongly seized with the idea
that they were good to eat, and 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 some-
2 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

what disappointed at the odd sweetish taste, and
thinking that onions were not as nice as I had
supposed.

“Then mother’s serene face appeared at the
nursery door, and we all ran towards her and
began to tell our discovery and achievement, — we
had found this 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, mamma would have
had in the garden next summer 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.”

This was one of the two incidents which, as she
says, “twinkle like rays through the darkness.”
The other 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.’”
HOW THE CHILD GREW 3

She goes on to say, “Then I havea recollection
of her reading to the children, one evening, Miss
Edgeworth’s ‘ Frank,’ which had just come out,
Ibelieve, and was exciting a great deal of interest
in the educational circles of Litchfield. After that
I remember a time when every one said she was
sick. . . . I used to be permitted once a day to
go into her room, where she lay bolstered up in
bed. I have a vision of a very fair face with a
bright red spot on each cheek, and a quiet smile as
she offered me a spoonful of her gruel; of our
dreaming one night, we little ones, that mamma
had got well, and waking in loud transports of
joy, and being hushed down by some one coming
into the room. Our dream was indeed a true one.
She was forever well; but they told us she was
dead, and took us in to see something that seemed
so cold and so unlike anything we had ever seen
or known of her.” —

Then came the funeral, which in those stern
days had none of the soothing accessories of
our gentler times. We are told of Harriet’s little
baby brother, Henry Ward, that after the funeral
he was seen by his sister Catherine digging with
great energy under her window, the bright sunlight
shining through the long curls that hung down on
4 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

either side of his little flushed face. When she
asked what he was doing, he replied, “I’m doing
down to find mamma!”

“Although mother’s bodily presence disappeared
from our circle,” says Mrs. Stowe, “I think that
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 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 Augus-
tine St. Clair describes his mother’s influence is a
simple reproduction of this mother’s influence as
it has always been in her family.” Such a woman
was Roxana Foote, Doctor Lyman Beecher’s first
wife and the mother of eight of Doctor Beecher’s
eleven children.

The scenery of Litchfield, Connecticut, where
Harriet Beecher was born June 14, 1811, had a
deep and lasting effect upon the moulding of her
character. Her lifelong love of nature was early
cultivated by the rare beauty of Litchfield’s hills
and woods and streams. Of these she says: —

“My earliest recollections of Litchfield are those
HOW THE CHILD GREW 5

of its beautiful scenery, which impressed and
formed my mind long before I had words to give
names to my emotions, or could analyze my men-
tal processes. To the west of us rose a smooth-
bosomed hill, called Prospect Hill; and many a
pensive, wondering hour have I sat at our play-
room window, watching the glory of the wonder-
ful sunsets that used to burn themselves out.amid
voluminous wreathings or castellated turrets of
clouds proper to a mountainous region.

“ On the east of us lay another upland, called
Chestnut Hills, whose sides were wooded with a
rich growth of forest trees, whose change of tint
and verdure, from the first misty tints of spring
green through the deepening hues of summer
into the rainbow glories of autumn, was a subject
of constant remark and of pensive contemplation
to us children. We heard them spoken of by older
people and pointed out to visitors, and came to
take pride in them as a sort of birthright.”

The house where Harriet was born was origi-
nally a square building with a hipped roof, to which
before her birth her father had built an addition
known as “the new part.” In the “ Autobiography
and Correspondence of Lyman Beecher,” it is de-
scribed in part as follows: —
6 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

“The ground floor of the new part was occu-
pied by a large parlor, in which memory recalls
ministers’ meetings with clouds of tobacco smoke,
and musical soirées, with piano, flute, and song.
Over this were sleeping-rooms, and in the attic
was the study, the windows of which looked out
into an apple orchard.”

Mrs. Stowe wrote of this home and her father:
“ Father was very fond of music, and very suscepti-
ble to its influence; and one of the great eras of
the family in my childish recollection is the tri-
umphant bringing home from New Haven a fine-
toned upright piano, which a fortunate accident
had brought within the range of a poor country
minister's means. The ark of the covenant was
not brought into the tabernacle with more glad-
ness than this magical instrument into our abode.
Father soon learned to accompany the piano on
his violin in various psalm tunes and Scotch airs,
and brothers Edward and William to perform
their part on their flutes. So we had often domes-
tic concerts which, if they did not attain to the
height of artistic perfection, filled the house with
gladness.

“One of the most decided impressions of the
family, as it was in my childish days, was of a
‘NNOO ‘CTHITHOLIT ‘AOVIAHIMIA SIMOLS ‘SUIT

 

 

 

 

 
HOW THE CHILD GREW 7

great household inspired by a spirit of cheerful-
ness and hilarity, and of my father, though
pressed and driven with business, always lending
an attentive ear to anything in the way of life
and social fellowship. My oldest sister, whose life
seemed to be a constant stream of mirthfulness,
was his favorite and companion, and he was al-
ways more than indulgent towards her pranks
and jokes.” This eldest sister says of her father,
“T remember him more as a playmate than in any
other character during my childhood.” In spite of
the fact that he was ever bubbling over with fun
he was respected and obeyed by his children in
the minutest particulars. His oldest daughter,
Catherine, says of her father, “As to family gov-
ernment, it has been said that children love best
those that govern them best. This was verified in
our experience. Our mother was tender, gentle,
and sympathizing; but all the discipline of gov-
ernment was with father. With most of his chil-
dren, when quite young, he had one, two, or three
seasons in which he taught them that obedience
must be exact, prompt, and cheerful, and by a dis-
cipline so severe that it was thoroughly remem-
bered and feared. Ever after, a decided word of »
command was all-sufficient. The obedience was to
8 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

be speedy and without fretting or frowns. ‘Mind
your mother! Quick! No erying! Look pleasant!’
These were words of command obeyed with almost
military speed and precision.”

(Never was a father more idolized by his chil-
dren than was Lyman Beecher.) Mrs. Stowe men-
tions especially his power for exciting family
enthusiasm. “ Whenever he had a point to be car-
ried, or work to be done, he would work the whole
family up to a pitch of fervent zeal in which the
strength of each seemed quadrupled. For instance,
the wood for the family used to be brought in winter
on ox-sleds, and piled up in the yard exactly over the
spot where father wished to plant his cucumbers
and melons. Of course as all this wood was to be
cut and split and carried into the wood-house be-
fore the garden could be started, it required a mira-
cle of generalship to get it done, considering the
immense quantity of wood required to keep an old
windy castle of a house comfortable in winter
weather. The axes would ring and the chips fly;
but jokes and stories would fly faster till all was
cut and split. Then came the great work of wheel-
ing in and piling.”

Harriet would work like one possessed, sucked
into the vortex of enthusiasm by her father’s re-
HOW THE CHILD GREW 9

marking, “ I wish Harriet were a boy! She would
do more than any of them!” Then would she
throw aside her book or her needle and thread
and, donning a little black coat which she thought
made her look more like a boy, she would try to
outdo all the rest’till the wood was all in and the
chips swept up. Frequently Doctor Beecher would
raise a point of theology and start a discussion,
taking the wrong or weaker side himself, to prac-
tice the youngsters in logic. If the children did
not make good their side of the case, he would
stop and explain to them the position and say,
“The argument is thus and so! Now if you take
this position you will be able to trip me up!” Thus
he taught them to reason as if he had taught them
to box or wrestle by actual face-to-face contest.

The task done, the Doctor always planned to
have a great fishing expedition with the children.
When Harriet was too little to go, she looked on
these fishing expeditions as something pertaining
only to her father and the older boys, and watched
the busy preparations with regretful interest. They
were all going to Great Pond and to Pine Island,
to that wonderful blue pine forest that she could
just see on the horizon, and who could tell what
strange adventures they might meet !
10 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

When they were gone the house seemed so still
and deserted all day long, —no singing, shouting,
tramping, and wrestling of noisy, merry boys. Har-
riet would sit silent and lonely, sewing a long seam
on a sheet by way of beguiling the time. At last
it would begin to be dark, and the stars peeping
out one by one would look down as if surprised to
find a little girl who had gone to bed but not to
sleep. With what joy she finally hailed in the
distance the tramp of feet, the shouts and laughter
of her father and brothers as, glad with triumph,
they burst into the kitchen with long strings of
perch, roach, pickerel, and bull-heads, with waving
blades of sweet-flag and lofty heads of cat-tail,
and pockets full of fragrant wintergreen, a gen-
erous portion of which was always bestowed upon
her! To her eyes these were trophies from the
dreamland of enchantment for which she had
longed. She was then safe for an hour or more
from being sent back to bed, and watched with de-
light the cheerful hurrying and scurrying to and
fro, the waving of lights as the fish were cleaned
in the back shed and the fire was kindled into a
cheerful blaze, while her father stood over the
frying-pan frying the fish. To his latest day
Doctor Beecher was firm in the conviction that no
HOW THE CHILD GREW 11

feminine hand could fry fish with that perfection
of skill which was his as a king of woodcraft
and woodland cookery.

One of Harriet’s favorite haunts was her father’s
study. It was an arched garret room, high above
all the noise and confusion of the busy household,
with a big window that commanded a view of
Great Pond with its fringe of steel-blue pines. Its
walls were set round from floor to ceiling with the
quiet friendly faces of books, and there stood her
father’s study-chair and his writing-table, on which
always lay open before him his Cruden’s Concor-
dance and the Bible. Here Harriet loved to re-
treat and curl herself up in a quiet corner with
her favorite books around her. Here she had
a restful, sheltered feeling as she thus sat and
watched her father at his sermon-writing, turning
his books and speaking to himself from time to
time in a loud and earnest whisper. She vaguely
felt that he was about some holy and mysterious
work, far above her childish comprehension.

The books ranged around filled her too with
solemn awe. There on the lower shelves were
enormous folios, on whose backs she spelled in
black letters “ Lightfooti Opera,” a title whereat
she marveled, considering the bulk of the volumes,
12 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

And overhead, grouped along in sociable rows,
were books of all sizes and bindings, the titles of
which she had read so often that she knew them
by heart. There were Bell’s “Sermons,” Bon-
nett’s “Inquiries,” Bogue’s “ Essays,” “ Toplady
on Predestination,” “ Boston’s Fourfold State,”
Law’s “Serious Call,” and other works of the
kind that she had looked over wistfully day after
day, without finding even a hope of somethihg
interesting. |

Cit was a happy hour for Harriet when her fa-
ther brought home and set up in his bookcase
Cotton Mather’s “Magnalia.*) What wonderful
stories these, and stories too about her own coun-
try, — stories that made her feel that the very
ground under her feet was consecrated by some
special dealings of God’s wonder-working provi-
dence! When the good Doctor related how a
plague had wasted the Indian tribes, and so pre-
pared a place for the Pilgrim Fathers to settle un-
disturbed, she felt in no wise doubtful of his ap-
plication of the text, “He drave out the heathen
and planted them.” No Jewish maiden ever grew
up with a more earnest faith that she belonged
to a consecrated race, a people specially called
and chosen of God for some great work on earth. .
HOW THE CHILD GREW 13

Her faith in every word of the marvels related in
this book was fully as great as the dear old credu-
lous Doctor Mather could have desired. It filled
her soul with a great eagerness to go forth and do
some great and valiant deed for her God and her
country. She wanted then, as always, to translate
her feelings into deeds.

But aside from her father’s study Harriet found
poetry and romance in the various garrets and
cellars of the old parsonage. There was, first, the
garret over the kitchen, the floors of which in
the fall were covered with stores of yellow pump-
kins, fragrant heaps of quinces, and less fragrant
piles of onions. There were bins of shelled corn
and of oats, and, as in every other garret in the
house, there were also barrels of old sermons and
pamphlets.

But most stimulating to the imagination of a
Puritan child, steeped in that wonderful allegory,
Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” was the smoke-
house, which was a wide, deep chasm made in the
kitchen chimney, in which the dried beef and the
hams were prepared. The door which opened into
this dismal recess glistened with condensed creo-
sote, and Harriet trembled as she listened to an
awful rumbling within, followed by crackling re-
14 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

verberations. One day she summoned courage to
open the door and peep in, and was reminded of a
passage in the “ Pilgrim’s Progress,” which reads,
“ Then I saw in my dream that the shepherds had
them to another place, in a bottom, where was a
door in the side of a hill; and ee opened the
door and bid them look in.

“‘ They looked in, therefore, and saw that within
it was dark and smoky; they also thought that
they heard a rumbling noise as of fire and a ery
of some tormented, and they smelt the smell of
brimstone.”’

Harriet closed the door and ran away trembling.

She delighted in upsetting the barrels of old
sermons and pamphlets on the floor, pawing
about in the contents, and reading with astonished
eyes the queer titles. It seemed to her that there
were thousands of unintelligible things. “ An Ap-
peal on the Unlawfulness of a Man’s Marrying
his Wife’s Sister,” turned up in every barrel she
investigated. But —oh joy and triumph! one rainy
day she found at the bottom of a barrel a copy of
the “ Arabian Nights”! Thenceforth her fortune
‘was made. She had no idea of reading as is the
fashion in these days—to read and dismiss a book.
To read with her was a passion, and a book once
HOW THE CHILD GREW 15

read was read daily ; becoming ever dearer as an
old friend. The “ Arabian Nights” transported
her to far-off lands, and gave her a new world of
her own. Thereafter, when things went wrong, when
the boys went away to play higher than she dared
climb in the barn, or started for fishing excursions,
on which they considered her an encumbrance, she
would find a snug corner, where, curled up ina quiet
lair, she could at will sail forth into fairy-land on
her bit of enchanted carpet.

Tt was also a great day when she discovered an
old torn copy of the “Tempest.” This experience
she has wrought into that romance of the Maine
coast, “The Pearl of Orr’s Island,” where she pic-
tures Mara exploring the garret and finding in an
old barrel of cast-off rubbish a bit of reading which
she begged of her grandmother for her own. “It
was the play of the ‘Tempest,’ torn from an old
edition of Shakespeare, and was in that delight-
fully fragmentary condition that most particularly
pleases children, because they conceive a mutilated
treasure thus found to be more particularly their
own property.”

There was one class of tenants, whose presence
and influence on Harriet’s youthful mind must
not be passed over. They were the rats. They
16 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

had taken formal possession of the old parsonage,
grown, multiplied, and become ancient in spite of
traps, cats, or anything that could be devised
against them. The family cat in Harriet’s day,
having taken a dispassionate survey of the situa-
tion, had given up the matter in despair and set
herself philosophically to attending to other con-
cerns. She selected a corner of the Doctor’s study
as her special domestic retreat. Here she made
her lair on a heap of old pamphlets and sermons,
whence, from time to time, she led forth litters
of well-educated, orthodox kittens, who, like their
mother, gazed on the rats with respectful curios-
ity, but ran no imprudent risks. Consequently the
rats had, as it were, “the freedom of the city” in
the old parsonage.

They romped all night on the floor of the gar-
ret over Harriet’s sleeping-room, apparently busy
hopping ears of corn across the floor and rolling
them down into their nests between the beams.
Sometimes she would hear them gnawing and saw-
ing behind the wainscoting at the head of her bed
as if they had set up a carpenter’s shop there, and
would be filled with terror lest they should come
through into her bed. Then there were battles
and skirmishes and squealings and fightings, and
HOW THE CHILD GREW 17

at times it would seem as if a whole detachment
of rats rolled in an avalanche down the walls with
the cobs of corn they had been stealing. When
the mighty winds of the Litchfield winters were
let loose and rumbled and thundered, roaring and
tumbling down the chimneys, rattling the windows
and doors; when the beams and rafters creaked
and groaned like the timbers of a ship at sea, and
the old house shook to its very foundations, then
would the uproar among the rats grow louder and
louder, and Harriet would dive under the bed-
clothes quaking with fear.(Thus did the old par-
sonage exert its subtle influence, every day fash-
ioning the sensitive, imaginative child. |

Among Harriet’s earliest recollections were those
of a visit to Nutplains in Guilford, Connecticut,
immediately after her mother’s death. Her aunt
Harriet Foote, for whom she was named, and who
was with her mother during her sickness, brought
her home to stay with her for a time. It was in
Nutplains and Guilford that, little child that she
was, she was deeply impressed by finding herself
treated with a tenderness almost amounting to ven-
eration by those who had known her mother.

Mrs. Stowe writes of this visit: “ At Nutplains
our mother lost to us seemed to live again. We
18 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

saw her paintings, her needlework, and heard a
thousand little doings and sayings of her daily life.
And so dear was everything that belonged to grand-
mother and our Nutplains home, that the Episco-
pal service, even though not well read, was always
chosen during our visits there in preference to our
own. It seemed a part of Nutplains and the life
there.

“‘ There was also an interesting and well-selected
library, and a portfolio of fine engravings; and,
though the place was lonely, yet the cheerful hos-
pitality that reigned there left it scarcely ever with-
out agreeable visitors.

“T can nowremember atthe close of what seemed
to me along day’s ride, arriving after dark ata
lonely little white farmhouse, and being brought into
a large parlor where a cheerful wood-fire was crack-
ling, partly burned down into great heavy coals.
I was placed in the arms of an old lady, who held
me close and wept silently, a thing at which I mar-
veled, for my great loss was already faded from
my childish mind. But I could feel that this dear
old grandmother received me with a heart full of
love and sorrow. I recall still her bright white
hair, the benign and tender expression of her ven-
erable face, and the great gold ring she wore,
HOW THE CHILD GREW 19

which seemed so curious to my childish eyes. There
was a little tea-table set out before the fire, and
Uncle George came in from his farm-work, and
sat down with grandma, and Aunt Harriet to
tea.

“ After supper I remember grandmother reading
prayers, as was her custom, from a great prayer-
book, which was her constant companion.”

There were no amusements then specially pro-
vided for children. There were no children’s books,
and no Sunday-schools. It was a grown people’s
world, not a child’s. Even the children’s toys were
so few and poor that, in comparison with our mod-
ern profusion, they could scarcely be said to exist.
Harriet had toys, however, and her own play-
things, as every child of lively fancy will. Child-
hood is poetic and creative, and can make to itself
toys out of anything. She had the range of the
great wood-pile in the back yard. She skipped, and
climbed, and sang among its intricacies and found
there treasures of wonder, —green velvet mosses,
little white trees of lichen, long graybearded mosses
and fine scarlet cups, and fairy caps which she
collected and cherished. With these she arranged
landscapes in which green mosses made the fields,
and little sprigs of spruce and ground-pine the
20 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

trees, and bits of broken glass represented rivers
and lakes, reflecting the overshadowing banks.
She had, too, hoards of chestnuts and walnuts
that a squirrel might have envied, picked up with
her own hands from under the autumn leaves; and
—chief treasure of all — a wooden doll, with star-
ing glass eyes, which was the central point of all
her arrangements. To her she showed the chest-
nuts and walnuts, gave her the jay’s feathers and
the blue-bird’s wing, — a trophy secured from the
boys. She made her a bed of divers colors, and a
set of tea-cups out of the backbone of a codfish ;
she brushed and curled her hair till she took all
the curl out of it, and washed all the paint off her
cheeks in motherly ablutions. This doll came to a
tragic end. Harriet was awakened one morning by
her little brother Charles calling out in the most
cheerful voice imaginable, “O Hattie, wake up!
Henry and I have pulled your doll all to pieces!”
To her dying day she carried the remembrance of
the pang that went to her heart at these words.
There was probably no one who more profoundly
- influenced Mrs. Stowe’s intellectual development
than did her seafaring uncle, Captain Samuel Foote.
Of him her sister Catherine says, “ After we re-
moved to Litchfield, Uncle:Samuel came among
HOW THE CHILD GREW 21

us, on his return from each voyage, as a sort of
brilliant genius of another sphere, bringing gifts
and wonders that seemed to wake up new faculties
in all. Sometimes he came from the shores of
Spain, with mementoes of the Alhambra and the
ancient Moors; sometimes from Africa, bringing
Oriental caps or Moorish slippers; sometimes from
South America, with ingots of silver or strange im-
plements from the tombs of the Incas, or hammocks
wrought by South American tribes of Indians.

“He was a man of great practical common
sense, united with large ideality, a cultivated taste
and very extensive reading. With this was com-
bined a humorous combativeness, that led him to
attack the special theories and prejudices of his
friends, sometimes jocosely and sometimes in
earnest.

“Of course he and father were in continual
good-natured skirmishes, in which all the New
England peculiarities of theology and of character
were held up, both in caricature and in sober
verity.

“T remember long discussions in which he
maintained that Turks were more honest than
Christians, bringing very startling facts in evi-
dence. Then I heard his serious tales of Roman
22 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

Catholic bishops and archbishops whom he had
carried to and from Spain and America, and he
affirmed them to be as learned and as truly pious
and devoted to the good of men as any Protestant
to be found in America.

“The new fields of vision presented by my
uncle, the skill and adroitness of his arguments,
the array of his facts, combined to tax my father’s
powers to the utmost.

“Whenever Uncle Sam came to Litchfield he
brought a stock of new books which he and Aunt
Mary read aloud. This was the time when Scott,
Byron, Moore, and that great galaxy of contem-
porary writers were issuing their works at inter-
vals of only a few months, all of which were read
and re-read in the family circle.”

When Harriet was between six and seven years
old, her father married Miss Harriet Porter, of
Portland, Maine. She has herself thus described
the advent of the new mother: “I was about six
years old and slept in the nursery with my two
younger brothers. We knew father was gone away
somewhere on a journey, and was expected home,
and thus the sound of a bustle or disturbance in
the house more easily awoke us. We heard father’s
voice in the entry, and started up, crying out as
HOW THE CHILD GREW 23

he entered our room, ‘ Why, here’s pa!’ A cheer-
ful voice called out from behind him, ‘ And here’s
ma!’

“A beautiful lady, very fair, with bright blue
eyes, and soft auburn hair bound round with a
black velvet bandeau, came into the room, smiling,
eager, and happy-looking, and, coming up to our
beds, kissed us, and told us that she loved little
children and would be our mother. We wanted
forthwith to get up and be dressed ; but she paci-
fied us with the promise that we should find her
in the morning.

“Never did mother-in-law make prettier or
sweeter impression. The next morning I remember
we looked at her with awe. She seemed to us so
fair, so elegant, so delicate that we were afraid to
go near her. We must have been rough, red-
cheeked, hearty country children, honest, obedient,
and bashful. She was peculiarly dainty and neat
in all her ways and arrangements; I remember I
used to feel breezy, rough, and rude in her pres-
ence. We felt a little in awe of her, as if she
were a strange princess, rather than our own
mamma; but her voice was very sweet, her ways
of moving and speaking very graceful, and she took
us up in her lap and let us play with her beautiful
24 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

hands, which seemed like wonderful things made
of pearl and ornamented with rings.”

Once ina fit of delirious boldness Harriet marched
up to her, and putting her little hands behind her
back, and thrusting her head somewhat forward,
said defiantly, (« You have come and married my
pa! and when I grow up I will go and marry your
pa ! ”

One Sunday evening, shortly after the arrival of
the new mother, Doctor Beecher, who was at that
time given to an undiscriminating admiration for
the worksof the great Jonathan Edwards, was read-
ing to her from a volume of sermons by that great
divine. It happened to be the sermon with the pun-
gent title, “Sinnersin the Hands of an Angry God.”
Harriet was curled up on the sofa, apparently ab-
sorbed in a book of her own. Drawn to observe
closely her new mother, she saw that she seemed to
be listening with abhorrence and suppressed emo-
tion. A bright red spot suffused each cheek, every
moment growing brighter and redder. Finally ris-
ing to her stately height, she swept out of the room,
saying as she went, “ Mr. Beecher, I will not listen
to another word! Why, it is horrible! It is a slan-
der on the character of my Heavenly Father!”
Harriet was impressed with the stupefaction pic-
HOW THE CHILD GREW 25

tured on her father’s face. If a bucket of ice-water
had been thrown over him, the effect could not have
been more startling. He probably never again read
Edwards’s lurid pages with the same ease of mind
as formerly. Doubtless this incident placed his
foot on the first rung of a ladder which the ultra-
orthodox of the period thought led anywhere but
to heaven. Harriet Porter, though orthodox was
human, and she belonged to a different age from
Edwards.

Harriet attended a school for young women kept
by a Miss Sarah Pierce, who is described asa woman
of “ more than ordinary talent, sprightly in conver-
sation, social, and full of benevolent activity.” In
process of time the school was enlarged and her
nephew, Mr. John Brace, became her assistant. Of
him Mrs. Stowe writes: (Mr. Brace was one of
the most stimulating and inspiring instructors that
I ever knew. He was himself widely informed, an
enthusiast in botany, mineralogy, and the natural
sciences generally. The constant conversation that
he kept up on these subjects tended more to de-
velop the mind and inspire a love of literature than
any mere routine studies could do.

“‘ This school was the only one I ever knew that
carried out a thorough course of ancient and mod-
296 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

ern history. . . . The interest of these historical
recitations, with a preceptor so widely informed and
so fascinating in conversation as Mr. Brace, ex-
tended further than the class. Much of the training
and inspiration of my early days consisted, not in
the things I was supposed to be studying, but in
hearing, while seated unnoticed at my desk, thecon-
versation of Mr. Brace with the older classes. There
from hour to hour I listened to historical criticisms
and discussions, or to recitations in such works
as Paley’s ‘Moral Philosophy,’ Blair’s ‘ Rhetoric,’
Alison ‘On Taste,’ all full of most awakening
suggestions to my thoughts.

“Mr. Brace exceeded all the instructors that I
ever knew in the faculty of teaching the art of Eng-
lish 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 teaching composition,
the main requisite for which, whatever people may
think, is to have something that one feels inter-
ested to say.

“¢ His manner was to divide hisschool of about one
hundred pupils into divisions of about three or four,
one of which was to write every week. At the same
time he inspired an ambition to write by calling
HOW THE CHILD GREW 27

every week for volunteers, and every week there
were those who volunteered to write.

“T remember I could have been but nine years
old, and my handwriting hardly formed, when the
enthusiasm he inspired led me, greatly to hisamuse-
ment, I believe, to volunteer to write every week.
The first week the subject of the composition
chosen by the class was, ‘The Difference between
the Natural and the Moral Sublime.’

“One may smile at this for a child nine years of
age; but it is the best account I can give of his
manner of teaching to say that the discussion that
he had held in the class not only made me under-
stand the subject as thoroughly as I do now, but
so excited me that I felt sure that I had something
to say about it; and that first composition with
half the words misspelled amused him greatly.

(By two years of constant practice, under his
training and suggestion, I had gained so far as to
be appointed one of the writers for the annual ex-
hibition, a proud distinction as I then viewed it.
The subject assigned me was one that had been
very fully discussed in the school in a manner to
show to the best advantage Mr. Brace’s peculiar-
ity in awakening the minds of his pupils to the
higher regions of thought. The question was,
28 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

‘Can the Immortality of the Soul be Proved by
the Light of Nature?’

“ Several of the young ladies had written strongly
in the affirmative. Mr. Brace himself had written
in the negative. To all these compositions and con-
sequent discussions I had listened, and, in view of
them, chose to adopt the negative.

“I remember the scene at that exhibition to
me so eventful. The hall was crowded with all the
literati of Litchfield. Before them all our compo-
sitions 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.”

“Never shall I forget the dignity and sense of
‘importance which swelled my mind when I w
‘first pronounced old enough to go to neta)
writes Mrs. Stowe in another account of tho
early Litchfield days.

“To my childish eyes our old meeting-house
was an awe-inspiring place. To me it seemed
HOW THE CHILD GREW 29

fashioned very nearly on the model of Noah’s
ark and Solomon’s Temple, as set forth in the
pictures of my scripture catechism — pictures which
I did not doubt were authentic copies; and what
more respectable and venerable architectural pre-
cedent could any one desire? Its double rows of
windows of which I knew the number by heart,
its doors with great wooden curls over them, its
belfry projecting out of the east end, its steeple
and bell, all inspired as much sense of the sublime
in me as Strasburg Cathedral itself; and the in-
side was not a whit less imposing. How magnifi-
cent to my eye seemed the turnip-like canopy
that hung over the minister’s head, hooked by a
long iron rod to the wall above! How apprehen-
sively did I consider the question, what would
become of him if it should fall. With what
amazement I gazed on the panels on either side
of the pulpit, in each of which was carved and
painted a flaming red tulip, bolt upright, with its
leaves projecting out at right angles. Then there
was a grapevine, basso-relievo in front, with its
exactly triangular bunches of grapes, alternating
at exact intervals with exactly triangular leaves.
“To me it was a faultless representation of
how grapevines ought to look, if they would only
30 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

be straight and regular, instead of curling and
scrambling, and twisting themselves into all sorts
of uncanny shapes.

“Tt was good orthodox custom of old times to
take every part of the domestic establishment to
meeting, even down to the faithful dog, who as
he had supervised the labors of the week, also
came with due particularity to supervise the
worship on Sunday. I think I can see now the
fitting out on a Sunday morning—the one
wagon, or two, as the case might be, tackled up
with an ‘old gray,’ or ‘old bay,’ with a buffalo
skin thrown over the seat by way of a cushion,
and all the family in their Sunday best packed
in for meeting; while waiting Bose, Watch, or
Towser stood to be an outguard, and went meekly
pattermg up hill and down dale behind the
wagon.

“‘ Arrived at meeting the canine part of the
establishment generally conducted themselves with
great decorum, lying down and going to sleep as
decently as anybody present, except when some
mischief-loving flies would make a sortie on them,
when you might hear the snap of their jaws as
they vainly tried to lay hold upon the intruder.

“‘ Now and then, between some of the sixthlies,
HOW THE CHILD GREW 31

seventhlies, and eighthlies of the long sermon,
you might hear some old patriarch of a dog giv-
ing himself a rousing shake, and pitpatting
soberly up and down the broad aisle as if to see
that everything was going properly, after which
he would lie down and compose himself to sleep
again. This was certainly as improving a way of
spending Sunday as a good Christian dog could
desire.

“We are compelled to acknowledge that Trip,
the minister’s dog, did not always conduct him-
self with that propriety and decorum that befitted
his social station and responsible position. He
was emotional and nervous, and never could be
taught to respect conventionalities. If anything
about the performance in the singers’ seat did
not please him he was apt to express himself in a
lugubrious howl. If the sermon was longer than
suited him, he would gape with such a loud creak
of his jaws as would arouse everybody’s attention.
If flies disturbed his afternoon naps, he would
give sudden snarls or snaps; orif he had troubled
dreams, he would bark out in his sleep in a
manner not only to interrupt his own slumbers,
but those of worthy deacons and old ladies,
whose sanctuary repose was thereby sorely broken
32 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

up and troubled. For these reasons Trip had been
denied the sanctuary privileges usually accorded
to good dogs of the period./He was shut up on
Sunday for private meditation Trip of course
was only the more strongly bent on social wor-
ship with dogs and men. He would hide behind
doors, jump out of windows, sneak through by-
ways and alleys, and lie hid till the second bell
had done tolling, and then patter up the broad
aisle, innocent and happy, and take his position
right under the pulpit and in front of the
minister’s pew.

“One Sunday Doctor Beecher exchanged
with the Rev. Father Mills of Torringford. He
was a thin, wiry, frisky little man, in a powdered
white wig, black tights, and silk stockings, with
bright knee-buckles and shoe-buckles ; with round,
dark snapping eyes; and a curious high, cracked,
squeaking voice, the very first tones of which made
all the children stare and giggle.

“On the Sunday morning when the event we are
about to relate transpired, we children went to the
house of the Lord in a very hilarious state, all
ready to explode with laughter on the slightest
provocation.

“The occasion was not long wanting. Directly
HOW THE CHILD GREW 33

after the closing notes of the tolling bell, Master
Trip walked soberly up the centre aisle and seating
himself gravely in front of the pulpit, raised his
nose critically and expectantly towards the scene
of the forthcoming performance. He wore an
alert, attentive air that befitted a soundly ortho-
dox dog that scents a possible heresy, and deems
it his sacred duty to narrowly watch the perform-
ance.

“He evidently felt called upon to see who and
what were to occupy that pulpit in his master’s ab-
sence. Up rose Father Mills, and up went Trip’s
nose vibrating with attention. The good man
began to read the opening hymn:—

‘Sing to the Lord aloud,’

when Trip broke into a dismal howl.

“Father Mills went on to give directions to the
deacons to remove the dog in the same tone in
which he read the hymn, so that the effect of the
whole performance was somewhat as follows: —

‘Sing to the Lord aloud, (Please put that dog out!)

And make a joyful noise.’

““We youngsters were delivered over to the
temptations of Satan and sank in waves and bil-
lows of hysterical giggles while Trip was put out
34 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
and the choir did its best at making a ‘joyful

noise.’ ””

In front of the pulpit was a bench on which at
noon between the two long sermons some members
of the congregation who came from afar sat and
ate their dinners. Consequently there would be by
time of the afternoon service sundry crumbs of
cheese and bread on the floor. In the base of the
pulpit just above the floor dwelt a number of
pious church mice, and in the afternoons when
Doctor Beecher was thundering away in the lofty
pulpit, Harriet would see their little bright eyes
shining cautiously out of their holes. If the Doc-
tor became quieter they would venture out and
begin a meal on the crumbs; but suddenly some
awful words, like reprobation or foreordination,
would come roaring down from above, and the
mice would run for their lives, and not venture
out again till they thought the danger past.

Harriet had hallowed as well as humorous associa-
tions connected with the thought of the old church.
“One beautiful, fresh, dewy, summer morning, when
it seemed as if all nature were hushed and listening
for the music of higher spheres,” she stood at'her
open window looking out on the green hills oppo-
site, the stately trees feathered with their varied
HOW THE CHILD GREW 35

greens, and the meadows waving with buttercups
and daisies. On the old apple tree under her win-
dow, a bobolink was tilting up and down chatter-
ing and singing with all his might. Early that
morning she had been reminded that it was Sun-
day, the holy Sabbath day, by this incident. Her
two younger brothers, Henry and Charles, slept
together in a little trundle-bed in a corner of the
nursery where she also slept. She was waked by
the two little fellows chattering to one another,
while they lay in their bed making little sheep
out of the cotton pulled from the holes in the old
quilt that covered them, and pasturing them on
the undulating hill-sides and meadows which their
imaginations conjured up amid the bedclothes.
Suddenly Charles’s eyes grew big with fright and
he cried out, “Henry, this is wicked! It’s Sun-
day!’’ There was a moment of consternation, fol-
lowed by silence, as both little curly heads disap-
peared under the old coverlid.

Yes, it was Sunday, and Harriet was trying her
best to feel herself a dreadful sinner, but with very
poor success. She was so healthy and the blood
raced and tingled so in her young veins. She tried
to feel her sins and count them up, but the birds,
and the daisies, and the buttercups were a con-
36 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

stant interruption, and she went into the old meet-
ing-house quite dissatisfied with herself. When
she saw the white cloth, the shining cups, and the
snowy bread of the Communion Table, she hope-
lessly felt that the service could have nothing for
a little girl,—it would be all for the grown-up
people, the initiated Christians. Nevertheless, when
her father began to speak she was drawn to listen
by a sort of pathetic earnestness in his voice.

The Doctor was feeling very deeply, and he
had chosen for his text, the declaration of Jesus:
“T call you not servants, but friends.” His sub-
ject was Jesus as the soul-friend offered to every
human being. Forgetting his doctrinal subtleties,
he spoke with the simplicity and tenderness of a
rich nature concerning the faithful, generous love
of Christ. Deep feeling inclines to simplicity of
language, and Doctor Beecher spoke in words
that even a child could understand. Harriet sat
absorbed, her large blue eyes gathered tears as
she listened, and when the Doctor said, “ Come,
then, and trust your soul to this faithful friend,”
her little heart throbbed, “I will!”

She sat through the Sacramental service that
followed with swelling heart and tearful eyes, and
walked home filled with a new joy. She went up
HOW THE CHILD GREW 37

into her father’s study and threw herself into his
arms, saying, “Father, I have given myself to
Jesus and he has taken me.” He held her silently
to his heart for a moment, and she felt his tears
dropping on her head. “Is it so?” he said, “then
has a new flower blossomed in the Kingdom this
day.”
CHAPTER II
ON THE THRESHOLD

Harriet was between twelve and thirteen when
she came to Hartford, Connecticut, to attend a
school recently established by her sister Cather-
ine. The schoolroom was over a harness store,
which, after the fashion of the day, had for a sign
two white horses. Great was the surprise and
pleasure with which Harriet gazed upon this tri-
umph of artistic skill as it then appeared to her.
One of the young men who worked in the harness
shop in the rear of the store had a fine tenor
voice, and often delighted her by singing in school
hours : —

“ 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.”

The expense of her board was provided for by
a kind of exchange common in those days. Mr.
ON THE THRESHOLD 39

Isaac D. Bull, of Hartford, sent a daughter to
Miss Pierce’s school in Litchfield, who boarded in
Doctor Beecher’s family in exchange for Harriet’s
board in his own. The very soul of neatness and
order pervaded the whole establishment, and Mrs.
Stowe has said that her own good, refined, par-
ticular stepmother could not have found a family,
better suited to her taste had she searched the
whole town. Mr. Bull, “a fine vigorous man on
the declining slope of life, but full of energy and
kindness,” kept a large wholesale drug store, and
his oldest son had established a retail drug store
of his own at the sign of the Good Samaritan.
Harriet frequently contemplated with reverence a
large picture of the Good Samaritan relieving the
wounded traveler, which formed a conspicuous
part of this sign.

Harriet occupied a little hall bedroom which
looked out over the Connecticut River. Mrs. Bull
took her young boarder into her heart as well as
into her house. If Harriet was sick, nothing could
exceed her watchful care and tender nursing. The
daughter, Miss Mary Ann Bull, was a beauty of
local celebrity, with long raven curls falling from
a comb on the top of her head. She had a rich
soprano voice and was one of the leading singers
40 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
in the choir of the Congregational Church. She

received frequent and impressive calls from a sol-
emn young man who lived next door. The three
brothers were also singers, and the family circle
was often enlivened by quartette-singing and flute-
playing.

In Hartford Harriet found what she had long
craved, real and lasting friendships with girls of
her own age. One of these friends was Catherine
Cogswell, a daughter of Hartford’s leading physi-
cian. The other was Georgiana May. Georgiana
had two younger sisters and a number of brothers.
She was older and more sedate than Catherine,
and consequently less attractive to the other girls,
but the friendship that sprang up between her
and Harriet endured undimmed through life. Mrs.
Stowe has described Catherine Cogswell as “one
of the most sunny-tempéred, amiable, lovable, and
sprightly souls she had ever known.” Her compan-
ionship was so much in demand that it was diffi-
cult for Harriet to see much of her. Her time was
all bespoken by the various girls who wanted to
walk to or from school with her, and at the half-
hour recess Harriet was only one of the many
suppliants at her shrine. Yet among the many
claimants there was always a little place kept here
ON THE THRESHOLD 41

and there for Hattie Beecher. Catherine and
Georgiana were reading Virgil when Harriet en-
tered the school and began the study of Latin, but
by the end of the first year she had made a trans-
lation of Ovid into verse that was so creditable as
to be read at the final exhibition of the school.
Harriet was, at this time, much interested in
poetry, and it was her dream to bea-poet. Con-
sequently, she began to write a metrical drama
which she called “Cleon.” Cleon was a Greek
lord residing at the court of the Emperor Nero,
who after much searching, doubting, and tribula-
tion became a convert to Christianity. This theme
filled her thoughts sleeping and waking, and
blank book after blank book bore testimony to her
industry, till finally her sister Catherine pounced
upon her and declared that she must not waste her
time trying to write poetry, but must discipline her
mind by the study of Butler’s “ Aono Young
as she was, she was set to instructing a class of girls
as oldas herself in the “ Analogy ”} a task for which
she had been fitted by listening to Mr. Brace’s
lectures at the Litchfield school. She wrote out
abstracts of the “ Analogy,” and mastered chapter
after chapter just ahead of her pupils. This she
did in addition to her regular work as a pupil in
42 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

the school. From then on she became both pupil
and teacher.

At this period, too, she read for the first time Bax-
ter’s “Saints’ Everlasting Rest,” and she often said
that no book ever affected her more powerfully.
As she walked the pavements she wished that they
might sink beneath her, and she awake in heaven.

Among her manifold duties was the instruc-
tion of her jolly, little, round-faced brother, Henry
Ward. One time in desperation she said, “ Now,
Henry, please do stop your fun and attend to your
grammar lesson! Now, Henry, listen! His is the
possessive pronoun. You would not say him book;
you would say his book.”

“Why can’t I say himbook, sister Hattie? I
say_hymnbook every Sunday.”\This sally quite
destroyed the gravity of the exasperated little
teacher.

Shortly after going to Hartford Harriet made a
call upon the Rev. Dr. Hawes, her father’s friend,
and her spiritual adviser, which left an enduring
impression upon her mind. It was her father’s ad-
vice that she join the church in Hartford, as he
had received a call to Boston, and the breaking
up of the Litchfield home was imminent. Accord-
ingly, accompanied by her two school friends, she
ON THE THRESHOLD 43

went one day to the pastor’s study to consult him
concerning the contemplated step. In those days
much stress was placed on religious experience,
and more especially on what was termed a convic-
tion of sin, and self-examination was carried to
an extreme calculated to drive to desperation a
sensitive, high-strung nature. The good man lis-
tened to the child’s simple and modest statement
of her Christian experience, and then with an
awiul though kindly solemnity of speech and
manner, said, “ Harriet! do you feel that if the
universe should be destroyed (alarming pause)
you could be happy with God alone?” After
struggling in vain to fix in her mind the meaning
of the sounds which fell on her ears like the mea-
sured tolling of a funeral bell, the child of fourteen
stammered out, “ Yes, sir!”

“You realize, I trust, in some measure, at least,
the deceitfulness of your own heart, and that in
punishment for your sins God might justly leave
you to make yourself as miserable as you have
made yourself sinful.”

Having thus effectually, and to his own satis-
faction, fixed the child’s attention on the morbi
and over-sensitive workings of her own heart, th
good, and truly kind-hearted man dismissed he
44 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

with a fatherly benediction. He had been alarmed

_at her simple and natural way of entering the
Kingdom. It was not theologically sound to make
short cuts to salvation. The child went into the
conference full of peace and joy, and she came
out full of distress and misgivings, but the good
Doctor had done his duty as he saw it.

It was a theological age, and in the Beecher
family theology was the supreme rat fills
their letters as it filled their lives. Not’only was
the age theological, but transitional, and charac-
terized by intense intellectual activity, accom-
panied by emotional excitement. The winds of
doctrine were let loose, blowing first from this
quarter and then from that. Doctor Beecher spent
his days in weathering theological cyclones, but
the worst of all arose in his own family, among
his own children. Great as were his intellec-
tual powers he was no match for his daughter
Catherine and his son Edward, — the metaphysi-
cal Titans who sprang from his own loins. It was
almost in a tone of despair that this theological
Samuel, who had hewn so many heretical Agags
in pieces before the Lord, wrote concerning his
own daughter: “ Catherine’s letter-will disclose
the awfully interesting state of her mind... .
ON THE THRESHOLD 45

You perceive she is now handling edged tools
with powerful grasp. . . . I have at times been
at my wits’ end to know what to do. . . . I con-
clude that nothing safe can be done, but to assert
ability and obligation and guilt upon divine au-
thority, throwing in at the same time as much
collateral light from reason as the case admits
of.” Catherine was at this time breaking out of
the prison-house of the traditional orthodoxy, and
her brother Edward was in many ways in sym-
pathy with her, though not as radical as she.
Doctor Beecher was contending with might and
main for the traditional Calvinism, and yet in his
zeal for its defense he often took positions that
surprised and alarmed his brother ministers, seri-
ously disturbed their dogmatic slumbers, and
caused them grave doubts as to his orthodoxy. So

“Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them, .. .
Volley’d and thunder’d.”

Harriet, keenly alive and morbidly sensitive to the
spiritual atmosphere in which she was compelled
to live, was driven nearly distracted by the strife
of tongues and division of opinion among those to
whom she looked for counsel and for guidance.
46 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

The events of family history that led to this
situation, so decisive in its influence on Harriet’s
mental development and subsequent literary ac-
tivity, were as follows. When Harriet was in her
eleventh year her sister Catherine had become en-
gaged to Professor Alexander Fisher of Yale Col-
lege. He was a young man of brilliant talents, and
specially noted for his mathematical genius. As an
undergraduate at Yale he distinguished himself by
original and valuable contributions to mathemati-
calastronomy. Immediately on graduation he was
appointed a professor of mathematics, and sent
abroad by his alma mater to devote some time to
study and the purchase of books and mathematical
instruments. The ship Albion, on which he sailed,
was wrecked on a reef off the coast of Ireland.
Of the twenty-three cabin passengers only one
reached the shore. He was a man of great phys-
ical strength, and all night long clung to the
jagged rocks at the foot of the cliff, against which
the sea broke, till ropes were lowered down from
above, and he was drawn up limp and exhausted.
He often told of the calm bravery with which
Professor Fisher met his end.

Up to this time in her life Catherine had been
noted for the gayety of her spirits and the bril-
ON THE THRESHOLD 47

liancy of her mind. An inimitable story-teller and :
a great mimic, it seemed her aim to keep every one
laughing. Her versatile mind and ready wit en-
abled her to pass brilliantly through her school
days with comparatively little mental exertion,
and before she was twenty-one she had become a
teacher in a school for girls in New London, Con-
necticut. It was about this time that she met
Professor Fisher, and they soon became engaged.
When the news of his death reached her, to the
crushing of earthly hopes and plans was added an
agony of apprehension for his soul. He had never
been formally converted ; and hence, by the teach-
ings of the times, his soul as well as his body was
lost. She writes to her brother Edward : “It is not
so much ruined hopes of this life, it is dismay and
apprehension for his immortal spirit. Oh, Edward,
where is he now? Are the noble faculties of such
a mind doomed to everlasting woe?” Anxiously,
but in vain, she searched his letters and journals
for something on which she might build a hope
of his eternal welfare. “‘ Mournful contemplations
awakened when I learned more of the mental ex-
ercises of him I mourned, whose destiny was for-
ever fixed, alas, I know not where! I learned from
his letters, and in other ways, as much as I could
48 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

have learned from his diary. I found that, even
from early childhood, he had ever been uncom-
monly correct and conscientious, so that his par-
ents and family could scarcely remember of his
doing anything.wrong, so far as relates to outward
conduct; and year after year, with persevering
and unexampled effort, he sought to yield that
homage of the heart to his Maker which was re-
quired, but he could not; like the friend who fol-
lowed his steps he had no strength. . . . It seemed
to me that my lost friend had done all that unas-
sisted human strength could do; and often the
dreadful thought came to me that all was in vain,
and that he was wailing that he ever had been
born in that dark world where hope never comes,
and that I was following his steps to that dreadful
scene.”

~ So she struggled on in the grasp of that New
England Calvinism which her own father preached.
Once she wrote to him, “I feel as Job did, that I
could curse the day in which I was born. I wonder
that Christians who realize the worth of immortal
souls should be willing to give life to immortal
minds to be placed in such a dreadful world.”
The letters which Doctor Beecher wrote to her at
this time were considered a very able defense of
ON THE THRESHOLD 49

New England Calvinism, but they did not satisfy
her. It may be doubted if they even satisfied him,
or if he from this time ever rested with the same
serenity of mind on the traditional foundations.
It was an epoch in the history of the Beecher
family, and in the history of the New England
theology. It was in this event of family history that
both Edward Beecher’s “ Conflict of Ages” and
Mrs. Stowe’s “ Minister’s Wooing” found their
peculiar inspiration. It is certain that, without
this tragedy, neither of these works, so influential
in determining the current of religious thought in
America, would have been written.

Miss Beecher passed the two years following
the death of Professor Fisher at Franklin, Massa-
chusetts, at the home of his parents, where she
listened to the fearless and pitiless Calvinism of
Doctor Nathaniel Emmons. Her mind was too
strong and buoyant to be overwhelmed and crushed.
by an experience that would have driven a weaker
and less resolute nature to insanity. Not finding
herself able to love a God whom she had been
taught to look upon, to use her own language, “as
a perfectly happy being unmoved by my sorrows
or my tears, and looking upon me only with dislike
and aversion,” and gifted naturally with a capacity
50 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

for close metaphysical analysis and a robust fear-
lessness in following her premises to logical con-
clusions, she arrived at results which, if not always
of permanent value, were certainly startling and
original.

The conventional New England Calvinism gave
her no satisfactory solution for her difficulties.
She was tormented with doubts. “ What has the
Son of God done which the meanest and most self-
ish creature upon earth would not have done?”
she asked herself. “ After making such a wretched
race and placing them in such disastrous circum-
stances, 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 suffermg, who would not save millions of
wretched beings, and receive all the honor and
gratitude without any of the trouble?” Yet when
such thoughts passed through her mind she felt
that it was “all pride, rebellion, and sin.” So she
struggled on, sometimes floundering deep in the
mire of doubt, and then lifted out of it by her
constitutionally buoyant spirits.

It was in this condition of mind that she came
to Hartford in the winter of 1824 and opened
her school. In the practical experience of teaching
ON THE THRESHOLD 51

she found at last the solution of her troubles.
Turning aside from doctrinal difficulties and theo-
logical quagmires, she determined “ to find happi-
ness in living to do good.” She says: “It was right
to pray and read the Bible, and so I prayed and read
the Bible. It was right to try to save others, and so
I tried to save them. In all these years I never
had any fear of punishment or hope of reward.”
Without ever having heard of pragmatism, she
became a kind of pragmatist. 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 in-
structions from the Bible and was much occupied
with plans for governing my school, and in devis-
ing means to lead my pupils to become obedient,
amiable, and pious.” These “ means” resulted in
a code of principles for the government of her
school which were nothing more nor less than
carefully formulated common sense with plenty of
the “milk of human kindness” thrown in. These
principles she carefully compared with the gov-
ernment of God, and came to the conclusion that
He in his infinitely mighty and complex task of
governing the universe was applying the same
fundamental principles as she in the relatively
52 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

infinitesimal and simple task of governing her
school. This was her solution, and this the view
of the divine nature that was for so many years
preached by her brother Henry Ward, and set
forth in the writings of her sister Harriet.
Harriet and Henry Ward took this position
with their hearts, and held it with their heads.
They ever felt their way with their hearts and fol-
lowed with their intellects. The reverse was true
of Edward and Catherine. They were the great
metaphysicians of the family. Doctor Beecher
presented just the inconsistent mingling of the
two kinds of mental process which one might ex-
pect in the father of such children. It was said of
him that he was the father of more brains than
any other man in America. It might with equal
truth have been said that he was the father of
more heart than any other man in America. The
view of God as manifested in Jesus Christ, which
came to Catherine Beecher as the solution of her
difficulties by long mental struggle, was essentially
the same that came to Harriet by intuition as a
child of thirteen in the old meeting-house at Litch-
field. It was truly religious, non-theological, and
practical. But because it was non-theological they
were not to be permitted to rest in it peacefully.
ON THE THRESHOLD 53

In March, 1826, Doctor Beecher, having re-
signed his pastorate in Litchfield, accepted a call to
the Hanover Street Church in Boston. In making
this change he was actuated partly by personal mo-
tives, his salary in Litchfield being inadequate to
the support of his large family, and partly by the
great strategic importance of the Boston church
in the war against Unitarianism. In Boston his
preaching, which has been called “logic on fire,”
became more aggressively theological than it had
ever been before. He felt that God had placed
him there to fight and crush a soul-destroying
heresy. The stake was nothing so paltry as power
and empire, or even human lives. It was the im-
mortal souls of meni. Now, although Mrs. Stowe’s
loyal soul would never have acknowledged that
her father’s preaching acted unfavorably on her
mental development, such was unmistakably the
case.) The atmosphere of mental excitement and
conflict in which her father lived and preached at
this time drove her already over-stimulated mind
to the point of distraction. Too much mental
strain and too little exercise had brought her to
her seventeenth year without the strength which
should have been the heritage of her robust
childhood. 2
54 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

In February, 1827, her sister Catherine writes
to her father: “I have received some letters from
Harriet to-day which make me feel uneasy. She
says, ‘I don’t know that I am fit for anything and
I have thought that I could wish todie 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 per-
fectly wretched I often feel; so useless, so weak,
so destitute of all energy. Mamma often tells me
that I am a strange, inconsistent being. Some-
times I could not sleep and have groaned and
cried till midnight, while in the day-time I have
tried to appear cheerful, and have succeeded so
well that Papa has 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 I should go dis-
tracted. 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.’”’ Catherine also writes to her brother
Edward that she thinks it the best thing for Har-
riet to return to Hartford where she can talk freely
with her. “I can get her books,” continues Cath-
erine, “and Catherine Cogswell and Georgiana
ON THE THRESHOLD 55

May, and her friends here can do more for her
than any one in Boston, for they love her and she
loves them very much. . . . 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 know best what is needed.”

The result was that Harriet returned to Hart-
ford where she passed a month or so and then in
the spring went with her friend Georgiana May
to visit Nutplains, in Guilford, which, as we have
already learned, was dear to her from childhood.
The August following her visit to Guilford she
writes to her brother Edward in a strain that re-
veals a state of mind bordering on religious mel-
ancholy, but at the same time shows that she is
returning to mental health and cheerfulness.
“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 contradic-
tory, 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 in-
terest for both worlds was depending on the turn
56 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

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, never more 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 to my
fellow creatures that Christians have often felt.
. . » T cannot say 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, and companions and
friends, the stronger the affection the less inclina-
tion I have to express it. Yet sometimes I think
myself the most frank, communicative, and open
of all beings, and at other times the most reserved.
If you can resolve all my 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 every little nothing
ON THE THRESHOLD 57

that we say brought to the test of mathematical
demonstration.

“It appears to me that if I could only adopt the
views of God you presented to my mind they
would éxert 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. Sec-
ondly, 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 gener-
ous 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.” This letter shows how she was
driven hither and thither by the powerful and
somewhat contradictory influences brought to bear
upon her mind by her father, her brother Edward,
and her sister Catherine.
58 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

‘ She is naturally drawn to the winning and rest-
ful conception of God as like Jesus Christ which
both her brother Edward and her sister Catherine
unite in presenting to her, but at the same time
she shows how the iron of her father’s Calvinism
has passed into her soul. It may make her very
unhappy and depressed, but still she cannot let it
goimmediately. For dull, lethargic souls Calvinism
may bea most excellent tonic under given condi-
tions, but on her artistic and sensitive nature it
acted like a subtle poison. It appealed to her rea-
son and left her heart unsatisfied, nay, even
wounded and bleeding. She is drawn hither and
thither by conflicting tendencies within herself.
Again she writes to Edward and unconsciously
paraphrasing a saying of Fénelon, remarks: “It
is only to the most perfect Being in the universe
that imperfection can look and hope for patience.
You do not know how harsh and forbidding every-
thing seems compared with his character! All
through the day in my intercourse with others,
everything seems to have 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 predilection for literature
ON THE THRESHOLD 59

having been a snare to you. I have found it so my-
self. I can scarcely think without tears and indig-
nation, that all that is beautiful, lovely, and poetic,
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
. . » Ido 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.”

This rhapsodical, overstrained state of mind was
highly characteristic of this period of her life. The
high tension was naturally followed by seasons of
depression and gloom.

During the winter of 1829 she is in Hartford
again assisting her sister Catherine in the school.
She writes to her brother Edward, “ 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 Iam!” This despair
60 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

is inevitable to one earnestly seeking the truth as
she was, amid conflicting counsels. She is now eigh-
teen, but still morbidly introspective, sensitive, and
overwrought. She apparently lives largely in her
emotions. In closing one of her letters she says,
“This desire to be loved forms, I fear, the great
motive for all my actions.”’ Again she writes to her
brother Edward, “I have been carefully reading the
book of Job, and I do not find in it the views of God
you have 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 justice. From the view of God that I re-
ceived from you, I should have expected that a
being that 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 asI need!” This was the vision of
God that came to her at the time of her conversion.
It was the confusing and perturbing influence of
her father’s Calvinistic theology that had dimmed
ON THE THRESHOLD 61

that gracious vision. Out of the prison-house of
Giant Despair she had been delivered by the teach-
ings of her sister Catherine and her brother Ed-
ward.

But again in thesameletter we havea passage that
shows that her feet are still meshed in the net of
Calvinistic theology. She writes: “My mind is
often perplexed and such thoughts arise in it that
I cannot pray, and I become bewildered. The won-
der to me is, how all ministers and all Christians
can feel themselves so inexcusably sinful, when it
seems to me that 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 his prayers, ‘ 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, but no hope
that I should resist, and then my eternal happiness
made to depend on my being temperate. Some-
times when I try to confess my sins I feel that I
am more to be pitied than blamed, for I have never
known the time when I have not had atemptation
within me so strong that it was certain that I should
62 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

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.”

It was such reflections and arguments as these
that had aroused Doctor Beecher to despair over
his daughter Catherine’s spiritual condition. The
fact was, he belonged to one age and his children
to another. Yet the brave old man lived to sym-
pathize with them.

Harriet at last learned to give up her introspec-
tion and morbid sensitiveness, and to live more
healthily and humanly. At the age of twenty-one
she was able to write thus to her friend Georgiana
May: “After the disquisition on myself above
cited you will be able to understand the wonder-
ful changes through which Ego et me ipse has
passed.

“The amount of the matter has been, as this
inner world of mine has become worn out and un-
tenable, I have at last concluded to come out of
it and live in the eternal one, and, as F
8 once advised me, give up the pernicious
habit of meditation to the first Methodist minister
who would take it, and try to mix in society some-
what as other persons would.

“<¢ Horas non numero non nisi serenas.’ Uncle

 

 
ON THE THRESHOLD 63

Sam, who sits by me, has just been reading the
above motto, the inscription on a sun-dial in Ven-
ice. It strikes me as having a distant relationship
to what I was going to say. I have come toa
firm resolution to count no hours but unclouded
ones, and let all others slip out of my memory and
reckoning as quickly as possible.

“ T am trying to cultivate a spirit of general kind-
liness 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 and incidental acquaint-
ance with all who will be acquainted with me. In
this way I find society full of interest and pleasure,
—a pleasure that pleaseth me more because it is
not old and worn out. From these friendships I
expect little, and therefore generally receive more
than I expect. From past friendships I have ex-
pected everything, and must of necessity have been
disappointed. The kind words and looks that I call
forth by looking and smiling are not much in them-
selves ; 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 I expected they would. This kind of plea-
sure in acquaintance is new to me. I never tried it
64 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

before. When I used to meet persons the first in-
quiry was, ‘Have they such and such a character,
or have they anything that might be of use or
harm to me?’”

In this new life she was able to write to her
brother 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.” So she learned to suffer and to love. To
suffer and to love and at last to rest. After five
years of struggling she returns to where she
started when converted as a child of thirteen.
Love became her gospel, the Alpha and Omega of
her existence, love for her God, for her friends, and
finally for humanity. The three words, “God is
love,” summed up her theology. Her love of hu-
manity was not the vague charitable emotion which
the phrase usually denotes. It was as real, as vital,
and as impelling as the love for her friend which
she thus expressed in closing this letter, —

“Oh, my dear G: , it is scarcely well to love
friends thus. . . those that I love; and oh, how
much that word means. I feel sadly about them.
They may change; they must die; they are sep-

 
ON THE THRESHOLD 65

arated 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.”
CHAPTER III
TEACHER AND WRITER

In January, 1831, Doctor Beecher, in the height
of his Boston ministry in poimt of popularity and
influence, began a series of sermons on the Roman
Catholic Church, in which he sounded the alarm
as to the supposed designs of the Papacy on the
liberties of our nation. At this time he was con-
sidering a call to become president of the newly
established Lane Theological Seminary at Walnut
Hills, near Cincinnati, Ohio. The leading motive
in determining him to accept this appointment
was the desire to hold the great West for Protest-
antism. He was thrilled by the greatness of the
enterprise. His whole family sympathized with
him, and entered heartily into his plans. They
felt that he was called to a great mission in which
they all had a share. Catherine immediately de-
termined to establish a school in Cincinnati to raise
up teachers for the West.

In a letter to Miss May, Harriet, who was at
this time about twenty years old, writes minutely
TEACHER AND WRITER 6

and at length of their plans: “ We mean to turn
over the West by means of model schools in this
its capital (Cincinnati). We mean to have a young
ladies’ school of about fifty or sixty, a primary
school of little girls to the same amount, an
then a primary school for boys. We have com
to the conclusion that the work of teaching will
never be rightly done till it comes into female
hands. ;

“ This is especially true with regard to boys. To
govern boys by moral influence 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 min-
isters, 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 at
the first trumpet that calls him away. As for di-
vision 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 in communicating it, nor have they the
68 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

patience, the long-suffering, and the gentleness
necessary to superintend the formation of char-
acter. We intend to make these principles under-
stood, 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, es-
pecially for the last, because here we must face
down the prejudices of society, and we must have
exemplary success to be believed. We want origi-
nal planning minds, and you do not realize how
few there are among females, and how few we can
command of those that exist.” Catherine had vis-
ited Cincinnati with her father before the removal
was made, and had written to Harriet, “ 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.”

The sense of having a mission in the world was
a ruling characteristic of the Beechers which Har-
riet shared to an unusual degree. It was only a
strong sense of humor that saved them from fa-
naticism. Harriet took a very serious view of the
migration of the family to the West, and believed
most devoutly that it was in obedience to a divine
call, and yet she could write thus from Philadel-
TEACHER AND WRITER 69

phia on the journey West: “I saw 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., ‘ were going like Jacob,’ etc.,
— very scriptural and appropriate flourish. It is
too much after the manner of men, as Paul says,
‘ speaking asa fool.’” This joyous, kindly humor
is a strongly marked characteristic of the Beecher
family. Mrs. Stowe often said that one of the
most vivid impressions of her father’s family as it
was in her childhood was that of ‘‘a great house-
hold inspired by a spirit of cheerfulness and hilar-
ity.” Cheerfulness and hilarity is the characteristic
Beecher atmosphere. The letter in which Mrs.
Stowe pictures the events of the journey westward
is overflowing with fun.

We have first a vivid picture of the sojourn in
New York City ; of Doctor Beecher rushing about
in high spirits, soliciting funds for the new insti-
tution, preaching, dipping into books, and con-
sulting authorities for his oration, “going around
here, there, and everywhere ; begging, borrowing,
and spoiling the Egyptians, delighted with past
success, and confident for the future.” Harriet,
however, finds New York too exciting and “ scat-
70 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

tering,” and begins to long for “the waters of
quietness.”

They take the boat from New York and arrive
in Philadelphia late on Saturday evening of a dull,
drizzling day. Poor Aunt Esther Beecher and
Mrs. Beecher are in despair over strayed trunks,
for the recapture of which George Beecher, one
of the sons, has been left behind. In the whole
caravan not a clean dress or cap to put on! Part
of the family are entertained at the house of Doc-
tor Beecher’s old friend, the Rev. Dr. Skinner, and
Harriet with Catherine, Isabella, and James goes
to the house of a Mrs. Elmes, — “ rich, hospitable
folks, who act the part of Gaius in apostolic
times.” The trunks arrive in a day or so, and
Doctor Beecher, after seeing them safely landed
in Doctor Skinner’s entry, swings his hat around
his head with a joyful, “ Hurrah.”

The next day they traveled about thirty miles
in a private conveyance to Dowington. The driver
was obliging, the roads good, and the scenery fine.
All were in high spirits and gave vent to their
joy in psalms and hymns. George had provided a
goodly supply of tracts which they tossed to the
way-farers whom they met. Harriet declared that
he was “ peppering the land with moral and spir-
TEACHER AND WRITER 71

itual influences.” As Harriet writes, they are com-
fortably seated in the front parlor of a little coun-
try inn, as much at home as if still in Boston.
Doctor Beecher is reading. Thomas and Isabella
are writing in their daily journals. Catherine is
writing to her sister, Mrs. Thomas Perkins, and
Harriet to her friend, Georgiana May. She says,
“Among the multitude of present friends my
heart still makes occasional visits to absent ones,
— visits full of cause for gratitude to Him who
gives us friends. I have thought of you often to-
day, my Georgiana. We stopped this noon at a
substantial Pennsylvania tavern, and among the
flowers in the garden was a late monthly honey-
suckle, like the one in 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.
Pleasant times, those! Those were blue skies, and
that was a beautiful lake with pine trees that hung
over it. But those we shall look upon ‘na mair!’

““Well, my dear, there is a land where we shall
72 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

notlove and leave. Those skies shall never cease to
shine, the waters of life we shall never be called
upon to leave.”

Sunday finds them in Harrisburg, sixty-two
miles from Wheeling, where they were to take the
boat for Cincinnati. On arriving in Wheeling the
news of cholera in Cincinnati leads them to wait
for eight days and then go on by private stage.
Then, again, at Granville they spend part of a
week and assist at revival meetings.

Arrived at Walnut Hills, Harriet, in the first
blush of her enthusiasm, writes to Georgiana May
this glowing description of the new home: “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 aroad to be, without
‘springs that run among the hills.’ Every possible
variety of hilland vale of beautifulslope, and undu-
lations of land set off by velvet richness of turf,
and broken up by grovesand forests of every outline
of foliage, make the scene Arcadian. You might
ride over the same road a dozen times a day, un-
tired, for the constant variation of view caused by
ascending and descending hill relieves you from
all tedium. Much of the wooding is beech of a
noble growth. The straight, beautiful shafts of
TEACHER AND. WRITER 73

these trees as one looks up the cool green recesses
of the woods seem as though they might form very
proper columns for a Dryad temple.”

Miss Catherine Beecher thus pictures the site
of the seminary: “The Seminary is located on a
farm of one hundred and twenty-five acres of fine
land, with groves of superb trees around it. . . .
Ihave become somewhat acquainted with those
ladies we shall have the most to do with, and find
them intelligent New England sort of folks. In-
deed, Cincinnati 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.”

Many years afterwards Mrs. Stowe, writing of
her life in Cincinnati at this time, says: “ Doctor
Beecher’s house on Walnut Hills was in many
respects peculiarly pleasant. It was a two-story
brick edifice of moderate dimensions, fronting the
West with a long L running back into the prime-
val forest, or grove, as it was familiarly called,
which here came up to the very door. Immense
trees, beech, black oak, and others, spread their
74 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

protecting arms over the back yard, affording in
summer an almost impenetrable shade.

“‘ An airy veranda was built in the angle formed
by the L along the entire inner surface of the
house, from which during the fierce gales of au-
tumn and winter we used to watch the tossing of
the spectral branches and listen to the roaring of
wind through the forest.”

“, .. During the first year of Doctor Beecher’s
Walnut Hills life the care of the family was shared
by Mrs. Beecher and Aunt Esther, though, as the
health of the former declined, the burden fell more
and more upon the latter. The family was large,
comprising, including servants, thirteen in all, be-
sides occasional visitors.

“The house was full. There was a continual
high tide of life and animation. The old carryall
was continually vibrating between home and the
city, and the excitement of going and coming
rendered anything like stagnation an impossibility.
. . . It was an exuberant and glorious life while
it lasted. The atmosphere of his household was
replete with moral oxygen, — full charged with in-
tellectual electricity. Nowhere else have I felt any-
thing resembling or equaling it. It was a kind
of moral heaven, the purity, vivacity, and inspira-
TEACHER AND WRITER 75

tion of which only those can appreciate who have
felt it.”

In 1832 while visiting her brother William in
Newport, Rhode Island, Harriet had begun an
elementary geography. This little book, her first
published work, was completed during the winter
of 1833, and published by Corey, Fairbank &
Webster of Cincinnati. Shortly after its publica-
tion she writes to Miss May, “ Bishop Purcell vis-
ited 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 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 about the book.”

When we remember that Doctor Beecher’s great .
motive in going to Cincinnati was to oppose the
influence of the Roman Catholic Church in every
way possible, and that he frequently attacked it
in the pulpit and in the press, this incident reflects
great credit, not only on the wisdom and tolerance
of Archbishop Purcell, but on that of Harriet
Beecher as well. When the father, whom the
daughter revered, honestly regarded the Catholic
Church as a great evil, and a peril to our free
76 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

institutions, it required no little courage and inde-
pendence of thought in the daughter to so handle
the Catholic question as to win words of hearty
appreciation from one of the highest ecclesiastics
of that communion. That the good bishop visited
the school and made such kind comments on its
mission showed a broad, wise, and tolerant spirit
which must have tended to confirm in Harriet’s
mind what she had often heard her Uncle Samuel
say in the old Litchfield days about the Roman
Catholic prelates, whom he carried on his ships
between Spain and America, being as learned and
as devoted to the good of men as any Protestants
to be found in America.

With all her enthusiasm and ideality, Harriet
nevertheless felt the wear and tear of the routine
work of the schoolroom. She writes to Miss May
during the first year of her school life in Cincin-
nati: “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... .

“ Now, Georgiana, let me copy for your delec-
tation 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
TEACHER AND WRITER 77

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., ‘ You are tired, I see,’ said John Gilpin,
so am I! and I spare you.

“T have just been hearing a class of little girls
recite, and telling them a fairy story that 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.”

To conceive great things is to smoke enchanted
cigarettes, but to execute is drudgery. Harriet
learned to know such drudgery in full measure.
Her ill-health was largely due to unregulated and
unrestrained feeling. She lived overmuch in her
emotions. Nothing like drudgery to tame the
feelings! About this time she writes to Miss
May, “ 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 various kinds that have for some time
been growing upon me. At present there is and
can be very little system and 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
78 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

have everything but good health. . . . How good
it would be for me to be put in a place that breaks
up and precludes thought. Thought, intense, emo-
tional thought, has been my disease. How much
good it would do me to be where I could not but
be thoughtless. . . .

“Recently I have been reading the life of
Madame de Staél 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 re-
pressed and they burn inwardly till they burn the
very soul, leaving only dust and ashes. It seems
to me that 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 emotions of affection, I have felt
‘with vehement and absorbing intensity, — felt
till my mind is exhausted and seems to be sinking
TEACHER AND WRITER 79

into deadness. Half of my time I am glad to re-
main in a listless vacancy; to busy myself with
trifles since thought is pain and emotion is pain.”
The sense of humor was for Mrs. Stowe indeed a
saving grace. She could not have lived without
it. Her nature so intense and emotional would, to
use her own figure, have burned itself to ashes.
Her letters at this time are full of playfulness.
For example, she writes to her sister Mrs. Perkins
in Hartford: “ By the by, Mary, speaking of the
temptations of cities, I have much solicitude on
Jamie’s account lest he should form improper in-
timacies, for yesterday or the day before we saw
him parading by the house with his arm over the
neck of a great hog, apparently on the most inti-
mate terms possible; the other day he actually
got on 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 arrangement of some
of her elder sisters, and a very disgusting one it
is!” Of the same quiet vein of humor is the de-
scription of the family physician. “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
80 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

cloth of the city. He is a tall, rectangular, per-
pendicular sort of a body, stiff as a poker, and
enunciates his prescriptions much as if he were
giving a discourse on the doctrine of election.
The other evening he was detained from visiting
Kate, and sent a very polite, ceremonious note
containing a prescription, with Dr. D.’s compli-
ments to Miss Beecher, requesting that she would
take the inclosed with a little molasses at nine
o’clock precisely.” These descriptions of the life
about her would hardly seem to come from the
young woman who had written, “ About half my
time I am scarcely alive.”

It was during her first year in Cincinnati that
Harriet, in company with a Miss Dutton, one of
the teachers in the school, made a visit to a Ken-
tucky slave plantation. Years afterward, on read-
ing “ Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Miss Dutton commented
with amazement that, although during this visit
Harriet had seemed too dreamy and abstracted to
notice what was passing about her, nevertheless
scenes, incidents, and persons, met with during
this brief visit, were graphically reproduced and
woven into the texture of her story.

About this time a wealthy and cultivated family
came from Louisiana to Ohio, and settled near
TEACHER AND WRITER 81

Cincinnati. They brought with them a number of
slaves whom they set at liberty, and among them
was a quaint little Jim Crow of a negro girl who
was the original of “Topsy.” It was in attempt-
ing to give this wild little savage some religious
instruction, in a little mission Sunday-school, that
Mrs. Stowe got her material for the celebrated
dialogue between Miss Ophelia and Topsy.

“Miss Ophelia, ‘ Have you ever heard anything
about God, Topsy?’

“The child looked bewildered but grinned as
usual.

“¢ Do you know who made you?’

“« Nobody as I knows on,’ said the child with
a short laugh.

“The idea appeared to amuse her considerably ;
for her eyes twinkled, and she added : —

“¢T spect I grow’d, nobody never made me!’”

Harriet’s two uncles, Captain Samuel Foote and
Mr. John Foote, also lived in Cincinnati at this
time. Captain Samuel Foote’s house was ona height
in the upper part of the city, and commanded a
fine view of the whole lower town. It was a centre
for persons of artistic and literary tastes. Here
often met the “Semi-Colon Club,” among the
membership of which were names afterwards as
82 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

prominent in state and national affairs as those
of Salmon P. Chase; Mrs. Peters, founder of the
Philadelphia School of Design; Mrs. Caroline Lee
Hentz; C. P. Cranch, the poet; Worthington
Whittredge, the artist; General Edward King,
Miss Catherine Beecher, Professor Calvin E.
Stowe, Judge James Hall, editor of the Western |
Magazine, and many others.

At the meetings of this club the members read
papers and stories, or discussed interesting topics
previously announced. In a letter to Miss May,
Harriet Beecher gives an amusing description of
her part in these meetings: “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 pur-
porting 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 parenthesis and
fogification. 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
TEACHER AND WRITER 83

fancy to it, and requested leave to put it in the
Western Magazine. It is ascribed to Catherine,
or I don’t know that I should let it go. I have no
notion of appearing in propria persona.

“The next piece was a satire on certain mem-
bers 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 allu-
sions in the 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.

“T 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 inci-
dental allusions to give it the air of having been
84 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

really a letter. I meant thus to give myself an
opportunity for the introduction of different sub-
jects and the discussion of different characters
in future letters.

“T meant to write on a great number of sub-
jects in the future. Cousin Elizabeth only was in
the secret; Uncle Samuel and Sarah Eliot 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 en-
velope, stating that it was a part of a set that
had fallen into my hands. This envelope was
written in a scrawny, scrawly gentleman’s hand.

“<T put it into the office in the morning, directed
it 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 exam-
ined it and pronounced, ex cathedra, that it must
have been a real letter. Mr. Greene (the gentle-
man who reads) declared that it must have come

from Mrs. Hall, and elucidated the theory by
TEACHER AND WRITER 85

spelling out the names and dates that I had
had erased, which, of course, he accommodated to
his own tastes. But then, what makes me feel
uneasy is that Elizabeth, after reading it, did not
seem to be exactly satisfied. She thought it had
too much sentiment, too much particularity of in-
cident, —she did not exactly know what. She was
afraid it would be criticised unmercifully. Now,
Hlizabeth 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.”

It was about this time that Judge Hall offered
a prize of fifty dollars for the best short story
that should be sent in to the Western Magazine
within a given period. The prize was awarded
to Harriet Beecher for a story entitled “ Uncle
Lot,” which was afterwards incorporated in the
“‘ Mayflower,” published by Harper & Brothers in
1843. It was at this time that Harriet Beecher
was laying the foundation of her fame as a writer.
In a letter to Mrs. Follen, written immediately
after the publication of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,”
she gives the following account of the way she
came to be a writer: “ During long years of
struggling with poverty and sickness, and a hot,
86 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

debilitating climate, my children grew up around
me. The nursery and the kitchen were my prin-
cipal fields of labor. Some of my friends, pitying
my trials, copied and sent a number of little
sketches from my pen to a number of liberally
paying Annuals, with my name. With the first
money that I earned in this way I bought a feather-
bed! For as I had married into poverty and with-
out a dowry, and as my husband had only a large
library of books and a great deal of learning, the.
bed and pillows were thought the most profitable
investment.

“ After this I thought I had discovered the
philosopher’s stone. So when a new carpet or
mattress was going to be needed, or when at the
close of the year it began to be evident that my
family accounts, like poor Dora’s, ‘ would n’t add
up,’ then I used to say to my faithful friend and
factotum Anna, who shared all my joys and sor-
rows, ‘Now, if you will keep the babies, and
attend to the things in the house for one day, Ill
write a piece, and then we shall be out of the
scrape.’

‘So I became an author, — very modest at first,
I do assure you, and remonstrating very seriously
with friends who had thought it best to put my
TEACHER AND WRITER 87

name to the pieces by way of getting up a reputa-
tion; and if you see a wood-cut of me, with an im-
moderately long nose, on the cover of all the U.S.
Almanacs, I wish you to take notice that I have
been forced into it contrary to my natural modesty
by the imperative solicitations of my dear five
thousand friends, and the public generally.”

So it appears that writing was with Mrs. Stowe
before marriage a diversion, but after marriage
a stern necessity.

Miss Catherine Beecher wrote this graphic ac-
count of her efforts in stirring her sister up to
literary activity after her marriage: “During a
visit to her [Mrs. Stowe], 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 him on next week? You have only this one
day left to finish it, and have it I must.’

«¢ And how will you get it, sister of mine?’ said
Harriet. ‘You will have at least to wait till I get
house-cleaning over and baby’s teeth through.’
88 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

“¢ As to house-cleaning, you can defer it one
day longer; and as to baby’s teeth there is no end
to them as I can see. 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, mar-
riage, catastrophe, éclaircissement and all; and
this three hours 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 green
girl for help, besides preparations to be made for
house-cleaning next week. It is really out of the
question, you see.’

“<T see no such thing. I do not know what gen-
ius is given for if it is not to help a woman out of
a scrape. Come set your wits to work and let me
TEACHER AND WRITER 89

have my way, and you shall have all the work
done, and finish the story too.’

“¢ Well, but kitchen affairs?’

“<Wecan manage them too. You know that you
can write anywhere, and anyhow. Just take your
seat at the kitchen table with your writing weap-
ons, and while you superintend Mina, fill up the
odd snatches of time with the labors of your
pen.’

“T 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 for 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,’ she said, with a resigned sort of an
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, on top of the tea-kettle, close by,’
said I.

“At this Mina giggled, and we both laughed
to see her merriment at our literary proceedings.
90 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

“T 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,’ she said, 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 any-
thing without me to direct her. We must give up
the writing for to-day.’

“ «No, no, let us have another trial. You can dic-
tate as easily as you can write. Come, I can set
the baby in this clothes basket and give him some
mischief or another to keep him quiet; you shall dic-
tate 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 next?’

“‘¢ Mina, pour a little milk into this pearlash!’
said Harriet.
TEACHER AND WRITER 91

“¢Come,’ said I, ‘The tears streamed through
her fingers, and her whole frame shook with con-
vulsive 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 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 work. For a while my culinary knowledge and
skill were proof to all Mina’s investigating in-
quiries, and they did not fail till I saw two pages
completed.

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

“‘ Never was there a more docile literary lady than
my sister. Without a word of objection she fol-
lowed my request.

“¢T am ready to write,’ said I. ‘The last sen-
92 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

tence was, “ What is this life to one who has suf-
fered as I have?” What next?’

“<Shall I put in the brown, or the white bread
first?’ asked Mina.

“¢The brown first,’ said Harriet.

“¢« What is this life to one who has suffered as
T have?”’ said I.

“Harriet brushed the flour off her apron, and

_sat down for a moment in a muse. Then she dic-
tated 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 in this pumpkin?’
queried Mina.

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

“<T 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 Har-
riet.

“¢ «They are my last earthly comfort,”’ said I.
‘What next?’
TEACHER AND WRITER 93

“ She continued to dictate, —

“<You must take them away. It may be— per-
haps it must be — that I shall soon follow, but the
breaking heart of a wifestill pleads, “a little longer,
a little longer.”’’

“<How much longer must the ginger-bread stay
in ?’ asked Mina.

“<< Hive minutes,’ said Harriet.

«<< A little longer, a little longer,”’ I repeated
in a dolorous tone, and we burst out into a laugh.

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

No wonder Mrs. Stowe describes her writing as
“rowing against wind and tide!”

During the summer of 1834 the young writer
made her first visit to New England since leaving
there for the West two years before. The occasion
was the graduation of her brother, Henry Ward,
from Amherst College. She covered the earlier
part of the trip by stage to Toledo, and thence
by steamer to Buffalo. It was on this journey that
she saw Niagara for the first time, and in a letter
to Mrs. Samuel Foote she thus pictures her sensa-
tions: “T did not once think whether it was high
94. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

or low; whether it roared or did n’t roar; whether it
equaled my expectations or not. My mind whirled
off it seemed to me into a new and strange world.
It seemed unearthly, like the strange dim images
in the book of Revelation.

“T thought of the great white throne; the rain-
bow around it; the throne in sight like unto an
emerald ; and O, that beautiful water rising like
moonlight, falling as the soul sinks when it dies,
to rise refined, spiritualized, and pure. That rain-
bow 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.

“T felt the very rock tremble under me with a
sort of joy. I was so maddened that I could have
gone, too, if it had gone.”
CHAPTER IV
WIFE AND MOTHER

Harriet BEECHER’s journey to the East was
saddened by the news of the death of her intimate
friend, Mrs. Stowe, wife of Professor Calvin Ellis
Stowe. Mrs. Stowe wasa daughter of the Rev. Ben-
net Tyler, at one time the president of Dartmouth
College, then Doctor Payson’s successor in Port-
land, Maine, and finally president of East Windsor
Theological Seminary, in Connecticut. She was
beautiful, talented, and had a wonderful voice, and
all this, added to unusual dignity and sweetness of
character, had made her universally loved. In a
letter written to her sister Mary, Harriet had thus
described Mrs. Stowe: “ Let me introduce you to
Mrs. Stowe, —a delicate, pretty little woman, with
hazel eyes, auburn hair, fair complexion, fine color,
a pretty little mouth, fine teeth, and a most inter-
esting timidity and simplicity of manner ; I fell in
love with her directly.”

His loss drove Professor Stowe nearly insane,
and Harriet on her return to Cincinnati became
96 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

his comforter. In about two years this friendship
ripened into love, and they became engaged. Har-
riet seized the last moments before the wedding
to write to Miss May.
CrncrnnatTl, Jan. 6, 1836.

Well, my dear G., about half an hour more, and
your old friend, companion, schoolmate, sister, etc.,
will cease to be Hattie Beecher and change to no-
body 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 will feel?
Well, my dear, I have been 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 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 all be done and over be-
fore they know anything about it.
WIFE AND MOTHER 97

Well, it is a mercy to have this entire apathy
come over one at this 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 feel-
ings 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. Stowe,
so farewell, and so for the last time I subscribe
myself

Your own
Hattie E. Bercuer.

The letter was not posted, and she later added:

“Three weeks have passed since writing the
above, and my husband and I are now 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 wed-
ding excursion so called, though we would have
most gladly been excused this conformity to ordi-
nary custom, had not necessity required Mr. Stowe
to visit Columbus, and I had too much adhesive-
ness 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 expe-
98 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

dition included as many pleasures as an expedi-
tion 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 whisp of nerve as myself has been trans-
acted so quietly. My dear, it is a wonder to my-
self. I am tranquil, quiet, and happy. I look only
on the present and leave the future to 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 shall pass away.”

Largely through the influence of his very warm
friend, General Harrison, Professor Stowe had
been appointed a commissioner by the State of
Ohio to investigate and report on the public
school systems of Europe. To this commission was
soon added another. The faculty and friends of
Lane Seminary found this an excellent opportu-
nity to make many sorely needed additions to the
seminary library, and intrusted him with funds
for the purpose. Professor Stowe, since his ar-
rival in Ohio, had been untiring in his labors for
popular education. It was largely through his in-
fluence that “The College of Teachers” was

v
WIFE AND MOTHER . 99

founded in Cincinnati in 1833, the object of which
was to popularize the common schools by increas-
ing their teaching efficiency, and so to increase
the demand for education among the people. He
was ably seconded in his efforts by such prominent
citizens as General Harrison, Smith Grimké, Arch-
bishop Purcell, A. H. McGuffy, Doctor Beecher,
Lydia Sigourney, and others. Mr. Stowe sailed
from New York on the ship Montreal, June 8,
1836, just five months after his marriage.
During her husband’s absence Mrs. Stowe con-
tinued to live at her father’s house, and employed
herself in writing short stories, articles, and es-
says which appeared from time to time in the West-
ern Monthly Magazine, the New York Hvangel-
ist, and other publications. She also assisted her
brother Henry Ward in editing the Journal, a
small daily paper published in Cincinnati. In-the
letter to Mrs. Follen, already referred to, she
gives this account of her early married life: “T
was married when I was twenty-five years of age
to a man rich in Greek and Hebrew, Latin and
Arabic, and, alas, rich in nothing else. When I
went to housekeeping, my entire stock of China
for parlor and kitchen was bought for eleven dol-
lars. That lasted very well for two years till my
100 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

brother was married, and brought his bride to
visit us. I then found, on review, that I had
neither plates nor tea-cups to set a table for my
father’s family ; whereupon I thought it best to
reinforce the establishment by getting me a tea-
set that cost ten dollars more, and this, I be-
lieve, formed my whole stock in trade for many
years.

“But then I was abundantly enriched with
wealth of another sort. I had two little, curly-
headed twin daughters to begin with, and my
stock in this line has gradually increased till I
have been the mother of seven children, the most
beautiful and the most loved of whom lies buried
near my Cincinnati residence.

“T lived two miles from the city of Cincinnati,
in the country, and domestic service, not always
to be found you know in the city, is next to an
impossibility to obtain in the country, even by
those who are willing to give the highest wages ;
so what was to be expected for poor me, who had
very little of this world’s goods to offer ?

“‘Had it not been for my inseparable friend,
Anna, a noble-hearted English girl, who landed
on our shores in destitution and sorrow, and clave
to me as Ruth to Naomi, I had never lived through
WIFE AND MOTHER 101

all the trials which this uncertainty and want of
domestic service imposed upon us both.”

While Professor Stowe was abroad his wife
kept him informed of the very significant events
that took place in Cincinnati during the summer
and fall of the year 1836. The burning question
of negro slavery had begun to be agitated in Cin-
cinnati, and Lane Theological Seminary came to
pe looked upon as a hot-bed of abolitionism.

( The Abolition movement was confined to the
students, however, and was led by Mr. Theodore
D. Weld, a man of remarkable decision and en-
ergy of character. He was unusually eloquent, a
strong, logical reasoner, and his personal influ-
ence was even greater than his eloquence, though
that enabled him to hold crowded audiences spell-
bound for many hours together. He had earned
money for his education by lecturing through the
Southern States, and what he then saw of slavery
made him, from the depths of his soul, its bitter
enemy. He had succeeded in converting a num-
ber of slave-holders to his views. Among them
was Mr. James G. Birney, of Huntsville, Alabama,
who not only liberated his own slaves, but in con-
nection with Dr. Gamaliel Bailey of Cincinnati,
founded and conducted in that city an Abolition.
102 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

paper called the Philanthropist. This was the
paper which was suppressed, and its office wrecked
by a mob, as recounted in Mrs. Stowe’s letter
which follows: “ Yesterday evening I spent scrib-
bling for Henry’s newspaper, the Journal. It
was in this wise: ‘Birney’s printing press has
been mobbed, and many of the respectable citi-
zens are inclined to wink at the outrage in con-
sideration of its moving in the line of their pre-
judices.’

“TI wrote a conversational sketch, in which
I rather satirized this inconsistent spirit, and
brought out the evil results of patronizing any
violation of private rights. It was in a light,
sketchy vein, and designed to draw attention to
a long editorial of Henry’s in which he consid-
ered 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 of
our pieces have gone to press to-day, with Charles’
article on music, and we have had not a little di-
version about our family newspaper.

“T thought when I was writing last night, that
I was like a good wife defending one of your prin-
WIFE AND MOTHER 103

ciples 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.

“The excitement about Birney continues to in-
crease. The keeper of the Franklin Hotel was as-
sailed 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. . . . A meeting has been convoked by means
of a hand-bill, in which some of the most respect-
able men of the city are invited by name to come
together and consider 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 op-
posed to the whole thing.

“T 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 the
104 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

members do not frown on these things as they
ought.

“Later: The meeting was held. . . . 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 dis-
avowal. . . . The 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 the mobs. We shall see what the result
will be in a few days.

“For my part I can easily see how such pro-
ceedings may make converts to abolitionism, for
already my sympathies are strongly enlisted for
Mr. Birney, and I hope 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
WIFE AND MOTHER 105

one window. Henry sits opposite to me writing a
most valiant editorial, and tells me to tell you he
is waxing mighty in battle.”

One day during this period Mrs. Stowe found
Henry in the kitchen busily engaged in making
lead bullets for his pistols.

‘What are you making those for, Henry?” she
asked.

“To kill men with, Hattie!”’ he replied. Many
years later in telling this incident to her son, Mrs.
Stowe said, “TI never saw Henry look so terrible!
I did not like it, for I feared he was growing
blood-thirsty.”

“Were you never afraid, mother?” asked her
son.

“No, I don’t remember being afraid exactly, —
I was excited, indignant, and thoroughly roused.”

“I suppose that there was danger both then and
afterwards,” she added, “but we were protected
by the distance of Lane Seminary from the city,
and the Providential depth and adhesiveness of
the Cincinnati mud in those days.”

In her next letter to her husband, she says: “I
told you in my last that the mob broke into Bir-
ney’s press, where, however, the mischief done
was but slight. The object appeared to be prin-
106 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

cipally to terrify. Immediately there followed a
general excitement in which even good men in
their panic and prejudice about abolitionism for-
got that mobs were worse evils than that, talked
against Birney, and winked at the outrage. .. .
Meanwhile, the turbulent spirits went beyond this
and. talked of revolution and of righting things
without law that could not be righted by it... .
A meeting was convoked at lower Market St. to
decide whether they would tolerate the publication
of an Abolition paper, and to this meeting all the
most respectable citizens were by name sum-
moned.

“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 consequences, and yet did not decidedly
frown upon it; those who sternly and decidedly
reprehended it.”

In the next paragraph we learn that Salmon
P. Chase was prominent in this last class.

She continues: “All the papers in the city
with the exception of Hammond’s and Henry’s
were either silent or openly mobocratic. As might
WIFE AND MOTHER 107

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 and
threw it in, and then came back to demolish the
office.

“. . . 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
were also mentioned as probable points to be at-
tacked by the mob.

“‘ By Tuesday morning the city was pretty well
alarmed. A regular corps of volunteers was organ-
ized, who for three nights patrolled the streets
with fire-arms, 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
108 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

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, unsup-
ported by a now frightened community, slunk
into their dens, and were still. . . .”

In speaking of the events of this crucial time
in her life Mrs. Stowe once said to her son: “T
saw for the first time clearly that the institution
of slavery was incapable of defence, and that it
was for that reason that its supporters were com-
pelled to resort to mob-violence. I saw that it-
was clearly incompatible with our free institutions
and was confident that it was doomed, and that
it would go, but how or when I could not picture
to myself. That summer and fall opened my eyes
to the real nature of slavery as they had never
been opened before.”

In September, 1836, while her husband was
still in Europe, Mrs. Stowe gave birth to twin
daughters, Eliza and Isabella as she named them,
but when Professor Stowe landed in New Yorkin
January, 1837, after a two months’ passage by
sailing ship, he insisted that they should be
called Eliza Tyler and Harriet Beecher.

In the summer of 1837 Mrs. Stowe’s health
WIFE AND MOTHER 109

forced her to put aside household cares, and
accordingly she made a long visit at the house of
her brother, the Rev. William Beecher, in Put-
nam, Ohio. From Putnam she writes: “The good
people here, you know, are about half Abolition-
ists. A lady who takes a leading part in the
female society in this place, called yesterday and
brought Catherine the proceedings of the Female
Anti-Slavery Convention.

“T should think them about as ultra as to mea-
sures 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 Philan-
thropist. Abolition being the fashion here it is
natural to look at its papers. It does seem to me
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

n from joining it.”

The attitude of Mrs. Stowe and her husband
at this time towards the Abolition party was very
a to the position of thousands of thought-

eople to-day with regard to the Socialist
es While deploring its excesses and unwisdom
in many particulars, they know it stands for great
110 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

and radical reforms for which there is a crying
need.

At the close of the letter Mrs. Stowe adds:
“Pray what is there in Cincinnati to satisfy one
whose mind is awakened on this subject (slavery)?
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?”

Little did she then dream that she was “to
do something” which would be as potent as any
other one thing in “cutting the Gordian knot” of
this giant problem. At this time her husband wrote
her, “ We all of course feel proper indignation at
the doings of the last General Assembly, and shall
treat them with merited contempt. This alliance
between the Old School Presbyterians and the
slave-holders will make more Abolitionists than
anything that has been done yet.”

Great events hung like storm clouds on the
horizon of the year 1838. In May of that year
the powerful Presbyterian Church of the United
States was rent asunder, the nominal cause being
differences in theological opinion, the underlying
cause slavery. Doctor Beecher and his sons were
conspicuous leaders in this great secession. At this
time a Lane student writes to Mrs. Stowe from
WIFE AND MOTHER 111
Philadelphia as follows: “ Your father and brother

distinguished themselves in the Convention on
Monday and Tuesday. I did not hear them —did
not reach Philadelphia till yesterday evening.
“The Assembly is by no means the most exciting
matter at present to the citizens. The heavens at
this moment are lighted up by the flames of the
Abolition or Liberty Hall in Sixth Street. The
mob have set it on fire. Itwas dedicated two weeks
ago, and cost forty thousand dollars. The Anti-
Slavery Society are holding a convention in it. Miss
Grimké, or rather Mrs. Weld,' spoke there (she was
married on Tuesday). The mob broke the windows.
Dr. Parrish told them not to hold night - meet-
ings; but they would. The ladies walk arm in arm
with the blacks. I was there this afternoon: the
women were holding a convention. The streets
were thronged by the mob watching the door.
“So long as the Abolitionists kept away from
the negroes the street was still as the grave, —the
mob only looked on, — but when they saw a huge
negro darken the door with a fair Quaker girl
hanging on his arm, they screamed and swore ven-
geance. The Mayor and Sheriff were on the ground.
The fire raged with great violence. The fire engines
1 The wife of Theodore D. Weld.
112 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

refused to play upon the building. . . . The bell
of the State House is tolling again—there are
cries of fire! ... The heavens are lighted up! The
African Hall on Thirteenth St. is on fire. Themob
is cutting the hose that no water may reach it. ...
That the Convention have been imprudent there
is no doubt; but that the rabble in the midst of a
powerful and enlightened community should be
permitted to trample on all law is shameful.”

History was making fast about the humble
household in Cincinnati. In January of this event-
ful year Mrs. Stowe’s third child, Henry Ellis, was
born. The following June she writes to Miss May:

“ 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 circum-
stance prove my apology, for I have been hand,
heart, and head full since I saw you.

“ Now to-day, forexample: I will tell you what I
had in my mind from dawn till 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 Mina up, for breakfast must
be ready at six o’clock this morning. So out of
bed I jump and seize the tongs and pound, pound,
WIFE AND MOTHER 113

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 it takes me,
or used to. Well, then baby wakes, qua, qua, qua,
and I give him his breakfast, dozing meanwhile
and soliloquizing as follows : ‘Now I must not for-
get to tell about the starch and dried apples’ —
doze —‘ah! um dear me! why doesn’t Mina get
up ?’ ‘IT don’t hear her’ — doze— ‘a um! I won-
der 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 for 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 bedclothes 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 bare-footed to
get blankets and pillows to prop him up, I finish
putting my frock on and hurry down to satisfy
myself by actual observation that breakfast is in
progress. Then back I come into the nursery,
where, remembering that it is washing day, and