i PUBLISHERS
'OUR FAMOUS WOMEN.
AN
2Uitl)ort?e5 emb Complete Becorft
OF THE
LIVES AND DEEDS OF EMINENT WOMEN
OF OUR TIMES.
GIVING FOB THE FIRST TIME
THE LIFE HISTORY OF WOMEN WHO HAVE WON THEIR WAY
FROM POVERTY AND OBSCURITY TO
FAME AND GLORY.
REPLETE WITH
SJnecliotes, grilling Incidents, anti
AN ENTIRELY NEW AND ORIGINAL WORK
WRITTEN BY THE FOLLOWING
TWENTY DISTINGUISHED AUTHOES:
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
ROSE TERRY COOKE.
MARY A. LIVERMORE.
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
MARION HARLAND.
MARY CLEMMER.
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY.
LUCY LARCOM.
JULIA WARD HOWE.
SUSAN COOLIDGE.
KATE SANBORN.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE.
LAURA CURTIS BULLARD.
LILIAN WHITING.
ELIZABETH T. SPRING.
ELIZABETH BRYANT JOHNSTON.
MAUD HOWE.
Illustrated
WITH FULL-PAGE PORTRAITS MAINLY FROM PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN EXPRESSLY
FOR THIS WORK, AND FINE FULL-PAGE ENGRAVINGS
FROM ORIGINAL DESIGNS.
-SOLD ONLY BY SUBSCRIPTION.
HARTFORD, CONN.:
THE HARTFORD PUBLISHING COMPANY.
1888.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883-
BY A. D. WORTHINGTON A1SD COMPANY,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. D.C,
TO
fHnr ant OTomen
WHO HONOR MAN AND WOMAN,
AND SEE THE SPECIAL FITNESS OF
THIS BOOK, TO-DAY,
IT IS DEDICATED.
PUBLISHEES' PKEFACE.
N these book-making days, a new volume of
biography needs, perhaps, a word of intro-
duction to the kindly households wherein it
seeks a welcome.
Probably no aspect of our time is more sig-
nificant of progress than the ever-growing dis-
cussion of the place and duties of women in
the social state. Causes both economical and
moral have tended to break up old habits of life and
thought, and make new demands upon their capacity and
conscience, which experience has not yet taught them to
satisfy. All over the land, women are conscious of a fer-
ment and disturbance of thought which is the prophecy of
better things. Everywhere they are asking, " What can /do
to hasten the New Day ? "
It seemed, therefore, to the Publishers of this volume that
the time had come when the simple story of what a few
women have done would prove an inspiration and incentive
to the many women who long to do. The book contains
thirty sketches of lives, which, in various ways, have made the
world richer for their presence. Excepting six, the subjects
vi PUBLISHERS' PREFACE.
of the sketches are living and working. With the natural
modesty of worth, these ladies shrank from needless publicity,
and at first hesitated to allow the use of their names. But
when assured by the Publishers that the aim of the book
was not to gratify a vulgar curiosity, but to kindle new hopes
and ambitions in unknown hearts, and that it was the story
of their labors, discouragements, and successes which was
desired, rather than of their private joys and sorrows, they
generously said that if the knowledge of anything which they
had done could be of use to other women, struggling for
Dread, or the right to labor, or an honorable fame, they
should hold it churlish to refuse. In no case has the name
of a living person been used without its owner's consent. In
almost every instance the writer of the sketch is the personal
friend of its subject, a relation which has insured an ex-
ceptional faithfulness and sympathy in treatment. The
arrangement of the papers is, of course, purely arbitrary,
an alphabetical order having been held the most convenient.
The Publishers believe that they may fairly call their book
representative. For while there are necessarily omitted
names perhaps as well-known and well-beloved as those
which appear, these thirty cover as wide a range of endeavor
and achievement as the limits of the volume permit. That
the subjects of the memoirs are all American, either by birth
or adoption, gives the book a title to be considered not less
national than representative.
The twenty women who have contributed these sketches
need no commendation. Their names are a sufficient guar-
antee of the volume's worth. But the Publishers desire to
express their sense of personal indebtedness to these co-
workers for the accuracy, ability, and hearty good-will which
have made the book better than their hopes.
PUBLISHERS' PREFACE. yii
In the mechanical execution of the work, the Publishers
take an honest pride. They have spared neither money nor
trouble to make it worthy of the subject-matter. Its por-
traits represent the best work of the best workers, and the
likenesses are as faithful as the execution is artistic.
Finally, the Publishers venture to hope that they have not
misconceived the temper of the time, and that to every one
of the thousands of homes which the book may enter, it will
bring something of the courage, patience, steadfastness of
purpose, cheerfulness, and lofty aspiration which fill the lives
whose history it records.
NAMES OF AUTHORS
WHO HAVE WRITTEN FOR THIS WORK,
WITH A LIST OF THEIR SUBJECTS.
SUBJECTS.
AUTHORS.
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE ( Cathenne E. Beecher.
\ Mrs, A.D.T. Whi
HOSE TERRY COOKE ' Harriet Beecher Stowe '
Whitney*''
\ Harriet Prescott Spofford.'
Rose Terry
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
Clara Louise Kellogg.
Louise Chandler
Mary L. Booth.
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS ......... Mafy ^ Livermore ^
a
Lcc* LAECOM
MES.A'.D.T.WH.TKEY
L,,c y
(Margaret Fuller.
Frances E. Willard.
Mary Virginia Terhune
(" Marion Harland").
Loom OHun, MOOLTO. ......... Lovis* M. Alcott.
MARY CLEMMER . ,
......... Lucretia Mott.
MARY A. LIVERMORE . . A . .
...... Anne Whitney.
MARIOS HARLAND . .
........... Elizabeth Prentiss.
NAMES OF AUTHORS. 1*
AUTHORS. SUBJECTS.
SUSAN COOLIDGE Lydia Maria Child.
f T7ie Doctors Blackwell.
LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLB | Mary Mapes Dodge.
[ Abby Hopper Gibbons.
JULIA WARD HOWE Maria Mitchell.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON Susan B. Anthony.
LAURA CURTIS BULLARD Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
(Mary Clemmer. ' *
Charlotte Cushman.
ELIZABETH T. SPRING Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.
ELIZABETH BRYANT JOHNSTON Frances Hodgson Burnett.
MAUD HOWB . Julia Ward Howe.^
LIST OF
OUR FAMOUS WOMEN,"
IN THE ORDER IN WHICH
THEIR LIVES ARE SKETCHED IN THIS WORK,
WITH THE NAMES OF THE WRITERS.
SUBJECTS. WRITERS. PAGE
LOUISA M. ALCOTT Louise Chandler Moulton .... 29
SUSAN B. ANTHONY Elizabeth Cady Stanton 53
CATHERINE E. BEECHER .... Harriet Beecher Stowe 75
CLARA BARTON Lucy Larcom 94
MARY L. BOOTH Harriet Prescott Spofford .... 117
THE DOCTORS BLACKWELL .... Lucia Gilbert Runkle 134
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT . . . Elizabeth Bryant Johnston ... 152
ROSE TERRY COOKE Harriet Prescott Spofford .... 174
CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN Lilian Whiting 207
LYDIA MARIA CHILD Susan Coolidge 230
MARY CLBMMBR Lilian Whiting 250
MARY MAPES DODGE Lucia Gilbert Runkle 270
MARGARET FULLER Kate Sanborn ........ 295
ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS Lucia Gilbert Runkle 316
JULIA WARD HOWE Maud Howe 337
CLARA LOUISE KELLOGQ .... Harriet Prescott Spofford .... 359
MARY A. LIVERMORE Elizabeth Stuart Phelps 386
LUCY LARCOM Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney 415
LIST OF "OUR FAMOUS WOMEN." xi
SUBJECTS. WRITERS. PAGE
MARIA MITCHELL Julia Ward Howe 437
LUCRETIA MOTT Mary Clemmer ^62
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON . . . Harriet Prescott Spofford .... 498
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD . . Rose Terry Cooke 521
ELIZABETH PRENTISS ...... "Marion Harland" 539
ELIZABETH -STUART PHELPS . . . Elizabeth T. Spring ...... 560
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE .... Rose Terry Cooke -581
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON .... Laura Curtis Bullard 602
V
MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE .... Kate Sanborn 624
("Marion Harland.")
MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY .... Harriet Beecher Stowe 652
ANNE WHITNEY Mary A. Livermore 668
FaANCfiS E. WILLARD Kate Sanborn . 691
LIST
OF
PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS,
THESE PORTRAITS WERE ENGRAVED MAINLY FROM PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN EXPRESSLY
FOR THIS WORK, AND THE FULL-PAGE ENGRAVINGS ARE FROM ORIGINAL
DESIGNS BY MR. T. W. WILLIAMS.
PAGK.
1. ILLUSTRATED TITLE-PAGE . . . To precede Title.
2. PORTRAIT OF LOUISA M. ALCOTT To face 30
3. A PROUD MOMENT Miss ALCOTT DISCOVERING THE AN-
NOUNCEMENT OF " BERTHA " ,, 38
4. How Miss ALCOTT WRITES HER STORIES 38
5. PORTRAIT OF CLARA BARTON 96
6. SCENES IN THE LIFE OF CLARA BARTON HOSPITAL SUPPLIES
ON THE WAY TO ANTIETAM 104
7. THE DYING REBEL'S WARNING 104
8. WRITING LETTERS FOR THE SOLDIERS 104
9. MIDNIGHT AFTER THE BATTLE OF CHANTILLY THE DYING
BOY 104
10. CLARA BARTON ENTERING STRASBURG WITH THE GERMAN ARMY ,, 112
11. THE BANNER OF THE RED CROSS n H2
12. AN INCIDENT IN THE STUDENT LIFE OF DR. ELIZABETH BLACK-
WELL AN ACTUAL SCENE IN THE OPERATING ROOM OF A
MEDICAL COLLEGE 142
13. THE WOMEN'S HOSPITAL AND INFIRMARY, NEW YORK CITY . . 142
14. PORTRAIT OF ROSE TERRY COOKE 176
15. PORTRAIT OF CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN , 208
16. PORTRAIT OF MARY CLEMMER ,, 252
17. SCENES AT THE BATTLE OF MARYLAND HEIGHTS THE RE-
TREAT n 264
18. PORTRAIT OF MARY MAPES DODGE 278
19. WRECK OF THE SHIP " ELIZABETH " AND DEATH OF MARGARET
FULLER, HER HUSBAND AND CHILD 314
LIST OF PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. xiii
20. CHRISTIAN WORK AMONG CONVICTS AND FELONS MRS. GIB-
BONS VISITING A CONDEMNED MURDERER IN HIS CELL AT
THE NEW YORK TOMBS To face 320
21. CASTAWAY CHILDREN CHILD-LIFE IN CITY STREETS .... 320
22. THE REIGN OF TERROR DURING THE DRAFT RIOTS IN NEW
YORK THE INFURIATED MOB ATTACKING MRS. GIBBONS'
HOUSE tt 332
23. THE TOMBS, THE CITY PRISON >f 333
24. PORTRAIT OF MARY A. LIVERMORE 388
25. MRS. LIVERMORE TRANSPORTING TWENTY-THREE WOUNDED
SOLDIERS TO THEIR HOMES IN THE NORTHWEST THE
STEAMBOAT CAPTAIN'S THREAT M 400
26. THE MISSISSIPPI STEAMER, "FANNY OGDEN," ON HER WAY
WITH SANITARY SUPPLIES FOR SUFFERING SOLDIERS ... 400
27. A THRILLING INCIDENT OF CHICAGO LIFE THE NIGHT SUM-
MONS FOR MRS. LIVERMORE 408
28. AT THE BEDSIDE OF THE DYING GIRL 408
29. NURSING SOLDIERS IN UNION HOSPITALS 408
30. PORTRAIT OF LUCY LARCOM 416
31. SCENES IN THE LIFE OF LUCY LARCOM THE LITTLE DOFFER . 428
32. PIONEER LIFE IN ILLINOIS TEACHING SCHOOL IN A " TWO-
MILE NEIGHBORHOOD " M 428
33. PORTRAIT OF MARIA MITCHELL n 438
34. PORTRAIT OF LUCRETIA MOTT 464
35. LUCRETIA MOTT SURROUNDED BY A MOB A RUFFIAN'S PRO-
TECTION 484
36. PORTRAIT OF LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 500
37. PORTRAIT OF HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD 522
38. PORTRAIT OF ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS 562
39. SUMMER LIFE BY THE SEA 574
40. AN INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS
" THIMBLE OR PAINT BRUSH, WHICH ? " 574
41. PORTRAIT OF HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 594
42. BROUGHT TO BAY A RUNAWAY SLAVE TRACKED BY BLOOD-
HOUNDS ,, 594
43. UNCLE TOM AND LITTLE EVA ,, 594
44. PORTRAIT OF MARIA VIRGINIA TERHUNE (Marion Harland) . . ,, 626
45. PORTRAIT OF MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY 654
46. PORTRAIT OF FRANCES E. WILLARD , 692
47. LOCKED OUT THE PRAYING BAND PRAYING IN THE STREET
AT THE DOOR OF A SALOON ,, 704
CONTENTS.
I.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT.
BY LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
PAGE
Amos Bronson Alcott His Early Life The ** Sage of Concord "
Louisa M. Alcott Girlhood Days High Talk and Low Diet
Her First Story A Very Stage-Struck Young Lady End
of Her Dreams of Dramatic Glory Seeking Her Own For-
tuneToilsome Years Story -Writing Advised to "Stick
to Teaching " Hospital Nurse. Shattered Health Her
First Book How " Little Women" Came to be Written Fame
and Fortune at Last Amusing Requests An Extraordinary
Effusion Miss Alcott's Portrait of Herself at Fifteen Miss
Alcott at Fifty Incidents Precious Memories Methods of
Work An Old Atlas for a Desk How She Plans Her Stories . 29
ii,
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
BY ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
Susan B. Anthony's Parentage Her Girlhood A Rebellious Qua-
ker Incident in Her Early Life The Heighth of Her Ambition
A "High-Seat'' Quaker Incident in Her Experience as
Teacher Advocating Temperance, Anti-Slavery, and Woman
Suffrage Her Facility and Power as an Orator Speaking to a
Deaf and Dumb Audience Incident on a Mississippi Steamboat
Celebrating Her Fiftieth Birthday Trip to Europe Inci-
dents of Foreign Travel Arrested for Voting The Legal
Struggle that followed Her Labors for Woman Suffrage Her
Industry and Self-denial for the Cause Personal Appearance . 53
XVI CONTENTS.
(Ctmptcv ill.
CATHERINE E. BEECHER.
BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
PAGE
A Leaf from Dr. Lyman Beecher's Diaiy The Old Parsonage at
Litchfield Miss Beecher's Early Education Her Keen Sense
of Humor A Sprightly Poem Lines Written on the Death of
Her Mother Her First Published Poems 4 ' Who is this C. D.
D. ?" Engagement to Prof. Alexander M. Fisher Bright
Prospects for the Future Prof. Fisher Sails for England Ship-
wreck of the " Albion " and Death of Prof. Fisher The Sur-
vivor's Narrative of the Shipwreck Effect of the Distressing
News Miss Beecher Establishes the Hartford Female Seminary
Her Energy and Incessant Activity Last Years of Her Life
Her Death Lines Written to a Dying Friend ....... 75
iv.
CLARA BARTON.
BY LUCY LARCOM.
Clara Barton's Early Life A Faithful Little Nurse at Eleven
Devotion to Her Sick Brother Breaking Out of the Civil War
Her Loyalty and Devotion to the Union The Old Sixth Mas-
sachusetts Regiment First Blood Shed for the Union Miss
Barton's Timely Services Consecrating Her Life to the Soldiers'
Needs At the Front Army Life and Experiences Her Un-
daunted Heroism Terrible Days Errands of Mercy " The
Angel of the Battlefield " Instances of Her Courage and Devo-
tionNarrow Escapes Her Labors for Union Prisoners
Record of the Soldier Dead Dorrance At water Work After
the War Her Visit to Europe The Franco-Prussian War
At the Front Again Unfurling the Banner of the Red Cross
Record of a Noble Life ........ 94
CONTENTS. XVii
feapter v.
MARY LOUISE BOOTH.
BY HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
PAGE
A Woman of Rare Intellect Childhood of Maiy Louise Booth
An Indefatigable Little Student Beginning of Her Literary
Life A Great Historical Work Breaking Out of the Civil
War Miss Booth's Sympathy with the North Her Anxiety to
Help the Cause How She did it A Prodigious Task " It
Shall be Done " Marvellous Industry and Perseverance
Charles Sumner's Friendship A Letter of Thanks from Abraham
Lincoln Assuming the Management of " Harper's Bazaar "
A Signal Success A Model Paper Miss Booth s Home True
Hospitality Pen-portrait of a Gifted Woman ....... 117
vi.
THE DOCTORS BLACKWELL.
BY LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE.
Early Home of the Blackwell Sisters " Little Shy " Her Indom-
itable Pluck and Wonderful Physique A Feat Showing Her
Strength Death of Her Father Struggle of the Family with
Misfortune and Poverty Elizabeth Begins the Study of Medi-
cine How She Acquired Her Professional Education Sur-
mounting Great Difficulties Some of Her Experiences as a
Medical Student Graduates with High Honor First Medi-
cal Diploma ever Granted to a Woman A Proud Moment in
Her Life Her Sister, Emily Blackwell Her College Life
Battling Against Opposition Final Success Her Studies
Abroad The Two Sisters Establish Themselves in Practice in
New York Founding the Woman's Hospital and College . 134
yn.
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.
BY ELIZABETH BRYANT JOHNSTON.
Mrs Burnett's English Home Tales of Her Childhood Emigra-
tion to America A Helpless Family in a Strange Land The
2
xviii CONTENTS.
PAOE
Struggle for Subsistence Incidents of Her Girlhood Sym-
pathy for the Poor How She Acquired Her Knowledge of
English Dialect The Original "Lass o' LowrieV -First
Literary Efforts Seeking a Publisher Devising Ways and
Means Diplomacy A Day of Triumph and Happiness
" Who is She ? " Life at Mt. Ararat Revisiting England
Her Washington Home A Thrilling Incident at Long Branch
A Heroine in Real Life Mrs. Burnett's Personal Appearance . 152
fcaptev vin.
ROSE TERRY COOKE.
BY HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
Rose Terry Cooke's Ancestry Her Description of an Old-Fash-
ioned Thanksgiving Scenes in Her Childhood A Picture of
Old New-England Life Her Deep Love of Nature Passion
for Flowers School Life Reading at the Age of Three -
Inimitable Skill in Depicting New-England Life and Character
Her Bright Humor and Keen Sense of the Ridiculous Begin-
ning Her Literary Career Opening of Her Genius A Novel
Incident in Plymouth Church The Story of an Opal Ring
How a Little Slave-Child was made Free A Romantic Story
Odd Experiences with Impostors and Counterfeiters Mrs.
Cooke's Home and Domestic Life A Woman of Rare Genius . 174
1X .
CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN.
BY LILIAN WHITING.
Charlotte Cushman's Childhood Her Remarkable Imitative Faculty
First Appearance on the Stage A Scanty Stage Wardrobe
A Friend in Need An Amusing Experience The Struggle for
Fame Macready's Sympathy and Influence First Visit to
Europe " Waiting in the Shadow " D6but in London A
Brilliant Triumph Her Ability Recognized at Last in Her
Native Land Glimpse of Her Life in Rome Unfaltering
Patriotism Her Munificent Gift to the Sanitary Commission
The Culmination of Her Power A Notable Dramatic Tri-
umph Her Farewell to the Stage Address of William Cullen
Bryant Miss Cushman's Response Her Illness, Death, and
Last Resting-Place , 207
CONTENTS. xix
X.
LYDIA MARIA CHILD.
BY SUSAN COOLIDGE.
PAGE
The Little Maid of Medford Her Early Life and Happy Mar-
riage Books She has Written Surprise and Indignation ex-
cited by Her " Appeal" The Battle of Life Rowing against
the Tide Her Patience, Fortitude, and Reliance Stirring
Times Devotion to Her Husband Life at Wayland Her
Bright Humor Her Sympathy for Old John Brown Mrs.
Mason's Violent Letter Mrs. Child's Famous Reply She is
Promised a " Warm Reception " Her Loyalty, Self-Denial, and
Work during the Civil War Princely Generosity Serene Old
Age Death of Her Husband Mrs. Child's Tribute to His
Memory Waiting and Trusting Her Death and Funeral . 230
xi.
MARY CLEMMED.
BY LILIAN WHITING.
Mary Clemmer's Ancestry Pen-portraits of Her Father and Mother
Her Childhood School-life and Early Education Publishing
Her First Verses Beginning Her Literary Career Removal
to New York First Newspaper Letters Marvellous Industry
and Capacity for Work Contracting to Write a Column a Day
for Three Years A Chapter from Her Experiences During the
War Vivid Description of the Surrender of Maryland Heights
Her Journalistic Work How she Gathers Materials for "A
Woman's Letter from Washington " Charles Sumner's Friend-
ship A Busy Life Tribute to the Memory of Alice and Phoebe
Gary Mary Clemmer's Washington Home ...... 250
xn.
MARY MAPES DODGE.
BY LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE.
New York Society Forty Years Ago Prof. James J. Mapes An
Ideal Home Genuine Hospitality Mary Mapes Dodge Her
XX CONTEXTS.
PAGE
Two Boys What First Turned Her Attention to Writing
First Workshop A Cosy " Den " Birthday Feasts for Jamie
and Harry A Birthday Poem Red-letter Days How " Hans
Brinker, or the Silver Skates," came to be Written Merited
Reward Mrs. Dodge's Remarkable Editorial Capacity Her
Clear Insight and Sound Judgment Editing " St. Nicholas "
A Model Magazine for Children Who and What Makes it So
The Care and Labor Bestowed upon Each Number Mrs.
Dodge's Home Life and Happy Surroundings 276
xin.
MARGARET FULLER.
(MARCHIONESS D'OSSOLI).
BY KATE SANBORN.
Conflicting Opinions An English Estimate of Margaret Fuller
Her Childhood and School-life Her Life as Seen by Others
A Peep at Her Journal An Encounter with Doctor Channing
Emerson's Opinion Wonderful Power as a Converser Her
Great Ambition The Influence She Exerted Horace Greeley's
Friendship Connection with the "New York Tribune"
" Alone as Usual " Visits Europe Noted Men and Women of
the Time Harriet Martineau's Opinion The Great Change
in Miss Fuller's Life Her Romantic Marriage in Italy Ter-
rible Trials Homeward Bound Shipwrecked on the Shores of
Her Native Land Last Scenes in Her Life . . .295
totter xiv.
ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS.
BY LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE.
" Father Hopper's " Work Among Convicts and Felons First Sun-
day Services in a Jail Abby Hopper's Girlhood Following in
the Footsteps of Her Father Her Work Among the Inmates of
the New York Tombs The "Isaac T. Hopper Home" The
School for Street Children The Waifs and Strays of Randall's
Island Charity Children An Appeal for Dolls Generous
Response Affecting Incident The Story of Robert Denyer
CONTENTS. xxi
PAGE
Mrs. Gibbons' Work During the War Nursing Union
Soldiers The Draft Riots in New York An Exciting Time
Attacking Mrs. Gibbons' House Havoc and Devastation
Wrought by the Mob Work After the War A Noble Life . . 316
xv.
JULIA WARD HOWE.
BY HER DAUGHTER, MAUD HOWE.
"Little Miss Ward" The Influences that Surrounded Her Early
Life Her Education Her Faculty for Acquiring Languages
' 'Bro. Sam" Miss Ward's First Visit to Boston Meets Dr.
Samuel G. Howe Her Marriage Wedding Trip to the Old
World Cordial Reception by Famous People Declining Tom
Moore's Offer to Sing Reminiscences of European Travel
Her Patriotism in the Days of the Rebellion " Madame, You
Must Speak to My Soldiers " Writing the Battle-Hymn of the
Republic The '* Brain Club " A Many-sided Woman
Mrs. Howe as a Public Speaker Reminiscences of Her Life in
Santo Domingo A Woman of Genius and Intellect .... 337
xvi.
CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG.
BY HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
Clara Louise Kellogg's Birth and Parentage Girlhood and Early
Education Her Extraordinary Musical Genius Its Early
Development Intuitive Knowledge of Tone and Pitch Mar-
vellous Execution Patient Study and Unwearied Devotion to
Her Art Beginning of Her Career An Unusual Compliment
at Rehearsal First Trial in Opera Her Debut Carrying
the Audience Captive Wild Enthusiasm Triumphant Suc-
cess Verdict of the Critics Visits Europe Debut in Lon-
don A Brilliant and Enthusiastic Audience Acknowledged
to be the Queen of Song Return to America Reception in
New York Triumphal Tours Her Charity and Kindness
Personal Appearance and Characteristics ......... 359
XX11 CONTENTS.
xvn.
MARY A. LIVERMORE.
BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.
PAGE
Mrs. Livermore's Ancestry Stories of Her Childhood The Little
Minister Her Marriage Journalistic Experiences The
War of the Rebellion Her Loyalty and Devotion to the Union
The Northwestern Sanitary Commission Army Experiences
Incidents of Hospital Life Wonderful Nerve and Ready
Resources in Emergencies A Remarkable Achievement
Mighty Work for Union Soldiers Their Love and Reverence
for Her " Mother " to them All Touching Story of a Soldier's
Ring A Thrilling Incident of Chicago Life An Errand of
Mercy Terrible Death-Bed Scene Labors after the War
Her Christian Life and Influence Work as a Reformer Fame
as an Orator Personal Appearance Home Life A Grand
and Noble Woman ................ 386
feapler xvni.
LUCY LARGO M.
BY MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY.
A Happy Name Lucy Larcom's Childhood First Literary Ven-
ture Removal of the Family to Lowell Lucy's Mill Life
The Little "Doffer" A Glimpse of the Daily Life of a Lowell
Mill Girl The Lowell " Offering " First Meeting with the
Poet Whittier His Lifelong Friendship Removal to Illinois
Pioneer Life Teaching a Real Deestrick " School Incidents
in Her Life as Teacher Mysterious Disappearance of one of
Her Pupils An Amusing Incident Return to Old New
England Work as Teacher in Wheaton Seminary Her
Loyalty During the War Editing " Our Young Folks ". . 415
teprter xix.
MARIA MITCHELL.
BY JULIA WARD HOWE.
Miss Mitchell's Nantucket Home Her Ancestors " Poor but
Happy " -Her Early Life Her Father's Love for Astronomy -
How She Obtained Her Education Unwearied Devotion to her
CONTENTS. XXlll
PAE
Studies A Great Event in Her Life Discovers a Telescopic
Comet Claiming the Prize Offered by the King of Denmark
Difficulty in Obtaining it Edward Everett's Efforts in Her
Behalf Final Recognition of Her Claim Receives the Gold
Medal from the Danish King Her Fame Abroad Visiting the
Old World Entertained and Honored by Distinguished Scien-
tists Her own Account of Some of Them Amusing Experi-
ences Interesting Incidents Her Life and Daily Work . . . 437
Trailer XX.
LUCRETIA MOTT.
BY MARY CLEMMER.
A Rare Example of Womanhood Ancestry of Lucretia Mott The
Women of Nantucket Celebrating the Fourth of July A
Nantucket Tea-party Lucretia Mott's Marriage A Marvel-
lously Mated Pair A Perfect Wedded Life of Fifty-seven Years
Power as a Preacher Abhorrence of Slavery How the
Colored People Revered Her Name Surrounded by a Mob
Claiming and Receiving Protection from a Ruffian Daunt-
less Bravery Reception in England Mrs. Mott's Domestic
Life Devotion to Her Children Her Thrift, Industry, and
Economy Her Home a Refuge for Runaway Slaves The
Meeting-place of Reformers Last Years of Her Life A Great
Philanthropist, Great Preacher, and Perfect Woman ..... 462
xxi.
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
BY HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
A Charming Woman Mrs. Moulton's Parentage Influences that
Surrounded Her Childhood Rigid New England Training
Girlhood and School Days First Literary Efforts Pub-
lication of Her First Book Letters to the New York
" Tribune " First Visit to Europe Impressions of the Old
World Paris Rome Pictures of Italian Life Venice
Cordial Reception in London Honors Shown by Distinguished
People Flattering Attention Delightful Experiences How
Her Book of Poems was Received in London High Praise
from Eminent Critics A Famous Traveller Her Personal
Appearance Her Charm of Manner A Gifted and Popular
Woman , . , .498
XXIV CONTENTS.
xxn.
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
BY ROSE TERRY COOKE.
PAGE
Mrs. Spofford's Parentage Anecdotes of Her Childhood A Novel
Expedition Girlhood Days Writing Dramas for School Exhi-
bition First Literary Efforts Brilliant Debut The Story
that First Made Her Famous How it was Received The
Commotion it Created Wonderful Command of Language
Newburyport and its Surroundings A City by the Sea
Some of its Odd People A Locality Justly Famed for its Noted
Persons Old Traditions and Associations Amusing Anecdote
Why the Colored Woman Named Her Baby Genevieve instead
of Harriet Mrs. Spofford's Present Home A Romantic Spot
Genuine Hospitality A Charming New England Home . . 521
Tmpler XXI II.
ELIZABETH PRENTISS.
BY MARION HARLAND.
Childhood of Elizabeth Payson Her Parentage Death of Her
Father The Struggle with Adversity A Glimpse of Her Life
at Nineteen " The Night Before Thanksgiving " Fond-
ness and Facility for Writing Preparing to Become a Teacher
Early Religious Experiences Marriage to Rev. Dr. Prentiss
Wife and Mother Mrs. Prentiss' First Books A Peep into
Her Domestic Life Cares of a Pastor's Wife Ill-health and
Suffering Patience in Affliction Marvellous Industry and
Courage Writing under Difficulties How " Stepping Heaven-
ward " was Written Its Wonderful Sale Fortitude and
Resignation of a Noble Christian Woman ........ 539
xxiv.
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.
BY ELIZABETH T. SPRING.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps' Ancestry Her Childhood The Old
Home at Andover Her Story-telling Faculty Improvising
Stories for Her Schoolmates Her Education Pen-portrait of
CONTENTS. XXV
PAGE
Miss Phelps at Sixteen Memories of the War An Unwritten
Story An Incident in Her School-life "Thimble or Paint-
brush, Which?" First Literary Ventures The Abbott Mis-
sion "The Gates Ajar" Its Enormous Sale and Helpful
Influence Miss Phelps as a Lecturer Power Over Her Audi-
ences Her Summer Home by the Sea Her Winter Study
Interest in Reform Movements Personal Work Among the
Fishermen The Strength of Her Writings 560
xxv.
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
BY ROSE TERRY COOKE.
Mrs. Stowe's Father, Rev. Dr. Lyman Beecher His Fame and Worth
His Wife, Roxanna Foote Mrs. Stowe's Early Training
Incidents in Her Childhood A Famous School Reminiscences
of Her Girlhood Early Passion for Writing Marriage to Prof.
Calvin E. Stowe Life on the Banks of the Ohio Where and
How She Received Her First Impressions of Slavery What
Led to the Writing of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " Difficulties
Under Which it was Written How it was Received Excite-
ment it Created Mrs. Stowe's Visit to England Her Recep-
tionThe True Stcry of "A Vindication of Lady Byron "-
Celebrating Mrs. Stowe's Seventy-first Birthday Her Two
Homes Looking Toward the Other Side of Jordan .... 581
Txaptcr xxvi.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
BY LAURA CURTIS BULLARD.
George Sand's Inquiry Mrs. Stanton as the Originator of the
Woman Suffrage Movement Birth and Parentage Early
Sympathies with Ill-treated Women Tries to be. a Boy
Studies Law in Her Father's Office Her Marriage and Wed-
ding Tour Meets Lucretia Mott, and Decides upon a Future
Career Calls the First Woman Sum-age Convention Fred-
erick Douglass Her only Helper Effect of the Convention
Progress of the Movement Lectures and Addresses Edits
"The Revolution" Travels in France and England Wit
Anecdotes Personal Appearance and Characteristics
Future of the Cause 602
xxvi CONTENTS.
XXVII.
MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE.
("MARION HARLAND.")
BY KATE SANBORN.
PAGE
A Popular Fallacy " Marion Harland " A Versatile and Successful
Author A Visit to Her Home Her Domestic Life A Peep
into Her Kitchen An Inviting Place Her Husband, Rev. Dr.
E. P. Terhune ; the Man and His Power Characteristic Letter
from "Marion Harland" An Interesting Bit of Autobiography
Her Own Account of Her Early Life Reminiscences of Her
Girlhood Her First Book Its Marked Success Career as a
Novelist A New Departure Her " Cookery Books " Their
Enormous Sale A Boon to Housekeepers Her Love for Little
Folks What She says about Santa Glaus Sound Advice to
Girls and Wise Words for Wives A Gifted and Famous
Woman .................... 624
xxvni.
MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY.
BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
The Influence of Good Literature in the Formation of Character
Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney Her Childhood Early Life and Sur-
roundings Memories of Good Old Days Her Education and
Religious Training Marriage Faculty for Portraying Do-
mestic Life Why She Excels in Painting Perfect Homes
Books She has Written Selections from Her Poems Sympa-
thy with Young People Gaining an Insight into Practical
Questions The Sparkle and Humor of Her Writings The
Soundness of their Teachings Their Great Influence for Good
Comparison between Her Books and Miss Edgeworth's Ex-
tracts Illustrating their Religious Tendencies ....... 652
xxi x.
ANNE WHITNEY.
BY MARY A. LIVERMORE.
Anne Whitney's Girlhood School Days Testimony of One of Her
Teachers Her Literary Talents Book of Poems The Cir-
CONTENTS. xxvii
PAGE
cumstance that turned Her Thoughts to Art An Interesting
Incident Beginning Her Work in Sculpture First Attempts
Marvellous Skill Her Statue of " Godiva " Attention it
Attracted " Africa " " The Lotus- Eater" Studies and
Travels Abroad " Roma " " A Thinking Statue" Com-
mission from the State of Massachusetts Statue of Samuel
Adams Miss Whitney's Studio Devotion to Her Art Work
that will Endure .... . . 60S
Irapte* xxx.
FRANCES E. WILLARD.
BY KATE SANBORN.
An After-dinner Speech An Amusing Incident A Southern
Clergyman's Opinion Miss Willard's Ancestry Memories of
Childhood's Days Scenes from the Past Amusing Extract
from Her Diary Her Keen Sense of Humor Climbing the
Pyramids " Genteel " Gymnastics " Paul Tucker, of New
York, Aged 18J " Miss Willard's Life- Work Delivering Her
First Lecture A Genuine Sensation Enlisting in the Tem-
perance Work Liberality and Sense of Justice Religious
Nature Specimen of Her Oratory Marvellous Command of
Language Experiences in the South A Southern Welcome
How She is Appreciated at Home Universally Loved,
Honored, and Respected 691
" It is an ungenerous silence which leaves all the fair
words of honestly-earned praise to the writer of obituary
notices, and the marble worker"
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES,
OUR FAMOUS WOMEN.
CHAPTER I.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT.
BY LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTOK
Amos Bronson Alcott His Early Life The " Sage of Concord " Louisa
M. Alcott Girlhood Days High Talk and Low Diet Her First Story
A Very Stage-Struck Young Lady End of Her Dreams of Dramatic
Glory Seeking Her Own Fortune Toilsome Years Story- Writing
Advised to " Stick to Her Teaching " Hospital Nurse Shattered Health
Her First Book How "Little Women" Came to be Written Fame
and Fortune at Last Amusing Requests An Extraordinary Effusion
Miss Alcott' s Portrait of Herself at Fifteen Miss Alcott at Fifty-
Incidents Precious Memories Methods of Work An Old Atlas for a
Desk How She Plans Her Stories Where They are Written.
N writing of an author still living, and still busily
at work, there is always a certain difficulty.
We are too near at hand for perspective, and
too much under the spell of a sympathetic per-
sonality to be able to anticipate the judgments
of posterity. Our utmost endeavor, then, must
be to make the world, so far as possible, sharers
in the pleasure of personal intercourse with a
gifted and remarkable woman, and to gratify to some
extent the general curiosity about a general favorite.
In the literature of our own country and time there are
few more picturesque figures than Louisa May Alcott ; since
we must consider not only her own distinguished achievement,
but also the surroundings of her life. Unless heredity were
30 LOUISA MAY ALCOTT.
a word without a moaning the world had a right to expect
much of Miss Alcott by virtue of inheritance, and the highest
of these expectations she has certainly fulfilled.
Her father, Amos Bronson Alcott, the " Sage of Concord,"
as he has often been called, is not less widely known than his
distinguished daughter. He came of a good old New Eng-
land stock, his ancestors having been among the earliest
settlers of the town of Wolcott, Conn., where Mr. Alcott
himself was born, in 1799. Wolcott was in the neighbor-
hood of wooden clocks, and while still a schoolboy Mr.
Alcott worked, in his vacations, at clock-making. After he
left school came a season of peddling, with alternations of
school-teaching ; and through those years a half-formed pur-
pose of entering the ministry of the Episcopal church had
some influence on his studies and his life. By the time he
was twenty-six, however, the young philosopher who was
afterwards to be so closely connected with the great Trans-
cendental movement in New England had discovered that
he was not called to the ministry, and had get himself to
the task of reforming the prevailing methods of early edu-
cation.
He first began the development of his educational ideas in
Cheshire, Conn., but in 1828, at the age of twenty-nine, he
was invited to take charge of a school for young children in
Boston by certain persons who had seen and admired the
working out of his ideas in Cheshire.
In 1830 he married Miss May, a daughter of Col. Joseph
May, and a descendant of the Sewells and the Quincys of
Boston. I have heard that the May family were strongly
opposed to the union of their beautiful daughter with the
penniless teacher and philosopher. But love found out a
way to soften their opposition ; and the poverty of plain liv-
ing and high thinking had no terrors for the petted child of
the prosperous Boston merchant. Tall and slight, fair, blue-
eyed, and delicate, she was yet strong enough to resolve and
to do, this gently-nurtured young lady, of whom her hus-
band long afterwards wrote :
LOUISA M. ALCOTT.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT. 33
" Mean are all titles of nobility
And kings poor spendthrifts, while I do compare,
The wealth she daily lavishes on me
Of love the noble kingdom, that I share."
This auspicious marriage took place in King's Chapel, Bos-
ton, in the month of May fit time for these happy, tune-
ful, improvident young lovers to pair. In November of the
same year they removed to Germantown, Perm., where Mr.
Alcott opened a school, which he continued for four years.
It was in Germantown, November 29, 1832, that Louisa
May Alcott was born. Concerning this date she writes : " I
was born on the 29th of November. The same day was my
father's own birthday, that of Christopher Columbus, Sir
Philip Sidney, Wendell Phillips, and other worthies."
Until I began to retrace her history for the purpose of this
brief biography, I had always supposed that Miss Alcott had
been born in Concord that town with which she is so in-
timately associated in the minds of us all. I fancied she
might even herself have been the child-sage whom the
stranger in Concord saw digging in the soil, and accosted
with the question, " What are you doing, my pretty maid?"
" Digging for the infinite ," was the unexpected answer ; and
all Concord seems to me to have been digging for the infinite
for two or three generations. Miss Alcott, however, has
been rather the exception to this Concordian habit. She
has contented herself with the study of the finite, which she
has pursued to such purpose that she has given more lively
and more living characters to juvenile literature than any
other author of her time. Perhaps she escaped the fate of a
philosopher by being born in Germantown, and not going to
Concord until she was eight years old.
Her first remove from Germantown was to Boston, where,
in 1834, Mr. Alcott opened a school in the Masonic Temple,
which Miss Peabody described in her book, entitled " Record
of Mr. Alcott's School," first published in 1835. This " Rec-
ord of a School " would be, in itself, sufficient to prove Mr.
Alcott's claim to a high place in the ranks of the world's edu-
34 LOUISA MAY ALCOTT.
cators. He knew, at that time, little or nothing of the
theories of Pestalozzi, yet his own were always kindred, and
sometimes the same.
Miss Peabody, herself a distinguished educator, once said
to me, "I would never say to a child, f You have a soul,' but
rather, 'You have a body,' since the real ' you' is the inde-
structible soul." Proceeding upon this principle, Mr. Alcott
addressed himself to the spiritual nature of his pupils. He
substituted appeals to their moral instincts and their affec-
tions for un discriminating punishments, and sought rather to
awaken in them a thirst for knowledge than to force them at
the point of a ferule to acquire it.
Concerning this school, Mr. Frank B. Sanborn has written
that it failed in consequence of a public outcry against cer-
tain opinions, supposed to be inculcated in a remarkable book,
entitled " Conversations with Children on the Gospels," which
Miss Peabody compiled from Mr. Alcott's daily talks with
his pupils, and which was clamorously assailed by the Boston
newspapers. Their unjust criticisms drew forth a public
defence from Mr. Emerson, who began by saying, " In behalf
of this book I have but one plea to make, this, namely, let
it be read."
In 1837 Mr. Alcott removed the school from the Masonic
Temple to his own house ; and after that removal committed
the still further enormity of showing his readiness to admit
little colored children to share the instruction bestowed on
the inheritors of the blue blood of Boston. Finally, in 1839,
the philosopher abandoned school-keeping, and, in 1840,
removed to Concord.
If I seem to have dwelt too long on the early history of
the serene Sage of Concord it is because the importance of
such a parentage cannot be overestimated, and I think Louisa
Alcott experienced her first supreme good fortune in being
the daughter of her father and her mother.
I like to think of her as she was when, at eight years of
age, she went to live in Concord, first at the Hosmer Cottage,
and afterwards at " The Wayside," Hawthorne's old home, at
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT. 35
present so fitly occupied by fair Rose Hawthorne Lathrop and
her gifted husband. After the Hawthorne house came the
o
episode of "Fruitlands," in Harvard, Mass., where Mr. Al-
cott took his family to live, with a few congenial souls, in a
sort of community, on high talk and low diet. This was the
experience which Miss Alcott afterwards described so vividly
in Transcendental Wild Oats." After "Fruitlands" came
a short residence in Boston, and then the Alcott family went
back to congenial Concord, to pass, in their home called
"The Orchards," the twenty-five fullest and most active years
of Miss Alcott's over-active life.*
As I have said, I love to picture to myself the girl of eight,
unusually tall, and so lithe and active that even before she
left Boston she could drive a hoop entirely round the " Com-
mon "without once stopping, able to run faster than most
boys, and therefore always welcome to share their sports.
After her father left off school-teaching she went no more to
school, but studied at home. She learned religion from
Nature, and the high example of virtuous parents, who
literally loved their neighbors better than themselves, and in
the pure atmosphere of whose daily life it was impossible
that anything small or mean should thrive.
Her literary ambition was of early origin. At eight years
of age she perpetrated her first literary attempt, in the shape
of the following :
ADDRESS TO A ROBIN".
" Welcome, welcome, little stranger,
Fear no harm, and fear no danger ;
We are glad to see you here,
For you sing sweet spring is near.
Now the snow is nearly gone,
Now the grass is coining on
The trees are green, the sky is blue,
And we are glad to welcome you."
"This gem," said Miss Alcott, "my proud mother pre-
served with tender care, assuring me that if I kept on in this
hopeful way I might be a second Shakspeare in time."
3
36 LOUISA MAY ALCOTT.
Fired by this modest and laudable ambition, she continued
to write poems upon dead butterflies, lost kittens, the baby's
eyes, and other kindred themes, until, suddenly, the story-
telling mania set in, and the world began to be peopled for
her with ideal shapes. For a long time she only frightened
her sisters by awful tales whispered in bed. It makes one
think of those other sisters in the Moorlands of Yorkshire,
who used to sit and " make up " stories round the fire, when
the sun had set, and the shadows haunted the corners, and
they drew close together in the shadow-casting firelight.
After a while Louisa began to write out these histories of
giants, and ogres, and dauntless maidens, and magic transfor-
mations, till the children's room at the Wayside had quite a
library of small paper-covered volumes, illustrated by their
author.
Later on, the poems grew sad and sentimental, and the
tales less tragic, lovely elves and spirits of earth and air tak-
ing the place of the former monsters.
At sixteen Miss Alcott wrote, for Ellen Emerson's pleas-
ure, her first book. It was entitled "Flower Fables." It
was afterwards published, but not until 1854, when Miss
Alcott was twenty-two. It made no marked impression, its
dainty fancies being obscured by too many adjectives, and its
illustrations so bad as to be anything but an adornment.
At sixteen, besides writing "Flower Fables," Miss Alcott
began to teach a little school of some twenty pupils, to whom
she told her stories instead of writing them. She says that
she never liked teaching ; though, in one way or another, she
pursued it for some fifteen years sometimes teaching home-
schools, sometimes going out as daily governess. Among
her pupils in those years she numbered the children of E. P.
Whipple, E. E. Apthorpe, John T. Sargent, J. S. Lovering,
and many others. Story-telling time, she says, was the one
pleasant hour in her school-day ; and even now she meets
from time to time the young men and women who had the
happiness to be her pupils in those old days, and finds that
they still recall her tales and laugh over them afresh with
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT. 37
their children, when some of them reappear in new forms in
her many books.
Miss Alcott's first full-grown romantic story was printed
in " Gleason's Pictorial," and for this tale she received five
dollars. Ah, who of us scribes does not remember the pride
and pleasure with which we received our first five dollars
earned by literature ; and why is a beginner's recompense
always five dollars, no more, no less? This first published
story appeared in 1851, when Miss Alcott was nineteen. The
next year she sent to the "Boston Saturday Evening Gazette"
rr The Rival Prima Donnas," which was accepted, and munifi-
cently, as it then seemed, rewarded with ten dollars, and a
request for more. Nor was this all ; for Miss Alcott herself
dramatized the tale, and it was accepted by Mr. Thomas
Barry, then manager of the Boston Theatre. The play was
never really put upon the stage, owing to a disagreement
about the distribution of the parts between Mrs. Barrow and
Mrs. John Wood, then rival actresses at "The Boston." In
spite of this mischance, however, its author considered it a
transcendent success ; since, for its sake, a free pass was
given her, and she went to the theatre forty times that winter.
Think of the unmitigated rapture of those forty evenings to
a very stage-struck young lady !
So strong, indeed, was Miss Alcott's passion at that time
for acting that she made an engagement to appear upon the
stage herself as Widow Pottle, in " The Jacobite," and was
anxiously waiting for the night to be fixed, when the friendly
manager broke his leg, and in consequence his contract, and
thus came to an untimely end the young girl's dream of
dramatic glory.
A farce of her composition was, however, actually put upon
the stage, and she tells me that she well remembers the wild
beating of her heart as she sat on this glorious occasion in a
stage box, holding an enormous bouquet, presented by a
friend as stage-struck as herself; and saw Mrs. W. H. Smith,
Josie Orton, and Mr. LeMoine enact "Nat Bachelor's Pleas-
ure Trip," for the benefit of Mrs. Smith.
38 LOUISA MAY ALCOTT.
" The Rival Prima Donnas " afforded Miss Alcott another
glimpse of glory, which she herself described as follows :
" One of the memorial moments of my life is that in which,
as I trudged to school on a wintry day, my eyes fell upon a
large yellow poster with these delicious words : '" Bertha," a
new tale by the author of " The Rival Prima Donnas," will
appear in the " Saturday Evening Gazette." ' I was late ; it
was bitter cold ; people jostled me ; I was mortally afraid I
should be recognized ; but there I stood feasting my eyes on
the fascinating poster, and saying proudly to myself, in the
words of the great Vincent Crummies, f This, this is fame ! *
That day my pupils had an indulgent teacher ; for, while they
struggled with their pot-hooks, I was writing immortal works,
and when they droned out the multiplication table, I was
counting up the noble fortune my pen was to earn for me in
the dim, delightful future. That afternoon my sisters made
a pilgrimage to behold this famous placard, and finding it
torn by the wind, boldly stole it, and came home to wave it
like a triumphal banner in the bosom of the excited family.
The tattered paper still exists, folded away with other relics
of those early days, so hard and yet so sweet, when the first
small victories were won, and the enthusiasm of youth lent
romance to life's drudgery."
These thrilling experiences, however, came after that
memorable autumn, described with such rare blending of
humor and pathos long afterwards, in " Work," when Louisa
Alcott went out into the world to seek her own fortune, as
did the heroine of that book. I think the true story was
quite as pathetic as the romance.
A trunk "a little trunk" full of the plainest clothes
of her own making, and twenty dollars which she had earned
by writing, these were the armor with which she went forth
to fight for existence in the world's struggle for the survival
of the fittest. Nay, she had more she had firm principles,
perfect health, and the dear consciousness of a loving and
waiting home to which to retreat if worsted in the fight.
And thus armed she struggled and conquered. With this out-
1. A PROUD MOMENT. DISCOVERING THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF "BERTHA.'
2. How Miss ALCOTT WRITES HER STORIES.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT. 39
fit she travelled to Boston one dull November day, intent on
carrying out her resolution to be, for evermore, self-helpful
and independent. And she succeeded triumphantly. By
teaching, sewing, writing anything that came to hand to be
done she not only supported herself for many long, busy,
toilsome years before any grand, paying triumph came, but
sent home to the dear ones left behind an ever-increasing
store of material help and comfort ; an unselfish pleasure
which lightened her hard tasks and sweetened every small
success.
Her days were devoted to unrelenting toil, but her even-
ings, when she was not writing, she gave to such small
pleasures as came in her way ; and chief among these she
reckoned the golden hours spent at the house of Theodore
Parker, where, sitting bashfully in a corner, she caught
glimpses of all that was best in Boston society.
Emerson came there, with ever a kind word for the girl he
had known in his own Concord; Sumner, Garrison, Phillips,
Mrs. Howe, just then beginning her crusade against all sorts
of iniquities ; all those brave women who in those days were
leading the van in the cause of abolition, and who, later, set
themselves to win for women suffrage and social freedom.
Fugitive slaves came there, too ; cultured and inquiring for-
eigners ; transcendentalists, with bees in their bonnets and
the light of enthusiasm in their eyes ; the hangers-on, who
surround all great men, striving to glorify themselves a little
by means of reflected light, since they have no candles of
their own ; beautiful women ; merchant princes ; all kinds
and conditions of men. Such was the society as varied
and shifting as the scenes in a panorama, and interesting as
life is interesting which the tall girl out of Concord
watched with those eager, gray-blue eyes of hers, whose
keen glances nothing escaped.
Dearest, best, most inspiring, and most memorable of all
was her host himself the one only Parker who never
omitted to give her at least a few words of greeting and fare-
well. No other hand, she says, had so firm and warm a
40 LOUISA MAY ALCOTT.
grasp as his ; and his cheery, " How goes it, my child ? " or,
"God bless you; keep your heart up, Louisa," helped her
over many a rough place, and sustained her under that de-
spondency which comes sometimes to the bravest young
woman fighting her own battle in a world where her place is
not ready made.
Theodore Parker is the " Mr. Power" of "Work," as Miss
Alcott herself is the " Christie " of that book. Who does
not remember the description of Mr. Power's prayer "so
devout, so comprehensive, and so brief, a quiet talk with
God," and of his "judgment-day sermons," in which
" kingdoms and thrones seemed going down, and each man
being sent to his own place." As he spoke thus, what won-
der that " a curious stir went through the crowd at times, as
a great wind sweeps over a cornfield, lifting the broad leaves
to the light and testing the strength of root and stem."
In those years Miss Alcott began to write "sensation"
stories ; following up the first attempts already mentioned
with many others. It seems almost incredible, but after a
little practice in crowding much wrath, ruin, and revenge
into twenty-five manuscript pages, she found she could turn
out ten or twelve tales in a month. Frank Leslie gladly
accepted these exciting romances for his numerous publica-
tions. After a while Louisa grew weary of this kind of writ-
ing. "Wrath, ruin, and revenge" pall at length upon the
bravest of us ; and when novellettes were called for, of
twenty-four chapters, with a breathless catastrophe in at least
every other chapter, thirty pages a day of such work proved
too much even for the indefatigable Miss Alcott.
Then she knocked at the doors of the " Atlantic Monthly" ;
and the first story she sent there was returned by Mr. Fields,
with the friendly advice that she should stick to her teaching.
Soon after this, however, the "Atlantic" opened its pages to
her and she also began to write for some of the semi-
religious papers, where a reasonable amount of the milk of
human kindness was admissible, and which therefore offered
a welcome change from the " sensation stories."
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT. 41
After all, those were happy years in which she dreamed
through the summer in that Concord of which Hawthorne has
said : " It was necessary to go but a little way beyond my
threshold before meeting with stranger moral shapes of men
than might have been encountered elsewhere in a circuit of a
thousand miles" and which yet, in spite of its strange and
gifted denizens, must have been a very sane place, since Mr.
F. B. Sanborn says of it, in his admirable "Life of Thoreau " :
"Perpetuity, indeed, and hereditary transmission of every-
thing that, by nature and good sense, can be inherited, are
ainon^ the characteristics of Concord."
O
Here, where great and good men were growing old, and
other great and good men had left behind them fragrant
memories of their just lives where Nature herself appeared
to have a sense of her own responsibility, and not to be quite
the capricious vagrant she seems elsewhere Miss Alcott
went with the spring, like the home-returning birds ; and
like them went away again in the autumn, not to the South
and the summer, but to busy Boston, teaching there her little
invalid pupil on Beacon street, or writing away at her numer-
ous stories in the nest she found under the eaves of some
quiet house, or indulging her taste for acting by taking part
in a play for the benefit of some charity she would not other-
wise have been able to assist. One does not half know Miss
Alcott who has not seen her as Mrs. Jarley display her
"wax- works." I think it is quite the best bit of broad
comedy I can remember.
One break in these busy years I have not mentioned
that December of 1862, when she went forth full of enthusi-
asm to nurse in the Soldier's Hospital a veritable Florence
Nightingale for courage, tenderness, and helpfulness, as I
have been told blessing scores of dying-beds with her
presence, and laboring until she herself was stricken down
with fever, and brought home with her dark hair shorn from
her head, with wan face, shaken strength, and unstrung
nerves, and for sole reward the blessed consciousness that she
had done what she could. "I was never ill," she said to- me,
42 LOUISA MAY ALCOTT.
" until after that hospital experience, and I have never been
well since."
It was concerning this period of Miss Alcott's life that her
father wrote his sonnet
" When I remember with what buoyant heart,
'Midst war's alarms and woes of civil strife,
In youthful eagerness thou did'st depart
At peril of thy safety, peace, and life,
To nurse the wounded soldier, swathe the dead
How, pierced soon by fever's poisoned dart,
And brought unconscious home with wildered head
Thou, ever since, 'mid languor and dull pain,
To conquer fortune, cherish kindred dear,
Hast with grave studies vexed a sprightly brain,
In myriad households kindled love and cheer ;
Ne'er from thyself by Fame's loud trump beguiled ;
Sounding in this and the farther hemisphere :
I press thee to my heart as duty's faithful child."
"Hospital Sketches " was first published in 1865, but re-
published, with additions, in 1869.
Even before "Hospital Sketches," "Moods" had been
fssued by Loring ; but that has also been recently reprinted,
with a large amount of revision. When Miss Alcott first
wrote this book she was still so young as to be in love with
the tragic aspects of life ; and death seemed to her the only
possible solution for the perplexities of her heroine. When
it was republished she had grown old enough to perceive that
nothing is irreparable but death ; and as the sun sets to rise
to-morrow, it is possible that the sun of a human life shall
rise again after it has seemed to set forever ; and she kindly
allowed Sylvia the benefit of this larger knowledge and more
cheerful faith.
In the July of 1865 Miss Alcott went abroad for the first
time. She went over as the companion of an invalid lady,
and passed the summer at German baths, the autumn at
Vevay, and the spring in Paris and London. By this time
she was alone ; and she stayed in London with the Con ways,
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT. 43
and made the acquaintance of such well-known persons as
John Stuart Mill, George H. Lewes, Jean Ingelow, Frances
Power Cobbe, and many others.
It was in 1868 that Mr. Alcott took to Roberts Brothers
those publishers whose name has been so intimately associated
with all the most successful and brilliant years of Miss
Alcott' s life a volume composed of various stories with
which the readers of newspapers were already familiar. Mr.
Niles, one of the firm, read them, and recognized their merit,
but he said : " We do not care just now for volumes of col-
lected stories. Will not your daughter write us a new book
consisting of a single story for girls ? *'
The result of this suggestion was " Little Women." Miss
Alcott says she wrote it to prove that she could not write a
girls' story, having always preferred to play with boys, and
therefore knowing very little about any girls except her
sisters and herself. This matchless tale was sent to the pub-
lishers in about two months after it had been first asked for,
with the amusing suggestion that if the title that happiest
title which juvenile book ever had was not liked the author
would willingly change it for something else.
The first part of " Little Women " was published in October,
1868 ; but it attracted comparatively little attention until the
publication of the second part, in April, 1869, when sud-
denly Miss Alcott became famous. I do not, of course,
mean that the first part of the book was not widely read and
cordially welcomed ; but only that the actual furore began
with the publication of the second part. Many young read-
ers got quite desperately excited over the first, and one such
enthusiast wrote to Miss Alcott :
DEAR Miss ALCOTT, I have read the first part of " Little
Women," and cried quarts over Beth's sickness. If you don't
have her marry Laurie in the second part, I shall never forgive
you, and none of the girls in our school will ever read any more
of your books. Do ! Do ! have her, please.
All the young people who had read the first part of this
fascinating story were eager to get hold of the second, and
44 LOUISA MAY ALCOTT.
these readers talked about the wondrous tale to others, so that
the sale grew and grew. No more hard work for Miss
Alcott ! The tide of her fortunes was rising fast. As early
as the 29th of December, 1869, she wrote to her publishers :
Many thanks for the check which made my Christmas an
unusually merry one. After toiling so many years along the
up-hill road, always a hard one to women-writers, it is peculiarly
grateful to me to find the way growing easier at last, with pleas-
ant little surprises blossoming on either side, and the rough places
made smooth.
This was the beginning of the most shining success ever
achieved by any author of juvenile literature so great a
success that when "Little Men" was issued, its publication
had to be delayed until the publishers were prepared to fill
advance orders for fifty thousand copies.
"Little Women" was succeeded by the new edition of
"Hospital Sketches," "An Old-Fashioned Girl," "Little
Men," "Eight Cousins," "Rose in Bloom," "Under the
Lilacs," " Jack and Jill," " Work," " Moods," in the revised
edition " Silver Pitchers," "Proverb Stories," and the six
volumes of "Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag," namely, "My Boys,"
"Shawl-Straps," "Cupid and Chow-Chow," "My Girls,"
"Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore," and "An Old-Fashioned
Thanksgiving," those last six volumes having been chiefly
compiled from her numerous contributions to " St. Nicholas "
and other juvenile publications.
There is another book of Miss Alcott's, the authorship of
which is still a mystery to the general public, "A Modern
Mephistopheles." This was contributed to the first series of
Roberts Brothers' "No Name" books, and the puzzle of its
authorship has remained a vexed question. It was so much
more like Mrs. Spoflbrd than like Miss Alcott that many
people set it down to the author of " Sir Rohan's Ghost," and
were satisfied.
On these various books Miss Alcott has received copyright
amounting to not far from one hundred thousand dollars.
They have not only been reprinted and largely sold in Eng-
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT. 45
land, but also translated into several foreign languages, and
thus published with persistent success. Take it altogether,
Miss Alcott has had a most prosperous life ; and yet she com-
plains, mildly, of the drawbacks attending success. She
says it is very trying to "live in a lantern"; and to an
obscurity-loving soul it is not pleasant to feel that one has
suddenly become public property. She endorses, with re-
freshing zeal, Dr. Holmes's "Atlantic" article on the Right of
Authors to Privacy. She says she could compile a very
amusing book from the curious requests she has received, and
the ill-judged confidences bestowed on her during the last ten
years. Of these modest requests here is one, from a lady in
South Carolina :
MADAME, As it has pleased God to bless you with a million,
I feel no hesitation in asking you for the sum of one hundred dol-
lars, to get a communion service for the new Episcopal chapel in
our town. A speedy reply is requested.
The petition which follows, from a resident of Los Vegas,
is even more amazing :
L. M. ALCOTT, Author.
I am interested in the oldest ruin in the United States.
We wish to rebuild and keep the Pecas Ruin as long as the
U. S. Government lasts. If you can interest your friends in
the cause, and send us funds, They will be gratefully received.
Our Country is full of Relicts of the past. If you wish to
write a legion of the ruins we will send the facts. It is about
the residence of Montezuma, and the indians tell how a hedi-
ous flying serpent carried him to Mexico and his fate. I am a
teacher.
Not all Miss Alcott's odd letters, however, are of the
"your-money-or-your-life" order. Here is one which con-
tains an amusing offer of assistance :
DEAR AUNT Jo, I am nine years old. I like your books
most of all in the world. Please do some more. Have a sequel
to Jack and Jill. I will pay for it if you will. I have seventy-
five cents. Won't that be enough ?
Your little friend, WILLY.
46 LOUISA MAY ALCOTT.
Miss Alcott generously keeps secret the amazing confidences
which have been reposed in her unresponsive heart. The
religious advice, so freely proffered, she accepts gratefully ;
the " matrimonial advances " she will not disclose ; and of all
the reams of poetry which have been lavished at her shrine
she has only afforded me this one remarkable example :
TO MY DEAR.
" Who is the geranium of the world,
Blooming proud and fair
Sweet as mignonette is she,
Perfuming all the air
Louisa M. Alcott.
" Who is best of human women,
Growing ever to the sky,
Scattering joy and compensation
From her life's inspiring eye
Louisa M. Alcott."
This extraordinary production was signed " Jim " ; and
Miss Alcott tells me that so many similar effusions, all signed
w Jim," and all postmarked " Hartford," have been received
as to suggest to her that she has inspired the profound and
lasting admiration of some amiable occupant of the Hartford
Retreat for the Insane.
Perhaps it is hardly matter for wonder that the recipient
of a long series of such letters and such rhymes should have
grown inflexible, and should turn a deaf ear to the syren
tongue of the interviewer, and reject all petitions for auto-
graphs and photographs. If people want to know her they
must divine her from her books ; and, indeed, the works of
no writer with whom I am acquainted convey so faithful and
complete an impression of their author as those of Miss
Alcott.
One of the questions I asked her in behalf of this sketch
was how large a portion of her books was actually founded
upon the facts of her life. She has told me that " Little
Women" was really the story of herself and her sisters,
with such slight changes of time, place, and denouement as
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT. 47
were necessary to make the tale complete. "Meg," who
afterwards became Mrs. Annie Pratt, with her genius for
making a happy home "Amy," otherwise May, with her
artistic taste and aspirations " Beth," with her sweet and
gentle nature, and early death and " Jo," who was Miss
Louisa herself did not Concord know them all, and smile
at them as old friends when they looked out of the pages of
" Little Women " ? " Mr. March " was Mr. Alcott, who did
not, however, really go to the war ; and " Mrs. March " was
the dear house-mother, for whom the utmost prSise never
seemed to her fond child half good enough. " John Brooke's "
life and death, "Demy's" quaint character, all the little
domestic devices and diversions these are history, as veri-
table as it is entertaining.
Here is Miss Alcott's portrait of herself at fifteen : " Jo
was very tall, thin, and brown, and reminded one of a colt,
for she never seemed to know what to do with her long limbs,
which were very much in her way. She had a decided
mouth, a comical nose, and sharp, gray eyes which appeared
to see everything, and were by turns fierce, or funny, or
thoughtful. Her long, thick hair was her one beauty, but it
was usually bundled into a net to be out of her way. Round
shoulders had Jo, and big hands and feet, a fly-away look to
her clothes, and the uncomfortable appearance of a girl
who was rapidly shooting up into a woman, and didn't like
it."
"Work," as I have said before, was very largely the story
of the author's own struggle with the world ; as " Hospital
Sketches " was the simple record of her own experience as a
hospital nurse.
" Little Men " was chiefly imaginary, and was written in
Eome in 1871. " Moods " was composed, in its earliest form,
at eighteen ; and was, says Miss Alcott, " the book into
which I put most time, love, and hope ; and it is much truer
than people suppose. Sylvia was suggested by my own
moods, through which, however, I never got into any senti-
mental woes. But they have gone with me through my life,
48 LOUISA MAY ALCOTT.
and made it both harder and richer by the alternations of
delight and despondency which they have brought me the
success the world sees, and the private trials and defeats are
known to myself only."
Some time after " Moods " was published a lady asked Miss
Alcott how she knew her story. " I had never known be-
fore," said Miss Alcott, "that she had a story at all. But I
was glad of the question, which assured me that the fanciful
heart-experiences of my book were possible."
" An Old-Fashioned Girl," and, indeed, all the remaining
books, with the exception of " Shawl-Straps," are imaginary.
K Shawl-Straps " is the record of Miss Alcott's second Euro-
pean journey a year in duration in which she was accom-
panied by her artist sister May, and Miss Bartlett, an inti-
mate friend. This journey, taken in 1870-71, is described
in so lively a manner that the reader really feels as if he had
shared it. In this book the author figures as " Livy," other-
wise "the Raven," otherwise "the old Lady ; " the last a title
which she began to bestow on herself before the rest of the
world had dreamed of calling her middle-aged. She repre-
sents Livy as groaning with rheumatism and neuralgia, nurs-
ing her woes, and croaking as dismally as any other raven ;
but you cannot help finding out that she was, after all, the
brightest, most delightful travelling companion, and most in-
dulgent duenna with whom any two girls were ever blessed.
Miss Alcott had learned her London by heart in 1865, and
had made up her mind that, next to Boston, it was the most
delightful of cities. Its mud and fog were dear to her ; its
beef and beer outrivalled nectar and ambrosia ; and its
steady-going, respectable citizens were heroes and heroines
to her fancy. Therefore, when she got there, " the old lady"
sniffed with delight the familiar fogs, and found herself in a
paradise more congenial than France or Italy had been.
The last twelve years have been for Miss Alcott full of tri-
umphant prosperity. She has orders so numerous that she
cannot fulfil them her books go through edition after edi-
tion -and in acknowledgment of a gift from her publishers
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT. 49
on her fiftieth birthday, November 29, 1882, she wrote : "It
was very kind of you to remember the old lady, and thus to
make this peculiarly sad birthday happier. . . . The burden
of fifty years is much lightened by the expressions of affec-
tion that come to me from east and west, and as I turn my
face toward sunset I find so much to make the down-hill jour-
ney smooth and lovely, that, like Christiana, I go on my way
rejoicing with a cheerful heart."
Miss Alcott certainly carries the burden of her fifty years
lightly. If you met her now, you would see a stately lady,
unusually tall, with thick, dark hair, clear-seeing, blue-gray
eyes, and strong, resolute features, full of varied expression.
How well I remember the humorous twinkle in her eyes,
which half belied the grave earnestness of her manner, when
she told me once that she was inclined to believe in the trans-
migration of souls.
"I have often thought," she said, " that I may have been a
horse before I was Louisa Alcott. As a long-limbed child I
had all a horse's delight in racing through the fields, and toss-
ing my head to sniff the morning air. Now, I am more than
half-persuaded that I am a man's soul, put by some freak of
nature into a woman's body."
" Why do you think that?" I asked, in the spirit of Bos-
well addressing Dr. Johnson.
"Well, for one thing," and the blue-gray eyes sparkled
with laughter, " because I have fallen in love in my life with
so many pretty girls, and never once the least little bit with
any man."
These recent years, that have brought to Miss Alcott such
great prosperity, have also brought to her much keen sorrow.
The dear mother, whose story reads like one of the lives of
the saints, who never was so poor that she had not something
to give, and who was herself the guide and teacher of her
children, not in books alone, but in everything that was
lovely and noble and of good report, lived long enough,
thank Heaven, to taste all the sweetness of her daughter's
good fortune. The most precious thing in Miss Alcott's
50 LOUISA MAY ALCOTT.
triumph was that she could lay its fruits at her mother's feet,
and cheer with them the last years of that brave and faithful
life. Mrs. Alcott had dearly loved noble books. When her
girls were young she used to read aloud to them from the
best authors while they sewed ; and this was a large part of
their education. Her own love for books went with her all
through her life, till one day in 1877, a week before her
death, she laid down her favorite Johnson, too weary to go
on with him, and said, quietly, "I shall read no more, but I
thank rny good father for the blessing the love of literature
has been to me for seventy years."
The death of this faithful and loving mother was as beauti-
ful as her life had been. Her last words to her husband
were, " You are laying a very soft pillow for me to rest on."
And when her failing breath made it difficult to speak, she
whispered, with a lovely, loving look, " A smile is as good
as a prayer," and soon, waving her hand to the picture of her
absent daughter, then in Europe, she said " Good-by, my
little May, good-by ! " and so died, to use Miss Alcott's
own words, "in the arms of that child who owed her most,
who loved her best, and had counted as her greatest success
the power of making these last years a season of happy rest
to the truest and tenderest of mothers."
It is the dearest plan in Miss Alcott's scheme of future
literary work to write the biography of this noble mother,
who had a heart warm enough and large enough to shelter the
sinful as well as the sorrowful ; and who so loved the worst
and weakest of her fellow-creatures that she joyed in noth-
ing so much as in spending and being spent for them.
In March, 1878, Miss Alcott's youngest sister, May, was
married, in Paris, to Ernst Nieriker; and in December,
1879, she died, leaving to Louisa's care her infant daughter,
Louisa May Nieriker, who was brought home to her aunt in
September, 1880, the partial consolation for so grievous a
loss.
*The Orchards," for twenty-five years the home of the
Alcotts, is now devoted to the " Summer School of Philoso-
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT. 51
phy," and Miss Alcott and her father live at present in the
house where Thoreau died, together with Mrs. Pratt, Miss
Alcott's widowed sister, and her children. Here for some
time past Miss Alcott had been absorbed in the care of her
father, stricken the 22d of October, 1882, with paralysis.
I cannot forget my own last interview with this serene old
man, of whom Thoreau wrote : " Great Looker ! Great Ex-
pecter ! to converse with him was a New England night's
entertainment."
It was, I think, in February, 1882, I stood under an um-
brella, in a light snow, waiting for a horse-car. Mr. Alcott
came by and stopped to speak to me, with that wise yet
genial smile which always seemed like a benediction. He
said a few friendly sentences, and then I spoke of his book
of " Sonnets and Canzonets," and asked, " How is it, Mr.
Alcott, that at eighty-two you are so vigorous and strong,
and with a poet's heart alive in you yet? "
"It is," he said, "because I have kept the ten command-
ments. Men were meant to live a hundred years at least
only they have disobeyed the taws. Let Us have several
generations of people who live healthfully and keep the com-
mandments, and we may have those who will be able to say,
' I think I will not stop at a hundred years. I will live onf
" Great Expecter," indeed ! It seemed to me, then, that
he might probably realize his own idea of living a hundred
years ; and the news of his illness shocked me with surprise as
w r ell as with grief. He is a man who has walked so long in
heavenly places that for him to die will be but " to pass from
this room into- the next." 9
Concerning Miss Alcott, it remains only to speak of her
education and her methods of work. She was educated
rather by reading than by study. She was always a great
reader, never a great student. At fifteen Ralph Waldo Em-
erson introduced her to the works of Goethe, which have
ever since been her delight. Her personal library consists of
Goethe, Emerson, Shakspeare, Margaret Fuller, Miss Edge-
worth, and George Sand. George Eliot she does not care
4
52 LOUISA MAY ALCOTT.
for, nor does she enjoy any of the modern poets, except
Whittier ; but she likes Coleridge, Keats, and, farther back,
Crashaw, and godly George Herbert, and a few of their con-
temporaries.
She never had a study any corner will answer to write
in. She is not particular as to pens and paper, and an old
atlas on her knee is all the desk she cares for. She has the
wonderful power to carry a dozen plots in her head at a time,
thinking them over whenever she is in the mood. Sometimes
she carries a plot thus for years, and suddenly finds it all
ready to be written. Often, in the dead waste and middle
of the night, she lies awake and plans whole chapters, word
for word, and when daylight conies has only to write them
off us if she were copying. In her hardest-working days she
used to write fourteen hours in the twenty-four, sitting
steadily at her work, and scarcely tasting food till her daily
task was done.
Very few of her stories have been written in Concord.
This peaceful, pleasant place, whose fields are classic ground,
utterly lacks inspiration for Miss Alcott. She calls it " this
dull town " ; and when she has a story to write she goes to
Boston, hires a quiet room, and shuts herself up in it, and
waits for an east wind of inspiration, which never fails. In a
month or so the book will be done, and its author comes out,
" tired, hungry, and cross," and ready to go back to Concord
and vegetate for a time. When engaged in the work of com-
position her characters seem more real to her than actual
people. They will not obey her she merely writes of them
what she seems to see and hear and sometimes these
shadows whom she has conjured almost affright her with
their wilful reality. She never copies, and seldom corrects
from before these men and women, great and small, she
pulls away the curtain and lets us see them as they are.
CHAPTER II.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
BY ELIZABETH CADY STANTOX.
Susan B. Anthony's Parentage Her Girlhood A Rebellious Quaker
Incident in Her Early Life The Heighth of Her Ambition A
" High-Seat" Quaker Incident in Her Experience as Teacher Advo-
cating Temperance, Anti-Slavery, and Woman Suffrage Her Facility
and Power as an Orator Speaking to a Deaf and Dumb Audience
Incident on a Mississippi Steamboat Celebrating Her Fiftieth Birth-
day Trip to Europe Incidents of Foreign Travel Arrested for
Voting The Legal Struggle that followed Her Labors for Woman
Suffrage Her Industry and Self-denial for the Cause Personal Ap-
pearance.
" He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune ; for they are impedi-
ments to great enterprises either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of
greatest merit, for the public have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men ;
which, both in affection and means, have married and endowed the public."
HIS bit of Baconian philosophy, as alike applica-
ble to women, was the subject, not long since,
of my conversation with a remarkably gifted
young English woman. She was absorbed in
many public interests, and had conscientiously
^ resolved never to marry, lest the cares neces-
sarily involved should make inroads upon her
time and thought to the detriment of the gen-
eral good. "Unless," said she, " some women
dedicate themselves to the public service, society is
robbed of needed guardians for the special wants
of the weak and unfortunate. There should be in the secular
world certain orders, corresponding in a measure to the grand
63
54 SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
sisterhoods of the Catholic Church, to the members of which,
as freely as to men, all offices, civic and ecclesiastical, should
be open." That this ideal will be realized may be inferred
from the fact that exceptional women have, in all ages, been
leaders in great projects of charity and reform, and that now
many stand waiting only the sanction of their century, ready
for wide altruistic labors.
The world has ever had its vestal virgins, its holy women,
mothers of ideas rather than men : its Marys, as well as its
Marthas, who, rather than be busy housewives, preferred to
sit at the feet of divine wisdom, and ponder the mysteries of
the unknown. All hail to Maria Mitchell, Harriet Hosmer,
Charlotte Cushman, Alice and Phoebe Gary, Louisa Alcott,
and Frances Willard ! All honor to the noble women that
have devoted earnest lives to the intellectual needs of man-
kind !
In this galaxy of single women we shall place one other
star, to be pronounced, perhaps, by the future as of the
first magnitude. If we seek out what first kindled that flame,
we find but a tiny spark, a few rough words, roughly spoken :
"It takes sometime to get the hang of the barn," uncouth
answer to kindly inquiry of gentle Quaker host, as to the
new teacher's first day's experience in his public school. The
vulgar words fell not on stony grounds, but on rich virgin
soil, and have borne fruit to us. Demure Quaker daughter
sitting there, apparently intent upon the wholesome New
England dinner, was, in truth, putting to her ardent soul a
mighty question, to which her life was to give answer. The
modest, conscientious girl of twenty for Susan Anthony
was twenty on the fifteenth day of the second month of that
year, 1840, just a score of years younger than her century
fell to pondering. For many days Susan had been eagerly
anticipating the arrival of the male teacher, whom the board
of education had selected to take her school during the win-
ter. Surely, thought she, he must be very superior ; for
even her teaching and discipline had now unbounded praise,
and he was to receive treble her salary ! And here at last is
SUSAN B. ANTHONY. 55
the ugly fact, " It takes some time to get the hang of the
barn ! " Think you not that our quiet, earnest, Susan longed
to rescue her village bairns, with immortality struggling in
each little soul, from the guidance of that homespun farmer
lad? Burning questions arose in the girl's mind, and she
went apart to think. Susan Anthony did not then solve her
vast problem : perhaps true solution has not yet come to any
seeker ; but friends and even many foes begin to think that
she had found at least one unknown quantity in this equation
of the vague, this world mystery, what is the true rela-
tion of man to woman ; what can render justice between them?
This bit of womanhood had not received unwholesome train-
ing for a clear insight into questions of absolute right.
Susan B. Anthony was of sturdy New England stock, and it
was at the foot of Old Grey lock, South Adams, Massachu-
setts, that she gave forth her first rebellious cry against the
world of formulas that awaited her. There the baby steps
were taken, and at the village school the first stitches were
learned, and the A, B, C, in good, old, stupid, orthodox
fashion, duly mastered. When five winters had passed over
the solemn little head there came a time of great domestic
commotion, and the child-mind, in its small way, seized the
idea that permanence is not the rule of life. The family
moved to Battenville, New York, wiiere Mr. Anthony became
one of the wealthiest men in Washington County. Susan can
still recall the stately coldness of the great house, how large
the bare rooms, with their yellow painted floors, seemed in
contrast with her own diminutiveness, and the outlook of the
schoolroom where for so many years, with her brothers and
sisters, she pursued her studies under private tutors.
The father of our young heroine was a stern Hicksite Qua-
ker c In Susan's early life he objected on principle to all
forms of frivolous amusement, such as music, dancing, novel
reading ; games and even pictures were regarded as mean-
ingless luxuries, if not as relaxing to strict morality. Such
puritanical convictions might have easily degenerated into the
meagerest formalism, expressing itself in most nasal cant;-*-
56 SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
but underlying all was a broad and firm basis of wholesome
respect for individual freedom, and a brave adherence, in deed
as well as word, to the best truth that lay hid in the heart of
him. No personal belief could blind him to the essentials of
life. He was a man of good business capacity, and a thorough
manager of his wide and lucrative interests. He saw that
compensation and not chance ruled in the commercial world ;
and he believed in the same just, though often severe, law in
the sphere of morals. Such a man was riot apt to walk humbly
in the path mapped out by his religious sect. He early of-
fended by choosing a Baptist for his wife. Heinous offence !
for which he was disowned, and, according to Quaker usage,
could only be received into fellowship again by declaring him-
self " sorry " for his crime in full meeting. Sad plight this for a
happy bridegroom ! yea, very sad ! For his heart said that
he was full of devout thankfulness for the good woman by
his side, and destined to be thankful to the very end for this
companion, so calm, so just, so far-seeing. Sturdily he rose
in meeting, and in quiet, manly way, said he was " sorry "
that the rules of the society were such, that, in marrying the
woman he loved, he had committed offence ! Here 's a man
of worth ; necessary to the society ; he admits he is " sorry "
for something, it does not matter what, let him be taken
back into the body of the faithful ! But this rebel's faith had
begun to weaken in many minor points of discipline ; his coat
soon becomes a cause of offence, and calls forth another
reproof from the moralities tightly buttoned in conforming
garments. The convenient coat was adhered to ; forgiveness
once more granted. The petty forms of Liberal Quaker-
ism began to lose their weight with him altogether, and he
was finally disowned for allowing the village youth to be
taught dancing in a large upper room of his dwelling. He
was applied to for this favor on the ground that young men
were under great temptation to drink if the lessons were
given in the hotel ; and, being a rigid temperance man, he
readily consented, though his principles in regard to dancing
would not allow his own sons and daughters to join in the
SUSAN B. ANTHONY. 57
amusement. But the society could accept no such nice dis-
crimination in what it deemed sin, nor such compromise with
worldly frivolity. Flagrant cause this for reprimand ! But
the final appeal, this time, the rebel makes to his own con-
science, and receives the verdict, " well done, good and
faithful servant," and he is seen no more in meeting, nor
in churches where the creeds rule. But in later years, in
Rochester, he sits an attentive listener to the soul truths of
Rev. William Henry Channing.
The effect of all this on our young reformer is the question
of interest. No doubt she early weighed the comparative
moral effects of coats cut with capes and those cut without,
of purely Quaker conjugal love, and that deteriorated with
Baptist affection. Weighty problems, too, she heard dis-
cussed, and decisions on all the vital questions of the hour,
overriding compromises based on the absolutely true. Susan
had an earnest soul, a conscience tending to morbidity ; but
a strong, well-balanced body and simple family life soothed
the too active moral nature, and gave the world, instead of a
religious fanatic, hypochondriac philosopher, a sincere, con-
centrated worker. Every household art was taught her by
her mother, and so great was her ability that the duty de-
manding especial care was always given into her hands. But
ever, amid school and household tasks, the day-dream of the
demure little maid was that in time she might be a " high-
seat" Quaker. Each Sunday, up to the time of the third
disobedience, Mr. Anthony, with honest faith, went to his
distant Mecca, the Quaker meeting-house, some thirteen miles
from home, wife and children usually accompanying him ;
though, as non-members, they were rigidly excluded from all
business discussions. Exclusion was very pleasant in the
bright days of summer ; but not so for the seven year-old
Susan, her father's sole companion, on one occasion in frosty
December. When the blinds were drawn at the close of the
religious meeting, and non-members retired, Susan, with de-
termination on her brow, remained. Soon she saw a thin old
lady with blue goggles come down from the " high-seat."
58 SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
Approaching her, the Quakeress spoke softly ; and Susan
wondered if she was moved by the spirit when she said,
"Thee is not a member, thee must go out." "No; my
mother told me not to go out in the cold,'' was the child's
firm response. "Yes, but thee must go out, thee is not a
member." But my father is a member." Calm logic fol-
lowed. " Thee is not a member." Finally, with all the voice
she could muster, the child pleads, " It is cold ! " But t*he
" high-seat " constable of the decencies gently answers, "Thee
must go," and Susan felt as if the spirit was moving her, and
soon found herself in outer coldness. Fingers and toes be-
coming numb, and a bright fire in a cottage over the way
beckoning warmly to her, the exile from the chapel of the
tender mercies resolved to seek secular shelter. But alas !
she was confronted by an advocate of " might makes right,"
in the shape of a huge dog, and just escaped with whole skin
though capeless jacket. Stern defender this was, no doubt,
of Quaker faith as to fitting style of garment. We may be
sure there was much talk that night at the home fireside
o
about " high-seat goggles," meaningless forms, and cant, and
stern resolution was taken by the good Baptist wife that no
child of hers should attend meeting again till made a mem-
ber. " So it was," says Miss Anthony, " by means of a rent
in my best jacket that I can lay claim to being a member of
any church.
Later definite convictions took root in Miss Anthony's
heart. Hers is, indeed, a sincerely religious nature, not
of the " blue-goggle" sort, but of the humanitarian. To be a
simple, earnest Quaker was the aspiration of her girlhood ;
but she shrank from adopting the formal language and plain
dress. Dark hours of conflict were spent over all this, and
she interpreted her disinclination as evidence of un worthiness.
Poor little Susan, as we look back with the knowledge of
your later life, we translate the heart-burnings as unconscious
protests against labelling your free soul, against testing your
reasoning conviction of to-morrow by any shibboleth of to-
day's belief. We hail this child-intuition as a prophecy of
SUSAN B. ANTHONY. 59
the uncompromising truthfulness of the mature woman. Su-
san Anthony was trained to no dogmas, taught simply that
she must enter into the holy of holies of her own self, meet
herself, and be true to the revelation. She first found words
to express her convictions in listening to William Henry
Channing, whose teaching had a lasting spiritual influence
upon her. To-day Miss Anthony is an agnostic ; as to the
nature of the Godhead, and of the life beyond her horizon she
does not profess to know anything. Every energy of her
soul is centred upon the needs of the world. To her work
is worship. She has not stood aside shivering in the cold
shadows of uncertainty ; but has moved on with the whirling
world, has done the good given her to do, and thus in darkest
hours has been sustained by an unfaltering faith in the final
perfection of all things. Her belief is not orthodox, but it
is religious, based on the high and severe moralities. In
ancient Greece she would have been a Stoic ; in the era of
the Reformation, a Calvinist ; in King Charles's time, a
Puritan ; but in this nineteenth century, by the very laws of
her being, she is a Reformer.
For the arduous work that awaited Miss Anthony her
years of young womanhood had given preparation. The
father, though a man of wealth, made it a matter of conscience
to train his girls as well as his boys to honest self-support.
Accordingly Susan chose the profession of teacher, and made
her first essay during a summer vacation, in a school her
father had established for the children of his employees. Her
success was so marked, not only in imparting knowledge, but
also as a disciplinarian, that she followed this career steadily,
with the exception of some months given in Philadelphia
to her own training, for fifteen years. Of the may school
rebellions which she overcame one rises before me prominent
in its ludicrous aspects. Before whirling off into Miss
Anthony's broader fields of conquest, let us take a peep into
the district school at Centre Falls, in the year 1839. Bad
reports were current there of male teachers ignominiously
driven out by a certain strapping lad, through open windows.
60 SUSAN B. AXTHONT.
Rumor new tells of a Quaker maiden coming to teach, Quaker
maiden of peace principles. She can be sent out circum-
spectly by open door. She is to be gently dealt with, for
she 's against floggings. The anticipated day and Susan arrive.
She looks very meek to the barbarian of fifteen, so he soon
begins his antics. He is called to the platform, told to lay
aside his jacket, and thereupon with much astonishment
receives from the mild Quaker maiden, with a birch-rod
applied calmly but with precision, an exposition of the
argumentum ad hominem based on the a posteriori method
of reasoning. Thus Susan departed from her principles, but
not from her school.
But now there are mighty conflicts in the outside world
disturbing our young teacher. Her mind wanders ; the
multiplication-table and spelling-book no longer enchain her
thoughts ; larger questions begin to fill her mind. About
the year 1850 Susan B. Anthony hid her ferule quite away,
and put off her laurel crown in teach erdom. Temperance,
anti-slavery, woman suffrage, three pregnant questions,
presented themselves, demanding consideration. Higher,
ever higher, rose their appeals, until she resolved, in the
silence of her individual self, to dedicate her every energy and
thought to the burning needs of the hour. Owing to early
experience of the disabilities of her sex, the first demand for
equal rights for women found echo in Susan Anthony's heart.
And though she was in the beginning startled to hear that
women had actually met in convention, and by speeches and
resolutions declared themselves man's peer in political rights,
urging radical changes in State constitutions, and the whole
system of American jurisprudence ; yet the most casual review
convinced her that these claims were but the logical outgrowth
of the fundamental theories of our republic.
Miss Anthony first carried her red flag of rebellion into the
State conventions of teachers, and there fought, almost single-
handed, the battle of equality. At the close of the first
decade she had compelled conservatism to yield its ground so
far as to permit women to participate in all debates, deliver
SUSAN B. ANTHONY. 61
essays, vote, and hold honored positions as officers. She
labored as sincerely in the temperance movement, until con-
vinced that woman's moral power amounted to little as a civil
agent until backed by a ballot, and coined into State law.
She still never loses an occasion to defend teetotalism and
prohibition ; but to every question the refrain of Poe's raven
was not more persistently "never more," than Miss Anthony's
response, " woman suffrage."
It was in 1852 that anti-slavery, through the eloquent lips
of such men as Pillsbury, George Thompson, Phillips, and
Garrison, first proclaimed to her its pressing necessities. To
their inspired words she gave answer four years afterwards
by becoming a regularly employed agent in the Anti-Slavery
Society. For her espoused cause she has always made
boldest demands. In the abolition meetings she used to tell
each class why it should support the movement financially,
invariably calling upon Democrats to give liberally, as the
success of the cause would enable them to cease bowing the
o
knee to the slave power, and to be "decent sort of men."
Mr. Garrison said, the first time he heard this plea, "Well,
Miss Anthony, you 're the most audacious beggar I ever
heard."
There is scarce a town, however small, from New York to
San Francisco, that has not heard the ringing voice of our
heroine. Who can number the speeches she has made on
lyceum platforms, in churches, school-houses, halls, barns,
and in the open air, with lumber wagons and carts for her
rostrum? Who can describe the varied audiences and social
circles she has cheered and interested? Now we see her on
the far-off prairies entertaining, with her sterling common
sense, large gatherings of men. women, and children, seated
on rough boards in some unfinished building ; again, holding
public debates in some town with half-fledged editors and
clergymen ; next, sailing up the Columbia River, and, in hot
haste to meet some appointment, jolting over the rough
mountains of Oregon and Washington Territories ; and, then,
before legislative assemblies, constitutional conventions, and
62 SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
congressional committees, discussing with senators and judges
the letter and spirit of constitutional law.
Miss Anthony's style of speaking is rapid and vehement ;
in debate, ready and keen ; and she is always equal to an
emergency. Many times in travelling with her through the
West, especially on our first trip to Kansas and California, we
were suddenly called on to speak to the women assembled
at the stations. Filled with consternation, I usually appealed
to her to go first ; and, without a moment's hesitation, she
could always fill five minutes with some appropriate words,
and inspire me with thoughts and courage to follow. The
climax of these occasions was in an institution for the deaf
and dumb in Michigan. I had just said to my friend, " There
is one comfort in visiting this place, we shall not be asked to
speak," when the superintendent approaching us said, "Ladies,
the pupils are assembled in the chapel ready to hear you. I
promised to invite you to speak to them as soon as I heard
you were in town." The possibility of addressing such an
audience was as novel to Miss Anthony as to me ; yet she
promptly walked down the aisle to the platform as if to per-
form an ordinary duty, while I, half distracted with anxiety,
wondering by what process I was to be placed in communi-
cation with the deaf and dumb, reluctantly followed. But
the manner was simple enough when illustrated. The super-
intendent, standing by our side, repeated in the sign language
what was said as fast as uttered, and by tears, laughter, and
earnest attention the pupils showed that they fully appreciated
the pathos, humor, and argument.
One night, crossing the Mississippi at McGregor, Iowa, we
were ice-bound in the middle of the river. The boat was
crowded with people, standing hungry, tired, cross with the
delay. Some gentlemen, with whom we had been talking
on the cars, started the cry for a speech on woman suffrage.
Accordingly, in the middle of the Mississippi river, at mid-
night, we presented our claims to political representation,
and debated the question of universal suffrage until we landed.
Our voyagers were quite thankful that we had shortened the
SUSAN 3. ANTHONY. 63
many hours, and we equally so at having made several con-
verts, and held a convention in the very bosom of the great
"Father of Waters." Only once in all these wanderings was
Miss Anthony taken by surprise, and that was on being asked
to speak to the inmates of an insane asylum. "Bless me,"
said she, " it is as much as I can do to talk to the sane !
What could I say to an audience of lunatics?" Her com-
panion, Mrs. Virginia L. Minor, of St. Louis, replied,
" This is a golden moment for you, the first opportunity you
have ever had, according to the constitutions, to talk to your
'peers'; for is not the right of suffrage denied to 'idiots,
criminals, lunatics, and women?"
Much curiosity has been expressed as to the love-life of
Miss Anthony ; but if she has enjoyed or suffered any of the
usual triumphs or disappointments of her sex she has not yet
vouchsafed this information to her biographers. While few
women have had more sincere and lasting friendships, or a
more extensive correspondence with a large circle of noble
men, yet I doubt if one of them can boast of having received
from her any exceptional attention. She has often playfully
said, when questioned on this point, that she could not con-
sent that the man she loved, described in the constitution as
a white male, native-born, American citizen, possessed of the
right of self-government, eligible to the office of President of
the great Republic, should unite his destinies in marriage
with a political slave and pariah. " No, no ; when I am
crowned with all the rights, privileges, and immunities of a
citizen, I may give some consideration to these social prob-
lems ; but until then I must concentrate all my energies on
the enfranchisement of my own sex." Miss Anthony's love-
life, like her religion, has manifested itself in steadfast,
earnest labors for man in general. She has been a watchful
and affectionate daughter, sister, friend ; and those who have
felt the pulsations of her great heart, know how warmly it
beats for all.
As the custom has long been observed among married
women of celebrating the anniversaries of their wedding-day,
64 SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
quite properly the initiation has been taken, in late years, of
doing honor to the great events in the lives of single women.
Being united in closest matrimony to her profession, Dr. Har-
riet K. Hunt, of Boston, celebrated her twenty-fifth year of
faithful service as a physician by giving to her friends and
patrons a large reception, which she called her silver-wed-
ding. From a feeling of the sacredness of her life-work, the
admirers of Susan B. Anthony have been moved to mark by
reception and conventions her rapid flowing years, and the
passing decades of the suffrage movement. To the most
brilliant occasion of this kind, the invitation cards, finely
engraved, with the letters " W. B " elaborately wrought in an
embossed monogram, were as follows :
" The ladies of the Woman's Bureau invite you to a reception
on Tuesday evening, February 15, to celebrate the fiftieth birth-
day of Susan B. Anthony, when her friends will have an oppor-
tunity to show their appreciation of her long services in behalf of
woman's emancipation.
" ELIZABETH B. PHELPS,
"ANNA B. DARLING,
" CHARLOTTE BEEBE WILBOUR.
"49 EAST 23o STREET, NEW YORK,
February 10, 1870."
In response to the invitation the parlors at the Bureau were
crowded with friends to congratulate Miss Anthony on the
happy event, many bringing valuable gifts as an expression
of their gratitude. Among other presents were a handsome
gold watch, and checks to the amount of a thousand dollars.
The guests were entertained with music, recitations, the read-
ing of many piquant letters of regret from distinguished peo-
ple, and witty rhymes, written for the occasion by the Gary
sisters. Miss Anthony received her guests with her usual
straightforward simplicity, and in a few earnest w^ords ex-
pressed her thanks for the presents and praises showered
upon her. The comments of the leading journals next day
were highly complimentary and as genial as amusing. All
dwelt on the fact that at last a woman had arisen brave
SUSAN B. ANTHONY. 65
enough to assert her right to grow old, and openly declare
that half a century had rolled over her head.
As a writer Miss Anthony is clear and concise, dealing in
facts rather than rhetoric. Of carefully-prepared written
speeches she has had few ; but these, by the high praise they
called forth, prove that she can in spite of her own declara-
tion to the contrary put her sterling thoughts on paper
concisely and effectively. After her exhaustive plea in 1880
for a XVIth Amendment before the Judiciary Committee of the
Senate, Senator Edmunds accosted her as she was leaving the
Capitol, and said he neglected to tell her in the committee-
room that she had made an argument, no matter what his
personal feelings were as to the conclusions reached, which
was unanswerable, an argument, unlike the usual platform
oratory given at hearings, suited to a committee of men
trained to the law.
It was in 1876 that Miss Anthony gave her much criticised
lecture on "Social Purity" in Boston. As to the result she
felt very anxious ; for the intelligence of New England com-
posed her audience, and it did not still her heart-beats to see
sitting just in front of the platform her revered friend,
William Lloyd Garrison. But surely every fear vanished
when she felt the grand old abolitionist's hand warmly press-
ing hers, and heard him say, that to listen to no one else
would he have had courage to leave his sick-room, and that he
felt fully repaid by her grand speech, which neither in matter
nor manner would he have changed in the smallest particular.
But into Miss Anthony's private correspondence one must
look for examples of her most effective writings. Verb or
subject is usually wanting, but you can always catch the
thought, and will ever find it clear and suggestive. It is a
strikingly strange dialect, but one that touches at times the
deepest chords of pathos and humor, and, when stirred by
some great event, is highly eloquent.
From being the most ridiculed and mercilessly persecuted
woman, Miss Anthony has become the most honored and re-
spected in the nation. Witness the praises of press and peo-
66 SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
pie, and the enthusiastic ovations she received on her depart-
ure for Europe. Never were warmer expressions of regret
for an absence, nor more sincere prayers for a speedy return,
accorded any American on leaving his native shores. This
slow awaking to the character of her services shows the abid-
ing sense of justice in the human soul, that, sooner or later,
seeks to atone for the martyrdom of those who are called to
expiate the sins of the people. Having spent the winter of
1882-3 in Washington, trying to press to a vote the bill for a
XVI th Amendment before Congress, and the autumn in a
vigorous campaign through Nebraska, where a constitutional
amendment to enfranchise women had been submitted to the
people, she felt the imperative need of an entire change in
the current of her thoughts. Accordingly, after one of the
most successful conventions ever held at the national capital,
and a most flattering ovation in the spacious parlors of the
Riggs House, she went to Philadelphia. Here she was given
another public reception by the Citizens' Suffrage Associa-
tion, whose president, Mr. Robert Purvis, presented to her,
in the name of the society, an engraved testimonial of their
regard and allegiance. To some it may suggest a pregnant
thought that the date of Miss Anthony's departure for Europe
was the birthday anniversary of the first President of the
United States.
Fortunate in being perfectly well during the entire voyage,
our traveller received perpetual enjoyment in watching the
ever-varying sea and sky. To the captain's merry challenge
to find anything so grand as the ocean, she replied : " Yes,
these mighty forces in nature do indeed fill me with awe ; but
this vessel, with deep-buried fires, powerful machinery,
spacious decks, and tapering masts, walking the waves like
a thing of life, and all the work of man, impresses one still
more deeply. Lo ! in man's divine creative power is fulfilled
the prophecy, ' Ye shall be as gods ! ' "
In all her journeyings through Germany, Italy, and
France, Miss Anthony was never the traveller, but always
the humanitarian incognito, the reformer in traveller's guise.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY. 67
Few of the great masterpieces of art gave her real enjoy-
ment ; the keen appreciation of the beauties of sculpture,
painting, architecture, one would have expected to find in so
deep a religious nature, was wanting, warped, no doubt, by
her early training in Quaker utilities. That her travels gave
her more pain than pleasure, was, perhaps, not so much that
she had no appreciation of aesthetic beauty, but that she
quickly grasped the infinitude of human misery ; not because
her soul did not feel the heights to which art had risen, but
that it vibrated in every fibre to the depths to which man-
kind had fallen. Wandering through a gorgeous palace one
day, she exclaimed, "What do you find to admire here? If it
were a school of five hundred children being educated into
the right of self-government, I could admire it, too ; but
standing for one man's pleasure, I say, No ! " In the quarters
of one of the devotees, at the old monastery of the Certosa,
there lies, on a small table, an open book in which visitors
register themselves. On the occasion of Miss Anthony's
visit the pen and ink proved so unpromising that her entire
party declined this opportunity to make themselves famous.
But our heroine looked higher than individual glory, and
made the rebellious pen inscribe the principle, "Perfect
equality for woman, social, political, religious. Susan B.
Anthony, U. S. A." Friends who visited the monastery next
day reported that lines had been drawn through this heretical
sentiment.
During her visit at the Berlin home of Senator and Mrs.
Sargent, Miss Anthony quite innocently posted her letters
in the official envelopes of the Suffrage Association of Amer-
ica. After the revolutionary sentiment, " No just govern-
ment can be formed without the consent of the governed,"
printed on the outside, had been carefully examined by
the German officials, all the letters were returned ; prob-
ably nothing saving her from arrest as a socialist under
the tyrannical police regulations but the fact that she was
the guest of the Minister Plenipotentiary of the United
States.
5
68 SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
Miss Anthony's host, during her visit in Paris, writes : "I
had never before seen her in the rdle of tourist. She seemed
interested only in historical monuments and in the men and
questions of the hour. The galleries of the Louvre had little
attraction for her, but she gazed with deep pleasure at Napo-
leon's tomb, Notre Dame, and the ruins of the Tuilleries.
She was always ready to listen to discussions on the political
problems before the French people, the prospects of the
republic, the divorce agitation, and the revolution in favor of
women's instruction. f l had rather see Jules Ferry than all
the pictures of the Louvre, Luxembourg, and Salon,' she
remarked at table. A day or two later she saw Ferry at
Laboulaye's funeral. The three things which made the
deepest impression on Miss Anthony, during her stay at
Paris, were probably the interment of Laboulaye, the friend
of the United States and of the women's movement ; the
touching anniversary demonstration of the Communists, at
the Cemetery of Pere La Chaise, on the very spot where the
last defenders of the Commune of 1871 were ruthlessly shot
and buried in a common grave ; and a woman's rights meet-
ing, held in a little hall in the Rue de Rivoli, at which the
brave, far-seeing Mile. Hubertine Auchet was the leading
spirit.
While on the continent, Miss Anthony experienced the
unfortunate sensation of being deaf and dumb ; to speak and
not be understood, to hear and not comprehend, were to her
bitter realities. We can imagine to what desperation she
was brought, when her Quaker prudishness could hail an
emphatic oath in English from a French official with the
exclamation, "Well, it sounds good to hear some one even
swear in old Anglo-Saxon ! " After two months of enforced
silence, she was buoyant in reaching the British Islands once
more, where she could enjoy public speaking and general con-
versation. Here she was the recipient of many generous
social attentions, and on May 25 a large public meeting of
representative people, presided over by John Bright, was
called in her honor by the National Association of Great
SUSAN B. ANTHONY. 69
Britain. She spoke on the educational and political status
of America, leaving to me the religious and social position of
our countrywomen.
Before closing my friend's biography, I shall trace two
golden threads in this closely-woven life of incident. One
of the greatest services rendered by Miss Anthony to the
suffrage cause was in casting a vote in the Presidential
election of 1872, in order to test her rights under the XlVth
Amendment. For this offence the brave woman was arrested
on Thanksgiving Day,- the national holiday handed down to
us by Pilgrim Fathers escaped from England's persecutions.
New World republicanism, based on inconsistencies, does not
contrast favorably with Old World injustice, founded on pro-
scriptive rights. But this farce of the equities hastens on
quickly to its close. Miss Anthony appeals for a ivrit of
habeas corpus. The writ being flatly refused her in January,
1873, the courtly counsel gives bonds. Our daring defendant,
finding, when too late, that this not only keeps her out of
jail, but her case out of the Supreme Court of the United
States, regretfully determines to fight on and gain the utter-
most by a State decision. Her trial is appointed for the
Rochester term in May. Quickly she canvasses the whole
country, laying before every probable juror the strength of
her case. The time of trial arrives ; but the Attorney-Gen-
eral, fearing the result if decision be left to a jury drawn from
Miss Anthony's enlightened county, postpones the trial to
the Ontario County Session, in June, 1873. Another county is
now to be instructed in all its length and breadth. So short
is the time that Miss Anthony asked and received valuable
assistance from Matilda Joslyn Gage ; and to meet all this
new expense, financial aid was generously given, unsolicited,
by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Gerrit Smith, and other
sympathizers. But in vain was every effort ; in vain the
appeal of Miss Anthony to her jurors ; in vain the logical
argument of her gifted counsel, Henry R. Selden ; in vain
the moral influence of the leading representatives of the bar
of Central New York filling the court-room, for Judge Hunt,
70 SUSAN B. ANTHCXNT.
without sympathy or precedent to sustain him, declaring it a
case of law and not fact, refuses to give the case to the jury,
reserving to himself final decision. Is it not an historic scene
being enacted here in this little court-house of Canandaigua ?
Do we not witness there all the inconsistencies embodied in
this judge, so punctilious in manner, so scrupulous in attire,
so conscientious in trivialities, and so obtuse on great prin-
ciples, fitly described by Charles O' Conner, " a very lady-like
judge." Behold him sitting there, balancing all the niceties
of law and equity in his Old World scales, and at last saying,
w The prisoner will stand up. [Whereupon the accused arose.]
The sentence of the court is, that you pay a fine of one hun-
dred dollars and the costs of the prosecution." Strange,
unruly defendant, this : " May it please your honor, I shall
never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty,' 4 and more to
the same effect, all of which she has lived up to. The "lady-
like " judge has gained some insight into the determination
of the prisoner ; so, not wishing to incarcerate her to all
eternity, he adds gently, ''Madame, the court will not
order you committed until the fine is paid.''
It was on the 17th of June that the verdict was given ; the
decision was a victory for the inconsistencies. On that
very day, a little more than a century before, other injustices
gained in an encounter with truth. The brave militia was
driven back at Bunker's Hill, back, back, almost wiped out ;
yet truth was in their ranks, and justice, too ; but how ended
this rebellion of weak colonists? The cause of American
womanhood, embodied for the moment in the liberty of a
single individual, received a rebuff on June 17, 1873 ; but
just so sure as our Revolutionary heroes were in the end
victorious, so sure will the alienable rights of our heroines
of the nineteenth century receive final vindication.
In his speech of 1880 before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at
Harvard, Wendell Phillips said what as a rule is true
that a reformer to be conscientious must be free from bread-
winning. I should like to open my heroine's account-book
and show that this reformer, being perhaps the exception
SUSAN B. ANTHONY. 71
which proves the rule, has been consistently and conscien-
tiously in debt. Turning over her year-books the pages give
a fair record up to 1863. Here begins her first herculean
labor. The Woman's Loyal League, sadly in need of funds, is
not an incorporated association, so its secretary assumes the
debts. Accounts here became quite lamentable, the deficit
reaching five thousand dollars. It must be paid, and, in
fact, will be paid. Anxious, weary hours were spent in
crowding Cooper Institute, from week to week, with paid
audiences, to listen to such men as Phillips, Curtis, and
Douglass, who contributed their services, and lifted the
secretary out of debt. Next a cunning device was resorted to
in asking the people who signed petitions against slavery to
contribute a cent each. "Audacious beggar," this? Yes, and
successful, too. At last, after many wanderings, we see cash-
book 1863 honorably pigeon-holed. In 1867 we can read
account of herculean labor the second. Twenty thousand
tracts are needed to convert the voters of Kansas to woman
suffrage. That occasions all the sorry plights revealed in the
accounts of this year. Travelling expenses to Kansas and
the rebellious tracts make the debtor column overreach the
creditor some two thousand dollars. There is recognition on
these pages of more than one thousand dollars obtained by
soliciting advertisements, but no note is made of the weary,
burning July days spent in the streets of New York to
procure this money, nor of the ready application of the
savings made by petty economies from her salary from the
Hovey Committee. Enough is it to say that herculean labor
number two reached a victorious conclusion cash-book 1867
honorable burial in some pigeon-hole ; and chiefest wonder,
that our bread-winning reformer remained conscientiously
faithful to the truth revealed in her.
It would have been fortunate for our brave Susan, if cash-
books 1868, 1869, and 1870 had never come down from their
shelves ; for they sing and sing in notes of debts till all unite
in one vast chorus of more than ten thousand dollars. These
were the days of the " He volution," the newspaper, not the war,
72 SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
though this was warfare for the debt-ridden manager. What
is to be done? is the question. Well, five thousand dollars
she paid with her fees for lecturing, and with money given her
for personal use. One Thanksgiving was in truth a time of
returning thanks; for she received, cancelled, from her
cousin, Mr. Lapham, her note for four thousand dollars.
After the funeral of Paulina Wright Davis, the bereaved
widower pressed into Miss Anthony's hand cancelled notes
for five hundred dollars, bearing on the back the words, " In
memory of my beloved wife." One other note was cancelled
in recognition of her perfect forgetfulness of self-interest and
ready sacrifice to the needs of others. When laboring in
1874 to fill every engagement in order to meet her debts her
mother's sudden illness called her home. Without one
selfish regret, the anxious daughter hastened to Rochester.
When recovery was certain, and Miss Anthony was about to
return to her fatiguing labors, her mother gave her at parting
her note for a thousand dollars, on which was written, in
trembling lines, " In just consideration of the tender sacrifice
made to nurse me in severe illness." At last all the "Revolu-
tion " debt was paid, except that due to her generous sister,
Mary Anthony, who used often humorously to assure her she
was a fit subject for the bankrupt act. But nothing daunted,
this Hercules of the nineteenth century vanquished creditor
after creditor, and in 1876 cash-books of revolutionary epoch
were safely pigeon-holed.
There is something humorously pathetic in the death of this
first-born of Miss Anthony, whose life proved too rebellious
and erratic for even her democratic nature. Mrs. Laura
Curtis Bullard generously assumed the care of the trouble-
some child, and in order to make the adoption legal, gave
the usual one dollar greenback. The very night of the
transfer Miss Anthony went to Rochester with the almighty
dollar in her pocket, and the little change left after purchas-
ing her ticket. She arrived safely with her debts, but nothing
more, her pocket had been picked ! Oh, thief, would you
could but know what value of faithful work you purloined !
SUSAN B. ANTH01S[Y. 73
From the close of the year 1876, annals show favorable signs as
to the credit column ; indeed, at the end of five years, there is
a solid balance of several thousand dollars earned on severe
lecturing tours. But alas ! the accounts grow dim again, in
fact, credit column fades quite away. Herculean labor in
form of " Woman Suffrage History " rises up, and ruthlessly
swallows every vestige of Miss Anthony's bank account,
excepting one thousand dollars reserved for the European
trip. Within the past two years she has been left some
twenty thousand dollars, in trust for the cause of woman
suffrage, by the will of Mrs. Eddy, daughter of Francis Jack-
son ; but, as the will is in litigation, no part of the money has
as yet been received.
In vain will you search these tell-tale books for evidence
of personal extravagance ; for although Miss Anthony thinks
it true economy to buy the best, and like Carlyle dislikes
shams, her tastes are simple even to Quaker excess. Is there not
something very touching in the fact that she has never bought
even a book or picture for her own enjoyment? The meagre,
personal balance-sheets show but four lapses from severest
discipline, lapses that she even now regards as ruthless ex-
travagances, the purchase of two inexpensive brooches, a
much-needed watch, and a pair of cuffs to match a point-lace
collar presented by a friend. Long since, friends interested
in Miss Anthony's personal appearance have ceased to trust
her with the purchase-money for any ornament ; for, however
firm her resolution to comply with y our wish, the check
invariably finds its way to the credit column of these same
little cash-books as " money received for the cause." Now,
reader, you have been admitted to a private view of Miss
Anthony's financial records, and you can appreciate her devo-
tion to an idea. Do you not agree with me that a " bread-
winner " can be a conscientious reformer ?
In finishing this sketch of the most intimate friend I have
had for the past thirty years, with whom I have spent weeks
and months under the same roof, I can truly say she is the
most upright, courageous, self-sacrificing, magnanimous
74 SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
human being I have ever known. I have seen her beset on
every side with the most petty annoyances, ridiculed and mis-
represented, slandered and persecuted ; I have known women
refuse to take her extended hand without vouchsafing an
explanation, women to whom she presented handsomely
bound copies of the " History of Woman Suffrage," return it
unnoticed, others keep it without one word of acknowledg-
ment, others write most insulting "letters in answer to hers of
affectionate conciliation. And yet, under all the cross-fires
incident to a reform, never has her hope flagged, her self-
respect wavered, nor a feeling of revenge shadowed her mind.
Oftentimes when I have been sorely discouraged, thinking
that the prolonged struggle was a waste of forces, that in
other directions might be rich in achievement, with her sub-
lime faith in humanity, she would breathe into my soul
renewed inspiration, saying, " Pity rather than blame those who
persecute us." In their present condition of slavery women
cannot have any esprit de corps ; they are the victims of gen-
erations of bigotry, prejudice, and oppression. If you can-
not stand the malignity of an enemy, and the treason of a
friend, where and how can I reinforce myself for the conflict.
Thus have we supplemented each other ; and through
these long years, though striving, side by side, as writers, as
speakers in conventions and on the lyceum platform, and as
officers in an influential national society, never has a single
break come in our friendship, never has one feeling of envy
marred the happiness of each in the success of the other. So
closely interwoven have been our lives, our purposes, and
experiences, that separated we have a feeling of incomplete-
ness, united such strength of self-assertion that no ordinary
obstacles, difficulties, or dangers ever appear to us insur-
mountable. Eeviewing the life of Susan B. Anthony, I ever
liken her to the Doric column in Grecian architecture, so
simply, so grandly she stands, free from every extraneous
ornament, supporting her one vast idea, the enfranchise-
ment of woman.
CHAPTER III.
CATHERINE E. BEECHER.
BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
A Leaf from Dr. Lyman Beecher's Diary The Old Parsonage at Litchfield
Miss Beecher's Early Education Her Keen Sense of Humor A
Sprightly Poem Lines Written on the Death of Her Mother Her First
Published Poems "Who is this C. D. D. ?" Engagement to Prof.
Alexander M. Fisher Bright Prospects for the Future Prof. Fisher
Sails for England Shipwreck of the " Albion," and Death of Prof. Fisher
The Survivor's Narrative of the Shipwreck Effect of the Distress-
ing News Miss Beecher Establishes the Hartford Female Seminary
Her Energy and Incessant Activity Last years of Her Life Her Death
Lines Written to a Dying Friend.
gfe.ISS CATHERINE E. BEECHER, celebrated in
a past generation as a leader in the cause of
female education, was the oldest child of the
numerous family of Dr. Lyman Beecher. She
was born at East Hampton, an obscure parish
on the shores of Long Island Sound, where
her fathers ministerial career commenced.
Among the family relics is a leaf from Dr.
Beecher's diary, a fragment yellow with age and
bearing the following entry :
"SATURDAY, September 6, 1800.
"This moment, blessed be God, my dear, dear wife is
delivered of a daughter, and my soul, my very soul from
agony. Oh, may I never forget the goodness of God who
has heard our prayer. Jesus ! Thou former of the body
and father of the spirit, accept as Thine the immortal soul
Thou hast ushered into life. Take, O take it to be Thine
before it cling round my heart, and never suffer us to take it
back again. May it live to glorify Thee on earth, and to
75
76 CATHERINE E. BEECHEK.
enjoy Thee forever in heaven. Now, Lord, we look to Thee
for grace to help us rear it for Thee, may it be Thine
forever, Amen and Amen."
The spirit of devout earnestness expressed in this relic was
characteristic of the whole life of Dr. Beecher. His minis-
terial career, afterwards so celebrated, commenced in earnest
missionary labors in this obscure field. Every night during
the week he held some meeting along the shore, now among
the Montauk Indians and now in a little settlement of free
blacks, and again in the East Hampton village proper.
The first nine years of Miss Beecher's life were spent in this
region. As her father's eldest child she became his compan-
ion, and often was taken in the old chaise between him and
her mother to his pastoral visitations. Mrs. Beecher was a
woman uniting a rare culture with great strength and sweet-
ness. As the salary of the parish was a limited one, she
opened a family school, receiving a select number of young
ladies to study under her instruction. She was aided in
these cares by a sister, a lady of great beauty, elegance, and
refinement, to whose early instructions Miss Beecher often
recurred as having a strong influence upon her life.
In her ninth year Dr. Beecher removed to Litchfield, Conn.,
a mountain town celebrated alike for the beauty of its
scenery and the exceptional cultivation and refinement of its
inhabitants. The law school under Judge Reeves, and sub-
sequently under Judge Gould, drew to the place students
from every part of the Union. The female seminary, under
Miss Sarah Pearse, and Mr. J. P. Brace, drew every year
hundreds of young ladies while the resident families of
the town numbered many of a class distinguished by intel-
lectual culture and refinement.
The house, which was bought by Dr. Beecher, and which is
remembered still as the early home of the family, was a large,
plain, old-fashioned mansion, shaded by elms and maples.
The front windows commanded a beautiful prospect, where
the waters of two lovely lakes gleamed out from encircling
forests of pines, and the blue outlines of Mount Tom rose
CATHERINE E. BEECHER 77
in the distance. On another side the wooded heights of
Chestnut Hills were covered with a veil of native forest trees,
which in spring, summer, and autumn gave a rich and
varied horizon of verdure. The village street was wide and
green, overshadowed with lofty trees, and giving glimpses
through deep, shady yards of the ample white houses which,
encircled by stately, old-fashioned gardens, stood in summer-
time with doors and windows hospitably open. Here, under
the care of Miss Pearse, Miss Beecher began her career as a
school-girl.
Possessed of perfect health and an unfailing store of cheer-
fulness and energy, warm-hearted, enthusiastic, and vigorous,
Catherine Beecher was a universal favorite, both with teach-
ers and companions. In music, painting, poetry, and
general literature she evinced both taste and talent, she
soon learned to play on the piano, and sing quite a repertoire
of the songs and ballads then in vogue. She also showed an
early and ready talent for versification, and at a very early
age her poetical effusions were handed about among her
family friends, and helped diversify the routine of the parson-
age. Most of them were of a sprightly and humorous turn,
called forth by some domestic chance or mischance, such as
the breaking of the largest dish in a new dinner-service, which
was thus bewailed :
" High mounted on the dresser's side,
Our brown-edged platter stood with pride !
A neighboring door flew open wide,
Knocked out its brains, and straight, it died.
" Come, kindred platters, with me mourn,
Hither, ye plates and dishes, turn !
Knives, forks, and carvers, all give ear,
And each drop a dish-water tear !
" No more with smoking roast-beef crowned
Shall guests this noble dish surround,
Roast pig no more here show his vizard,
Nor goose nor even goose's gizzard.
78 CATHERINE E. BEECHER.
" But broken-hearted must it go
Down to the dismal shades below,
While kitchen muses, platters, plates,
Knives, forks, and spoons upbraid the Fates ;
With streaming tears cry out " I never,"
Our brown-edged platter's gone forever !
Another sprightly lyric detailed the nocturnal capers and
frolics of the rats that infested the walls of the old parsonage,
and were set forth under the title of " The Great Ratification
Meeting." In her later years Miss Beecher amused herself
with collecting and arranging the memorials of these early
days in Litchfield, under the head of " The Merriment and
Romance of My Early Life," and often said, in looking back,
that her young life seemed to her one continued frolic.
Picnics, promenades, concerts, parties of pleasure, in all of
which she was the animating spirit, succeeded each other
with the varying months.
In her sixteenth year came the first stroke that taught her
the reality of life. On the night of September 25, 1816,
after a short illness, her mother died, the mother who had
been to her teacher, friend, and guide for so many years.
Instead of gay and fanciful lyrics, she now wrote in a graver,
sadder strain, lines entitled " The East Graveyard of
Litchfield " :
" The busy hum of day is o'er,
The scene is sweet and still,
And modest eve, with blushes warm,
Walks o'er the western hill ;
" All nature round looks sweetly sad,
And smiles with pensive gloom,
The evening breeze soft gliding by
Seems sighing o'er the tomb.
" The great, the good, the weak, the wise,
Lie shrouded here in gloom,
And here, with aching heart, I mark
My own dear mother's tomb.
CATHERINE E. BEECHER. 79
" Oh, as upon her peaceful grave
I fix my weeping eyes,
How many fond remembrances
In quick succession rise.
" Again I see her gentle form,
As when in infant days,
And through my sporting childish years,
She guarded all my ways.
" As when, w r ith fond and anxious care,
She watched my early day,
And through the dangerous snares of youth
She gently cleared my way.
" Far through the vista of past years
As memory can extend,
She walked, my counsellor and guide,
My guardian and my friend.
" From works of science and of taste,
How richly stored her mind ;
And yet how mild in all her ways,
How modest, meek, and kind.
"Religion's pure and heavenly light
Illumined all her road ;
Before her house she led the way
To virtue and to God.
" Like some fair orb she blessed my way
With mild and grateful light ;
Till called from hence the opening heavens
Received Ler from my sight.
left in dark and dubious paths,
I mourn her guidance o'er,
And sorrow that my longing eyes
Shall see her face no more.
" Father in Heaven ! my mother's God,
Oh, grant before Thy seat,
Among the blessed sons of light,
Parent and child again may meet.
80 CATHERINE E. BEECHER.
" There may I see her happy face,
And hear her gentle voice,
And gladdened by Thy gracious smile
Through endless years rejoice."
The death of the mother brought upon her, as the eldest
daughter of the family, many cares and responsibilities.
Though only sixteen years of age, she was the eldest of a
family of eight children, and, having always been treated by
her father as a companion, she sympathized with him fully in
the sorrows and anxieties of this bereavement. When, there-
fore, after a suitable interval, lier father announced to her
that he had found a lady of culture and piety willing to
assume the cares and labors of the head of his family, Miss
Beecher at once with generous openness wrote a letter of
welcome to the prospective stepmother, and a friendship
arose between the two which continued through life.
Under the new organization the parsonage became a centre
of a very charming, cultivated circle of society, where music,
painting, and poetry, all combined to shed a charm over life.
Parties were formed for reading, and at these parties original
compositions were often handed in and read. Mr. J. P.
Brace and Miss Beecher simultaneously took up the idea of
writing poems, the scene of which should be laid in Litchfield
during the time when it existed as an Indian village, called
Bantam. Both these poems were presented and read, and
circulated in manuscript through the appreciative circles of
Litchfield.
At that time there was no daily press, and none of those
magazines which now stimulate the young composer to rush
into print. The literature thus confined to an appreciative
circle had a charm of its own, uninvaded by sneering criticism,
and certainly added to the interest of the Litchfield society.
Miss Beecher's ballad of "Yala" possessed no mean
poetic merit as tiie composition of a girl of seventeen, and
was circulated even among the literary circles of New
Haven.
CATHERINE E. BEECHER. 81
Dr. Beecher, who had risen into the front ranks of influence
in Connecticut, at this time, in concert with the literary gen-
tlemen connected with Yale College, projected the idea of a
monthly magazine of literature and theology to be called the
w Christian Spectator." Dr. Beecher was a regular contributor
under the signature "D.D." Miss Beecher's first published
poems appeared in this under the signature " C. D. D."
These poems first drew towards her the notice of one, her
connection with whom was destined to reverse the whole
course of her life. The young professor of mathematics, Alex-
ander M. Fisher, was led to inquire of a friend, " Who is this
r C. D. D.' that writes these poems ?" and the replies that
he received so far increased his interest that he asked a class-
mate who was to supply Dr. Beecher's pulpit for a Sabbath
to allow him to accompany him. As Professor Fisher had
hitherto avoided society, and lived a life of scholarly seclu-
sion, this step was the more remarkable. Miss Beecher, how-
ever, devoted herself to his entertainment, played and sang
for him, and knowing that he was an accomplished musician,
drew him out of his diffidence and reserve to play and sing
in return, and in fact made his visit so delightful that the
memory of it followed him back to his study.
After a while, hearing from different sources of the lady
who had so interested him, he wrote a frank and manly letter
to Dr. Beecher, avowing his interest, and begging permis-
sion to seek the regard of his daughter, and soliciting his aid
in providing opportunities. As Miss Beecher was very soon
going to take a place as teacher of music and painting in
New London, it was easily arranged that she should on her
way spend a week in New Haven, at the house of a mutual
friend. After a week of devoted attention, Professor Fisher
announced to Dr. Beecher that he was going to Massachu-*
setts in a chaise to bring back his sister, and that he would
be happy to take Miss Beecher to New London, and so it was
arranged. A correspondence followed, in which the delicacy
and elegance of his mind, his high principle and keen sense
of honor were displayed, while a vein of gentle humor gave a
82 CATHERINE E. BEECHER.
grace to scholarly exactness. To this correspondence fol-
lowed an engagement, and it was arranged that immediately
on Professor Fisher's return from a tour in Europe the mar-
riage was to take place. On all hands Miss Beecher received
congratulations. Professor Fisher had already distinguished
himself in his department of science, and was now going abroad
to form the acquaintance of scientists and to observe the
methods of teaching in European universities, with a view of
improving his department in Yale College. The prospect
before Miss Beecher was of a home in the beautiful rural
city of New Haven, in cultured literary society, and at the
distance of only an hour or two from father and home.
Nothing could be asked on her own part or that of her
friends more perfectly desirable.
But like a stroke of lightning from a clear sky came the
news in a letter to Dr. Beecher, that on the 22d of April the
"Albion" in which Professor Fisher had sailed was wrecked
on Kinsale Point, and that every passenger but one had
perished.
Miss Beecher was prostrated by the stroke both in mind
and body, and was for some time unable to leave her room.
The small glimmer of hope which the saving of one passenger
afforded was soon extinguished by further particulars. The
sole survivor, Mr. Everhard, thus described the dreadful
catastrophe. After saying that a heavy sea had carried
away the masts of the "Albion," stove in the hatchways, and
carried off the wheel which enabled them to steer, he adds :
"All night long the wind blew a gale directly on shore,
towards which the ' Albion ' was drifting at the rate of about
three miles an hour. The complete hopelessness of our
situation was known to few except Captain Williams. The
coast was familiar to him ; and he must have seen in despair
and horror throughout the night the certainty of our fate.
" At length the ocean dashing and roaring upon the preci-
pice of rocks under the lee of the ship told us that the hour
had come. Captain Williams summoned all on deck, and
briefly told us that the ship must soon strike ; it was impos-
CATHERINE E. BEECHER. 83
sible to preserve her. We were crowded about the fore-
castle, our view curtained by the darkest night I ever beheld,
surrounded by waves running mountains high, propelled by
a tremendous storm towards an iron-bound shore. The
rocks, whose towering heads appeared more than a hundred
feet above the level of the sea, against whose side the mighty
waves beat with unremitting fury, by their terrific collision
gave the only light by which we were enabled to see our
unavoidable fate and final destruction. The sea beating for
ages against this perpendicular precipice has worn large
caverns into its base, into which the waves rush violently
with a sound re-echoing like distant thunder, then running
out in various directions, form whirlpools of great force. For
a perch or two from the precipice rocks rise out of the
water, broad at bottom and sharp at top ; on one of these,
just at the gray of dawn, the ' Albion ' first struck. The
next wave threw her further on the rock, the third further
still, until, nearly balanced, she swung round and her stern
was driven against another nearer in shore.
" In this situation, every wave making a breach over her,
many were drowned on deck. It is not possible to conceive
the horrors of our situation. The deadly and relentless blast
impelling us to destruction ; the ship a wreck the raging of
the billows against the precipice on which we were driving
the sending back from the caverns and the rocks the hoarse
and melancholy warnings of death dark, coid, and wet
in such a situation the stoutest heart must have quailed in
utter despair. When there is a ray of hope there may be a
corresponding buoyancy of spirit. When there is anything
to be done, the active man may drown the sense of danger
while actively exerting himself; but here there was nothing
to do but to die. Every moment might be considered the
last. Terror and despair seized upon the most of us with
the iron grasp of death, augmented by the wild shrieks of
the females, expressive of their terror. Major Gough, of the
British army, remarked, that f Death, come as he would, was
an unwelcome messenger, but we must meet him as we
O '
6
g4 CATHERINE E. BEECHER.
could.' Very little was said by others ; the men waiting the
expected shock in silence.
" Presently the ship broke in two, and all those who re-
mained near the bow were lost. Several from the stern of
the ship had got on the side of the precipice and were hang-
ing by the crags as they could. Although weakened by
previous sickness and present suffering, I made an eifort and
got upon the rock, and stood on one foot, the only hold that
I could obtain. I saw several around me, and among the
rest Colonel Prevost, who observed on seeing me take my
station, 'here is another poor fellow !' but the waves rolled
heavily against us, and often dashing its spray fifty feet over
our heads, gradually swept those who had taken refuge one
by one away. One poor fellow, losing his hold, as he fell
caught me by the leg, and nearly pulled me from my place.
Weak and sick as I was, I stood several hours on one foot on
a little crag, the billows dashing over me, benumbed with
cold.
"As soon as it was light, and the tide ebbed so as to render
it possible, the people descended the rocks as far as they
could, and dropped a rope which I fastened round my body,
and was drawn out to a place of safety."
Such were the distressing images which gathered around a
loss in itself great and irreparable. Some lines written at
this time express the sufferings and sorrows of those days :
" Where can the sorrowing heart find peace
Whose every throb is filled with woe ;
When can the aching head find rest,
And bitter tears no longer flow ?
"Wisdom with kind, inviting voice,
Directs the soul to paths of peace ;
And points the weeping eye to heaven,
Where pain shall end and sorrow cease.
"But vain her call the wayward heart,
Its best hopes wrecked, its comfort o'er,
Wanders despairing and unblest,
To Erin's cliffs and dismal shore.
CATHERINE E. BEECHER. 85
" There where the dark and stormy wave,
Hides the dear form forever lost ;
Still hovers round uncomforted,
Afflicted, lone, and tempest-tossed.
" Oh, Saviour, at whose sovereign word
The winds and waves of sorrow cease ;
Thou seest my tears, thou hear'st my sighs,
Speak but the word and all is peace.
" Be thou my trust while I resign,
The dearest boon thy mercy gave ;
And yield my cherished earthly hopes
To Erin's cliffs and ocean's wave."
It was not at once that the peace so ardently desired was
attained. It is not without a struggle that the soul can
accept heavenly hopes in place of earthly joys. Miss Beecher
at the earnest solicitation of Professor Fisher's parents went
to visit them, and spent several months of the ensuing season,
and at first the visit seemed only to intensify her sense of
loss. She wrote thus to her father :
" I am now sitting by the fireside which has so often been
cheered by the most dutiful son, the most affectionate brother,
and the dearest friend. His beautiful picture is hanging be-
fore me, his piano is near, his parents, brothers, and sisters
around. I have read letters to his family where are disclosed
the dutiful, affectionate feelings of his generous heart. I have
seen with what almost idolatrous affection he was beloved by
his family, and how dear a place I find in all their hearts for
his sake, who loved me so truly alas, I knew but little
how tenderly I was beloved till his heart was stilled in
death, but now I every day discover renewed proofs of his
affection and care. Is it strange that I sometimes feel that
my sorrow is greater than I can bear? Oh, that the clouds
and darkness that are around Him who made me, might
pass away ! " In a more cheerful strain she describes their
family life : " Every evening we gather around the par-
lor fireside to talk over past days. His brother and two
gfl CATHERINE E. BEECHEK.
sisters have the sweetest voices I ever heard, and as they all
sing by note and can read music readily, and have a large
collection of good music, we have some delightful singing."
To prevent herself from sinking into hopeless melancholy
she now undertook, under the care of the brother, Willard
Fisher, a course of mathematical study as the best means of
giving mental discipline and diverting the mind from dis-
tressing thoughts. It was, however, unfortunate for the
attainment of that religious peace that she was seeking that
the family were punctual attendants on the preaching of the
celebrated Dr. Emmons.
In his austere mode of presentation God appeared, not as a
tender Father but an exacting autocrat, and the chances for
shipwrecked souls of final salvation seemed as hopeless as
those iron-bound rocks on which the hapless " Albion " was
wrecked .
The dreary effect of this teaching was increased by finding
the mother of Professor Fisher the victim of a settled relig-
ious melancholy, and discovering by reading Professor Fisher's
private journal that those same views had clouded his own
religious hopes and driven him at times almost to despair.
Miss Beecher kept up a vigorous correspondence with her
father, in which the then current New England theology was
discussed from every point of view. At last she came to the
conclusion to let these insoluble problems alone and devote
herself to the simple following of Jesus Christ in a life of
practical usefulness.
She came back to Litchfield, united with her father's church,
and selected the field of education as the one to which she
would hereafter devote her energies. In the year 1823 she
began, in connection with her sister, a select school in Hart-
ford. She commenced the Latin grammar only a fortnight
before she began to teach it herself. Her brother, Edward
Beecher, was at this time at the head of the Hartford Latin
School, and boarded in the same family with his sisters, and
she studied with him while she taught her pupils. Sur-
rounded by young life, enthusiastic in study and teaching,
CATHERINE E. BEECHER. 87
Miss Beecher recovered that buoyant cheerfulness which had
always characterized her.
She was at this time in her twenty-third year, and had a
ready sympathy with all the feelings of the young ; she en-
couraged her scholars to talk freely with her of the subjects
they studied, and the recitation hours were often enlivened
by wit and pleasantry. She had under her care some of the
brightest and most receptive of minds, and the results, as
shown in the yearly exhibitions, to which the parents and
friends were invited, were quite exciting. Latin and English
compositions versified translations from Virgil's Eclogues
and Ovid's Metamorphoses astonished those w r ho had not
been in the habit of expecting such things in a female school.
The school increased rapidly ; pupils were drawn in from
abroad, and it became difficult to find a place to contain the
numbers to be taught.
Miss Beecher had always enjoyed the friendship of the
leading ladies of Hartford, and when at the end of four years
she drew the plan of the Hartford Female Seminary it was by
their influence that the first gentlemen in Hartford subscribed
money to purchase the land and erect such a building as she
desired, with a large hall for study and general exercises,
eight recitation-rooms, and a room for chemical laboratory
and lectures. A band of eight teachers, each devoted to some
particular department, carried on the course of study.
At this time she published " Suggestions on Education," in
which she forcibly compared the provision that had hitherto
been made for the education of men with those which had
been deemed sufficient for the other sex. For the brothers
of a family the well-endowed college, with its corps of pro-
fessors, each devoted to one department of knowledge, and
with leisure to perfect himself in it and teach it in the most
complete manner for the sisters of the family only such
advantages as they could get from one teacher in one room,
w r ho had the care of teaching in all branches ; and she asked
what but superficial knowledge could be the result of such a
system. The article was vigorously written and excited much
88 CATHEKINE E. BEECHEK.
attention. It was favorably noticed in the " North American,"
and in the "Revue Encyclopedique," and drew instant atten-
tion to the system that was being carried on in the Hartford
Female Seminary.
There was at the time an educational current rising strongly
in New England. Mr. Woodbridge, the author of a geog-
raphy much in use, edited a " Journal of Education," in which
the methods of Fellenberg and other European educators
were described ; frequent teachers' conventions were held in
which information on these subjects was disseminated.
Miss Beecher was enthusiastic in education, and succeeded
in imparting her enthusiasm both to her teachers and scholars,
and there was scarce a week in which the school was not visited
by strangers desirous to observe its methods. The example
soon was copied. One of her associate teachers inaugurated
a similar institution in Springfield, Mass., supplied with
teachers of Miss Beecher's training. A gentleman came
north from Huntsville, Alabama, desiring teachers to com-
mence a similar institution in that State, and Miss Beecher
despatched them four of her most promising scholars to com-
mence the work.
The efficiency and energy that Miss Beecher displayed at
this time of her career was the wonder of every one who
knew her.
With all the cares of a school of between one and two
hundred pupils, many of them from distant States of the
Union, Miss Beecher's influence was felt everywhere, regu-
lating the minutest details. She planned the course of study,
guided and inspired the teachers, overlooked the different
boarding-houses, corresponded with parents and guardians.
With all these cares she prepared an arithmetic which was
printed and used as a text-book in her school and those that
emanated from it. The peculiarity of this book was its re-
quiring of the pupil at every step a clear statement of the
rationale of the arithmetical processes. It was never pub-
lished, but printed as wanted for her school and those after-
wards founded by her teachers. When the teacher in mental
CATHERINE E. BEECHER. 39
philosophy left her institution for that in Springfield, Miss
Beecher took charge of that department, and wrote for it a
text book of some four or live hundred pages, entitled
"Mental and Moral Philosophy, Founded on Reason, Obser-
vation, and the Bible." Like the arithmetic, this book was
printed and not published. As it applied common sense to
the interpretation of the language of the Bible, it came in
collision with many theological dogmas, but the views of the
divine love which it exhibited made it a most powerful
assistant in religious and moral education.
She constantly enforced it upon her teachers that education
was not merely the communication of knowledge, but the
formation of character. Each teacher had committed to her
special care a certain number of scholars, whose character she
was to study, whose affection she was to seek, and whom she
was to strive by all means in her power to lead to moral
and religious excellence.
The first hour every morning was given to a general relig-
ious exercise with the assembled school, and the results of
those exercises and of the whole system of influences were
such that multitudes can look back to the Hartford Female
Seminary as the place where they received influences that
shaped their whole life for this world and the world to come.
During all her multiplied cares and engagements she kept
up her health by systematic daily exercise on horseback,
generally in the early morning hours, and often accompanied
by some of her teachers or pupils. She also kept up the
practice of piano music as a recreation, and now and then
furnished a poem for the weekly " Connecticut Observer,"
and received on one evening of the week her own friends and
those of her pupils, to a social gathering, enlivened by music
and conversation. The weekly levees of the Hartford Fe-
male Seminary were a great addition to the social life of
Hartford.
For some years it seemed as if there were to be no limit to
what she could plan and accomplish. As the making money
was no part of her object in teaching, so every improvement
90 CATHERINE E. BEECHER.
which money could procure was added to the many advan-
tages of the seminary. A lecturer on history was hired who
introduced charts of ancient and modern history, afterwards
used as the basis of instruction. A lady who first brought
into use the system of calisthenics was employed to give a
course in the seminary, and thus the exercises became a daily
part of the school duties. Dr. Barbour, afterwards Pro-
fessor of Elocution in Harvard College, was hired to give a
course of instruction in his department, and his book (a con-
densation of Dr. Rush's treatise on the voice) was introduced
into the school. So many were the teachers employed, so
many the advantages secured to the pupils, that Miss Beecher,
at the head of it all, made no more than a comfortable sup-
port, and laid up nothing for the future.
After seven years of this incessant activity, her nervous
system began to give out, and after several attacks of sciatica
she relinquished the charge of the seminary into the hands of
Mr. John P. Brace, the associate teacher in the celebrated
Litchfield School.
In 1830, she accompanied her father in his first journey of
observation to Cincinnati, preparatory to the removal of his
family to the West. When the family went out she also
went with them, and, in connection with the younger sister,
commenced a school in Cincinnati, which she furnished with
teachers of her own training.
But after this time she did not herself labor personalty as a
teacher. In connection with many other ladies she formed
a league for supplying the West with educated teachers.
Governor Slade of Vermont, as agent for this association,
travelled and lectured, and as the result many teachers were
sent West and many schools founded. It was planned to
erect one leading seminary in every Western State, where
teachers should be trained to supply the country, and the
plan was successfully carried out in Milwaukee and Dubuque,
and some other cities.
During the latter years of her life Miss Beecher was prin-
cipally occupied in authorship. By great exactness and care
CATHERINE E. BEECHER. 91
of her health she was able to give certain regular daily hours
to these labors. Her first work was a treatise on " Domestic
Economy," designed as a school-book, and treating of all those
subjects which relate to the home-life of women the care of
house and furniture, the making and repairing of garments,
the care of young children, the nursing of the sick the
training of servants. When this work was first issued
there was no other of its kind, and it was felt to be a most
important aid in female education. It was published first
in Boston and afterwards transferred to the Harpers of New
York.
This was followed by a " Domestic Keceipt Book," devoted to
the preparation and care of food. The mode of preparing this
was somewhat peculiar. She collected round her in Hartford
the graduates of her school, and induced them to bring to her
from each family the best receipts. As the housekeepers of
Hartford had always been famous for the excellence of their
menages, she had a basis of solid fact and experience to go
upon in preparing her work, which also was published by the
Harpers. Under their care the sale of these works afforded
her a yearly income, which she spent freely in forwarding her
educational plans.*
Miss Beecher lived to be seventy-eight years of age, and
though the last ten years of her life she was crippled by
sciatica and in many respects an invalid, the activity of her
mind and her zeal in education continued to the last.
In her sixty-first year she united with the Episcopal church
by confirmation, in company with three of her young nieces.
Her reason for the step she gave in her belief that the religious
educational theory of the Episcopal church was superior to
* At the request of the writer the Messrs. Harpers have furnished the fol-
lowing list of her published works:
Duty of American Women to their Country, 1845 ; A Treatise on Domestic
Economy for the Use of Ladies at Home and in School, 1845; Miss Beecher's
Domestic Receipt Book, 1846; Miss Beecher's Address, 1846; Letters to the
People, 1855; Physiology and Calisthenics, 1856; Common Sense Applied to
Religion, 1857; An Appeal to the People, 1860; The Religious Training of
Children, 1864; The Housekeeper and Healthkeeper, 1873.
92 CATHERINE E. BEECHER.
that of any other, and ever after that she was an attendant
on the services of that church.
Her death at last was sudden. She was visiting a brother
at Elmira, N. Y., but intending shortly to journey eastward.
On the llth of May, 1878, she arranged everything for her
departure, made cheerful farewell calls on all her friends, and
retired to rest at night at her usual hour. The next morning,
as she did not appear, her brother entered her room and found
her in a heavy stupor, from which it was impossible to rouse
her, and in the course of a few hours, on Sunday, May 12,
1878, she quietly passed from the pain and weakness of
earth to the everlasting rest of heaven.
In many respects the manner of her death seemed merci-
fully ordered. She had a great shrinking from physical pain
and all that usually precedes death, and there was none of
this in her last hours. Death came to her as a tranquil sleep.
We cannot more fittingly close this memoir than by quoting
her " Hymn for the Bed of Death."
It was written for a lovely and much afflicted friend of her
early days, who, after a life of peculiar suffering, was lying
on her deathbed. When Miss Beecher received a few
trembling lines from this friend, expressing her feeling that
the final hour was near, she composed and sent to her this
hymn :
"And is there One who knows each grief,
And counts the tears His children shed,
Whose soothing hand can bring relief,
And smooth and cheer their painful bed ?
Saviour ! invisible, yet dear
Friend of the helpless, art Thou near ?
" Forgive the faltering faith and fears
Of this weak heart that seeks Thine aid ;
Forgive these often flowing tears,
Thou who hast fainted, wept, and prayed.
Ah, who so well our wants can know
As He who felt each human woe ?
CATHERINE E. BEECHER. 93
" Yes, Thou hast felt the withering power
Of mortal weakness and distress ;
And Thou hast known the bitter hour
Of desolating loneliness,
Hast mourned Thy friends so faithless fled,
And wept in anguish o'er the dead.
" Thou, too, hast tried the tempter's power,
And felt his false and palsying breath ;
And known the gloomy fears that wait
Along the shadowy vale of death,
And what the dreaded pang must be,
Of life's last parting agony.
" My only hope, my stay, my shield,
Thy fainting creature looks to Thee ;
Thy gracious love, Thy guidance yield,
In this my last extremity.
With Thy dear guardian hand to save,
Lord, I can venture to the grave."
CHAPTER IV.
CLAKA BAETON.
BY LUCY LARCOM.
Clara Barton's Early Lif e A Faithful Little Nurse at Eleven Devotion
to Her Sick Brother Breaking Out of the Civil War Her Loyalty and
Devotion to the Union The Old Sixth Massachusetts Regiment First
Blood Shed for the Union Miss Barton's Timely Services Consecrat-
ing Her Life to the Soldier's Needs At the Front Army Life and
Experiences Undaunted Heroism Terrible Days Errands of Mercy
"The Angel of the Battlefield" Instances of Her Courage and
Devotion Narrow Escapes Her Labors for Union Prisoners Record
of the Soldier Dead Dorrance Atwater Work After the War Visit
to Europe The Society of the Red Cross The Franco-Prussian War
At the Front Again Unfurling the Banner of the Red Cross Record of
a Noble Life.
HE women who have lived nobly are far more
worthy of honor than those who have only
written or spoken well. Great inspirations,
whether sudden as lightning or slow as the
steady unfolding of dawn, find their perfect
end only through embodiment in action.
The every-day life of woman is full of difficult
demands, grandly met ; and these are none the
less heroisms because they often occur in some
obscure corner, where they are not looked upon as
anything remarkable. But when an unusual occa-
sion reveals a duty which must be done in the face of the
whole world, the true woman does not shrink back into her
beloved seclusion, and let the opportunity pass. She may
dread notoriety with all the strength of her womanly nature,
but the voice of God within her is imperative ; she cannot be
disobedient unto the heavenly vision ; and the really heroic
soul forgets herself and everything except the high demand
94
CLARA BARTON. 95
of the hour, and undertakes the difficult public labor as sim-
ply as she would any humble fireside service.
Clara Barton's life is before the world, not through any
effort or wish of her own, but only through her having taken
hold, with all her heart and with all her strength, of work
that she saw needed to be done. Her labors have been
almost unique in the annals of womanly endeavor, for their
steady perseverance, for the wisdom, the courage, and the
self-forge tfulness which has animated them. Quick to see
the exigencies of a situation, and prompt and wise to meet
them ; understanding both how to direct and how to obey ;
her bravery and self-reliance balanced by her generosity and
warm-heartedness, there is much in her character that
reminds us of Wordsworth's description of "The Happy
Warrior," while it would be unjust to her not to add that
she is one of the most womanly of women.
She is a daughter of New England. Her birthplace was
North Oxford, among the hills of Worcester County, Massa-
chusetts ; and the fact that she was born on Christmas day
is not without significance in her history. Her childhood
was blessed with outdoor freedom and indoor comfort and
peace, such as are known to the healthy, well-cared-for coun-
try children of our Commonwealth. The youngest of a large
family, with many years intervening between her and her
brothers and sisters, she was left a good deal to herself for
amusement and occupation, both of which she readily found,
going through wild snow-drifts or summer sunshine two
miles to school, playing on the hillsides, wading in the brooks,
or scampering across her father's fields on any untamed pony
she could find.
So it went on until she was eleven years old, when more
care fell upon her than often comes to so young a child. One
of her brothers, an athletic young man, had a fall from the
top of a building he was helping to raise. He seemed not at
all hurt at the time, but the shock resulted in a long period
of utter prostration, during which his little sister became his
nurse, for two years scarcely leaving his bedside, day or night.
9(3 CLARA BARTON.
It may seem strange that this wearing task should have
been given to the youngest of the family ; but it was charac-
teristic of Clara Barton from the first to assume the most
self-denying work as her own especial right. Moreover, she
grew into her position through a natural fitness for it.
Placed beside the sick man, as the little girl of the household,
to fan him or bring him a glass of water at need, he became
accustomed to her cleft ways and fresh sympathies, and could
not well do without them. And the child-nurse, for love of
the sufferer and of the work of ministering, took only a half
day's respite for herself during that long period.
After the invalid's recovery, when Clara was about sixteen
years old, having prepared herself in the studies ordinarily
required, she began to teach in the district-schools of her own
home-neighborhood, not shrinking from those where rough
boys had been in the habit of forcibly ejecting the master.
She had no trouble with her pupils, winning at once their
hearts and their obedience. Her services were in constant
demand, and she pursued the occupation for several years,
during intervals of leisure assisting her brothers, who had
become prominent business men of their native place, in their
counting-house labors.
Later, she went through a thorough course of study in Clin-
ton, N. Y., and then resumed teaching in the State of New
Jersey.
In 1853 we find her doing a remarkable work at Borden-
town, where there had been a strong prejudice against the
establishment of free schools. She had been told that such
an undertaking would certainly be unsuccessful ; but she
agreed to assume the entire responsibility for three months
at her own expense. She took a tumble-down building, and
began with six scholars, making it understood that the chil-
dren of rich and poor were alike welcome. In four or five
weeks the building proved too small for the number who
came, and the one school grew into two. The result in one
year was the erection of a fine edifice, and the establishment
of a free school at Bordentown, with a roll of five hundred
CLARA BARTON.
CLARA BARTOX. 99
pupils. It is but just to the authorities of the town to say
that they insisted upon Miss Barton's receiving the salary she
had agreed to do without.
Her exertions here, added to the fatigues of previous years,
began to tell upon her health, and she was obliged to rest.
She went to Washington, where she had relatives, .for change
of scene and a more favorable climate.
eJust at this time, through the treachery of clerks, troubles
had arisen in the Patent Office. Secrets had been betrayed,
and great annoyance caused to inventors who had applied for
patents. The Commissioner was at a loss what to do, when
Miss Barton was recommended to him as a person who could
be trusted, and whose clear chirography and aptitude for busi-
ness affairs well fitted her for the situation.
Her services were at once secured. But although her new
employment was less fatiguing than teaching, it was not with-
out its trials. Hitherto, male clerks only had been employed,
and these men did not like to see their province invaded by a
woman. They were perhaps the more displeased because they
had brought her there by their own unfaithfulness, which could
no longer profit them. They adopted the chivalrous course of
making her position as uncomfortable as they could, hoping
to drive her from it by personal annoyance. They ranged
themselves every morning, in two rows, against the walls of
the long corridor through which she had to pass on her way
to her desk, staring hard at her, and whistling softly as she
went by.
Miss Barton felt the insult keenly, but she determined to
bear it, for the sake of the principle involved. Day after
day she passed through this ordeal, with her eyes upon the
floor, seeing nothing of those two lines of indignant masculines
but their boots.
Failing to oust her in this way, they tried slander, but
signally failed, her accusers instead of herself receiving
their discharge. She suffered no further indignities of the
kind, and remained in the Patent Office three years, doing
her work so well that her books are still exhibited as models.
100 CLARA BARTON.
In the Buchanan administration, her acknowledged anti-
slavery sentiments drew upon her the charge of " Black Re-
publicanism," and she was removed; but, being urgently
recalled again by the same administration, she yielded to her
father's advice and returned.
When the civil war broke out, and the Government found
itself involved in serious pecuniary troubles, Miss Barton
looked about to see what relief she could bring to the situa-
tion. There were clerks of known disloyalty in the Patent
Office, and she offered to do with her own hands, and without
additional pay, the work of two of these, if they might be dis-
missed. The offer, though warmly appreciated, could not
legally be accepted. But she decided that she could at least
save her own salary to the impoverished Treasury, and she
resigned her position, determining to find some other way of
serving her country in its need.
And ways were opening before her in which none could
walk but with bleeding feet and a martyr's fortitude. Every
energy was to be tested, every fibre of her loyal heart
strained to its utmost tension.
Many of us can remember the inspiring thrill of patriotism
to which we awoke after the first sharp pang of sorrow and
surprise at finding our country drawn into the horrors of civil
war. We knew now to our heart's depths that we belonged
to a Nation ; that our separate interests were nothing, except
as they were identified with the Republic, which was to us
fireside and home. No sacrifices seemed too great for us to
make that the Union we loved might be preserved. Women
felt all this as deeply at least as men. We were all lifted
out of ourselves upon the tide of patriotic enthusiasm, and
were grateful indeed, if we might in any way be permitted
to take part in the struggle which we felt sure was for hu-
manity's sake no less than for our own.
The departure of the Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts
Volunteers from Boston was a scene which the women who
witnessed it can never forget ; and there were naturally more
women than men among the spectators. A look of solemn
CLARA BAETON. 101
consecration was upon the eager faces of those who went,
and in the tearful eyes of those who said farewell. The
very air seemed to breathe the joy of heroic, self-forgetting
purpose.
Clara Barton was in Washington when these soldiers of her
own State arrived there from Baltimore, where the first blood
of the war had been shed. She was among those who met
them at the station ; she saw the forty wounded men taken
to the Infirmary, and the rest quartered at the Capitol ; and
she Visited both with such help as she could command. On ac-
count of the suddenness of the call, little provision had been
made, in a regular way, for the hungry crowd at the Capitol,
and she caused food to be brought in great baskets, and dis-
tributed among the men, while she read to them from the
Speaker's desk an account of their own progress from Boston
to Washington, as it had been recorded in the daily papers.
From that hour she identified herself with the soldiers in
their risks and sufferings.
During the campaign of the Peninsula, her custom was to
go down the Potomac on the boats which carried provisions
to the army and returned loaded with wounded men, taking
with her such things as would give them relief and refresh-
ment until they could be cared for in the hospitals. In this
way she became a medium of communication between the
soldiers and their friends at home, she writing letters for
the men, and receiving such comforts and delicacies as were
intrusted to her care for them. Not only was her own room
soon filled with these contributions ; she hired several spa-
cious storerooms, which continually overflowed.
It became a serious problem how to get these things the
offerings of individuals, of churches or of town societies to
the persons for whom they were intended. As regiments
were ordered further away from Washington, the difficulty
increased. But Miss Barton determined that if she could
compass it, they should at least reach the rank and file of the
army. Meanwhile, other matters perplexed and troubled her
yet more.
7
102 CLARA BARTON.
On her errands of mercy down the river, she was con-
stantly distressed at the sight of sufferings which might have
been avoided, could the wounded men have been attended to
on the battle-field where they fell. They were sent up from
the swamps of the Chickahominy, covered with mud and gore,
in which they had lain for days. There was no relief for
them, except of the voluntary kind Miss Barton gave, until
they were landed at Washington.
While saddened beyond measure at this state of things,
she was called home to her father's sick-bed. It was late in
the year 1861. He had attained the ripe age of eighty-six
years, and this was his last illness, although his death did
not occur until the following March.
Sitting beside the beloved old man, who had himself in
his youth been an officer under General Wayne, she talked
with him of what she was doing, and of what more she
might do for the soldiers. She told him of her desire to go
to the front, of her feeling that she ought to be there to
relieve suffering, and perhaps to save lives. It was a new
thing for a woman to undertake, and among other dangers
the possibility of exposure to insult was discussed, as what
she most dreaded. But her father said:
" Go, if you feel it your duty to go ! I know what sol-
diers are, and I know that every true solder will respect you
and your errand."
And comforted by the good man's blessing, she returned
to her post with little anxiety about herself, but with a con-
firmed resolution to persevere in the labor of love which she
had chosen.
It was not easy to carry out her purpose. At first she
waited, hoping that influential ladies of the capital would
take steps that she might follow. But they only touched the
matter slightly. Things remained much in the same sorrow-
ful condition.
When at last she did apply for a pass beyond the army-
lines, she was everywhere rebuffed. Perhaps her youthful
looks were against her. Officers could not understand what
CLARA BARTON. 103
this dark-haired young woman with the keen bright eyes had
undertaken to do, and was so earnest about. But she per-
severed, although so discouraged that when, as her last hope,
she stood before Assistant Quartermaster-General Rucker,
she could not tell him her wish for tears.
This kind-hearted man listened to her, sympathized with
her, and befriended her in her work, then and ever after. To
his warning suggestions and inquiries, she replied that she was
the daughter of a soldier, and that she had no fears of the
battle-field, or of being under the enemy's fire. She told
him of her large storerooms filled with supplies which she
could not get to the soldiers, and she asked of him means
of transportation for herself and for them.
Everything she requested, and more, was cheerfully given ;
for the good Quartermaster had that in his own nature which
enabled him to look into the large heart and strong character
of the woman who stood before him. Abundant means of
transportation were furnished, and she was free to go to the
relief of soldiers in battle whenever and wherever she would.
In the quartermaster's department of the army, at whatever
point she appeared, her errand was at once understood and its
purposes forwarded.
The record of the good she accomplished during the war
could never be fully written out, even by herself; and in
this brief sketch only a hint of it can be given.
We may catch a glimpse of her at Chantilly, in the
darkness of the rainy midnight bending over a dying boy
who took her supporting arm and soothing voice for his
sister's, or falling into a brief sleep on the wet ground in
her tent, almost under the feet of flying cavalry ; or riding
in one of her train of army-wagons towards another field,
subduing by the way a band of mutinous teamsters into her
firm friends and allies ; or at the terrible battle of Antie-
tam (where the regular army-supplies did not arrive until
three days afterward), furnishing from her wagons cordials
and bandages for the wounded, making gruel for the faint-
ing men from the meal in which her medicines had been
104 CLARA BARTON.
packed, extracting with her own hand a bullet from the
cheek of a wounded soldier, tending the fallen all day,
with her throat parched and her face blackened by sulphurous
smoke, and at night, when the surgeons were dismayed at
finding themselves left with only one half-burnt candle amid
thousands of bleeding, dying men, illumining the field with
candles and lanterns her forethought had supplied. No won-
der they called her the "Angel of the Battlefield ! "
We may see her at Fredericksburg, attending to the
wounded who were brought to her, whether they wore the
blue or the gray. One rebel officer, whose death-agonies
she soothed, besought her with his last breath not to cross
the river, in his gratitude betraying to her that the movements
of the rebels were only a ruse to draw the Union troops on to
destruction. It is needless to say that she followed the sol-
diers across the Rappahannock, undaunted by the dying man's
warning. And we may watch her after the defeat, when the
half-starved, half-frozen soldiers were brought to her, having
great fires built to lay them around, administering cordials,
and causing an old chimney to be pulled down for bricks to
warm them with, while she herself had but the shelter of a
tattered tent between her and the piercing winds. Or we
may follow her to Morris Island, to the attack upon Fort
Wagner, where no one but herself was prepared for repulse,
and see her ministering to the men who dragged themselves
back over the burning sands that the sea-winds blew like
needle-points into their wounds. When asked by a friend
how she dared risk in midsummer the climate of Morris
Island, with its sickly swamps and shadeless sand-hills,
the unconscious heroism of her answer was characteristic :
"Why, somebody had to go and take care of the soldiers, so
I went."
It was the same story of courage, and helpfulness, and
endurance, all through the war. She was in many battles,
often directly under fire, but she bore a charmed life ; for,
although her clothing was frequently grazed or pierced, she
was never wounded. At the battle of Antietam, as she
ViSJS W KV SW VVV1S WK'VM XHKX TO K\\T \tt KVK ' V N
SCENES IN TPIE LIFE OF CLARA BARTON.
1. HOSPITAL SUPPLIES ON THE WAY TO ANTIETAM. 2. THE DYING REBEL'S
3. WRITING LETTERS FOR THE SOLDIERS. 4. MIDNIGHT AFTER THE
BATTLE OF CHANTILLY. THE DYING BOY.
CLARA BARTON. 105
stooped to lift the head of a wounded man, a ball passed
between her arm and her body, entering the soldier's breast,
and instantly killing him.
As the conflict drew to a close, and prisoners were ex-
changed, Miss Barton received numerous letters from the
mothers of soldiers, who had willingly given their sons to
their country, but who felt that they ought at least to be told
what had become of them. She conferred with President
Lincoln, whose great heart felt the necessities of the case, but
who could not decide at once how to meet them. Meanwhile
she was called home to Massachusetts by family afflictions.
While there, she saw it announced in the daily papers that
Miss Clara Barton had been appointed by the President to
correspond with the friends of missing prisoners, and that she
might be addressed at Annapolis, where the survivors of An-
dersonville were received.
Leaving her own sorrow behind her, she went at once to
Annapolis, finding there that during the three days since the
announcement, about four bushels of letters had arrived,
erery one of them full of heart-breaking appeal. These let-
ters continued to accumulate after the discharge of the Ander-
sonville prisoners, and Miss Barton went to Washington to go
on with the work, which, in her hands, was sure to be meth-
odical and thorough. She established at her own expense,
a Bureau of Records of missing men of the United States
armies, employing several clerks to assist her. These records,
compiled from hospital and prison rolls and from burial lists,
came to be of great value to the government in the settle-
ment of bounties, back pay, and pensions, no less than to the
friends of the soldiers; to whom, indeed, they brought often
but a mournful satisfaction the confirmation of dreaded loss,
Miss Barton went to Andersonville, and, with the aid of
Dorrance Atwater, a Union prisoner who had been employed
in hospital service there, and had preserved the prison rolls,
identified all but about four hundred of the thirteen thousand
graves of buried soldiers. She had a suitable headboard
placed at each grave, and a fence built around the cemetery.
106 CLARA BARTON.
In all that she had done through the war she had never
asked for money. She had used her own income freely, say-
ing, when friends demurred :
" What is money to me if I have no country ? "
But the work of this Bureau could not be carried on with-
out large expenditures. She had already used several thou-
sand dollars of her own, and there were five or six thousand
letters yet awaiting examination. This came to the knowledge
of some members of Congress, and it was voted that Miss
Barton be reimbursed, and the means for going on furnished
her, an appropriation of fifteen thousand dollars being made
for that purpose. For her services, then, as always before
and after, she neither desired nor received pay ; they were a
free-will offering to her country and to humanity. It may be
added that her income is almost entirely the result of her own
patient earnings and wise investments. Her remarkable busi-
ness faculty might easily have won her great wealth ; but she
has preferred to be rich in the most royal way, that of
doing good.
At this Bureau she continued four years, giving meanwhile
to large audiences East and West her thrilling war reminis-
cences. But her army labors were not yet ended. There
was service for humanity awaiting her in another hemisphere.
There is nothing in the divine ordering of human lives
more beautiful than the way in which opportunities to do
noble work grow out of similar work which has already been
faithfully done. Life is no longer fragmentary, every part
has meaning and unity, and the toiler goes thankfully on
through the broader activities, and into the deeper consecra-
tion, developing always a less self-conscious personality, but
one everywhere more definitely recognized and honored.
Even a careless observer cannot fail to see in Clara Barton's
work a unity peculiar to itself, a work which has grown
out of her own character, and which no one bujb herself could
have done. Her labors have been going on in mind and heart
and will, even while she has been still in the helplessness of
prostration ; for she has more than once been obliged to yield
CLARA BARTON. 107
to the physical reaction resulting from her unsparing strain
upon her powers. But new work has always been awaiting
her recovery ; new, and yet invariably a widening and deep-
ening of the old, as a stream, however impeded, swells to a
river, its fulness flowing from the freshness of its own dis-
tinctive source.
The autumn of 1869 found her seeking renewal of her
strength under the shadow of the Alps at Geneva. There
she was waited upon by leading members of the International
Committee of Geneva for the relief of the wounded in war,
who had for several years been doing, as an organization,
what she had attempted personally and alone. The most
striking feature of their plan was its wide humanity, which
recognized in the wounded soldier the man only, not asking
on which side he fought. On this principle Miss Barton had
persistently worked in our civil war, although subject .often
to official reproof, and sometimes even accused of disloyalty
to the national cause.
The society these gentlemen represented had ministered to
the wounded on many battle-fields, under a treaty of neutral-
ity for all who wore its badge, and were doing its humane
work. This treaty had been signed by nearly all civilized
nations, and also by some not commonly regarded as such.
It had twice been offered to the United States for signature,
but no response had been received. Knowing something of
what Miss Barton had done for wounded soldiers in her own
country, these gentlemen naturally turned to her as one who
might be able to explain the reticence of our government.
She could only say to them that she had never even heard
of the treaty, nor of the society organized under it ; that the
documents relating to it, being in a foreign language, had
probably been passed on from one official to another, pos-
sibly unread ; and that the fact of its existence was doubtless
quite forgotten.
The silence and seeming apathy on the part of the United
States must have seemed the more strange to these philan-
thropic men, since the idea of their work had partly been
108 CLARA BARTON.
suggested by the methods of the Sanitary Commission, and of
other humane efforts on our battle-fields, during the rebellion.
The object of the Society as set forth in the articles of the
Geneva Convention of August, 1864, was the exemption from
capture, and the protection, under treaty, of those who were
taking care of the wounded on battle-fields, and also of such
inhabitants of invaded territories as gave them shelter and
assistance. It undertook to care for wounded men where
they fell, no matter to which of the belligerent armies they
belonged.
The Society had agreed to adopt a uniform flag, which was
to be recognized and protected by all belligerents ; and also
an arm-badge corresponding to the flag, to be worn by mem-
bers in active service. The design chosen for the flag and
badge was a red cross on a white ground, simply the
colors of the national flag of Switzerland reversed, that bear-
ing a white cross on a red ground. The association took its
name from its flag, the Society of the Red Cross.
It was not a secret or knightly order ; it w r as just what
its name purported, a society for the relief of sufferings
inseparable from war; a society in whose benevolent en-
deavors all nations were invited to participate, and which had
no more official machinery than was necessary for efficient
working.
o
Geneva was the international centre, through which all
national committees might confer with each other. Every
national society was to be responsible for the work in its
own country, all local societies being under the direction of
their own national head. Simpler organization than this
was scarcely possible ; with it, great good had already been
accomplished.
Miss Barton, with her clear-headedness and natural execu-
tive talent, saw at once what a long step forward in her own
direction this society had taken. She examined the matter
carefully, and became ever, as she says, " more deeply im-
pressed with the wisdom of its principles, the good practical
sense of its details, and its extreme usefulness in practice."
CLARA BARTON. 109
With local societies of this kind scattered over every
country, all bound together for national and international
work in a world-encircling bond, a world-weight of suffering
might be lifted. It became possible, by these means, " to
oppose the arms of charity to the arms of violence, and to
make a kind of war upon war itself." For if nations could
forget their separate causes of quarrel in trying to alleviate
the sufferings which that quarrel had caused, would they not
soon come to see the inhumanity of settling any dispute by
bloodshed ? It was a glimpse of the millennium. Miss Barton
says, in one of her addresses on this subject :
" There is not a peace society on the face of the earth
so potent, so effectual against war, as the Ked Cross of
Geneva."
Europe was then at peace, and Miss Barton was travelling
on the continent in the hope of regaining her health. She
was unequal to any serious exertion ; but if we know what
sympathy with a great cause and a generous resolution once
formed mean to a nature like hers, practical, decisive,
loyal, and steadfast, we can easily understand that sho was
thoroughly a member of the Society of the Red Cross long
before she served under its banner ; and we shall not err in
predicting that if one woman's efforts availed, her own country
would before long enter into the treaty by which other nations
had bound themselves together for the mitigation of the
horrors of war.
In the summer of 1870 she was at Berne, still a slowly-
recovering invalid. In July of that year, the continent was
startled by a declaration of war France against Prussia.
The summons to the field was the signal for the unfolding
of the Red Cross flag. Within three days after war had been
declared, Miss Barton was waited upon at her villa by a
party, with Dr. Appia, one of the founders of the Society, at
their head, who invited her to go with them to the place of
conflict, and assist them in whatever way she could. Not
feeling able to set out at once, she followed them in a few
days, taking with her only one companion, a young French
HO CLARA BARTON.
girl, the " fair-haired Antoinette," who had offered herself to
the Eed Cross Society for active service.
They passed down from Berne to Basle, thence across the
frontier country toward Strasburg, meeting everywhere fly-
ing, frightened people, who believed that they had left their
native villages sacked behind them, as in the barbarous war-
fare of the Middle Ages. The two women were implored to
return. The people could not believe that they were actually
bound to the battle-field of their own free will and purpose.
Pressing on, they at last reached the German army, and were
admitted within its lines. There they remained several weeks
during which time the battle of Hagenau was fought
assisting in the Red Cross work.
Miss Barton had now opportunity to study the practical
operation of this beneficent organization. Everything was
done systematically and quietly ; surgeons, nurses, assistants
trained for the emergency promptly at work, supplies abun-
dant, the wounded and the dead removed from the battle-field
at once, so that the next day none of the dreadful debris of
the conflict remained.
The terrible scenes of our own war came back to her in
vivid contrast. She says : " I thought of the Peninsula in
McClellan's campaign, of Pittsburg Landing, Cedar Moun-
tain, and second Bull Run, Antietam, old Fredericksburg, with
its acres of snow-covered and gun-covered glacis and its
fourth day flag of truce, of its dead, and starving wounded,
frozen to the ground, and our commissions and their supplies
in Washington with no effective organization or power to go
beyond ; of the Petersburg mine with its four thousand dead
and wounded and no flag of truce, the wounded broiling in a
July sun, the dead bodies putrefying where they fell. As I
saw the work of these Red Cross societies in the field, ac-
complishing in four months under their systematic organiza-
tion what we failed to accomplish in four years without it, no
mistakes, no needless suffering, no waste, no confusion, but
order, plenty, cleanliness, and comfort wherever that little
flag made its way, a whole continent marshalled under the
CLARA BARTON. Ill
banner of the Red Cross, as I saw all this, and joined and
worked in it, you will not wonder that I said to myself, 'If I
live to return to my country, I will try to make my people
understand the Red Cross and that treaty.' But I did more
than to resolve ; I promised other nations I would do it, and
other reasons pressed me to remember my promise."
Chief among these reasons was the futility of attempts
made by charitable persons in the United States to relieve
sufferings caused by the devastations of this Franco-Prussian
war. Ships were sent over, freighted with supplies, but when
these things arrived, no one was authorized to receive them, and
for the most part they went to utter waste. Had they borne
the stamp of the Red Cross Society, they would have been for-
warded, and through them a vast amount of misery might
have been saved. It was indeed a pity that so much generous
effort should have failed of its end.
On reaching her summer retreat at Berne, Miss Barton
learned that the Grand Duchess of Baden had been making
inquiries for her through the legations, desiring her presence
at her court at Carlsruhe. Acceding to the request, she found
the Grand Duchess Louise, the only daughter of the Em-
peror of Germany, a noble lady in the noblest sense of the
word, whose warm heart was deeply moved by the distresses
of the conflicts in which her nearest relatives were involved,
anxious to understand more clearly the peculiarities of the
field-hospital service in our civil war. There were features
of it new to her, which she felt might be made available to
relieve suffering in the German armies. The women of her
country and court, with herself at their head, were already
doing their utmost under the Red Cross flag on the battle-field,
the " Frauenverein," or Woman's Union of Baden, which had
grown up under her patronage, having constituted itself a
Society of the Red Cross. She asked Miss Barton to stay
with her, that they might each become acquainted with the
other's methods, and for an exchange of suggestions.
The long, weary weeks of the siege of Strasburg had be-
gun, and Miss Barton agreed to remain at Carlsruhe until that
112 CLARA BARTON.
was ended. As soon as it was possible to enter the city, she
must go there, and help relieve the distresses the besieging
armies had caused.
During this visit she was enabled to see how generously
the Grand Duchess had devoted herself to the aid of wounded
men, whether foes or friends. Miss Barton says : " Her
many and beautiful castles, with their magnificent grounds,
throughout all Baden, were at once transformed into military
hospitals, and her entire court, with herself at its head,
formed into a committee of superintendence and organization
for relief. I have seen a wounded Arab from the French
armies, who knew no word of any language but his own,
stretch out his arms to her in adoration and blessing as she
passed his bed."
No wonder that two workers like these, so earnestly unsel-
fish, found themselves one in a friendship which has remained
undimmed through the flight of busy years. Miss Barton
still has frequent letters from the Grand Duchess, and she
cherishes among her treasured mementos a beautiful gold-and-
enamel Red Cross brooch, presented to her before they parted
by that lady ; who also, with her husband, the Grand Duke,
decorated her with the Gold Cross of Remembrance, attached
to the colors of the Grand Duchy of Baden.
The Empress Augusta, with the Emperor, conferred upon
her the Iron Cross of Merit, accompanied by the colors of
Germany and the Red Cross the Iron Cross being only
bestowed upon those who have earned it by deeds of heroism
on the battle-field.
Those were anxious weeks that Miss Barton passed with
her noble hostess at Carlsruhe, for the sufferers within the
besieged city could neither be heard from nor approached.
But at last Strasburg yielded. The gates were thrown open,
and the German army entered; and with it, Miss Barton
made her way across the Rhine, and into the city unattended,
for so she always chose to go to her army work.
She found sad havoc there, but the wounded by shot and
shell were well cared for by the Sisters of Mercy. The con-
1. CLARA BARTON ENTERING STRASBURO WITH THE GERMAN ARMY.
2. THE BANNER OF THE BED CROSS.
CLARA BARTON. 113
dition of the poorer people, whose employments had been
stopped, and who were degenerating into rags and pauperism,
she saw required immediate attention. Squalid and half-
starved, huddled into cellars where they had gone for shelter
during the bombardment, their destitution was painful beyond
description. Having looked into their wants, and returned
for a brief conference with the Grand Duchess, she estab-
lished herself among these poor women with only one assist-
ant ; this time the faithful, devoted Anna Zimmerman.
The details of the work these two did cannot be given
here, but they are intensely interesting. All that can be said
is that the raising of hundreds of women from utterly de-
moralized poverty to a well-clad, self-helpful condition,
seems to us, as it seemed to the leading men of Strasburg,
who watched its progress and lent it their aid, well nigh
miraculous.
A similar work of relief was carried on by Miss Barton in
other cities which had suffered from siege. We hear of her
aiding the starving inhabitants of Metz, ministering to the
wounded returning from Sedan, and distributing at Belfort,
Montbeliard, and in Paris, the large contributions of the Bos-
ton Reliei Fund, which its agent had intrusted to her care.
She reached Paris in the closing days of the Commune, bring-
ing with her large supplies of clothing from Strasburg the
work of the women she had helped as the gift of the poor
of that city to the poor of Paris.
Here she remained several weeks, acting under the direc-
tion of the Prefect, whose house she had been invited to make
her headquarters for the distribution of supplies. She gave
with her own hands, into the hands of every needy person
sent to her, money or clothing, as the case required, taking
the name of every one who was assisted, and rendering an
account of the same, exact to a franc.
This has always been Miss Barton's method. She has done
nothing irresponsibly ; and through her careful business hab-
its, and direct sympathetic contact with the people she has
served, she has come into those personal relations by which
114 . CLAKA BARTON.
the ties of human fraternity are made real and strong. Her
image is, beyond doubt, enshrined in the memory of a great
multitude of the European poor, with gratitude that borders
upon adoration.
Such labors are not carried on without drawing upon
one's treasury of vital power to the last farthing. Miss
Barton was far from well when she began them, not having
recovered from the strain of service during our own war,
and when she crossed over from the continent to London
she fell ill, and lay there a long time, unable to return to
America.
She came back in 1873, but through extreme physical pros-
tration, she was for several years debarred from all exertion.
As soon as she was able, she went to Washington, to urge
the acceptance of the Geneva treaty, under which the phil-
anthropic work of the Red Cross might be efficiently or-
ganized.
The matter was delayed, apparently for no other reason
than that it had always been delayed. No satisfactory re-
sponse vvas received until the inauguration of President Gar-
field. From him it met with prompt approval, and only the
assassin's hand stayed his from signing the treaty. It re-
ceived the signature of his successor, President Arthur, in
March, 1882 ; and our country may know that one of its
wisest, most humane treaties exists through the unwearying
perseverance of a woman.
In 1877 a few ladies and gentlemen had formed themselves,
at Washington, into an "American National Committee of the
Red Cross," which, on President Garfield's accession, reorgan-
ized, and was incorporated under the title of the " American
Association of the Red Cross." Miss Barton was appointed
to the presidency of this society by the martyred Garfield
himself, and since that time she has devoted herself to carry-
ing out its benevolent purposes.
It is to be hoped that we shall have no more wars of our
own ; atid, knowing that we are less exposed to that scourge
than the more crowded nations of Europe, the provisions of
CLARA BARTON. 115
the American Society have been extended so as to cover the
calamities to which we are peculiarly liable by fire, flood, and
pestilence.
Great help has already been rendered in various disasters.
The Red Cross Society of Western New York at once sent
relief to the sufferers by the terrible fires in Michigan ; and
from Mississippi, and from Louisiana, where there is a State
organization earnestly at work, come back words of overflow-
ing gratitude for aid from the National Association during the
recent devastating floods. It is easy to see, now that Clara
Barton shows it to us, that this work is one that belongs to
erery city and town in the country ; and the people are see-
ing it, and are everywhere gathering themselves together
under the banner of the Red Cross.
It is scarcely possible to know Miss Barton and not catch
from her a contagion of enthusiasm for her work for her
work is herself. Under her quiet demeanor, one feels the
stirring of irresistible energies, centred and steady as the
forces of the universe. And these energies all move forward
to beneficent ends, warmed and impelled by a heart over-
flowing with sympathy. How little she has thought of her-
self, how willingly she has given all she has, time, thought,
strength, money, to carry out her generous plans, one sees
incidentally only in reviewing her life, for by no hint of hers
would it appear that she has done what she has, except as the
simplest matter of course, because it fell into her hands to
be done.
" I have no mission," she says. "I have never had a mis-
sion. But I have always had more work than I could do
lying around my feet, and I try hard to get it out of the way,
so as to go on and do the next."
Large in her comprehensions, and of penetrative insight,
careful, just, systematic, her work has to be done well, or not
at all. There is nothing of the visionary in her composition.
Life presents itself to her in its practical issues, which she
meets with the grand calmness of a nature thoroughly disci-
plined. A woman of simple manners, carrying with her no
116 CLARA BARTON.
air of superiority, she is one of the very few whose life illus-
trates to the world the heroic womanly ideal.
Miss Barton, having accepted the superintendency of the
Reformatory Prison for Women at Sherburne, Mass., entered
upon her duties there in May, 1883. The work is different
from any in which she has hitherto been engaged ; but it
seems not unsuitable that she who has done so much to re-
lieve sufferers in other conflicts, should devote herself to the
fallen on moral battle-fields. For this work, she may wear
her Red Cross badge with an added meaning, the cross of
sacrifice, whereby souls are to be won back to purity and
peace.
But she resigns nothing of the larger responsibility she had
already assumed. She is pledged to the American Associa-
tion of the Red Cross as its President, to carry on its work
until the men and women of her country shall take it into
their hearts and hands, where she feels that it belongs. So
entirely is she wedded to her grand purpose, it does not seem
strange to hear her say, "Until this work is done, I cannot
go to heaven."
CHAPTER V.
MAKY LOUISE BOOTH.
BY HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
A Woman of Rare Intellect Childhood of Mary Louise Booth An Inde-
fatigable Little Student Beginning of Her Literary Life A Great
Historical Work Breaking Out of the Civil War Miss Booth's Sym-
pathy with the North Her Anxiety to Help the Cause How She did
it A Prodigious Task " It Shall be Done" Her Marvellous Industry
and Perseverance Charles Sumner's Friendship A Letter of Thanks
from Abraham Lincoln Assuming the Management of "Harper's
Bazaar" A Signal Success A Model Paper Miss Booth's Home
True Hospitality Pen-portrait of a Gifted Woman.
EW women in America have wielded the influence,
both in public and in domestic matters, that has
been exercised by Mary Louise Booth, or have
performed their part so quietly ; for her work
in the civil war was great as ever woman was
called to do, and her editorial work since that
time has given the keynote to life in a hundred
thousand homes, and penetrated them with that
spirit of innocence, dignity, poetry, and industry
which actuates all her endeavors.
The subject of this sketch w r as a precocious child, so
much so that, on being asked, she once confessed she had no
more recollection of learning to read either French or English
than of learning to talk. As soon as she could walk, her
mother says, she was following her about, book in hand, beg-
ging to be taught to read stories for herself. She read them
soon to so much purpose that before she was five years old
she had finished the Bible, being rewarded by a polyglot
Testament for the feat, and had also read Plutarch, which at
every subsequent reading has given her an equal pleasure,
8 117
118 MARY LOUISE BOOTH.
and at seven had mastered Racine in the original, upon which
she began the study of Latin with her father.
From that time she was an indefatigable reader, troubling
her parents only by her devotion to books rather than to the
play natural to her age. Her father had a considerable
library, the contents of every book in which she made her
own, always preferring history, before she had finished her
tenth year being acquainted with Hume, Gibbon, Alison, and
kindred writers.
At this point she was sent away to school. Her father and
mother, seeing the intellect for which they were responsible,
took all possible pains with her education, and fortunately her
physical strength was sufficient to carry her through an unin-
terrupted course in different academies and a series of lessons
with masters at home. She cared more for languages and
natural sciences, in which she was very proficient, than for
most other studies, and took no especial pleasure in mathe-
matics.
When she was about thirteen years of age her father
moved his family from the quiet and pretty little village in
Suffolk County, New York, with the quaint Indian name of
Yaphank, in which she was born, to Brooklyn, E.D., and
there Mr. Booth organized the first public school that was
established in that city.
Mr. William Chatfield Booth was a man well qualified both
by education and by native character for the guidance of such
an intelligence as that developed by his daughter. Deeply
interested in scholarly matters, a man of great directness of
purpose and of fearless integrity, he and his daughter were in
perfect sympathy, and he watched her growth with tender
solicitude, and in subsequent years cherished with pride every
word of her writing. But he could never quite bring him-
self to believe, even after she had won a handsome independ-
ence by her exertions, that she was really altogether capable
of her own support, and always insisted upon making her the
most generous gifts. As the President of the United States
lately said of him, " A kinder and more honorable gentleman
I
MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 119
it would be hard to find." Another daughter and two sons
comprised the remainder of his family, the younger of the
sons, Colonel Charles A. Booth, who has seen some twenty
years' service in the army, having been born so much later
than herself that he was naturally his sister's idol from his
infancy.
Mr. Booth was descended from one of our earliest settlers,
John Booth, who came to this country in 1649, a kinsman of
the Sir George Booth, afterwards Baron Delamere and Earl
of Warrington, who, as the faithful friend and companion of
Charles II. in his exile and wanderings, only showed that
trait of fidelity to friendship which still marks his race.
In 1652 Ensign John Booth purchased Shelter Island from
the Indians, and the original deed is yet in possession of the
family who, for two hundred years and over, have not
wandered a great way from the region where their ancestor
made his first home on these shores.
Miss Booth's mother, who is still living, at the age of
eighty, active and vigorous in body and in mind, shows her
origin so plainly in her sparkling black eyes, her vivacity,
her picturesqueness, and her gentle manners that it is hardly
necessary to say one of her grandparents was a French
emigrg of the Revolution.
Miss Booth's literary career began, as might be expected, at
an early age. She had the foundation of long and hard study,
and extensive reading, aided by an immense memory, an in-
tense enthusiasm and faculty of appreciation, and a poetic soul.
Her writing at first consisted chiefly of sketches, essays,
and poems. But after compiling the " Marble- Worker's
Manual," and the "Clock and Watchmaker's Manual," both
successful and standard works in request by artisans, and
rendering French and German with such ease and freedom as
she did, she by degrees drifted into translation more than
she had intended, the field being almost entirely unoccupied.
She translated and published Mary's " Andre Ch^nier,"
Victor Cousin's " Life and Times of Madame de Chevreuse,"
Marmier's " Russian Tales," and Sue's " Mysteries of the
120 MARY LOUISE BOOTH.
People," connecting her name inseparably with all these
works, and with Edinond About's exquisite creation of
r Germaine," and "King of the Mountain" the latter of
which remains an inimitable burlesque of modern Greek
government to this day as the epigrammatic brilliancy and
beauty of the style of which she has rendered as an object is
reflected in a mirror.
Miss Booth was still scarcely more than a young girl when
a friend suggested to her that no complete history of the city
of New York had ever been written, and that it might
be well to prepare such a one for the use of schools.
Although without ambition to attempt the impossible, yet
never daunted by the possible, she has that patience and
perseverance which is as much a second description of genius
as of valor, and she at once busied herself in the under-
taking, and, after some years spent in preparation, finished
one that became, on the request of a publisher, the basis of
a more important work upon the same subject, her material
having far outgrown the limits proposed, and her experience
having taught her the best way of using it.
This task was thoroughly delightful and congenial to her
taste and capacity. She knew, moreover, that it was no
petty work, as many of the most stirring events of colonial
and national history were connected with its story, and she
loved the city of her adoption as if it had been the place of
her birth.
"It is certain," she says, "that New York is rich in
memories, which are worthy of the most reverent respect,
and which belong alike to all its inhabitants, but which are
too often unheeded. Throngs of busy citizens pass and
repass the grave of Stuyvesant and the tomb of Montgomery,
ignorant of their locality, and look with indifference on the
Battery, and Bowling Green, teeming with reminiscences of
the old Dutch Colony days, and on that cradle of liberty, the
Park, where still may be seen one of the old prison-houses
of the Revolution. In these things we are far more remiss
than our neighbors. Boston never forgets to celebrate her
MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 121
tea-party ; few New Yorkers even know that a similar one
was once held in their own harbor. Boston proudly commem-
orates her " Massacre ; " how many New Yorkers are aware
that two months previous to this brief affray, the earliest
battle of the Revolution, lasting two days, was fought in the
streets of New York, on Golden Hill, where the first blood was
shed in the cause of freedom ? "
During the course of her historical work, Miss Booth met
with great and spontaneous kindness on all sides. She had
the fullest access to libraries and archives, accessible to but
few, and received from everybody the most considerate
courtesy ; especially did the older historians seem pleased that
a young girl should exhibit such powers and such inclina-
tions, and they admitted her to the guild with the ceremony
of every kindness at the^r command. Washington Irving
sent her a letter of cordial encouragement, and D. T. Valen-
tine, Henry B. Dawson, W. J. Davis, E. B. O'Callaghan,
and numerous others showered her with documents and every
assistance. " My Dear Miss Booth," writes Benson G.
Lossing, " the citizens of New York owe you a debt of grati-
tude for this popular story of the life of the great metropolis,
containing so many important facts in its history, and
included in one volume accessible to all. I congratulate you
on the completeness of the task and the admirable manner in
which it has been performed."
The history appeared in one large volume, and met at once
with a generous welcome, whose pecuniary results were very
considerable. So satisfactory, indeed, was its reception, that
the publisher proposed to her to go abroad and write popular
histories of the great European capitals, London, Paris,
Berlin, and Vienna. It was a bright vision for the young
writer, but the approach of war and other fortuitous circum-
stances prevented its becoming a reality.
A second edition of the history was published in 1867, and
a third edition, revised and brought down to date, appeared
in 1880. A large paper edition of the work was taken by
well-known book-collectors, extended and illustrated by them
122 MARY LOUISE BOOTH.
with supplementary prints, portraits, and autographs on the
interleaved pages. One copy, enlarged to folio and extended
to nine volumes by several thousand maps, letters, and other
illustrations, is owned in the city of Naw York, and is an
unequalled treasure-house of interest ; Miss Booth herself
owns a copy that was presented to her by an eminent bib-
liopolist, enriched by more than two thousand of those illus-
trations on inserted leaves ; and a collector in Chicago is so
in love with the great city and with the work recounting its
part in the drama of civilization, that he has extended his
own copy to twenty-two volumes.
The first sentences of the book enlist the attention of the
reader, as they present a picture of the wilderness of Man-
hattan Island in vivid contrast to the peopled and cultured
city of to-day. "At this time, yie Dutch were the richest
commercial nation on the globe. Having conquered their
independence from Spain, and their country from the sea,
they turned their attention to commerce, and with such
success that it was not long before their sails whitened the
waters of every clime. A thousand vessels were built annually
in Holland, and an extensive trade was carried on with all the
European nations. But their richest commerce was with the
East Indies ; and the better to secure themselves against
all competition, the merchants engaged in this traffic had,
in 1602, obtained a charter of incorporation for twenty-one
years from the States General, under the name of the East
India Company, granting them the exclusive monopoly of
the trade in tli3 Eastern seas beyond the Cape of Good
Hope on one side and the Straits of Magellan on the other,
with other valuable privileges.
"This obtained, it next became desirable to shorten the
passage thither, and thus to render the commerce more
lucrative. The voyage to China by the only known route,
that by the way of the Cape of Good Hope, consumed two
years, and the time seemed long to the impatient merchants.
It was thought that a more expeditious passage might be dis-
covered by the way of the Polar seas, and three expeditions,
MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 123
under the command of Barentsen, Cornelissen, and Heems-
kerck, were despatched, one after the other, in search of it.
But they found nothing but snow and ice, where they had
hoped to find a clear sea, and they returned after having
endured unheard-of hardships and earned a lasting fame as
the earliest Polar navigators."
With this she tells the story of Henry Hudson, sailing in
his yacht, the " Half-Moon," up " the beautiful river with its
lofty palisades, its broad bays, its picturesque bends, its
romantic highlands, and its rocky shores covered with luxu-
riant forests."
As the tale proceeds, the origin of the Patroon system is
explained ; vigorous outlines are drawn of the robust ad-
venturers and of the various early governors ; the exploits of
the renowned Wouter Van Twiller are recounted with as
much quiet humor as the stories of the Indian troubles, the
Leisler affair, and the relation of the Colony to the revolu-
tion of 1689, are given with dramatic vividness, and a com-
plete Dutch painting is made of New Amsterdam in the old
Dutch Colony days, making an invaluable record.
"The province thus passed away forever from the hands of
its Dutch rulers," says the author, at the conclusion of this
epoch, "but many years elapsed before the Holland manners
and customs were uprooted, and New York became in truth
an English city. Indeed, some of them linger still, and New
York yet retains a marked individuality which distinguishes
it from the eastern cities and savors strongly of its Dutch
origin. The memorials of the Dutch dynasty have fallen one
by one ; the Stuy vesant pear-tree was long the last token in
being of the flourishing nation which so long possessed the
city of New Amsterdam, the last link that connected the
present with the traditional past, and this fell in 1867,
before the slow decay of age. But the broad and liberal
nature of the early settlers is still perpetuated in the cosmo-
politan character of the city, in its freedom from exclusive-
ness, in its religious tolerance, and in its extended views of
men and things. . . . The Dutch language has disappeared,
124 MARY LOUISE BOOTH.
the Dutch signs have passed away from the streets, and the
Dutch manners and customs are forgotten save in a few
strongholds of the ancient Knickerbocker. But the Dutch
o
spirit has not yet died out, enough of it is still remaining
to enable New York to trace its lineage in a direct line to its
parent, New Amsterdam."
As we continue to turn these enchaining pages, we find the
true story of Captain Kidd recited for the first time, the great
negro plot, whose atrocities far outdid those of the Salem
witchcraft, rehearsed with judicial impartiality, the era of
the Revolution set before us in burning words, and all the
events of the life of the great city, so intertwined with
the national life, are swiftly and strongly told, down to
the times of the cruel draft riots and the robberies of the
'ring,' which are yet unnoted by any other historian.
Here and there a lively anecdote brightens the text ; a
character is limned in black and white so sharply that one
sees wh} r the traits of the old Stuyvesants, Van Rensselaers,
and Rapelyes, should still mark their descendants, or a bit of
forcible word-painting is given, as in the sketch of the foun-
dation of the fur-trade which made the beginning of so many
colossal fortunes. "This opening of a new path in commerce
wrought a revolution in the aims and lives of the young men
of the city. These youths, instead of remaining, as formerly,
behind their fathers' counters, or entering the beaten track
of the West India trade, now provided themselves with a
stock of guns and blankets, and set out with a trusty servant
in a bark canoe to explore the pathless wilderness. Here
they roamed for months in the primeval forests, forced at
every step to turn aside to avoid some deadly reptile or fierce
beast of prey, or to guard against the wiles of an insidious
foe, ever on the alert to entrap them in some snare, and to
purchase their goods at the expense of their lives. Forced
to depend for their subsistence on the quickness of their eye
and the sureness of their aim, to journey by day through
thicket and marsh, over cataract and rapid, to sleep at night
with no other canopy than the stars and sky, and to be con-
MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 125
stantly on their guard against the unseen danger which was
lurking everywhere about them this forest education called
forth all their resources of courage and sagacity, and they
came from the trial with muscles of iron, nerves of steel, and
a head and eye that never flinched before the most deadly
peril. No fiction of romance can surpass the adventurous
career of those daring travellers who thus pursued the golden
fleece in the wilds of America ; and those who came forth
from this school of danger were well fitted to play their part
in the approaching tragedies of the French and Indian war
and the drama of the coming Revolution."
To linger a moment on a subject where there is still so
much to be said, perhaps no better example can be seen of
the facile grace of the author's style and the calm and well-
balanced power of presenting a case than in the following
extract from this work, which has the interest of a romance
and the value of an encyclopedia of reference : " The truth is
that Great Britain contemptuously regarded the colonists as
rich barbarians, the chief end of whose existence was to fur-
nish an ample revenue to the mother-country. Their interests
were wholly disregarded in the government councils, and the
restrictions imposed on them were rigorous in the extreme.
The English parliament claimed the right of regulating the
trade of the colonies, and, under cover of this pretext, levied
heavy duties upon imports, ostensibly for the purpose of de-
fraying custom-house expenses, and at the same time sedu-
lously suppressed all attempts at home manufactures. By a
series of navigation acts, the colonists were forbidden to trade
with any foreign country, or to export to England merchan-
dise of their own in any but English vessels. The country
was full of iron, but not an axe or a hammer could be manu-
factured by the inhabitants without violating the law. Beaver
was abundant, but to limit its manufacture no hatter was per-
mitted to have more than two apprentices, and not a hat could
be sold from one colony to another. Of the wool which was
sheared in such abundance from the flocks, not a yard of
cloth could be manufactured except for private use, nor a
126 MARY LOUISE BOOTH.
pound exported from one town to another ; but the raw mate-
rial must all be sent to England to be manufactured there,
then to come back as imported cloths, laden with heavy
duties. Imposts were also levied upon sugar, molasses, and
all articles of foreign luxury imported into the colonies, and
America was, in fact, regarded only as a place from which to
raise money.
" Notwithstanding, the colonists had patiently submitted to
this manifest injustice. They had evaded the payment of the
duties by living frugally and dispensing with the luxuries
which could only be obtained at such a cost. They had
accepted the royal governors, profligate and imbecile as they
often were, and had contented themselves with opposing their
unjust exactions. In the French and Indian wars they had
acted nobly, and by lavish expenditure of their blood and
treasure had secured to England the possession of a rich and
long-coveted territory. These wars, which had added such
lustre to the crown of Great Britain, and had secured the
broad lands of Canada to her domain, had cost the colonies
thirty thousand of their bravest soldiers and left them bur-
dened with a debt of thirteen million pounds. But, in-
satiable in her desires, in return for this she required still
more. The country which had been able to contribute so
largely in the intercolonial wars had not, she thought, been
taxed to the utmost, and, in order to wring from it a still
larger revenue, new means were proposed by the British
ministry for establishing a system of parliamentary taxation,
a right which the colonists had ever persistently denied."
Shortly after the publication of the first edition of this
invaluable work, the civil war broke out. Miss Booth had
always been a warm anti-slavery partisan and a sympathizer
with movements for what she considered true progress,
although directed by that calm judgment which never lets
the heart run away with the head. But here heart and
head were in accord, the country was aflame with fervor to
prevent the destruction of the noblest government ever given
to man ; and all hoped that a certain result of the struirzle
MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 127
would be that universal freedom without which the freedom
already vaunted was a lie.
Miss Booth was, of course, enlisted on the side of the
Union, and longing to do something to help the cause in
which she so ardently believed. She did not feel herself
qualified to act as a nurse in the military hospitals, not only
having that inherent antipathy to the sight of sickness and
suffering common to many poetic natures, although willing
to endure all that such sight and association could bring, but
being, through her life among books^ too inexperienced in such
work to venture assuming its tasks with their consequent risk
of life. Still something she must do. That she had sent her
brother to the front, scarcely more than a boy, as he was,
seemed not half enough ; and, when, while burning with eager-
ness she received an advance copy of Count Agenor de Gas-
parin's " Uprising of a Great People," she at once saw her
opportunity in bringing heartening words to those in the
terrible struggle.
She took the work, without loss of time, to Mr. Scribner,
proposing he should publish it. He demurred a little, saying
he would gladly do so if the translation were ready, but that
the war would be over before the book was out, Mr . Sew-
ard having authoritatively limited its duration to a small
number not of weeks but of days. Mr. Scribner finally said,
perhaps but half believing in the possibility, that if it could
be ready in a week he would publish it. " It shall be done,"
was her reply, and she went home and went to work, work-
ing twenty hours of every twenty-four, receiving the proof-
sheets at night and returning them with fresh copy in the
morning. The week lacked several hours of its completion
when the work was finished, and in a fortnight the book was
out, and its message rang from Maine to California.
Nothing published during the war made half the sensation
that did this prophetic volume, whose predictions were so
wonderfully accurate that very few of them were found to
have proved false at the end of the dark contest, dark not
only because beginning to be so doubtful, and laden with sor-
128 MARY LOUISE BOOTH.
row, and suffering, and loss, but because, although the North
shone in the light of a glorious resolve, and the South con-
tended for principle, the struggle was still one between broth-
ers. The newspapers of the day were full of reviews and
notices, eulogistic and otherwise, according to the party repre-
sented. The book revived courage and rekindled hope. " It
is worth a whole phalanx in the cause of human freedom,"
wrote Charles Sumner ; and Abraham Lincoln paused in the
midst of his mighty work to send her a letter of thanks and
lofty cheer.
The publication of the book was the means of putting Miss
Booth at once into communication with the author and his
wife, who begged her to visit them in Switzerland ; and it
subsequently brought about a correspondence with most of
those European sympathizers with the North who handled a
pen, such as Augustin Cochin, Edouard Laboulaye, Henri
Martin, Edmond de Pressense, Conte du Montalembert,
Monseigneur Dupanloup, and others, men of all shades of
religious and political belief at home, but united in the hatred
of slavery, and in sympathy for the cause in whose success
its extinction was involved.
These gentlemen vied with each other in sending her
advance-sheets of their books, and numerous articles, letters,
and pamphlets to meet the question of the day, which she
swiftly translated, publishing them without money and with-
out price, in the daily journals, and through the avenues
afforded by the Union League Club. In return, she kept these
noble Frenchmen accurately informed of the progress of events,
and sent them such publications as could be of service.
The Uprising of a Great People " was followed rapidly by
Gasparin's "America Before Europe," by Laboulaye's " Paris
in America," and two volumes by Augustin Cochin, " Results
of Emancipation " and " Results of Slavery." Cochin's work
attracted even more attention than Gasparin's had done. She
received hundreds of appreciative letters from the leading
Republican statesman Henry Winter Davis, Senator Doo-
little, Galusha A. Grow, Dr. Lieber, Dr. Bell, the president
MAKY LOUISE BOOTH. 129
of the Sanitary Commission, and a host of others, among
them George Simmer, Cassius M. Clay, and Attorney-Gen-
eral Speed, Charles Sumner writing her that Cochin's work
had been of more value to the cause " than the Numidian
cavalry to Hannibal."
It will easily be seen from this brief and condensed recital
how important was Miss Booth's share in the great national
work, a share in firing and sustaining the public heart second
only to that of Mrs. Stowe's, before the war, when "Uncle
Tom's Cabin'' went through the land like the Fiery Cross
that, seared in fire and dipped in blood, flashed from hand to
hand for the rousing of the clans. "As I went over some of
those letters last night," she wrote once, concerning this
"Sturm and Drang" period of her life, " it was like opening
the grave of the past. My present life seemed thin and
frivolous compared with those glowing hours so full of earn-
est work, in which the fate of a nation was involved ; and I
could not sleep for thinking of the days that are no more."
In the meantime she pursued her translations as before,
adding to her list Laboulaye's " Fairy Tales," and Jean
Mace's " Fairy Book," and several of the religious works of
the Count and Countess do Gasparin, "Happiness" by the
former, and " Camille," " Vesper," and " Human Sorrows " by
the latter. Her translations in all number nearly forty vol-
umes. She had thought of adding to this number, at the
request of Mr. James T. Fields, an abridgment of Madame
Sand's voluminous " Histoire de ma Vie" and, with her
customary delicacy, not liking to undertake a task of that
nature without permission, she wrote the author, giving her
proposed plan, and receiving the following reply :
"MADAME, J f ai ete absente de chez moi, et je recois vos deux
lettres a la fois. Yotre maniere a dire et de penser, et la delica-
tesse de vos scrupules, me donnent une confiance entiere dans
Votre discernement et dans votre conscience. Je vous autorise
done & faire les coupures que vous jugiez ne"cessaires, et vous prie
de me croire toute a vous, GEORGE SAND.
Nohant, 22 Mai, '63,
Par la Chatre, Indre.
130 MARY LOUISE BOOTH.
Circumstances, however, prevented the completion of the
work.
Her pleasant correspondence with people of interest still
continued, and, among others, with Mr. Suinner, passages
from which I have begged, and with difficulty obtained per-
mission to transcribe for the sake of their value to those who
love his name.
" I cannot express to you all the gratitude I feel for your
kindness to the memory of my late brother. His death was a
release to him, but it has been a trial to us. It leaves me more
than ever alone." Afterwards, acknowledging a message, he
says, " I am touched and gratified by those beautiful words
of Madame de Gasparin. When you write to her, be good
enough to let her know how constantly my brother cherished
the recollection of his visit to her family, and that he often
went over its incidents. I had not the good fortune of know-
ing personally any of this remarkable family, but I am familiar
with their history and with their labors. Madame de Gasparin
is not the least remarkable of this distinguished connection."
o
Still later he writes her in touching words that seem to cry
for the rest that never came, " It is hard to contend always.
I long for repose. But there is no rest for me so long as the
freedmen are denied their rights, and the only chance of
placing them beyond assault is through the national gov-
ernment."
Miss Booth did not cease her labors after her work in con-
nection with the war was over, but at once began the trans-
lation of Henri Martin's "Unabridged History of France,"
six of whose volumes she translated. Since then, in connection
with Miss Alger, she has translated Martin's abridgement of
the "History of France," in six volumes, 'now in course of
publication. She has been in friendly communication with
most of the authors to whose writings she has turned her
attention, and all without exception have taken warm interest
in her work, and commended it in flattering terms.
In the year 1867 Miss Booth undertook another enter-
prise of an entirely opposite but no less important nature,
MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 131
in assuming the management of " Harper's Bazar," a weekly
journal devoted to the pleasure and improvement of the
domestic circle. She had long been in pleasant relations
with the Messrs. Harper, the four brothers who founded the
great house which bears their name, and who conducted
its business to such splendid results ; and when they resolved
upon issuing a family newspaper of this description they
immediately asked her to take its editorial control.
Diffident concerning her abilities in this untried direc-
tion, she accepted with hesitation. But the correctness of
their judgment was soon displayed ; for under her editorial
management it proved the swiftest journalistic success on
record, numbering its subscribers by the hundred thousand,
and while other papers take a loss for granted in the begin-
ning, putting itself upon a paying basis at the outset. While
she has assistants in every department, among their names
those of some most distinguished in our literature, she is her-
self the inspiration of the whole corps, and under the advice
and suggestion of its proprietors she has held it on an even
course, whatever winds of doctrine blew outside. There is
scarcely a poet, or a story-writer, or novelist of any rank in
America or England who is not a contributor to its pages,
and its purity, its self-respect, its high standard, and its lite-
rary excellence, are unrivalled among periodical publications.
The influence of such a paper within American homes is
something hardly to be computed. It has always been on
the side of good and sweet things ; it has made the right
seem the best and pleasantest ; it has taught while it has
amused ; it has had the happiness, well-being, and virtue of
women and the family for its first consideration, and it has
created a wholesome atmosphere wherever it is constantly
read. Through its columns its editor has made her hand felt
o
in countless families for nearly sixteen years, and has helped
to shape the domestic ends of a generation to peace and
righteousness.
Perhaps Miss Booth could not have accomplished so much
if she had been hampered, as many women are, by conditions
132 MARY LOUISE BOOTH.
demanding exertion in other than her chosen path, and with-
out the comfort about her of a perfect home. She lives
in the city of New York, in the neighborhood of Central
Park, in a house which she owns, with her sister by adopt-
ion, Mrs. Anne W. Wright, between whom and herself there
exists one of those lifelong and tender affections which are
too intimate and delicate for public mention, but which are
among the friendships of history, a friendship that was
begun in childhood and that cannot cease in death. To Mrs.
Wright, more than to any other woman I have known, do
Wordsworth's lines apply :
" A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet.
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill,
A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command."
Their house is one particularly adapted to entertaining,
with its light and lovely parlors and connecting rooms ; there
are always guests within its hospitable walls, and if there is
such a thing in this country as a salon, it is to be found here,
where every Saturday night may be met an assemblage of the
beauty and wit and wisdom, resident or transient, in the city
authors of note, great singers, players, musicians, statesmen,
travellers, publishers, journalists, and pretty women, making
the time fly on wings of enchantment. A few years ago
these friends of the house took the occasion of a birthday to
present Miss Booth with a magnificent album full of portraits
and autographs of great value.
Miss Booth is a person who has been singularly blest
with steadfast friends ; one has only to look at the benig-
nancy of her habitual expression to see the reason why.
She forgets herself in serving others, and is happy in their
happiness. Exquisitely sensitive herself, sympathetic and
delicate, she is further characterized by a lofty nobility and
honor. Many-sided as a faceted jewel, to the man of busi -
MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 133
ness she is merely a woman of business ; but to the poet she
is full of answering vibrations. She values beauty in every
form, betraying the fact in a deep and intelligent love of
nature, in a passion for flowers, gems, and perfumes, and in
an intense delight and thorough knowledge of music. Warm
in her affections, quick in her feelings, cool in her judg-
ments, untiring in her energies, imperious in her will, and
almost timid in her self-distrust in spite of her achievement,
her character is a singular combination of the strength on
which you can rely, and the tenderness you would protect,
while there is a certain bounteousness of nature about her,
like the overflowing sweetness and spice of a full-blown rose.
All these qualities are held within bounds by a shy and suf-
fering modesty that will make it impossible for her to read
these words !
In person Miss Booth is majestic and commanding, being
taller and larger than women usually are. Her dress is sim-
ple to plainness when about her business, but rich and becom-
ing otherwhere, for she has the weakness of other women
about rare old lace, and cashmeres that are drawn through a
bracelet. Her hands are as perfect as sculpture, and sparkle
with quaint and costly rings ; and her skin of infantile deli-
cacy and rose-leaf color, her dimples, her straight, short nose,
her soft brown eyes, and her prematurely silvered hair, worn
rolled over cushions, give her a striking appearance that
approaches beauty.
But there is a beauty of the soul more precious than any
other ; it shines in the purity of the countenance, in the quiet
independence, of movement, in the sincerhVy and straightfor-
wardness of utterance, in the care and concern for others,
and in the glance that seeks their sympathy ; and this beauty
is still more pre-eminently hers. Strong for troublous times
and sweet for gentle ones, she is one woman in a myriad, and
the world is better because she has lived in it.
9
' CHAPTER VI.
THE DOCTOKS BLACKWELL.
BY LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE.
Early Home of the Blackwell Sisters "Little Shy " Her Indomitable
Pluck and Wonderful Physique A Feat Showing Her Strength Death
of Her Father Struggle of the Family with Misfortune and Poverty
Elizabeth Begins the Study of Medicine How She Acquired Her Profes-
sional Education Surmounting Great Difficulties Some of Her Experi-
ences as a Medical Student Graduates with High Honor First Medical
Diploma Ever Granted to a Woman A Proud Moment in Her Life
Her Sister, Emily Blackwell Her College Life Battling Against Oppo-
sition Final Success Her Studies Abroad The Two Sisters establish
Themselves in Practice in New York Founding the Women's Hospital
and College Recognition and Success at Last.
ARDINAL MAZARIN said to Don Luis de Haro,
at the time of the Peace of the Pyrenees :
" How lucky you are, in Spain ! There, women
are satisfied with being coquettish or devout;
they obey their lover or their confessor, and
interfere with nothing else." His eminence
held, in common with the public opinion of his
time, that the political and social troubles of less
well-regulated countries proceeded from the failure
of the meddlesome sex to mind its own business.
But as women came more frequently to be heard upon the
subject, it appeared that a respectable minority disagreed
with the majority as to the nature and limits of that business.
Presently a clear-eyed woman wrote : " History jeers at
the attempts of physiologists to bind great original laws by
the forms which flow from them. They make a rule : they
say, from observation, what can and cannot be. In vain !
Nature provides exceptions to every rule. She sends women
to battle, and sets Hercules spinning; she enables women to
bear immense burdens, cold, and frost ; she enables the man,
134
THE DOCTORS BLACKWELL. 135
who feels maternal love, to nourish his infant like a mother.
. . . Presently she will make a female Newton, and a male
siren. . . . But if you ask me what offices they may fill, I
reply a ny. I do not care what case you put ; let them be
sea-captains, if you will. I do not doubt there are women
well-fitted for such an office, and if so, I should be as glad
to see them in it as to welcome the Maid of Saragossa, or
the Maid of Missolonghi, or the Suliote heroine, or Countess
Colonel Emily Plater."
The female Newton is yet to come, but in tjie very year
that saw the publication of Margaret Fuller's brave plea for
her sex, a young woman in the West, alone, unaided, and
poor, began those studies which have made her name eminent
in medical science, and freed a new domain of labor to the
occupation of women. That America, however grudgingly,
afforded Elizabeth Blackwell, and, afterward, her sister,
Emily, that opportunity for professional instruction and prac-
tice which their native England withheld, constitutes her
claim to reckon them among her noble women.
Their father, Mr. Samuel Blackwell, a rich sugar-refiner of
Bristol, was a man of singular high-mindedness, catholicity,
energy, honesty, and benevolence. Their home offered a
fruitful soil for virtues to take root in, which throve the better,
as it seemed, for the overrunning tangle of innocent wild-
oats that grew up with them. Winters were given to hard
work in the school-room, summers to equally hard play at
the seaside. Long walks in all weathers kept heads clear
and complexions bright. The wise mother was not frightened
at the name of torn-boy, nor disturbed by the cheerful din of
the host of children who " rampaged " through the passages
between lesson-hours. Birthdays, which seemed to have a
jovial trick of recurring oftener than in other families of like
spaciousness, were celebrated with a frenzy of affectionate
zeal. Holidays brought " sport that wrinkled care derides,
and laughter holding both his sides."
The sunshine and fresh air of this hearty, sensible, hilarious
household developed a sturdy growth of juvenile character.
136 THE DOCTORS BLACK WELL.
|
Elizabeth, the third daughter, was a tiny creature, fair, with
blonde hair, beautiful hands, and a voice of extraordinary
sweetness. As a child, she was so unusually reserved and
silent that her father, to whom she was devoted, nicknamed
her tf Little Shy." But this singularly delicate and shrinking
exterior hid a tenacity of purpose and muscular strength
almost incredible.
An elder sister relates that before the little maid was five
years old, her father was once obliged to go to Dublin on
business. This necessity was made the occasion of a frolic
for the children, who went in force to the Hotwells to see him
off. Elizabeth, bent on being useful, persisted in holding his
heavy portmanteau in her lap all the way to the anchorage.
As the steamer swung off and moved slowly down the river,
the children ran along the bank, shouting their good-bys.
But when the rest were ready to turn homeward, " Little Shy "
only quickened her pace. She had made up her small mind
that since she was forbidden to accompany her father, as she
had entreated, she would make the journey on foot, and rejoin
him in Ireland ! Coaxing and remonstrance were vain. The
tiny pilgrim, bound on her filial errand, had already the con-
stancy of a devotee. At last it was made plain to her that
her father had taken the ship because it was impossible to
reach Ireland by land, and that should she walk to Holy-
head she must there be turned back by the Channel. Even
her indomitable little spirit saw the futility of contending with
the natural divisions of the earth, however arbitrary and
senseless they might appear to her, and she turned home-
ward with injured and resentful countenance, too indignant
with Circumstance to utter a word.
In earliest girlhood she read Foster's "Essay on Decision
of Character" which became an inspiration to her. All her
ideals were heroic, Elizabeth, the huntress Diana, the
Valkyries, with their lofty self-dependence and undaunted
courage, Boadicea, Lady Russell, Madame Roland. She
herself had the perfect physique of the mythical maids of
Valhalla. Her muscles were corded steel, her delicate hands
THE DOCTORS BLACKWELL. 137
had a grip of iron. She would pick up the other children
and carry them about the house, till, tired out with laughter
and struggling, they consented to her terms of release.
While still in the school-room her feats of strength were
astonishing.
It is related of her that she once used the argwnentum ad
hominem in a peculiarly convincing way. Some intimate
friends having called one evening at her father's house, the
conversation happened to turn on the feeble muscular develop-
ment of women. A certain gentleman maintained that the
weakest man, putting forth his full strength, could overcome
the strongest woman.
" But that must be a mistake," declared her brother, " for
when Elizabeth chooses she is more than a match for the
best of us at wrestling or at lifting, and carries us about as
she likes."
" She could not lift me! No woman living could lift me ! "
exclaimed the champion of his sex. "Try it, Miss Eliza-
beth," he continued, settling himself for resistance ; "do your
utmost ! I defy you to move me out of this chair."
Deliberately the new Brunhilda approached, deliberately
lifted the scoffer, deliberately settled him on her left arm,
and holding him firmly with the other, despite his desperate
struggles to escape, bore him three times round the room,
with the slow stateliness of a triumphal march.
Commercial disorders following on the political crisis of
1830-31 crippled the prosperous house of Blackwell, whose
head resolved to emigrate with his family to the United
States, where the sugar business was then lucrative. In
August, 1832, the new settlers landed in New York. A
sugar-refinery was soon established, which was immediately
prosperous. But the financial ruin of 1837 spared no in-
dustry. Though avoiding personal bankruptcy, Mr. Black-
well found his fortune again swept away by the failure of
weaker houses. But he was a man incapable of defeat.
Even then he saw the great opportunities which the widening
West offered, and in 1838 removed with his family to
138 THE DOCTORS BLACKWELL.
Cincinnati. The summer proved hot and pestilential. His
health, already impaired by anxiety and the severe strain of
the American climate, gave way under the change from sea
air to the humid heats of a Western river-town. While
working with characteristic energy to establish a new sugar-
refinery, he was smitten by fever, and died, after a brief
illness, at the early age of forty-five.
In a strange city the family now found themselves penni-
less and unknown. The wreck of their fortune had been in-
vested in the new business. Debts due the estate were
disregarded. . An agent in New York sold the valuable house-
hold furniture which had been left in his charge, and kept the
proceeds. Rent was owing on the house they occupied and
on the business premises. Protested notes were to be paid.
Doctors' and undertakers' bills demanded settlement, two
more deaths having occurred in the family during that terrible
autumn. Every day brought its tale of expenses, however
narrowly the schedule of necessities was made up. But the
scrupulous honesty of the father was a characteristic of the
rest. No one dreamed of evading one just claim upon his
name, and in the end every penny of indebtedness was paid.
The three elder daughters, of whom Dr. Elizabeth, just
seventeen years old, was the third, at once assumed the sup-
port of the younger children and their mother. With ready
self-denial the two boys, next in age, left their studies to
take clerkships. Four little ones, of whom Dr. Emily
was the eldest, were still in the nursery. But one way of
support offered itself to these needy gentlewomen, and the
Misses Blackwell opened a boarding-school for young ladies.
They were thoroughly and liberally educated. They were
full of the family courage and energy. Respect for their
abilities and interest in their misfortunes soon filled the
school.
The assurance that the family could be kept together, and
the younger children educated, was worth almost any cost to
these devoted sisters. But the old household ways had been
those of comfortable ease and rare good-fellowship. The toil,
THE DOCTORS BLACKWELL. 139
confinement, and incessant responsibilit} 1 " of a boarding-school ;
the inevitable formality and rigidity of the daily routine ;
more than all, the irksome need of a thrift approaching parsi-
mony, weighed heavily on young shoulders hitherto exempt
from burdens. Pay was small, compared with the endless
labor and self-denial of the work. The fact that they were
shut in to this one weary way of bread-winning was, in itself,
harassing. A sort of gentle Jacobin club grew up among
them, whose entire membership they constituted, and at
whose irregular meetings, in the insecure privacy of their bed-
rooms, they arraigned society for its unfairness to their sex.
Had they been men, or, being women, had they received a
thorough business and professional training, they saw how
much easier and more honorable their struggle for existence
would have been. Each year deepened their conviction that
an enlargement of woman's opportunities was the necessary
condition of a higher social well-being. But hard necessity
kept them to their familiar treadmill. By night they might
plan new achievements and rewards for their sex. By day
they must conjugate French verbs, listen to blundering
scales, or vainly strive to impose habits of conscientious
study on the spoiled young tyrants of the class-room.
Six years of this patient grind placed the younger children
in self-supporting positions, and the school was given up.
Already Elizabeth had resolved to devote her future to the
science of medicine. Shrinking with the strong instinct of
perfect health from all contact with disease, loathing the
atmosphere of the sick-room, and naturally intolerant of the
moral weakness of invalidism, she yet believed women to be
specially fitted by nature for the medical profession. Of the
many fields of honorable labor then closed against them it
seemed to her that this might most easily be won. And she
saw clearly that if prejudice could be made to yield a single
outpost, the taking of the citadel was but a question of time.
Examples were not wanting of women who had enriched
medical science. She remembered Marie Catherine Biheron,
the Paris apothecary's little daughter, who, working eagerly
140 THE DOCTORS BLACKWELL.
over dead bodies, by night, in her attic chamber, perfected
the common manikin, and was the first to unfold, by the aid
of prepared wax, the inner mysteries of the human frame.
She remembered Elizabeth Nihell, contending with calm good
sense and steady judgment against the obstetrical quackeries
of the fashionable London doctors of the last age. She re-
membered that noble Elizabeth Blackwell of the eighteenth
o
century, Scotch and sturdy, who, studying midwifery to sup-
port her sick husband, himself a physician of repute, found
her means of livelihood taken away by the trades'-union of
the faculty, and turned to the preparation of the first medical
botany. She remembered the nurses and healers of the
middle ages, a great cloud of witnesses to the fitness of
women for the profession of her choice. The very need of
conquering her personal dislike of the task she had set herself
whetted her courage. But that task was herculean, and the
money required was yet to be earned.
In 1844 she took charge of a large country school in Ken-
tucky, hoarding every penny of pay for professional uses, and
every moment of leisure for professional studies. The next
year a higher salary was offered her as music teacher in a
fashionable boarding-school at Charleston, South Carolina.
There, while working hard at medicine, she began the study
of Latin, being already a good French and German scholar.
There, too, it was her good fortune to meet the distinguished
Doctor Samuel Henry Dickson, who took a generous interest
in her plans, admitted her among his office students, and gave
her invaluable help and encouragement.
In May, 1847, after three years of indefatigable prepara-
tion, she sought admission to the Philadelphia Medical
School. The physicians in charge, without exception, re-
jected her, professing to be shocked at the indelicacy of her
application. College and hospital were closed against her,
and she was forced to take private courses of anatomy and
dissection with one physician, and of midwifery with another.
But however able the teacher or zealous the pupil, no private
certificate of capacity could equal the guarantee of a diploma.
THE DOCTORS BLACKWELL. 141
And Miss Blackwell was not more anxious to obtain a
thorough training for herself than to make straight the path
for other women who should follow her. Besides, there
already flourished a guild of ignorant or half-educated female
doctors, whose code was immoral, and whose practice was em-
pirical. It was plain that only qualified women, bearing the
diploma of a reputable college, could bar out these pretenders
from practice, or hinder their misuse of the professional name.
The young student's next step was to obtain a list of all the
medical schools of the country, and send her dignified appli-
cation to each in turn. Twelve of these institutions promptly
rejected her, most of them rebuking either her immodest
desire to understand the laws of physical nature, or her pre-
sumptuous invasion of those high intellectual regions habitable
only by man. Only the faculties of the college at Geneva,
New York, and of that at Castleton, Vermont, courteously
consented to consider her application. At Geneva, the ques-
tion of her admission was referred to the students themselves,
These young men, to their honor be it said, unanimously
decided in her favor, and voluntarily pledged themselves
" individually and collectively," that, should she enter the
college, "no word or act of theirs should ever cause her to
regret the step."
In November, 1847, she was entered on the college register
as "No. 417," and saw herself at the beginning of the end.
In a brief monograph published twenty-five years ago, to
which this sketch is much indebted, Miss Anna Blackwell
says : " Aware that the possibility of her going through the
course depended on her being able, by her unmoved deport-
ment, to cause her presence there to be regarded by those
around her, not as that of a woman among men, but of one
student among five hundred, confronted only with the truth
and dignity of natural law, she restricted herself for some time
after her entrance into the college to a diet so rigid as almost
to trench upon starvation, in order that no involuntary change
of color might betray the feeling of embarrassment occa-
sionally created by the necessary plain-speaking of scientific
142 THE DOCTORS BLACKWELL.
analysis. How far the attainment of a self-command which
rendered her countenance as impassible as that of a statue
can be attributed to the effect of such a diet may be doubtful ;
but her adoption of such an expedient is too characteristic to
be omitted here.
" From her admission into the college until she left it she
also made it an invariable rule to pass in and out without
taking any notice of the students ; going straight to her seat,
and never looking in any other direction than to the professor
and on her note-book. How necessary was this circumspection
may be inferred from something which occurred in the lecture-
room a short time after her admission. The subject of the
lecture happened to be a very trying one ; and while the
lecturer was proceeding with his demonstration, a folded
paper, evidently a note, was thrown down by some one in
one of the upper tiers behind her, and fell upon her arm,
where it lay, conspicuously white, upon the sleeve of her
black dress. She felt, instinctively, that this note contained
some gross impertinence, that every eye in the building was
upon her ; and that, if she meant to remain in the college, she
must repel the insult, then and there, in such a way as to
preclude the occurrence of any similar act. Without mov-
ing or raising her eyes from her note-book, she continued to
write, as though she had not perceived the paper ; and when
she had finished her notes she slowly lifted the arm on which
it lay, until she had brought it clearly within view of every
one in the building, and then, with the slightest possible turn
of the wrist, she caused the offensive missile to drop upon
the floor. Her action, at once a protest and an appeal, was
perfectly understood by the students ; and in an instant the
amphitheatre rang with their energetic applause, mingled
with hisses directed against her cowardly assailant. Through-
out this scene she kept her eyes constantly fixed upon her
note-book ; taking no more apparent notice of this welcome
demonstration than she had done of the unwelcome aggression
which had called it forth. But her position in the college was
made from that moment, and not the slightest annoyancr of
AN INCIDENT IN THE STUDENT LIFE OF DR. ELIZABETH BLACKWELL. AN ACTUAL
SCENE IN THE OPERATING-ROOM OF A MEDICAL COLLEGE. 2. THE
WOMEN'S HOSPITAL AND INFIRMARY, NEW YORK CITV.
THE DOCTORS BLACK WELL. 143
any kind was ever again attempted throughout her stay. On
the contrary, a sincere regard, at once kindly and respectful,
was thenceforward evinced toward her by her fellow-students ;
and though, for obvious reasons, she still continued to hold
herself aloof from social intercourse with them, yet, when-
ever the opportunity of so doing presented itself, in the
course of their common studies, they always showed them-
selves ready and anxious to render her any good offices in
their power, and some of them are of her truest friends at
this day."
By degrees the embarrassment of her position was for-
gotten in her devotion to her work. The wonderful and
beautiful mechanism of the human body filled her with a
reverence which cast out self-consciousness. But the pain
she had already endured convinced her of the imperative need
of a separate medical school for women.
Never was Little Peddlington more distracted by a question
of social etiquette than Geneva by the coming of the " lady
student." Boarding-house keepers were warned that their
lodgers would leave them if asked to sit at table with so
doubtful a character. Boys followed her about the streets,
with audible and unflattering comments on her personal
appearance and supposed intentions. Well-dressed men and
women felt at liberty to stop on the sidewalk and stare openly
at the prodigy. But the dignity of the quiet little figure,
dressed always in black, and intent upon its own business,
soon conquered civility. And when it was known that the
professors' wives had called upon her, the boarding-houses
capitulated.
An incredible self-denial and industry marked Miss Black-
well's college course. Even the hot summer vacation was
spent in study and active practice in one of the outlying
hospitals of Philadelphia. Like all finely-organized women,
she had an intense liking for flowers, odors, beautiful
surroundings, and dainty apparel. But she contented herself
with a cheap room, plain garments, and the rarest necessaries.
Years afterwards she used to smile at the recollection of the
144 THE DOCTORS BLACKWELL.
struggle it cost her to deny herself a ten-cent bottle of cologne.
She remembered its exact place on the chemist's shelf, and
the pang she felt in leaving it there.
The price of her graduation gown seriously encroached on
the little hoard so carefully kept for future study. But as
always, she faced the inevitable with serenity. In a letter
written at that time she says : " I am working hard for the
parchment which I suppose will come in good time ; but I
have still an immense amount of dry reading to get through
with and to beat into my memory. I have been obliged to
have a dress made for the graduation ceremony, and mean-
while it lies quietly in my trunk biding its time. It is a rich
black silk, with a cape, trimmed with black silk fringe,
and some narrow white lace round the neck and cuffs. I
could not avoid the expense, though a grievous one for a poor
student ; for the affair will take place in a crowded church.
I shall have to mount to a platform on which sits the presi-
dent of the University, in gown and triangular hat, surrounded
by rows of reverend professors ; and of course I can neither
disgrace womankind, the college, nor the Blackwells by
presenting myself in a shabby gown."
On a bright January day of 1849 the largest church in
Geneva was packed with spectators eager to see the presenta-
tion of the first medical diploma ever granted to a woman.
Whatever marvel they may have expected, the reality was
simple enough. A slender, black-robed girl ascended the
steps, with a group of her brother students, and standing
undismayed, the focus of a thousand eyes, received from
the venerable president of the college the blue-ribboned
parchment which converted " No. 417 " into Doctor Eliza-
beth Blackwell. A door hitherto closed against women
stood open. A whole world of fresh interests and aspir-
ations invited them to possess it. The old order had
changed, giving place to new. And never was revolution
so quietly accomplished.
When it came to Dr. Elizabeth's turn to return thanks, she
said, in a low voice, which the utter stillness made audible in
THE DOCTORS BLACKWELL. 145
the remotest corner, tf l thank you, Mr. President, for the
sanction given to my studies by the institution of which you
are the head. With the help of the Most High, it shall be
the endeavor of my life to do honor to the diploma you have
conferred upon me."
No change could well be greater than that from rural
Geneva to cosmopolitan Paris. But the indomitable Dr.
Elizabeth next besieged the doors of that ancient city's
schools. An unwritten Salic law excluded women from
inheritance in their unrivalled opportunities. The most emi-
nent physicians, to whom she had brought letters of intro-
duction, declared her quest hopeless, and advised her to assume
a man's dress and register a man's name. But like that great
reformer who said : "I will be as uncompromising as justice.
I am in earnest ; I will not equivocate ; I will not excuse ; I
will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard," she held
to her purpose with dogged tenacity. After months of weary-
ing delay, the great lying-in hospital of theMaternite admitted
her as a resident-pupil, and some others consented to tolerate
her visits. These concessions demanded a heavy return of
application and labor. But Dr. Elizabeth was a very Hotspur
of young doctors, vanquishing difficulties as Percy his Scots,
and finding time for exacting private studies under the ablest
professors in Paris. Returning to London, she obtained ad-
mission to St. Bartholomew's and the Women's Hospital, and
again took private instruction.
She had always intended to practise in America, partly be-
cause it offered a better field than England ; partly because
she was anxious to help and encourage the many women
whom her example had stimulated to attempt the study of
medicine.
In 1851, after seven years of the hardest study, she arrived
in New York to enter on her profession. But her Hill of
Difficulty stretched high and steep before her. Prejudice
and ignorance are tough combatants who too often push large-
minded ability into the ditch. The sensible young doctor
knew how slowly a good practice must grow. But it seemed,
146 THE DOCTORS BLACKWELL.
at first, as if she would not be permitted even to plant the
germ. The mere mention of her profession closed the doors
of reputable boarding-houses against her. And when sub-
mission to an exorbitant rent finally secured tolerable office
room, the suspicions or neglect of her landladies sent away
patients, or failed to deliver messages. Intelligent women of
the class she had hoped to benefit sneered at " female doc-
tors." Reputable physicians ignored her claims as a fellow-
practitioner. But the quiet, steadfast, indomitable woman
refused to be dismayed. As in Charleston, Philadelphia,
Paris, and London, a few able physicians recognized her high
character and capacity, and treated her with profound profes-
sional and personal respect. Without this encouragement her
attempt would have been impracticable from the outset.
With it, she could say, like Walter Scott, "Time and I
against any two."
In 1852 she delivered a series of lectures to ladies, on
hygiene and physical development. Health had not yet come
into fashion, but these talks attracted many listeners, partly
drawn by curiosity to hear one of the " strong-minded,"
partly by worthier motives. Even those who came to scoff,
however, remained to praise, while not a few became eager
patrons and patients of this learned and high-minded teacher.
The next year she published an excellent treatise called,
" The Laws of Life, considered with reference to the Physi-
cal Education of Girls," and, with an increasing practice,
found time to establish a Dispensary for Women and Chil-
dren. This long-needed charity began its work in a single
room, with the free furnishing of advice and medicine to out-
door applicants. But Dr. Blackwell saw in it the germ of a
beneficent and wide-spreading growth. As its funds in-
creased it was to receive indoor patients, providing indigent
women with able physicians of their own sex. It was to
give this class of patients, beside needed advice and medL
cine, plain and kind counsel concerning the care of health,
rearing and education of children, household management,
and personal habits. It was to educate an efficient body of
THE DOCTORS BLACKWELL. 147
nurses for the community, a service of benefit not only to
the sick, but to those deserving and competent women who
would gladly earn their bread as nurses, could they command
the necessary training.
So steady was the success of Dr. Elizabeth's dispensary,
that in May, 1857, she was enabled to add to it that Hospital
for Women which, both as relief-agency and as training-
school, had been the hope of so many years. This Infirm-
ary was the first medical charity established by female
physicians, as well as the first hospital organized for the in-
struction of women in practical medicine. In ten years over
fifty thousand patients were relieved by its means. Thirty-
one students had been received, who resided from one to two
years in the house, and nineteen nurses had been trained and
established in the city. The record of the seven subsequent
years has been even more satisfactory.
Meantime Dr. Elizabeth had welcomed a coadjutor, able,
wise, and zealous as herself. In 1848 her younger sister,
Emily, began a course of medical reading and dissection with
Dr. Davis, demonstrator of anatomy in the Cincinnati Col-
lege. Like Dr. Elizabeth, she brought perfect health and in-
domitable energy to her work. Like her, she possessed
quick perception, and an exceptional memory. Latin,
French, and German she knew well. In Greek and mathe-
matics her standing was fair. Earning as teacher the funds
required as student, she worked hard in both capacities till
1851, when she applied for admission to the Medical School
at Geneva. To her surprise she was refused, the same fac-
ulty which had testified that the presence of her sister " had
exercised a beneficial influence upon her fellow-students in all
respects," and that " the average attainments and general con-
duct of the students during the period she had passed among
them, were of a higher character than those of any class which
had been assembled in the college since the connection of the
president with the institution," now declaring that they were
not prepared to consider the case of Dr. Elizabeth a precedent.
Ten other colleges in succession refused her application.
148 THE DOCTORS BLACKWELL.
Meanwhile the Free Hospital of Bellevue, in New York,
gave her admission to study, and, after more than a year of
waiting, the young Medical College of Chicago accepted her
as a student. Her summer vacation she passed in hospital
work at Bellevue and in the chemical laboratory of Dr.
Doremus. Returning to Chicago for the next term, to her
surprise and dismay she found the doors closed against her.
The State Medical Association had censured the college for
having admitted a woman. The woman was therefore left
to shift for herself. After much delay she was received by
the college of Cleveland, where she completed her course,
triumphantly passing the examinations. From Cleveland to
Edinburgh, studying in the Lying-in Hospital and under the
eminent Dr. Simpson ; from Edinburgh to Paris, follow-
ing the clinical lectures of the great masters of their art
through the Hotel Dieu, Beaujou, St. Louis, the Hopital des
Enfans Malades, living and working in the vast establish-
ment of the Maternite ; from Paris to London, walking the
wards of St. Bartholomew and other hospitals, Dr. Emily
toiled along her conscientious way, bringing back to America
in the autumn of 1856 the highest testimonials of capacity
and acquirement from the men most competent to bestow
them.
A curious ebb-tide of feeling concerning the fitness of pro-
fessional life for women seemed, at that time, to be bearing
away all that had been gained. After the graduation of the
Doctors Blackwell, and two or three of their immediate suc-
cessors, the schools which had received them closed their
doors upon subsequent applicants. It was as if the Faculties,
on the impulse of the moment, had said, " Anything so simple
and natural as medical attendance upon women by women
must be right," but, having time to think about it, had
amended their formula to " Anything so simple and natural as
medical attendance upon women by women must be wrong."
Separate schools for female students of course sprang up.
But small means and small classes necessaiily confined the
teaching of these schools to lectures, unaccompanied by prac-
THE DOCTORS BLACKWELL. 149
tical study and observation, while all existing hospitals and
dispensaries were closed against women, whether as physicians
or students.
It was this meagreness of opportunity which led Dr. Black-
well to conclude that hospital experience would be more
immediately valuable to female medical students than college
study, and perhaps more readily sustained by public opinion.
But even to so humane and necessary an experiment as
that of the hospital objection waxed loud. The projectors
were assured that no one would let a house for the purpose ;
that the plan would invite suspicion and the interference of
the law ; that if deaths occurred, their death certificates would
not be recognized ; that improper persons would apply for
treatment ; that, without resident male physicians, discipline
could not be maintained ; and, finally, that they would never
be able to collect money for so unpopular an undertaking.
The Doctors Blackwell had the courage of their opinions.
They held nothing which was right to be impossible. They
found the house. They prepared the sick wards. Through
discouragement and distrust they held their serene way. The
practice was conducted entirely by women, but a board of
consulting physicians, men of the highest standing, gave it
sanction and reputation. Necessary operations were per-
formed by its attending female physicians, and performed
with adequate skill and nerve. In a year or two the govern-
ment of a hospital by women for women was a proved
success.
In 1865 the trustees obtained from the Legislature a char-
ter conferring college powers upon the institution. The new
college began with certain amendments of established customs,
which the profession at large had vainly urged upon the older
schools ; namely, the extension of the college course through
three years, the lengthening of the college year, the grading
the course, so that each year's study was not a repetition of
the preceding one. A chair of hygiene was established,
which, surprising as is the statement, for the first time made
hygiene a branch of instruction in any medical college in this
10
150 THE DOCTOKS BLACXWELL.
country. " Of the forty-six students who had passed through
the Infirmary prior to 1878, nine were married women, five
of them the wives of physicians, all now engaged in practice
with their husbands. Three graduates were daughters of
physicians, now in practice with their fathers. Four had
gone abroad as missionaries, it having been found that women
physicians obtain access to Eastern women as no other mis-
sionaries can. One of these has succeeded in establishing in
China a hospital for women, through which she is exerting
a widespread influence. Sixteen graduates have engaged in
hospital work as resident physicians, or as physicians to
women's colleges, as Yassar and Mount Holyoke. Seven
have pursued their studies at European universities. One of
these in connection with one of the professors at Zurich has
published a paper of original research on some points of
physiology. The thesis of another has been republished by
an English medical journal as one of the most important
papers contributed to the subject. Two graduates have ap-
plied for hospital positions given by competitive examina-
tions, these being the first instances in which women have
been allowed to compete. Both candidates passed honorably.
One obtained the desired position at Mount Sinai Hospital,
and filled it well. The other was refused the post of Interne
at the Charity Hospital, because no arrangement had been
made for giving it to a woman."
Almost invariably the pupils of the Infirmary have remained
in the practice of their profession, supported themselves by
it, and in many instances acquired a competence.
From the beginning, all the professional work of the insti-
tution has been done by women. Daily prescribing in the
dispensary, charge of patients in the wards, visiting the poor
in their own homes, exposure to wet, fatigue, bad air, con-
tact with every form of disease, all the hardships and horrors
known to the city practitioner, have not discouraged the
ardor or impaired the health of these physicians. On the
contrary, their roused mental activities vivify and strengthen
the physical nature.
THE DOCTORS BLACKWELL. 151
When the institution she had founded was strong enough
to do without her, when the scores of women whom she had
helped to help themselves were able to help others, when
the public sentiment which her example had created was ready
to release new fields of labor to her sex, Dr. Elizabeth felt
that she could do more useful work in England than in
America. For some years she has lived in London, writing,
lecturing, advising, organizing, saying the fit word in the fit
place, helping the efforts of women towards self-support and
higher culture. Dr. Emily has remained in New York, busy,
useful , and honored. The Women's Hospital and College profit
by her attendance and instruction, her private practice is large,
the best physicians of the city acknowledge her remarkable
attainments, and willingly meet her in consultation.
Other women are making a high professional name. Other
women have toiled faithfully for high professional education.
But in their undertaking the Black well sisters stood not more
for personal success than for woman's right to labor. They
chose an interdicted and uncongenial calling, pursuing it in the
face of poverty, suspicion, misrepresentation, and the preju-
dice which denies opportunity, not more to vindicate their
conscious capacity than to justify woman's right to learning.
And if paid industry is coming into fashion for their sex, the
new mode owes no little of its vogue to the discussion of
woman's work and wage which their brave experiment
excited.
The moral of biography, said a great man, is, that by heroic
encouragements, it holds us to our task. Lives like these
make toil and self-denial seem easy, kindle new hopes and
aspirations, lift those who ponder them above their old selves
and their old lot, and take the sting from that bitter curse of
Timon of Athens, " If there sit twelve women at the table,
let a dozen of them be as they are."
CHAPTER VII.
FKANCES HODGSON BUKNETT.
BY ELIZABETH BRYANT JOHNSTON.
Mrs. Burnett's English Home Tales of Her Childhood Emigration to
America A Helpless Family in a Strange Land The Struggle for Sub-
sistence Incidents of Her Girlhood Her Sympathy for the Poor
How She Acquired Her Knowledge of English Dialect The Original
"Lasso' Lowrie's" First Literary Efforts Seeking a Publisher De
vising Ways and Means Diplomacy A Day of Triumph and Happi-
ness "Who is She?" Life at Mt. Ararat Revisiting England
Her Washington Home A Thrilling Incident at Long Branch A
Heroine in Real Life Mrs. Burnett's Personal Appearance.
T is as difficult to write a faithful biography as to
paint a true portrait. The artist gives form,
line, color, and a phase of life or expression ;
the biographer gives country, lineage, personal
appearance, deeds ; but the better part of a
life, the incentive, is as hard to catch, as delicate
to transcribe, as the soul is to imprison on
canvas. Indeed, a perfect biography may only
be written when it is possible to divest the
mind of the conviction that in writing it a privilege
is being taken with individual rights.
It will be conceded that the few incidents usually scattered
"through the years of a woman's life are enclosed by two
words "opportunity," "duty." Men make their oppor-
tunities ; women accept the appointment of destiny ; therefore,
their lines in life are more dependent on the accident of birth,
and are longer under the governance of another will. Woman's
duty is her own, not limited by station, but may rather be
called limitless, knowing only such bounds as mental and
.physical strength have set. In writing the life of a woman,
152
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT 153
these obstinate facts are encountered at the beginning first,
the scarcity of event, and second, the ever present realization
that whatever is best, strongest, loveliest, and most worthy
to be admired and imitated, is so delicately interwoven with
the sacredness of domestic ties that the world may never know
that life's full beauty. Therefore the drawing, tone, and
color of a woman's pen-portrait must be found in incidents
rather than in important events.
Frances Hodgson Burnett was born in the thrifty old
manufacturing city of Manchester, Lancashire, England.
She is the daughter of Edwin Hodgson, a merchant who
lived near the suburbs of the city, in a commodious house
facing Islington Square, and near the well-known Isling-
ton House, a mansion quite pretentious within this gen-
eration. Her father, having died when she was about four
years old, was little more than a memory to her. Her
mother was Miss Eliza Boond, daughter of William Boond, a
heavy cotton manufacturer. He was an heroic character,
such as would have delighted Mrs. Gaskell or Charles Reade
as a model in that crisis when the ill-feeling between manufac-
turer and operative was most bitter, consequent upon the
introduction of machinery into the mills. In these periods of
excitement his personal danger was not small, and on their way
to and from church his daughters were often hooted at by the
angry weavers. .
The description given by her mother of the coolness and
hauteur of one of these aunts under circumstances so embar-
rassing used to delight Frances. She had no recollection of
her grandfather, but one of the pleasures of her childhood was
an intimate association with her grandmother, a beautiful old
lady^ of fourscore, with stately carriage, placid brow, and
snowy hair. Her maiden name was Hannah Clegg, and her
family was of gentry, which had intermarried with wealthy
manufacturers.
In the home circle Frances was thought to have inherited
the characteristics of her maternal grandmother, and it may
have been this similarity that made her a chosen companion
154 FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.
of the old lady. She would often ask Frances to remain
through the night with her, and the little maiden, before
breakfast was served, would read aloud from a well-marked
copy of Young's "Night Thoughts," always a welcome author
to the listener. Sometimes the aged mother would interest
the child with family legends, several of which she recalled
years after. One was of a certain Lady Alice Clegg, of
Ordsall Hall, who was privately married to a mysterious
stranger, with whom she soon removed to the Continent, and
never returned. The country folk started the rumor that the
deserted hall was haunted, as strange, fitful lights were seen
moving to and fro at the " wee sma' hours ; " but the sudden
advent of London detectives, who arrested a band of counter-
feiters established there, laid the ghosts.
Another story was of a beautiful girl, the eldest of seven
Misses Clegg, who, from an unhappy love-affair, resolved
to become dumb, and for seven years no persuasion nor arti-
fice could induce her to speak, or hold communication in any
manner with man, woman, or child. There was no paralysis
only a very firm will, and it was conjectured that she
had made a vow. One afternoon she astonished the maids
by walking into the kitchen, and with her own hands prepar-
ing tea ; then calling her sisters to the table, took her rightful
seat at the head ; and this particularly composed maiden lady
led the conversation on the current events of the neighborhood,
but could in no way be induced to explain her self-imposed
silence. During these seven years her only occupation was
writing, and she always destroyed her manuscript when it
seemed to be completed.
The intimacy of Frances and her grandmother continued as
long as the aged lady lived, who often said, " No one knows
what a comfort that dear child has been to me."
At the time of Mr. Hodgson's death his business was in
flourishing condition, and he left it to the management of an
experienced business man, to be turned over to his sons when
they were of suitable age to accept the responsibility. Affairs
were badly managed, and the civil war in America gave the
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 155
final blow to their fortunes. In a few years Mrs. Hodgson
discovered that she was utterly without means to rear and
educate her five children Herbert, John, Frances, Edith,
and the baby, Edwina, who was born after her husband's
death. She was a woman of refinement, accustomed to ease
and luxury, and the situation was one that demanded imme-
diate action. A brother had some time previously removed
to the United States, and was established in prosperous busi-
ness in Knoxville, Tenn. He wrote to her to come to
America, holding out as an inducement the promise of imme-
diate employment for the two boys. She ventured into a
strange land with her helpless family, but about the time of
her arrival her brother became involved in ruinous litigation,
and was powerless to fulfil his kind intentions.
They left their home cheerfully, and no one of them had
finer spirits than the eldest daughter, Frances. To this pre-
cocious girl, life in the New World had great fascination. It
altogether assumed the form of charming adventures in search
of fortune, where every change was not only sure to bring
success, but in addition to present interesting studies of a
strange people. The reality was very different. From the
date of their arrival the struggle began a hand-to-hand
fight for subsistence, in which the willing hands, the an-
swering genius of her daughter came to the rescue. The
civil war gave Frances Hodgson Burnett to America pov-
erty called forth her strength and gave her work to the world.
Frances was the eldest daughter and third child, and her
remarkable mind had always been a matter of pride to the
family. At the early age of three sh e stood by the side of
her aunt and read one of the parables out of a large Bible.*
The little one had apparently absorbed the art of reading,
as no one had taken any special care in teaching her. Her
childhood was marked by a passionate fondness for books ;
reading, when permitted, or by stealth, was her daily
avocation. Finally books became her crime, and ff that child
* In a recent biographical sketch of Madame Henri Greville, it is stated
that she read fluently at the same age.
156 FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.
has a book again," was the signal for new prohibitory resolu-
tions made by the mother, and persistently disregarded by
the child ; until the sorrow and disobedience of her young
life was "a book, always a book/' Nooks and closets were
utilized by her to secrete favorite volumes, until one day
she offended beyond endurance. She had been hurriedly des-
patched to the domestic realm with a message of importance,
when she sat down on the broad stairway, and, beginning to
read, forgot all about the order. There was a commotion,
and the hitherto indulgent mother made laws, the breaking of
which would have been unprecedented in any well-regulated
English household.
o
The little maiden's hunger for romance had, for a time, to
be satisfied by her own creations. Her dolls had always
lived in her mind, each china-baby and wax-darling assuming
roles; and she loved to play alone with them, weaving for
each a romantic destiny. In the wide range of her reading,
this girl, now seven, had found great attractions in Stevens'
"Central America." She therefore immediately equipped an
exploring expedition, and the daily report of the doll voyagers
was indeed unique. " Uncle Tom's Cabin " was among her
favorite works, and she was not contented until a black doll
was purchased, which she dressed and invested with all the
woes and virtues of Topsy. That gentle lady, her mother,
was distressed one day upon entering the nursery to discover
her little daughter, whom she thought an amiable child,
vigorously whipping poor Topsy. She had improvised a
whipping-post, and assumed the character of "Legree."
One of the happiest incidents of her childhood was dis-
covering in a collection of books left by her father, a complete
set of " Blackwood's Magazine." These books were in a hand-
some mahogany bookcase or secretary that then stood in her
mother's bedroom. She had never thought those dark,
heavy-looking volumes could contain anything except legal
lore, until her eye was accidentally arrested by the word
Magazine. She clambered up and opened a volume. Here
were stories short and stories long, a literary bonanza.
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 157
Seating herself upon the ledge of the secretary, with her
little legs dangling over, she daily read, until from sheer
weariness she almost fell from her perch. In this small
library were many good books, and her mother becoming
each season more absorbed and perplexed with business
entanglements allowed greater liberty to the reader, so
docile in other ways. Sitting thus, in the room seldom
entered during the day, she read Shakspeare, Scott, Byron,
Burns Aikin's "British Poets" complete. It was here she
read " The Fair Maid of Perth," which opened a new world
to her, and it would have been impossible to convince her,
as she hung with delight over this beautiful romance, that
the world held in reserve for her another joy so entrancing.
Byron was, from seven to twelve, the poet of her idolatry.
When only eight she startled a dignified Scotch gentleman by
expressing the opinion that " the travels of Don Juan was a
very pleasing book of adventures," quoting the description
of Haidee as one of its gems :
"Her hair's long auburn waves down to her heels
Flowed like an Alpine torrent which the sun
Dyes with his morning light ; "
The young man was so surprised that he satisfied himself as
to the correctness of the quotation, and suggested that he
should select books more suited to her age, whereupon
the little lady decided him to be "deficient in literary taste."
From this incident arose a firm friendship between the
precocious reader and the cultivated man of business ;
one of many pleasant relations which it was a sorrow to
break, upon removing to the United States. Her compan-
ionship with maturer minds was somewhat peculiar. She
had many grown-up friends, whose conversation on books and
authors, though a delight to her, did not appear to arouse her
vanity.
The fondness Frances evinced for history, a year or two
later, would seem somewhat paradoxical ; yet she read such
works with no less eagerness than she had shown in perusing
the wildest romance, and at a remarkably early age, she was
158 FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.
quite well versed in the histories of Greece, Rome, France,
England, and America. History had a special charm to her
creative mind. The most momentous national event was to
her a splendid romance, bristling with situations, her vivid
imagination supplying all that the conscientious historian had
not found.
Her education was given into the hands of the Misses
Hadfield, who had a small private school. They w r ere the
daughters of an artist, and enjoyed good social relations.
With them she had a careful English course with music, in
which she became quite proficient. Her mother preferred
that she should not study the languages in England ; she
intended to take her to France and Germany. The school
had the advantage of a fine art atmosphere. Books and
magazines on art were at her command, and at an early age
she had read much on the subject, and had also seen a great
many fine pictures, for the City of Spindles could boast its
public exhibitions and private collections.
She was the " star " of domestic troupes, and their fre-
quent entertainments presented to her occasions of great
enjoyment as well as improvement. Her three friends and
schoolmates were also sisters of her teachers, Suzette, Annie,
and Hetty Hadfield.
After school hours they used to wander into the neigh-
borhood where the operatives lived. They were first
attracted by the charm of the broad Lancashire dialect,
which they attempted to imitate. The effect of indulgence
in this was soon observed by their teachers, and a penalty
imposed for using it. They had, however, acquired con-
siderable knowledge of the provincial phrases, and often
were offenders in their use. Their childish sympathy had
been awakened by the scenes of poverty which they wit-
nessed, and the family of Mrs. Hodgson were soon able
to recognize the humble friends, who had been encour-
aged by Frances to solicit alms at the back-door. These
came to be distinguished as "Frances' pin-and-needle-
woman," " Frances' fitty woman," " Frances' dumb
man," etc.
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT., 159
As a small child, she began the study of character, and
especially such as she met among the operatives. Their house
faced Islington Square, and the rear yard extended to a nar-
row street where the long, low rows of workmen's houses
had been built. In these adjacent homes there was fine
opportunity for observation, and Frances was frequently
awakened by the reflection on the nursery ceiling of a single
candle in the hand of a woman, who groped about before
the daylight in her little kitchen, preparing breakfast for
her sulky " man." The child would spring out of her bed,
and softly creeping to the window, lest the nurse should l>e
aroused, would watch each stage in the progress of the morn-
ing meal. She closely observed the various types found in
these humble homes, the besotted and often brutal husband,
the hopeless wife-drudge, the children, hungry, prema-
turely old, and preternaturally wise.
Islington Square was entered by a large iron gate, and
through this she was wont to watch the operatives, home-
ward-bound women and girls, with their clogs heavily
clanking on the paved walks, and their brooding faces en-
shrouded in the indispensable woollen shawl. Through the
bars of this gate, when nine years of age, she first saw the
girl whom she afterwards draped in romance and sent out to
the world as " That Lass o' Lowrie's," a tall, handsome
figure, clothed, according to the custom of mill-girls, with a
long, coarse linen apron over the dress, and tied close down
the back with strong tapes to guard against accidents from
machinery. She stood in a group of children playmates
all, save her for in the midst of their romps her fingers
busily knitted on a dark, rough sock. She was so different
from the others strong, massive frame, large, luminous
gray eyes, pale, clear-cut face, and head rivalling in pose the
Venus of Milo, she instantly riveted the attention of the
maiden at the gate ; but not till long years after did Frances
realize her to have been so wondrously beautiful, for at that
period of the young romancer's life her type of female loveli-
ness demanded rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes. The refined
160 FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.
strength of the girl had a fascination she could not then
analyze, but she has since looked in vain for a face so fair, a
form so majestic. The boisterous children apparently recog-
nized her superiority, as appeals were made to her in the
adjustment of all differences, and her voice answered the
expectation of the listener at the gate, as the replies fell upon
her ears in broad, yet musical Lancashire. Frances saw her
only once more in the square as before, not at play, but
friend and adviser of the children. This time a brutal-looking
man, whose face was swollen from drink, came and drove
her out with angry words and threatening gestures. She
obeyed silently, proudly, yet without defiance or apparent
fear. For many afternoons Frances watched at the gate for
her, but in vain ; that noble form was never again seen
amid the group in the sunny square.
What is known as the "Lancashire distress" 1863-64
will be remembered as having elicited universal sj^mpathy.
The pathetic poem by Miss Muloch ff A Lancashire Dox-
ology " was written upon reading the following : " Some
cotton has been imported into Farrington, where the mills
have been closed for a considerable time. The people,
who were previously in deepest distress, went down to
meet the cotton ; the women wept over the bales, kissed
them, and finally sang the Doxology over them." Such
great suffering called upon the active offices of both young
and old, and Frances improved the opportunity of being
permitted to be the dispenser of modest charity. Per-
haps the calamitous effects of the civil war were nowhere,
save in the South, so much felt as in the good old cotton-
weaving city of Manchester. As before stated, the Hodgson
family were financially ruined by it. For four years, in
reply to every coveted indulgence, Frances received the
unwelcome answer, " Wait until the war is over in America,
then we shall have more money."
An incident illustrating the precocious development of
Frances Hodgson occurred when she had just entered her
thirteenth year. A friend of Mrs. Hodgson's, who had been
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 161
reduced from affluence, had opened a school, and her daughter
was her assistant as teacher of music and other higher
o
branches. She was suddenly called away, and the good lady
being sorely distressed to supply the place sent to Mrs.
Hodgson, asking if Frances might be loaned to her for a few
days. It was an important period, just before the close of
the session, but the request seemed ridiculous, as some of the
scholars were nearly grown. However, the emergency had
to be met, and the happy thought of putting her in long
dresses immediately set all doubt at rest. Her auburn hair
was twisted into an awe-inspiring club, and with fearless heart
she entered the hall and taught to the close of the term.
Her first literary effort was written at the age of seven, and
was a poem "Church Bells," which was immediately
destroyed. Her second, also a poem, in the same year, was
shown to her mother. One Sunday evening when the family
had all gone to church she began a dolorous poem entitled,
" Alone." Suddenly striking another key, she launched into
a humorous description of the woes of old bachelorhood.
When Mrs. Hodgson returned, Frances followed her to her
room, and read the effusion. The reader was interrupted
with exclamations of " How clever I " w How very funny ! "
r Where did you find this ? " the mother said when it was
ended. Learning that Frances had written it, she stooped
down and kissed her, saying, " My child, I believe you have
the gift of ten talents." " No, mamma," replied Frances,
with calm conviction, " I am not clever ; you think so because
you love me. A little girl who is clever would love arith-
metic better than I do."
A story immediately followed the poem, the title of which
was "Frank Ellsworth, or Bachelors' Buttons." It was the
history of a woman-hater, ending in his total and abject
enslavement by some dazzling daughter of Eve. This was
read in sections to her mother, and then destroyed ; for
her brothers, discovering her delight in scribbling, insti-
tuted a system of bantering and teasing, holding her efforts in
utter contempt as "girl's romance," "silly stuff," and treating
162 FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.
it all with undisguised disdain. So the little .girl hid her
manuscript with trembling anxiety from these audacious
critics, who voted her a jolly playfellow if they could only
get books and pens out of her hands.
Every English girl keeps a small book of personal expenses,
and in her earlier efforts in romance Frances would fre-
quently utilize her account-book. Once, when visiting an
aunt in the country, the good lady looked through the
bureau in Frances' room to satisfy herself as to the orderly
habits of her charge. She opened the little book, and
supplementary to the modest rows of figures was a story,
entitled " Millicent's Romance." " What is this ? " sternly
demanded the lady of the culprit, who stood near. " Only a
little scribbling of mine," said the abashed girl. "Do not
waste your time in that foolish way," was the discouraging
advice.
Her second story was rather more pretentious, and was
read to the dear mother as before. Its title was " Celeste, or
Fortune's Wheel," and the manuscript was kept until the
family left England, when it was burned, with an accumula-
tion of like nature. Before she came to the United States
she had made notes for a story, which was finished in
Tennessee, and sent to "Ballou's Magazine." It was the first
story for which she attempted to find a publisher, and the
trial was made the third year after their removal to America.
In the privations of their new life it occurred to Frances,
who was then teaching a country school in New Market, that
she would make this venture. The school-room was in their
own home, an old log-house, which they had dubbed
"Noah's Ark." The payment for her services was almost
entirely in vegetable currency, potatoes, cornmeal, flour,
and occasionally bacon. Frances did not have the nerve to
submit to her mother, nor yet to her brothers, the daring pro-
posal to send her manuscript to a publisher, but of her sister
Edith, who was the " Dame Durden " of the establishment, she
took counsel. From the first suggestion Edith was sanguine,
and the manuscript of w Miss Carruthers' Engagement " was
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 163
revised, but at the outset the two girls had to meet a very
embarrassing question ; " Where were they to get the money
for postage ? " It would not do to ask Herbert, for he would
demand to know what they intended doing with such an
amount. It never occurred to them to ask a favor a loan.
" Dame Burden " at last proposed that they should spend a
morning gathering blackberries, which they could dispose of
in town. The possible return of the manuscript was another
perplexity which must be guarded against ; for that it should
fall into the hands of the family was a mortification that could
not be endured. It was finally determined to ask permis-
sion of a gentleman friend to have some letters or pack-
ages enclosed to him. He was only too glad to oblige the
young English girls ; and besides this the request had a flavor
of romance, as visions of returned love-letters flitted across
his mind. "But how can I distinguish your letters or
packages from my own?" "I will have ' The Second 'put
on mine," replied Frances. The story was despatched, and
the editor replied that he was pleased with it, and would
publish it, but did not propose to pay for it. This was
stoutly opposed by Edith, who maintained that " if it was
worth publishing, it was worth paying for" which sound
position the young author approved. So they wrote for the
story to be returned, and then sent it to Mr. Godey, who
promptly replied, inquiring if it was an original story, as it
seemed strange that a tale of English life should emanate
from Eastern Tennessee. He also requested her to write
another, and Frances at once wrote " Hearts and Diamonds,"
by " The Second." This was published in " Godey's Maga-
zine," in June, 1868, and "Miss Carruthers' Engagement"
followed in October of the same year; the editor paying
thirty-five dollars for the two short stories.
It need not be said that this was a far larger amount than
had been anticipated by the girls ; and it was a day of tri-
umph and happiness when Herbert took the young author in
his arms and kissed her. From that day until this, work
with her pen has been the first duty of this gifted woman*
164 FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.
She had not anticipated or cared for a literary career ; nor
does she appear, even at the present moment, to have de-
veloped, in the great pressure of her busy life, an ambition
comparable with her rich endowments. Urgent need has
been the spur ; but there is little doubt if she had continued in
the sphere of ease and luxury to which she was born some
crisis in life would have called for her aid or work.
When she had once begun, she wrote with amazing rapidity.
Her contributions were accepted by Ballou, Frank Leslie,
Peterson, Harper, and Scribner. " Dolly " appeared in 1872,
in "The Ladies' Friend," edited by Mrs. Henry Peterson,
and was the first novel which was afterwards published in
book form. To the timely and unselfish encouragement of
Charles J. Peterson, more than to any other person, does
Mrs. Burnett attribute her success. For this she never fails
to give him due meed of praise, speaking with affectionate
gratitude. "But for that man's honest consideration, I
might early have become discouraged, as I never for a moment
contemplated writing without remuneration ; the need was
too urgent.'* She contributed to his magazine for years, and
from time to time, without a suggestion from the modest
writer, he would increase the pay, writing, " You are growing
more and more valuable to my magazine." Later, he said
to her husband, " I know Mrs. Burnett will rapidly advance
in popularity, and I may not be able to pay her such prices
as she can command. When that time comes I do not want
her to hesitate to write for others, or to feel that she is under
obligations to me. I am more her friend than her pub-
lisher.'' 1 He liberally advanced money for the trip to Europe,
and when she wrote " Louisiana " to meet this indebtedness,
he gave ready consent that it should be sent to Scribner, and
waited until she could write " A Fair Barbarian."
The first story sent to the Scribners was in 1872, and was
-entitled "The Woman who Saved Me." This was returned,
with the comment that it was too long ; but the real reason,
as was afterwards admitted, was that they feared it was not
original, because of the finished style and English manner
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 165
of writing, they thought it might have been taken from
some trans- Atlantic magazine. However, they requested her
to send a shorter story, and she wrote ? Surly Tim's Troubles."
The following note, upon the receipt of the second MSS.,
left no doubt as to its acceptance :
"NEW YORK, Feb. 23, 1872.
"DEAR Miss HODGSON, Dr. Holland and Dr. Holland's
daughter (Miss Annie) and Dr. Holland's right-hand man (myself)
have all wept sore over * Surly Tim.' Hope to weep again over
MSS. from you. Very sincerely and tearfully,
"WATSON GILDER."
Both of these stories " by Miss Fannie E. Hodgson," ap-
peared in " Scribner," and from that time, a period of eleven
years, she has been a regular contributor.
The profit of this young girl's pen soon began to lift the
family from indigence to comparative comfort. The gentle
mother lost some of the deep lines furrowed by anxiety, and
the household, having abundant capacity for enjoyment,
was a very happy one. It was an unequal fight with poverty,
as they had no training for such a struggle. They removed
as early as 1868 to Knoxville, finding a house that pleased
them, on the banks of the Tennessee, in the suburbs of the
town. They chose this house because its tiers of wide
verandas made it resemble a boat ; and Herbert had a boat,
though many other important things were not purchased.
The gay young people named this home " Mt. Ararat ; "
and it was a home from which care was banished, and indul-
gence in fun and frolic was encouraged by the loving mother,
who assented to any suggestion within the bounds of pro-
priety. Entirely emancipated from conventional austerity,
they were amiable, talented, and contented, and by their
varied gifts some new interest was continually afforded. One
could paint, another play or sing, while the third could write
or improvise a story. It is true they had no carpets on the
floor, no lace curtains at the windows, but they had a
piano, a harp, an organ, a guitar, a violin, a piccolo, and a
banjo, so that a concert could be given impromptu at any
11
166 FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.
hour. Frequently there was no pudding for dinner, but there
was a painting on the easel, a new book to be read, or a manu-
script by Frances, over which they might laugh or cry.
In the dawning of this more prosperous future the beloved
mother died. Frances, as eldest daughter, was burdened
with increased care, which, with the sudden bereavement, was
very hard to bear. A year later the household presented a
group of engaged young people ; all five, 'every member
of the family, except their cousin, Frederick Boond, w r ere
determined to face the perils of matrimony. Those were
halcyon days. Fun and frolic were succeeded by a summer
of poetry and happy dreams. Herbert married Miss Burnett,
the sister of Dr. Swan M. Burnett, to whom Frances had
become engaged ; and when the brother brought home his
bride, "Mt. Ararat" became the model of "Vagabond! a."
Soon after the marriage of her brother, Miss Hodgson,
being released from the responsible care of her sisters, went
to England, intending also to visit the Vienna Exposition.
Being taken ill at her relative's in Manchester, she remained
there, and wrote " Dolly." During this long visit she read a
series of articles in the " Manchester Guardian," which
directed her sympathies anew to the lives of miners and
weavers. This resulted in the production, after her return to
Tennessee, of "That Lass o' Lowrie's " "the flower and
crown of all recent fiction."
She remained abroad about fifteen months, returned
September 16, 1873, and was married to Dr. Burnett on the
17th. Dr. Burnett was practising in Knoxville, and for a
year pursued this uneventful, unpromising, and laborious life.
His wife, never ambitious for herself, saw not only that
her husband was unappreciated, but, w r ith the example of so
many physicians around her, that he was in danger of falling
into a rut, and with the care of a family, of accepting the
situation. She knew his ability, and his desire to devote
himself to the specialty for which he had already spent one
winter in New York, and she determined he should have
every advantage. But anxious as he was to complete his
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 167
studies as an oculist, he very naturally inquired where the
means could be found. The reply was "My pen." Nothing
else was thought of by the wife and mother for a brown-
eyed boy Lionel had been born to them. It was deter-
mined to start in quest of fortune, and they began pre-
parations for their forlorn venture. Friends remonstrated in
vain, pleading that they were leaving a certainty in a land
where any good doctor (if he did not die in the trying) was
sure to make a respectable competency. Mrs. Burnett, who
had firmly resolved not to accept such drudgery for either
her husband or herself, worked through that one year with
a will and concentration that, had she not been blessed with
a splendid constitution, would doubtless have cost her life.
While the doctor was on his long, weary rides to see his
poor patients his wife was weaving with her pen the pathetic
stories that made the readers weep, and the world begin to
inquire " Who is she ?" With hands often burning with fever,
and head throbbing with excitement, she daily sat by her
table. Under such circumstances she wrote in about fifteen
months " That Lass o' Lowrie's," " Pretty Polly Pemberton,"
" The Fire at Grantley Mills," and " The Fortunes of Philippa
Fairfax."
Effecting a favorable engagement with her considerate
friend, Mr. Peterson, the little family, husband, wife, baby
and black "Mammy," started on their tour; and in this
crisis our brave woman, our admired writer, rivals in heroism
the knights of old, made famous in song and story. They
were armed cap-a-pie* ; she, with fearless exaltation born of
love and hope, dared more than they in all their fine, vaulting
bravado. First they went to Manchester, then to London,
Rotterdam,- Utrecht, and Dusseldorf the last two cities
being selected with a view to the advantages afforded the
doctor in his studies.
They spent the autumn in Rome, going to Paris in the
winter, and in both cities the studies of the husband and the
writing of the wife were continued. In Paris, she wrote
" Smethurstses," "Seth," and other stories. In this city, in
168 FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.
the spring, a second son, Vivian, was born to them. In the
summer of 1876 they returned to the home of the doctor's
father, in New Market, and Doctor Burnett determined to
establish himself in Washington. It was six months before
affairs financial justified the removal of the rest of the family.
Mrs. Burnett, with her two children, spent the interim in the
quiet Tennessee village of New Market ; but she was not
idle. She wrote "Lodusky," " Esmeralda," " Mere Giraud's
Little Daughter," etc., etc.
For nearly a year after joining her husband in Washington
they lived quite obscurely and plainly in the West End. Her
children were a great care, and through months of weakness,
she lived a life of almost utter hopelessness in this city,
where soon her name was known in every household.
In a short time she began her' work with renewed deter-
mination, sending " Louisiana " to " Scribner's," and " A Fair
Barbarian " to " Peterson's Magazine," and writing " Ha-
worths," a work which, though it never attained the popu-
larity of " That Lass o' Lowrie's," is undoubtedly, as an ex-
ample of literary art, the finest she ever produced, and the
rival of any romantic creation in the New World. In 1878
the family removed to the pleasant house which they now
occupy, 1215 I street, and Mrs. Burnett has a large circle of
devoted personal friends. Nor is her accomplished husband
less popular. Their home is one of luxury, though not ex-
travagance, filled with works of art, handsome hangings, and
interesting bric-a-brac. Upon entering the hall the fact ap-
pears that it is the abode of refinement and culture. Here
the visitor at the Capital seeks to know the writer whose pen
has furnished so many hours of pleasure ; and here they are
met with such a genial welcome and such hospitality that
even the most shy are placed at perfect ease. The doctor,
who delights in art, has collected old engravings and fine
etchings ; and he often surprises his wife with a vase of roses,
or a bunch of field-flowers, painted, as he says, by an unknown
artist, in whom she is quick to recognize himself. It is a
home free from the iron rule of conventionality, and though
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 169
not " Vagabondia," is the outgrowth, as far as the environ-
ments of a city allow, of such freedom. Each Tuesday
evening in the season the parlor is filled with visitors, a large
proportion being strangers. For a year or so Mrs. Burnett,
with her genial nature, essayed to take up the burden of
social life in Washington, but it was too great a burden, es-
pecially as the demands of the busy pen were not less exact-
ing ; indeed, rather more, now that the boys grew rapidly,
and luxuries were added to necessities. Mrs. Burnett's work-
room is known as the " Den," and to the favored few who
are received into its privacy the very mention will recall the
delightful home circle and agreeable friends met there.
Early each morning Mrs. Burnett seats herself at her table
and writes until noon. Mood, not even health is con-
sulted. If she is in happy mental frame, the hours are not
heeded, and the sentences flow freely from her pen ; if not,
the afternoon is given to recreation, walks, drives, and visit-
ing. The evenings, except those of the more formal Tues-
days, are spent in the "Den," and "the children's hour"
there is one to be remembered. There, to amuse two rest-
less boys, were improvised "The Proud Little Grain of
Wheat," "Editha's Burglar," "Behind the White Brick," and
other stories that have delighted the juvenile readers of " SL
Nicholas." Here, too, she has recently completed " Through
One Administration."
The world has set its critical seal upon the productions
of this woman of genius, and should she never write an-
other word of fiction, the fame of Frances Hodgson Burnett
will rest secure upon " That Lass o' Lowrie's," " Haworths,"
w Smethurstses," and " Louisiana." Having written these,
she must remain her own rival.
Of poetry Mrs. Burnett has published but little ; occa-
sionally a short poem appears from her hand such as "Yes-
terday and To-day," so exquisite as to make us ask for
more. At the Garfield Memorial of the "Literary Society,"
Washington, D.C., she read a poem that will never be for-
gotten by those who were present. As neighbor and friend,
170 FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.
President Garfield had been much beloved, and this was a
heart utterance which, indeed, rose to the heroic :
" We cry, but he who suffers lies
Meeting sharp-weaponed pain with steadfast eyes,
And makes no plaint ; while on the threshold Death
Half draws his keen sword from its glittering sheath,
And looking inward, pauses lingering long
Faltering himself the weak before the strong."
* A Woman's Reason," which appeared in the " Century n
January, 1883, gives a happy portrayal of a woman's heart
by a woman's hand :
" And now my hand clings closer to your breast ;
Bend your head lower, while I say the rest
The greatest change of all is this, that I
Who used to be so cold, so fierce, so shy,
In the sweet moment that I feel you near,
Forget to be ashamed and know no fear
Forget that life is sad and death is drear
Because because I love you."
If called upon to discriminate as to the characteristics of
this eminent woman I should call her personal courage the
most distinguishing. She is delicate in her womanly instincts,
modest in valuing her literary achievements, socially not
ambitious of display, and right feminine in all her pleasures
and avocations, yet possessing a coolness and courage in an
emergency which is not generally a female attribute.
A paragraph which appeared two years since in the daily
papers describing her rescue at Long Beach of Mr. Larz
Anderson of Cincinnati, was not overstated. Mrs. Burnett,
with Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, were walking on the beach
ready to have an early morning swim in the Inlet. Mr.
Anderson declared his intention of diving from the bridge
a purpose he had several times declared. His wife had
doubts as to its safety ; but he was determined to try it.
The two ladies saw the plunge, and in an instant a white
face appeared on the surface of the water, then went down.
FRANCES HODGSON BUKNETT. 171
The frightened wife ran for assistance, and Mrs. Burnett, who
was that summer learning to swim, dashed into the waves
and swam rapidly to him. The helpless form, for, as may
be surmised, his head had struck a rock, was going under
for the third time. She clutched him, and putting forth all
her strength reached the beach with her still insensible bur-
den, and, with a power almost superhuman, bore him across
the stretch of sand to a grass-plot, where Mrs. Anderson
had brought assistance and restoratives. The friendship
based on this incident has grown to be one of the pleasantest
associations of this heroic woman.
Dress has abundant attraction for her. She enjoys it artis-
tically, and has an honest delight in a new gown. This is not
really an individual consideration, but a part of the love she
has for all that is beautiful in art or nature. She fancies
working in dainty lace, adjusting bows on robe or hat, and
is apt to give all such detail as far as possible her personal
attention. She is aesthetic in all her belongings, and in her
own boudoir every nook and corner indicates the fancies of
its occupant, or the thought of her husband, who, with pic
ture or bric-a-brac, adds frequently to her collection of
novelties.
Mrs. Burnett is modest in her estimate of her achievements ;
while she listens to words of praise, she is not embariassed,
but pleasantly surprised, and often says that when met with
more than ordinary effusiveness she accepts it as absolutely
impersonal, as though it was some other writer of whom they
are speaking.
Although she is certainly not indifferent to criticism, she is
philosophical, accepting the abuse and the approval with
equanimity; freely discussing reviews in her home circle,
yet I feel at liberty to say that nothing yields her greater
happiness than a realization that she has given solace or
enjoyment to so many. I remember one evening just at
twilight I went in to sit an hour with her. As soon as she
saw me she called to her husband, " Please light the <ras,
doctor; \ want to show my beautiful present." The light
172 FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.
revealed thrown across her on the lounge a rare India shawl,
a gem full a hundred years old, as was told by the delicate color
and antique pattern ; " Made when men loved art for art's sake,''
wrote the donor, an elderly gentleman, an entire stranger,
who begged its acceptance as some recognition of the pleas-
ure he had received in reading "Louisiana." When I read
aloud his beautiful letter, in which he modestly claimed some
soul kinship with the pathetic old father in the mountains of
North Carolina, " Tho' a little more polish had been given me
some forty years ago," she was deeply touched, and said,
" That repays me many times for days of labor and hours of
discouragement. "
Graceful recognition of pleasure received and much grate-
ful expression come to the successful story-teller, yet I
doubt if ever an offering went more directly to her heart. She
receives countless confidences, particularly from young women
who indulge in literary aspirations, with enclosed manuscript
for criticism. Daily applications for autographs come, and
letters of inquiry and approval. To all this, as far as time or
strength permit, she has conscientiously endeavored to send
answers; not failing to encourage, if it be possible, young
writers -r- well remembering the worth of such kindness.
Her capacity for work must be illustrated by a plain state-
ment. In little more than seven years she has given the
world five novels, a large number of short stories, several
children's stories, and the dramatization of " Esmeralda."
During this time there were often months in which she w r as
seriously indisposed with nervous prostration. Meantime
domestic and social duties were not disregarded. There is
nothing, by the way, in which she can accomplish so much as
working, unless it be playing upon which she enters with a
zest that is charming. This, a happy heritage, is often the
blessing given to true genius, a blessing which renews the
strength and keeps the heart young.
Although of English birth, the work of Mrs. Burnett has
so identified her with and endeared her to the country of
her adoption that she may be proudly claimed by the New
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 173
World. In physique she is decidedly of English type,
well-formed, graceful usually she rejoices in excellent
health. She is a blonde of rich tint, with dark bluish-gray
eyes, that are full of varying expression, so intense do
they sometimes become that they have been described as
black. Her head is shapely and well poised ; nose straight
and finely cut, nostrils thin and sensitive, while the firm chin
and decisive mouth are full of character. In manner she is
utterly free from affectation, though sometimes forgetful and
abstracted. She has a fund of small talk for an idle hour,
and of humor an abundant supply, with most happy apprecia-
tion of it in others. While in writing her pathos is so touch-
ing as to overshadow the vein of humor threading her pages,
in conversation humor predominates. She is endowed with
a large degree of magnetism, and above all she has charms for
her own sex. The highest eulogy that may be pronounced on
a woman is when it can be said " Women love her," and this
can with truth be said of Mrs. Burnett. Those who know her
well have much reason to love her. In temper she is delight-
fully amiable and ready in sympathy. I have endeavored not
needlessly to intrude upon the sacred precincts of home, but
if I had yielded to the temptation and related incidents
known to me, this brave-hearted woman of genius would
indeed appear what she is a heroine in real life. A life so
loving in all its ties, so exalted in duty, so full of good work,
so responsive to every call, so replete in wide-reaching
sympathy, she with all her power of characterization has
never presented in romance.
CHAPTER VIII.
EOSE TEKEY COOKE.
BY HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
Rose Terry Cooke's Ancestry Her Description of an Old-Fashioned Thanks-
giving Scenes in Her Childhood A Picture of Old New England
Life Her Deep Love of Nature Passion for Flowers School-life
Reading at the Age of Three Inimitable Skill in Depicting New-
England Life and Character Her Bright Humor and Keen Sense of
the Ridiculous Beginning Her Literary Career Opening of Her Genius
A Novel Incident in Plymouth Church The Story of an Opal Ring
How a Little Slave-Child was made Free A Romantic Story Odd
Experiences with Impostors and Counterfeiters Mrs. Cooke's Power of
Mimicry Her Home and Domestic Life A Woman of Rare Genius.
QUARTER of a century ago, most of us can
recall the joyous pride with which the birth of
the "Atlantic Monthly" was hailed, and the
eagerness with which each number was antici-
pated. Into what charming company it took
us ! There the Autocrat of the Breakfast-table
held his genial sway ; Motley fought over the
" Battle of Lepanto " ; Colonel Higginson led us
into the woods of "April Days" and among the
" Water-Lilies " of August in his series of wondrous
out-door studies ; Anne Whitney came with poems of a
loftier reach and fuller grasp than any other woman has ever
given the world ; the " Minister's Wooing " took up its placid
way ; that brilliant tale, the " Queen of the Red Chessmen,"
delighted the fancy and promised a new type of fiction ; the
" Man without a Country " deceived a wilderness of readers
into tears ; Emerson sang of " Brahma," Longfellow of " San-
dalphon," and Whittier sang the " Swan-song of Parson
Avery " ; Frank Underwood stretched his kind hand to the
unknown ; and James Russell Lowell's genius welded the
varying elements into a harmonious whole.
174
ROSE TERRY COOKE. 175
In this gracious company, too, came Rose Terry, with the
leading story of the first number ; and as story followed
story, each better than the other, she kindled the ambition
and had the felicitation of every other young woman who
turned the pages throughout the country, for most of us
felt as if all girlhood were honored in her who carried her
light before men with such proud strength and beauty.
We knew but little about her in those days, for personal-
ities had not grown to rule us. We only knew that she lived
in Connecticut, and had already published a story, in the
palmy days of "Putnam's Monthly," called "The Mormon's
Wife," which dealt powerfully with the leprosy of Mormon-
ism, and wrung from the heart tears dried only by the heat of
indignation. Any one who now reads that old story will be
as much moved by it as its first readers were, will com-
prehend that stronger yet more delicate argument was never
made against the iniquity which would undermine that whole
foundation of civilization, the family, tearing the hearts of
women and debasing the souls of men, and must needs ask
how so young a person knew the deep springs of feeling that
play there, unless it is true that the experience of years
teaches less than the intuitions of genius.
It is genius that informs every line Rose Terry has ever
written, a pure and lofty genius that burned with a white
flame in such subtle metaphysical reveries as " My Tenants,"
and " Did I?" and showed its many-colored light in brief bits
of poetic romance, and in a succession of stories of New
England life. One marvels how such a genius became the
ultimate expression of generations of hard Puritan ancestry,
as one marvels to see after silent flowerless years some dry
and prickly cactus-stem burst out into its sudden flaming
flower.
Rose Terry Cooke came of undoubted and undiluted Puritan
blood, which is to be found nowhere bluer than in Connec-
ticut. Her mother was Anne Wright Hurlbut, the daughter
of John Hurlbut of Wethersfield, Connecticut, the first New
England shipmaster who sailed round the world, and a man
176 ROSE TERRY COOKE.
who subsequently lost his life caring for the sick during an
epidemic. He left his daughter an orphan in her ninth year ;
and she grew up beautiful, tender, delicate, shrinking, unde-
monstrative from principle, and with a morbid conscience.
She married Henry Wads worth Terry, the son of Nathaniel
Terry, president of a Hartford Bank, and for some time a
member of Congress.
Henry Wads worth Terry was a man of great information,
a social favorite, sensitive, generous, and open-hearted. On
his mother's side he belonged to the old Wadsworth stock,
from which the poet Longfellow descended, his immediate
ancestor in this country having been the Hon. William Wads-
worth, dated at Cambridge, 1632, and at Hartford, 1636;
and his uncle, several times removed, having been that Joseph
Wadsworth who stole the Charter and ennobled the oak-tree
for all time to come, and who had a descendant of his own
spirit in General Terry of Fort Fisher and Pulaski fame, the
cousin of Kose.
Rose was born on the 17th of February, 1827, on a
farm, where her father and mother then lived, a half-dozen
miles from Hartford, to which city, when the child had
reached her sixth year, they removed, taking up their resi-
dence in a large brick mansion built in 1799 by ColonelJere-
miah Wadsworth for his daughter, and at that time the best
house in Hartford, except another just like it which he built
for his son.
It is of the life and manners in this house that she speaks
in a little sketch, faithful as a Flemish picture, in which she
narrates to a child of the family the old-fashioned Thanks-
giving doings in her grandmother's kitchen, with the green
knotty glass of its window-panes through which she watched
the pigeons and the cats, and with its immense fireplace :
" It was very wide indeed, so wide you could sit in each
corner and look up the chimney to the sky. The fire was in
the middle, and was made of big logs piled up on great iron
andirons. Over it was an iron thing called a crane, a flat,
strong bar that swung off and on, so you could put on the
ROSE TERRY COOKE.
ROSE TERRY COOKE. 179
kettles without burning your arms in the flame, and then
swing them back to their place. They were hung on hooks,
and those hooks put into short chains that had other hooks
which held them on the crane, so the pot-hooks could be put
in higher or lower, just as was needed. There was a bake-
kettle stood in one corner of the chimney, and a charcoal
furnace in the other, so that you could cook a great many
tilings at once.
" What fun we children did have at that fireplace when the
cook was good-natured. We used to tie apples to strings,
and then fasten the strings to the shelf above and see the
apples twirl and roast and drip into saucers. We used to
melt loaf-sugar into little wire-baskets tied to just such
strings, and see it drop into buttered pans, making cakes of
cleaf amber candy. We thawed frozen apples in the dish-
kettle, and roasted ears of corn by leaning them against the
andirons. We always begged the pigs' tails at 'killing-time,'
and, rolling them in brown paper, baked them in the hot
ashes. They never were good, nobody ever ate them ; but
we persisted in doing it year after year."
Then she tells us what Monday was in this great kitchen on
the week in question, and Tuesday, and Wednesday, when,
" if I was good, I was allowed to tuck myself into a corner,
and look on, and run of errands. I went for nutmegs, for
cinnamon, for pie-dishes ; for more sugar, for milk, and
spoons, and spices ; but I was more than paid if I could
only watch grandmother roll the thin crust out, lay it neatly
over the dishes, shave off the edge close, and then, after
filling it with the red, or yellow, or creamy mixture before
her in big bowls, cut strips of paste with the dough-spur, and
ornament their surfaces. What a work of skill it was to set
those pies in the oven and never spill a drop or slop the
broad edges of crust and leave a smear ! How deliciously they
smelt when they came out glazed and crisp and fit to melt in
your mouth, like the cream-tarts of Bedredden Hassan ! "
It was here that Rose learned how to become the faultless
housekeeper and accomplished cook that she is, and to prao-
180 ROSE TERRY COOKK
tise an abounding hospitality in her own house. " Now the
guests might come, and come they did, some from the river-
boat where they had spent a long dreary day ; some from
the stage that rattled and rumbled up to the door and un-
loaded there more bundles and babies than it ought to have
held. And oh, what fun it was to hear the house ring with
fresh voices ; to see our dear handsome old grandfather wel-
coming them all so heartily ; to hear fires crackle in the spare
rooms and in the drawing-room ; to see the tea-table with an
extra leaf for extra guests ; and see them all enjoy the
bread and butter, the loaf-cake, the cookies, the dried beef,
the pears and cream that nobody ever got so nice anywhere
but at grandmother's house ; and then there was the last
delight of the day, to see mother, just as I was dropping off
into sleep, standing close to the lamp to baste a bit of old
lace into the throat of my green merino dress, and pin on the
front her own little pin of rough Carolina gold.
" But the next day is Thanksgiving. Grandfather is down-
stairs early, and has a big bright fire all ready ; and there
is sweet, gentle Aunt Clara with the last baby beside her
knee, and a smile and a kiss for all of us ; there are half a
dozen cousins and five or six other aunts and uncles ; and
I get into a corner silent and shy. I love them all, but I
could not say so, possibly. So I get out of sight all I can,
swallow my breakfast and am happily at play under the table,
with paper boats and handkerchief babies, and my dearest
cousin Taf, the best boy in the world, I think, when mother
comes for me to be washed and dressed and go to church.
Taf is a big man now, and a general. He has taken forts,
and conquered rebels, and been trailed about the world from
pillar to post, and been praised in the newspapers and hon-
ored by the country; but I asked him, not long ago, if
he remembered how we played boats under the table, and he
laughed and said he did.
" I'm sorry to say I didn't like to be washed and dressed
and go to church. My nose was always rubbed up, and soap
got into my eyes, and my hair was braided in dreadfully
ROSE TERRY COOKE. 181
tight pig-tails. I wanted to stay at home, and see the big
turkey roasted in the roaster. I should have liked to baste
him through the lid behind and turn him on the spit. I
wanted to help stick cloves into the cold ham and score the
mashed potato before it was put to brown in the reflector ;
but I had to go to church for all that, in my plum-colored
pelisse and the pea-green silk hood lined with pink and edged
with squirrel fur, that was made for us out of a piece of old
Aunt Eunice's petticoat. She left two of them, one sky-blue
and one pea-green, quilted in flowers and scrolls in the most
elegant manner, and they made beautiful hoods.
"But then there was church. We sat in a square pew close
by the pulpit, and when the long prayer came I always got
up on the seat and knelt down and looked out of the window
into the graveyard. There were two tombstones under the
window, very small and brown, with a disagreeable cherub's
head on each of them, and letters to tell about Mr. Joseph
Hancox and two little sons, from New Hampshire, lying
there. I used to wonder if they liked it to be buried there,
and have burdocks grow over them. I never did like bur-
docks.
" It seemed to me very hard that we had to go to church
on a week-day. But I suppose they wanted us out of the way
at home. For when we got back there was the long table all
set out with silver, and glass, and china ; the big bunch of
celery in the middle in its sparkling glass vase ; the moulds
of crimson cranberry at the corners ; decanters of bright wine
at either end ; the ham starred with cloves at one side, and
a pair of cold tongues at the other ; little dishes of pickled
mushrooms, mangoes, and butternuts standing interspersed
about ; and on the sideboard such an array of pies, and
jellies, and nuts, and apples, and almonds, and raisins, as
might make four desserts to-day. But then people liked to
eat and drink. They had open fires and rattling windows,
and so plenty of fresh air.
"There was grandfather in his knee-breeches and queer
old-fashioned coat, with all the children clustering and clam-
182 ROSE TERRY COOKE.
bering round him ; there was grandmother, with her brown
silk dress and best cap on, ruffles of soft thread-lace about
her face and throat, the pretty young aunts dressed for the
day, and the married aunts talking to each other about their
children, and servants, and clothes, much as married aunts do
still ; and there were the uncles looking a little as if they
wished the dinner would hurry. And last of all, there was
one little table for we children always had a table to our-
selves with a set of small pies on it. And sometimes I sat
at the head, if Kate was not there, for she was older than I ;
but Quent always sat at the foot, being always there and the
oldest of us all. What fun we had ; and how hard it was 'to
say what we would have to eat, for we could not eat every-
thing. And by this time the table was loaded with turkey,
and roast ducks, and chicken pie, and stewed salsify, and
celery sauce, and gravies, besides all the cold meats ; and I
knew mother's beautiful dark eyes kept good watch over her
little daughter's plate, for fear of next day's headache, for
even then I had headaches."
This little transcript is valuable not only as giving scenes
in the childhood of Rose, but as a picture that is nowhere
else, that I am aware of, given so faithfully and vividly of the
daily life of the period it treats, for there is much of it that I
have not quoted.
How fond she is of those old places and people now long
gone, and how she loves to delay and dally with them.
" A garden full of all old-fashioned blooms lay about the
wide front door and south of the side entrance. Old pear-
trees, knotty and awkward, but veiled always in the spring
with snowy blossoms, and hung thereafter with golden fruit,
shaded a little the formal flower-beds where grew tulips,
lifting scarlet and golden cups, or creamy chalices striped
white, and pink, and purple, toward the sun ; peonies round
and flaunting ; ragged robins ; flowering almond that bloomed
like Aaron's rod with myriads of tiny roses on a straight
stick; fleur-de-lis with languid and royal banners of blue,
white, or gold ; flowering currant, its prim yellow blossoms
ROSE TERRY COOKE. 183
breathing out spice to the first spring winds ; snowdrops,
original and graceful ; hyacinths, crocuses, jonquils, nar-
cissus, dafladowndillys ; velvet and parti-colored roses, the
rich buds of Provence and moss, the lavish garlands of the
old white rose, and the delicate odorous damask. Why
should I catalogue them? Yet they all rise crowding on
my memory, and the air swims with their odors. . . . The
smooth-cheeked crisp apricots ripened against the wall ;
bell-pears, a fruit passed out of modern reach, a won-
drous compound of sugar, and wine, and fragrance,
dropped in the rank grass ; peaches that are known no more
to man, great rose-flushed globes of honey and perfume that
set the very wasps crazy, drooped the slight trees to earth
with their gracious burden ; cherries and plums strewed the
ground, and were wasted from mere profusion ; curculio was
a stranger in the land, fire-blight unknown, yellows a myth,
black-knot never tied, and the hordes of ravaging insects yet
unhatched ; there was enough for men and robins ; the land
was full of food."
How she delights to people this garden and its house with
the old figures that belonged there there is something touch-
ing in the way she lingers about them ; perhaps the figure
of the distant uncle to whose inheritance she at last owes that
comfort which makes her in a measure independent of pub-
lishers, perhaps that of the rosy, wilful, sweet, high-spirited
maiden whose " very self has come back to earth in the third
generation, romping, blooming, blue-eyed, and bewitching as
her great-grandmother, with the same wide clear eyes and
softly curving lips, the imperious frown, broad white fore-
head, and careless waving hair, that charmed the eyes of
Rochambeau and Washington, and made the gay and gallant
French officers clink their glasses for honor of little Molly
when she was set on the dining-table with dessert to drink the
general's health at a dinner-party. Sitting at her feet on a
cricket and looking up at the wrinkled face and ruffled cap
above us, it seemed more incredible than any wildest fairy
tales that she should ever have been young and beautiful ;
12
184 ROSE TERRY COOKE.
but her picture, taken in the prime of womanhood, attests
with its noble beauty all that tradition tells."
Here, too, she lingers with Mabel, the. old great-great-
grandmother, stern, self-reliant, with regular features, set
lips, and keen, cold, gray eyes. "That chill and steel," she
says, "come out here and there among her descendants, and
temper, perhaps desirably, the facile good-nature and bon-
hommie that her husband bequeathed also among us." That
husband rode, to serve his country, on some emergency, till
his legs were so swollen with the fixed position and fatigue
that it was necessary to fill his riding-boots with brandy
before they could be forced off.
It is his clothes laid up in the garret, the clothes of the old
Wadsworth of the Revolutionary era, worn at the French
court and other less regal festivities, that were wont to de-
light Rose's childish fancy.
" How goodly were those ample suits of Genoa velvet,
coats whose skirts would make a modern garment, with silver
buttons wherever buttons could be sewed ; breeches with
paste buckles at the knees, so bright in their silver setting
that my childish soul secretly cherished a hope that they
might possibly be diamonds after all ; and waistcoats of white
satin, embroidered with gold or silver, tarnished, it is true, by
time, but what use is an imagination only eight years old if
the mere tarnish of eighty years counts for anything in its
sight. These coats were wonderful to me ; how wonderful
would they not be in the streets to-day ! One was of scarlet
velvet, with a silvery frost on its pile like the down on a
peach, velvet so thick that I pricked my fingers painfully
attempting to fashion a pincushion out of a fragment thereof;
another was purple, with a plum-like bloom on its royal tint,
and another sober gray and glittering only with buttons and
buckles of cut steel. Think how a goodly and personable
man dazzled the eyes of fair ladies in those days, arrayed like
a tulip, with shining silk stockings, and low shoes all of a
sparkle with steel, or paste, or diamonds ; his shapely hands
adorned with rich lace frills, his ample bosom and muscular
ROSE TERRY COOKE. 185
throat blossoming out with equally soft and costly garni-
ture ! "
Between Rose and her mother, with the beautiful dark eyes
she spoke of, to return to herself after this glimpse at her
ancestry, there existed the most close and tender relation
in a tie of unusual intimacy. But to her father she owes
much of her love of nature, and of her varied knowledge
of its manifestations. It was he that taught her how to
study the clouds and the stars, flower and weed, and land-
scape ; it was he that taught her the names of blossoms
and the songs of birds, so that there seems to be small
sum of wildwood lore of which she is not mistress. An
apt little pupil, a child of the woods in which she lived so
much, these studies were after her own heart, she stood
once nearly an hour, as silent as a stone, to see if a big, burly
bumble-bee, buzzing and humming about, would not mistake
her for a flower and alight upon her. She can tell you where
to find the partridge's nest, the whippoorwill's eggs hidden in
dry leaves, the humming-bird's pearls ; her glance knows all
the difference between the basket-nest of -the vireo hanging
from its twig, the pensile grossbeak's swinging over the
stream, and the orchard oriole's. She distinguishes their
notes, and as if she understood their meaning; she knows
the " faint songs of blue-birds closing their spring serenades in
a more plaintive key, as if the possible accidents of hatching
and rearing assailed them now with apprehension ; " an old
acquaintance of hers is the cat-bird, "giving his gratuitous
concert from the topmost twig of an elm ; " and it is she that
describes "the distant passionately mournful lyric of the
song-sparrows, reserved for spring alone, as if a soul had
merged its life in one love, and in its deepest intensity and
most glowing fervor knew through all that the love was
wasted and the fervor vain."
All the wild-flowers and their haunts are pre-eminently hers,
too. She knows where the first of the pink moccasin-flowers
hang out their banners, in what wet spot the sweet and rare
white violets hide their fragrances, the brookside where the
186 ROSE TERRY COOKE.
cardinals gather the later heats into their hues, the forgotten
paths where the shy-fringed gentian may be found, and the field
where here and there is to be seen " a vivid fire-lily holding
its stately cup of flame right upward to the ardent sun, as if
to have it filled with splendor and overflowed with light ; "
and so true is she to their seasons, as if she felt with them
the life that pulses up through the old earth to their blossom-
ing, that if she said the wild-rose wreathed the snowdrifts of
January, I should believe that the rest of the world had
always been mistaken regarding that particular blossom.
She ought to know about roses, anyway, for none in all the
country-side bloom more beautifully than hers do in the little
plots where she is a famous gardener to-day. Perhaps it
was her mother, on the other hand, again, who taught her
the love of man and woman and child, the knowledge of
human nature which marks every word she utters, and from
whom she inherited that innermost poetry of being, the emo-
tional delicacy which gilds and illumines all her thoughts.
She was a delicate child, owing to an early illness, so severe
an illness that for a space it was thought she had really
passed away from life ; and it was possibly for that reason
that her out-door habits were encouraged. She was an
exceedingly sensitive and imaginative child, too, and her
imagination was by no means dwarfed by the servants, who
told her ghost-stories, so powerfully affecting her that years
afterward she would slip out of bed in all the dreadful,
haunted darkness, grope shivering and shuddering to the
stairs, and crouch there where she could see a glimmer of
light or hear a murmur of voices.
The most noted of these servants was Athanasius, a Greek
boy escaped from the Turkish massacre, more's the pity, one
is tempted to say, and despatched to her father as a waiter
by Bishop Wainwright. Rose was sent out to walk with him
every day, being then only three years old, and he would
regale her on the way with the most frightful recitals, threat-
ening that if she ever told her father or mother he would
murder her, a possibility which she fully believed of him.
ROSE TERRY COOKE. 187
So thoroughly had secrecy been burned into her soul by fear
that she never told of him till she was a grown woman, and
had forgotten every word of his stories ; but she never forgot,
she has said, her horror when she chanced to meet his fierce
black eyes at the table, and, thinking he might fulfil his
threat on the supposition that she had betrayed him, would
open her lips to cry out, " O Athanasius ! don't kill me ! I
haven't told ! " when the thought that such an exclamation was
truly betrayal and sudden death checked her. It is very
possibly something of her own experience of this sort that
has made her one of the most eloquent advocates of oppressed
children.
After leaving the shelter of her mother's side, Rose entered
a female seminary, under the care of Mr. John P. Brace,
who had been an instructor in the school where her mother
received her education before becoming a pupil of Mrs.
Sigourney's. The early growth of her powers, which was
marked by the fact of her knowing how to read perfectly at
the age of three, was equally perceptible in her school life,
where she wrote prize-poems, composed dramas for the young
amateurs of the school, and learned languages, all as if it were
play : some verses written then under the title of " Hearts-
ease " would have done credit to the maturer poetesses of
the preceding generation.
At sixteen she graduated ; and it was during the same year
that she united with the church, making a profession of
religion which has ever since been as vital to her as tho
atmosphere she breathed. But although of the straitest sect
herself, she has always been liberal and kindly in relation to
the views of others. To some, in her enthusiasm for beauty,
her idealism, and her sense of the consoling power of visible
nature, it would seem as if a strain of pagan blood had, after
all, a little enlarged the Puritan, if there were any possi-
bility of the pagan upon the scene. For if one recalls the
dark antecedents of that region which gave her birth, the
strength and sternness of a race springing on a soil but half
reclaimed from the primeval forest, but half redeemed from
188 ROSE TERRY COOKE.
the lurking savage, haunted by terrors of the known and of
the unknown, where thought descended straightened by the
iron cage of a strict creed, nowhere stricter, and nowhere
enduring with more unrelaxing rigor, it will be felt that so
rich and beautiful a nature as Rose Terry's was as foreign to
all that gloomy shadow of descent as a tropical blossom
would be to that belt of the eternal snows where only the
lichen grows.
But whatever her own nature and identity may be, that
descent has given her a warm and kindred sympathy with the
experiences of people who share it with her, and she derives
from it her faculty of depicting the last delicate shade and
contour of the New England country life in a manner rivalled
by no other delineator. For capital as the dialect of Mrs.
Stowe is in this field, and delicious as the "Biglow Papers "
are, I should say that they neither of them quite render that
inner piquancy and flavor which she has caught, nor altogether
evince complete perception of that strange character, soon to
be only a thing of history, with all its contrasts and colors,
its wealth and its meagreness, the depth of its sombreness,
the flashes of its drollery, the might of its uprightness, the
strength of its superstitions, with its shadows, its grotesque-
ries, and its undying pathos, all of which she sees with
keen insight and personal sympathy, humanizes with fearless
fidelity to nature and most tender humor, and brightens with
a brilliant wit.
It is not in any flattering light that she takes up this theme ;
she finds in it occasion for romance of all the darker sort, as
well as for trenchant phrase and for illimitable laughter. In
the sketch of the " West Shetucket Railway," that Hawthorne
might have written ("Crispin, rival de son maitre, un petit
chefd'ceuvre que Moliere a ouUie defaire," as Arsene Hous-
saye says), she looks on a blacker side than many of us are
quite willing to admit the existence of; but it is on this black
side that she knows how to throw the irradiation of her genius,
and, while bringing out the abrupt lights and darks, softening
all with the divine glow of pity.
ROSE TERRY COOE3J. 189
" To a person at all conversant with life in the deep country
of < New England," she says : "Life in lonely farms among its
wild mountains, or on the bare, desolate hills that roll their
sullen brown summits mile on mile through the lower tracts
of this region, there is nothing more painful than the
prevalence of crime and disease in these isolated homes.
Born to an inheritance of hard labor, labor necessary to mere
life ; fighting with that most valorous instinct of human nature,
the instinct of self-preservation, against a climate not only
rigorous but fatally changeful, a soil bitter and barren enough
to need that gold should be sewn before more than copper
can be harvested, without any excitement to stir the half
torpid brain, without any pleasure, the New England farmer
becomes in too many cases a mere creature of animal instincts
akin to the beasts that perish, hard, cruel, sensual, vindic-
tive. An habitual church-goer, perhaps ; but none the less
thoroughly irreligious. All the keener sensitiveness of his
organization blunted with over-work and under-feeding till
the finer emotions of his soul dwindle and perish for want of
means of expression, he revenges himself on his condition in
the natural way. And when you bring this same dreadful
pressure to bear on women, whose more delicate nature is
proportionately more excitable, whose hearts bleed silently to
the very last drop before their lips find utterance, when you
bring to bear on these poor weak souls, made for love and
gentleness and bright outlooks from the daily dulness of
work, the brutality, stupidness, small craft, and boorish
tyranny of husbands to whom they are tied beyond escape,
what wonder is it that a third of all the female lunatics in our
asylums are farmers' wives, and that domestic tragedies, even
beyond the scope of a sensation novel, occur daily in these
lonely houses, far beyond human help or hope ? "
It is not always from such gloomy material, however, that
she has drawn, and whenever she has used it it is to brighten
it with her inexhaustible pleasantry. " The's other folks die
and don't remember you, and you're just as bad off as if you
wa'n't a widder," comes on a funereal occasion ; a touch of
190 ROSE TERRY COOKE.
rude nature breaks upon the pathos of a scene where " the
locusts in the woods chittered as though they was fry in'," and
phrases of the vernacular, such as "chewin' of meetin'-seed,"
" the shockanum palsy," " dumb as a horned critter," and a
world of others are preserved for all time, like bugs in amber.
A multiplied value is given to these characterizations by
the circumstance that their types are fast becoming extinct.
The pious old spinster, who could give lessons in the five
points of Calvinism to the modern minister, will soon be no
more, and it is a historical study when we find her, as we do,
for instance, in the person of Miss Lavvy, uttering her shrewd
aphorisms, " Well, of all things ! if you hain't got aground on
doctrines," cries the old tailoress. " Happilony, you hear to
me, you've got common sense, and does it stand to reason
that the Lord that made you hain't got any ? ... If you've
got so't you can't understand the Lord's ways, mebbe you'd
better stop. Folks that try dippin' up the sea in a pint-cup
don't usually make it out. . . . We ain't a right to vex our-
selves about to-morrow ; to-day's all we can handle ; the
manna spiled when it was kep' over."
Immediately after graduation Rose began to teach in Hart-
ford, although she did not long remain there while thus
occupied, presently taking a situation in a Presbyterian
church school in Burlington, N. J. In the fourth year there
she became a governess in the family of the clergyman ; but
after a while, feeling the need there was of her at home, she
returned to Hartford and began her more precisely literary life.
Her first story, written for " Graham's Magazine," at the
age of eighteen, encouraged her; but her dream was that of
developing her powers of poetry. Sympathy with those
whom she met and knew from day to day, a quick and keen
eye for the ridiculous, a heart touched with pity, and the
natural faculty of the raconteur, diverted her in some mea-
sure into the stories of New England life of which I have
spoken ; but the fluttering aspiration of her nature, at home
in lofty regions, lifted her on wings of song ; and every one
of her stories that deals with human nature in other than
ROSE TERRY COOKE. 191
its rustic New England aspects is as much a poem as if
written in measure with rhyme and rhythm.
Her first verses were printed in the New York " Tribune,"
and nothing better shows the tenderness of the tie between
her and her mother, and the inherent modesty of her
nature, than the fact of her using her mother's initials for a
pseudonym, and hiding her own authorship altogether. Mr.
Charles A. Dana, then editorially connected with the " Tri-
bune," was her very good friend in this matter, and she has
always cherished for him a grateful attachment. Those who
befriend us in these trying if glowing days of our first en-
deavor, become in some degree a part of the ideal we
pursue, and never lose the light then shed about them, and
this was her case in relation also to many others who watched
the opening of her genius with interest and sympathy. Rose
Terry is the most loyal of friends where she has given
her affection ; her fidelity is as stanch as her choice is dis-
criminating, and her enthusiasm once kindled knows no
bounds, since in its cause there is nothing she would not sac-
rifice except her soul. Possibly she would be as good a
hater as lover should occasion rise, for indifference is impos-
sible to her, and all her emotions are strong ones.
Such a spirit, sensitive to all the phenomena of the material
and immaterial universe, is the animate essence of poetry ;
and it is no wonder that as week by week her verses appeared
they touched a wider and wider circle, till inquiry rose as to
their origin, and it was at last demanded that they should be
gathered into a volume where their lovers could have them
more nearly at hand. Between the lines of this little volume
much of the author's experience and personality can be read by
one in search of it. A passionate love of beauty pervades it,
a stinging scorn of the ignoble. Every here and there a
delicate sadness breaks through its reserves :
" My life is like a song
That a bird sings in its sleeping,
Or a hidden stream that flows along
To the sound of its own soft weeping."
192 ROSE TERRY COOKE.
And again we have it in the " New Moon," in M Implora Pace,''
and in the " Fishing Song " heard over the wide gray river :
" And the ways of God are darkness,
His judgment waiteth long,
He breaks the heart of a woman
With a fisherman's careless song."
It is a sadness, nevertheless, that once in a while rises to an
impersonal height, as in the strength of the lines :
"Hast thou no more enduring date
Than out of one despair to die?"
Or yet again,
" God sees from the high blue heaven,
He sees the grape in the flower ;
He hears one's life-blood dripping
Through the maddest, merriest hour ;
He knows what sack-cloth and ashes hide in the purple
of power ! "
Here, too, in such fiery verses as " Samson Agonistes,"
"Fremont's Ride," and "After the Camanches," may be seen
the writer's patriotism, her politics, and her lively interest in
the questions of the day ; her religious feeling is found in the
" Bell Songs " and in " Prayer," to speak of no others ; and
her sympathy with the human heart in " At Last," and in
"The Two Villages," a thing that has been printed and
reprinted, carried in work-baskets and pocket-books, and
everybody's heart. There is a tremendous vigor and vivid
picturesqueness in her poems of " Semele " and "The Suttee,"
weird and wonderful phases of passion, and in "Doubt," a
poem without a peer, in its own order, unless it be Emer-
son's " Brahma ; " while " Basile Renaud " is a ballad that in
dramatic fire, spirit, and beauty is worthy of the first poet
of the age. Meantime, "In The Hospital," "Done For,"
and "Lost on the Prairie," were the pioneers of the Border
ballad, originated the idea and gave the motive to all of that
nature that have ever followed.
ROSE TERRY COOKE. 193
There are few poets who have the power of presenting a
scene so that its very atmosphere is felt ; but Rose Terry
always does ; here the spell of cool odors and dews and
rustling leaves are had, where
" Far through the hills some falling river grieves,
All earth is stilled
Save where a dreaming bird with sudden song is thrilled ; "
And there the sense of the forest distils about us as
" The thick leaves that scent the tremulous air
Let the bright sunshine pass with softened light,
And lips unwonted breathe instinctive prayer
In these cool arches filled with verdurous night."
None of her poems are more spiritually or suggestively lovely
than that with the title of " Trailing Arbutus," which seems
to bear about it the fragrance of the flower itself.
" Were your pure lips fashioned
Out of air and dew,
Starlight unimpassioned,
Dawn's most tender hue,
And scented by the woods that gathered sweets for you ?
" Were not mortal sorrow
An immortal shade,
Then would I to-morrow
Such a flower be made,
And live in the dear woods where my lost childhood played."
Through all these pages a sweet, keen, delicate music throbs
and sings itself. I remember when I first read them how
it haunted me, a beautiful ghost that would not down, and
after twenty-five years they are still singing their tunes in my
brain.
Of late years other work has in too great measure super-
seded the delight of singing, although a long poem was written
to be read at the celebration of the anniversary of the Groton
194 ROSE TERRY COOKE.
Massacre, the selection of her name as that of the poet of the
day, showing the pride and appreciation in which her native
State holds her ; and later she gave the young girls of the
graduating class of Smith College " The Flower Sower," as
full of freshness and purity as the spring morning is of sun-
shine and dew.
Ten years after writing her first story, "The Mormon's
Wife," of which we have already spoken, was published, and
after that time Rose became a constant contributor to " Put-
nam's Monthly" till it ceased, to "Harper's," the "Atlantic,"
and other periodicals as they rose, receiving the best pay
given, although the best may be said to be inadequate for
such work. If many of these stories are not poems, as I
have said, it is simply in form. What fine unison with
nature breathes through them, what feeling for the ineffable
experiences of which all are conscious but which most are
powerless to reduce to words, how rich and varied is the
diction, and how sonorous the phrasing ! What sentences are
such as this : " The music lived alone in upper air ; of men
and dancing it was all unaware ; the involved cadences rolled
away over the lawn, shook the dew-dropped roses on their
stems, and went upward in the boundless moonlight to its
home." And who, with brush and pigment, can paint a pic-
ture more actually and perfectly than this : " From the front
door-step, a great slab of hewn granite, you looked south-
ward down a little green valley, striking a range of wooded
hills, and on the other hand a bright chain of lakelets
threaded on a rippled river. To the right, as you faced this
lovely outlet, a mountain lifted its great green shoulders and
barren summit high in air ; and, to the left, a lake slept in
the bosom of just such lofty hills, wooded to the water's
edge, and so reflexed and repeated in that tranquil mirror
that its shifting dyes of golden verdure mimicked the
peacock's beauteous throat, and changed, faded, brightened,
grew dark, or gold, or gray, with every wandering cloud, each
sun-kiss from the sunnier heaven, all flying showers or
ruffling winds; while, to the north, mountain overlapping
ROSE TERRY COOKE. 195
mountain, painted by the deepening distance with darkest
green, solemn purple, or aerial blue, and hiding in their giant
breasts the road that threaded those secret abysses, daunted
and defied the gazer with a mystery of grand beauty that
might make a poet hopeless and a painter despair."
Although stories as forcible as "Freedom Wheeler's
Controversy," full at once of a terrible pathos and a grim
humor, have since come from her pen, nothing that she has
ever written has exceeded the absolute beauty of " Metempsy-
chosis," published twenty years or more ago, and of which I
subjoin a portion :
" I drew the long skirt of my lace-dress up over my hair,
and quietly went into the greenhouse. The lawn and its
black firs tempted me, but there was moonlight on the lawn,
and moonlight I cannot bear ; it burns my head more fiercely
than any noon sun ; it scorches my eyelids ; it exhausts and
fevers me ; it excites my brain, and now I looked for calm.
This the odor of the flowers and their pure expression
promised me. A tall, thick-leaved camellia stood half-way
down the border, and before it was a garden-chair. The
moonlight shed no ray there, but through the sashes above
streamed cool and fair over the blooms that clung to the wall
and adorned the parterres and vases ; for this house was set
after a fashion of my own, a winter-garden under glass ; no
stages filled the centre. It was laid out with no stiff rule,
but here and there in urns of stone, or in pyramidal stands,
gorgeous or fragrant plants ran at their own wild will, while
over all the wall and along the woodwork of the roof trailed
passion-flowers, roses, honeysuckles, fragrant clematis, ivy,
and those tropic vines whose long dead names belie their
fervid luxuriance and fantastic growth ; great trees of lemon
and orange interspaced the vines in shallow niches of their
own, and the languid drooping tresses of a golden acacia
flung themselves over and across the deep glittering mass of
a broad-leaved myrtle.
" As I sat down on the chair, Pan reared his dusky length
from his mat and came for a recognition. It was wont to be
196 ROSE TERRY COOKE.
something more positive than caresses ; but to-night neither
sweet biscuit nor savory bit of confectionery appeared in the
hand that welcomed him ; yet he was as loving as ever, and,
with a grim sense of protection, flung himself at my feet,
drew a long breath, and slept. I dared not yet think ; I
rested my head against the chair, and breathed in the odor of
flowers ; the delicate scent of tea-roses ; the southern per-
fume, fiery and sweet, like Greek wine, of profuse heliotropes,
a perfume that gives you thirst, and longing, and regret.
I turned my head towards the orange-trees ; southern, also,
but sensuous and tropic was the breath of those thick white
stars, a tasted odor. Not so the cool air that came to me
from a diamond-shaped bed of Parma violets, kept back so
long from bloom that I might have a succession of them ;
these were the last, and their perfume told it, for it was at
once a caress and a sigh. I breathed the gale of sweetness
till every nerve rested and every pulse was tranquil as the air
without.
" I heard a little stir. I looked up. A stately calla, that
reared one marble cup from its gracious, cool leaves, was
bending earthward with a slow and voluntary motion ; from
the cup glided a fair woman's shape ; snowy, sandalled
feet shone from under the long robe ; hair of crisped
gold crowned the Greek features. It was Hypatia. A
little shiver crept through a white tea-rose beside the calla ;
its delicate leaves fluttered to the ground ; a slight figure,
a sweet sad face with melancholy blue eyes and fair brown
hair, parted the petals. La Valliere ! She gazed in my
eyes.
'Poor little child!' said she. 'Have you a treatise
against love, Hypatia?'
" The Greek of Egypt smiled and looked at me also. ' I
have discovered that the steps of the gods are upon wool/
answered she ; ' if love had a beginnning to sight should not
we also foresee its end?'
ff 'And when one foresees the end, one. dies/ murmured La
Valliere.
ROSE TERRY COOKE. 197
" 'Bah ! ' exclaimed Marguerite of Valois, from the heart of
a rose-red camellia ; ' not at all, my dear ; one gets a new
lover ! '
" ' Or the new lover gets you,' said a dulcet tone, tipped
with satire, from the red lips of Mary of Scotland, lips
that were just now the petals of a crimson carnation.
"' Philosophy hath a less troubled sea whereon to ride than
the stormy fluctuance of mortal passion ; Plato is diviner than
Ovid/ said a Puritanic, piping voice from a coif that was
fashioned of the white camellia-blooms behind my chair, and
circled the prim beauty of Lady Jane Grey.
"'Are you a woman, or one of the Sphinx's children?'
said a stormy, thrilling, imperious accent, from the wild
purple and scarlet flower of the Strelitzia, that gradually
shaped itself into gorgeous oriental robes, rolled in waves of
splendor from the lithe waist and slender arms of a dark
woman, no more young, sallow, thin, but more graceful
than any bending bough of the desert acacia, and with eyes
like midnight, deep, glowing, flashing, melting into dew, as
she looked at the sedate lady of England.
" ' You do not know love ! ' resumed she. f It is one
draught, a jewel fused in nectar; drink the pearl and
bring the asp ! '
" Her words brought beauty ; the sallow face burned with
living scarlet on lip and cheek ; the tiny pearl-grains of teeth
flashed across the swarth shade above her curving, passionate
mouth ; the wide nostril expanded ; the great eyes flamed
under her low brow and ;litterinf coils of black hair.
o o
f * Poor Octavia ! ' whispered La Valliere. Lady Jane Grey
took up her breviary, and read.
" ' After all, you died ! ' said Hypatia.
r ' I lived ! ' retorted Cleopatra.
' ' Lived and loved,' said a dreamy tone from the hundred
leaves of a spotless La Marque rose ; and the steady ' unhast-
ing, unresting' soul of Thekla looked out from that centreless
flower, in true German guise of brown, braided tresses, deep
blue eyes like forget-me-nots, sedate lips, and a straight nose.
198 ROSE TERRY COOKE.
'"I have lived, and loved, and cut bread and butter/
solemnly pronounced a mountain-daisy, assuming the broad
features of a fraulein.
" Cleopatra used an Egyptian oath. Lady Jane Grey put
down her breviary and took up Plato. Marguerite of Valois
laughed outright. Hypatia put a green leaf over Charlotte,
with the air of a high-priestess, and extinguished her.
: < Who does not love cannot lose,' mused La Valliere.
' Who does not love neither has nor gains,' said Hypatia.
* The dilemma hath two sides, and both gain and loss are pro-
blematic. It is the ideal of love that enthralls us, not the real.'
' Hush, you white-faced Greek ! It was not an ideal ; it
was Marc Antony. By Isis ! does a dream fight and swear
and kiss?'
' The Navarrese did ; and France dreamed he was my
master, not I ! ' laughed Marguerite.
f This is most weak stuff for goodly and noble women to
foster,' grimly uttered a flame-colored hawk's-bill tulip, that
directly assumed a ruff and an aquiline nose.
" Mary of Scotland passed her hand about her fair throat.
* Where is Leicester's ring?' said she.
'* The Queen did not hear, but went on. ' Truly, you
make as if it was the intent of w r omen' to be trodden under
foot of men. She that ruleth herself shall rule both princes
and nobles, I wot. Yet I had done well to marry. Love
or no love, I would the House of Hanover had waged war
with one of mine own blood ; I hate those fair, fat Guelphs ! '
' * Love hath sometimes the thorn alone, the rose being
blasted in bud,' uttered a sweet and sonorous voice, with a
little nasal accent, out of the myrtle-boughs that starred with
bloom her hair, and swept the hem of her green dress.
' Sweet soul, was thou not, then, sated upon sonnets?'
said Mary of Scotland, in a stage aside.
' Do not the laurels overgrow the thorn?' said La
o
Valliere, with a wistful, inquiring smile.
" Laura looked away. * They are very green at Avignon,'
said she.
ROSE TERRY COOKE. 199
" Out of two primroses, side by side, Stella and Vanessa
put forth pale and anxious faces, with eyes tear-dimmed.
"'Love does not feed on laurels,' said Stella; 'they are
fruitless/
' That the clergy should be celibate is mine own desire,'
broke in Queen Elizabeth. ' Shall every curly fool's pate of
a girl be turning after an anointed bishop? I will have this
thing ended, certes ! and that with speed.'
r? Vanessa was too deep in a brown study to hear. Pres-
ently she spoke. f I believe that love is best founded on a
degree of respect and veneration, which it is decent in youth
to render unto age and learning.'
' Cielf muttered Marguerite. 'Is it, then, that in this
miserable England one cherishes a grand passion for one's
grandfather ? '
" The heliotrope clusters melted into a face of plastic con-
tour, rich, full lips, soft, interfused outlines, intense, purple
eyes, and heavy, waving hair, dark indeed, but harmonizing
curiously with the narrow gold fillet that bound it. ' It is no
pain to die for love,' said the low, deep voice with an echo
of rolling gerunds in the tone.'
' That depends on how sharp the dagger is,' returned
Mary of Scotland. ' If the axe had been dull '
" From the heart of a red rose Juliet looked out ; the
golden centre crowned her head with yellow tresses ; her
tender hazel eyes were calm with intact passion ; her mouth
was scarlet with fresh kisses, and full of consciousness and
repose. ' Harder it is to live for love,' said she ; ' hardest of
all to have ever lived without it.'
f ' How much do you all help the matter? ' said a practical
Yankee voice from a pink hollyhock. ' If the infinite rela-
tions of life assert themselves in marriage, and the infinite
" I " merges its individuality in the personality of another, the
superincumbent need of a passional relation passes without
question. What the soul of the seeker asks for itself and the
universe is, whether the ultimate principle of existent life is
passional or philosophic ? '
13
200 ROSE TERRY COOKE.
"'Your dialectic is wanting in purity of expression,'
calmly said Hypatia ; ' the tongue of Olympus suits gods and
their ministers only.'
"'Plato hath no question of the matter in hand,' observed
Lady Jane Grey, with a tone of finishing the subject.
"'I know nothing of your questions and philosophies,'
scornfully stormed Cleopatra. ' Fire seeks fire, and clay
clay. Isis send me Antony, and every philosopher in
Alexandria may go drown in the Nile ! Shall I blind my
eyes with scrolls of papyrus when there is a goodly Roman
to be looked upon?'
" From the deep blue petals of a double English violet
came a delicate face, pale, serene, sad, but exceeding ten-
der. 'Love liveth when the lover dies,' said Lady Rachel
Russell. ' I have well loved my lord in the prison ; shall
I cease to affect him when he is become one of the court
above ? '
' You are cautious of speech, Mesdames,' carelessly spoke
Marguerite. ' Women are the fools of men ; you all know it.
Every one of you has carried cap and bell.'
" They all turned towards the hawk's-bill tulip ; it was not
there.
r ' Gone to Kenil worth,' demurely sneered Mary of Scot-
land.
"A pond-lily, floating in a tiny tank, opened its clasped
petals ; and with one bare pearly foot upon the green island
of leaves, and the other touching the edge of the marble
basin, clothed with a rippling, lustrous, golden garment of
hair, that rolled down in glittering masses to her slight
ankles, and half hid the wide, innocent blue eyes and infantile,
smiling lips, Eve said, ' I was made for Adam,' and slipped
silently again into the closing flower.
' But we have changed all that!' answered Marguerite,
tossing her jewel-clasped curls.
' They whom the saints call upon to do battle for king
and country have their nature after the manner of their
deeds,' came a clear voice from the fleur-de-lis that clothed
ROSE TERRY COOKE. 201
itself in armor, and flashed from under a helmet the keen
dark eyes and firm beardless lips of a woman.
' There have been cloistered nuns,' timidly breathed La
Valliere.
' There is a monk's hood in that parterre without,' said
Marguerite.
" The white clematis shivered. It was a veiled shape in
long robes that hid face and figure, who clung to the wall
and whispered ' Paraclete I '
" ' There are tales of saints in my breviary,' soliloquized
Mary of Scotland ; and in the streaming moonlight, as she
spoke, a faint outline gathered, lips and eyes of solemn peace,
a crown of blood-red roses pressing thorns into the wan tem-
ples that dripped sanguine streams, and in the halo above the
wreath, a legend partially obscured, that ran, ' Utque tails
Rosa nulli alteri plantce adhcereret.'
" 'But the girl there is no saint; I think, rather, she is of
mine own land,' said a purple passion-flower that hid itself
under a black mantilla, and glowed with dark beauty. The
Spanish face bent over me with ardent eyes and lips of sym-
pathetic passion, and murmured, ' Do not fear ! Pedro was
faithful unto and after death ; there are some men '
" Pan growled. I rubbed my eyes. Where was I?" . . .
The oftener I read this story, in which history, poetry, the
dramatic, and the natural, blend so many charms, the more
irresistible I find its spell, and sometimes I hesitate to ac-
knowledge that, in its own vein, the passage I have quoted
has its superior. To me Rose Terry Cooke is the queen of
all living story-tellers ; in the power of wringing tears and
forcing laughter I do not know her superior, and Ludvig
Tieck and Edgar Poe are alone her equals.
The writing of , stories and poems has been, after all, but
an outside matter with her, a sort of ring of Saturn. The real
business of her life has gone on within its circle, a life largely
given to others, crowded with domestic interests and occupa-
tions, in which she has proved, to quote a couplet of her own,,
that
202 ROSE TERRY COOKE.
" Daily, hourly, loving and giving
In the poorest life makes heavenly living ; "
a life little of which belongs to the public, and whose tenor
until her marriage was varied only by a journey to Can-
ada, or the West, or the White Mountains, by the publi-
cation of her " Poems," and a marvellously sweet and simple
book for Sunday-school children called " Happy Dodd," and
later by a volume of collected stories, by no means her
best.
When Rose was about twenty-nine her idolized sister
Alice, younger than herself by nearly five years, married ;
and in the delicate state of this sister's health her two chil-
dren became the care and delight of Rose. Much as these
children may owe to her, it is to them chiefly that Rose owes
her delicate and innermost 1 sympathy with children, the know-
ledge of their pretty patois, and of their needs and natures ;
and for years they made all the happiness she had. Great
griefs came to her, the death of her mother, the long illness
and death of her sister ; but the love of the children has
remained a precious possession.
It would be no brief or light thing to tell the story of all
that Rose Terry Cooke is in a home, among the poor, in the
life of a neighborhood, or beside a sick-bed. Her sister used
to say that she thought of everything like a woman and did
everything like a man. There was never any limit to her
self-devotion, and there is none to-day ; she is a prodigal of
her time, her work, her thought, her money, and herself.
Hardly less is to be expected of so generous and enthusiastic
a spirit ; for enthusiasm is itself a self-forgetting.
I recall an instance of this enthusiasm, when she was a
good deal younger than she is now. She happened to attend
Plymouth Church one morning when the pastor brought upon
the platform a little colored child who was to be returned to
slavery unless a certain sum of money could be paid for her
at once, Mr. Beecher undertaking to raise that money in his
church .and s&t the child free. As he told the story of her
ROSE TERRY COOKE. 203
little life and wrongs, in his inimitable manner, every heart
was harrowed, none more so than that of Rose, who was half
wild with excitement, wrought to a fever of pity and horrcr ;
and every purse flew open, and Rose had no purse about her.
But on her hand, a white and tiny hand, was a ring she valued,
a ring with a single fine opal in its setting, if it had been
the Orloff diamond it would have made no difference, it was
all she had when the box came round, and she took it off and
dropped it in. It chanced that the ring exactly fitted one of
the fingers of the little brown hand, and Mr. Beecher gave it
to the child in token of her freedom and her friends, as the
money raised was amply sufficient to purchase her safety ;
and presently advertising for information concerning the
giver of the ring, he christened the child into the new life
with the name of Rose. If the reader should ever see a
painting by Eastman Johnson, called the " Freedom Ring,"
where a child sits on a tiger-skin and looks curiously and
gladly at a jewel on her hand, it is this incident which it
commemorates.
It is such hearty consonance and accord, such quick re-
sponse, aided perhaps by the pungent wit which is born of
common sense at its highest development, that makes Rose
Terry constantly the recipient of all manner of sympathetic
confidences, both from people whom she knows and those whom
she never met before, but who seek her, certain of receiving
comfort, and repose in her the sad and sacred secrets of their
lives. People, too, turn up, thinking that this or that passage
of her writing is about themselves, so true a chord does she
strike with her touch that knows the sore spots of the human
heart.
Possibly no odder experience ever befell any one than she
has encountered in the simulation and personation of herself
by various individuals for reasons best known to themselves.
The first of these appeared in a Pennsylvania town, in the
shape of a woman who claimed there that she had written
everything ever published under Rose Terry's name, that the
name was a nom de plume any way, the name of a little cousin
204 ROSE TERRY COOKE.
of hers who died young, her uncle, the child's father, allow-
ing her to use it.
This interesting person aroused a wild religious excitement
among the young people of the place, fell into hysteric
trances on hearing sacred music, and made herself generally
adored and followed. As irritating a fact as any in the mat-
ter may have been her statement that she had received eighty
thousand dollars from these writings of hers, and had used it
all in educating poor girls ! After a time Mrs. Stowe re-
ceived a note from the lady with whom this pretender
boarded, which ran,
" DEAR MADAM, I call upon you to silence the base reports
spread about here concerning a lovely Christian woman at pres-
ent staying with me. A line from you, stating that she is the
author of the works written under the signature of Rose Terry,
will stop the rumors at once, and much oblige yours truly."
Mrs. Stowe immediately responded that she had known
Rose Terry from her birth, and that she was then, and had
been for many years, living in Hartford, and the other person
was necessarily an impostor.
Years afterward this gay deceiver came to Rose's native
place, established herself there as one of the leaders in re-
ligious and charitable matters, told some one that she had
written much under Rose's name, told some one else that she
had eighteen hundred dollars a year from the " Atlantic
Monthly," and marked several of the best poems in a religious
collection as her own, the publisher positively denying her
statement when asked about it. This peculiar individual still
holds a trusted position in a city charity, and lives in a
wealthy family as guide, philosopher, and friend, although
the truth has been told to her clientele, who persist in regard-
ing her as a persecuted saint.
The next counterfeit of her identity was in the person of a
lady on a railroad train, who made acquaintance with the
sister of a friend of Rose's, the sister never happening to have
seen Rose ; she informed her that she was Rose Terry, that she
ROSE TERRY COOKE. 205
was going abroad to write a book, and various other items of
her literary affairs, of which Rose herself is never in the habit
of speaking to casual acquaintances, having, as she says, an
old-fashioned predilection for thepassSe grace of modesty.
Number three of these replicas was not so bad as might be,
as she simply offered her services in a New York Sunday
school, and having registered this name of her fancy, never
appeared.
Number four, however, very soon replaced her, making
her avatar at a hotel in New York and confiding the fact of
the authorship of certain sentimental, romantic, and humorous
stories and verses to a Southern lady who presently betrayed
her.
But number five carried things to a pretty pass ; meeting
an acquaintance of Rose's in the cars on the way from Hart-
ford, she naturally enough inquired if she lived there, and then
if she knew Rose, and thereat proceeded to give quite a cir-
cumstantial account of her own intimacy with the object of
her remark. On reaching New York, she |^ft the train at the
upper station, and the pocketbook of Rose's Hartford ac-
quaintance left with her.
As curious as anything done in the counterfeiting way by
these worthies is the fact that it was Rose whom they dared to
make the subject of their deceits and lies, for in the fires of
her indignant scorn and anger a lie is something that should
shrivel, it could not live in her presence. Honest herself,
with an unflinching integrity, she has small mercy on mean-
nesses and falsehood, although, tender-hearted to a fault,
she is full of forgiveness for the repentant.
Rose is one of the most emotional of people. Music flatters
her to tears, as it did the "aged man and poor" of St. Agnes'
Eve ; she loses herself, like a child, at the play ; and she
outstrips justice in the generosity of her judgments on her
literary contemporaries, some of whom owe her a debt of
inspiration not to be repaid. She is an easy and rapid writer,
a child of nature, owing little to art, writing on her knee and
seldom copying, in a compact and regular script that tells of
206 EOSE TERRY COOKE.
an even pulse ; submitting to interruption, and never shutting
herself up from her household duties for the sake of her pen.
She is an amazing mimic, a delightful talker, having an im-
mense memory with stores of learning, and being the wittiest
woman I have ever met ; alive to the tips of her fingers, she
takes the keenest interest in everything and everybody about
her. Tall and shapely, dressing richly, she is still very
attractive in person ; in her youth, with her Spanish color, her
great soft dark eyes, her thick and long black hair, and the
sweetness and vivacity of her expression, she is said to have
been singularly beautiful. I have a picture of her, taken as
a Quakeress, the relic of some fancy fair where all were in
costume, that is lovely enough for a Madonna.
On the 16th of April, 1873, a great change came into
Rose Terry's life, a change that lifted its daily round into the
ideal. She became then the wife of Mr. Rollin H. Cooke, an
iron manufacturer of Litchfield County, Connecticut ; and
she went to live with him, after the death of her father, at
Winsted, a little mountain town full of gorges and boulders,
and forest trees, the tumbling foam of brooks and the whir-
ring wheels of manufactures, which she has described in a
number of ff Harper's Monthly," and where she occupies a
large old-fashioned house, once a colonial mansion, standing
under the shadow of great trees, with a rocky ledge in front
lifting its black edge against the sunset. Her life has been
ideal ; for there is an entire sympathy of taste, and feeling,
and opinion, and enjoyment between the husband and wife ;
they are completely complementary to each other; and a
more intimate union could hardly be imagined ; a union at
which all who know them, who love and honor them, who
realize the tenderness of her nature and the nobility of his,
rejoice with a full heart, and which has given them ten years
of almost perfect happiness. Out of this late happiness, with
life, and strength, and health, what lovelier work than ever
before may yet blossom from Rose Terry Cooke's hands !
CHAPTER IX.
CHAELOTTE CUSHMAN.
BY LILIAN WHITING.
Charlotte Cushman's Childhood Her Keinarkable Imitative Faculty First
Appearance on the Stage A Scanty Stage Wardrobe A Friend in Need
An Amusing Experience The Struggle for Fame Macready's
Sympathy and Influence First Visit to Europe "Waiting in the
Shadow" Debut in London A Brilliant Triumph Her Ability
Recognized at Last in her Native Land Glimpse of her Life in Rome
Unfaltering Patriotism Her Munificent Gift to the Sanitary Commission
The Culmination of her Power A Notable Dramatic Triumph Her
Farewell to the Stage Address of William Cullen Bryant Miss Cush-
man's Response Her Illness, Death, and Last Resting-Place.
After my death I wish no other herald,
No other speaker of my living actions,
To keep mine honor from corruption
Than such an honest chronicler as Griffith.
Queen Katherine.
N attempting any interpretation of the artist, it is
in the inner life that we must seek the clue.
Thoughts are his events, and creations are his
only real achievements. Genius controls its
possessor, and life becomes a journey under
sealed orders, advancing less by development
than by crises of surprises and revelations.
The proverbial unrest of genius is the result of
this law.
That divine fruition of creative power which we call Art
is the result of intricate elements. Into its forces enter in-
herited instincts, the rude powers of material necessity, and
those invisible but potent tides of spiritual life. Yet back
of these, and defying all analysis, is always the elusive force,
the element of the unknown. In studying the life of Miss
Cushman, this great fact of the elusive force that defies
analysis emphasizes itself to us. In vain we seek its source
in her parentage or in the external circumstances of her life.
207
208 CHAKLOTTE CUSHMAN.
Charlotte Saunders Cushman was born in Richmond street,
in Boston, July 23, 1816. She died at the Parker House,
in Boston, February 18, 1876, in the nation's centennial year.
In the sixty years between these dates a wonderful life was
lived. A girl born into humble and primitive conditions
goes forth and conquers a world.
She was the daughter of Elkanah and Mary Eliza (Babbit)
Cushman. Her father was born in Plymouth. Left an
orphan at the age of thirteen, he w r alked to Boston in search
of employment and began the conscious struggle of life. He
established himself in business as a merchant on Long Wharf,
but when Charlotte was thirteen years of age he met with
such reverses as impelled her, child as she was, to consider
how she could rely on herself. Hereditary instincts were
strong forces within her. For generations back, on the part
of both parents, her ancestors had been exceptional for in-
dustry, energy, and piety.
It is believed that Robert Cushman, the founder of the
family in America, born about 1580, preached the first ser-
mon in New England, and it was he to whom Governor Brad-
ford alludes as "the right hand of the Adventurers, who for
divers years has managed all our business with them to our
great advantage." Elkanah Cushman, the father of Char-
lotte, was the seventh generation in descent from Robert
Cushman, and the fifth bearing the name of Elkanah. The
Babbit family, too, were honorably known. The maternal
grandfather and great-grandfather of Charlotte Cushman were
graduates of Harvard University. Her grandmother Babbit
(born Mary Saunders) was gifted with a remarkable degree
of the imitative faculty, and this gift Charlotte inherited to an
extent that made her, as a child, un enfant terrible, and
which in later years imparted an added vitality to her dra-
matic power.
Of her childhood Miss Cushman herself said : " Imitation
was a prevailing trait with me. On one occasion, when
Henry Ware, pastor of the old Boston Meeting-House, was
taking tea with my mother, he sat at table talking, with his
Illlt
CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN.
CHARLOTTE CUSHMAtf. 211
chin resting in his two hands, and his elbows on the table. I
was suddenly startled by my mother exclaiming, ' Charlotte,
take your elbows off the table and your chin out of your
hands ; it is not a pretty position for a young lady ! ' I was
sitting in exact imitation of the parson, even assuming the
expression of his face."
In early youth Charlotte's special gift appeared to be
music. She received in it careful cultivation. She sang in
church choirs, and a few years later, about 1834-35, when
Mrs. Wood came first to sing in Boston, and inquiries being
made for a contralto singer to support her, Miss Cushman was
recommended. The result of a trial was satisfactory, and
both Mr. and Mrs. Wood assured her that she had a fortune
in her voice if properly cultivated for the lyric stage. She
became a pupil of James G. Maeder, and under his instruc-
tion made her first appearance in the role of Countess Alma-
viva, in the " Marriage of Figaro," at the Tremont Theatre,
Following this she went to New Orleans and sang, when,
almost without warning, her voice failed. This marked the
second of those distinct crises which one traces in studying
critically the life of this remarkable woman, and which sug-
gest the changes to which Emerson refers as those that break
up the currents of life, but which are advertisements of a
nature where law is growth.
To Charlotte Cushman each of these successive crises of
life came as the stepping-stone to larger experiences, till of
them she might well have said :
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul !
As the swift seasons roll;
Leave thy low vaulted past,
Let each new temple, statelier than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown cell by life's unresting sea.
But it was reserved for the insight that results from
experience to enter into the profound truth of these lines.
212 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN.
The girl's eagerness and tremulous anticipation had not then
deepened to the woman's endurance and the conviction of
personal power. She was left stranded as it were by a
seeming misfortune, which is often only fortune in disguise.
So it proved to Charlotte Cushman. Her dramatic ten-
dencies and latent possibilities had revealed themselves to
others, and she was asked to essay the rdle of Lady Mac-
beth to the Macbeth of Mr. Caldwell in the principal theatre
of New Orleans. With characteristic inspiration she seized
the opportunity. "So enraptured was I with the idea of
acting this part, and so fearful of anything preventing me,"
she wrote of it later, "that I did not tell the manager I had
no dresses until it was too late for me to be prevented from
acting it ; and the day before the performance after rehearsal
I told him. He immediately sat down and wrote a note of
introduction for me to the tragedienne of the French Theatre.
This note was to ask her to help me to costumes for the
role of Lady Macbeth. I was a tall, thin, lanky girl at that
time, about five feet six inches in height. The French-
woman, Madame Closel, was a short, fat person of not more
than four feet ten inches, her waist full twice the size of
mine, with a very large bust ; but her shape did not prevent
her being a very great actress. The ludicrousness of her
clothes being made to fit me struck her at once. She roared
with laughter ; but she was very good-natured, and by dint
of piecing out the skirt of one dress it was made to answer
for an underskirt, and another dress was taken in in every
direction to do duty as an overdress, and so make up the
costume. And thus I essayed for the first time the part of
Lady Macbeth, fortunately to the satisfaction of the audience,
the manager, and all the members of the company."
Here Charlotte Cushman struck the keynote of her life,
and although it was appointed for her to sound the whole
scale of difficulty, and denial, and defeat; of aspiration,
and triumph, and inspiration, yet here as an untried girl she
touched the supreme possibilities -of her artistic life. From
it her path was to lead away in many labyrinthine turnings
CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 213
till she might well have questioned whether she would ever
come to her own. Unseen faces were to break up all the old
relations of her life, to force her out under new skies and to
experiences prefigured in her dreams and awaiting her in
actual guise.
At the close of the New Orleans season she embarked in a
sailing-vessel for New York. Mr. Simpson, manager of the
Park Theatre, offered her a trial, but in a part that seemed
to her, coming fresh from her New Orleans triumph in Lady
Macbeth, too insignificant. Finally she accepted an offer
from the Bowery Theatre, where she entered into a three
years' engagement at a salary of twenty-five dollars per
week, to increase ten dollars a week each year. She was to
appear in Lady Macbeth, Jane Shore, Mrs. Holler, and
other characters. She had no wardrobe, and this the man-
ager offered to procure, deducting five dollars per week from
her salary to meet the expenses. Miss Cushman at once
induced her mother to leave the boarding-house she was
keeping in Boston, and join her with two of her brothers in
New York. For her elder brother she procured a situation
in a store, putting the younger at school. So the little
household in New York was established and supposed to be
on a firm foundation for three years.
The week before her engagement at the theatre was to begin
she was seized with rheumatic fever ; recovering after three
weeks, she went upon the stage, and at the end of that week
the theatre was burned, with all her wardrobe, all her debt on
it, and her three years' contract ending, she said, in smoke.
Then followed a brief engagement at Albany, which was a
triumphant success, and where, as Miss Cushman laughingly
narrated, more members of both houses of the General
Assembly could be found at her benefit than at the Capitol.
Following this came an engagement at the Park Theatre in
New York, in some minor position, at a salary of twenty
dollars per week ; a period of some three or four years
from the time she was twenty-one to twenty-four or five
of ceaseless study, activity, and nebulous projects. Macready
214 CHAELOTTE CUSHMAN.
came and she supported him. " Even with this great and
cultivated artist," wrote an English critic who saw her at this
time, "she held her own. She had not his experience, but
she had genius. There were times when she more than
rivalled him ; when in truth she made him play second."
In the winter of 1842, a young woman of twenty-six years
of age, she undertook the sublime audacity of managing the
Walnut Street Theatre of Philadelphia. Her company in-
cluded Messrs. Chippendale, Fredericks, and Wheatleigh,
Alexina Fisher, the Misses Vallee, one of whom was after-
wards the wife of Ben DeBar, her sister Susan Cushman, and
others ; she served herself as leading lady, acting her large
repertoire.
Time passed on, and in October, 1844, Miss Cushman
sailed for England. Her finances ran low ; a benefit per-
formance given in her native Boston met little response.
The cultured Hub has small faith in the possibility of entertain-
ing angels unawares. It insists on visible wings, and full
credentials, after which it cannot be surpassed in polite
courtesy. The city in which Hawthorne sat neglected, and
wrote sadly of himself " as the most obscure man of letters of
the day," permitted this young woman, whose brilliant
genius was destined to honor above all others her native city,
to go out from it with a benefit attended by an audience de-
scribed by the press of that day as " ungenerously small and
largely made up of foreigners.'' However, this did not
matter. That Boston failed to discern the genius of Haw-
thorne or of Charlotte Cushman in its early manifestations
was not, on the whole, to be regretted. " The man is not
worth much," says the brilliant Autocrat, "who cannot treat
himself to an interval of modesty." Genius will cut its own
channels, whether the world deride or applaud. When
Jupiter divided the goods of the world the poet was absent,
lost in a day-dream. Returning, he reproached the god for
saving none for him. " True, there is nothing left to give
you," replied Jupiter, "but my heaven is always open to
you." The legend is vital with truth. Heaven is always
CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 215
open to the artist, and if the world albeit Beacon street
prove inhospitable, he has his resources and his inspirations.
Charlotte Cushman found hers. Under new skies a new life
began. Yet with what a combination of fainting heart and
tenacity of purpose she went forth words are powerless to
picture.
The winter she passed in Albany was made memorable by
the anticipations of all that constitutes a woman's fairest and
holiest life. For the first and last time love came to her ;
yet, while she " dreamed and thought life was beauty," came
the rude awakening to find that for her " life was duty."
Turning from the clasp of arms strong and tender and sustain-
ing, she found herself alone, with only the wreck of a
vanished happiness, and the memory of " the tender grace of a
day" that was forever dead. It is idle to repeat the story in
detail. It was all over so long ago. Of it Charlotte Cush-
man herself wrote,
" There was a time in my life of girlhood when I thought
I had been called upon to bear the very hardest thing that can
come to a woman. Yet, if I had been spared this early trial,
I should never have been so earnest and faithful in my art ;
I should have still been casting about for the ' counterpart/
and not given my entire self to my work. God helped me in
my art-isolation, and rewarded me for recognizing Him and
helping myself. ... My art, God knows, has never failed
me, never failed to bring me rich reward, never failed to
bring me comfort. I conquered my grief and myself.
Labor saved me then and always, and so I proved the eternal
goodness of God."
The influence of Macready was doubtless a potent element
in Miss Cushman's resolve to put fortune to the test by going
abroad. "Come to England," he had said to her, "where
your talents will be appreciated at their true value.'* Yet it
was with an almost desperate resolve to win success, rather
than with any rose-colored anticipations of meeting it, that
Charlotte Cushman sailed on her voyage, which was the
threshold of that wonderful life awaiting her. Goethe's
216 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN.
emphasis of the parting of the ways is one that every life,
which is at all distinctive in its aims or individual in its
method, repeats. The defined separation from the original
point of departure can be discerned.
In her diary on this voyage she copied from Longfellow's
" Hyperion," as if to reassure herself, the words : " Look not
mournfully into the past ; it comes not back again. Wisely
improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the future
without fear and with a manly heart."
And again she found courage and inspiration in the lines
from Browning's " Paracelsus " :
" What though
It be so? if indeed the strong desire
Eclipse the aim in me ? if splendor break
Upon the outset of my path alone,
And duskest shade succeed ? What fairer seal
Shall I require to my authentic mission
Than this fierce energy? this instinct striving
Because its nature is to strive? enticed
By the security of no broad course,
With no success forever in its eyes !
How know I else such glorious fate my own,
But in the restless, irresistible force
That works within me? Is it for human will
To institute such impulses still less
To disregard their promptings? What should I
Do, kept among you all ; your loves, your cares,
Your life, all to be mine ? Be sure that God
Ne'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart ! "
Miss Cushman arrived in England November 18, 1844.
Her first movement was a little excursion into Scotland with
an agreeable party of friends, and later, while waiting the
slow course of theatrical engagements, whose methods exhibit
as little rapidity as the mills of the gods, she dashed over to
Paris with characteristic energy, and for ten days put herself
en rapport with the French stage, which left on her a per-
manent impression. Returning to England she found a
CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 217
letter from Macready, with the proposition that she should
appear in a company with himself and Miss Fauci t. This
proposal she rejected, as it would place her in an apparent
competition with Miss Faucit, who was at that time the
favorite of the English public, and she retired into humble
lodgings in London to await her destiny.
The faithful maid, Sally Mercer, without a reference to
whom any sketch of Miss Cushman were incomplete, was
with her, and acted, as Miss Cushman herself said, as
her "right hand." It was a period of that waiting "in the
shadow " which so often precedes the most brilliant achieve-
ment. She registered her determination at a high standard
and by inherent force compelled her own conditions.
Her first appearance in London was made at the Princess's
Theatre, in the rdle of Bianca in " Fazio." Of her debut
the London " Times " said : " The great characteristics of
Miss Cushman are her earnestness, her intensity, her quick
apprehension of ' readings,' her power to dart from emotion
to emotion with the greatest rapidity, as if carried on the
impulse alone. . . . We need hardly to say that Miss Cush-
man is likely to prove a great acquisition to the London
stage. For passion real, impetuous, irresistible passion
she has not at present her superior."
The next rdle in which she appeared was Rosalind, in "As
You Like It." The last line of this critique indicates that the
large inclusiveness of Miss Cushman's was the predetermining
element in her great success. Versatility is strength. The
force that goes to each effort becomes the force of all.
In the following March Miss Cushman thus writes to her
mother : " By the packet of the 10th I wrote you and sent
newspapers, which could tell you in so much better language
than I could of my brilliant and triumphant success in Lon-
don. I can say no more to you than this : that it is far,
far beyond my most sanguine expectations. In my most
ambitious moments I never dreamed of the success which has
awaited me and crowned every effort I have made. ... To
you I should not hesitate to tell all my grief and all my
14
218 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN.
failure if it had not been such, for none could have felt more
with me and for me. Why, then, should I hesitate (unless
through a fear that I might seem egotistical) to tell }'ou all
my triumphs, all my success? Suffice it, all my successes put
together since I have been upon the stage would not come near
my success in London ; and I only wanted some one of you
here to enjoy it with me, to make it complete.
"I have played Bianca four times, Emilia twice, Lady
Macbeth six times, Mrs. Haller live, and Rosalind five, in
five weeks. I am sitting to five artists."
In this winter of 1844-45 the life of Charlotte Cushman
[lowered into bloom and fragrance. She was then in her
twenty-ninth year, a time when the girl's first flush of eager-
ness had not faded, while it was still reinforced by the calm
poise of woman's strength. Friendships crowded her life with
beauty. The most distinguished literary and artistic people
of that day sought in her sympathy and society. Like
Margaret Fuller, like all great and gifted spirits, Charlotte
Cushman had a capacity for friendship. Hers was a nature
large enough to include a wide range of sympathies. Earn-
estness was the keynote to her spiritual scale. A prominent
dramatic critic said that the secret of her success on the stage
was that " she is in earnest in everything she undertakes."
The currents of social sympathy that set toward Charlotte
Cushman during her first London winter were indicated by
the verses that were written, the pictures that were painted,
in her honor, and from the inspiration of her life. Eliza
Cook celebrated in verse her friendship. The poet Eodgers
sought her out. Breakfasts and other entertainments were
given for her.
Her London success made success in the provinces a fore-
gone conclusion ; indeed, it thus predetermined and prefigured
the success of her entire future. For when an individual
life has registered a certain degree of attainment it has
thereby gained an impulse that moves with accelerated im-
petus to its final achievement.
CHARLOTTE CUSHMAK 219
In the following autumn Miss Cushman summoned her family
to London, where they took a furnished cottage at the suburb
of Bayswater, and where she and her sister Susan studied
together the roles of "Romeo and Juliet," in which they
appeared at the Hay market Theatre, making their d6but in
that play on the night of December 30, 1845. It would not
have been the natural choice of Charlotte Cushman to appear
in male character, but by enacting Romeo she could support
her sister as Juliet, and the rdle provided opportunities to
which she was fully equal.
A prolonged tour through the provinces followed, during
which the sisters played in all the prominent cities of Great
Britain, and during the succeeding summer Miss Cushman
visited Switzerland, where she was more enchanted than she
had dreamed of being, and from whence she returned to Lon-
don with new inspirations, caught from the mountain heights.
Somewhere about this time Miss Jewsbury, who was Char-
lotte Cushman's faithful friend, wrote to her, saying thai
"you are not a machine, but a woman of genius," and insist-
ing that she must not be discouraged if a reaction followed so
great an excitement.
It is wonderful how in all this unrest and nervous tension
of her professional struggle she kept herself up to a certain
level of serenity and repose. It is recorded that she <f made
many friends of quiet domestic people," and she herself told
how she " tried always to keep her prow turned toward good."
To a young friend who had histrionic aspirations she wrote at
this time : " I should advise you to get to work. . . . You
must suffer, labor and wait before you will be able to grasp
the true and the beautiful. You dream of it now ; the in-
tensity of life that is in you, the spirit of poetry which makes
itself heard by you in indistinct language, needs work to
relieve itself and be made clear."
With all Charlotte Cushman's capacity for friendship
and those words signify a great deal, this capacity for friend-
ship she was, as every artist must be, severe in the sense
of selection. She was as discriminative as she was generous
220 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN.
in response. While she would sacrifice personal ease and even
personal achievement for a life that needed it, and in which
this sacrifice would be as seed to take root and grow, she had
withal the delicate intuition of the artist nature ; its instinct
of preservation not to waste itself needlessly.
In 1845-46 Miss Cushman was associated with James Wai-
lack, whose influence was educative to her in her art. In the
summer of 1849 she returned to America, playing a brilliant
series of engagements throughout the country. The nightly
average of her receipts was greater than had been Macready's.
The woman who had gone out alone from her native country
five years before clinging to the faith that
"Be sure that God
Ne'er dooms to waste the strength He deigns impart ! "
returned with recognized honor and with a permanent place
awarded her in histrionic art.
In October, 1852, Miss Cushman first visited the Eternal
City in company with Harriet Hosmer, who was then on her
way to study art in Rome, and with Grace Greenwood. Dur-
ing this winter Page's portrait of her was painted, the pic-
ture preserved at Villa Cushman at Newport. It is of this
portrait, painted when she was thirty-six years of age, that
Paul Akers said : " It is a face rendered impressive by the
grandest repose, a repose not to be mistaken for serenity,
but which is in equilibrium."
In January, 1856, she was in England and gave a dinner to
Mme. Ristori, whose first visit it was to London. For Ris-
tori's acting, as well as for Salvini's, Miss Cushman had the
greatest admiration. Throughout her life she preferred the
natural to the conventional school of acting ; yet the Thedtre
Fran$ais seems to have impressed her, as it did Miss Kate
Field, who, in her brilliant and glowing biography of Fech-
ter, describes her own feelings when, after having been from
childhood under the influence of the natural school of acting,
she first witnessed the French drama. Miss Cushman always
preferred Ristori to Rachel, perhaps somewhat from the Puri-
CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 221
tan in her, which recognized a kindred nobility of character
in Ristori.
The winter of 1856-57 again found Miss Cushman in Kome,
and it was at this time that she first met Miss Emma Stebbins,
her friend and future biographer. This was a winter rich in
all that makes the fulness of life. A party of congenial
friends were with her. Her ' ' evenings " were the occasions
of charming social reunions. Her musical gift was exercised
freely, and memories are yet vivid of her rich voice in " Wilt
Thou not Visit Me?" or the touching pathos with which she
rendered Kingsley's ballad of " The Sands o' Dee." Gounod's
"There's a Green Hill Far Away" was among her favorite
musical selections. Of Miss Cushman's home in Rome, Miss
Stebbins says : " This home was a genuine one, and so grew
every year more and more in harmony with the true hospita-
ble nature of its mistress. Its walls gradually became cov-
ered with choice pictures and such sculpture as there was
space for ; but its chief beauty consisted in its antique carved
furniture, its abundance of books, and the patent fact that
every part and parcel of it was for daily use, and nothing for
mere show."
Among Miss Cushman's friends at this period was Miss Isa
Blagdon, who was also an intimate friend of the Brownings,
and to whose memory Florence erected a commemorative
tablet after her death, in 1873. Miss Elizabeth Peabody
shared Miss Cushman's generous hospitality in Rome, and
chronicles the months as rich in enjoyment. " But even
amid the glories of Rome," says Miss Peabody, "there was
nothing that I studied with more interest and intensity than
Miss Cushman."
Of the morning talks at Miss Cushman's home, Elizabeth
Peabody writes : " Can you, or anybody with mortal pen,
describe so that readers could realize the high-toned, artistic,
o
grandly-moral, delightfully-hurnan nature, that seemed to be
the palpable atmosphere of her spirit, quickening all who
surrendered themselves to her influence? What sincerity,
what appreciation of truth and welcome of it (even if it
222 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN.
wounded her) ; what bounteousness of nature ; and how the
breath of her mouth winnowed the chaff' from the wheat in
her expression of observed character and judgment of con-
duct."
When the war of the rebellion came it affected Miss Gush-
man deeply. She was firm in her conviction, even in the
early days, that the war would never end until slavery was
abolished. Her patriotism was unfaltering all through those
years of a nation's agony. In June, 1863, she returned to
her native country, her chief reason being to act for the
sanitary fund. In the report of Henry W. Bellows, president
of the Sanitary Commission, the sum of $8,267.29 is credited
to Charlotte Cushman, and Mr. Bellows says: "It is due
to Miss Cushman to say that this extraordinary gift of money,
so magically evoked by her spell, is but the least part of
the service which ever since the war began she has rendered."
The outward events of Miss Cushman's life in the decade
of 1860 to 1870 were to an unusual degree a translation of
her inner experience : a materialization, as it were, of thought
and feeling. They were the years of the culmination of her
power as an artist, and of the finest fruition of her woman-
hood. During the years 1865-66 she is again in Rome, and
writing home letters freighted with valuable literary expres-
sions. Of Browning's " Saul " she says : " It is so very fine,
full of grandeur and meaning." Of Whittier she writes :
"He is a true soul, with a pure poet's heart." Her letters to
Miss Fanny Seward are strong in expressions of her feeling
for America.
The latter years of her life developed her talent for
dramatic reading. It is said she liked better to read " Mac-
beth " than to act it. In her wide repertoire she had included
the male parts of Romeo, Hamlet, and Cardinal Wolsey.
In Hamlet she had an intuitive perception of the poetic power
of the character, and entered into its psychological mystery
by a power of spiritual insight, of fine divination, that has
been almost unprecedented in the history of the stage. Her
Cardinal Wolsey was a magnificent triumph. In complete
CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 223
contrast to these roles were her Rosalind, Beatrice, Juliana,
and Lady Gay fipanker. The three greatest roles of her
dramatic life were, without doubt, her Lady Macbeth, her
Meg Merriles, and her Queen Katherine. "As Meg Mer-
riles," said William Winter, " she obeyed the law of her own
nature ; as Queen Katherine, she obeyed the law of the poetic
ideal that encompassed her. Her best achievements in the
illustration of Shakspeare were accordingly of the highest
order of art. They were at once human and poetic. They
were white marble suffused with fire."
Contemporary dramatic criticism is always valuable, and
preserves, as by a picture, the art of the actor. An engage-
ment in Chicago was made pleasantly memorable to Miss
Cushman by the presentation of a ring in black enamel, on
which, in gold letters, was the inscription, "Kind words.
McVicker's Theatre, Jan. 11, 1873."
The last engagement at Booth's Theatre in New York was
one of the most brilliant of her life. It was here that she
took her final leave of the metropolitan stage in the play of
" Macbeth," on a night whose performance has passed into
history as one of the most notable dramatic triumphs in
America. It was the evening of November 7, 1875.
Both Mrs. Siddons and Macready had taken leave of the
stage in this tragedy. It was fitting that it should also be
the farewell play of Charlotte Cushman.
The scene that night was one of marvellous grandeur. The
house was made up of people distinguished in literature, art,
and social life. It is thus described by Mr. Winter :
" The house was brilliantly illuminated, and it was deco-
rated with a taste at once profuse and delicate. A tricolor,
spangled with golden stars, was twined about the proscenium
columns, and hung in festoons along the fronts of the gal-
leries. The chandeliers were garlanded with autumn leaves,
and with leaves and fruit of the vine, symbolical o^the
maturity of that genius and the ripeness of that fame in which
Miss Cushman retires from the theatre. Banners displaying
the arms of the States were arranged along the upper tier.
224 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN.
The flag of the Republic formed an arch over the central
entrance, and flung its cheerful and hopeful folds over the
proscenium boxes. In one of these boxes, inscribed in
golden letters with the name of the Arcadian Club, which
society prompted this demonstration, and has carried it for-
ward to signal and honorable success, sat the poet Bryant,
the poet Stoddard, Peter Cooper, and other distinguished
guests of the club. In the opposite proscenium box, in-
scribed with the name of the Army and Navy Club, sat
Major-General Hancock, Mr. Tilden, and other dignitaries of
peace and of war. Perfumes, from great silver braziers upon
the stage, made the air fragrant, and the dreamy music of
the dear old Scotch melodies turned it into poetry and
attuned every heart to sympathy with the spirit of the time.
" It was about eleven o'clock when the curtain fell upon the
tragedy. The curtain rolled up again, and one of the most
distinguished companies that have ever been seen in a pubiic
place came into view. The stage was crowded. Prominent in
the throng were Mr. Wallack, Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Boucicault,
Mr. Gilbert, Miss Charlotte Thompson, and other professional
friends of Miss Cushman. The venerable face of William
Cullen Bryant, austere, yet tender, shone out of the central
throng. Mr. Charles Roberts, who had been selected by the
Arcadian Club to read Mr. Stoddard's ode, appeared at the
right of the stand, which was wrought of the beautiful floral
testimonials offered to Miss Cushman. The actress herself,
hailed by plaudits that almost shook the building, entered
and took her place upon the left of the stage ; and the cere-
monies of farewell began. Mr. Stoddard's poem carries along
with it its own testimonial. It is conceived and written in a
simple spirit and style ; it is worthy of the genuine theme and
the lofty occasion ; and it was uttered with sympathy and
force, and received with every mark of public pleasure,
the applause at the end of the stanza which couples Cushman
with Shakspeare being in a marked degree spontaneous and
emphatic."
The poet Bryant addressed Miss Cushman, presenting her
CHAKLOTTE CUSHMAtf. 225
with a laurel-wreath bound with white ribbon, resting on a
purple velvet cushion. Embroidered in golden letters was
this inscription :
Palmam <&ui Jfteruit Jfrrat
18 JL dL 74*
"A. C." were the initials of the Arcadian Club.
From the response of Miss Cushman is extracted this
paragraph :
"You would seem to compliment me upon an honorable
life. As I look back upon that life it seems to me that it
would have been absolutely impossible for me to have led any
other. I was, by circumstances, thrown at an early age into
a profession for which I had received no special education,
but I had already been brought face to face with necessity.
I found life sadly real and intensely earnest; and in my
ignorance of other ways of study, I resolved to take there-
from my text and my watchword ; to be thoroughly in
earnest, intensely in earnest, in all my thoughts and in all my
actions, whether in my profession or out of it, became my
one single idea. And I honestly believe herein lies the
secret of my success in life. I do not believe that any great
success in any art can be achieved without it."
The song of " Auld Lang Syne " was sung by Mrs. Annie
Kemp Bowler, the entire audience joining in the chorus, and
with this and the applause of four thousand people the curtain
fell upon the farewell appearance of Charlotte Cushman.
True, she appeared on the stage after this date, playing a
notable engagement in Philadelphia, and giving readings in
Baltimore, Washington, Chicago, Cincinnati, and St. Louis;
but virtually this splendid ovation was her final farewell.
226 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAIST.
Her last appearance before a Boston public was made in the
Globe Theatre in May, 1875. During the previous winter
she had first seen Ristori in " Elizabeth" and " Marie Antoi-
nette," and of her Miss Cushman writes to a friend : " She is
the greatest woman artist I have ever seen. Such perfect
nature, such ease, such grace, such elegance of manner, such
as befits a queen. On Monday night I sat in the directors'
box, holding a beautiful bouquet of roses and lilies-of-the-
valley for her. As I lifted the bouquet she saw it and came
over to the box. She is near-sighted, so did not recognize me
until she came near ; then she gave a start toward me, saying,
'Ah, cam arnica? 1 Her voice is the most lovely, and her
mouth the most fascinating, after Titiens, of any artist I ever
saw."
On her last appearance in Boston she impersonated Lady
Macbeth, supported by Mr. D. W. Waller as Macbeth. Of
the scene at the conclusion of the play Mr. Clapp writes :
"When the curtain was raised again, the stage presented the
appearance of a drawing-room, and in its centre stood a gilt
table upon which rested a floral crown with laurel wreath.
Upon either side were placed bronze statuettes of Mercury
and Fortune, resting upon handsomely carved pedestals.
Other floral decorations were about the stage. After a
moment's pause, Mr. Cheney entered from the left, leading
Miss Cushman, whom he briefly presented."
Mr. Curtis Guild then addressed Miss Cushman in a grace-
o
ful speech, concluding with the words : "And now, when we
depart, and when
1 Fallen is the curtain, the last scene is o'er,
The fav'rite actress treads the stage no more,'
we shall each and all of us remember that though
' Many the parts you played, yet to the end
Your best were those of sister, lady, friend.' "
Miss Cushman concluded her response by saying: "Look-
ing back upon my career, I think I may, ' without vain-glory,'
say that I have not, by any act of my life, done discredit to
I
CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 227
the city of my birth. Believe me, I shall carry away with
me in my retirement no memory sweeter than my associations
with Boston and my Boston public. From my full heart,
God bless you, and Farewell ! "
For many years before her death Miss Cushman had been
a sufferer from a malady that proved fatal at last. In
October, 1875, she established herself in rooms at the Parker
House in Boston. The suffering was great and almost uninter-
mitting in character, yet she bore it all bravely and never made
herself the topic of conversation. Intimate friends came to
her daily. Until within two days before her death she wrote
each day to her family at Newport, in that loved villa by the
sea where she had passed so many happy hours.
On the morning of February 12, in walking through the
corridor, she took a sudden cold which resulted in pneumonia,
from which she died on the eighteenth six days later.
James Russell Lowell's poem of " Columbus" had always been
with her a favorite, and a few hours before she went out into
the Infinite Unknown she asked to have it read aloud. Its
words had been a part of her evolved experience of life :
" Endurance is the crowning quality
And patience all the passion of great hearts.
One faith against a whole earth's unbelief,
One soul against the flesh of all mankind."
This incident suggested some exquisite lines that appeared
at that time in a Boston journal, signed "C. T. E.," of which
the first and last stanzas were :
" For wast not thou, too, going forth alone
To seek new land across an untried sea ?
"New land, yet to thy soul not all unknown,
Nor yet far off, was that blest shore to thee.
" Thine was a conflict none else knew but God,
Who gave thee, to endure it, strength divine :
Alone with Him the wine-press thou hast trod,
And Death, His angel, seals the victory thine."
228 CHAKLOTTE CUSHMAN.
The funeral services were held in King's Chapel. They
were simple in character, as befitted the sacred majesty of
the occasion. For an hour before the services people were
permitted to pass through the room where she lay, beautiful
in the light of the holy peace reflected from that noble coun-
tenance. "God giveth quietness at last" was the refrain in
every heart.
In King's Chapel flowers sent by loving hands lay about
her. The deep organ music in its solemn chant blended with
the prayers that were said. The chancel inscription : "This is
my commandment to you, that you love one another," seemed
the expression of her entire life. Still and cold lay Charlotte
Cushrnan in the last dreamless sleep under the shadow of
white lilies that leaned above her, fair and fragrant.
Forty years had passed since the untried girl had gone out
from her native city to conquer life. In those years she had
done more. She had conquered herself. She had learned the
lesson of renunciation. She had won the reward of achieve-
ment.
To Charlotte Cushman life was a conflict. Born into
simple, primitive conditions, with the inherited instincts of a
long line of Puritan ancestry, yet with the tragic intensity
of creative genius in her soul, and the glow of its sacred
mystery in her being, what wonder that those two warring
forces should have alternately swayed her throughout her
plastic youth, and stamped their traces on her mature woman-
hood ? It was this meeting of two forces that could never,
from their intrinsic nature, mingle, that gave to her character
an aspect of superficial inconsistency. In reality she was
strictly true, but now one nature and now the other domi-
nated her.
Her character was made up of the massive forces, and
it included with almost startling distinctness two entirely
different personalities.
" Oh, sorrowful, great gift
Conferred on poets of a twofold life
When one life has been found enough for pain,"
CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 229
wrote Elizabeth Browning, and this twofold life was essen-
tially that of Charlotte Gush man.
To some degree it was true of her, as Miss Kate Field has
said of Ristori, that in her presence " it required a mental
effort to recall her histrionic greatness." Conversely this was
equally true, and to those who knew in her the grandeur, the
sublimity, the intensity of the artist, it was difficult to asso-
ciate her with other than the artistic life, or to see in her
aught but the grandest tragic actress of America.
The religious earnestness of her character never faltered.
It was a part of her identity ; and, disregarding all forms, the
heart of the woman spoke when she said, " I can go to any
church and find God."
She is dead. " The curtain drops upon a vanished
majesty." A plain granite shaft, thirty -three feet in height,
stands in Mount Auburn, and at its base is the name,
Charlotte Cushman. Afar to the east lies the beautiful city
that she loved her native Boston. Beyond rolls the blue
sea. The wind sighs its low requiem among the trees.
It is hallowed ground. Here stands the monument to
Margaret Fuller. The beloved poet Longfellow sleeps not
far away. Names that have made life sacred and heaven
more dear meet the eye. Lingering among the loveliness
of Mount Auburn one feels that, indeed,
" Happy places have grown holy : if we go where once we went,
Only tears will fall down slowly as at blessed sacrament."
Remembering the crystalline purity and truth of this
divinely-gifted woman, you may find yourself repeating, as
you stay and stray by her last resting-place, the words
of Queen Katherine, whose impersonation was the most
majestic triumph in the art of Charlotte Cushman :
" After my death I wish no other herald,
No other speaker of my living actions
To keep mine honor from corruption
Than such an honest chronicler as Griffith."
CHAPTER X.
LYDIA MAKIA CHILD.
BY SUSAN COOLIDGE.
The Little Maid of Medf ord Her Early Life and Happy Marriage Books
She has Written Surprise and Indignation excited by Her " Appeal "
The Battle of Life Rowing against the Tide Her Patience, Fortitude,
and Reliance Stirring Times Devotion to Her Husband Life at
Wayland Her Bright Humor Sympathy for Old John Brown
Mrs. Mason's Violent Letter Mrs. Child's Famous Reply She is Prom-
ised a "Warm Reception" Her Loyalty, Self-Denial, and Work during
the Civil War Princely Generosity Serene Old Age Death of Her
Husband Mrs. Child's Touching Tribute to His Memory Waiting
and Trusting Her Death and Funeral.
N the year 1636 one Richard Francis emigrated
from England to America and settled in Cam-
bridge, Mass., where his tombstone may be seen
to this day. A hundred and thirty-nine years
later we find one of his descendants taking part
in the skirmish at Concord, where he is said to
have killed five of the enemy. Half a century
after Concord, another descendant of the same
sturdy stock was settled as a baker in Medford,
Mass., where he first introduced what are still
known as " Medford crackers." He was the father
of Lydia Maria Francis, the subject of this sketch ; and in
Medford, on the llth of February, 1802, she was born.
To children of a thoughtful and intelligent cast, the very
bareness of New England life at that period had in it some-
thing formative and stimulating. The keen, youthful obser-
vation and analysis, undistracted by trifles, expended them-
selves upon facts with their underlying principles, upon
theories and the convictions to be deduced from them. At
nine years of age, the little maid of Medford was puzzling
230
LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 231
her brains to find out exactly what that " Kaven down of
darkness" could be which smiles when stroked, and was
sorely perplexed by the explanation of her teasing brother
Convers, that it must mean the fur of a black cat, which
gnaps and crackles with electricity when caressed in cold
weather ! At twelve she read " Waverley," and exclaimed,
'' Why cannot I write a novel ? " In her seventeenth year
she writes to her brother: "Do not forget that I asked you
about the ' flaming cherubims,' the effects of distance, horizon-
tal and perpendicular, ' Orlando Furioso,' and Lord Byron ! "
Her earliest teacher was an old woman known as " Marm
Betty," who kept her school in an untidy bedroom, and
chewed much 'obacco. At no time does Lydia Francis seem
to have had better opportunities for education than the public
academy of her native town could furnish, with the exception
of one year at private seminary. But her mind had that
power of assimiu'ion which converts spare diet into generous
growth. And tha home atmosphere in which she was reared
was full of good, practical teaching.
David Francis, her father, though not a highly-educated
man, was remarkably fond of books, and possessed of a wide
and zealous benevolence. His anti-slavery principles were in
advance of his time, and his children were taught from their
infancy to exercise a frugal self-denial with regard to their
own wants, and a hospitable generosity towards those of
others. A Sunday dinner was always carried to " Marm
Betty," and at Thanksgiving she and all the other humble
friends of the family, to the number of twenty or thirty,
were assembled and feasted. This mingling of frugality on
the one hand, and liberality on the other, characterized Mrs.
Child during her whole life.
In the year 1819 Convers Francis was ordained pastor over
the first Unitarian church at Watertown, Mass., and his sister
went to live with him. Two years later her first book ap-
peared, a novel called " Hobomok," after its Indian hero. It
is a tale somewhat resembling " Enoch Arden," with the
important variation that the noble red-man who has married
232 LYDIA MARIA CHILD.
the heroine promptly gives up his wife and child on the reap-
pearance of her early lover. But this was in the dawn of
American letters ; and with all its crude improbability,
"Hobomok" enjoyed such a measure of popularity as to
warrant the publication during the following year of a second
novel, "The Kebels ; or, Boston before the Revolution,"
bearing a motto from Bryant, and " respectfully inscribed "
to George Ticknor. The immediate effect of its appearance
was to make its author a celebrity in her own circle.
In 1825 Miss Francis opened a private school in Water-
town, and in 1827 she established " The Juvenile Miscellany/'
pioneer to the long line of American children's magazines.
In 1828 she married David Lee Child, a lawyer in Boston,
and took up her residence in that city. The following year
appeared "The Frugal Housewife," a manual of domestic
management, which proved so suited to the wants of the
public that it has since attained its fortieth edition. Later
came, in a natural sequence, " The Mother's Book," tf The
Girl's Own Book," " The History of Women," and " The
Biographies of Good Wives." It was about this time that
" The North American Review," then the highest literary
authority in the country, said of her : ?f We are not sure that
any woman of our country could outrank Mrs. Child. Few
female writers, if any, have done more or better things for
our literature in the lighter or graver departments."
This was probably the time of Mrs. Child's life in which
she tasted most of what the world calls ease and good.
Happily and congenially married to the man she loved,
courted and invited, revelling in the work which she most
enjoyed doing, feeling an increasing influence resulting from
it, the sweetness of a new home-life encompassing her day
by day ; surely this was much for any woman to possess, and
very much for any woman to endanger. Many young wives
in her situation would have found abundant occupation for
mind and heart in self-cultivation, the enjoyment of society,
or the details of housekeeping. Decorative art, or whatever
did duty for it in those early days, would have claimed atten-
LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 233
tion, and the scant facilities for household convenience fur-
nished a real excuse for much personal labor and supervision.
But neither house nor social ambitions, nor the absorbing
interests of her literary life, stood in Mrs. Child's way for
one moment when her conscience recognized an obligation.
In 1833 the American Anti-Slavery Society was started at a
convention held in Philadelphia. It attained an instant un-
popularity. Immediately afterward Mrs. Child wrote and
published her "Appeal in Behalf of that Class of Americans
called Africans," and by doing so cut herself off from much
of what must have been to her the pleasantness of life.
It is difficult at the present day to realize the surprise and
indignation excited by this " appeal," so justly called forth
and so temperately made. The sale of Mrs. Child's books
fell off the subscriptions to her magazine were withdrawn.
Many acquaintances closed their doors against her. That she
knew what she hazarded and was prepared for the result is
proved by the preface to her book : " I am fully aware of
the unpopularity of the task I have undertaken ; but though
I expect ridicule and censure I do not fear them. A few
years hence the opinion of the world w r ill be a matter in
which I have not the most transient interest ; but this book
will be abroad on its mission of humanity long after the hand
that wrote it is mingling with the dust."
"Thenceforth her life was a battle," says Mr. Whittier, "a
constant rowing hard against the stream of popular prejudice
and hatred. And through it all pecuniary privation, loss
of friends and position, the painfulness of being suddenly
thrust from ' the still air of delightful studies ' into the bit-
terest and sternest controversy of the age, she bore herself
with patience, fortitude, and unshaken reliance upon the
justice and ultimate triumph of the cause she had espoused.
Whenever there was a brave word to be spoken her voice
was heard, and never without effect. It is not exaggeration
to say that no man or woman of that period rendered more
substantial service to the cause of freedom, or made such a
great renunciation to do it."
15
234 LYDIA MARIA CHILD.
Of the intensity of public feeling against the anti-slavery
reformers her letters of this date bear evidence. In August,
1835, she writes to a friend :
"I am at Brooklyn, at the house of a very hospitable
Englishman, a friend of Mr. Thompson's. I have not
ventured into the city, nor does one of us dare to go to
church to-day, so great is the excitement here. You can
form no conception of it. 'Tis like the times of the French
Revolution, when no man dared trust his neighbor. Private
assassins from New Orleans are lurking at the corners of the
street to stab Arthur Tappan ; and very large sums are
offered for any one who will convey Mr. Thompson into the
slave States. He is almost a close prisoner to his chamber,
his friends deeming him in imminent peril the moment it is
known where he is. Your husband could hardly be made to
realize the terrible state of fermentation now existing here.
Mr. Wright was yesterday barricading his doors and win-
dows with strong bars and planks an inch thick. Violence in
some form seems to be generally expected."
Fearless of consequences, however, Mrs. Child persevered
in her self-appointed task. Between the years 1833 and 1838
she published four additional works treating on the evils of
slavery. In 1836 appeared her romance of "Philothea," the
scene of which is laid in ancient Greece. This book would
seem to embody a reaction of the dreamy and imaginative
side of her nature against its practical counterpart. Intensely
practical she was, with a capacity for detail which extended
to the humblest domestic economies ; yet, singularly enough,
this clear common-sense and talent for administration was
balanced by a passionate craving for art, and by a love of
beauty which made the *e very day sights of nature a continual
feast. One of her letters, written in 1840, exhibits this : "I
am ashamed to say how deeply I am charmed with sculpture,
ashamed because it seems like affectation in one who has had
such very limited opportunity to become acquainted with the
arts. I have a little plaster figure of a caryatid which acts
upon my spirits like a magician's spell. Many a time this
LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 235
hard summer I have laid down the dishcloth or broom and
gone to refresh my spirit by gazing at it for a few minutes.
It speaks to me. It says glorious things. In summer I
place flowers before it ; and now I have laid a garland of
acorns and amaranths at its feet. I do dearly love every
little bit of real sculpture." And later, " It is not I who
drudge, it is merely the case containing me. I defy all the
powers of earth and hell to make me scrub floors or feed
pigs, if I choose meanwhile to be off conversing with the
angels." Again, in 1841, " A Southern gentleman some time
since wrote to me from New Orleans, postage double and
unpaid, inviting me to that city, and promising me a c warm
reception ' and r lodgings in the calaboose with as much nigger
company as you desire.' He wrote according to the light
that was in him. He did not know that the combined police of
the world could not imprison me. In spite of bolts and bars
I should have been off like a witch at midnight, holding fair
discourse with Orion, and listening to the plaintive song of
Pleiades mourning for the earth-dimmed glory of their
fallen sister. How did he know in his moral midnight
that choosing to cast our lot with the lowliest of earth was
the very way to enter into companionship with the highest
in heaven ? "
A curious sympathy with the mystical and speculative was
another of Mrs. Child's characteristics. She had also a fond-
ness for ghost stories and supernatural signs and imitations.
But these strangely-balanced traits worked in perfect adjust-
ment and without friction. "Her mysticism and realism ran
in close parallel lines without interfering with each other,"
said Mr. Whittier, and he adds, " she was wise in counsel ;
and men like Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, Salmon P.
Chase, and Governor Andrew availed themselves of her fore-
sight and sound judgment of men and things."
In 1844 Mr. and Mrs. Child were engaged by the Anti-
/
Slavery Society as joint editors of their weekly newspaper,
" The Anti-Slavery Standard," just started in New York. The
state of Mr. Child's health did not at first permit him to share
236 LYDIA MARIA CHILD.
in the labor, and for a considerable time his wife carried it on
without him. The separation which this involved was painful
to them both. In the early days of their married life Mrs,
Child had written to her husband, " It is nonsense for me to
go a-pleasuring without you. It does me no good ; I am only
homesick for you, and my private opinion is that I shall not
be able to stand it a whole week." Now circumstances forced
her to " stand it " for two years !
"My domestic attachments are so strong, and David is
always so full of cheerful tenderness, that this separation is
dreary, indeed," she writes to her brother ; and to another
friend, " My task here is irksome to me. Your father
will tell you that it was not zeal for the cause but love
for my husband which brought me hither. But since it
wks necessary for me to leave home to be earning some-
what, I am thankful that my work is for the anti-slavery
cause."
Eight years did the husband and wife continue their joint
editorship, During that time Mrs. Child, whenever in New
York, occupied a room in the house of "Friend Hopper,"
whose biography she afterward edited so charmingly. Under
his roof her ardent and wide philanthropy found stimulus
as well as sympathy. "Dwelling in a home where disin-
terested and noble labor were as daily breath, she had great
opportunities," wrote one of her friends. " Since the keen
tragedy of city life began it has seen no more efficient organi-
zation for relief than when dear old Isaac Hopper and Mrs.
Child took up their abode under one roof in New York."
It was about this time that Lowell, in his " Fable for
Critics," gave what is perhaps the most charming of the
many attempted sketches of Mrs. Child, in the person of
"Philothea":
" The pole, science tells us, the magnet controls,
But she is a magnet to emigrant Poles ;
And folks with a mission that nobody knows,
Throng thickly about her as bees on a rose.
LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 237
Yes, a great soul is hers, one that dares to go in
To the prison, the slave-hut, the alleys of sin,
And to bring into each, or to find there some line,
Of the never completely out-trampled divine ;
If her heart at high floods swamp her brain now and then,
4 Tis but richer for that when the flood ebbs again,
As after old Nile has subsided, his plain
Overflows with a second broad deluge of grain ;
What a wealth it would bring to the narrow and sour
Could they be as a Child but for one little hour."
During her eight years of editorship Mrs. Child wrote for
the " Boston Courier " that series of " Letters from New
York," which, appearing afterwards in book form, proved
their popularity by going into seven or eight editions. In
1852 the husband and wife gave up the conduct of the "Anti-
Slavery Standard," and retired to the small rural town of
Way land, in Massachusetts, where, with brief exceptions, the
remainder of their lives was spent. Of this new abode Mrs.
Child, in some "Reminiscences" found among her papers,
says :
"In 1852 we made a humble home in Wayland, Mass.,
where we spent twenty-two pleasant years entirely alone,
without any domestic, mutually serving each other, and
dependent on each other for intellectual companionship. I
always depended upon his richly stored mind, which was able
and ready to furnish needful information on any subject. He
was my walking dictionary of many languages, my universal
encyclopedia."
Nothing could seem lonelier than the life led by Mrs. Child
in Wayland during the greater part of the year. With few
neighbors, and fewer visitors, off the lines of travel, shut in
by winter snow, immersed in needful household work, prac-
tising a rigid economy, yet the spirit that was in her turned all
these hard things into beauty. " Her life in the place made,
indeed, an atmosphere of its own, a benison of peace and
good- will " ; and here, as elsewhere, she found people to help
and loving work to do. The inward cheer of her undaunted
238 LYDIA MARIA CHILD.
nature acknowledged no hinderance and left no chill ;
loneliness was a thing unknown or undreaded, so long as she
had the company of her husband, who was so deservedly dear
to her. Of him she writes in the " Reminiscences " already
quoted : " In his old age he was as affectionate and devoted
as when the lover of my youth ; nay, he manifested even
more tenderness. He was often singing
' There's nothing half so sweet in life
As love's old dream.'
" Very often, when he passed by me, he would lay his hand
softly on my head and murmur, ' Carum caput.' But what
I remember with the most tender gratitude is his uniform
patience and forbearance with my faults. He never would
see anything but the bright side of my character. He always
insisted upon thinking that whatever I said was the wisest and
wittiest, and whatever I did was the best. The simplest little
jeu d'esprit of mine seemed to him wonderfully witty. Once
when he said, ' I wish for your sake that I was as rich as
Crcesus,' I answered, ' You are Croesus, for you are king of
Lydia.' How often he used to quote that."
Sweet words to be recorded by a wife of seventy-two, of a
husband who had gone to his rest at the age of eighty !
What more could she say or he desire ?
It was during the third year of this secluded life in Way-
land that Mrs. Child published her most important work,
"The Progress of Religious Ideas in Successive Ages." It
appeared in 1855 in three large volumes. "More than eight
years elapsed between the planning and the printing, and for
six years it was her main pursuit." During its progress she
writes to her brother with regard to it :
"My book gets slowly on. I am not sustained by the least
hope that my mode of treating the subject will prove acceptable
to any class of persons. No matter. I am going to tell the
plain unvarnished truth, as clearly as I can understand it, and let
Christians and Infidels, Orthodox and Unitarians, Catholics
and Protestants, and Swedenborgians, growl as they will."
LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 239
This laborious work brought Mrs. Child no pecuniary
reward ; it barely paid expenses. This was, no doubt, due
to the fact that, gentle and candid as was the tone of the book,
it was in opposition to the pervading religious tendencies of
the community in which she lived. Her treatment of the
questions involved was too dispassionate. Each sect in turn
felt its claims understated. As we have seen, she was not
unprepared for this result, nor was she disheartened by it.
" This is the second time I have walked out in stormy
weather without a cloak," she said to a friend. " I trust I
have never impelled any one in the wrong direction. Most
devoutly do I believe in the pervasive and ever-guiding spirit
of God ; but I do not believe it was ever shut up within the
covers of any book, or that it ever can be. Portions of it,
or rather breathings of it, are in many books. The words of
Christ seem to me full of it as no other words are. But if
we want truth we must listen to the voice of God in the
silence of our soul, as he did."
In the year following the publication of "The Progress of
Religious Ideas," we have the following picture of her life :
"This winter has been the loneliest of my life. If you
could know my situation you would pronounce it unendur-
able. I should have thought so myself if I had had a fore-
shadowing of it a few years ago. But the human mind can
get acclimated to anything. What with constant occupation
and the happy consciousness of sustaining and cheering my
poor old father in his descent into the grave, I am almost
always in a state of serene contentment. In summer my
once extravagant love of beauty satisfies itself with watching
the birds, the insects, and the flowers in my little patch of
a garden. I have no room in which to put the vases and
engravings and transparencies that friends have given me from
time to time. But I keep them safely in a large chest, and
when birds and flowers are gone I sometimes take them out,
as a child does his playthings, and sit down in the sunshine
with them, dreaming how life would seem in such places, and
how poets and artists come to imagine such things. This
240 LYDIA MARIA CHILD.
process sometimes gives rise to thoughts which float through
the universe, though they began in a simple craving to look
at something that is beautiful."
The words that we have underlined in this letter seem to
us to express the serene philosophy which was one of Mrs.
Child's prominent characteristics. Her large-mindedness
with regard to others was no less remarkable. Of Dr.
Channing she writes : " At first I thought him timid and
even time-serving, but soon discovered that I formed this
estimate merely from ignorance of his character. I learned
that it was justice to all, not popularity to himself, which
rendered him so cautious. He constantly grew upon my
respect until I came to regard him as the wisest as well as
the gentlest apostle of humanity. / owe him thanks for
helping to preserve me from the one-sidedness with ivhich
zealous reformers are apt to run. He never sought to under-
value the importance of anti-slavery, but he said many
things to prevent my looking upon it as the only question
interesting to humanity. My mind needed this check, and I
never think of his many-sided conversations without deep
gratitude."
Another extract, equally striking to those who recognize
the narrowing influences of literary ambition in the majority
of minds, is this :
"I am not what I aspired to be in my days of young
ambition ; but I have become humble enough to be satisfied
with the conviction that what I have written has always
been written conscientiously, that I have always spoken
with sincerity if not with power. In every direction I see
young giants rushing past me, at times pushing me some-
what rudely in their speed, but I am glad to see such strong
laborers to plough the land and sow the seed for coming
years."
Of the warmth of her affections and friendship sufficient
proof has already been given. She was as just to others as
to herself, and more generous. Nothing jarred upon her
more than to detect a small motive in her own action.
LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 241
" I have a confession to make to you," she says to a friend,
whose birthday canie in the same month with her own. " I
intended to send you some little ' rattle-trap ' on your birthday,
but I said to myself, ' That will seem like reminding her of
my birthday. She is rich and I am poor. If I send her
plaster she will perhaps send me marble ; it will be more
delicate not to do it.' I am ashamed, thoroughly ashamed, of
these mean ideas, for the thought 'I am poor and thou
art rich' ought never to interrupt the free flowing of
human souls toward each other. Nevertheless I did it, as
I have done many other things that I regret and am
ashamed of."
Absolute integrity was a part of Mrs. Child's nature. She
was thoroughly in earnest. To know the truth and obey it
was her chief desire. "It is the likeness of my soul in some
of its moods," she says, referring to Domenichino's Cumaean
Sybil, " Oh, how I have listened!"
Her benevolence was wide as the sea. Down to the last
years of her life it knew no slackening. "I have never
experienced any happiness to be compared to the conscious-
ness of lifting a human soul out of the mire," she writes,
with regard to a drunkard, reformed by months of intelligent,
painstaking, daily effort on her part. In her will an annuity
of fifty dollars a year was left to this man, to be paid in
monthly instalments so long as he should refrain from drink.
His was but an example of the many lives which she touched
and helped, and furthered toward higher standards.
A constant bright humor plays about her earnestness, like
harmless summer lightning against a clear sky. " The ' Bos-
ton Post ' was down upon me for the verse about President
Pierce," she writes in 1856. "I could not help it. His name
would not rhyme to anything but curse."
At another time she wrote, "Miss R. complains of the ex-
ceeding slowness with which things tended to that result
(emancipation). I told her of the consolation an old nurse
gave to a mother whose child was very sick. The mother
said, " The medicine doesn't seem to work as you thought it
242 LYDIA MARIA CHILD.
would." The nurse replied, " It will work. Trust in God,
madam : he's tedious, but he's sure."
And once more : " It is natural enough that Gerrit Smith
should deem me ' wise.' When I approach him I don't go
dancing on a slack-rope, decorated with spangles and Psyche
wings ; I walk on solid ground as demurely as if I were
going to meeting with psalm-book in hand. If I happen to
catch a glimpse of a fairy by the way, she and I wink at
each other, but I never 'let on.' He supposes the chosen
teachers of my mind to be profound statesmen and pious
Christian fathers. I never introduced him to any of my
acquaintances of light character."
Still again : " You were right in your prediction about your
poems. Many of them are too metaphysical for my simple,
practical mind. I cannot soar so high, or dive so deep ; so I
stand looking and wondering where you have gone, like a
cow watching a bird or a dolphin. A wag says that when
Emerson was in Egypt the Sphinx said to him, ' You're
another.' I imagine the Sphinx would address you in the
same way."
Some who read this will recall the neat drollery of her
return strokes to the violent letter addressed her by Mrs.
Mason of Virginia, after Mrs. Child's application to the
authorities of that State for permission to minister to old
John Brown, then a wounded prisoner. Mrs. Mason had
asked, with what was intended to be scathing sarcasm,
" Now compare yourself with those your sympathy would
devote to such ruthless ruin, and say on that ' word of honor
which has never been broken,' would you stand by the bedside
of an old negro dying of a hopeless disease to alleviate his
sufferings as far as human aid could? Do you soften the
pangs of maternity in those around you by all the care and
comfort you can give ? Did you ever sit up till the ' wee '
hours to complete a dress for a motherless child that she
might appear on Christmas day in a new one, along with her
more fortunate companions? We do these and more for
our servants."
LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 243
To this Mrs. Child retorted :
" To the personal questions you ask me I will reply in the
name of all the women of New England. It would be ex-
tremely difficult to find any woman in our villages who does
not sew for the poor and watch with the sick whenever occa-
sion requires. We pay our domestics generous wages, with
which they can purchase as many Christmas gowns as they
please, a process far better for their characters, as well
as our own, than to receive their clothing as a charity
after being deprived of just payment for their labor. I
have never known an instance where the f pangs of mater-
nity ' did not meet with requisite assistance ; and here at
the North, after we have helped the mothers, we do not sell
the babies."
The outbreak of the civil war two years later aroused her
to the most active interest. Her strong anti-slavery feeling
was in the outset at variance with her patriotism. " I wait to
see how the United States will deport itself," she writes.
" When it treats the colored people with justice and humanity
I will mount its flag on my great elm-tree. Until then I
would as soon wear the rattlesnake on my bosom as the eagle.
It seems as if the eyes of the government were holdeu, that
they cannot see."
Her helpfulness, however, could not remain inactive when
there was such pressing work to do. Very soon she was
deep in every sort of undertaking collecting funds, collect-
ing supplies, urging Whittier to the writing of patriotic
songs, sewing, knitting, quilting. At first this work was
done only for special regiments, of whose conduct she felt sure.
" This winter I have for the first time been knitting for the
army ; but I do it only for Kansas troops. I can trust them,
for they have vowed a vow unto the Lord that no fugitive
shall ever be surrendered in their camps. A soldier needs a
great idea to fight for ; and how can the idea of freedom be
otherwise than obscured by witnessing the wicked, mean, un-
manly surrendering of poor trembling fugitives? The absurd
policy of the thing is also provoking, to send back those
s/
244 LYDIA MARIA CHILD.
who want to help us to be employed by rebels to help them
to shoot us."
Later she writes to a friend, half-comically, half-sorrow-
fully, " Our cause is going to mount the throne of popular
favor. Then I shall bid good-by to it, and take hold of
something else that is unpopular. I never work on the win-
ning side, because I know there will always be a plenty ready
to do such work."
But while clinging firmly to her anti-slavery principles, no
one was readier than she to spend and be spent for the service
of our country in its hour of need. Her economy, always
careful, grew carefuller still. Self-indulgence in the smallest
particular was rigidly lopped off. In 1862 she writes to
thank a friend for the gift of a book which she had wished
to see. ' When I was in Boston last week I stopped and
looked at the advertisement of ' John Brent,' in the windows
of Ticknor & Fields. I wanted it very much, and was on
the point of stepping in and buying it, but I thought of the
'contrabands' and of other claims upon me still nearer, as
natural relationship goes, and I said to myself, ' No unneces-
sary expense till the war is over.' I walked away well satis-
fied with my decision ; but I am amazing glad to have the
book."
Immediately after comes another letter to the husband of
the same friend ; " I enclose twenty dollars which I wish you
would use for the ' contrabands ' in any way you think best.
I did think of purchasing shoes, of which I understand they
are much in need, but I concluded it was best to send to you
to appropriate it as you choose. In November I expended
eighteen dollars for clothing, mostly for women and children,
and picked up all the garments, blankets, etc., that I could
spare. I sent them to Fortress Monroe. Last week I gave
A. L. twenty dollars towards a great box she is filling for
Port Eoyal. I still have forty dollars left of a fund I have
set apart. I keep it for future contingencies ; but if you
think it is more needed now, say the word and you shall
have it."
LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 245
"And yet," says Mr. Phillips, "this princely giver kept
till death the cheap, plain fashion of dress which early narrow
means had enforced, used an envelope twice, and never wrote
on a whole sheet when a half one would suffice. 'I do not
think, Mrs. Child, you can afford to give so much now,' I
said to her once, when in some exigency of the freedman's
cause she told me to send them from her a hundred dollars.
'Well,' she answered, 'I will think it over and send you
word to-morrow.' To-morrow word came, ' Please send
them two hundred.'
w Her means were never large, never so large that a woman
of her class would think she had anything to give away. But
her spirit was Spartan. When she had nothing for others
she worked to get it. She wrote to me once, ' I have four
hundred dollars to my credit at my publisher's for my book
on " Looking Toward Sunset." Please get it and send it to
the freedmen.' And she had nothing of the scholar's disease
timidity and selfishness ; her hand was always ready for
any drudgery of service. The fallen woman, the over-
tempted inebriate, she could take to her home and watch
over month by month. And prison bars were no bar to her
when a friendless woman needed help or countenance against
an angry community. She sought honestly to act out her
thought, obeyed the rule,
1 Go put your creed
Into the deed ' ;
was ready to die for a principle or starve for an idea, nor
think to claim any merit for it."
" Looking Toward Sunset," to which Mr. Phillips alludes,
was published in 1864, the last year of the war. It was a
collection in prose and verse by various authors, all bearing
upon the subject of old age. It met with a most cordial
reception.
"My sunset book has had most unexpected success,"
writes its author. " The edition of four thousand sold before
New Year's Day, and they say they might have sold two
246 LYDIA MARIA CHILD.
thousand more if they had been ready. This pleases me
beyond measure, for the proceeds, whether more or less,
were vowed to the freedmen ; and cheering old folks with one
hand, and helping the wronged and suffering with the other,
is the highest recreation I ever enjoyed. Nobles or princes
cannot discover or invent any pleasure equal to earning with
one hand and giving with the other."
In 1867 appeared "A Romance of the Republic," which
met with equal welcome. Its scenes were laid in the South,
and its plot hinged on what had been the great interest of
Mrs. Child's life, the slavery question.
For seven years after the' publication of " A Romance of
the Republic," the peaceful life at Wayland continued. Age
was laying his quieting hand on Mrs. Child's energetic pulses,
but his touch neither dulled her sympathies nor blunted her
discrimination. She was systematically cheerful. " Cheer-
fulness is to the spiritual atmosphere what sunshine is to the
earthly landscape," she said. " I am resolved to cherish
cheerfulness with might and main. The world is so full of
sadness that I more and more make it a point of duty to
avoid all sadness that does not come within the sphere of my
duty. I read only f chipper' books. I hang prisms in my
windows to fill the room with rainbows ; I gaze at all the
bright pictures in the shop windows ; I seek cheerfulness in
every possible way. This is my ' necessity in being old.' "
Her letters during this interval are full of comments on
books. Reading, then, as always, was her chief recreation,
and served as stimulus and refreshment after her daily tasks.
In a letter dated June 18, 1874, occurs this calm and
beautiful passage :
" David and I are growing old. He will be eighty in three
weeks, and I was seventy-two last February. But we keep
young in our feelings. We are, in fact, like two old chil-
dren ; as much interested as ever in the birds and the wild
flowers, and with sympathies as lively as ever in all that con-
cerns the welfare of the world. Our habitual mood is serene
and cheerful. The astonishing activity of evil sometimes
LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 247
makes me despondent for a while, but my belief returns as
strong as ever, that there is more good than evil in the
world, and that the all-wise Being is guiding the good to
certain victory. How blest are those whom He employs as
His agents." m
With the following October came the stroke which severed
this long and happy union. Mrs. Child bore it with ac-
customed bravery. She writes to a dear friend :
"I was wonderfully calm at the time, and for. twenty-four
hours afterward, but since then 1 seem to get more and more
sensitive and distressed. I try hard to overcome it, for I do
not want to cast a shadow over others. Moreover I feel
that such states of mind are wrong. There are so many
reasons for thankfulness to the Heavenly Father. And I do
feel very thankful that he did not suffer for a long time, that
the powers of his mind were undimmed to the last ; that my
strength and faculties were preserved to take care of him to
the last ; and that the heavy burden of loneliness has fallen
upon me rather than upon him.
" But at times it seems as if I could no longer bear the
load. I keep breaking down. They told me I should feel
better after I got away from Wayland, where memories
haunted me at every step. But I do not feel better. On the
contrary, I am more deeply sad. The coming and going of
people talking about subjects of common interest makes life
seem like a foreign land, where I do not understand the
language, and I go back to my darling old mate with a more
desperate and clinging tenderness. And when there comes
no response but the memory of that narrow little spot where
I planted flowers the day before I left our quiet little nest, it
seems to me as if all were gone, and as if I stood alone on a
solitary rock in mid-ocean, alone in midnight darkness, hear-
ing nothing but the surging of the cold waves."
To another friend she writes: "I have passed through a
very severe ordeal in separating from the loving and beloved
companion of half a century, and in the breaking up of the
cosy little nest where we had passed so many comfortable
248 LYDIA MARIA CHILD.
years. I do not suppose that time will ever entirely heal the
deep wound, but I trust the sharpness of suffering will sub-
side sufficiently to enable me to be of some use during the
remainder of the time that remains to me in this world. I
cannot solve the problem of this world, except by supposing
it to be a primary school for another ; but that other world
seems too far off, and the conditions of existence there too
vague, to be positive relief from the loneliness of separation.
I can only wait and trust."
f ' Wait and trust, " she did, but for a time life was become
a hard struggle. "People are very kind, but I cannot banish
the desolate feeling that I belong to nobody and nobody be-
longs to me," she tells a friend during the year following her
husband's death. Such recognition of loneliness is the al-
most inevitable fate of one or other of a childless pair, who,
for a long term of years, have been all in all to each other.
Mrs. Child had never a son or daughter of her own, though,
as some one said, " a great many of other people's."
Calmness and comfort came with time and with the min-
istrations of the man}' friends who surrounded her. Her last
book, "Aspirations of the World," a volume of selections on
moral and religious subjects, was published in 1878.
On the morning of October 20, 1880, she died, after a few
brief moments of suffering. The generous heart which had
beat with all the strongest pulses of her century had at last
expended its force, and peacefully and easily the end came.
The funeral was, as befitted one like her, plain and simple.
Mr. Whittier tells us : " The pall-bearers were elderly, plain
farmers in the neighborhood, and led by the old white-haired
undertaker, the procession wound its way to the not distant
burial-ground over the red and gold of fallen leaves, and
under the half-covered October sky. Just after her body was
consigned to the earth a magnificent rainbow spanned, with
its arc of glory, the eastern sky."
We can hardly close this little sketch more fittingly than
with the beautiful words added to her recently published
w Correspondence " by Mr. Wendell Phillips :
LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 249
" A dear, lovable woman, welcome at a sick bedside ; as
much in place there as when facing an angry nation ; con-
tented with the home she had made. A wise counsellor, one
who made your troubles hers, and pondered thoughtfully
before she spoke her hearty word. She was the kind of
woman one would choose to represent woman's entrance into
broader life. Modest, womanly, sincere, simple, solid, real,
loyal, to be trusted; equal to affairs, and yet above them;
mother wit ripened by careful training and enriched by the
lore of ages ; a hand ready for fireside help and a mystic
loving to wander on the edge of the actual, reaching out up
into the infinite and the unfathomable, so that life was lifted
to romance, to heroism, and to loftiest faith."
16
CHAPTER XI.
MAEY CLEMMEE.
BY LILIAN WHITING.
Mary Clemmer's Ancestry Pen-portraits of Her Father and Mother Her
Childhood School-life and Early Education Publishing Her First
Verses Beginning Her Literary Career Removal to New York First
Newspaper Letters Marvellous Industry and Capacity for Work
Contracting to Write a Column a Day for Three Years A Chapter from
Her Experiences During the War Vivid Description of the Surrender of
Maryland Heights Her Journalistic Work How She Gathers Materials
for " A Woman's Letter from Washington " Charles Sumner's Friend-
shipA Busy Life Sought and Caressed by Society Tribute to the
Memory of Alice and Phcebe Cary.
MONG the women of letters in our own country,
few have appealed to the public by work that
has attracted so wide a personal response as has
Mary Clemmer.
In 1866 she inaugurated an original and
specific line of journalistic work that at once
fixed public attention. Thousands of families
became subscribers to the "New York Inde-
pendent" when that journal began the publication
of " A Woman's Letter from Washington." Mary
Clemmer's first letter to the "Independent" was written
March 4, 1866. In the years that have passed between that
date and the present, Mrs. Clemmer has become widely known
as a poet and novelist ; yet it is as the fine interpreter of the
important phases of Washington life through an eventful series
of years that we see her most distinctive work. Her letters
from the Capital have always been significant of fine percep-
tion, wide comprehension, and a refined insight into the sub-
tle relations and the undercurrents of human life. Strong in
their political characterization, these letters have been a potent
250
MARY CLEMMER. 251
force in the shaping of national issues by their power to
influence public opinion.
Mary Clemmer was born in Utica, New York. Her
father, Abraham Clemmer, a native of Pennsylvania, was of
Huguenot descent. Her mother, Margaret Kneale, was born
in the Isle of Man.
The Clemmer family trace their origin to Alsatia, France,
on the borders of Germany. Their name in the fatherland
was spelled Klemmer. In 1685, when Louis XIV. pushed
his persecutions of the Huguenots past the borders of France
into the very heart of Germany, the Clemmer family were
among the million Huguenots who then fled from their native
soil to seek refuge in strange lands. The}- settled in Berks
county, Pennsylvania, before the American Revolution.
Jonas Clemmer, the father of Abraham Clemmer, an edu-
cated man, a teacher by profession, died when his son was
but five years of age his death changing the entire earthly
destiny of his child.
The mother of Abraham Clemmer, born Barbara Schelley,
came also from Huguenot stock. The male members of
her family for many generations had been practitioners of
medicine, or professors of medical science. Her brothers
were educated as physicians, and their sons to-day are prac-
tising physicians in the State of Pennsylvania. She, a girl,
denied the liberal education bestowed upon her brothers,
possessed in no less degree than they the instinct of healing.
With none of the training that bestows a college diploma she
became famous in the country surrounding her home for her
knowledge of medicines, her skill in using them, and in
healing the sick. A woman of magnificent constitution, of
great force of character, of profound sweetness of disposi-
tion, she died in the homestead in Pennsylvania, where she
lived from her youth, as late as the year 1873, aged eighty-
two years.
The early death of his father, with the burden that death
cast upon his mother of caring for a growing family, were,
together, the causes which denied to Abraham Clemmer the
252 MARY CLEMMER.
liberal education, the thorough mental discipline, which, up
to his time, had been the birthright of his family.
In response to a request from the writer of this sketch,
Mary Clemmer writes of her father :
" The first memory I recall of the aspect of my father was
when I was five years old. They placed me in a high chair at
the tea-table, and instead of eating, I sat gazing at my father,
because to my child's vision he looked so handsome. My first
outburst of grief I recall at the same table, when a person told
me that some time my father's raven hair would be gray.
The announcement to me was so terrible I burst into tears.
" Abraham Clemmer carried in his bearing and on his face
the visible stamp of a superior race. He was of fine stature,
with an alert step and a haughty poise of the head. His
features were patrician in outline and expression. His head
high, his hair black and curling, his brows arched, his hazel
eyes dark and full, his nose finely aquiline, his mouth as ex-
quisitely cut as Apollo's, with the suggestion of disdain in
its curves, yet full of sweetness. This was the beauty of his
prime. In old age, in its patriarchal aspect, it became still
more uncommon, and in death was so remarkable that those
who had never seen him in life, looking upon him in his last
sleep, robed for the grave, recall his face to-day, with the
seal of ineffable peace upon it, as one of the most nobly
beautiful that they had ever gazed upon in death.
" He had the temperament of the poet. He loved Nature
with that passion which finds in her presence perpetual satis-
faction and solace. He loved beauty with the fine fervor
that makes its love religion. He loved music with an enthu-
siasm that was in itself an inspiration. He wrote with great
elegance, drew with remarkable accuracy and facility was
a natural linguist.
" With due opportunity he would have excelled as an artist,
or have succeeded in any profession demanding the develop-
ment of the finest mental faculties. What in his whole life
he never attained was the power of calculation indispensable
to merely material success.
MARY CLEMMER.
MARY CLEMMER. 255
" Born of a race for many generations devoted exclusively
to artistic and scientific pursuits, the calculating insight, the
forethought of the money-getter, the commercial instinct
that commands financial gain were left by nature out of his
temperamental and mental make-up.
" Unadapted in every way to a life of business, the circum-
stances of his lot doomed him early to it, with the inevita-
ble sequence failure in all the results that build up financial
fortune. He lived and died a poor man, bequeathing to his
children as their supreme earthly inheritance, the necessity
of shaping life for themselves. His generosity was a fault,
giving to others, often to the unworthy, what he should have
kept for himself and his children. Honorable at any cost to
himself, his heart was full of charity. In my whole life I
never heard him speak to the detriment of any human being.
The absent were always safe in his kindly and gentle speech.
His youth glowed with fire and with dreams for the future
whose fulfilment the limitations of his lot made impossible.
"No man ever put more patience, more industry, more
energy, into his struggles for a home and a competency.
With a little, only a little, more iron in his nature, he could
have compelled adversity to have yielded to fortune, could
have commanded the friends who never dreamed that they
could have served him till it was too late. ' It was not in
him.' He yielded to the blows of adverse fate he never
struck back. He accepted at last the fact of material failure
as the final sum of his lot accepted it with a gentleness and
a patience which lifted its very pathos into the atmosphere of
serenity. But the absolute consciousness of this fact was the
final blow of fortune. It broke his spirit ; after it he never
struggled again. He mellowed into old age with a childlike-
ness and sweetness of temper which won the hearts of all who
approached him. Years of wasting malady he bore with a
patience that was angelic. Hour by hour he drew constant
solace from Nature, from the beauty of the green earth
that he loved. The joy of sight never failed him till it failed
him on earth forever. Not till the day he died was his chair
256 MARY CLEMMER.
by the window vacant, where for years he had gazed out on
the roses of his garden and on the gay sights of the streets
of the Capital city.
"That Christmas Sabbath morning, 1881, when asked if
he felt able to go down stairs, for the first time he shook his
head. Before another morning God took him.
" A Christian believer from youth, with a smile ineffable
which chanced to fall upon the face of his child his last look
on earth,* without a sigh he passed out to the Father of his
spirit. Never did that FATHER gather back to His all-loving
heart a more ingenuous, a more gentle, a more loving child.
" Such, ever mourned, ever missed, ever loved, was is
my father.
" One day that was his very own a day all balm and azure
and gold we laid all of him that was dust in God's acre in
the inalienable churchyard of Rock Creek, in a suburb of the
city of Washington, where the pines will sough, the birds
sing above his head, the creek murmur, the flowers bloom
beside him, till the Resurrection."
The mother of Mary Clemmer (born Margaret Kneale)
came from the Isle of Man. This little island, in the storm-
tossed Irish sea, has an importance wholly disproportionate
to its geographical extent. It has a government of its own,
a House of Parliament, a people descended through genera-
tions of noble blood, a striking and eventful history. In
Hawthorne's English Note-book he has recorded his impres-
sions of the historic spot ; and from its scenery and romantic
traditions Scott collected his material for "Peveril of the
Peak." The island history dates back to the time that the
Norsemen were mighty in the West.
Wordsworth's famous line,
"The light that never was on sea or land,"
is in a poem that was "suggested by a picture of Peele Castle
in a storm." Just outside the ramparts of that castle Mar-
garet Kneale was born, and under its ancient archways she
played through all her childhood. The influences of this
MARY CLEMMER. 257
spot entered into her life, and have flowered into conscious'
ness in the life of her gifted daughter.
The Isle of Man lies in a temperature that fosters a
wonderful beauty and luxuriance of nature. Fuschias grow
and mass their scarlet blossoms ten and twelve feet high. The
mist-crowned heights shine sun-touched and fair above the
purple defiles of rocky valleys, over which foam-crested
cascades rush, tumbling into the river below. An old legend
runs that the isle had once a wizard king who enshrouded it
with vapor. Here King Harold Haarfager reigned, and here
the Vikings held their sea-throne. Myth and legend have
vanished now. The island is only seventy-five miles from
Liverpool, and a line of daily steamers connects it with the
outer world. Yet something in the sturdy poise of its race
recalls the old motto of the land, Quocunque jeceris stabit.
[However you throw it, it will stand.] The old enchant-
ment hovers over the spot, although a sail of six hours brings
one into the life of to-day.
Mary Clemmer writes of her mother and her parentage :
w William Kneale is a name still most honorably known in the
Isle of Man as borne by the author, Mr. William Kneale, of
Douglas. In 1827 my grandfather, William Kneale, a deeply
religious and studious man, desiring for his young children a
larger outlook and more extended educational advantages
than the Isle of Man at that time afforded, sold his patrimony
with that of his proud, high-spirited wife (born Margaret
Crane) and sailed for America. His destination with his
family was the State of Ohio ; but meeting friends from the
island by the way at the young city of Utica, New York,
he paused on his journey and never resumed it. He at once
purchased a homestead, which, now in the heart of the city of
Utica, is still in possession of his family. In this homestead
grew to womanhood, and was married, Margaret Kneale.
" She was a dazzlingly fair, wide-eyed, blue-eyed daughter
of the Vikings. She brought with her to bleak New York
not only the radiant complexion for which the women of
Mona's Isle are famous, but also all the best inherited traits
258 MARY CLEMMER.
of her ancient race, a passion for liberty in its relation to
the whole human family ; absolute faith in God ; the deepest,
most spontaneous religious fervor, with an intense desire for
knowledge that pervaded her entire being.
" The city of Utica, settled by many of the oldest and most
cultivated families of New England, lured from their sterile
surroundings by the opulent soil and magnificent promise of
the Mohawk Valley, was from its very beginning a small
centre of religious, educational, philanthropic, and reforma-
tory ideas and action. It was a rallying point for the early
"Abolitionists." Beriah Green, Alvan Stuart, and Gerritt
Smith, in those days were the apostles and prophets of free-
dom to the slave. From the convocations over which they
presided issued such Abolitionists as John Brown, William
Lloyd Garrison, and Wendell Phillips.
"To the influence of such public teachers, to the marvel-
lously active spirit of f reform ' which in all the churches
insisted on the highest thinking, acting, and living in every
phase of human life ; added to the same influence in her own
home, wherein her father was not only the father of his chil-
dren, but a father in the church, may be traced that lifelong
devotion to every good cause, especially to that of the down-
trodden and oppressed everywhere, which marks Margaret
Clemmer in Washington to-day, as it t marked young Mar-
garet Kneale in Utica long ago."
In this city, where he chanced to be making a casual visit,
she met and married Abraham Clemmer, and here Mary
Clemmer and other children were born.
As a child Mary Clemmer is described by those who have
known her from infancy as being singularly beautiful and
engaging in manner, and as living much in her ideal world,
even in those early days. Seated in her little rocking-chair,
or wandering in the shaded grounds, while the wind touched
caressingly the sunny, breeze-blown hair, she would compose
rhymes, repeating them to herself, long before she learned the
use of a pen. To the curious student of heredity here was a
rare and a wonderful mingling of forces. The poetic legends
MARY CLEMMER. 259
and the magic of the Isle of Man that were assimilated into
the life of the mother ; the positive element giving creative
force from the grandmother, and the deeply artistic nature of
the father coloring her entire being and attuning it to the
inspirational temperament.
When she had just passed childhood, business circum-
stances led Abraham Clemmer to remove to Westfield, Mass.,
where two brothers of his wife, one Hon. Thomas Kueale,
had already settled.
In due time Mary Clemmer entered the academy of West-
field, one of whose early teachers long before her birth was
the famous Mrs. Emma Willard. It was one of those stable
and stately schools of the past, where young men were fitted
for college and young girls were taught dubious French, and
how to read fluently Virgil and Homer. Naturally enough
books were to her a passion. The principal of the school,
William C. Goldthwaite, one of the rarest and best teachers
Massachusetts ever produced, took great interest in this
young girl, and especial pleasure and pains in the cultivation
of her mind. While a student in the Westfield Academy her
first line in verse was put into print. Read as a school
exercise, it pleased one of her teachers, Samuel Davis,
sufficiently to impel him to send it to his friend, Samuel
Bowles, who printed it at once in the " Springfield Re-
publican."
In every life there is an hour when the keynote of the
future is struck. At Westfield this hour came to Mary
Clemmer. For a literary exercise was chosen one day that
sweetest poem of Alice Gary's, " Pictures of Memory." Its
beauty was noted by Professor Goldthwaite, and after dwell-
ing on its rhythm as the most perfect in language, he went on
to speak of the life of its author, Alice Gary.
" It fell upon me like a tale of romance," said Mrs. Clem-
mer, in referring to this time, "and I went on thinking of her."
In that hour was forged the unseen links of a chain of lifelong
friendship between two noble women. Natives of the same
land of song, the subtle affinities of nature reached through
260 MARY CLEMMER.
time and space. Years after, when the young girl whose
nature responded so swiftly to that poem had grown to early
womanhood, she went to New York, and the woman-poet she
had cherished as an ideal became to her the wise counsellor,
the tender friend : while in turn the young girl met her with
a new and rare appreciation, and became her trusted friend,
her perfect biographer.
When the young girl went to New York she went bearing
another name. While yet a school-girl, with no knowledge
of actual life, with no desire of her own to impel her to the
step she took, moved by misfortune that had fallen upon her
home, she yielded to the wishes and the will of others, and
was married to a man many years her senior. All that was
spiritually right in this relation called a marriage was its
final, legal annulment. When with mutual good-will the
two honorably parted, she in law, as she was by birth,
became again by title solely Mary Clemmer.
Before this separation occurred, in the first flower of
her youth, while living in the city of New York, her
artistic nature found its first expression. Her first essay
in the journalism she was destined to ennoble and adorn
was made in the columns of the Utica "Morning Herald,"
to which she contributed a series of letters from New
York.
About this time Mrs. Clemmer wrote a touching little waif
of a poem which has never since that date been republished.
As it holds in its simple pathos a clue to her complex inner
life at this period, the following stanzas of the lines entitled
"My Little Sister " are here reproduced :
" Come to my arms, my little sister,
Thou of the large brown eyes,
In whose deep wells thoughts softly tremble
Like light in twilight skies.
Come to my arms, my little sister,
Thou of the gleaming hair ;
Whose sunny life ne'er wore a shadow
Lost from the wing of care.
MARY CLEHMER. 261
" I've joined the host of eager runners
Whose race is for a prize ;
My soul hath laid on Toil's great altar
Its holiest sacrifice.
A life of lofty aim and effort
Is that which suits me best,
Till I lie still on Death's chill bosom
I do not ask to rest.
" To-day I've paused amid the struggle,
I've banished every care ;
I've passed again Home's placid portal
And ta'en my vacant chair.
My little sister's fond caresses,
Her winsome, winning ways,
Make glad my heart that loves and blesses
And joins her pleasant plays,
Till I live over in her presence
My childhood's merry days.
" Still play with me, my little sister,
I am so glad to-night,
That childhood in earth's darkest places
Spreads out its wings of light,
That I may turn from earth's proud teachers,
Turn from the earth's deceit,
And learn so many holy lessons
At childhood's sinless feet."
Beginning with no practical training for, or actual know-
ledge of journalism, she, groping her way, obeyed the law
of necessity, and through her obedience to it at last came her
opportunity. In early youth she came to know many cares
and to bear heavy responsibilities, which together left her no
choice of what she would do.
Recalling this time Mrs. Clemmer wrote of it in a private
letter to a friend :
"No one can grow as a writer unless she grows as a
thinker. Comparatively few appreciate the value of the
discipline of trained faculties, that may come through doing
faithfully and well the drudgery, so to speak, of intellectual
262 MAKY CLEMMER.
work. ... I once entered into a written contract to write
one column per day on any subject I was instructed to write
on, for three years in advance, and at the end of that
three years I had not, for a single day, failed of fulfilling
my task, which included everything from book revision,
comments on government, public men and affairs, to a com-
mon advertisement paragraph. You see that I did not miss
the apprenticeship of literary work. ... It was a toilsome
time, but one positive satisfaction I feel in looking back is the
consciousness of the entire command it gave me of all my
mental forces. It cured me utterly of the mental perversity
that waits for the inspiration of creative moods to do what is
necessary to be done. No matter how great the disinclina-
tion, whenever I had anything to do I did it, illy sometimes,
sometimes better, but / did it, the very best I could at that
moment. The final result was not deterioration in style, but
a much higher aggregate of forces and of command."
There are certain very severe limits that must suggest
themselves in attempting biographical details of one who is
in and of the life of to-day. :f The wreath of immortelles
that could be fitly placed on a grave cannot be laid on a
library table." The life that is dramatic in outward facts is
the exceptional life. Karely is it that of the eventful inner
life whose creations are its crises. Men are born and go
through life and die with little in the framework of outer
circumstances to distinguish one from another. Events
spring from within.
Yet when the war came Mary Clemmer was literally in it.
In her novel " Eirene," the chapter on the " Surrender of
Maryland Heights " was written from personal experience and
personal observation. At that time "Eirene" was running
as a serial in " Putnam's Monthly," and this vivid and graphic
picture of a war event was widely copied by the press of that
day, and was reproduced in " Littell's Living Age," and in
the "London Athenaeum."
From this memorable description of the surrender of
Maryland Heights is extracted the following :
MARY CLEMMER. 263
SEPTEMBER, 1862.
We had been expecting to hear the rebel guns for a week.
From the moment that we learned certainly that the Confederates
were in possession of PVederick ; that they had destroyed the
railroad bridge at Monocacy ; that they had entirely surrounded
us, we knew that they were only awaiting their own convenience
to attack Maryland Heights.
" If we can only keep the Heights," we said, as we looked with
anxious eyes to the green pastures above us, "if we can only
keep the Heights, we are safe." We could not forget that Jack-
son said, when last here, " Give me Maryland Heights, and I will
defy the world."
Of what avail would be the force in battle-line on Bolivar
Heights, three miles away ; of the array of infantry lining the
road to Charlestown ; the earthworks, the rifle-pits, the bat-
teries of what avail all, if from the other side Jackson ascended
Maryland Heights and turned our guns against us !
The boys had just had their breakfast on Saturday morning,
September 13, when the quick, cruel ring of musketry cutting the
air made them start. On one side was the Shenandoah, bounded
by Loudoun Heights, on the other the Potomac, with the Heights
of Maryland, a high, green, precipitous wall, towering above its
opposite shore.
Jackson had come. Through the blue of that transcendent
morning the sunlit woods upon the mountain-tops were echoing
with death. Volley after volley shivered the air, and with it the
bodies of men. At first the report was far up on the very moun-
tain summit; then it grew nearer, rattling louder, and I knew
that the enemy were advancing. I heard their dreadful war-cry
and caught the flash of their bayonets piercing the green woods.
Suddenly the cry grew fainter, the resounding guns seemed
muffled in the thicket, and a loud shout from the soldiers of the
republic told that they were driving back the foe. The sounds of
battle palpitated to and fro, the double line of bayonets glanced,
advancing, retreating, while I listened with suspended breath.
The fight on the mountain was to decide our fate. Below the
artillerists were at work. The great guns pointed upward.
Shells screamed and hissed, tearing the green woods, poisoning
the pure ether with sulphurous smoke. Ambulances began to
wind down the steep mountain road with their freight of wounded.
Many of these brave soldiers were so shattered that they could
264 MARY CLEMMER.
only be carried on blankets, and the sad procession was swelled
by the bodies of two of our artillerists, shattered to death at their
guns. ... It was just noon when the musketry firing ceased.
Tents were struck. Cannon were spiked and sent tumbling
down the mountain gorge. Bayonets flashed out from the woods.
Long columns of men began moving down the mountain defile.
O, saddest, most disgraceful sight of all, the flag which waved
from that mountain-top, our signal of freedom and hope, they tore
it down. " The Heights are surrendered ! " From the ranks
came one curse, long and deep : " If we had not had a traitor for
a leader we should not have surrendered."
It dawned, that memorable Sabbath morning, September 14,
1862, in superlative splendor. Through that long azure-gold
morning a morning so absolutely perfect in the blending of its
elements, in its fusion of fragrance, light, and color, that it can
never die out of my consciousness, I sat at the window making
bandages ; sunshine, balm, and ether suffused the august mountains,
and the blue ether which ensphered us. All were unheeded while
we awaited the terrors of the day.
In the spring of 1866 Mary Clemmer wrote from Wash-
ington her first letter to the "Independent." From that date
to the present few weeks have passed during the congressional
sessions that she has not contributed to that journal. "A
Woman's Letter from Washington" was significant of refined
culture, of bright and keen perception, of an insight into the
nobler motives of life. It was strong in political character-
ization, and was apt to photograph pretty clearly politicians,
parties, and principles for the delectation of the reading
public. In brief, these letters treated topics of thought
rather than the mere surfaces of things.
The feeling with which Mrs. Clemmer looked on all this
Vanity Fair is indicated in the following extract from one of
her letters in the " Independent " :
" This letter is only a good-morning and a good-evening,
dear friends a salutation on the threshold of winter, as we
meet once more with all the summer between us and our last
good-by. The world I have left and the world I meet do not
SCENES AT THE BATTLE OF MARYLAND HEIGHTS. THE RETREAT.
MARY CLEMMER. 265
easily coalesce. The strength begotten of mountain heights ;
the peace of stormless lakes ; the pervasive fragrance of the
autumnal woods ; the music of a tiny leaf stirring in the blue
air ; the rustle of a squirrel scampering through the crisp
ferns with his winter nuts ; the lowing of the little black cow,
bossed like jet against the twilight sky, coining home across the
russet flat all these sights and sounds of a pastoral sphere
have come with me hither. Their music is in my ears and
their love is in my heart, as I confront this other world,
which is no relation of mine the world of rush, and hurry,
and of roaring streets ; the world of vanity and show ; of
policy, treachery, and place ; of shallow insights ; of harsh
rnisjudgment and broken faith. This is not my world. I
confess to a reluctant hand that lifts a pen to tell of its doings.
I am in it but not of it."
The years that Mrs. Clemmer has passed at the national
capital have been to her varied, eventful, rich in experiences.
She went to Washington in her early youth, with all her
latent capabilities untried and unproved.
Her first sustained work there comprised seven newspaper
letters each week. She passed long mornings in the ladies'
gallery of the Senate or of the Hall of Representatives.
Nothing about her, not even a scrap of a note-book or pencil,
indicated the professional listener. The letters being of an
editorial rather than of a reportorial nature, did not require her
to appear in the outward role of a correspondent. Returning
to her rooms, she sent the long letters and telegraphic matter
by a messenger who came for them. In the evening she held
herself free to receive friends, or for social engagements. In
her parlors might have been found the most eminent men of
the day.
The esteem in which Mrs. Clemmer's work was held is
indicated in two impromptu notes written in the Senate
Chamber by Charles Sumner. One of these bears no date
save that of the day of the week. Written at his desk and
handed by a page to Mrs. Clemmer in the ladies' gallery, it
runs :
2G6 MARY CLEMMEB.
" I am glad to see you again, even at a distance. I wish I could
tempt you to my house, where you will find some literary curi-
osities. Sincerely yours, CHARLES SUMNER."
A pleasant word of greeting this was to the young woman
who had that day returned to her post from a brief sojourn
in New York. Another note from Mr. Sumner runs as fol-
lows :
"SENATE CHAMBER, 22d March, 1871.
" I have always thought of you with honor and with a con-
stant desire to know personally one who does so much by her
pen for ideas which I have much at heart. I hope that you
will pardon me if I say that we are co-workers in the same field.
I am so little abroad that we have not met, but I trust that it may
not be so always.
" Sincerely yours, CHARLES SUMKER."
That trust was fulfilled, and for the years following this
date to that of his death the honored Massachusetts Senator
and Mrs. Clemmer were warm personal friends. Perhaps
no man was ever more truly apprehended or more fairly
interpreted than was Mr. Sumner by Mrs. Clemmer. Of
him in one of her " Independent " letters she says : " A man
solitary by the primal law of his nature, preoccupied, ab-
sorbed, aristocratic in instinct, though a leveller in ideas,
never a demagogue, never a politician, he is the born master
and expounder of fundamental principles."
Under date of March 5, 1871, Mrs. Clemmer wrote to the
" Independent " concerning Lincoln and the Eepublican party
as follows :
" It has been said that when God wants a great man he
makes one. I wish that he would make the great man for
the Republican party. In Lincoln He gave the man for the
time. The occasion came, and ten thousand sprang equal to
the occasion. Repressed men, half-developed men, who else
had never risen to the full stature of manhood, in the ex-
tremity of battle towered heroic as the gods. They did their
work and vanished. With a few exceptions, the grandest
men of our generation have already perished in their prime.
MARY CLEMMER. 267
Every epoch thrusts forth its demand. Where now is the
man for the hour ? The leader of a great party should have
not only the intellect to be the highest expounder of its
principles, but also embody that in his own manhood which
arouses and holds the enthusiasm of the masses for the
principles which he maintains.
" While he lived nobody suspected Mr. Lincoln of being a
great man. We did not even know how we loved him till he
died, and crape floated from every door. Where now in
high place can we find a man so simply grand? Where one
who could be trusted to use limitless power as he did, solely
to attain the ends of justice and mercy, without thought of
himself ? f If I am God's instrument, He will never forsake
the thing that he uses, but it must accomplish His purpose,'
I once heard him say, in the heyday of his power, with a
humility and sadness never to be forgotten. What -is great-
ness? It is not intellect alone. It is not moral and emo-
tional quality only. It is character compounded of both. It
is wisdom, it is high thought, it is wide vision. It is magna-
nimity, it is mercy, it is love, it is gentleness and child-
heartedness, it is forgiveness, it is supremacy over all
littleness. I believe in my race. I believe in man. I pray
God to raise up such a chief to save the Republican party to
the land which owes it so much."
The decade between 1870 to 1880 were years in which
Mary Clernmer achieved a great amount of creative work.
Journalistic correspondence, novels, poems, the lives of Phoebe
and Alice Gary, tr Ten Y*irs in Washington," all followed in
quick succession. This work, which in its quantity and quality
was enough in itself to absorb the entire time and energies of
its author, was really the achievement of a crowded life,
of a woman sought and caressed by society ; who was con-
stantly partaking of, and contributing to, the gay world's
elegancies and ceremonies.
In October, 1872, Mrs. Clemmer completed the biography
of the Gary sisters, a work which long intimacy and residence
17
268 MARY CLEMMER.
in their home had peculiarly fitted her to undertake. One
must always feel in reading Mrs. Clemmer's memorial of
these poet-sisters that Providence prepared the work in
advance for her, and, in the meantime, prepared her for the
work. It is in this book that Mrs. Clemmer pays a beautiful
tribute to Alice Gary, as the one friend of her life, in these
words :
"For her sake let me say what, as a woman, she could be
and was to another. She found me with habits of thought
and of action unformed, and with nearly all the life of woman-
hood before me. She taught me self-help, courage, and
faith. She showed me how I might help others and help
myself. Wherever I went I carried with me her love as a
treasure and a staff. How many times I leaned upon it and
grew strong. It never fell from me. It never failed me.
No matter how life might serve me, I believed without a
doubt that her friendship would never fail me, and it never
did. Yet, saying this, I have not said, and have no power
to say what, as a soul, I owe to her."
In this biography, and especially in depicting the life and
character of Alice Gary, to whom she was strongly drawn by
that mysterious spiritual affinity which defies for us all analy-
sis, Mary Clemmer did some of her most perfect literary work.
Of Alice Gary she wrote : " The intellectual life of
neither man nor woman can be justly judged without a
knowledge of the conditions which impelled that life and gave
to it shape and substance. Alice Gary felt within her soul
the divine impulse of genius, but hers w r as essentially a
feminine soul, shy, loving, full of longings for home, over-
burdened with tenderness, capable of an unselfish, lifelong
devotion to one. Whatever her mental or spiritual gifts, no
mere ambition could ever have borne such a woman out
into the world to seek and to make her fortune alone.
Had Alice Gary married the man whom she then loved
she would never have come to New York at all, to coin the
rare gifts of her brain and soul into money for shelter and
bread."
MARY CLEMMER. 269
The beginning of the friendship with Alice Gary, years
before they met face to face, is thus exquisitely told by Mrs.
Clemmer :
" Years ago, in an old academy in Massachusetts, its pre-
ceptor gave to a young girl a poem to learn for a Wednesday
exercise. It began,
4 Of all the beautiful pictures
That hang on Memory's wall,
Is one of a dim old forest,
That seemeth best of all.'
"After the girl had recited the poem to her teacher, he told
her that Edgar Poe had said, and that he himself concurred in
the opinion, that in rhythm it was one of the most perfect
lyrics in the English language. He then proceeded to tell
the story of the one who wrote it of her life in her Western
home, of the fact that she and her sister Phoebe had come to
New York to seek their fortune, and to make a place for
themselves in literature. It fell like a tale of romance on
the girl's heart ; and from that hour she saved every utterance
that she could find of Alice Gary's, and spent much time
thinking about her, till in a dim way she came to seem like a
much-loved friend."
Of the spiritual experiences of Alice Gary she recorded :
"The life of one woman who has conquered her own spirit,
who, alone and unassisted, through the mastery of her own
will, has wrought out from the hardest and most adverse
conditions a pure, sweet, and noble life, placed herself among
the world's workers, made her heart and thought felt in ten
thousand unknown homes the life of one such woman is
worth more to all living women, proves more for the possi-
bilities of womanhood, for its final and finest advancement,
its ultimate recognition and highest success, than ten thou-
sand theories or eloquent orations on the theme. Such a
woman was Alice Gary. Mentally and spiritually she was
especially endowed with the rarest gifts ; but no less the low-
liest of all her sisters may take on new faith and courage
from her life."
270 MAKY CLEMMER.
Mary Clemmer's literary work is not only widely compre-
hensive and sound in thought, but it has a peculiarly sympa-
thetic quality which gives it an enduring hold upon the hearts
of the people. It is work especially characterized by insight
by the spiritual sight which sees beyond. Sympathy is
the polarized light of the mind which reveals the hidden
chambers, the secret architecture of human life. It is the
supreme endowment of the poet, and it is the predominant
poetic temperament of Mrs. Clemmer that gives her writings
a vitality which is felt rather than described. This element
of her work finds, perhaps, more forcible illustration in the
memorial of the lives of Alice and Phoebe Gary, in her poems
and in her journalistic work, than in her novels. There are
logical reasons for this. Mrs. Clemmer has by nature much
of the creative force that is purely artistic. The work done
by this type of organization demands not so much repose as
freedom ; not so much time as it does the consciousness of
time.
In journalistic work Mrs. Clemmer is spontaneous, and
infuses into it much of that freedom of utterance which forms
the magnetism of private letters. She does not fill out a
stilted mechanical framework, but fearlessly writes out her-
self her clear views and vivid impressions ; and, as a journal-
istic letter is not of a lengthened structure, she gives the
ideal type of a newspaper letter.
Her poems are an utterance. They express, to all who
feel their subtle interpretation, the intensity of the inner life
of this woman-artist, an inner flame that burns not for this
world. You feel how it is that she " hears the songs of
heaven afar." It is the sound of the living waters to one
who cannot drink ; the far-falling echo that her ear catches
amid the din and strife of the market-place, which these
poems voice and repeat again in their own music ; and to
their exquisite quality we would add nothing, take away
nothing. They stand as the indices to a life, and their un-
dercurrents of meaning are to him who holds the key to their
sacred harmony. They draw their inspiration from the hid-
MARY CLEMMEE. 271
den wells of being, from a woman's deepest experiences,
love, life, and death.
The logical reason, which, in a critical estimate of Mrs.
Clemmer's varied work, may be applied to the fact that her
novels have not, as yet, ever exhibited her full power, lies
in the very nature of the work itself. A novel is not written
in an hour, a day, a week. It requires complete surrender.
It does not demand an application that is utterly unremitting,
but its characters must take possession of the mind in such a
manner as to develop naturally. This class of artistic work
cannot be forced into a hothouse growth, indeed, what
true work of the artist can be ? It is easily seen how in Mrs.
Clemmer's crowded life, that of a woman in society ; who
entertains largely in her own elegant home ; who holds a
leading place on the editorial staff of a weekly paper of New
York city ; who averaged for years seven journalistic letters
per week, letters accurate in facts, fine in philosophical
generalization, and vigorous in thought : from this data it
will be readily seen how incongruous the writing of novels
must be to such a life. "Any work, the presentation of
which should fill the whole soul, cannot be undertaken in ex-
traneous moments snatched from other duties," says Goethe.
These remarks are not intended as any apology for Mrs.
Clemmer's fiction. It needs none. It stands fair among that
of this age. It is only in comparing the actual work with her
own ideal in romance, and that marvellous latent power of
Mrs. Clemmer's nature which has never yet adequately
expressed itself, that a discrepancy is suggested. "His
Two Wives," which appeared first as a serial in the Boston
publication, " Every Saturday," is a work of unusual power.
In regard to this novel the only marvel is that it could
have been written at all. The request had been urged
upon Mrs. Clemmer to contribute a serial story to " Every
Saturday." Declining at first, from what seemed the
negation of overfilled time, she was led to consider the
project, to which all her natural creative power responded.
She undertook the work, giving to it simply the Friday
272 MARY CLEMMER.
afternoon of each week, sending the chapters just as they
flowed from her pen ; and when the story was published
in book-form it was made up, simply, from the pages of
" Every Saturday," without revision from the author. The
story, which is unique in treatment, and which sets itself like
a series of pictures in the memory, is rendered a remarkable
production when the circumstances under which it was writ-
ten are considered.
Some of the finest work of Mary Clemmer has been in
monographs on characters with whom she was strongly in
sympathy. Among these were papers on Charles Sumner,
Margaret Fuller, George Eliot, Emerson, and on Longfellow.
As a poet Mary Clemmer has touched chords to which the
response has been peculiarly sympathetic. In this phase of
creative work she has made herself the interpreter of two
distinct forces, the life of nature and the emotions of the
human heart. Her utterances are strongly subjective, yet
much of it is from the material of imagination, and sympathetic
rather than of real or of personal experience. A forcible
instance of this is in the poem entitled " The Dead Love,"
which upon its appearance in her volume of " Poems of
Life and Nature," was greeted by those discerning per-
sons, the critics, as "written from the depths of her own
experience," whereas it was really written when she was a
young girl, with no experience of love, living or dead, and
was a sympathetic response to a girl-friend whose painful
experience she thus interpreted. In the "Good-by, Sweet-
heart," Mrs. Clemmer touches her highest lyric force. In
her "Arbutus" we see the oneness of her soul with nature,
a harmony that is again interpreted in the two sonnets entitled
w The Cathedral Pines," written one summer day at Intervale,
New Hampshire.
The deeply religious nature of Mary Clemmer is revealed
in every line she has ever written. The life of her mother
from early childhood has been full of religious enthusiasm.
In joy or in sorrow she seeks in silence and in solitude
communion with the Divine Spirit. In the work of the
MARY CLEMMER. 273
distinguished daughter this religious meditation, this uninter-
mitting spiritual aspiration, is embodied and wrought into
practical application to men and things, and to the minutest
duties of human life.
Mary Clemmer has ennobled journalism by her profound
conviction of its moral significance. Measuring her work by
an ideal standard, she has always written up and not down
to the mentality of the hour. The action and reaction of
human life in its special phases in national statesmanship has
been subtly analyzed and ably revealed by her. In the
world, though not of it, the poetry of her nature has saved
her from the allurements of fashionable frivolities. Her
work, be it poetry or politics, has always in it the inspira-
tional element. She has the divining instinct of the poetic
temperament, the kindling of its fervor, the vividness of its
imagery.
Mrs. Clemmer's home on Capitol Hill, in Washington, is a
large, hospitable brick mansion, book-lined and picture-hung ;
with its souvenirs of friendship from names honored among
men, its dainty elegance, its sweetness of repose. It is cos-
mopolitan in its atmosphere. It could not be otherwise when
presided over by this fair, blue-eyed poet woman, whose
sympathies and interests radiate like a star to all points of
individual and national interests. Years ago Mrs. Clem-
mer purchased this house, and with her parents entered
it to make a home. In this household the father and the
mother were the honored guests, the treasured counsellors,
the beloved ones to whose comfort and happiness, first of all,
the household arrangements were subservient. In the winter
of 1881 the aged father passed away, cheered to the last by
the unfailing tenderness of his daughter. The mother still
graces and brightens this home with her gentle presence, that
falls as a benediction on the stranger or the guest.
Into this home come the tributes of respect and of love.
Through the discipline of waiting, through rich and varied
experiences, Mrs. Clemmer is garnering material and forces
for her future literary work.
9 74 MARY CLEMMER.
While Mrs. Clemmer has never been an active advocate in
special reforms, she has been a potent force in general advance-
ment. By nature and temperament she is distinctively the
artist, the writer, and she has not the aggressive inclination to
tilt a lance on all occasions, yet when the occasion appeals to
her moral power she has the full courage of her convictions.
Those who are leading the cause of the political enfranchise-
ment of women ; those who are consecrating their lives to
temperance, to philanthropy, find in Mary Clemmer not alone
the sympathizer and the helper, but the inspirer. Women go
to her home as on a pilgrimage to seek the sweetness and
light that never fails them there. Many an "Independent"
letter has been sacrificed ; many an artistic expression has
been left unwrought, to meet the claims of humanity. To
Mary Clemmer, truly, the life is more than meat ; the need
of one humble human heart is more to her than the fame or
applause of the world.
The story of a life ! Who may presume to tell it? And
who, while that life is a part of the present forces of
humanity, may dare reveal its deepest meanings, its romance,
its invisible yet potent dreams ? Let those who would fore-
cast the horoscope of Mary Clemmer read, in her "Poems of
Life and Nature," three sonnets: "Recognition," "The
Friend," " The Lover." If the reader will he may read a
story between the lines.
Little dreamed this young girl of the great world on
whose threshold she stood when she crossed that un-
seen line of fate and went to New York. The reader
of her novel " Eirene " may fancy that something of her
own experience is reflected in this paragraph regarding her
heroine :
" She had reached that crisis in life when a woman of oppo-
site nature, disappointed and wounded in her affections, turns
toward the prizes of intellect and ambition, and sallies forth
into the great world in search of a crown. It never occurred
to this girl that such a thing was possible to her. Of the rich
endowments of her mind as personal possessions she had no
MARY CLEMMEK. 275
consciousness, much less that it might be possible for her to
use them to build up a splendid fate for herself in the world.
The realm of letters, the realm of art she knew were both in
this vast world into which she was going ; both in a dim and
distant way had a charm for her ; she had read of and wor-
shipped the queens of women who had reigned therein. How
remote and inaccessible seemed these realms. . . She did
not think at all that this enchanted world, in which the beau-
tiful, the gifted, and the prosperous dwell, could be for her."
CHAPTER XII.
MAEY MAPES DODGE.
BY LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE.
New York Society Forty Years Ago Prof. James J. Mapes An Ideal
Home Genuine Hospitality Mary Mapes Dodge Her Two Boys
What First Turned Her Attention to Writing First Workshop A
Cosy " Den " Birthday Feasts for Jamie and Harry A Birthday Poem
Red-Letter Days How "Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates," came to
be Written Merited Reward Mrs. Dodge's Remarkable Editorial Capa-
city Her Clear Insight and Sound Judgment Editing " St. Nicholas "
A Model Magazine for Children Who and What Makes it So The
Care and Labor Bestowed upon Each Number Mrs. Dodge's Home Life
and Happy Surroundings.
ORTY years ago, or so, New York still kept some-
thing of her earlier simplicity of manners. Her
best society had passed the toil of poverty,
without yet having entered upon the toil of
wealth. The great fortunes of to-day were un-
dreamed of, as the ostentation which vaunts
them was unknown. Hospitality was not ex-
pressed in monumental dinners and balls, but
in more intimate visiting. Strangers, bringing let-
ters of introduction to well-known citizens, were
invited to their houses in a friendly way, and contributed
whatever brightness they possessed to the general household
pleasure, as they received the best which the household could
bestow.
Ceremony is a necessary defence in large communities, and
the great city long since outgrew this period of grace. But
it was the good fortune of the subject of this sketch to be
born into one of the most hospitable homes upon the island,
at a time when hospitality meant much. Professor James J.
276
MAKY MAPES DODGE. 277
Mapes was not only a scholar of distinction, an eminent
scientist, and an inventor of note, but a man of wide social
accomplishments, a brilliant talker, and famous wit. His
wife, accustomed in her father's house to entertain a wide
circle, was a graceful and gracious hostess, unconsciously an-
ticipating Emerson's precept : " Certainly, let the board be
spread, and let the bed be dressed, but let not the emphasis
of hospitality lie in these things."
In this household the children heard high affairs discussed
in a high way. Men of science, poets, painters, musicians,
statesmen, philosophers, journalists, were familiar friends.
The talk was of scientific achievements, of music, painting,
and the drama ; of great philanthropic and benevolent move-
ments all over the world ; of contemporary history, as the
news of the morning journal recorded it ; of projected laws
and the reasons for them. The petty gossip and small per-
sonalities which, in so many families, do duty as conversation
never intruded their impertinent heads.
It was a great thing for bright children thus to have the
round world rolled daily to their door. And this liberal edu-
cation was balanced by a rigorous training in those disciplin-
ary studies which teach the mind exactness.
It was a theory of Professor Mapes a theory which his
distinguished daughter has done so much to make a popular
article of faith that children instinctively like good reading
if they are fortunate enough to find it. And, at a time when
juvenile books represented a waste land of dreary facts and
drearier morals, with only an occasional oasis of fancy or
freshness, he taught his own flock to find a genuine delight in
the old ballads, in Shakspeare, and in Walter Scott. To
her thorough knowledge of English literature, and her love
of it, Mrs. Dodge owes the excellence of her style ; and this
love and knowledge she owes to the influence of her father.
Of the four daughters of the house, the eldest and youngest
showed remarkable musical ability, and became accomplished
musicians. The third had a talent for painting, studying
diligently at home and abroad, and choosing the artist's pro-
278 MARY MAPES DODGE.
fession. The second, Mary, was one of those fortunate mor-
tals from whose christening feast no ill-tempered fairy stayed
away to give her a plague for a dowry. She had an aptitude
for music, drawing, and modelling, a quick ear and tongue
for languages, a clear and critical judgment, great executive
capacity, and an indomitable cheerfulness and serenity of
spirit, which made any labor or success seem possible to her.
But in her girlhood, before she had decided between the
claims of sculpture and painting, another voice appealed to
her, and she left the home of her father for the home of her
husband.
In the happy years which followed, the claims of husband
and children, of domestic affairs, of friends and society,
absorbed her time. But the constant contact with an excep-
tionally able mind stimulated her own mind to steady growth,
while the new household, like the old, welcomed the best
people and the best thought. From this house might have
been drawn that famous picture of the ideal home which
" should bear witness to all its economy that human culture is
the end to which it is built and garnished. It stands there
under the sun and moon to ends analogous and not less noble
than theirs. It is not for festivity, it is not for sleep ; but
the pine and the oak shall gladly descend from the moun-
tains to uphold the roof of men as faithful and necessary as
themselves ; to be the shelter always open to the good and
the true ; a hall which shines with sincerity, brows ever tran-
quil, and a demeanor impossible to disconcert ; whose in-
mates know what they want ; who do not ask your house how
theirs should be kept ; who have aims ; who cannot stop for
trifles."
Almost without warning this beautiful home was closed by
the sudden death of its master, and Mrs. Dodge, with her
two young children, returned to the house of her father, then
living in New Jersey. To take up her life again in the old
spirit of rejoicing ; to rear and educate her boys as their
father would have done ; to do a man's work with the persist-
ent application and faithfulness of a man, to gain a man's
MARY MAPES DODGE.
MARY MAPES DODGE. 281
pay, yet to leave herself freedom and freshness to enter into
all her children's interests and pursuits as their comrade and
friend, was the duty she saw before her. It was almost an
accident which first turned her attention to writing. But
having decided that writing must be her work, it became
necessary to contrive a workshop.
In the country, as in the city, the hospitality of Professor
Mapes was boundless. Vacant chairs stood at the table for
the chance comer, and the friendly host was disappointed if
they remained vacant. Time had brought money losses, and
the household economy was of the simplest. But such
cordiality of spirit was there, in that rambling old house,
such bright discourse, such refinement of atmosphere, such
beauty of surroundings, as made luxury seem vulgar.
Professor Mapes himself was the prince of good talkers.
His mother, a charming old lady, in her day one of the
charming young girls who could remember having been
saluted by the adored Washington, who had danced with the
courtly Lafayette at the famous Castle Garden fete tendered
him by the citizens of New York, and who, on occasion,
would graciously exhibit the tiny slippers and stupendous
headdress which had adorned the ball, held a little court
of her own, under her son's roof, received her visitors with a
certain state and ceremony, and delighted her great-grand-
sons with stories of that historic past which seemed to them
an age of gods and heroes. Their young mother and her
sisters had their troops of friends, the children their compan-
ions. Sunshine, music, flowers, the heartiest good-fellowship
filled the house. No atmosphere could be more delightful to
live in. In none could hard work have been more difficult.
A stone's throw from the dwelling stood a deserted farm-
house, its low-pitched attic tenanted only by spiders, and
heaped with that debris of human occupation which long
housekeeping consigns to the living tomb of garret spaces.
Of this dusty solitude Mrs. Dodge took possession. The
boys knocked down a partition wall, turning two mean cham-
bers into one generous one, cleared away the rubbish, made a
282 MARY MAPES DODGE.
treaty of peace with the banished spiders, which secured to
them the undisputed possession of an adjoining territory, re-
stored a hinge here, put up a shelf there, and lo ! the coveted
study was ready for the decorator and furnisher. By what
magic a few pieces of cast-off furniture were made to assume an
air of special utility and youthfulness, by what abracadabra
the odds and ends of ornament which nobody claimed for the
house were forced to set themselves in harmony for the
adornment of " the den ; " by what spell this ill-proportioned,
dingy loft became the quaintest and brightest of habitations,
at once spacious and cosy, must remain an incommunicable
secret. Certain women are born with the gift of decoration
in their finger-tips. Draperies fall into perfect folds at their
touch. Colors and shapes are obedient to a look. Not even
the white waste of ceilings, or the aggressive angularity
of corners, refuses to become part of the charming whole.
But most domestic artists of this order need beautiful material
to work with. It is only genius which creates elements as
well as results.
A few yards of Florida moss, a few bunches of bright
leaves, a few cheap pictures, a small company of high-bred
books, a drift of softly-brilliant drapery falling across an
ancient lounge, a cheerful old patriarch of a Franklin stove,
and everywhere flowers, and flowers, and again flowers
these were all the visible agencies at work to produce an
harmonious completeness. Nobody ever remembered that
the carpet was made of rags. Nobody ever noticed the lack
of curtains at windows which the climbing ivy hung with
softest green. Nobody ever thought that rough-cast was an
objectionable wall-finish. And if "" the ornament of a house
is the friends who frequent it " that eyrie under the roof was
ornamented indeed. For thither came many a choice spirit,
and often and often the old beams heard " talk, far above
singing/
Here, too, were celebrated those little birthday feasts which
the boys considered the red-letter days of their calendar.
The festivities began only when the day's work was ended ;
MARY MAPES DODGE. 283
for the youngsters, their lessons ; for their mother, her task
of writing. Manuscript and thoughts of manuscript being
pushed aside, she covered the writing-table with a white
cloth festooned with greenery from the woods, set forth the
two or three oranges, the little dish of nuts, the simple birth-
day cake, with its tiny candles sparkling the measure of the
young life's counted years, and then only, most often while
the eager lads were clamoring for admission, found time to
write the birthday verses which they thought best of all the
feast. When the door was opened they rushed first upon
their mother, and then upon the table, to find such a remem-
brance as this :
ANOTHER YEAR.
Old man, with the hour-glass, halt ! halt ! I pray
Don't you see you are taking my children away?
My own little babies, who came long ago,
You stole them, old man, with the beard white as snow !
My beautiful babies, so bonny and bright !
Where have you carried them, far out of sight ?
Oh, dimpled their cheeks were, and sunny their hair !
But I cannot find them : I've searched everywhere.
My three-year-old toddlers, they shouted in glee ;
They sported about me ; they sat on my knee.
Oh, their prattle and laughter were silvery rain !
Old man, must I list for their voices in vain ?
They were here ; they were gone, while their kisses were warm,
I scarce knew the hour when they slipped from my arm
Oh, where was I looking, when, peerless and sweet,
They followed the track of your echoless feet ?
My brave little schoolboys, who ran in and out,
And lifted the air with their song and their shout :
My boys on the coldest days ever aglow,
My dear romping schoolboys who tortured me so !
There were two of them then ; and one of the two
Ah ! I never was watchful enough followed you.
My chubby-faced darling, my kite-flying pet
Alack ! all his playthings are lying here yet.
284 MARY MAPES DODGE.
And the other, O Time ! do not take him away !
For a few precious years, I implore, let him stay !
I love him I need him my blessing and joy !
You have had all the rest ; leave me one little boy !
He halts ! He will stop ! No ; the fall of the sand
In the hour-glass deceived me. It seemed at a stand.
But whom have we here? Jamie! Harry! how? why,
Just as many as ever and Time passing by ?
Jamie, my bouncer, my man-boy, my pride !
Harry, my sunbeam, whatever betide
I can hardly believe it. But surely it's clear
My babies, my toddlers, my schoolboys are here !
Move on then, O Time ! I have nothing to say !
You have left me far more than you've taken away,
And yet I would whisper a word, ere you go ;
You've a year of my Harry's the latest, you know.
How does it rank among those that are flown ?
Was it worthily used, while he called it his own ?
God filled it with happiness, comfort, and health
Did my darling spend rightly its love-given wealth ?
No answer in words. Yet it really did seem
That the sand sparkled lightly the scythe sent a gleam.
Is it answer and promise ? God grant it be so,
From that silent old man with his beard white as snow.
To have a "visit with mother" was to the boys the highest
conceivable enjoyment. It was for the happy talk, the cheery
plans touching the year to come, the intimate sympathy and
friendship of these celebrations, and not for any presents
they might bring, that they were joyfully anticipated for one
twelvemonth, and joyfully remembered for another. The
presents, indeed, were few and cheap, for, from their baby-
hood, the boys had been taught that the value of a gift lay in
the spirit which offered it, that the "how " and not the "what "
made life rich, and that their pleasure must be found in the
simple things of existence.
MARY MAPES DODGE. 285
Mrs. Dodge had already proved herself a clever essayist
and capital story-teller for grown-up readers when she pub-
lished her first book, a collection of short tales for children,
under the name of "Irvington Stories." It was a modest
little muslin-covered duodecimo, with three or four illustra-
tions by Darley ; a book quite out of print now, but dear to
the heart of many a young man and woman who were chil-
dren eighteen years ago. So successful was it as not only
to pass through several editions, and receive the warmest
encomiums of the press, but to elicit praise from the "North
American Review," at that time the " big bow-wow " of our
literature, which saw that the stories had just enough of im-
probability to suit the minds of children, for whom the age
of fancy and fable renews itself in every generation. "They
are not sermons in words of two syllables," said Rhadaman-
thus, "they are not prosy, but what is gracious and lovely in
childhood is appealed to indirectly, with something of moth-
erly tenderness in the tone. Good books for children are so
rare, and books to make little spoonies so common, that this
should be praised."
The publisher begged for a second series of "Irvington
Stories." Mrs. Dodge, meantime, had begun another story,
as a short serial, to run through several numbers of the juve-
nile department of a weekly religious paper.
Like the rest of the reading world, she had been thrilled
and fascinated by the lately-published histories of Motley,
the "Rise of the Dutch Republic," and the "History of the
United Netherlands." She resolved to make Holland the
scene of a juvenile tale, and give the youngsters so much of
the history of that wonderful country as should tell itself,
naturally, through the evolution of the story. The subject
fascinated her, and grew upon her hands. It passed the lim-
its which the weekly paper set, and developed into a volume.
The publisher, disappointed at not receiving a second collec-
tion of short stories, was tempted to reject the manuscript
offered him. But the author had nothing else ready, he could
not afford to forego the prestige of her former success, and
18
286 MARY MAPES DODGE.
so, reluctantly and doubtfully, he issued the most successful
juvenile tale of our time, " Hans Brinker ; or, The Silver
Skates." No tenderer, sweeter, loftier story was ever told.
Boys' hearts beat quicker as they read it, with the thrill and
stir of action, and old eyes dimmed with tears over the un-
written pathos of the humble lives it recorded. The critics
seemed to take it for granted that a new book by the author
of "Irvington Stories" would be worthy of its parentage,
and praised the story in a matter-of-course way, but with one
accord dwelt on the perfection of the local coloring, which,
as the work of an artist who had never seen the Low Coun-
tries, was a marvellous achievement. On closing the book
one did not seem to have been reading about Holland, but to
have been living in Holland ; nay, to have been born and bred
there ; and to have grown so familiar with the queer customs
of that queer country that neither customs nor country any
longer seemed queer.
From the moment of its publication, sixteen years ago, the
success of ft Hans Brinker " was instant and assured, and to-
day it is one of the books of steady sale. It has had a very
large circulation in America ; has passed through several
editions in England ; and has been published in French, at
Paris ; in German, at Leipsic ; in Russian, at St. Petersburg ;
and in Italian, at Rome. A version in French under the title
of r Patins $ Argent" was awarded one of the Monthyon
prizes, of fifteen hundred francs, by the French Academy.
But the crowning tribute to its excellence is its perennial sale
in Holland in a Dutch edition, which, when Mrs. Dodge was
in Amsterdam a few years ago, was recommended to one of her
party by a zealous bookseller, as the most attractive juvenile
in his collection.
This success, of course, was no lucky hit, but the merited
reward of the hardest work. Mrs. Dodge ransacked libraries,
public and private, for books upon Holland ; made every
traveller whom she knew tell her his tale of that unique coun-
try ; wrote to Dutch acquaintances in Amsterdam and Haar-
lem ; and submitted every chapter to the test of the criticism
MARY MAPES DODGE. 287
of two accomplished Hollanders living near her. It was the
genius oT patience and toil, the conscientious touching and
retouching of the true artist, which wrought the seemingly
spontaneous and simple task.
About 1870 Mrs. Dodge became associate editor of "Hearth
and Home," a new weekly family paper, her coadjutors being
Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Mr. Donald G. Mitchell
(Ik. Marvel). Her departments exhibited a fertility of ex-
pedient, a freshness of mind and resource, an inexhaustible
spontaneity, an editorial instinct and capacity, which won
wide recognition. A few years later, when Messrs. Scribner
and Company were considering the publication of a new juve-
nile magazine, it w r as to her that they turned for co-operation,
and upon her consent to assume its management that the en-
terprise was established. From the choice of its title, to the
superintendence of each number, " St. Nicholas " has been the
personal care and labor of nine years.
Never before, perhaps, had editor so appreciative, gener-
ous, and helpful publishers ; so capable, tireless, and interested
assistants. But with all this help, the original work which
must go to every issue of such a publication the planning,
inventing, inspiring, the new thought, the fresh combination,
the motive and impulse which are the breath of its life,
constitutes in itself an incessant and absorbing labor. The
mere balance of pages, the artistic grouping of pictures and
text, the writing of verses to pictures, the sketching in the
rough of pictures to illustrate verses, the enormous corre-
spondence, the endless detail, the suggestion here, the altera-
tion there, and, more than all, the regular recurring of the
task, as fixedly as the waxing and waning of the moon, de-
mand an unwearying power of application and organization
possible only to an exceptional temperament.
Besides, in the nature of things, the editing of a periodical
for children is far more difficult than the editing for adults.
Mature minds, however they may differ in special tastes and
individual development, have at least their maturity in com-
mon. But a child's magazine must address the intelligence
288 MARY MAPES DODGE.
of five years as genially as the intelligence of fifteen, and
neither five nor fifteen must be sacrificed the one to the other.
Again, though the constituency of the " Atlantic " or the
" Century" widens, as young people grow up to read them, it
does not change essentially. Travels, fiction, essays, biog-
raphy, historical sketches, poetry, please the readers of to-
day as they pleased the readers of a dozen years ago. But
the ingenuity that delighted the children who hugged " St.
Nicholas" in 1874 must vary its devices in 1875, or be found
neither ingenious nor delightful. A child's contemptuous
w Oh, that's old," takes the flavor out of a story or puzzle for a
whole family of children. Every year the new fives and fif-
teens demand a difference not only m degree, but in kind.
And the wonder grows that every year they find it.
But it is not the aim of publishers and editor to create merely
the most beautiful and entertaining book for youth which it was
possible to create. They saw that in that very interest in,
and study of, children which makes this the Children's Age, a
subtle danger lurked. It was, as has been said, as if a newly-
discovered specimen, known as TJie Child, were put under
the object-glass of the scientific observer, studied, classified,
and minutely explained. This observation would be wise
were it not that the specimen too often becomes in turn the
observer. That is to say, the modern interest in children
has produced a special literature, whose tendency is to make
them self-conscious, morbid, priggish, and more or less openly
disobedient.
It is a question whether the simple virtues which make
childhood lovely did not flourish better in the bleak atmos-
phere which old-fashioned notions of parental dignity and
distance produced, than in the hothouse air which pervades
the representative juvenile publication. For this quality of
unwholesomeness belongs to many books which are pure,
well- written , and interesting. And it is this quality which
Mrs. Dodge has succeeded in excluding from ff St. Nicholas."
She believed that their literature should stimulate and quicken
children intellectually, but discourage emotional precocity.
MARY MAPES DODGE. 289
And the innumerable letters which reach the editor reveal the
fact that the children who love the magazine most, and best
apprehend its spirit, are simple, natural, real children, whose
interests are external to themselves, and to whom it has not
occurred to wonder whether their exceptional nature is under-
stood and appreciated by those beings of a commoner fibre
their parents and teachers.
ff The magazine," wrote Gail Hamilton to a friend, in her
delightfully hearty way, " is the very best children's magazine
that was ever read, or seen, or dreamed of. The pictures
and the nonsense verses are captivating. I suppose I read
that rocking-horse poem over to Jamie Elaine thirty-five
thousand times without stopping yielding to his imploring
eyes and wheedling voice." " While its freshness lasts," de-
clared another well-known author, " the bound volume drives
away all other books from the table ; and somehow its fresh-
ness seems to have spells of recurrence. Every rainy day
puts new charms in it, and acts as a sprinkle or a soak upon
a resurrection flower. The youngsters are not quite sure if
the}' like the pictures on the inside of the cover. They're
sure they like them, to be sure; but don't quite like the
cheeky way in which the binder and Mother Goose set them-
selves out in this way in opposition to the dainties of Mrs.
Dodge in the inside." " It has been made level with the
comprehension of children," wrote Mr. Charles Dudley War-
ner to the publishers, " and yet it is a continual educator of
their taste and of their honor and courage. I do not see how
it can be made any better, and if the children don't like it I
think it is time, to begin to change the kind of children in
this country ! " And this is really what the editor has been
quietly laboring at for the last nine years.
As if the shaping and doing of work like this were not
enough for one mortal, Mrs. Dodge has published three books
since she has had charge of " St. Nicholas," and written a
fourth, a serial story for the magazine, which, though already
printed in book-form in England, is not to be placed in cov-
ers in America for another year. The first of these publica-
290 MARY MAPES DODGE.
tions was the famous " Rhymes and Jingles," a book of verses
for children, as spontaneous and irrepressible as the lyrics of
Mother Goose, with a frolicsome humor, a subtle wit, a deli-
cate innuendo, a love of nature in them, which that singer of
an elder day never dreamed of. Their inconsequence is not
more delicious than their sense, their fun no more captivating
than their moral. They seem to have come by nature, as
morning-glories blossom in a score of tints, or as mocking-
o o o
birds sing every note known to melody, and to have given
Mrs. Dodge no trouble beyond that of collecting them.
The success of " Rhymes and Jingles " was as great as that
of "Hans Brinker" had been. Critics praised their art, their
originality, their cleverness ; children delighted in them with
no afterthought of " why ; " mothers found them an aid to
nursery government, after the heart of Miss Martineau her-
self. A year or two later came a little volume of prose
sketches for adults, entitled " Theophilus and Others," and
containing, among other bright papers, the famous "Miss
Maloney on the Chinese Question," whose cleverness even its
enormous popularity has not availed to cheapen, and that
unique bit of satire, "The Insanity of Cain." This collection
showed how high a reputation Mrs. Dodge might have won
as an essayist and story-writer had she not chosen to devote
herself to other labors. The papers showed originality, ver-
satility, clarity of thought and a richness of humor, unique,
perhaps, in a woman's work.
The volume of prose was followed in 1879 by a small vol-
ume of verse called " Along the Way." It was truly " a
charming way that she has rambled along, for she has not
only picked bright and tender things that were growing at her
feet, but she has shaken them down from the trees, caught
them in her hat as they flew about her, and gently captured
them as they fluttered in her hand. It is a happy thing for those
of us who do not walk such ways to have her show us what
may there be seen." These words of a brother poet touch
the keynote of this poet's song. Her verses are full of
naturalness, feeling, imagination ; they sing as the birds sing,
MARY MAPES DODGE. 291
but, more than all, they have that loftiness of spirit, that
serenity of the upper air, which is the poet's sweetest and
rarest gift. Among them are none of those lachrymose
"Doubts," "Despairs," "Last Requests," "Resignations,"
"Misunderstandings," which wail through most feminine
verse. By contrast, they justify her own witty saying, that
Pegasus generally feels impelled to pace toward a graveyard
the moment he feels a side-saddle on his back.
Her sympathy with nature is a sixth sense, as her inter-
pretation of nature is a new voice. "Shadow-Evidence" and
" Once Before " are poems for poets ; " Inverted " gets itself
remembered, as it was written, "by heart"; "Old Songs,"
>^Secrets," " My Window Ivy," have floated on newspaper
wings into remotest solitudes. In a little lyric called "Heart
Oracles " is written that philosophy of life which makes its
singers own days seem so uplifted :
"]Jr the motes do we know where the sunbeam is slanting;
Through the hindering stones speaks the soul of the brook ;
Past the rustle of leaves we press into the stillness ;
Through darkness and void to the Pleiads we look ;
One bird-note at dawn, with the night silence o'er us,
Begins all the morning's munificent chorus.
"Through sorrow come glimpses of infinite gladness ;
Through grand discontent mounts the spirit of youth ;
Loneliness foldeth a wonderful loving ;
The breakers of doubt lead the great tide of truth;
And dread and grief-haunted the shadowy portal
That shuts from our vision the splendor immortal."
But the one poem which touches the deepest human ex-
perience, which breathes comfort in the bitterest human
anguish, is
THE TWO MYSTERIES.
" We know not what it is, dear, this sleep so deep and still,
The folded hands, the awful calm, the cheek so pale and chill ;
The lids that will not lift again, though we may call and call ;
The strange, white solitude of peace that settles over all.
292 MARY MAPES DODGE.
"We know not what it means, dear, this desolate heart-pain ;
This dread to take our daily way, and walk in it again;
We know not to what other sphere the loved who leave us go,
Nor why we're left to wander still ; nor why we do not know.
" But this we know ; our loved and dead, if they should come this
day
Should come and ask us, " what is life ? " not one of us could
say.
Life is a mystery as deep as ever death can be,
Yet oh, how sweet it is to us, this life we live and see !
" Then might they say, these vanished ones, and blessed is the
thought !
* So death is sweet to us, beloved, though we may tell you
naught ;
We may not tell it to the quick this mystery of death
Ye may not tell us, if ye would, the mystery of breath.'
" The child who enters life comes not with knowledge or intent,
So those who enter death must go as little children sent.
Nothing is known. But I believe that God is overhead ;
And as life is to the living, so death is to the dead."
But, after all, the true business of Mrs. Dodge's life, the
work to which everything else was subsidiary, and without a
knowledge of which no intelligent estimate of her powers
could be made, has been the rearing and educating of her two
sons. From the dawning of their young intelligence they
were taught to regard her as not more their mother than their
boon companion, helper, and friend. She flew kites with them,
skated with them, swam with them, passed hours in their
improvised gymnasium, set up many a " form " at printing-
press, tramped miles beside them, collecting specimens for
microscope or herbarium. Whatever subject interested them
she studied in secret. When the elder, a born inventor,
began to care for the things of his craft, it was she who was
ready to explain to him the crystallization of iron, the effects
of heat and cold, the laws of statics and dynamics. When
the younger, a born musician, began to think of harmonies, it
MARY MAPES DODGE. 293
was she who seemed to him to know more of the science and
art of music than any teacher.
One afternoon of every week belonged exclusively to the
boys, whatever claims were made upon her time by work or
friendship. If it became inevitable that that afternoon
should be used for other purposes, she appealed to their
generosity to release her, which they did, in the spirit of
young princes. But she always made up to them that con-
cession, and this sense of justice pervaded all her dealings
with them. She recognized their rights as fully as she desired
them to recognize the rights of others. She kept before them
the highest ideal of character, and left details of conduct to
their instructed moral sense.
It was the result of her system that through school-life and
college-life, and the life of young manhood in the world, she
remained the most intimate friend and adviser of her sons,
who grew to be what her love and wisdom had foretold. The
elder has created, in his own home, an atmosphere like that
in which he was bred. The younger, in the flush of his
beautiful and round youth, full of capacity, enthusiasm, and
purpose, of noble character and rare intelligence, passed on
into the life which completes this.
Dean Swift records it as the opinion of his day that it
would not be wise to give women more than a rudimentary
education, because mental development would awaken in
them an interest in things outside the domestic circle, and
render them indifferent to household concerns. But the
feminine nature, with its love of home, its instinct of beauty,
and its innate desire to minister to the comfort of its beloved,
seems conspicuously independent of institutions, and in-
capable of radical change, even through the insidious influence
of the alphabet. The women who have done the best work
in literature, and whose culture and interest in affairs are
broadest, are, as a rule, not only the women whose domestic
duties have been exacting, but who have most ably and con-
scientiously discharged them.
294 MARY MAPES DODGE.
Mrs. Dodge is an admirable housekeeper, having that last
gift of the good manager, the capacity to keep the intricate
wheels of the domestic machinery smoothly turning without
ever seeming to touch them. But she is much more than a
housekeeper, she is a home-maker; two offices not neces-
sarily conjoined, and often drearily dissociated. The order
and neatness, the economy and routine of her management,
are simply the foundation on which the beauty and serenity
of the home rest. Her rooms seem to have been evolved
from her individual needs and tastes, and so to have fulfilled
that lofty rule, that " the genius and love of the man should
be so conspicuously seen in all his estate that the eye that
knew him should see his character in his property, in his
ornament, in his every expense, for a man's money should
not follow the direction of his neighbor's money, but should
represent to him the things he would willingliest do with it."
In this home, the simplest and most spontaneous hospitality
dwells. Mrs. Dodge has inherited her father's brilliant
talent of conversation, and no writing she has ever done gives
so strong an impression of her thorough mental equipment,
her freshness of view, clearness of insight, sound judgment,
vivid sympathy, and affluent humor as an hour's talk. Of
those qualities which are above and beyond all these, it is not
permitted even to speak. But they cannot be concealed.
" Grandeur of character," says Emerson, " works in the dark,
and succors those who never saw it."
CHAPTER XIII.
MAKGAEET FULLER.
(MARCHIONESS D'OSSOLI).
BY KATE SANBORN.
Conflicting Opinions An English Estimate of Margaret Fuller Her
Childhood and School-life Her Life as Seen by Others A Peep at Her
Journal An Encounter with Doctor Channing Emerson's Opinion
Wonderful Power as a Converser >Her Great Ambition The Influence
She Exerted Horace Greeley's Friendship Connection with the "New
York Tribune" "Alone as Usual" Visits Europe Noted Men and
Women of the Time Harriet Martineau's Opinion The Great Change
in Miss Fuller's Life Her Romantic Marriage in Italy Terrible Trials
Homeward Bound Shipwrecked on the Shores of Her Native Land
Last Scenes in Her Life.
NOTHER sketch of this remarkable woman is
called for, and the various comments made by
friends show the difficulty of the task. "She
is as much of a myth as Sappho," says one ;
and another, " I envy you your subject ; " a
third (a man who liked to talk himself) , " She
was a monstrous thing, don't you try to be
like her ! " And a fourth, with a warning shrug,
" Why write any more about that woman ? She
has been done to death ! She was a brilliant per-
sonality in her day, a marvellous talker ; but her writings
wont live, her criticisms were often crude and prejudiced,
her conceit colossal, absurd. Take a newer light ! " Still
another, a noble woman, whose name is known and loved all
over this land, writes : " I want you to make Margaret
Fuller better known to the young girls of our country.
There should be a volume condensed from her life and
writings for study in schools."
295
296 MARGARET FULLER.
Each bit of advice is true in its own way, and one may
well hesitate, as Emerson, Channing, and Freeman Clarke
have honored her by a memoir ; such women as Harriet
Martineau, Mrs. Child, Miss Anna C. Brackett, have ex-
pressed their views of her career, and her influence ; Lan-
dor, G. P. R. James, Christopher Cranch, Mary Clemmer,
and others wrote poems on her death ; while two English
writers, Mrs. Newton Crosland, and William Russell, the
curiosity-monger, have placed her in their collection of " Ex-
traordinary Women" and "Eccentric Personages." The
latter, determined to serve up a piquant sketch, dwells with
delight on "her nasal tones, the quick opening and shut-
ting of her eyelids, unpleasing cast of features, her hectic
nervousness and spectral illusions, her superstitious faith in
sortes, talismans, and the occult power of gems, her somnam-
bulism and wild Dervish-like dances in school-days, her firm
belief in the mummeries of mesmerism, her pet scheme for a
female congress at Washington, to be presided over by her-
self, and her superior manner as she spoke from the lofty
stilts of a self-conceit unmatchable in this used-up Europe."
But one more friend gives exactly the sentiment that leads
me to try again this oft-told tale. " I personally feel indebted
to Margaret Fuller, because she has done so much to help
women, and make their position easier, and has stimulated
them to more independence."
To these facts hundreds of women can add a hearty endorse-
ment from their own experience, and this proves that she ha s
left something more than literary criticism, or scholarship
versatile and profound, or the memory of her power in mono-
logue or familiar talk.
Her character alternately repels and charms, but her story
is always sad. Struggles, baffled hopes, unsatisfied longings,
heart-hunger, solitude these were her lot; the sarcasm of
destiny pursued her from cradle to grave, stern, bitter,
relentless. Call it inexorable Fate, or a necessary and
blessed discipline it was destined that she should suffer.
Some baleful star might be supposed to have darkened her
MARGARET FULLER. 297
horoscope. In her words, f 'I have known some happy hours,
but they all led to sorrow, and not only the cups of wine but
of milk seemed drugged for me." And in her rhapsodic
letter to her patron saint Beethoven : " I know that the curse
is but for the time. I know what the eternal justice promises.
But on this one sphere it is sad. Thou didst say thou hadst
no friend but thy art. But that one is enough. I have no
art in which to vent the swell of a soul as deep as thine. I
am lost in this world."
Yet with this ever-present conviction of limitation and
bondage she was no whining, pining misanthrope, but said
grandly: "Yet will I try to keep the heart with diligence,
nor ever fear that the sun is gone because I shiver in the cold
and dark." Oh, it was hard, and hers was a brave fight !
An Oriental priestess sent by some mischance into a prim
Puritan abode, where her wild fervor, idealism, imagination,
passion, were curbed by an iron hand, and classics and ancient
history crammed into an already over-excited brain. A sybil
in a straight jacket ! Was it a wonder that she raved ? Smiles
or sneers follow her statement that she was a queen. But
queen she proved herself, though uncrowned ; more truly
fitted to reign than many a woman born to the purple. Her
conceit was half frankness, and conceit seems a frequent fault
with the truly great. A series of remarks could be quoted
from distinguished poets, orators, scientists, inventors, that
would send our heroine's confidence in her pre-eminent
ability far into the shade. Genius and self-assertion are
twins.
Margaret Fuller proved herself a teacher, a rare talker, a
critic, essayist and editor, a reformer, pioneer, philanthro-
pist, almost a poet, very nearly an improvisatrice, and, best of
all, a loving, true-hearted woman, who never neglected home
ties or homely duties, as is shown by her brother's tender
tribute.
A commonplace woman has her compensations. No temp-
tations for her to wander from the prescribed path ! No
ecstacy of exaltation, no frenzy of despair ! No wrestlings
298 MARGARET FULLER.
fierce and vain with the chains of hereditary temperament
and circumstance. If, as Swift says, "Censure is the tax a
man pays for being eminent," comment and criticism are the
tax a woman pays for being original. The forty years of
Margaret's life were one long struggle with pain, disease,
poverty, surroundings, pent-up affection, "tremendous repres-
sion," joy ever rimmed with torture.
Many people seem to be perpetually rattling round in a
circle that is too big for them, in complete ignorance of the
fact that they have never once touched the boundary line.
But Margaret said of herself ; "I have no natural circle."
And her path in life was cramped and thorny. She says :
" From a very early age I have felt that I was not born to
the common womanly lot. I know I should never find a
being who could keep the key of my character ; that there
would be none on whom I could always lean ; from whom I
could always learn ; that I should be a pilgrim, a sojourner
on earth, and that the birds and foxes would be surer of a
place to lay the head than I." And later : " We are born to
be mutilated, and the blood must flow till in every vein its
place is supplied by the divine ichor."
Born of good Puritan stock at Cambridge, Mass., May 23,
1810, she had "force and quality "in her blood; but her
childhood was unhappy unnatural, excited ; her earliest re-
collection the death of a sister who mi^ht have been a
o
companion ; no playmates ; her first friendship an ideal-
izing fondness for an English lady who exercized a pow-
erful influence over her life ; instead of story-books, she
was at eight years absorbed in Shakespeare, Cervantes,
Moliere ; her recreation, the dear old garden, the only
place where her precocious brain could rest, and where the
best hours of her lonely life were spent. With the flowers
she could dream and be happy. Under her father's guidance,
and led also by her own tastes, she went over a most un-
wholesome amount of reading and study, crammed and over-
stimulated. And this is her wise comment as she reviewed
this period : " Children should not cull the fruits of reflection
MARGARET FULLER. 299
and observation early, but expand in the sun and let thoughts
come to them. They should not through books antedate
theii actual experiences."
Next, we see her in school-life ; eccentric, intense, lovable
yet disagreeable. She describes this in the story of "Mari-
ana," never sparing herself. A lady, who was a schoolmate
of hers in Boston, described to me Margaret's extraordinary
appearance and manner, as with head on one side and an air
of power and superiority, she swept through the room to her
desk. And as she acted this out I could see the old mag-
netism lingered yet. " We all put down our books and
stared at her, and felt she was a genius."
Then as a girl at Cambridge ; ardent, passionate, arrogant,
drawing around her a rare circle of intimate friends, demand-
ing of each a high aim and their entire confidence ; anxious
to help each to do the very best of which he was capable.
She said of herself that she was at nineteen " the most intol-
erable girl that ever took a seat in a drawing-room," and we
presume that many agreed with her. Flat contradiction of
her seniors was her natural habit.
There is a tendenc}' in talking of such a phenomenal and
strongly-marked character to either exalt or depreciate ; to
fall in love, or unduly dislike ; to find an inspiration or a
warning.
I take two of her own sentences as my guide in this
matter. She says :
" We have pointed out all the faults we could find in Mrs.
Browning, feeling that her strength and nobleness deserves
this act of self-respect."
And her remark on some other author :
" I think where there is such beauty or strength we can
afford to be silent about slight defects."
To represent this modern Hypatia, this Yankee Corinne,
this feminine Socrates, and nineteenth-century Sybil, as a
well-rounded specimen of womanly perfection, would be a
monstrous mistake and a lie as well. One writer compares
her to a new flower. To me she is more like a comet ; bril-
300 MARGARET FULLER.
liant, fitful,, irregular in orbit, a little dangerous if brought
too near, quite mysterious and thoroughly fascinating.
To people in general Margaret appeared at this tin^e
from sixteen to twenty-five sarcastic, supercilious, with a
contemptuous benevolence for mediocrity, a strong inclination
to quiz, and an overwhelming and ill-bred appreciation and
expression of her own ability ; " prodigiously learned and
prodigiously disagreeable." Some one who knew her well
said that she always found herself giving up the inmost
secrets of her heart, while no corresponding confidence was
returned, and that she felt after such an interview as if she
had been examined, classified, and set one side, with a pin
through the back, as another bug for her collection. To
others she was sympathetic, sincere, helpful, magnetic
her one object in life to grow, to improve, and to urge others
to follow her.
Her conversation then as ever was her forte. Eev. James
Freeman Clarke explains : " How she did glorify life to all !
All that was tame and common vanishing away in the pic-
turesque light thrown on the most familiar things by her
rapid fancy, her brilliant wit, her sharp insight, her creative
imagination, by the inexhaustible resources of her knowledge,
and the copious rhetoric which found words and images apt
and always ready."
She was now familiar with the best French, Italian,
and Spanish literature, and in 1832 took up the study
of German, able in three months' study to read the master-
pieces in that language, a fact that illustrates her patience,
persistence, and power.
A letter just received from Mrs. Christopher Cranch, of
Cambridge, shows how she was loved by those who knew her
well.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., February 20, 1883.
You have asked me to do, what would honor me in the
doing, were I able to accomplish it in a fitting and appropriate
manner. You ask me to write to you of one of the rarest of
women, whose talents, whose virtues are revered by all who
MARGARET FULLER. 301
knew her well, by those who were able to enjoy her friend-
ship. Have not several of the first minds our country can claim
written in her praise, and how much more durable than marble
monument will be those words secured to literature in the vol-
umes already published of her life. Her wit, her learning, her
subtle sympathy with all those who could appreciate her qual-
ities of mind and heart, were cherished by a choice circle,
though it also included the simple and the lowly as well as the
great.
She had no personal beauty. Her health was an uncertain de-
pendence before her visit to Europe, where she ripened in an
Italian atmosphere to a degree of physical strength, and a happi-
ness unknown to her in the cold New England climate of her
birth and yet with no personal attractions, with a voice enfeebled
by delicate health, often rendered ill by the excitement of a too
active brain. Yet this woman drew to her side with admiration the
young, the talented, the distinguished what was the charm?
it was indescribable, and it was felt by so many who sought a
strength in her companionship ; whose influence was to elevate, to
inspire with new hope and courage the power to battle with the
struggles of life and of destiny. Her generosity towards those
who interested her, and who sought her aid, if measured by com-
parison would far outweigh the richest givers, for she sometimes
gave her all as in one instance out of many which came to my
knowledge, where she devoted to an unfortunate Danish poet the
sum which she had for some time been accumulating by intense
study, and severe brain work, to accomplish her long-wished-for
tour in Europe and lost the whole of it in the generous action
to enable him to publish a book, which was a total failure, in New
York.
This of itself should be one of the greenest of laurels that
encircles her brow and I would quote as applicable to her the
lines that Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote to George Sand,
" Thou large-brained woman, and large-hearted man ; " for indeed
her heart was as large as her intellect.
I remain, dear madam, most cordially yours, with all good
wishes,
ELIZABETH DsWiNDT CRANCH.
Goethe was now her hero ; she desired to write his life,
and make him better known to the American public. Her
19
302 MARGARET FULLER.
critique on Goethe is one of her finest efforts. She also
translated Eckerman's " Conversations with Goethe."
We have thus far traced her life as seen by others ; a peep
at her journal gives another view. Her aspirations often
took the form of written prayer. " Blessed Father, nip every
foolish wish in blossom. Lead me any way to truth and
goodness. O lead me, my Father ! root out false pride and
selfishness from my heart ; inspire me with virtuous energy,
and enable me to improve every talent for the eternal good
of myself and others." And her creed at that time; "I
believe in eternal progression. I believe in a God, a beauty
and perfection, to which I am to strive all my life for assimi-
lation. From these two articles of belief, I draw the rules
by which I strive to regulate my life."
Her father removed to Groton, Mass., from Cambridge-
port, in the spring of 1833, a matter of deep regret to her.
She was decidedly unpopular at this time with all but her de-
voted circle of intimates. Her formidable wit, keen sense of
the ludicrous, indiscriminate sarcasms, pedantic, high-flown
talk, and extravagant tendencies in thought and action, were
sufficient cause. Yet how little the world knew of her severity
with herself, and her humility before God. There is a lesson
just here for all of us.
In the summer of 1835 Miss Fuller met Harriet Martineau,
a woman fully as strong, fully as individual as herself. There
was at first great enthusiasm on both sides, Margaret hoping
she had found the intellectual guide she sighed for, and Miss
Martineau, delighted with the brilliancy of her new friend,
insisted that Emerson must know her. But of course they
clashed later on, and the account of the acquaintance from
the Englishwoman's standpoint is funny enough.
Her life was suddenly changed by the death of her father, in
the fall of 1835. The family were left quite poor, and her
long-cherished plan of visiting the Old World must be given
up. And see how bravely she took her trouble : " The new
year opens upon me under circumstances inexpressibly sad.
I must make the last great sacrifice, and apparently for evil,
MARGARET FULLER. 303
to me and mine. Life, as I look forward, presents a scene
of struggle and privation only. Yet I bate not a "jot of
heart," though much of "hope." My difficulties are not to
be compared with those over which many strong souls have
triumphed. Shall I then despair? If I do, I am not a strong
soul." "Let me now try to forget myself, and act for others'
sakes. What I can do with my pen I know not. The
expectations so many have been led to cherish by my conver-
sational powers I am disposed to deem ill-founded. I do not
feel in my bosom that confidence necessary to sustain me in
such undertakings the confidence of genius."
She now devoted herself to the homeliest domestic duties,
reading also in her intense way, and as the result of this dis-
cipline, her "heart was awakened to sympathize with the
ignorant, to pity the vulgar, to hope for the seemingly worth-
less."
In the autumn of 1836 she went to Boston as a teacher,
both in Mr. Alcott's school and for classes of young ladies.
She saw Alcott as he was ; admired his many good qualities,
but felt the fallacy of his dicta. " He becomes lost in ab-
stractions, and cannot illustrate his principles."
Through the kindness of Mr. George H. Calvert, of New^
port, Rhode Island, I have before me an autograph letter of
hers written to Mrs. Calvert while she was at Providence.
Mr. Calvert has added a few words of personal reminis-v
cence. He says : "I wish I could do more for you ; but my
interviews with Miss Fuller were brief and far between.
Our relations \vere most cordial, and though of so large a
nature, she was not difficult to know, for her soul shone
through and lighted up her being with a rare illumination. I
first met her, in 1837, in Newport, where she was invited to
spend a week with the Channings. I drove Miss Fuller out
in the old-fashioned chaise. New books were rare in those
days, and Talfourd's "Ion" had lately been republished in
Boston. The Doctor spoke of it as a dramatic poem of merit.
Miss Fuller quickly, but with the confidence of one not
unpractised in such matters, expressed an opposite opinion,
304 MARGARET FULLER.
saying that Talfourd was not a poet ; and it seems to me that
she was right. Dr. Charming was better versed in ethic than
aesthetic principles, and had probably not studied poetry.
This little encounter was conducted with well-stuffed, silk-
covered gloves, and the Doctor seemed to defer to Miss Fuller's
judgment on such subjects. This pleasant passage at literary
arms was characteristic of Margaret Fuller, who was sincere
and impulsive, and incapable of worldly calculation."
It was through Miss Martineau that Miss Fuller became a
friend of Emerson. She had reported enthusiastically the con-
versation of this new light, and introduced them. His first im-
pression was disagreeable, as with most persons. He says :
" Her manner expressed an overweening sense of power and
slight esteem of others. The men thought she carried too
many guns, and the women did not like one who despised
them. I believe I fancied her too much interested in per-
sonal history ; and her talk was a comedy in which dramatic
justice was done to every one's foibles. I remember that she
made me laugh more than I liked," etc.
But her sense of the ridiculous was inborn, and Emerson
saw at once that her satire was only the outlet of super-
abundant wit and spirits, and soon went far beyond this into
an admiring study of her " many moods and powers." What
a great soul she must have been to have won from Emerson
this eulogy : " She was an active, inspiring companion and
correspondent, and all the art, the thought, and the nobleness
in New England seemed at that moment related to her, and
she to it. She was everywhere a welcome guest. Her
arrival was a holiday and so was her abode, and all tasks that
could be suspended were put aside to catch the favorable
hour in walking, riding, or boating ; to talk with this joyful
guest, who brought wit, anecdote, love stories, tragedies,
oracles with her, and, with her broad web of relations to so
many fine friends, seemed like the queen of some parliament
of love, who carried the key to all confidences, and to whom
every question had been finally referred. The day was
never long enough to exhaust he*- opulent memory, and I,
MARGARET FULLER. 395
who knew her intimately from July, 1836, till August, 1846,
when she sailed for Europe, never saw her without sur-
prise at her new powers." Yet the phrases " imperious
dame" and "haughty assurance," with the sentence, "She
extorted the secret of life," show that there was still too
much of the autocrat in her manner. From the beginning
she had idealized herself as a sovereign, and said coolly of
Shakspeare : " He was as premature as myself." She said
plainly that no man ever gave such invitation to her mind as
to tempt her to full expression. "A woman of tact and
brilliancy like me has an undue advantage in conversation
with men." She also made this astounding statement : " I
now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I
find no intellect comparable with my own." No wonder that
Emerson spoke of her "mountainous Me," and Lowell alluded
playfully to her
" I-turn-the-crank-of-the-Universe air."
With all this there is for those who have studied her
carefully a deal of truth in what Miss Brackett says on
this point : " It seems to me that those who accuse her
of self-esteem in any fault-finding sense simply show their
own littleness. To her, life, in others, in herself, was an art.
Always a sculptor, fully conscious of the difficulties of her
task, she stood chisel in hand before a half-finished statue."
This is excellent, and will prove a key to much that without
it cannot be rightly understood.
But she could not help knowing her power as a converser.
I will not say " conversationalist," for it weakens the praise
due her. I wonder that " conversationalisabilitativeness "
has not been coined for the use of those who imagine that
with every added syllable a greater idea of power is given.
What other woman in this country has achieved a lasting
reputation as a converser? Miss Fuller never wearied her
auditors. "I never wanted her to stop," was the universal
testimony. She was also willing to listen patiently, cordially,
and enjoyed making other women talk well.
306 MARGARET FULLER.
With other extraordinary talkers the experience has been
vastly different. When Coleridge expatiated for two hours
on a couple of ragged soldiers he had encountered by the
roadside, Theodore Hook exclaimed at the close, "Thank
God he did not meet the regiment ! " There was a preachiness
in his harangues which was intolerable. Carlyle was terribly
severe on his monologues, and had the courage to say that
few had any idea what the old man was driving at. Rogers,
too, declared he often did not understand one word the
oracle was pouring forth.
Schiller groaned after two or three interviews with De
Stael : " I feel as if I had had a month's illness ; " and said
that in order to follow her one had absolutely to convert
himself wholly into an organ of hearing. Goethe dreaded the
encounter, and braced himself as for a serious trial. Byron
called her an avalanche in society.
Johnson was dogmatism personified. No one else had the
slightest chance, and Carlyle, who inveighed constantly
against talking, was a growling, cross-grained pessimist,
with a profound respect for his own opinions and a profound
contempt for the world at large a combination, as Dr.
Lord wittily put it, of Diogenes, Jeremiah, and Dr. Johnson.
Brougham thought that any one was lucky to get off alive
from one of Macaulay's erudite and torrent-like monologues,
and Sydney Smith made merry over his nightmare w^hen he
dreamed he was chained to a rock and talked to death by
Harriet Martineau and Macaulay.
Is there any other woman who has a more enviable reputa-
tion as an eloquent and instructive converser ? It was Miss
Fuller's especial ambition to talk well. " If I were a man
the gift I would choose should be that of eloquence. I would
prefer it to a more permanent influence. Conversation is my
natural element. I need to be called out, and never think
alone without imagining some companion." She added to
this, "It bespeaks a second-rate mind."
One of her friends says of her wonderful power in this
direction : " Her mood applies itself to the mood of her com-
MARGARET FULLER. 307
panion point to point, in the most limber, sinuous, vital
way, and drew out the most extraordinary narratives, yet she
had a light sort of laugh when all was said, as if she thought
she could live over that revelation. And this sufficient
sympathy she had for ail persons indifferently for lovers, for
artists, and beautiful maids, and ambitious young statesmen,
and for old aunts and coach-travellers. Ah ! she applied
herself to the mood of her companion, as the sponge applies
itself to water."
Emerson says of his conversations with her : " They inter-
ested me in every manner, talent, memory, wit, stern
introspection, poetic play, religion, the finest personal feel-
ing, the aspects of the future, each followed each in full
activity. She knew how to concentrate into racy phrases the
essential truth gathered from wide research and distilled with
patient toil, and by skilful treatment she could make green
again the wastes of commonplace."
From this we drift naturally into the Conversation Class
started by her in Boston in 1839. She needed money, and
many bright and thoughtful women were glad to pay for the
privilege of being guided by her in discussion and listening to
her decisions. And it is pleasant to miss her former arro-
gance, as she says modestly : "I am so sure that the success
of the whole depends on conversation being general that I do
not wish any one to come who does not intend, if possible, to
take an active part. General silence or side talks would
paralyze me. I should feel coarse and misplaced were I to
harangue overmuch."
The ladies met at Miss Peabody's rooms. Miss Fuller
alluded to the sad fact that women run over a great variety
of studies in school, but when they come into real life find
themselves unfit for any practical work, as they learn without
any attempt to reproduce. She was not there as a teacher,
but to give her views and elicit thought from others. The
entire circle met her with charming responsiveness. They
began with Mythology, then took up the Fine Arts, Educa-
tion, her favorite theme of Demonology, and the Ideal. I am
308 MARGARET FULLER.
glad k> say that Miss Fuller was always well dressed and
looked " sumptuously," and am more glad to add that, while
her toilet was appropriate, it was the magnificent impression
made by her genius and her face, glorified by lustrous
thoughts, that gave the idea of splendor, for her dress had
no special expense.
The influence of this class was grand and wide-spreading.
"Everything she said had the power of germinating in other
minds," and one lady, who did not like Miss Fuller, and was
a severe critic, was obliged to say after one of these rare
treats : " I never heard, read of, or imagined a conversation
at all equal to this we have now heard."
Her fame increased, and gentlemen begged for an even-
ing class to which they might be admitted. This was
arranged, but she was still the head by general consent,
and Margaret was the best informed of all the party. "Take
her as a whole, she has the most to bestow on others by con-
versation of any person I have ever known. I cannot
conceive of any species of vanity living in her presence. She
distances all who talk with her." It is something to be
o
proud of that no man ever had to talk down to her standard.
The summer of 1839 saw the full dawn of the Transcen-
dental movement in New England, and Mr. Frothingham
says that Margaret Fuller was certainly, next to Emerson, the
most noble representative of this new departure, " a peer of
the realm in this new world of thought."
Their organ was the "Dial, "and Miss Fuller was the editor
for four years. She worked laboriously for small pay, and
did much for its success. It is now principally regarded as a
literary curiosity.
In the autumn of 1844 she was invited by Mr. Greeley,
who had been impressed by her articles in the "Dial," to
become a constant contributor to the "New- York Tribune.*'
This was just the opening she had desired, for she had
written only a few weeks before : "At present I feel inclined
to impel the general stream of thought ; my nearest friends
also wish that I should now take share in more public life."
MARGARET FULLER. 309
In December she took up her abode with Mr. and Mrs.
Greeley. Ill-health and her habit of waiting for a mood
were against her in this new position. Mr. Greeley at first
disliked her, but they were soon devoted friends. How
beautifully he speaks of her devotion to children, and her
especial love for his little Pickie, who in turn gave his whole
heart to "Aunty Margaret." He also applauds her courage
and compassion in ministering to those of her own sex who
are called "outcasts." "I regard them," she nobly said, "as
women like myself, save that they are victims of wrong or
misfortune " ; and while others deplored their condition and
shunned them, she labored to vindicate and redeem. Her
articles for the " Tribune " are not especially valuable to-
day. Her criticisms were far from infallible, but she was
always sincere, never discussed in a frivolous spirit, was never
an imitator, never spoke for a clique or sect. Her honest,
independent convictions were her only guide. Her judgment
of Longfellow was unreasonably severe, and it was a hard
slap to say of Lowell, " His verse is stereotyped, his thought
sounds no depth, posterity will not remember him." No
wonder that Lowell following Goldsmith's example attempted
a playful retaliation in his "Fable for Critics," giving her the
name she had herself assumed :
" But there comes Miranda ; Zeus ! where shall I flee to ?
She has such a penchant for bothering me, too !
She always keeps asking if I don't observe a
Particular likeness 'twixt her and Minerva.
She will take an old notion and make it her own
By saying it o'er in her Sybilline tone,
Or persuade you 'tis something tremendously deep
By repeating it so as to put you to sleep."
What a picture he drew of her in one line !
"The whole of whose being's a capital I."
Lowell is also supposed to have sketched Margaret Fuller
in his "Studies of Two Heads,"
310 MARGARET FULLER.
" Her eye it seems a chemic test
And drops upon you like an acid ;
It bites you with unconscious zest,
So clear and bright, so coldly placid,
It holds you quietly aloof,
It holds and yet it does not win you;
It merely puts you to the proof
And sorts what qualities are in you ;
It smiles, but never brings you nearer,
It lights, her nature draws not nigh ;
'Tis but that yours is growing clearer
To her assays ; yes, try and try,
You'll get no deeper than her eye.
" There you are classified ; she's gone
Far, far away into herself ;
Each with its Latin label on,
Your poor components, one by one,
Are laid upon their proper shelf
In her compact and ordered mind,
And what of you is left behind
Is no more to her than the wind ;
In that clear brain, which day and night,
No movement of her heart 'ere jostles,
Her friends are ranged on left and right,
Here, silex, hornblende, sienite ;
There, animal remains and fossils."
Miss Fuller was quite a lion in New York society, but the
old feeling of isolation never left her. "Alone, as usual,"
was her reply when questioned as to the reason for sighing
after a merry evening. There is no loneliness in life like this,
and it is a subject upon which a woman cannot enlarge without
being laughed at or accused of maudlin yearnings or weak
sentimentality, but Mrs. Browning and others have dared to
depict this heart-tragedy borne in cheerful silence by many a
brave and brilliant woman who is expected to give bread, nay
meat and wine, to others, without a crumb to feed her own
starving heart.
MARGARET FULLER. 311
" Ye weep for those who weep ? she said
Ah, fools ! I bid you pass them by.
Go, weep for those whose hearts have bled,
What time their eyes were dry.
Whom sadder can I say? she cried."
In the spring of 1846 Miss Fuller went abroad with a
party of friends, and her letters tell of her meeting with
almost all the noted men and women of her time in a way
that interests all and can offend or injure none. She found
it impossible to get in a word when with Carlyle.
It must have been a severe verbal tussle, but the Chelsea
sage conquered by brute force. " To interrupt him," she
complains, " is a physical impossibility. If you get a chance
to remonstrate for a moment, he raises his voice and bears
you down ; he allows no one a chance."
These were hard lines for the woman who in her own
country had been so long accustomed to reign, and had
found all glad and grateful to listen to her wisdom.
Her experience reminds me of the indignant Frenchman,
who had been vainly trying to break in upon his opponent's
fiery monologue. " If he coughs or spits he is lost ! " And
of Sydney Smith's declaration that Macaulay had never
yet heard his voice, as when they met they would both talk
every moment on perhaps totally different themes, each
regardless of the other's eloquence. After one of these
encounters Sydney pathetically exclaimed, thinking of all the
good things he had said, "Poor Macaulay, he'll be very sorry
some day to have missed all this ! "
Miss Martineau, who had evidently been offended by Miss
Fuller's frank expressions of dislike to some portions of her
book on America, said that she did not enjoy herself except
where she could harangue the whole drawing-room parly
without any interruption, although there were those present
as eminent as herself; and describes comically Miss Fuller's
disappointment that Miss Martineau, after her marvellous cure
by mesmerism, exhibited no unusual manifestations, and was
in fact more commonplace than ever. Miss Martineau had a
312 MARGARET FULLER.
bad habit of giving every one a black eye as she passed them,
and did not fail in her autobiography to pummel her former
friend, saying :
" The difference between us was that while she was living
and moving in an ideal world, talking in private and dis-
coursing in public about the most fanciful and shallow
conceits which the transcendentalists of Boston took for
philosophy, she looked down upon persons w~ho acted instead
of talking finely, and devoted their fortunes, their peace,
their repose, and their very lives to the preservation of the
principles of the republic. While Margaret Fuller and her
adult pupils sat "gorgeously dressed," talking about Mars
and Venus, Plato and Goethe, and fancying themselves the
elect of the earth in intellect and refinement, the liberties of
the republic were running out as fast as they could go, at a
breach which another sort of elect persons were devoting
themselves to repair ; and my complaint against the " gorge-
ous " pedants was that they regarded their preservers as
hewers of wood and drawers of water, and their work as a
less vital one than the pedantic orations which were spoiling a
set of well-meaning women in a pitiable way. . . . Her life in
Boston was little short of destructive. In the most pedantic age
of society in her own country, and in its most pedantic city,
she who was just beginning to rise out of pedantic habits
of thought and speech relapsed most grievously. She was
not only completely spoiled in conversation and manners,
she made false estimates of the objects and interests of human
life. She was not content with pursuing, and inducing others
to pursue a metaphysical idealism destructive of all genuine
feeling and sound activity : she mocked at objects and efforts
of a higher order than her own, and despised those who, like
myself, could not adopt her scale of valuation. All this
might have been spared, a world of mischief saved, and a
world of good effected, if she had found her heart a dozen
years sooner, and in America instead of Italy. It is the most
grievous loss I have almost ever known in private history,
the deferring of Margaret Fuller's married life so long."
MARGARET FULLER. 313
Greeley admired Channing's delicate way of expressing the
fact that, being such a genuine woman, her life was maimed
and marred by lack of a satisfying love and a home, adding,
"If I had attempted to say this I should have somehow blun-
dered out that, great and noble as she was, a good husband
and two or three bouncing babies would have emancipated
her from a deal of cant and nonsense." But the change is
near. Six years before in prophetic strain she gave a glimpse
of the volcano beneath the snow : " Once I was almost all
intellect, now I am almost all feeling. Nature vindicates her
rights and I feel all Italy glowing beneath the Saxon crust.
This cannot last long. I shall burn to ashes if all this
smoulders here much longer. I must die if I do not burst
forth in genius or heroism."
An ample outlet for this flood of feeling came to her in the
Italian struggle for freedom and her romantic marriage with
the young Marquis D'Ossoli, while her inclination to hero-wor-
ship drew her irresistibly to Mazzini, whom she described as
" in mind a great poetic statesman, in heart a lover, in action
decisive and full of resources as Caesar." Her own heroism
and philanthrophy shone nobly in her devotion to the cause of
freedom, her tireless nursing of the wounded soldiers in the
hospital w r here she was directress, for whom she "would have
sold her hair, or blood from her arm ; " and her generosity
was always so excessive as to be almost unfair to herself.
Her marriage, kept private for more than a year for
pecuniary and political reasons, was a strange affair to one
who did not know the woman's need and longings, much like
Madame de Stael's private marriage with the invalid soldier
Rocca, who was so much her junior, and inferior to her in
everything but love and devotion. But all Margaret's friends
felt what one expressed : " I have an unshaken trust that what
Margaret did she can defend."
As she rejoiced that in D'Ossoli her heart had " found a
home," no one should dare to blame or criticise or even
wonder. She could talk of her friends without treachery or
gossip ; an example I am proud to follow.
314 MARGARET FULLER.
She was an utterly changed being after the birth of her
boy, Angelo ; no arrogance, conceit all gone, only love, hope,
and peace. She writes : " What a difference it makes to come
home to a child ! how it fills up all the gaps of life, just in
the way that is most consoling most refreshing. Formerly
I used to feel sad at twilight ; the day had not been nobly
spent ; I had not done my duty to myself and others, and I
felt so lonely ! Now, I never feel lonely, for even if my little
boy dies, our souls will remain eternally united. I console my-
self in him for my own incapacities. Nothing but a child can
take the worst bitterness out of life. The most solid hap-
piness I have known has been when he has gone to sleep in my
arms." I like to think of Margaret Fuller, the happy mother,
bending over her baby, splashing with merry frolic in his bath,
one bright and perfect gleam of sunshine in her clouded life.
New and terrible trals were in store for her. During the
siege of Kome she had to be separated from both husband
and child ; one constantly in danger, the other in the charge
of an unprincipled nurse, who was willing to starve her darling
for the lack of a few scudi. She wrote : " What I endured at
that time in various ways not many would survive. In
the burning sun, I went every day to wait in the crowd for
letters. Often they did not come. I saw blood that had
streamed on the wall where D'Ossoli was. I have a piece of a
bomb that burst close to him." She now wrote to Channing :
o
" You say truly I shall come home humbler. God grant it
may be entirely humble. In future, while more than ever
deeply penetrated with principles and the need of the martyr
spirit to sustain them, I will ever own that there are few
worthy, and that I am one of the least." See the statue fully
freed from the rough block.
The piteousness of poverty is ten times increased when it
cramps and saddens genius, and it is painful to recall her
words ; " It is very sad we have no money, we could be so
quietly happy a, while." She was obliged to support her
family by her pen while preparing her history of the " Recent
Revolution in Europe," which, alas, was lost at sea.
WRECK OF THE SHIP "ELIZABETH" AND DEATH OF MARGARET FULLER,
HER HUSBAND, AND CHILD.
MARGARET FULLER. 315
But her face was now turned homeward and mother-
ward. Their passage was taken in a sailing vessel, the
Elizabeth. Fate again loomed gloomily on her path. D'Ossoli
had been warned years ago to "beware of the sea," and
Margaret said, " I am absurdly fearful, and various omens
have combined to give me a dark feeling. In case of mis-
hap, however, I shall perish with my husband and child, and
we may be transferred to some happier state."
God grant that this is now a blessed reality ! Every one
knows the result. Their captain was a victim of small-pox,
and Angelo just escaped. When just in sight of land the
ship struck on Fire Island beach at daybreak. The rest is
too agonizing to redescribe, when all have the scene in their
own minds. Her death was like all the rest ; within sight of
land, an idle life-boat, beach-pirates not one to save.
Channing exclaims : "Did the last scene appear but as the
fitting close to a life of storms, where no safe haven was ever
in reach, where thy richest treasures were so often stranded,
where even the nearest and dearest seemed always too far off,
or too late to help? " She died for love, she might have been
saved, but all must be saved or lost. What a tableau for im-
mortality was Margaret, seated in her white robe at the foot
of the foremast, her fair hair fallen loose upon her shoulders,
face to face with death ! This is her epitaph : " By birth a
citizen of New England ; by adoption a citizen of Rome ; by
genius, belonging to the world." Better than this, is the tes-
timony of a friend : " She helped whoever knew her."
" Thus closed thy day in darkness and in tears ;
Thus waned a life, alas ! too full of pain ;
But Oh, thou noble woman ! thy brief life
Though full of sorrow, was not lived in vain."
Not in vain, if the women of this land avoid her errors,
imitate her virtues, and endeavor to carry out the reforms
which she inaugurated. Let us adopt her motto, " Give us
truth ; " her watchword, " Patience," and, with her, " love
best to be a woman."
CHAPTER XIV.
ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS.
BY LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE.
" Father Hopper's " Work Among Convicts and Felons First Sunday Ser-
vices in a Jail Abby Hopper's Girlhood Following in the Footsteps
of Her Father Her Work among the Inmates of the New York Tombs
The " Isaac T. Hopper Home " The School for Street Children
The Waifs and Strays of Randall's Island Charity Children An
Appeal for Dolls Generous Response Affecting Incident The Story
of Robert Denyer Mrs. Gibbons' Work During the War Nursing
Union Soldiers The Draft Riots in New York An Exciting Time
Attacking Mrs. Gibbons' House Havoc and Devastation Wrought by
the Mob Work After the War A Noble Life.
HE "Hapsburgh lip," the " Guelph heaviness,"
the "Adams temper," are historic. That subtle
drop of blood which forever bequeaths its ten-
dencies descends from sire to son through long
generations. But not less certainly does excel-
lence derive itself from excellence. Philan-
thropy in certain races is an inheritance, and
the Hopper good-will is as truly a characteristic
as the " Hapsburgh lip."
The father of Mrs. Gibbons, Isaac T. Hopper,
of beautiful memory, spent sixty-five years of his
allotted fourscore in constant, cheerful, brotherly labors
for the outcast, the prisoner, and the fugitive. When he
left his home, at the age of sixteen, to begin life for him-
self, his mother, a woman of lofty and generous character,
said to him : " My son, you are now going forth to make
your own way in the world. Always remember that you are
as good as any other person ; but remember, also, that you
are no better." This counsel he received as a birthright, and
316
ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS. 317
the Hopper claim to it still holds good. On the one side he
had always the courage of his opinions, the self-respect that
" Dares to be
In the right with two or three ; "
on the other, he kept the simplest modesty, without self-con-
sciousness. His wife was a woman of great beauty and singular
high-mindedness. They belonged to the society of Friends,
and' believed in the duty of the simplest living, that world-
liness might not corrupt or superfluities defraud charity.
Into this plain home many sons and daughters were born,
to delight in the beauty and sweetness of their mother, and
that resistless charm of their witty, fun-loving, sport-devising,
story-telling, dramatic, Quaker father, which, when he was
an old man, still drew children to crowd about him, and
prefer "Father Hopper" to their young playmates. From
babyhood his own boys and girls were familiar with instances
of want and misery that might have made them unhappy had
there been any morbidness and sentimentalism in the atmos-
phere of the household. But they were taught, with a simple
matter-of-course-ness which precluded harm, that the unfor-
tunate had a human claim upon them. Time and sympathy
were not to be wasted in vain pity, but devoted to practical
help. Abused apprentices, fugitive slaves, wronged seamen,
defrauded workwomen, were familiar figures in their home.
On Saturday afternoon they used to take long country
rambles with their lather, always stopping at the prison to
leave whatever comforts they had been able to procure for its
inmates. For many years Friend Hopper was an official
inspector of prisons, and a tireless Good Samaritan to the
most questionable neighbor.
Those were days when it was still a recent discovery that
convicts were human beings, capable of reformation, and
penetrable to kindness. Near the close of the last century
the Rev. Dr. Rogers of Philadelphia, one of the committee
of the first society formed in this country " for relieving the
miseries of public prisons," proposed to address a religious
20
318 ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS.
exhortation to the prisoners on Sunday. The keeper assured
him that his life would be in danger. Solitary confinement
was the rule of the jail. If the convicts were allowed to
assemble together it was feared that they would overpower
the guard and escape, to rob and murder as they went. The
sheriff finally granted an order for the performance of religious
services. But the warden obeyed it with fear and trembling,
actually ordering a loaded cannon to be planted near the
clergyman, a gamier beside it with alighted match, while the
motley worshippers were ranged in solid column, directly in
front of their srim threatener. This is believed to have been
o
the first attempt ever made in America to hold Sunday
services in a jail.
Friend Hopper used to say that there was not a convict in
Philadelphia, however desperate, with whom he should fear
to trust himself alone at midnight anywhere. He was once
warned against a certain violent and revengeful felon who had
been heard to threaten the life of a keeper. Thereupon he
summoned the man, telling him that he was wanted to pile
some lumber in a cellar, and went down with him to hold the
light. They remained for more than an hour in that solitary
place, the Quaker talking in the friendliest way to his sullen
companion. When they came up again it was plain that the
man's dangerous mood was past, for the time, at least.
Presently it became the rule, whenever the final resources of
prison discipline failed, to send for Friend Hopper, whose
shrewd kindness prevailed in the end against the most dogged
obstinacy and malevolence.
All the children of this extraordinary man inherited his
spirit. But his second daughter, Abby, heard the " inner
voice" calling upon her to take up his peculiar work in his
peculiar way. Teaching in girlhood, and mothering the
younger children, left by their mother's long illness and
death to their elder sisters, she still found time to be her
father's constant aid and counsellor.
After her marriage and removal to New York cares came
upon her in battalions. With no home duty neglected,
ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS. 319
and with an ever-demanding spirit of helpfulness, exerted,
not in sentiment, but instance by instance, the days were full.
Six children were born to the young couple. Money was
never plentiful, and the consequent claims upon the time,
strength, and ingenuity of the mother and housekeeper were
unending. But her wonderful management so systematized
affairs as to leave leisure for innumerable good works.
Fashionable ladies keep an " engagement-book," lest, in
the whirl of their days, some visit of ceremony, some over-
due invitation, some civil message or arbitrary courtesy
should be neglected. The punctual Quakeress needed no
memorandum of social duties even more numerous and press-
ing. For fifty years and more, five days of every week have
been " visiting days " with her.
Every Wednesday found her at the Tombs, that grim
Egyptian pile which is the city Bridewell. Only one
who has stood within the bounds of a prison can com-
prehend the gloomy misery of the place, or the self-denial
implied in frequent visits to its squalid inmates. The
bolts and bars ; the multiplied iron doors ; the narrow
guarded passages ; the far grated windows just below the
ceiling, through which no ray of sunshine glances ; the chill,
and silence, and mocking neatness ; the stark, strait walls,
which, to affrighted fancy, seem ever to be narrowing; the
unvarying routine of stagnant hours these things give one
a suffocating sense of living burial, and the human life
entombed there is horrible to see. Men and women,
debauched, quarrelsome, drunken, sickening to every sense,
and, to the common judgment, conscienceless as the beasts,
and incapable of reformation, sulk and complain in the dole-
ful cells, which, after all, are less dreadful places than the
dens which fill them. Familiarity with such creatures natu-
rally breeds indifference to them. Official justice naturally
confounds unhardened culprits with hopeless offenders.
Armed with discretion in the needed discrimination, the
Prison Association, whom Mrs. Gibbons represented, at-
tempted to help those who were willing to help themselves.
320 ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS.
These philanthropists saw with what appalling pressure the
superincumbent weight of society bore down upon the crimi-
nal mass below it. They saw, therefore, the necessity of
providing work and a fair chance for convicts, who, having
completed their term of sentence, too often found themselves
distrusted, isolated, and unable to obtain employment, and
finally driven back to their old haunts and their old ways.
Another purpose of the association, never lost sight of,
was the improvement of the condition of prisoners, whether
awaiting trial, detained as witnesses, or finally convicted.
When Mrs. Gibbons began her weekly visits to the Tombs
she found mere children arrested for vagrancy or held to
give evidence, herded with the most abandoned criminals.
She found young girls, accused of trifling offences, exposed
to the companionship of the lowest of their sex, and decent
men, more unfortunate than vicious, breathing the tainted air
of hideous immorality.
Through her instrumentality new rules provided a separate
shelter for the children, and made some sort of discrimination
between the various grades of crime. She inquired into the
previous life and associations of the female prisoners,
admonishing the dissolute, and encouraging the remorseful.
She lightened the utter cheerlessness of prison life with the
hope of better days to come. Felons besought her kindness
for their families, and murderers in the condemned cells sent
for her to counsel and assist them.
Yet with all her sympathy she had her father's shrewd and
sceptical judgment. No sham repentence, no interested
piety, no fictitious distresses, imposed upon her for an instant.
She had no sentimental counsels for wrong-doers. Hard
work, indomitable perseverance, patient endurance of distrust
and harsh judgment, she set before them as the hard condi-
tions of readmission to the world of decent living.
A very brief experience among these prisoners convinced
her that the women must have some refuge in which they
would be safe from temptation on leaving prison. Helped
by a few other zealous souls, she established for them the
1. CHRISTIAN WORK AMONG CONVICTS AND FELONS. MRS. GIBBONS VISITING A
CONDEMNED MURDERER IN ins CELL AT THE NEW YORK TOMBS.
2. CASTAWAY CHILDREN. CHILD-LIFE IN CITY STREETS.
ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS. 321
"Isaac T. Hopper Home," on Tenth Avenue, one of the
most useful and modest of the many charitable institutions of
New York.
" A few young women," said the directors, in one of
their reports, " may occasionally be found there, strangers
in the country, wanderers from their natural homes, who,
alone and friendless in this great city, have fallen, not
from vicious propensities, but through sheer misfortune ; and
a few there are, whom we have also found in your prisons,
the victims of wrong, suspicion and helplessness. All these,
after a short novitiate, we have restored to decent life and
productive industry. Some of our inmates are from Sing
Sing, convicts, who have been sent there for the lighter
class of crimes so punishable ; but by far the greater part is
from the Tombs or Blackwell's Island persons committed
for petty offences, or merely for vagrancy. These are the
victims of intemperance."
During the forty years existence of the Home, more than
two-thirds of the women received many hundreds in all
have been restored to honorable and useful lives, some of
them marrying and making good wives and mothers, others
working faithfully in factories or families. Of the remaining
third, a few have been sent to hospitals or almshouses, and
a few, as was inevitable, have returned to their old life.
While in the Home the women work diligently with a view
to acquiring those habits of industry, neatness, and thrift
which must be their sole future capital. And it is a touching
testimony to its usefulness that, among the contributions
received for the support of the institution, there often comes
a mite from some former inmate. Once a gift of twenty
dollars was received, with the message that it had been
honestly earned by hard work, and was given " as an act of
faith."
Yet, though thus responding in heart and deed to the
sighing of the prisoner, Mrs. Gibbons always has believed
the prevention of crime and degradation to be the true policy
of society. Placing the children of the very poor, and es-
322 ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS.
pecially the children of foreign parentage, under better
influences than their wretched homes supplied, she considered
the first essential of an improved social order. It seems, in
looking over scores of records, as if every effort in this direc-
tion had had her sympathy and help. For twelve years, a term
of arduous labor, she was president of a German Industrial
School for street children. The parents had come, usually,
from small villages, where they and their ancestors had lived
and toiled on the same spot, and in the same way, for gen-
erations. Driven from this narrow round by hard necessity,
they found themselves, for the first time in their lives,
inhabitants of a city, and without money, language, or
friends. Unskilled in any trade, they lived by keeping beer-
shops, or by the lower callings of scavenger or rag-picker.
Herded together, and easily tempted and deceived in scenes
so strange, it was inevitable that they should fall into greater
misery than they had left. Even sunshine and fresh air were
too costly for them, for in a room nine feet by fourteen,
whose one small window looked out upon a noisome alley,
it was a common thing to find a family of thirteen persons,
sleeping, working, living or dying. The children were
driven into the streets for air and elbow-room, and the way,
through vagrancy, to the city prison, was pitifully short.
It was not pleasant work, nor easy, to gather pupils of this
order, and teach them something more of American ideas and
Christian practice than they were likely to learn from native
vagrants or police regulations.
The school opened with seven reluctant students. In four
months one hundred and two names stood on the register,
and fifty or sixty abecedarians came regularly. Nineteen of
them were so well connected that they could have a dinner,
such as it was, at home. The rest received a bowl of soup
and plenty of bread in the school-room, sixteen hundred and
eighteen of these " Christian evidences " being thus set forth,
at an average cost of two cents and a fraction each. The
children earned the garments they received by good marks,
which represented pennies. Begging and indiscriminate giving
ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS. 323
were discouraged, as injurious to the thrift, industry, and
honest pride, which generally characterize the Germans.
A lady who visited the school on one of its annual exami-
nation days thus wrote of it : " You should have attended
our matinee. It was more entertaining than the opera
troupe's. The audience was small, to be sure, and undeniably
dowdy. Those eccentric persons who give all their leisure
and most of their money to help the helpless over the hard
places of life do not, as a rule, recognize the vast importance
of English tailors and French dressmakers in the scheme of
human existence. A Quaker-like simplicity prevailed, not to
mention a certain meagreness, as shown in the whitened
seams of ancient overcoats, and the experienced air of bon-
nets, several seasons old. I do not remember seeing a single
jewel, save that quaint decoration that St. Paul admired
the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which was very
generally worn by those present most of them helpers in
and workers for the school.
" The fifty performers were in full dress, of course. The
richest costume was a frock of vivid blue calico, trimmed
with pink galloon, worn above red woollen stockings, and
copper-toed shoes. This simple and elegant toilet was har-
monized by a yellow flannel sack, and green ribbons, tying pale
flaxen hair. Naturally, such splendor could not be general.
The majority appeared in scanty raiment, evidently descended
through a long line of previous possessors. This entail,
though adding the dignity of history to each forlorn relic, had
the usual disadvantage of entails that it did not consider
the peculiar needs of the heir. Hence, an imposing array of
misfitting gowns and shoes distracted attention at first from
the more serious misfit of circumstances in which the little
creatures seemed invested. For at their age such atoms
ought to be playing with dolls and soap-bubbles.
"This school-room life is happiness, however, compared
with any other possible to these children. They have been
gathered by kind women from the habitations which house
the most dangerous ignorance the ignorance which does not
324 ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS.
value knowledge. They would be selling matches and pins,
begging, sweeping the crossings, if they were not in school.
Most of them, indeed, pursue one or other of these trades
after school-hours. But in class they are taught sewing and
like industries, reading, singing, the simpler elementary
branches, and the virtues of cleanliness, order, civility, and
truthfulness. They bring slow brains to the learning, the
legacy of generations of dull disuse. But their wise teacher
does not hinder their progress with fetters of rules.
' ' Her system of object-teaching is most successful. And the
sharp attention which the whole school paid to a blossoming
rose-tree, and the thoroughness with which its nomenclature
and functions were learned an examination, at the end of
twenty minutes, proving that each child knew the name and
use of every part of the fragrant wonder seemed to show
that the system of primary instruction from books alone is
all awry.
"Here, as everywhere, it is the first step which costs.
These charity children have taken that step in learning to
use their eyes, their understandings, their powers of com-
parison. All the rest follows if they have but opportunity.
And these fifty little foreign dullards are already on the
straight road that leads to intelligent American citizenship."
Another charity dear to the heart of Mrs. Gibbons, and
for many years an exacting consumer of time and labor, was
the Infant Asylum. But no other work among children has
been more fruitful of relief and happiness than her self-
appointed mission among the waifs and strays of Randall's
Island.
On that lovely islet, in the East River, are gathered ten
or twelve hundred children of the city poor the motley
drift washed upon those quiet shores by the storm and wreck
of city sin. Some of them are nameless babies, born of
unknown fathers and miserable mothers, at the city hos-
pital of Bellevue. Some are boys and girls given up by
their parents on account of the poverty which waits on
intemperance or crime. Some are the half-orphan children
ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS. 325
of those whose occupations make it impossible to care for
them at home ; cooks, seamen, soldiers, and the like, who
pay from three to five dollars a month. Some are foundlings
abandoned in the streets of the great city.
Of the twelve great buildings on the island, composing the
city of refuge for these oppressed, that which first receives
them is the Quarantine Hospital. Here they are detained
till it is certain that they bring no contagious disease from
foul rookeries and cellars. After this probation they are
transferred to the Boys' School, the Girls' School, or, sadly
often, to the Sick Hospital or the Idiot Asylum. Babies are
.kept in the Foundling Hospital till they are four years of age
before being assigned to the school departments. In these
schools the children are well taught in the same branches
which the ward-schools of the city prescribe.
In time many of them are adopted, and the rest bound
out to responsible persons, who guarantee their support.
Even then they are regularly visited by trustees twice a
year, and if any are ill-treated or subjected to evil influences,
they are brought back to the institution, to be reapprenticed
under better conditions.
In the Idiot School there are, perhaps, one hundred
teachable and fifty hopeless idiots children of foreign
parents almost without exception. When these poor crea-
tures come, most of them can discern no difference between
white and black, between a circle and a square, nor can they
articulate an intelligible sound. Under patient, tireless, re-
repeated drill they learn to talk, to sing, even to write and
cipher. More than these, they learn to put off the beast
nature, and put on the human, gaining perceptions more or
less clear of the need of decency in behavior.
In the Sick Hospital there are seldom fewer than two
hundred and fifty children, from two years old to fifteen.
They suffer from almost every known disease ; many of them
enduring chronic maladies which have maimed or lamed
them for life. All are the victims of parental vices, or of that
early exposure to cold, want, and hardship which saps the
326 ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS.
springs of life. Of the vast mortality among them, by far
the greater portion occurs during the few months following
their arrival, and among the youngest children. A very
brief residence on the island, with its pure air, good food,
and cleanly habits, wonderfully improves the condition of the
frail little creatures.
Neatness, order, and system are the law of the place.
Physicians, matrons, attendants, teachers, servants, are kind
to their troublesome charges, and astonishingly patient.
Contrasted with any life they have known, or can know,
elsewhere, the comfort and security of this fill the measure of
well-being, and promise a decent and useful future. Its
great Nursery, taken for all in all, is an institution of which
the city may well be proud.
And yet, there are few sadder sights under the sun than
these ranks on ranks of unchildish children, careworn and
anxious so far beyond their years. Even the babies in the
tidy nursery-house, where they are well fed, well clothed
and tended, seem to look out upon life with a dreary resigna-
tion, dumbly pleading for that brooding mother-love which is
never to enfold them. And in the refectory, to see seven
hundred children four hundred in one room and three
hundred in another form themselves into ranks before the
tables at a given signal ; drop their eyes and bow their
heads simultaneously at a second signal ; repeat aloud in
singsong chorus an arbitrary " grace " at a third ; and at a
fourth, fall to work with spoon, knife, and fork, silent as
mutes, and obedient as machines, is to feel how drearily the
automaton-like precision and regularity of life in such a place
as this inevitable, indispensable as they may be press
down upon the natural joyousness and spontaneity of childhood.
Years ago Mrs. Gibbons, visiting the island in her kindly
round of duty, and reading the dumb, pathetic appeal in
these young-old faces, said to herself , " What these children
need is pleasure. They have care and kindness. They want
to feel that they are persons, standing in a human relation to
other persons, not mere unrelated members in the sum-total
ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS. 327
of an 'Institution.'" And she resolved that when the
approaching Christmas should bring its message of good-will,
every sick child, at least, and as many more as could be pro-
vided for, should be comforted with a doll or a book.
Benevolent friends gladly helped. They appealed, through the
newspapers, for contributions of sample cards, scraps of gay
merino, silk, or ribbon, or gifts of dolls, books, or money to buy
them. A week before Christmas a committee of ladies met at
Mrs. Gibbons' house, one bleak and boisterous afternoon, and
worked from three o'clock to ten, to dress the dolls. Other
ladies, hearing of the matter, sent for dolls to dress at home.
And when Christmas morning came, and the fairy godmother,
with a few attending fairies by no means young, and very
plain in raiment, started to spend the day at Randall's
Island, the fairy gifts filled great clothes'-baskets.
First to be remembered were the sick children in the
Hospital, so old, so careworn, so indifferent to life ! But they
were not indifferent to the joy of possessing something for
their very own. Boys, as well as girls, begged for a doll,
save a few who were old enough to prefer a book. They
hugged, and kissed, and laughed over their new treasures.
One poor little creature, dying, and already sightless, pressed
her baby to her pallid face, and smiled with joy. " Good doll,"
she whispered, and tenderly kissed it. They were the last
words she uttered. In the Quarantine nursery the children
danced for joy over their gifts. Even the slow idiot-minds,
prisoned, not housed, in their torpid bodies, felt pleasure,
most of them, and manifested gratitude.
It was a simple thing enough, the impulse of one motherly
heart, the labor of a few kindly hands, the expenditure of a
trifling sum. But the happiness it brought was so obvious
and abundant that the visit became a custom, and to this day
the doll festival is yearly celebrated. Other persons grew
interested, and Christmas trees, with glittering fruitage, now
spring in that arid soil.
Going these rounds year after year, Mrs. Gibbons had
often noticed a pale scrap of humanity, Robert Denyer by
328 ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS.
name, the appealing sadness of whose face touched her
kindly heart. He was but a stepchild of generous Nature ;
high-shouldered, humpbacked, with neck awry, and chest
misshaped, and with that weird look of old age so often seen
in the countenances of the deformed. In stature he was a
child of eight, in age a lad of thirteen, in experience of
sorrow a man. Year after year the good boys, with whom
alone he would consort, sturdy, strong-limbed, capable
fellows, were selected for adoption or apprenticeship, and he
was left behind. He was a good scholar, in his way, and
clever with tools ; but these talents were not marketable, and
nobody wanted the deformed dwarf.
One blessed day the faithful visitor, whom all the children
believed to be a saint, stopped at his chair, and said, " Robert,
I believe thee is an honest boy. Would thee like to make
me a visit, and do me a service at the same time ? We are
going to hold a fair for the benefit of the ' Home,' and thee
would make an excellent doorkeeper. Thee can reckon
money, and give change quickly, and answer questions well,
lam sure. Would thee like it?" Like it! The heavens
seemed opening to the excited fancy of the child. To be
trusted, to be useful, to make a visit in the house w r hich he
imagined the most beautiful in the world, for did not such
inexhaustible gifts and kindnesses pour out of it, he felt that
life could hold no higher joy.
The little custodian justified her trust. So smiling, so
happy, so helpful a manikin was never placed on duty.
Visitors came and came again for the pure pleasure
of seeing his delight in receiving another shilling for the
" Home," and, hearing his pathetic story from his friend
within, bought more than one trifle, to be laid aside for him.
But when the joyous excitement was over, and the homeless
little fellow had to face the bleak necessity of returning to the
island, his unspoken repugnance to the place was more than
his hostess could bear.
She sent for her brother, a busy lawyer in the city, and
always her ready right-hand and helper in good works, and
ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS. 329
said to him : " John, I have a testimony for thee. This
Eobert is no common child. Where he could have gotten
them, I don't know, but he has the instincts and even the
habits of gentle breeding. He is conscientious, modest,
truthful, and clean of speech. He is fond of music, and
pictures, and flowers. Thee can imagine what it must have
cost such a child to live in the Institution. I should keep
him if I had the time and means to do him justice. Now 7
thee has both, and thee has a kind-hearted wife, and a big
house. And I think it is the Lord's plain will that thee
should take him, and bring him up with thy own child, and
as thy own child."
"If thee think so, Abby, doubtless thee is right,"
answered her brother. "I will do as thee desires."
From that moment the homeless child found a home not
only in an abode which delighted his starved sense of beauty,
but in a heart which gave him fatherly tenderness and care.
In every way he was treated as a child of the house, and the
family name was added to his own. His health was delicate,
the vital organs laboring heavily to do their work in his poor
misshapen body. Because it fatigued him to walk, Mr.
Hopper bought a goat-carriage, whose gay equipments were his
delight. Because he could not go to school, private lessons
were arranged for him. But, though told that he might do
so, the lad, with that singular delicacy which characterized
him, never called his kind protectors "father" or "mother."
"I could not love them more if they were fifty parents,"
he said to his teacher, " but I think it is better for them and
for Willy that I should say ' Mr.' and ' Mrs.' " " Willy " was
the only child, a beautiful boy of two or three, to whom
Eobert showed a passionate devotion which never tired in his
service, and which was ardently reciprocated.
So sunny, so sweet, so helpful a presence in the household
was the quiet little figure, so loving in his ways, so high-
minded and unselfish, that he gave as much as he received.
"Thee might spare us, Bob, but we couldn't spare thee," Mr.
Hopper used to say, taking the lad in his strong arms, when
330 ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS.
he was worn and discouraged. And the pinched little face
would glow with pleasure. He had a regular and generous
allowance of money, that he might not feel dependent, but he
spent all his little wealth in presents for the family, or for
some of the comrades he had left on the island. And when
he had permission to invite one or two of these to visit him,
and to go to the theatre, as his guests, he confided to his
teacher that he thought he must have experienced all the
happiness that this world could offer.
He could not live long with the entire machinery of exist-
ence out of gear. Four happy years of love and home were
his, and then, tired out with the vain effort to live, and glad
to be relieved, he laid down the heavy burden of mortality.
In constant pain, he never complained, and always answered,
"better, thank you," when asked how he was feeling.
During his last illness some unspoken anxiety seemed to
trouble him, and one day when they two were alone together,
he whispered, "Mr. Hopper, where shall I be buried?"
"Beside me, my dear, dear child," answered that tender
spirit, and from that hour the sick boy was serenely tranquil.
He was laid to rest in the family lot in Greenwood, and
when, but a few months afterwards, Mr. Hopper suddenly
died, in the very prime of his beautiful life of blessing and
bounty, the grave was widened, and the two sleep side by side.
When the war broke out new work devolved upon the
busy hands, which seemed already over-full. For the first
six months there was much to do at home in organizing
Relief Associations for the soldiers. But in November,
1861, Mrs. Gibbons, with her eldest daughter, went to the
front. First entering the Patent Office Hospital, at Washing-
ton, they worked early and late to evolve order, system, and
comfort from the prevailing chaos.
The capital at that time was a vast camp, environed by
fortifications, the many divisions, brigades, and regiments
scattered over a wide area, each with its larger or smaller
hospital, half-organized, insufficient, and crowded with sick
and suffering men not yet inured to the hardships of army life.
ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS. 331
Driving one day with a friend, for a brief rest, to Falls
Church, ten miles below the city, Mrs. Gibbons found herself
in a small encampment of New York troops, their hospital
containing about forty men, most of them dangerously ill with
typhoid fever. One of these, hardly more than a lad, wasted
to a shadow, and too weak for the slightest movement, fixed
his eager, restless eyes upon the compassionate face bent above
him, and whispered, " Come and take care of me. If you do
not I shall die." It was impossible for the busy nurse to
stay. It was terrible to refuse. But she went back to duty,
carrying a memory of such need and wretchedness as she
had not before encountered, and feeling that this must be her
place. Falls Church was in a disaffected and dangerous
neighborhood ; no woman had ever entered its hospital ; the
only nurses were ignorant and blundering men, and the
death-rate was appalling.
As soon as she could transfer her charge Mrs. Gibbons
returned, with her daughter, to the fever hospital. The
young volunteer was still living, but too feeble to speak.
Again his eyes seemed to implore her care. The surgeon-in-
charge was ready to accept the services of the ladies, but
said that there was, literally, not a roof which would shelter
them. At last, the offer of five dollars a week induced a
neighboring pr saloon-keeper " to allow them the use of a loft,
floored with unplaned planks, and furnished with a bedstead,
and a barrel, which served as table and toilet-stand. There
were then thirty-nine patients in the hospital, six lying un-
buried in the dead-house. Two or three others died. But
when the nurses left, six weeks later, all the rest had rallied
sufficiently to bear removal save three, who were slowly
convalescing. The young fellow who had fastened his hope
of life on their coming had been able to return to his home at
Penn Yan, and eventually he recovered.
From Falls Church the indefatigable nurses went to the
Seminary Hospital, at Winchester, devoted to the worst
cases of wounds. Four months in the constant service of
pain here were followed by a term at Strasburg, where they
332 ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS.
were involved in the famous retreat from that place, the
enemy seizing the town, and holding even the hospital nurses
prisoners, till the main body of their army had secured its
escape southward.
Point Lookout, Maryland, was the next post of these tire-
less women, that vast caravansary of sick and wounded,
of released prisoners and destitute contrabands, which was,
in some respects, the most sorrowful and awful of those wide-
spreading encampments of misery known as the hospital
service. Here, through summer heat and winter cold, cook-
ing, nursing, encouraging the sick or comforting the dying,
they had labored for fifteen months, when news of the draft
riots in New York summoned them home.
On Monday, July 13, 1863, a mob attacked the office of
the provost-marshal, where the drawing of names for the
conscription was in progress, assaulted the officers in charge,
scattered the enrolment lists, and burned the building to the
ground. Growing in numbers and excitement, and finding
a recruiting station in every drinking-shop, the howling horde
spread itself over the town, pillaging and burning as it went.
For four days the great city lay helpless under this reign of
terror. The militia companies were at the front. The police,
brave and faithful as they proved, were too few in numbers
to cope with the insurgent multitude. Street-cars and stages
were stopped. Unarmed citizens barricaded themselves within
their homes and places of business, going out stealthily and
in old clothes. All trade was at an end except the trade in
liquor, and a portentous stillness pervaded the town, save
where the yells and curses of the drunken mob, hounding to
death some harmless negro, or threatening mischief to some
obnoxious citizen, broke the appalling silence. By night the
sky was red with the glare of burning buildings, and every
hour the fire-bells sounded the vain alarm which the incen-
diaries forbade the firemen to obey.
The " Tribune " newspaper was especially hateful to the
mob, from its vigorous support of the war and the odious
draft-measure. Its office was attacked, but found too strongly
THE REIGN OF TERROR DURING THE DRAFT RIOTS IN NEW YORK. THE INFURIATED
MOB ATTACKING MRS. GlBBON's HOUSE. 2. THE ToMBS, THE ClTY PRISON.
ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS. 333
guarded for that easy conquest which a mob prefers. It was
whispered about, however, that Mr. Greeley lived in West
Twenty-ninth street, where he might be more safely pun-
ished. On the afternoon of Wednesday a motley crowd,
made up, for the most part, of shrieking beldames and half-
grown boys, armed with guns, pistols, clubs, staves, paving-
stones, and knives, streamed down the quiet block called
Lamartine Place, in search of that kind and steadfast friend
of the ignorant and vicious, whom they thought their enemy.
Swaying uncertainly to-and-fro, up and down the street, and
unable to identify Mr. Greeley's lodgings, the rioters might
have passed on without further mischief had not a young
gutter-snipe, ambitious of distinction, pointed out Mr. Gib-
bons' house, some doors further on, as the doomed dwelling.
So fierce and sudden was the assault that the two young
daughters, with a servant, had hardly time to escape by the
roof before the door was battered in, the Windows broken,
and fires set in many places. The arrival of the police drove
off the mob for the time, and neighbors extinguished the
flames. But under cover pf night the vandals returned to
steal and violate.
When Mrs. Gibbons and her daughter reached the place
that had been home, havoc and devastation confronted them.
The panels of the doors were beaten in. Not a pane of glass
remained unbroken. The furniture was destroyed or stolen.
The carpets were soaked with oil and filth and trampled into
ruin by the feet of the struggling crowd. On the key-board
of the piano fires had been kindled. Everywhere were
scattered the fragments of books and valuable letters, the cor-
respondence of a lifetime with the great minds of the country,
and all the papers and remembrances of Friend Hopper, who
had died under his daughter's roof.
Eight years before 'this the irremediable sorrow of their
lives had befallen that tender household, in the sudden loss
of the only son and brother, William, then a young man at
college. In this noble youth were garnered up the promise
and power of generations. With rare mental capacity and
21
334 ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS.
an irresistible social charm that captivated all acquaintances,
he possessed a singular strength, sweetness, and purity of
character. The president of his university lamented him as
the strongest influence for good the college possessed ; his
classmates mourned long and truly for him as the best of
good fellows, tremendous in work and tremendous in play.
But to his mother, his most intimate and trusted friend,
his death was desolation. From her thoughts he was never
absent. One room in her house was sacred to his memory,
where were gathered the pictures he had loved, the gifts he
had received, the prizes he had earned, his desk and books,
the thousand trifles which love consecrates, and flowers daily
renewed as if upon an altar.
In this sanctuary the defiling mob had left nothing un-
spoiled, and this sacrilege was the only disaster which bowed
the heroic spirit of the mother. Strange irony of fate it
seemed, that the woman who had spent her life in the service
of the very class which wrecked her home should be the
allotted victim of their blind fury ! But she said only, " It
was ignorance and rum. Their children must be taught
better."
The broken family was reunited under her brother's roof,
and, as soon as she could be spared, Mrs. Gibbons, with her
daughter, Mrs. Emerson, returned to camp and hospital,
moving from post to post, and remaining in service, with short
intervals of rest, till the close of the war.
With experiences such as these, and with the burden c?
more than threescore years upon her steadfast shoulders,
another woman might have asked for rest. But the charitable
hands of this indomitable worker could not be suffered to fold
themselves. Her duties to the needy, the criminal, and the
unfortunate were promptly resumed, and new obligations
growing out of the war cheerfully recognized. Mission
schools and other helps were to be maintained for the colored
refugees, who, ignorant, destitute, and miserable, thronged the
city. The widows and orphans of soldiers were in great need,
and, fully convinced that the prevailing methods of relief
ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS. 335
would tend to pauperize them, and that honest work and honest
wages were far more helpful than charity, Mrs. Gibbons
organized, on a plan of her own, a " Labor and Aid Associa-
tion," hiring for a laundry a large house on Hudson street,
built by the actor, Burton. The noble apartment in which
that gentle genius gathered the first Shakspearean library in
America, and where he wrought out those marvels of comic
art which once convulsed the town with innocent mirth,
became the mangling-room. One could fancy the ghosts of
Touchstone and Dromio, of Bottom and Toodles, peering
about in the darkness, and marvelling at the strange trans-
formation. In another room was the day-school, where little
creatures too young to work were taught simple lessons,
knitting, sewing, basket-making, and other light handicrafts.
The noon-meal was furnished them, and they were amused
and cared for while their mothers and elder sisters earned
the means to keep a home for them. A sewing-room and
hospital chambers were to increase the usefulness of the
establishment. But the health of the projector, seriously
impaired by the strain of army life and domestic grief, at
last gave way, and the plan of the association was abandoned ;
not, however, till the success of the self-helping system
was assured, and many a woman put in the way of a comfort-
able livelihood.
The New York Diet Kitchen, for the relief of the sick poor,
is another charity which owes its prosperity largely to Mrs.
Gibbons' fostering care. The association has opened kitchens
in various tenement-house regions of the city, where, on the
requisition of physicians, broth, milk, fruit, meat, and other
nourishments are distributed to the sick who are unable to
buy them. Every case of suffering reported to the society is
carefully investigated, and, in many instances, these investiga-
tions lead to employment, and other efficient mitigations of
the miseries of the decent poor. The rate of mortality in the
city has been much diminished since these kitchens were
established, and, under the stimulus of proper food, those
who recover are so improved in condition that they work
336 ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS.
better and earn more. So that the indirect benefit of the
kitchens is a greater thrift among the lower classes, as their
direct benefit is a greater comfort.
In so brief a sketch there is not room even to mention
efforts and experiences, merely incidental, which in a life
less busy than that of Mrs. Gibbons would have seemed
pivotal points. The better education of women, social
reorganization, the amelioration of punishments, the establish-
ment of ragged schools, the relief of the sufferers in Kansas,
Hungarian liberty, and the victims of Austrian despotism,
every humane cause for more than half a century has appealed
to this philanthropist, and none in vain.
It is not a brilliant episode these sixty years of self-
sacrificing labor in scenes and among people offending every
instinct of taste or morals. Yet humanity might better lose
the history of its conquerors than the record of heroic souk
like these.
Such deeds are not wrought in the sudden fire of a high
moment, but are -the slow result of faith in human, nature
and long-forbearing patience. They make frivolity and
selfishness seem despicable. They make luxurious worldli-
ness appear the poor pretence it is. They enlarge belief in
the reach of human virtue.
CHAPTER XV.
JULIA WAED HOWE.
BY HER DAUGHTER, MAUD HOWE.
" Little Miss Ward " The Influences that Surrounded Her Early Life Her
Education Faculty for Acquiring Languages " Bro. Sam" Miss
Ward's First Visit to Boston Meets Dr. Samuel G-. Howe Her Mar-
riageWedding Trip to the Old World Cordial Keception by Famous
People Declining Tom Moore's Offer to Sing Reminiscences of Euro-
pean Travel Her Patriotism in the Days of the Rebellion " Madame,
You Must Speak to My Soldiers " Writing the Battle-Hymn of the
Republic The "Brain Club" A Many-Sided Woman The Woman
Suffrage Movement Mrs. Howe as a Public Speaker Reminiscences of
Her Life in Santo Domingo A Woman of Genius and Intellect.
the year 1819, in one of the stateliest homes near
the Bowling Green, then the 1 most fashionable
quarter of the city of New York, there was born
a little girl. The parents of the child, Samuel
Ward and Julia Cutler Ward, were young
people in strong and robust health. This little
girl, who was christened Julia, was the fourth
child which had been sent to them. The eldest,
a son, bore his father's name. The second child, a
daughter, named for her mother, died in infancy.
Next came Henry, the second son. A miniature painted
at about the time of the birth of this second daughter
o
represents Mrs. Ward as a very beautiful young woman.
The likeness was made in her twenty-first year, and
portrays a graceful, rounded figure and an expressive,
poetic face. The eyes are large and dark, the lips full
and sensitive, the brow high and intellectual. She came
of a family somewhat noted for beauty and talent, and
her inheritance in both was remarkable. Dying at the age
of twenty-eight, she left six children, all of whom inherited
337
338 JULIA WARD HOWE.
something of the character and attraction which made Mrs.
Ward one of the most interesting women of her time.
The little Julia was but five years old at the time of her
mother's death. She was nevertheless distinctly aware of her
loss, and still remembers with its pain the lovely face whose
charm and comfort were so early taken from her life.
Mr. Ward's health had already been somewhat impaired by
his assiduous attention to business. The loss of his beloved
wife was a blow which laid him prostrate on a bed of sick-
ness for many weeks. Kecovering at length from the shock,
he addressed himself to the task of bringing up his motherless
family, feeling, as he was afterwards wont to say, that he
must now be mother as well as father to his little ones. The
immediate care of these was intrusted to Miss Eliza Cutler,
an elder sister of Mrs. Ward, who now came to reside with
her brother-in-law, and who proved a most faithful guardian
to her sister's children. When little Julia was in her tenth
year this aunt of hers was married to Dr. J. W. Francis, a
young physician, already eminent, whose skill had on one
occasion saved Mr. Ward's life, and to whom he w r as much
attached. Dr. and Mrs. Francis continued to reside for
many years with Mr. Ward, and only left his house when the
youngest of his children had attained the age of fourteen
years. Mrs. Francis was called the wittiest woman of her
time, and the quick, sudden flashes which illuminate the con-
versation of the niece recall the brilliant sayings which made
her aunt famous.
Mr. Ward was a man of tall and stately figure, un-
impeachable in character and exceptionally strict in his
views of language and deportment. No smallest neglect
of decorum was ever tolerated in his presence, nor did
he allow anything approaching to gossip or frivolous
conversation to pass unreproved before him. He was a
member of the well-known firm of Prime, Ward, and King,
which at that time held a high position in the financial affairs
of the city, and was the first president of the Bank of Com-
merce.
JULIA WARD HOWE. 339
From her earliest childhood the little Miss Ward, for so
she was always called, showed signs of an uncommon mind.
Her teachers were all struck with her remarkable memory
and faculty for acquiring languages. One of her lifelong
friends, in speaking of her youth, said to the writer not long
since : " Mrs. Howe wrote ' leading articles ' from her cradle."
The exaggeration is not so great after all when we find
that at seventeen Julia Ward was an anonymous, but valued,
contributor to the "New York Magazine," then a leading
periodical in the United States. Her youngest sister pre-
serves among the most precious relics of other days, a
charming poem of Mrs. Howe, written when she was sixteen
years old, in a careful, half-formed hand, called " The Ill-cut
Mantle." The same sister, among her many tender reminis-
censes of the days of their early youth, tells the following story :
One day the young poet chanced upon her two younger sisters
busy in some childish game. She upbraided them for their
frivolous pursuit, and insisted that they should occupy them-
selves as she did in the composition of verses. Louisa, the
elder of the two, flatly refused to make the effort, but the
little Annie dutifully obeyed the elder sister, and, after a long
and resolute struggle, produced some stanzas, of which the
following lines have always been remembered :
" He hears the ravens when they call,
And stands them in a pleasant hall."
Since then the hand which wrote these lines has penned
many graceful verses, which unfortunately have never been
given to the public.
The atmosphere of Mr. Ward's house was one well calcu-
lated to develop the talents of his children. It was the resort
of the most distinguished men of letters of the day. One of
the most prominent of these, Joseph Greene Cogswell, was
intrusted with the literary training of the strong young mind
of Mr. Ward's eldest daughter. The girl's thirst for know-
ledge was not to be entirely satisfied by the literature of her
own language, and while still very young she became familiar
340 JULIA WARD HOWE.
with the German and Italian tongues. This early training in
the European languages has proved of the greatest value all her
life through. Not only has it given her access to the treasure-
houses of the literature of these languages, but the purity of
her pronunciation and the thoroughness of her knowledge
have made her at home in European society.
Though a very remarkable child, Mr. Ward's eldest
daughter had nothing of the prodigy about her. The
father saw at an early day that hers was a mind of un-
common quality and ability, but its growth and develop-
ment, though precocious, were not abnormal in character.
A portrait of her, made when she was about five years old,
represents the little girl looking out through a vine-clad
window, a favorite kitten clasped in her arms. The face is
very exquisite, and has certain traits recognizable even now,
after the lapse of more than half a century. Her hair, which
afterwards changed to a deep auburn color, was at that time
unmistakably red the color of deep-red gold, soft and fine
as the unspun silk of a chrysalis. This hair, which to-day in
one of her grandchildren is treasured as the greatest beauty,
was made a source of the bitterest mortification to the child.
From the early impression that her hair was a great personal
misfortune is to be traced the singular lack of vanity which
has always characterized Mrs. Howe.
With all her eagerness for study there was no lack of
childishness about the child, and one of her first griefs was in
the parting from her dolls. This heart-rending separation
took place on her ninth birthday, whan her waxen darlings
were taken from her arms, and she was told that "Miss Ward
was too old to play with dolls any longer."
Her musical education was as thorough as were the other
branches which she pursued. Her masters were so much
impressed with her genius for musical composition that she
was urged by one of them to devote the greater part of her
time to it. Gifted with a fine, expressive voice, she sang her
own music with a dramatic power which easily gave her a
high place among the amateurs of her time. Mr. Ward, who
JULIA WARD HOWE. 341
was for those days a very rich man, spared neither money
nor pains in bringing musicians to his home, and the musical
evenings at the Bond Street house are among the pleasantest
memories of Mrs. Howe's youth. Here came every Thursday
evening the most eminent connoisseurs of the then small
society of New York, and listened to many excellent per-
formances. Miss Ward was at that time a diligent student
of Beethoven, Mozart, and Hummel, and often played the
pianoforte part in the trios and quartets of these composers.
In 1835 the eldest son, Samuel Ward, Jr., came home
from Germany, where he had been pursuing his studies,
and where he had first met and travelled with Mr. Long-
o
fellow. A friendship was then established between these two
remarkable men whose earthly bond was only broken by the
death of the poet. Brother Sam, or Bro. Sam, as he was
always called by his family, brought back with him from his
long European residence much that was fascinating to the
romantic mind of his sister, and the intercourse between
the two has always been one of the most valued features
in their lives. Brimming over with the poetry, the romance,
the music of Germany, the advent of this handsome, bril-
liant son, with his fine tenor voice, was a great event in the
somewhat serious atmosphere of Mr. Ward's house, and its
effect upon the mind of his sister was very marked.
She now received a strong impression of the state and pro-
gress of the social world outside of the limits within which
she had been carefully trained. Her interest in German
literature was much quickened by her brother's acquaintance
with it, and her proficiency in the language grew rapidly
through frequent conversations with him. Miss Ward was
greatly aided in her German studies by Dr. Cogswell. The
influence of Teutonic thought naturally modified in her the
views derived from the narrow religious training which she
had received.
The brother and sister sang together the music of the great
German composers, and always conversed in the language,
which they then preferred to all others. Mrs. Howe has
342 JULIA WARD HOWE.
always preserved this early taste, and to-day a well-worn
volume of Kant lies upon her writing-table, and is taken up
by her for half an hour every day. In the twilight children's
hour when "the ring of jewels," her grandchildren, gather
about her at the piano and beg for a song, it is often one of
the old studenten-lieder learned all these years ago from
Bro. Sam, that the sweet silver echo of a voice sings for
them.
In the year 1833, previous to the return of his son from
Germany, Mr. Ward built his great house on the corner of
Broadway and Bond street. When he first removed his resi-
dence to the latter street he was told that he was going alto-
gether out of town, and that the city would never grow up to
his new house. Ten years ago, before this house was torn
down, it was a noticeably stately edifice, standing by itself,
with a garden on one side. It was built in the simple, dig-
nified style of the time, of red brick, with white marble
entrance, steps, and columns. At that time it made more im-
pression than do the houses of all the Vanderbilts on Fifth
Avenue to-day. The picture gallery was one of the most
interesting apartments in the house. Mr. Ward had made a
very valuable collection of foreign pictures in order that his
children might have some knowledge of art. To this house,
which was made attractive with every luxury, and graced by
three lovely daughters, came many men whose names have
been identified with their country's progress. Of suitors for
the three maidens there was no lack, but the father was a
somewhat stern man, and dealt with all of these summarily.
The writer has dwelt on these early days in the life of Mrs.
Howe, feeling that their influence was such as greatly to affect
her later years. The exceptional education which she re-
ceived, the early formation of her tastes, the studious atmos-
phere in which she passed her first score of years, laid the
foundation for the solid structure of worth and attainments
which she has so faithfully builded into her life. The
habit of study thus acquired has not been lost. In all
her later years, when the cares of society, wifehood, mother-
JULIA WARD HOWE. 343
hood, and public works, came in turn to be laid upon her, the
" precious time " to be devoted to her books has never
been relinquished. In the times when her brain has been
most actively creative, she has never let slip the power of re-
ceiving the thoughts of other minds, and the volume of
Kant has for its companions the works of the great Greek
and Latin authors, whose writings she peruses in the lan-
guages in which they were written. Translation is the pho-
tography of letters. The form of the thought is preserved,
but its color is lost in the process. Thrice happy is that per-
son who plucks the fruit of literature on the soil where it
originally grows, and not in the transplanted garden of for-
eign language.
In the sudden death of her father, while in the prime of
life, Julia Ward felt her first serious grief. She was deeply
attached to him, and between the father and daughter there
existed the closest affection, though the awe with which she
had in childhood regarded her only parent never quite left
her. After their father's demise his children left the great
house at the corner, and went to live with their uncle, Mr.
John Ward, who proved a second father to them in the ten-
der devotion which he bestowed upon them during his life-
time.
Not long after the sad event which left her an orphan Miss
Ward made the first of a series of visits to Boston. Here she
met Margaret Fuller, Horace Mann, Charles Sumner, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, and a man who was of this band of thinkers
and workers, through whom she was destined to join their
ranks. Dr. Samuel G. Howe was the most picturesque, and
one of the most prominent men of that phalanx of reformers
wiiich came into the world with the new century, and which
won for Massachusetts the place which she has until lately
held undisputed, of leadership in the thought and progress of
the nation. Accustomed to a society of learned men whose
whole energy was given to thought and speculation, what
wonder that the character of the chivalrous man who thought
and worked out his thought with an enthusiasm and steady
344 JULIA WARD HOWE.
persistence which compelled success, should attract the sensi-
tive, romantic young girl who had lived hitherto in an atmos-
phere of speculative thought. Here was a man who theorized
and made his theories into practical facts.
The rare combination of a passionate, romantic nature,
with a strong executive power, and a magnetism which over-
came all those who fell within its influence, made Dr. Howe
a formidable rival to the other suitors for the hand of Miss
Ward. The prize of which he was all-worthy was won by
him, and in the year 1843, in the twenty-fourth year of her
age, Julia Ward and Samuel Howe were married.
The two youngest sisters were intrusted with all the pre-
paratory arrangements for the marriage, and it was with diffi-
culty that the bride-elect could be induced to express a
preference as to the material of her wedding dress, so little
was her mind occupied with the concerns of the wardrobe.
Shortly after their marriage Dr. and Mrs. Howe made a
trip to Europe, accompanied by the bride's younger sister,
Miss Annie Ward. This wedding journey was the first
glimpse of the Old World that the sisters had enjoyed, and
has always been remembered by them as one of the delight-
ful experiences of their lives.
The English and American world had then recently been
startled by the story of Laura Bridgman, as told by Charles
Dickens in his " American Notes." The interest thus excited in
the English community insured to Doctor Howe and his wife
a cordial reception in London society. At this period Eng-
lish society was in one of its most brilliant epochs, and the
names of some of the men and women whose acquaintance
Mrs. Howe made at that time have remained famous until
this day. Charles Dickens, Thomas Moore, John Forster,
Sir Robert Harry Inglis, Samuel Rogers, Lord Morpeth,
Thomas Carlyle, Monckton Milnes, the Duchess of Suther-
land, and Sydney Smith, all received the American travellers
with hospitality. Sydney .Smith, in alluding to Doctor Howe's
remarkable achievement in educating Laura Bridgman, spoke
of him as " a modern Pygmalion who had put life into a statue."
JULIA WARD HOWE. 345
Tom Moore was much struck with the beauty and charm of
Miss Annie Ward, whom he met one night at a dinner-party,
and in his diary there is a tribute to the lovely young Amer-
ican girl. He asked Mrs. Howe if he should not come to
their lodgings and sing for them, to which she naively replied
that she regretted deeply that she had no piano ! Only too
late did she realize the pleasure which she declined, and the
ease with which the difficulty could have - been obviated by
hiring an instrument for the occasion.
After leaving England the trio of travellers started for an
extensive tour on the continent. In those days there were
few railroads. The great tunnel of the Mont Cenis had not
been dreamed of. The diligence or the more luxurious sys-
tem of posting were the only resources of the traveller. The
rapid tourist of to-day did not then exist. In their own
comfortable carriage Dr. and Mrs. Howe, with their sister
Miss Ward, made a long journey through the Netherlands
and along the Rhine and Moselle rivers. Europe was already
familiar to Dr. Howe, but to the two sisters everything in it
had the enchantment of a first impression. Many delightful
weeks were spent by the travellers in Switzerland, Styria,
the Tyrol, and Southern Germany. At Milan a month was
passed, and many brilliant and interesting acquaintances were
made through the introductions given by Miss Sedgwick and
by Signor Castiglia, whom Mrs. Howe had known in New
York.
Every stage of this journey had its own measure of delight,
and each step brought the pilgrims nearer to Rome. It was
with a feeling of awe that the young woman, poetic, passion-
ate, and full of reverence for the t? golden heart" of the Old
World, approached the place which she has called " The City
of my Love."
The poem of which the title has just been quoted is one of
the loveliest blossoms in the vivid garland of ' ' Passion Flow-
ers " which sprang from the heart of the young poet. Several
of the verses here given will show the deep feeling with which
the Eternal City inspired her :
346 JULIA WARD HOWE.
" She sits among the eternal hills
Their crown thrice glorious and dear,
Her voice is as a thousand tongues
Of silver fountains gurgling clear.
Her breath is prayer, her lips are love,
And worship of all lovely things,
Her children have a gracious port ;
Her beggars show the blood of kings.
She rules the age by beauty's power,
As once she ruled by armed might,
The Southern sun doth treasure her
Deep in his golden heart of light.
Awe strikes the traveller when he sees
The vision of her distant dome,
And a strange spasm wrings his heart
As the guide whispers, " There is Rome."
Five months were passed in Rome, and it was in this city
that the crown of motherhood was laid upon the brow of the
young wife.
In the spring of 1844 our travellers turned their faces
homeward, carrying with them a little daughter, who received
the name of Julia Romana, in remembrance of her Roman
birth. They now made some stay in Paris, and crossed
thereafter to England, where their time was fully occupied
by a series of visits in the country after the mode of hospitality
which still exists. One of these visits was to the venerable
Dr. Fowler of Salisbury. Another was at Atherston, the
residence of Charles Nolte Bracebridge. Mrs. Bracebridge
was very intimate with the family of Florence Nightingale,
and through her it was arranged that Dr. and Mrs. Howe
should visit Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale at their country seat in
Hampshire. Miss Nightingale was at that time contemplating
the philanthropic career in which she afterwards so greatly
distinguished herself. She consulted Dr. Howe on the ad-
visability of devoting her life to the professional care of the
sick. To the family of the high-born young woman the idea
JULIA WARD HO WE. 347
was at the time unwelcome ; but from the philanthropic
American she met with every encouragement.
After their return to America Dr. and Mrs. Howe took up
their abode at the Institution for the Blind, of which Dr.
Howe was then, and continued to be until the time of his
death, the director. The charming estate of "Green Peace"
was soon afterwards bought, and here many years were spent.
The great garden, with the famous fruit-trees and conserva-
tories, was a constant source of delight to Dr. Howe. The
summers were passed at Lawton's Valley, one of the most
beautiful spots on the island of Newport. During the first
few years of her married life, that busiest time of young
wifehood and motherhood, Mrs Howe had little time to give
to her favorite occupation of writing, and though she never
gave up her habit of study, she produced little literary work
of importance.
In the year 1854 she published anonymously her first
volume of poems, "Passion Flowers." The little volume
made a great sensation in the literary world of Boston, and
was easily laid at the door of its brilliant author. " There is
no other woman in Boston who could have written it," was
the universal verdict, and an all-unsought reputation was won
for Mrs Howe by this her first serious literary venture.
The recognition which "Passion Flowers" obtained was
of the highest kind. The brother and sister poets whom she
addresses in the opening salutation stretched forth to her
welcoming hands. Emerson, Whittier, Longfellow, Bryant,
and Holmes admitted her gladly as an honored member of
their glorious guild.
After the publication of her first volume, Mrs. Howe
became deeply interested in the question which at that time
divided all society under the two heads of Pro-slavery and
Anti-slavery. Dr. Howe earty identified himself with the old
Free-Soil party, which later developed into the Anti-slavery
body. That chivalrous soul, who, before boyhood was left
behind, had gone a knight-errant to the help of the Greeks,
and had suffered danger and imprisonment in aid of the
348 JULIA WAUD HOWE.
cause of freedom, was pledged to the party which had
resolved that the fetters should be stricken from the wrists
of the slave. With that band of workers, which numbered
in its ranks John Andrew, Wendell Phillips, Charles Simmer,
and Theodore Parker, Mrs. Howe was thrown in constant
contact. That her woman's wit and poet's pen helped on the
cause with all courage and enthusiasm is not to be wondered at.
The "Boston Commonwealth" was at that time a paper almost
exclusively devoted to the anti-slavery cause. For some time
Dr. and Mrs. Howe edited this journal, and Mrs. Howe con-
tributed much that was brilliant to its columns.
" Words for the Hour," a volume of poems printed in 1855,
a year after the publication of "Passion Flowers," contains
many poems which at that time failed not to produce an
effect. The thunderous rumblings which foretold the storm
were in the air, and in the cadenced numbers of " The Ser-
mon of Spring," " Tremont Temple," " Slave Eloquence,"
"An Hour in the Senate," "Slave Suicide," and "The Sen-
ator's Return," there rings a sterner motif th&u in the stanzas
of the preceding book.
These verses seem now to be but the .prelude of the great
poem of the " Battle-Hymn of the Republic." The soul of the
patriotic woman changed colors with the progress of the
nation, and when our land was stained with the blood of its
defenders, and the war bugles rang through the country, her
voice took up the cry and echoed back a war paean, a " Battle-
Hymn," grand enough for the march of the Republic to its
greatest conquest, the victory of self.
It was in the first year of the war that Dr. and Mrs. Howe,
Governor and Mrs. Andrew, Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Whipple
made their memorable journey to Washington. Their visit
was full of a deep interest, and every moment brought with
it some new experience of the terrors of war which shook the
seat of government. One afternoon the whole party drove
out to the camps outside of Washington to visit Colonel Wil-
liam Greene. During the visit their host turned to Mrs. Howe
and said : " Madame, you must say something to my soldiers."
JULIA WARD HOWE. 349
To a woman who had never made a speech in her life this
request, almost like a command, was indeed startling. Three
times she ran away and hid herself, but the colonel found her
each time and persisted that she should speak to the soldiers.
Finally she yielded to his solicitation, and made a short address
to the company of men.
Some days after this Mrs. Howe and her friends were
present at a review of troops, which was interrupted by a
movement on the part of the enemy. Reinforcements
were sent to a party of Union soldiers in the neighborhood
who had been surprised and surrounded. The review was
abandoned for the day, and the troops marched back to their
cantonments. The carriage in which Mrs. Howe rode
moved slowly, surrounded by what seemed a river of
armed men. To beguile the time she began to sing the
John Brown song, on hearing which the soldiers shouted ;
" Good for you." Mrs. Howe now spoke to her friends in
the carriage of the desire which she had felt to write some
words of her own which might be sung to this stirring tune,
saying also that she feared she should never be able to
do it. Her wish was soon fulfilled. She lay down that
night full of thoughts of battle, and awoke before dawn
the next morning to find the desired verses immediately
present to her mind. She sprang from her bed, and in the
dim gray light found a pen and paper, whereon she wrote,
scarcely seeing them, the lines of the poem. Returning to
her couch, she was presently asleep, but not until she had
said to herself: "I like this better than anything I have ever
written."
One of Mrs. Howe's most interesting literary productions
is " The World's Own," a five-act drama in blank verse.
This was played at Wallack's Theatre in the year 1855. The
tragedy is a very powerful and terrible one, and has high
literary merit. The leading role was played by Miss Ma-
thilda Heron, then one of our most popular actresses. Mr.
Edwin Sothern, at that time a member of the Wallack's
company, played one of the minor parts.
22
350 JULIA WARD HOWE.
ff A Trip to Cuba," published in 1860, is a charming vol-
ume, embodying the experiences of a winter passed in the
tropics. The outward voyage was made in company with
Theodore Parker, one of Mrs. Howe's warmest friends, Mrs.
Parker, and Miss Hannah Stevenson. In the narrative of
the voyage Parker is spoken of as " Can Grande," and the
descriptions of the great man are among the most interesting
passages of the brilliant, breezy little book. The humorous
account of the voyage to the beautiful island, the picture of
Nassau, and the landing in Havana, bring the reader to the
capital of the West Indies in as good spirits, and as eager to
explore its beauties and mysteries as was ff Hulia Protes-
tante" herself on the day when she first set foot on Cuban
soil. The visit to the Jesuit College is vividly pictured, and
the Padre Doyaguez and the younger, more interesting
Padre Lluc are drawn to the life. From the former of
these worthies the writer received the quaint title of " Hulia
Protestante," by which she speaks of herself all through
the book. In the parting with Parker, whom they were
never to see again, there is a prophetic melancholy run-
ning like a dark vein across a bright piece of glistening
marble.
"A pleasant row brought us to the side of the steamer.
It was already dusk as we ascended her steep gangway, and
from that to darkness there is at this season but the interval
of a breath. Dusk, too, were our thoughts at parting from
Can Grande the mighty, the vehement, the great fighter.
How were we to miss his deep music here and at home !
With his assistance we had made a very respectable band ;
now we were to be only a wandering drum and fife the
fife particularly shrill, and the drum particularly solemn.'
..." And now came silence and tears and last embraces ;
we slipped down the gangway into our little craft, and look-
ing up saw bending above us, between the slouched hat and
silver beard, the eyes that we can never forget, that seemed
to drop back in the darkness with the solemnity of a last
farewell. We .went home, and the drum hung himself
JULIA WARD HOWE. 351
gloomily on his peg, and the little fife ' shut up ' for the
rest of the evening."
" Later Lyrics," a volume of poems published in the year
1866, contains some of the most beautiful of Mrs. Howe's
compositions. Those which relate to the loss of her little
boy, who died in the year 1863, are poems which mothers
cannot read without a tribute of tears. " In My Valley " is a
prophetic vision of her later years, which has been strangely
fulfilled :
" Thou shalt live for song and story
For the service of the pen,
Shalt survive till children's children
Bring thee mother joys again.
" To my fiery youth's ambition
Such a boon was scarcely dear,
Thou shalt live to be a grandame
Work and die devoid of fear.
" Now as utmost grace it steads me,
Add but this thereto, I said,
On the matron's time-worn mantle
Let the poet's wreath be laid."
Though Boston is only the city of her adoption, Mrs. Howe
has become a Bostonian of the Bostonians. In the years
of her early married life in this city she felt not only
her removal from the familiar scenes and the friends of her
youth, but also a certain formality and coldness in her sur-
roundings which were in strong contrast to the easier hospi-
tality of her own city.
With her peculiar magnetic charm she quickly drew about
her a circle of people ; and her house has always been the
resort of men and women interesting for other reasons than
the magnitude of their bank accounts, or the extravagance of
their toilette.
The so-called " Brain Club " owes the origin of its brilliant
existence to three ladies, Mrs. Apthorp, Mrs. Quincy, and
352 JULIA WARD HOWE.
Mrs. Howe. This association was formed with an idea of
bringing together the most intellectual society people, for
mutual entertainment and benefit. The Club met at the
house of one of its members once in ten days during the
winter season, the lady who received the Club being respon-
sible for its amusement or instruction. How often was Mrs.
Howe called upon to assist in these entertainments, and how
brilliant were the evenings lighted up by her fantastic humors.
Charades there were which will never be forgotten by those
who witnessed them. One of these, which Mrs. Howe can
never recall without a paroxysm of laughter, included
among its actors Mr. William Hunt and Mr. Hamilton
o
Wilde, who fought a mock combat with hobby-horses. For
this Club were written "Parlor Macbeth," and "Mrs. Some-
Pumpkins at Court," two brilliant comic monologues which
have never been printed.
At the very time when these comic fantasies were indulged
in Mrs. Howe was engaged in a serious study of philoso-
phy. These brilliant essays of wit and frolic-fancy were
like the sparks which the smith strikes out from the anvil
whereon lies the iron ploughshare which he is forging. To
the crowd of children and idlers gathered about the door of
the smithy, the shower of shining scintillations is all that is
seen in the darkness of the forge. But the smith works away
with ringing blows, shaping the implement which shall harrow
up the soil, and make way for the seed and its fruit. He is
glad of the delight which the children feel in the red golden
rain of the iron, and he can laugh with them in their thought-
less merriment.
This ebullition of what she herself calls "nonsense" has
always been one of the rarest and most fascinating qualities
of this many-sided woman ; it is one which has made her a
welcome guest in gay as well as in serious society. The
making of fun seems the necessary and natural relief which
her nature claims after heavy and continued thoughts and
productions. It is the safety-valve of an intense and energetic
temperament, and the delicate wit and fine satire are not the
JULIA WARD HOWE. 353
least among the weapons given her to combat and take captive
those with whom she has been thrown in relation.
Mrs. Howe's philosophical researches led her to a more
careful study of society than she had hitherto made. The
results of this were embodied by her in a series of essays
upon practical ethics, in writing which Mrs. Ho we had in view
a possible audience. In the winter of 1862 she collected this
audience in the parlor of her house in Chestnut street, by
commissioning ten of her personal friends to invite each the
same number of their friends. These parlor lectures bore
the following titles: "How not to Teach Ethics," "Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity," " Doubt and Belief," " Proteus, or the
Secret of Success," "Duality of Character." In these lectures
Mrs. Howe hovered on the borders of metaphysical speculation,
to which she has devoted some years of labor. In this direction
were conceived her essays on " Polarity," tf The Fact Accom-
plished," on "Limitation," on Ideal Causation," and others.
Mrs. Howe was soon invited to read these essays be-
fore the general public, and in doing so became aware that
she had passed somewhat out of the sphere of the average
audience. While intensely enjoying this part of her work,
she still felt the necessity of returning to methods of thought
and expression which should bring her into more immediate
sympathy with the world around her. At this period Mrs.
Howe also contributed three papers to the "Christian Exam-
iner," of which the first was entitled " The Name and Exist-
ence of God," while the others treated of " The Ideal State,"
and " The Ideal Church." These essays made a profound
impression at the time of their publication, and were justly
considered as valuable additions to theological philosophy. It
is work of this order that has placed Mrs. Howe on a level
with the eminent thinkers of her time. Her friendship has
been sought by men like Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes,
Lieber, Hedge, Lowell, Agassiz, Sumner, and Parker, "who
judged her," in the words of not the least distinguished of
these, "as their peers." Her intellectual conscience is of the
most sensitive order, and has never been satisfied with work
354 JULIA WARD HOWE.
which fell short of being the best she could make it. Fowler,
the phrenologist, remarked on her great love of approbation,
which was, he said, " restricted by the desire only of the
approbation of the best."
In the year 1867 Mrs. Howe crossed the Atlantic for the
third time, in company with her husband and two of her
daughters, Julia Romana, her eldest born, and Laura, the
third daughter. The trip was one of great interest, and was
undertaken by Dr. Howe in order to carry aid to the Greeks,
the brave struggle of the little island of Crete against the
unholy Turkish bondage being then at its height. The coun-
try for which half a century before he had ventured his young
life, again claimed the help of all Philhellenes, and enlight-
ened men and women. Dr. Howe, though then nearing three-
score years and ten, raised a large sum of money, and with
it purchased supplies, which he carried to the refugees from
the heroic isle. England, France, Germany, and Italy were
revisited, and a long sojourn was made in Rome, at the
delightful home of Mrs. Howe's sister, Mrs. Terry. The
notes of this journey were embodied in a charming book of
travel, "From the Oak to the Olive," published after Mrs.
Howe's return to America, in 1869.
It was at this period that the subject of this sketch first
became interested in. the movement with which she has since
become so widely identified. The advance of her kind in all
ways Mrs. Howe had always had at heart, but only at that
period did she conceive the woman suffrage movement to be
the foremost question of the time. Once convinced of the
importance of giving the franchise to woman, she became an
avowed and powerful champion of the cause. Heart, soul,
and mind were devoted to furthering the movement, which
acquired through her an additional dignity and importance.
Nothing has been more important in America than breeding,
That security which rests upon good manners, that modera-
tion belonging to refined natures, are the bridges between the
reformer and the public, which suspects the mere intellectual
adventurer.
JULIA WARD HOWE. 355
\
The philosophical character of Mrs. Howes mind, and her
recognition of principles, have made all that she has said in
connection with the suffrage movement logical. With the
enthusiasm of a late convert to the cause she has combined
the results of her studious life. Of the merits of the much-
vexed question this is not the occasion to speak. The writer
would, however, bear testimony that even among those who
are most firmly convinced that its success would not conduce
to the \vell-being of the women, children, and men of the
country, Mrs. Howe's disinterested and ardent advocacy is
admired and respected.
The establishment of the New England Women's Club in
the year 1869 was a new departure in the woman's move-
ment. Mrs. Howe was one of those with whom origi-
nated the plan of the association, of which she has long
been president. This club of some two hundred ladies
has pleasant parlors in Park street, in the house origin-
ally built by Mr. Francis Gray, and afterwards occupied
by ex-President Quincy. The rooms are always open and
warmed, and the regular w r eekly meeting brings a large pro-
portion of its members together to listen to a paper from
some eminent person. The club is not a suffrage club,
though a large proportion of its members are interested in
the cause. Many of the subjects there discussed relate to the
education and the general welfare of women.
As a speaker Mrs. Hx>we has had much experience since
the year 1870. Her lectures are interesting, and touch on
many topics, some of which are germane to the reform she
has had so warmly at heart. Her gentle voice and powers
of oratory are by no means the least of her gifts. The ex-
quisite modulations of her tones, the perfectly chiselled enun-
ciation of the words, make her voice carry to a great distance,
and she has frequently been heard to advantage in the Bos-
ton Music Hall and Tremont Temple, and has also spoken in
the Royal Albert Hall in London.
In the year 1872 Dr. and Mrs. Howe, with their youngest
daughter and a party of friends, passed three of the winter
350 JULIA WARD HOWE.
months in the island of Santo Domingo, the queen of the
tropics, the garden of the world. Dr. Howe had been
appointed a member of the commission sent down by President
Grant to investigate the advantages of the proposed annexation
of the island to this country. The report was one very favor-
able to the scheme, and of all the commissioners none was more
enthusiastic for the annexation than Dr. Howe. The Samana
Bay Company made Dr. Howe one of its directors, and Pres-
ident Baez received him with the greatest cordiality. The
winter passed in the picturesque gray-walled town of Santo
Domingo, where Columbus had so long lived, was one full
of a romantic interest. The wonderful resources of the
island were explored, and journeys into its interior were
made on horseback. The hospitality of the inhabitants
was cordially extended and greatly enjoyed by Dr. and Mrs.
Howe. The great white-marble house or palace, as it was
called by the natives where they lived was garrisoned day
and night by a military guard of honor. The soldiers drew
for this and all other military duty the incredibly small pay
of ten cents a day. The payment was made in United States
silver. The army was dressed very sketchily in uni-
forms a large part of which bore the familiar letters U. S.
The life in the great cool palace, with its open courtyard and
wide marble corridors, its view of palm groves and orange
orchards, was idyllic. The perfect climate, the beautiful
landscape, the simple, pathetic people, longing for a civiliza-
tion which we have declined to help them achieve, all made a
strong impression on Mrs. Howe.
From Santo Domingo she sailed for Europe, where she
remained several months. The object of this visit was the
furtherance of the cause of peace by a direct appeal to the
sympathies of women . In the year of the Franco-Prussian war
Mrs. Howe had become much impressed with a feeling that the
women of the civilized world could, by uniting their efforts,
do much to destroy the prestige of military glory and to pro-
mote the settlement of international difficulties by arbitration,
based on recognized principles of justice. So strongly was
JULIA WARD HOWE. 357
Mrs. Howe moved by this view that she composed and issued
a circular addressed to women of all nationalities and degrees.
This brief circular was translated into several languages, and
was distributed in countries as various.
Her visit to Europe in 1872 was made in pursuance of this
appeal, and in the hope of assembling a Women's Peace
Congress in London, the metropolis of the world. To this
end Mrs. Howe remained in England some two months,
where she was employed mostly in the public advocacy of
the measure which she had so much at heart. The time was
not, and is not yet, ripe for such a congress as Mrs. Howe
sought to assemble. Her efforts, however, were recognized
by many eminent persons, and her "Peace Crusade" of 1872
has always remained one of her happiest remembrances.
A second visit to Santo Domingo was made by Dr. and
Mrs. Howe in the year 1873. This time the little town of
Samana, lying cradled at the foot of a range of hills, washed
by the beryl-green waters of the bay, was their headquarters.
In a cottage high up on the mountain-side Dr. and Mrs. Howe,
with one faithful black attendant, France, a Dominican,
passed a quiet winter. The simple folk of the village grew
to love the strange lady who took such interest in their homes
and children. When at last Dr. and Mrs. Howe were obliged
to leave the island, and the flag of the Samana Bay Company
was lowered, it was with real grief that they parted with their
humble friends, who still cherish a grateful memory of the
visitors who sojourned for so long among them.
On the 9th of January, in the year 1876, Dr. Samuel G.
Howe died after a short illness. For several years previous
to his death his health had been greatly shattered, and in the
last year especially he became very dependent upon his wife.
Her care of him was tender and unfailing.
In the spring of the following year Mrs. Howe made a
voyage to Europe with her youngest daughter. She remained
abroad for more than two years, and visited in this period
England, France, Holland, Italy, Switzerland, Germany,
Egypt, Syria, Turkey, and Greece. With Greece she was
358 JULIA WARD HOWE.
already familiar, but the delights of the Orient had until
then been unexplored by her.
Genius is of a twofold order. That which springs only
from the intellect is like the wonderful spectacle of the
aurora borealis, which flames across the face of heaven. It
will challenge the admiration of mankind. It may illuminate
the spheres of the present and the future, solving their
problems and revealing their secrets ; but while its brilliant
play transfigures sky, sea, and land, it warms no living
thing. There is a quality of genius which is of the heart,
and which works mainly for the comforting of humanity.
Through every thought and action of him who possesses this
spark of the Divine love is felt the glow of the Promethean
fire.
It is a strange fact that most women of genius have
possessed the genius of the intellect. Those of Eve's daugh-
ters who have claimed and found admittance to the Olympian
heights of greatness have more often been admired than
loved. Their feminine nature seems often to be hateful to
them, and in their striving for fame and glory they lose that
quality which should most endear them to their kind. Men
are their competitors, and it is from them they must wrest
the unwilling admission of equality. The heavier burden
which is laid upon their shoulders handicaps them in the race
of life, and their sex becomes a grief to them.
How different has been the spirit by which Mrs. Howe has
been animated through life. How has she striven to maintain
the dignity of womanhood, and to lift her sex to the high
level which she has attained.
To those who have lived nearest to the deep heart, its
warmth has overcome the griefs and disappointments of the
world. To those who from a distance can only judge of the
woman by her works, the glow of her genius is a beneficent
and helpful light. As poet, philosopher, reformer, she is
known by the world ; to her own she is dearest as woman,
friend, and mother.
CHAPTER XVI.
CLAKA LOUISE KELLOGG.
BY HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
Clara Louise Kellogg' s Birth and Parentage Girlhood and Early Education
Her Extraordinary Musical Genius Its Early Development Intuitive
Knowledge of Tone and Pitch Marvellous Execution Patient Study
and Unwearied Devotion to Her Art Beginning of Her Career An
Unusual Compliment at Rehearsal First Trial in Opera Her Debut
Carrying the Audience Captive Wild Enthusiasm Triumphant
Success Verdict of the Critics Visits Europe Debut in London
A Brilliant and Enthusiastic Audience Acknowledged to be the Queen
of Song Return to America Reception in New York Triumphal
Tours Her Charity and Kindness Personal Appearance and Charac-
teristics.
T would be difficult to imagine a stronger con-
trast in any life than that existing between two
nights in the life of Clara Louise Kellogg. In
the one, at the very end of the Italian opera
season, in the city of New York, a girl of
seventeen, slight and pale, so nervous that she
could hardly move her rigid lips, so frightened
that she could hardly command her young
voice, came before a calm and critical audience,
under the shadow of a powerful Italian clique, who
sat in cool judgment, oblivious of the fact that
warmth of manner and generosity of applause would stimu-
late the singer as sunshine stimulates the budding stem,
essayed to sing the part of Gilda in " Rigoletto," both the
dramatic and the musical portions of which she had studied
faithfully for nine months, and fainted under the cruel ordeal
when the curtain had fallen at the end. In the other, some
few years later, in London, before a house crowded from
floor to ceiling with the best culture of the British empire,
359
360 CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG.
with dukes and duchesses flinging her their flowers, with the
heir of the throne, and other royal princes, applauding in the
royal box, sure of herself and of her audience, mistress of
her art and of the stage, she sang triumphantly the role of
Violetta, was tumultuously called five times before the cur-
tain, and half smothered in the wreaths and offerings of a
superb triumph.
In the interval of these two nights, what arduous labors,
what industry, what abnegation of a young girl's pleasure,
what effort to overcome the timidity of a press and a public
that dared not admire anything not yet gilded with a Euro-
pean endorsement, what patience to outgrow the influence of
the intrigues of jealous foreign artists, what struggle, what
determination ! There was on the first night the same woman,
the same genius, the same will, as on the last ; but in the
last all these things had come to the full flower of their
beauty.
Clara Louise Kellogg was born in the year 1845, in Sum-
terville, South Carolina, where her parents had gone the year
before, her father, George Kellogg, at the head of a school,
and her^ mother playing the organ of the church there. Her
father was a man of original talent, a deep thinker, with great
powers of perception and reason, familiar with the most in-
timate principles of mechanics, a student of the fine arts, a
performer on the flute, remarkable for precision and richness,
and an inventor, who shared the ill-fortune of most invent-
ors, in seeing other people acquire wealth by his own unpaid
labors. He was the inventor of type-distributing, chain-
making, and other machines, and of improved surgical instru-
ments ; and it was he that introduced into England machinery
for making hats, hooks and eyes, and a variety of other
articles. Going further back, one of our prima donna's
grandparents was a person of very uncommon mathematical
attainments ; and another was an excellent violinist, who,
moreover, in the beginning of the cotton manufacture, super-
intended the erection of a valuable invention of her own in
most of the large cotton mills ; a parentage, it may be seen,
CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG. 361
from which something far more than usual might be expected
to result.
Mr. Kellogg, convinced that the musical ear becomes de-
praved when hearing music out of tune or off the true pitch,
carefully kept the piano in tune and up to concert pitch dur-
ing all of his daughter's childhood, which accounts, in some
degree, for the unvarying nicety and spontaneity of her musi-
cal ear. Her father, in addition to his other accomplish-
ments, was a philosophical short-hand writer, and he took
care to educate his daughter in the elementary sounds which
constitute the basis of every language ; possibly this drilling,
before the study of any foreign tongue, had to do with mak-
ing her one of the most extraordinary linguists on the stage,
one who can master the lines of her part in less than three
days, as well as the music. "More than thirty years
ago," says a leading clergyman, " I stood side by side with
George Kellogg in the Wesleyan University, from which we
graduated together in 1837. It was there, in the regular ex-
ercises of the class-room, that I first detected his musical
genius, which, however, appeared as a peculiar capability,
rather than as anything already fully developed. Passing
into the chapel for prayers, one day, he remarked that the
casting of the bell was imperfect, for he observed that the
sounds were not in accord. At his recitations in acoustics,
or in* psychology or physiology, whenever any point within
the range of the science of music came up, although he was
not a proficient in these things by study, he yet seenfed in-
stinctively to know all about them. He was married to a
Middletovvn lady after his graduation, and it was commonly
understood that the young couple had been attracted to each
other by their common musical affinities."
Mrs. Kellogg, the mother, is herself one of the most nota-
ble women of the generation. She is possibly the one most
thoroughly alive woman I have ever met. She is still young,
is good, kind, and wise, and might have made a great mark
on the artistic world if she had not so forgotten and ab-
sorbed herself in her daughter, that hers might be called
362 CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG.
a case of suppressed genius. " Her brain is large, and her
nervous system remarkably sensitive and susceptible," was
written of the mother at the time of the daughter's
debut ; " and from the first we have thought she possessed
more natural dramatic power than almost any woman we
ever knew. In ordinary conversation she has the faculty
of imparting to her speech such emphasis, action, and ex.
pression of countenance as to give to the listener the most
vivid and lasting impression of the subject in hand. And
she is one of a thousand for'the scope and brilliancy of her
intellect, and especially for the sparkling fascination of her
wit and imagination. A bright, enthusiastic woman, she
seems to learn everything with grasping rapidity, bordering on
intuition ; yet, with these, she has a strong and logical mind."
She is a woman, moreover, with an irresistible impulse in
the direction of art. She plays, sings, draws, and models,
and all decidedly well, while her painting is something
merely marvellous. " We have a vivid remembrance of an
illustrative incident that occurred many years ago, in which
her singular success came under our own observation, "writes
another raconteur. "At a gathering of several friends, Mrs.
Kellogg noticed a cameo of beautiful design and exquisite
workmanship, worn by one of the ladies in the company.
After a careful examination of the cameo, she quietly re-
marked it might be possible for her to cut one like it, if the
proper implements were only at hand. Observing that her
friends were incredulous, she at once determined to make the
experiment, and, accordingly, borrowed the cameo. The next
morning she started out in pursuit of a suitable shell and the
necessary tools. The artisan* of whom she purchased her
materials and implements, on learning that she had never re-
ceived the least instruction in the art of cameo-cutting, sug-
gested the impossibility of success in the proposed experiment.
But, still confident of her ability, she returned home, and com-
menced her novel and difficult task. She was fortunate in
the selection of a shell of the same color ; and in a few days
the work was finished. Strange to say, she had duplicated
CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG. 363
the cameo so perfectly that even a practised observer could
scarcely distinguish the original from the copy."
It was from the force and quality of such natures that the
genius of Clara Louise Kellogg was created, and all that was
in them was bent to her formation and education. Her pa-
rents returned from the South to their home in New Hartford,
Connecticut, while she was yet in her infancy, and there they
lived, their daughter growing up familiar with the world of
woods and waters, a child of nature, until, in her fifteenth
year, they removed to New York, where, subsequently, Mr.
Kellogg received a position in the custom-house, which he
held for several years.
Louise received the usual education of young girls at Ash-
land Seminary, among the Catskills, studying there with the
faithfulness that has always marked her course ; modestly
conscious of her gifts, and of her duty in their trusteeship.
She was at home with her mother, singing at the piano, when
a gentleman, Colonel Stebbins, the brother of Emma Steb-
bins, the sculptor of the "Lotus-Eater, " who had occasion to
visit the house, heard, on mounting the stairs, the wonderful
shake of a young fresh voice on an upper note, like that of a
bird in the blue sky. The result of his inquiries was that he
undertook the musical education of what he considered a
prodigy, because spreading the royal wings of genius at an
age when the common flock preens its feathers without a
thought of flight. In accepting the future thus opened to
her, the child knew well what she was doing, that she was
to forego most of the pleasures and pursuits of girlhood, the
companionship of young associates, the fascinations of easy
social life ; that she was, in short, to make an almost entire
abandonment of the desires and inclinations of youth. But
besides the development of her natural powers, she now had
the reward of those who believed in her powers to aim for,
and her fidelity and application were equal to their belief.
Her first teacher was Professor Millet ; he was succeeded by
Signer Albites and Signor Manzochi ; and there were three
years under the guidance of Signor Rivarde, to whom she
364 CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG.
owes much of the correctness of her style. At a later period
Signor Muzio gave her a few lessons, and in London Signor
Arditi. did the same, although, with the education she acquired
in America, she had already accomplished the height of her
fame, and must have taken the additional lessons only through
complaisance. Perhaps she owes as much to the unfailing
supervision of her mother, in all her suggestions, her dis-
cipline, and her sympathetic genius, as to any other teacher.
Her mother has been her constant companion, confidante, and
manager, designing all her costumes, superintending her
dressing, standing behind the scenes with a wrap ready to
fold round her as she leaves the stage, having in many years
never seen her from the front, shielding her in all her concert
and stage experience before the public as carefully as a
daughter could be shielded in a mother's drawing-room.
Clara Louise Kellogg's musical development seems to date
from her birth. She has no knowledge of how or when she
acquired the art of reading music, being unable to recall the
time when she was not mistress of all the symbols of the
divine art. When but nine months old, and yet in arms, she
began to warble a tune that had pleased her baby fancy, and
accomplishing the first part, but failing to turn it correctly,
she ceased, and was not heard to attempt it again till just
before the completion of the year, when she broke out in joy
and sang the whole air through. At two years old certain
songs would occasion her showers of happy tears ; and there
was other music that could not be played or sung in the
house on account of the nervous paroxysms into which it
threw her. It may be judged from this how keen was her
musical susceptibility. Her musical ear, also, as I have said,
has always been of the finest. She was not three years old
when, some one touching the keys of the piano and asking
their names, unseen, the little Louise cried out from an
adjoining room, where, of course, the key-board was in-
visible to her also, "I know which one it is, mamma. It's
the little white one between the two black ones," which it
was. Nothing could better demonstrate how positive is her
CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG. 365
sense of sound. Something always to be noticed in her
singing is this absolute knowledge of tone and accuracy in
rendering it. Other singers may be heard to strike the note
just off' the true pitch, by a shade, an almost inappreciable
trifle, thus sliding to the correct tone ; but with Louise
Kellogg it is always the pure and perfect touch at the first
instant, without faltering or uncertainty, sure as the dart of
a sunbeam. Her ear, her voice, and her genius are the
gifts of abundant nature, but all the rest of her achievement
is the result of solid work. She has accomplished nothing
without persistent and untiring labor, before which others
might well recoil ; and her marvellous execution, in which
she is not only unrivalled but unapproached by any other
singer, has been acquired only by unceasing effort. After
every triumph, she has said to her mother, in whom she was
so sure of perfect comprehension and sympathy, ff But better
next time ! " A notable critic has said of her, " Miss Kellogg
came to her work divinely attuned. Her natural advantages
were many and large. She possessed that nature which
could not only carol but could conquer. She was gifted with
musical 'apprehension which even in infancy was looked upon
as something marvellous. Her ear was not merely superior
to many others in its delicacy ; it was absolutely unlike any
other in its unerring fidelity to a positive standard of purity
and pitch. It could designate and analyze all the subdi-
visions of the gamut before the child had learned the names
of the notes. She seemed, indeed, to have been born with a
positive and not a relative sense of tone ; and the fortunate
advantage of the purest associations and the best training
during childhood developed and strengthened it. This is the
basis of that subsequent purity and accuracy of execution
that have been the admiration of masters and composers in
two hemispheres ; and it explains the somewhat remarkable
statement made by one of the best musicians in America, to
the effect that Miss Kellogg was the only vocalist in the
country who never, under any circumstances, sang out of
tune. To this gift of an ear so exquisitely sensitive that it
23
366 CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG.
could detect the faintest departure from the pitch, was added
a vocal function of very remarkable quality and power."
An interesting illustration of this extraordinary musical
organization, with its instinctive knowledge of a positive
standard of pitch, was afforded by an occurrence one night
during her first visit to London, when Colonel Mapleson was
bringing out "The Water-Carrier," with Madame Titiens in
the title role. Two renowned musical critics sat in the front
of the box with her, each with his full score of the opera,
ready to note his criticisms as the work proceeded. Sud-
denly Miss Kellogg exclaimed : " Ah, what singular harmony !
That chord was so and so," naming the different notes that
composed it. " There it goes into another strange bit of
harmony," she exclaimed, quite excited, and again giving the
separate notes. "You are familiar with the opera," said one
of the gentlemen. "Not at all," she answered; "I never
read a note of it, or saw a score." He turned, and looked
at her in blank amazement. "How is it possible," he ex-
claimed, " for you to repeat this harmony under such condi-
tions?" "I cannot tell you how I know it, nor why I know
it," she answered. But she went on, to his delight and
astonishment, as he looked at the score and she listened to
the music, giving page after page of the important chords,
sometimes so fore-feeling the necessity to come, with her sense
of nice adjustment, as to give a bar or two in advance, nearly
to the end of the opera. I have never known of another
person with such a phenomenal power.
When at last, in her seventeenth year, it was decided that
she was to be given a trial in opera, under the management
of M. Grau, she surprised even those who had believed in
her the most. " Do you know," said some one to Mr.
Kellogg, as the orchestra, at her rehearsal, laid down their
instruments and applauded her, "that the orchestra has just
paid your daughter the most unusual and extraordinary com-
pliment?" And it is musicians, the world over, who have
been and still are her most ardent appreciators. Of her
dtbut that night N. P. Willis wrote : " As she overcame her
CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG. 367
agitation and regained command of her voice, she astonished
her hearers with her force and execution ; " and Charlotte
Cushman, who was present, and who, fully appreciating her
dramatic genius, took in her the liveliest interest, declared
her acting to be that of an incipient Rachel. She bore then,
by the way, a strong resemblance to Rachel, chiefly in the
shape of her face and her dark and deep-set eyes ; but her
happy open smile and her changing color give her a luxuri-
ance of womanly beauty to which the slim Hebrew, classic
and white and lustrous as a statue, was a stranger.
In one sense this debut of hers was entirely satisfactory ;
it assured her that she was right in her aspirations, and that
she was capable of success ; and the word " fail " was no
more in her vocabulary than in Richelieu's. She had scorned
to adopt the precaution of timid debutantes by singing a great
part in the smaller places before attacking it in the metropo-
lis, and had plunged boldly in to conquer or die. She sang
a second time in New York, and then made her debut in
Boston, in "Linda di Chamounix." Of her effort in this rdle,
on the night of a terrific rain storm, the New York "Com-
mercial Advertiser," had said : " We unhesitatingly pronounce
the result of her appearance in this second role to be a
redoubled conviction that she is one of the first geniuses that
has yet appeared on our lyric stage. Any woman who can
so enter into the very life, both acted and vocal, of the mad
passages in Linda, who can grade the infinitely delicate
departings and returnings of reason with such subtle accuracy,
has established her right to be considered ... a genius ade-
quate with patience to all the most difficult parts in the
operatic field." In Boston she took her audience captive, was
called twice before the curtain at the close of the second act,
and was again recalled at the end of the opera and overwhelmed
with flowers. All the newspapers next day were enthusiastic
over her voice, her clear and crisp execution, and her mag-
netic power. Said the " Transcript " : " Her vocalization
was fragrant with bloom and beauty. She sang the music
of the first act with the natural enthusiasm of youth, and yet
368 CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG.
with artistic skill and finish. In the duet with Brignoli there
was a gush of song that carried delight and admiration to a
high pitch in the audience." Meanwhile, D wight's " Journal
of Music," perhaps then the highest authority in this or any
other country, said of her : " We have rarely had occasion to
record a more complete and genuine success. An entire
novice upon the stage, having appeared only some half dozen
times in all, coming to us almost unheralded and unpuffed,
indeed almost unknown, she has stepped into the position of
a public favorite at a single bound. In person she is slender
and graceful, with a pleasing face, intelligent and intellectual
rather than beautiful, capable of the most varied expression.
Her voice is a pure, sweet, high soprano, of that thin and
penetrating quality that cuts the air with the keen glitter of a
Damascus blade, wanting now, of course, in that volume and
power which age and time will give, yet sufficient for all
practical purposes ; of course, furthermore, not so full in the
lower register as it will be in time. She reminds us much of
Adelina Patti, as to the quality of her voice, and indeed in
her execution, which is finished and thoroughly artistic,
savoring little of the novice, but worthy of the experience of
a longer ^tudy and a maturer age. Everything attempted is
done with admirable precision, neatness, and brilliancy that
leave little to be desired. In the opening cavatina, O luce
di quest anima, she exhibited at once these qualities, giving the
air in a way that brought down the house in spontaneous
applause. As she proceeded, she evinced a rare dramatic
talent, and an apparent familiarity with the business of the
stage that was truly remarkable. The grace and simplicity
of manner that mark her are, however, native and not ac-
quired, and seem a real gift of nature. Through all the
changes of the opera she showed herself always equal to the
demands of the scene ; so that, as an actress, we should set
her down as possessed of a rare instinct, if not, indeed, of
positive genius."
She had an equal success in " La Somnambula ; " but the
war ended the season abruptly. She was re-engaged for the
CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG. 369
next year, and in 1863 she signed a contract for the following
three years. In 1862 she assumed the part of Violetta
in " La Traviata," and the " Albion " remarked of her appear-
ance : " Miss Kellogg, whose dramatic aptness has been a
most noticeable trait of her career so far ... in the final
scene, by clear, steady vocal flights, placed herself above
almost every Violetta we have heard ; " while another
authority said : " Her song seems an outburst of the fulness
of melodious life, and as if she could no more help singing
than the song-sparrow which fills the leafless woods of early
spring with its thrilling notes." Of her Amina, at this
period, the "Home Journal" said: "She carries the realism
which specially characterizes certain interpretations of hers
to the fullest extent in the action of the part. Her sleep-
walking never swerved from the strange rhythmical step of
the actual somnambulist. The method of her vocalization is
throughout that of the unconscious talker in sleep. Her
waking scenes are deliciously sung, and in point of passionate
acting inimitable."
The hold that she had now acquired upon the public was
shown when, in 1863, we find the Boston "Journal," saying
her "All, non giunge was an exhibition of vocalism, and of
acting as well, that makes the heart of an American swell
with pride," The " Post," after speaking of her finish and
force, said of her Lady Henrietta that she " was all sunshine
and music. She sang with heart, and acted with spirit, and
was charming in a thousand and one nameless by-plays. Her
sparkling eyes, vivacious manners, and buoyant spirits told
effectively on her audience. The 'Last Rose of Summer'
was sung with exquisite sweetness and grace." And again
the same critic said : " As Linda she is magnificent ; and so
thought an audience that sat enraptured under the exhaustless
melody of her rich, sympathetic voice." Of her Zerlina in
"Don Giovanni," the "World" of New York, said she "ob-
tained the most artistic success of 'the evening, acting well
and singing better; her 'Batti, Batti,' gained her a universal
recall." And the Philadelphia "Press" declared: "She
370 CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG.
carried her audience away with her. She was born and will
remain a dramatic songstress. Her career in America has
been most unequivocally successful. Her sway over an
audience is a sceptre." I have made these quotations because
they are words carrying far more authority than any opinion
of my own, and because they show the drift of contempo-
raneous feeling. The pride and satisfaction which the people
felt in her was manifested by a constant iteration of the fact
that she was a purely American product, and had received
none of her education, musical or histrionic, elsewhere than
in America, and that she was a living refutation of all foreign
impertinences in relation to us as crude and ignorant in the
direction of art.
It wag in 1864 that she put the crown upon her perform-
ances in the creation of the part of Marguerite in " Faust,"
which she sang twenty-eight times in one season. To create
a part is the work of a great artist, and few are the prima-
donnas of the day that have done so. "Faust "had never
been played in this country, and in Europe only by its origi-
nal interpreter, Mdme. Miolan-Carvalho. Miss Kellogg was
obliged to interpret the rdle without the benefit of instruction
or tradition. She had no model or teacher of any kind, not
even the hearsay of older artists ; her own genius and inspi-
ration gave it birth. She had then sung not quite three years.
There was an almost universal concern felt in the fact when
it was learned that she was studying the part ; the country
seemed full of an affectionate personal interest in the young
girl. During her study, one would say, everybody wished to
do something to help her success ; she received, both from
people she knew and from strangers, copies of various edi-
tions of Goethe's poem, and numberless illustrations of it also
by famous artists ; hints and suggestions poured in upon
her from the most unexpected sources ; the excitement was
more intense than it has ever been over any similar event ;
and when at last she appeared before the footlights of
the Academy of Music in New York, in the presence of
a most notable audience, in this most poetical of all the
CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG. 371
parts prima-donna ever sang, her triumph was tremend-
ous.
As much as her success had been anticipated, it remained a
matter of wonderment that a girl reared in the puritanical
traditions of New England, who had never been out of her
own country, who had been kept from all that knowledge of
the world which brushes the bloom from the young nature,
had been able from her own imagination to present the ideal
of so subtle a character as that of Goethe's heroine. It
would not have been so surprising in a European peasant ; for
something of the atmosphere of old legend would reach even
the peasant of those meridians. There were not two opinions
about her success. " The portrait," wrote Mr. Wheeler in a
leading periodical, " had the instant cogency of a homogene-
ous work, artistically conceived and poetically colored. The
music exhibited for the first time the quality, fluency, com-
pass, and culture of an exceptional voice. The critics who
desired the sensuous mellifluence of Grisi, the power of Cata-
lani, and the execution of Persiani, in the debutante, were
willing to acknowledge in Qretchen a vocal excellence distinct
and even new. What Miss Kellogg's voice at this time
lacked in color and breath, it made up in fineness and purity.
What her impersonation wanted in organic ardor it supplied
in accuracy, delicacy, and finesse. She may not have shown
in Gretchen the force of an impulsive, mimetic nature, but
she evinced the possession of a chaste, creative imagination
and a subordinating intelligence. There was reason no less
than sentiment ; and it is worth noting that no artist who has
since essayed this same part for us has so succeeded in deli-
cately conveying what seems to be the poet's ideal. . . .
With Miss Kellogg there was, throughout the performance,
an exquisite reference to the supernatural character of the in-
fluences that were surrounding her. This spirituality lifted
the role at once out of the purely objective domain of melo-
drama into the region of poetry, where Individual facts are
of less import than general truths. 'I have seen,' wrote
to Berlioz, a celebrated virtuoso, who was here at the time, 'a
372 CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG.
young girl, who is little better than an amateur, enact the
part of Marguerite in M. Gounod's recent setting of " Faust,"
and I have been both surprised and charmed by the delicious
skill with which she has apprehended and made obvious those
subtler nuances of the poet which I believed were beyond the
reach of lyric or mimetic art.' " Of this wondrous impersona-
tion the critic of the " Tribune," an exacting one, declared
that " she literally warbled the delicious music, so liquidly the
notes fell from her lips. Perfect purity of intonation, light
and well-articulated execution, the utmost purity of taste, and
a naive, delicious, and impassioned manner, distinguished her
personation of Marguerite. We have seen nothing more
maidenly, tender, and delicately passionate than her whole
bearing in her interview with Faust. It was a flash of pure
nature, touching at once the sympathizers of the audience and
calling forth murmurs of irrepressible admiration. It was a
masterpiece of lyric and dramatic power." Another musical
connoisseur felt obliged to say, in more charming compliment
than singer ever had before, that, "The exquisite quality and
purity of her voice, its sweet and gentle character, and its
thrilling sympathetic power, are so aptly united to a faithful
rendition of this part, that it would seem as though both the
poet and the composer had written it for her in place of her
having created it for them." The newspapers, over and above
their own critical remarks, were besieged with mpre commu-
nications than they could print, respecting the excellence of
the rendition, one correspondent calling it the greatest dra-
matic triumph since Miss Heron woke to find the city at her
feet; and another sending a little jeu $ esprit:
" When Kellogg sat and spun
And sang the song of Thule,
We felt the lifelike tale begun,
The key was struck so truly.
"If Goethe's soul could view,
With us, the passing glory,
He'd see the Margaret that he drew
Rise, living, from his story ! "
CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG. 373
From one end of the country to the other, wherever she
appeared, the air rang with plaudits. In Boston the audi-
ences were wild with eagerness ; ladies crowding the aisles
and standing through the entire opera were no infrequent
sight there, and hundreds were turned away from the doors,
as they had been in New York, where, at the dense matinees,
throngs of ladies appeared frantic for either seats or standing-
room. The modest little girl who sang Gil da to icicles three
years before would never have supposed it could be herself
causing such animated scenes in Irving Place, before the
opera, when coachmen and policemen and an army of car-
riages depositing their gay loads, made outcry and confusion
for an hour or more. "The interpretation of Goethe's Mar-
garet by Miss Kellogg has caused ' Faust' to be the most
attractive opera of the season, and filled the house to over-
flowing on each night of its representation," wrote the Boston
correspondent of the "Evening Post." "But it is Margaret
who holds in her slender hand the chain which, encircling the
vast audience, strikes through thousands of hearts the electric
spark of sympathy. The innocence, sweetness, and pathos
of Margaret could only be fitly represented by one whose
own nature corresponded to all those elements, and as in the
first act the gentle and lovely presence passed over the stage,
shrinking from the contact of the crowd, uttering only a few
notes, we acknowledge ' Sure, something holy lodges in that
breast.' Through all the succeeding scenes Miss Kellogg's
insight into the nature of Margaret never fails. The element
of holiness is always present to our thoughts, even amid her
direst temptations and darkest trials, while the musical tones,
tender, trustful, agonized, come to us as the true source
of such emotions. . . . Miss Kellogg restored to us the
meaning of the poem, that there is an innate power in
innocence to put down Satan under her feet ; for although
Margaret dies on the floor of a dungeon, as a criminal in the
eyes of the world, it needed not the visible presence of angels
to assure us that the pure in heart shall see God." Mr.
Longfellow, in fine, expressed the sentiment of everybody
374 CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG.
when, in a note to Mr. Fields, which she keeps as an auto-
graph, he said : " Her Margaret was beautiful. She reminded
me of Dryden's lines :
" 'So poised, so gently, she descends from high,
It seems a soft dismission from the sky.' "
Subsequently, and when the charms of all rival prima-donnas
had been tested, the Goethe Club, at the dedication of a statue
of the poet, choosing William Cullen Bryant as the orator
and Bayard Taylor as the poet of the occasion, requested her
assistance, saying they were emboldened to make the request
by the fact that the greatest of Goethe's feminine ideals had
found through her its truest and most inspired interpretation on
the lyric stage.
At the close of her season in New York, this triumphant
year, as Miss Kellogg came before the curtain in answer to
repeated calls, M. Maretzek stepped after her, and presented
her, in the name of the stockholders of the Academy, as evi-
dence of their appreciation of her as an artist and a lady,
with a ring and bracelet of superb diamonds. Such testi-
monials, however, the traditional treasure of prima-donnas,
became a common thing as she went on. The St. Louis
people gave her, when singing in "Don Giovanni," a massive
gold chain and inscribed medallion, after ovations of flowers ;
and in New York, while singing "L'Etoile clu Nord," a bunch
of white roses was tossed to her, among which nestled a
humming-bird holding a diamond cross in his bill. Later
were offerings of still costlier jewels from the Princess of
Wales and other foreign dignitaries, while bouquets and bas-
kets and pyramids of flowers, some of them, as the news-
papers delicately said next day, costing from fifty to two
hundred dollars, were the events of every appearance. She
had already valuable possessions in her stage paraphernalia,
among them a crown of amethysts set in a fragile gold fili-
grane, to which a romantic history is attached. In this opera,
"L'Etoile du Nord," she exhibited an exquisite purity and
melodiousness of voice, an irreproachable method, and a
surprising brilliance and facility of execution.
CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG. 375
It was now acknowledged that Miss Kellogg had one of
the purest high soprano voices on any stage, and was a bravura
singer surpassed by none living or dead ; that her ear was
precisely correct, and that she was ruled by no false ambi-
tions, but by a lofty love of her art ; that, in short, as it has
been beautifully said of her, she was less a lyric queen than
a lyric priestess ; her domain the boundless one of pure
music, and that she rested her claim to recognition on no per-
sonal graces or attractions, but on conscientious and complete
Avork alone. The purity of her musical method, which never
allows her to overload a measure with ornament not to the
purpose, is only equalled by her fidelity to detail in action
and in dress. It may be trivial, but it demonstrates this
peculiarity of hers, to relate that when, on a benefit night, with
a programme in which scenes from "Traviata" and "Faust"
followed one another, and she was obliged to change her
toilet rapidly, laying aside the gorgeous ball-robes of Vio-
letta for the peasant's dress of Marguerite, whose russet leather
shoes had been mislaid, she was in a terror lest she should be
late, and some one suggested that she should retain ViolettcCs
pale-blue satin shoes, which really matched the border of
Marguerite's dress, and were not very noticeable. w Who ever
heard," she cried, "of a burgher maiden going to church in
satin slippers?" Miss Kellogg's memory, moreover, was as
prodigious as her work was faithful ; she knew not only her
own part but the whole opera, and was wont to conduct, as
one might almost say, a large measure of the performance
herself, prompting, suggesting, and maintaining the key, a
thing remarkable for its unselfish devotion to art itself instead
of the usual devotion to personal success alone.
I remember her well at this happy period of her life.
Success had not spoiled her, as it never can spoil her. She
was but a trifle turned of twenty, modest, natural, and
unaffected to a degree, radiant with simple happiness, receiving
admiration that was almost adoration with a sort of surprised
sweetness, taking a girlish interest in the delayed affairs of
youth ; all alive and tingling, too, with her music, singing
376 CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG.
to friends on the off-nights of the opera as if she were the
obliging ballad-singer of any parlor, and obedient to her
worshipping but far-sighted mother as a child of ten might
be. It was only an example of her happiness overflowing in
abundant kindness towards everybody, when one night, as
she sang "Trovatore," with an abandon that was a revelation of
unexpected power, returning to the prima-donna's room, she
saw another singer, one who had once reigned supreme in that
room herself, whose fame had been world- wide, but from
whom years had robbed her glory, turn to go upstairs, and
she sprang after the fallen queen, and insisted she should
reoccupy her old quarters with herself; a trifle, to be sure,
but showing the same generous spirit that has poured plenty
into the lap of more than one poor singer's family, and never
whispered of the act. She had just produced her second
creation, the part of Annetta in " Crispino e la Comare," in
which she displayed a rare capacity for comedy, playing most
piquantly, and singing the gay music, in which is a gondola-
song in the Venetian dialect, so charmingly as to be applauded
to the echo. There was something exceedingly satisfactory
in the sight of her innocence and joyousness, and the thought
of her faithfulness to the obligations of her genius, a genius
that sparkled in the light coquetry of the Zerlina of ff Fra
Diavolo," glowed with a superb strength of flame in the
passionate Leonora, and, as Mr. Wheeler asserted, com-
passed in its splendor, when she sang the Zerlina and the
Donna Anna of " Don Giovanni," or the Filina of " Mignon/
all the distance between the immortal song and joy of Mozart
and the temporary pleasures of Ambroise Thomas.
It was in 1867 that she signed an engagement to sing for
Mr. Mapleson in Her Majesty's Theatre, London, sailing in the
" Russia." She made her dgbut there as Marguerite ; at once,
by the deed, throwing down her challenge to the lyric world ;
for in this part she had to confront recent recollections of
Patti, Lucca, Miolan-Carvalho, Nilsson, and Titiens. The
house that night was crowded, brilliant, and enthusiastic ; the
applause was deafening ; the Prince of Wales congratulated
CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG. 377
her, and the impression she made was immense as a brilliant
singer and a consummate actress. " Her voice," said the
authoritative critic of the "Standard," "is a high soprano of
the most brilliant and sympathetic quality, as fresh as a lark's,
and invariably in tune ; " and elsewhere the same critic wrote :
" She possesses a voice of rare quality, silver-bright, liquid,
and emotional to a degree. She sings with art, feeling,
judgment, and supreme taste." The " News " asserted that her
performance compared with that of any of her predecessors,
and that she was an example of finished training in the best
school ; the " Era " assured her that she need fear no com-
parison ; the " Review " pronounced her bravura singing in
florid, ornamental passages to have a distinctness and com-
pleteness of style seldom realized, while her shake was
irreproachable in closeness, evenness, and intonation ; and
Mr. Davidson, the severe and unapproachable critic of the
ff Times," declared that, coming so entirely without the con-
ventional puff preliminary, the debut was in the strictest
sense legitimate, and she had achieved a brilliant and unquali-
fied success ; that, emotional, impassioned, and strikingly
picturesque, she exhibited a high order of dramatic talent ;
that her voice was a true soprano resonant, flexible no less
than sympathetic and telling, boasting the precious quality
of being invariably in tune, with extreme sensibility in canta-
bile phrases. ff Then her articulation of the words, her sense
of accent, her balance of phrase alike in tempo giusto, and
in tempo rubato in the strict division of time, and in its
measurement at discretion, are irreproachable ; while last,
not least, her pronounciation of the Italian language is so
uniformly correct and musical that she might almost be taken
for an Italian-born. . . . When Mile. Kellogg sings the
house is crowded ; and now that Mr. Mapleson has got hold
of the young and fair American, he must retain possession
of her, as of Falernian wine, 'under a hundred keys." :
In " Traviata " her success even exceeded that in " Faust,"
and she followed it by "Lady Henrietta" w r ith a facile
brilliancy of execution, and by " Linda," of which the " Times *
378 CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG.
said her performance was, with few exceptions, "probably
the best that has ever been witnessed on the Italian or any
other stage." And Mr. Smalley sent word home, "She has
filled the opera-hous3, carried her audience by storm, and
delighted the critics. Her triumph is more decided than was
that of Patti in her first appearance, and is not less complete
than that of Christine Nilsson, who came over from Paris
last season."
It was the Americans in England who were more rejoiced,
if possible, than Miss Kellogg was herself, by this proud
success. They thronged to her representations, they loaded
her with flowers, they overloaded her with cordial expres-
sions. Mrs. General Dix, Mrs. Charles Francis Adams, the
wife of our Minister, and others of prominence congratulated
her by letter. Many Americans, indeed, felt that although
it was with them that the growth and expansion of the
dramatic genius of Maria Felicia Malibran took place, and
although it was they w r ho first recognized the talents of Bosio
and of Patti, nevertheless, Kellogg was the first American
singer whose whole antecedents and instruction belonged to
their shores, and who, born at one end of the country,
educated and brought out at the other, and half idolized
throughout its extent, was utterly American and theirs, and
their gratified pride gave her something like an international
position.
The burning of Her Majesty's Theatre brought the season
to a close, but Miss Kellogg was re-engaged for the next
year. She opened in " Traviata," and created & furore. Of
her Violetta at Drury Lane the English critics said she robbed
the part of repulsiveness, and set the cachet of innate
refinement on all she did. Of her Gilda they maintained
that it was not perfect merely, but a new revelation, and there
was certainly no Gilda now to be seen so tender, so engag-
ing, so truly pathetic. In "La Somnambula," they asserted
her mingled terror and grief to be as genuine a display of
true passion as the lyric stage had seen for many a day ; and
of "Le Nozze di Figaro," that a more sprightly, arch, and
CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG. 379
eminently graceful Susanna, distancing all competitors, as
near perfection as can be conceived, was not to be found,
nor had the garden-song been given with purer vocalization
and truer taste. They had to thank the American prima-
donna, too, they acknowledged, for the revival of a racy
example of the Italian style of half a century back in the
ambitious part of JVinetta, in " La Gazza Ladra " ; and in
" La Figlia del Eeggimento " they found her singing beyond
all praise : " Gay or sad, hopeful or depressed, the music
was poured forth like a nightingale's, or as unpremeditatedly
as that of Shelley's Skylark." Her Lucia, meanwhile, was
pronounced a very perfect effort, in which " she not only sur-
mounted every difficulty for which the composer is account-
able, but introduced cadences and ornaments that only the
most finished executant could attempt.'* Said the " Standard,"
in conclusion : " Mile. Kellogg's success could not possibly
be greater. She was recalled after every act, and was received
each time with genuine enthusiasm. At the fall of the cur-
tain, when she was summoned before the footlights, the stage
was literally rained on with bouquets, and the scene forcibly
reminded one of a night during the Jenny Lind furore, when
the operatic excitement was at the fever height."
During these seasons she sang repeatedly in private con-
certs under the patronage of the royal family and members
of the nobility, before the queen at Buckingham Palace, and
at the great Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace, where,
before an audience of twenty-three thousand people, and
with such singers as Titiens, Lemmens-Sherrington, Nilsson,
Sainton Dolby, Carola, Sims Keeves, and Santley, her
rendering of " Oh, had I Jubal's Lyre ! " was pronounced one
of the best and most legitimate specimens of Handelian
singing of the day. " The old Handelian fire was mainly felt
when Mile. Kellogg sang the noble air from f Joshua,' " said
a writer in " Harper's Magazine," in describing the occasion.
" Dear Miss Kellogg," wrote Mr. John Hay to her from
Vienna, " I believe you do not read the Vienna papers, and
so will not see what the f Fremdenblatt ' says of you this
380 CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG.
fine May morning. It is so hearty, and yet so naive, that
I send you a literal translation : ' Miss Kellogg is the star of
the opera in England. The enthusiasm for this young artiste
is indescribable. Miss Kellogg, a most poetical apparition,
eighteen years of age, is a non plus ultra bravura singer,
and strikes the Patti with her masterly song formally dead.
With her singing unites this artiste a so sublime play that one
through the same is moved to tears. Fraulein Tietjens, who,
as well, in the same opera in which Miss Kellogg appeared,
collaborated, namely in Mozart's " Don Juan," was, through
the splendor of the young stranger, completely eclipsed.' ' :
During this really colossal success, Patti and Lucca were
singing at Co vent Garden, and Titiens and Nilsson at Drury
Lane. With these latter artists Miss Kellogg alternated
appearances, and in the performances of " Don Giovanni " and
of the "Nozze di Figaro," she sang in conjunction with them ;
in the one playing Zerlina to Titien's Donna Anna and Nils-
son's Elvira; and in the other, Susanna to Nilsson's Chenibino
and Titien's Countess. Her repertoire now numbered thirty-
four parts, as she sang in "Poliuto," "Rigoletto," " Som-
nambula," "Lucia," "Linda," " Traviata," " La Figlia del
Reggimento," "Un Ballo in Maschera," "L'Etoile du Nord,"
"Don Giovanni" (both Zerlina and Donna Anna), "Puri-
tani," "Marta," "Crispino," "Roberto,"' "Le Xozze," * La
Gazza Ladra," " II Barbiere," "Faust," " Fra Diavolo,"
"Les Noces de Jeannette," "Trovatore," "Carnival of Yen-
ice," "Pipele'e," "Don Pasquala," "Mignon," "Talisman,"
'"Lily of Killarney," "Bohemian Girl," ^Flying Dutchman,"
"Aicla," "Huguenot," "Carmen," and "Lohengrin." Offers
were made her to sing at Paris, Florence, St. Petersburg,
and Madrid, but she had already signed an engagement to
sing in America under the management of Mr. Strakosch, and
she returned home to receive a welcome which showed her
how her country-people felt she had taken off their reproach
in the eyes of the world.
The Academy held an immense audience on the night of
her reappearance in New York, and as she came down the
CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG. 381
stage the falling bouquets almost hid her from view. It was
several minutes before she could cease her acknowledgments,
and it was beyond her power alone to clear the stage, even
by armfuls, of the flowers that were sent up in pyramids,
columns, baskets, and wreaths, with doves scattering tube-
roses, and canaries rivalling the prima-donna. After this she
made a triumphal tour through the land, a sort of royal
progress. In the next year she sang in opera with Mdme.
Lucca, and in 1870 she organized a concert tour of her own.
Every movement she has made has been an upward one,
even when it seemed as if there were no further for her to
go. " She has gained every step by industry and study.
There has been no sentimental nonsense expended on her.
She has won honestly and fairly the first position, and occu-
pies it to the acceptation of every one. No one has tried to
write her up. There has been but a single effort to write her
down, and it failed. What she possesses to-day she owes to
herself." When, in 1870, she played Paulina, in "Poliuto,"
the public acclaim verified the critic's statement, that her
acting throughout was " truthful and impassioned ; she did
not lose sight of the situation for an instant, but kept the
cord tightened until the strain of irrepressible enthusiasm
severed the strands, and her heart poured out in a burst of
passionate song the words: ' Oh, Santa Melodia! Celeste
voluttaf So finely and truthfully was that rendered that it
excited a furore of admiration, and it had to be repeated amid
shouts of brava and thunders of applause. It was a supreme
moment both for the artists and the public.* Miss Kellogg's
gestures were purely classic ; they demonstrated the emotions
with striking fidelity ; every movement was rounded and
beautiful. Her poses were classic and graceful, and in some
cases as beautifully statuesque as those of Rachel. She sang
the music splendidly, from the first note to the last; she
threw into it all the passion it required ; her phrasing and
emphasis were admirable. Her finish is most elaborate ; it
is hardly possible to select a blemish in her intonation, articu-
lation, or execution. It was pure, beautiful, and honest
24
382 CLAKA LOUISE KELLOGG.
singing, from the beginning to the end, and we were gratified
to hear the repeated and irrepressible murmurs of f brava,'
f bravaj Avhich greeted her as point after point of refined
beauty of execution and interpretation appeared in strong
relief. Her voice is in superb order ; it is full, melodious,
and sympathetic, and rang out in passages of force with
metallic power which surprised while it delighted. We must
name Pauline as the grandest of all the successes that Miss
Kellogg has yet achieved."
In the succeeding years she has never allowed herself to
rest. In 1872 she enjoyed another triumphant season in
London, when Campanini made his debut, singing Edgardo
to her Lucia. The "Atlantic Monthly" said of her, shortly
afterward : " The pure, penetrating quality of her voice seems
more beautiful, if possible, than in past seasons. As a
singer, so far as purity of style and method and fine sympa-
thetic musical expression go to make one, we should rank
her even above Madame Lucca or Miss Nilsson. Her singing
is, in fact, almost absolutely faultless." In the winter of
1875 she sang one hundred and twenty-five nights. In 1880
her success in Vienna, where she alone of all the troupe was
allowed to sing in Italian, German being the prescribed
tongue, was colossal. And meanwhile she has been at the
head of an enterprise, which has been as fertile in results as
anything in her life, for the introduction of English opera,
which she has made familiar to the American public. "Into
this enterprise," says the Rev. O. B. Frothingham, "she
threw herself with all her accustomed energy, aided by a
deep confidence in the musical appreciation and enthusiasm
of the American people, assuming the direction of the pieces,
the training of the singers, the translation of the libretti from
the French or Italian, and in general the conduct of the
business."
But great as Miss Kellogg is in her art, a large affection is
given her for the equally great qualities of her heart. She
has never been known to condemn a rival. Of Miolan-Car-
valho she wrote home : " I don't think I ever heard anything
CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG. 383
more perfectly rendered than her singing of the waltz " (in
"Romeo and Juliet"). When a bouquet was once thrown,
after the curtain fell, upon the stage where she was singing
with Lucca, the curtain rose upon her clasping Lucca's hand
with the flowers between them in the clasp. Everybody
knows of her goodness to debutantes, of her patronage of
Lisa Harris and others when she was quite young herself; of
her efforts to place above want the family of young Conly,
one of the singers of her company who was drowned ; of her
kindness to the superannuated beneficiaries of the stage.
She was singing one night in Toledo, when a }~oung woman
made her way to the anteroom where M. Strakosch was, and
begged him to afford her a hearing, that she might have some
support in the path she had undertaken, believing that she
had a voice and determined to do something with it, at present
making her way by singing to her guitar in parlor concerts at
one hotel after another, till she should obtain money enough
to take lessons, being totally unacquainted with written mu-
sic. After the concert Miss Kellogg and the company listened
to her, and found a wonderfully powerful but crude voice,
sustaining, even in its untrained condition, the second B flat
above and the C below ; and that night Miss Kellogg took
her home to the hotel in the carriage, and the next day sent
her to the best masters of New York for an education at her
own expense.
How often has not that generous voice been heard in chari-
ties ; and how often in gracious acts, as when, Charlotte
Cushman playing Queen Katharine, the voice that sang to
the dying woman was Louise Kellogg's, that voice like a
" silver bell struck with a velvet hammer," or as it was heard
at Mr. Greeley's funeral. " There was a pause for a moment
before the organ was heard again, and a sweet and ringing
voice broke out in that grand song of faith and tenderness
and triumph, ' I know that my Redeemer liveth.' It was
Miss Kellogg, who paid this last touching tribute to one
whom she had long known as a dear personal friend. . . .
He had conceived a strong regard for this estimable lady ;
384 CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG.
he spoke of her in warm terms of praise, and during his
sickness, only a little while before he died, talking of remark-
able women whom he had known, he mentioned especially
two of whom his opinion was very high. These were Mar-
garet Fuller and Clara Louise Kellogg. It was no mere
artistic sentiment, therefore, which Miss Kellogg threw into
the divine song which she poured upon the ears of that great
audience. There was grief at her heart, for there were tears
in her voice. When she ceased a sense of inexpressible
tenderness seemed diffused over the whole house."
Miss Kellogg has never married. I will confess that I
have thought a strong and tender passion, an experience of
that great school of life to be found in marriage, would enrich,
deepen, and fortify her genius and her art. But the only pas-
sion she has ever acknowledged is the love of her music.
Her home, originally in New Hartford, was afterwards for
many summers at Cold Springs, on the Hudson, on the estate
of Clarehurst, a delightful spot which she has beautified
through the ample resources of the wealth she has accumu-
lated, lying on a mountain side opposite West Point, under
the shadow of huge oaks and hickories, and where the view
outside is as full of color and splendor as the house inside is
of music and all the sweetness of domestic life. Latterly
she has spent more time at the Clarendon Hotel in New York,
which has been her home to all intents and purposes.
The career of Miss Kellogg is one that it is a pleasure to
contemplate, and mention of which I leave with reluctance.
It seems to me that it will be of immeasurable use in the
future, a wise and lofty and beneficent example. Greatly
endowed by nature, she has yet had great difficulties to mas-
ter. That she was an American has militated against
her, except in temporary bursts and spasms of public feeling.
She had a cabal of critics always to overcome, chiefly foreign-
ers attached to the great newspapers, who would not believe
good could come out of Nazareth, otherwise America. No
newspaper was ever approached with a consideration in her
behalf, and she had been more than a dozen years on the
CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG. 385
stage before she met any of these people personally. She
had, moreover, a natural manner, wanting in the repose of
indifferentism, full of a certain nervous restlessness, that
afforded these critics ground for accusing her of a vanity and
conceit absolutely foreign to her being. In truth, Clara Louise
Kellogg is totally without conceit. She never admits that she
has done anything so well that it might not have been done
better. She never goes on the stage without her heart in her
mouth. Cruel words have cut her to the quick ; she has
needed the kindest. Encouragement has always warmed her,
and more encouragement would have fired her to yet happier
heights than she has reached. With all her signal success no
audience has yet got the best from her, that best which she
could give if she felt herself sustained in their strong sym-
pathy to the point of her courageous aspiration ; if they would
forget that she did not belong to the terra incognita of the
foreigner, with its charms of the unknown. To-day an audi-
ence will raise the roof with thunders of applause ; to-mor-
row, she knows, its caprice will hesitate to dare to say she is
better than the best because she is one of themselves. She
herself never had a caprice ; she is an embodied conscience ;
she is amiability itself; she has carried on the stage, if not in
such precise facts, yet in their spirit, the rearing of a Puritan
girl whose piano, before she went to New York, was closed
on Saturday night and not opened till Monday morning. Ex-
posed to every danger, there has never in all the years while
she has been in the blaze of the public eye, " in the fierce
light which beats about a throne," been a blemish on her fair
fame, nor has the breath of blame blown over her. When
will the influences of the universe combine about a wonderful
throat again in such self-denying industry and earnestness
and will, such unsullied spotlessness, such intelligence and
spirit, in short, in another Clara Louise Kellogg? Let us
be thankful for her while we may ; for she is an honor to her
household, a delight to her friends, a glory to womankind !
CHAPTER XVII.
MAKY A. LIYEEMOEE.
BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.
Mrs. Livermore's Ancestry Stories of Her Childhood The Little Minister
Her Marriage Journalistic Experiences The War of the Rebellion
Loyalty and Devotion to the Union The Northwestern Sanitary
Commission Army Experiences Incidents of Hospital Life Won-
derful Nerve and Ready Resources in Emergencies A Remarkable
Achievement Mighty Work for Union Soldiers Their Love and
Reverence for Her "Mother" to them All Touching Story of a Sol-
dier's Ring A Thrilling Incident of Chicago Life An Errand of Mercy
Terrible Death-Bed Scene Labors after the War Her Christian
Life and Influence Work as a Reformer Fame as an Orator Personal
Appearance Home Life A Grand and Noble Woman.
HERE is still fossil poetry left in the too familiar
phrase, " representative " man or woman.
Our own country, yet young and prophetic, is
pre-eminently the ground of experiment. " Your
land of the future," George Eliot called it,
M America, is the nursery and seed-ground of
new ideals, where they can expand in a better,
freer air than ours."
In looking over the list of great and gracious
women whose achievements are recorded in the
pages of this book, it may be doubted if there is one who
will be found fifty years hence more broadly to re-present
the spirit of the last twenty years of American story than
her whose name heads this commemorative sketch.
I am enabled to give, in the words of one near to Mrs.
Livermore, a few facts about her early life, which are of so
much interest as indicating the prophetic cast which strong
natures often take on in childhood, that I can only wish I had
threefold the space which can be spared to them.
MARY A. LIVERMORE. 387
Science teaches us nowadays that in order to save a man
we must convert his grandfather ; and gives us, in its own
despite, the strongest proofs we possess of the value of relig-
ious character as a social factor. Nothing so illustrates the
persistence of force as the continuity of spiritual fibre. We
all freshly remember the religious molecules in the brain of
Emerson, who was the result of eight generations of Christian
ministers.
This most womanly story of a noble woman adds another
to the long list of instances in which a believing stock has
been preservative of intellectual vigor.
"The parents of Mrs. Livermore," I am told, "were very
devout, indeed stern in their ideas of morality and religion.
Her ancestry on her father's side were Welsh, on her mother's
side English, her maternal grandfather having been born at
London. He was an East India sea-captain. Her father
was bred a Berkshire farmer in Massachusetts." Further back
in the ancestral line we find the clerical environment. " I
have the blood of six generations of Welsh preachers in my
veins," is the significant testimony of the woman who packs
Boston Theatre on Sunday evening when she talks on Immor-
tality.
" Mary was born in Boston. She was most rigorously
trained from her earliest infancy in habits of industry and
economy, in morals, and in the severe theology of the day,
after the belief of the Close Communion Baptist Church ;
while the very best education was given her that the schools
of Boston and the educational facilities of New England at
that time afforded for girls. She does not remember a time
when she was not vitally concerned in all matters pertaining
to religion, eager for knowledge and ambitious for study,
while there was no possibility of her shirking her daily allot-
ment of work in her father's household.
" The oldest surviving child of a family of six, she always
exercised a mother's care over her younger sisters. Before
she w T as ten years old she was harassed by wakeful nights
of anxiety for them, when she would arouse her parents in the
388 MARY A. LIVERMORE.
middle of the night, asking them to pray for these little sisters
that they might become good women and be eternally saved
in heaven. When asked if the same prayer should not be
made in her own behalf, she gave this characteristic answer :
' 'Tisn't any matter about me ; if they are saved I can bear
anything.'"
Pretty stories are told us, too, of the little girl's being
followed to and from school, by a procession of timid chil-
dren, the weak, or sick, or poor and ill-dressed, or otherwise
" unfit," who were worsted by the ridicule or insult of their
rougher and tougher mates. Mary's presence was "hands
off" to the biggest bully, and protection to the feeblest of her
dependents. " She took the law into her own hands, and
was judge, jury, and executioner to the unlucky boy who
attempted any insult to her dubious procession of ragged and
unkempt children."
These little tales read like a legend from the annals of
chivalry ; or like a prophecy from the Old Testament pre-
ceding the Gospel of a beautiful life. What wonder that a
friend says of her to-day : " It is doubtful if there is another
woman of the day who is more sought by forlorn and friend-
less women women needing comfort, encouragement,
assistance ; women bankrupt in character, charged with
crime, and awaiting trial ; women who are called ' outcast,'
and who are on the verge of suicide than the subject of
this sketch. . . . It is literally true of her that never
yet in her life has she turned away either man or woman who
had sought her in distress."
The favorite amusement of the little Calvinist was playing
at meeting, and she who to-day holds an audience from the
platform or pulpit, better perhaps than any other living
woman, began to train herself for her vocation b}^ practising
(in default of other hearers) on the sticks and logs arrayed
in her father's wood-shed. She writes now and then from
some point in her yearly lecturing tours that she " has met
some members of one of her old wood-shed audiences, but
has not always been sure whether these were blockheads or
MARY A. LIVERMORE
MARY A. LIVERMORE. 391
lager-beer barrels." Her father used to say : " If you had
only been a boy I would have educated you for the ministry."
We read, it is true, of one secular encroachment upon
these " sad amusements," in the shape of a wax doll which
did duty as a worldly diversion for a time. But a little heap
of ashes was discovered one day in the back-yard, where, it
was learned, the recantation of Cranmer had been enacted be-
fore admiring spectators. The archbishop met the fate of a
heretic with great historical accuracy and religious fervor,
but the unfortunate five-dollar French doll was missing from
the scene of her brief domestication in that family.
An impressive account of the " Play of the Resurrection,"
one of the diversions out of which the sternly-reared child
managed to wring her unyouthful pleasures, has seemed to me
too interesting to be set aside. It is thus described :
" In order to reach the play it was necessary that one of
the children should be taken sick, and the usual programme
follows. The doctor was summoned, the pulse and tongue
were examined, medicines were prescribed and taken without
any benefit ; the doctor finally abandoned all hope, and amid
well-counterfeited grief that sometimes became so real as to
lead to violent weeping, the little patient died. Then came the
preparation for burial. The eyes were closed and the lids
weighted with coins, the hands folded on the breast, the body
arrayed in a long night-dress, and all moved about solemnly
and sadly.
" Then came the funeral, Mary officiating as the minister,
with prayer and addresses. All sang a dolorous hymn to a
dolorous tune, and the procession was formed, which marched
slowly and tearfully through the chamber to a back square
bedroom given up for a play-room. It had a large wide fire-
place closed with a fire-board, and its windows were dark-
ened by green shutters, a heart-shaped aperture in the top of
each admitting the only light. The fireplace had been cleansed
and painted black for the children's convenience, for the fire-
place was the tomb where now the pretended dead child was
buried, all the ghastly formalities of the times being faithfully
392 MARY A. LIVERMORE.
copied, and then with great grief the fire-board the door of
the tomb was put in its place, and the funeral procession
returned to the front of the house in the order in which it had
come.
" All this was preliminary. Now the real play began.
The green window-shutters were tightly closed, even the
heart-shaped apertures for lights were shaded the room was
made as dark as possible, and then, all being ready, one of
the boys at the upper stairway gave the signal, a prolonged
blast on a trumpet. This was Gabriel, announcing the end
of the world, and the coming resurrection. Nearer came the
trumpets louder grew the blast and as it entered the
darkened room the window-shutters were suddenly thrown
back with great clatter, the fire-board was dashed down with
great noise at the same moment by the occupant of the fire-
place, who, arrayed in the burial garments, sprang into the
middle of the room, whither now all the children sprang,
with arms and eyes uplifted, all bursting out into a jubilant
song of welcome, which grew louder and faster as the ex-
citement increased, and their emotions became more vehe-
ment.
"I have heard Mrs. Livermore say that no spectacular play
she has ever witnessed, has thrilled and excited her as did
this f Play of the Resurrection ' in her childhood."
The child's devotion to her parents, and fear of making
trouble, were almost unchildlike. We hear of her as secretly
engaging slop-work, and sewing flannel shirts at night (until
parentally discovered), to earn a few shillings towards her
own support ; and as collecting and controlling a vacation
school of fifty little pupils, at twenty-five cents a week, to
meet the expenses of her own education. Here shows the
organizing fibre which afterwards carried the Sanitary Com-
mission of the great Northwest upon its broad shoulders.
Her intellectual vigor early developed. At a tender age,
we hear of her being shut up by her schoolmaster with no-
thing but a dictionary, and required to write an impromptu
thesis on " Self-government," by way of proof that her extraor-
MARY A. LIVERMORE. 393
dinary compositions had not been plagiarisms. The result
acquitted her fully and finally, in the mind of that teacher.
At fourteen she graduated at the Hancock School with the
highest honors.
O
When Mary was seventeen years old, an event occurred
which more than any other one affected her inner and outer
life. A younger sister, greatly beloved, after a lingering
illness, died. The life of this child had been one of sin-
gular purity and loveliness. In character she seems to
have been one of the natural saints, or at least of the early
matured for the moral results of death one of those rare
souls whom the Master " beholding," would have " loved."
But according to the theology of the family, she was not
" converted," and by the logic of theology she could not be
saved.
The self-sacrificing sister faced this fact with an anguish
nothing less than maternal. No comfort approached her de-
spair. She bore it, as intense girls bear such things. The
little sister was in hell, and she, Mary, who would have gone
there in her stead as unhesitatingly as she would dispose of
the bully who abused a child that trusted her at school, she
could not lift a muscle or use a heart-throb to prevent this
moral outrage. So much purity so much punishment
how much God?
She faced her problem in the solitary way that befalls
strong young natures. The wise and tender word which
should have " read his righteous sentence" otherwise to the
desperate mourner was not spoken. No one gave her a
sane gospel. No one taught her that when the conflict struck
between essential Love and accidental creed the odds were
not in favor of the creed. Human device had pitted itself
against Divine tenderness ; and there was no religious good-
sense at hand to convince the tortured creature that God
Almighty loved the dead child better than her father's min-
ister. The inevitable consequences racked the strong soul
and body of the growing girl. Years of agony left traces
which can be seen to this day in the trembling lips and solemn
394 MARY A. LIVERMORE.
appeal of the grave eye, with which this epoch in life is
alluded to. She left home the better to fight her fight in the
loneliness which such moral emergencies demand, and for two
years taught as governess in a desolate Virginia plantation,
seeking to throw the turmoil of her nature into active and
incessant work.
It was upon her return from this Southern trip that chance
threw her in the way of a young Universalist preacher, to
whose ears the story of her experience was carried by troubled
friends. This was a case which peculiarly appealed to the
sectarian zeal of the minister, and it is easy to see that the
strong sweetness and sweet strength of the woman must have
presented more complicated problems to the man. The- sub-
ject of eternal punishment was replaced by that of eternal
blessedness, and Mary Ashton Rice became the wife of Rev.
Daniel P. Livermore.
The elder Dumas, I think it was, said of Michael Angelo
painter, architect, poet, and sculptor that he had four
souls. We need not climb as high as Angelo to meet a com-
manding versatility that can be best described by some such
phrase. The greatest difficulty in dealing with a subject like
that which is crowded into the limits of this sketch, lies in the
variousness of this woman's claims to public interest.
Beyond question the first, if not the strongest of these, is
to be found in Mrs. Livermore's magnificent war-record.
The years immediately preceding and succeeding her
marriage were full such a life could never be empty of
those tentative efforts which strong youth puts forth to find
its footing. Women longer than men, (and women more
helplessly then than now), throw out their intellectual an-
tennae, groping after the " wherefore " of individualism.
Mrs. Livermore taught and wrote, as other gifted girls
teach and write, because these were the only outlets for
superfluous life then possible to the " ever- womanly." She
was for some time associate editor, with her husband, of " The
New Covenant," a religious paper published at Chicago. Her
newspaper and magazine work was industrious, almost i
MARY A. LIYERMORE. 395
sant, and kept in practice that mental muscle destined later
to find its true athleticism. All this balancing of the emo-
tions by reflection disciplined the young feminine exuberance,
and prepared the way for the future power ; it was like the
prelude which it has become usual to place before certain lec-
tures so much mental exercise before the real business of
the day begins.
It should be remembered that during these early years of
her married life, Mrs. Livermore was also occupied, like
other women, in the cares of home-keeping, and in the rear-
ing of her young family. She is the mother of three chil-
dren ; one of whom is no longer living.
So far as the public is concerned, Mrs. Livermore's life
began with her career in the War of the Rebellion.
It was a grand history. It is twenty years since that
clarion sounded which should " never call retreat," and our
hearts are growing a trifle dull to the old war-stories. Half
a million of the men we sent forth from North and South are
in their graves ; and the dead take no trouble to remind us of
themselves. Those who returned to us are beginning to drop
out of the ranks fast enough, and in the press of life we do
not turn lo see who falls. Often the erect shoulder and the
direct eye, ail the signs left of the soldier whom we gave with
tears and welcomed with huzzas, pass us without raising so
much as an association with the sacrifice which we have ac-
cepted at his hands. The widowed wives and the widowed
girls with whom the war saddened the broad land, are already
"entering into peace" that of eternity, or that of time, and
if neither has comforted them, who stays to ask? Thus too,
with the army woman, she who did what the rest of us desired,
and carried womanhood so soldierly, yet right womanly, to
the very front of war how more than easy we have found
it to forget her in these prosperous years. How once we
honored her, sought her, envied and loved her, leaned on her
strength and hung on her words. How frivolous seemed our
idle lives beside her own, how small our motives and poor
our achievement ; above and beyond all else how great our
396 MARY A. LIYERMORE.
debt ! In looking over the record of the deeds of women in
the nursing and sanitary service of the war, one is sometimes
blinded by tears that come from the bottom of the heart, at
chancing upon some now forgotten name, some "ex-lioness"
of a once grateful public, who compressed into those four
short years poetry, pathos, glory, and sacrifice enough to
make the staple of any dozen whole lives such as we are
living, and are not ashamed to be content with in these later
days.
Few women in the long, heroic list did a better, braver,
sounder work than Mary Livermore. It should be remem-
bered that she gave her clear head, no less than her strong
hands and warm heart, to the emergency. tf The columns of
her husband's paper," we are told, " furnished her the oppor-
tunity she desired of addressing her patriotic appeals to the
country, and her vigorous pen was ever at work, both in its
columns and those of other papers open to her. During
the whole war, even in the busiest times, not a week passed
that she did not publish somewhere two cr three columns
at the least. Letters, incidents, appeals, editorial corre-
spondence always something useful, interesting head and
hands were always busy, and the implement ' mightier than
the sword' was never allowed to rust in the inkstand."
In an article of Mrs. Livermore's, published soon after the
fall of Fort Sumter, we find this vivid reminiscence of those
fateful days :
" But no less have we been surprised and moved to admira-
tion by the regeneration of the women of our land. A
month ago we saw a large class, aspiring only to be leaders
of fashion and belles of the ball-room, their deepest anxiety
clustering about the fear that the gored skirts and bell-shaped
hoops of the spring mode might not be becoming, and their
highest happiness being found in shopping, polking, and the
schottische pretty, petted, useless, expensive butterflies,
whose future husbands and children were to be pitied and
prayed for. But to-day we find them lopping off superfluities,
retrenching expenditures, deaf to the calls of pleasure, swept
MARY A. LIVERMORE. 397
by the incoming patriotism of the time to the loftiest heights
of womanhood, willing to do, to bear, or to suffer for the
beloved country. The riven fetters of caste and conven-
tionality have dropped at their feet, and they sit together,
patrician and plebeian, Catholic and Protestant, and make
garments for the poorly-clad soldiery. An order came to
Boston for five thousand shirts for the Massachusetts troops
at the South. Every church in the city sent a delegation of
needle women to ' Union Hall,' a former ball-room of Boston ;
the Catholic priest detailed five hundred sewing-girls to the
pious work ; suburban towns rang the bells to muster the
seamstresses ; the patrician Protestant of Beacon street ran
the sewing-machines, while the plebeian Irish Catholic of
Broad street basted and the shirts were done at the rate
of a thousand a day. On Thursday, Miss Dix sent an order
for five hundred shirts for the hospital at Washington on
Friday they were ready."
It is with the work of the United States Sanitary Commis-
sion that Mrs. Livermore, it will be remembered, was most
closely identified. Many a brave woman found her way, in
the teeth of shot and shell and surgeons' opposition, to the
chartered nursing service along the lines. Many a noble
woman, sheltered in her own home, kept there, perhaps, to
guard the children whose father she had sent to the front,
served the Commission in the quiet ways without which no
great undertaking can be supported knit the stockings,
made the clothes, picked the lint, rolled the bandages, packed
the boxes, collected the money those " home ways " whose
name was legion, and whose memory must not die. Mrs.
Livermore's work seems to have been a combination of home,
commissary, and hospital service.
At the beginning of the year 1862 the Northwestern
branch of the United States Sanitary Commission was organ-
ized at Chicago. It was an influential body.
Mrs. Livermore, with Mrs. A. H. Hoge, a well-known
army worker, were appointed agents of the Northwestern
Commission, and went to work as two such women would.
398 MARY A. LIVERMORE.
Upon them fell the yoke of organization often that heaviest
of the hard, in crises where the strain upon the sympathies
can only be eased by a quick stroke and immediate response.
Throughout the great Northwest Mrs. Livermore travelled,
arousing, instructing, and vivifying the people by the painstak-
ing patience which is the final sign of strength in excitement.
The Sanitary Aid Societies sprang up under her departing
feet like shadows; the enthusiasm, the ignorance, the ardor,
and heart-break of women were ordered and utilized, and
so the great Commission, with the precision of the Corliss
engine, got to work.
In December of 1862 the National Commission called a
council at Washington, and appealed to the Branch Commis-
sion at the North to send two ladies practically familiar with
the work, as delegates to this convention. Mrs. Livermore
and Mrs. Hoge were detailed for this errand. There was
need of it, and of them.
This was the time when sanitary supplies had fallen off,
and the demand for them desperately increased. " One
and one," says the Oriental proverb, "make eleven." The
strength of union in the Commission, as in the ranks, car-
ried the hour over the need, and the results of this council
were felt throughout the land like an accelerated pulse.
It was on this Washington trip that Mrs. Livermore
visited the convalescent camp at Alexandria, known as Camp
Misery. Here, from improper drainage, from actual lack of
fuel, clothing, and food, our soldiers were slaughtered like
slaves in an amphitheatre. But here was one woman to " keep
the count." When she found that eighteen sick soldiers died
at that camp in one night, from cold and starvation, the
country heard of it. Her unresting pen flew to the help of the
aroused Commission, and " carried the story of these wrongs
all around the land."
It was early in this year that Mrs. Livermore was ordered
to make a tour of the hospitals and military posts on the
Mississippi river. This brought her into yet more direct
contact with army sufferings. One may doubt w r hich was
MARY A. LIVERMORE. 399
more to the purpose, among the wounded, homesick,
neglected boys, her chartered power to relieve them, or her
womanly presence among them. She was a fortress of
strength and a fountain of comfort. She was one of the rare
o
women who know how to make feminine sympathy tell with
masculine force. Her emotions never bubbled over into
froth ; they swelled a current of practical and practicable re-
lief, as inevitably as healthy breath flowed from her broad
lungs, or magnetic vigor radiated from her massive frame.
Mrs. Livermore always worked largely ; small motives and
small results seem as foreign to her career as small feelings.
One's impression in reviewing her army record is that she
served like a General. She had the broad sweep of eye, the
reserve of expedient, and the instinct of command. These
Mississippi tours, for instance, resulted in an organized attack
upon the scurvy, which was threatening the ranks to an extent
unstayed, and even unknown by the military authorities.
Mrs. Livermore and Mrs. Hoge, having observed the
mischief while serving as agents at Washington, kept their
woman's eyes well open, and were quick to detect both the
premonitory and actual symptoms of the dreaded disease at
Vicksburg camps and hospitals. They personally explained
to General Grant the facts with which his surgeons had not
acquainted him. But this was not enough. These two
women did not shift the responsibility upon the shoulders of
the man, but made, themselves, trips up and down the river,
whose object was to arouse practical excitement upon this
matter. Their appeals, their circulars, their enthusiasm,
their persistence, and their personality resulted in an out-
burst of immediate relief. In three weeks over a thousand
bushels of potatoes, onions, and other vegetables were sent
to the scurvy-threatened army, and by their prompt distribu-
tion the danger was averted.
On one of these tours up the river, Mrs. Livermore dis-
covered twenty-three sick and % wounded soldiers, who had
been left at a certain station, with the most insufficient care,
and not a loop-hole of escape by which they could get back
25
400 MARY A. LI VERM ORE.
to die among their friends. Their descriptive lists were with
their regiments ; their regiments were in the field ; no one
had authority to discharge them ; home, with its last comforts
or its desperate chance of life, was denied ; a knot of red
tape tied them down.
Mrs. Livermore took in the case at a glance, and presented
herself immediately at the headquarters of General Grant.
Without waiting so long as to take the chair he offered her,
she hastened to tell her story in a few soldierly words, briefly
intimating that she had chartered power from the Sanitary
Commission, and adding :
"General, if you will give me authority to do so, /will
agree to take those twenty-three wounded men safely
home."
The General eyed her in silence a tremendous look.
Many and varied were the types of women who came
down the river in those days on errands sometimes more
enthusiastic than rationally available. Mrs. Livermore was
a stranger at headquarters, and, as the officer's eye asked, "Is
she lying ? " the woman's eye silently replied. When the mute
duel was over, the General, still without comment, called his
chief-of-staff.
" This lady is Mrs. Livermore of the Sanitary Commission.
She finds twenty-three wounded soldiers who cannot get
home for lack of their descriptive lists. She agrees to take
them herself."
Then followed the necessary order, which empowered her
for her extraordinary venture ; and as quickly as will could
act she was under way with her twenty-three soldiers.
Their homes were scattered all over the West, but the trans-
portation service at her command was equal to the emer-
gency, and her pluck to anything. It had not occurred to
her, however, that a power more silent and greater than the
General could get her into difficulties for which he had pro-
vided no authority ; and when, the first day up the river, one
very sick man died, she had nothing more or less to meet
than the fact that she could not get him buried.
MRS. LlVERMORE TRANSPORTING TWENTY-THREE WOUNDED SOLDIERS TO THEIR HOMES.
THE STEAMBOAT CAPTAIN'S THREAT. 2. . THE MISSISSIPPI STEAMER
"FANNY OGDEN" ON HER WAY WITH SANITARY SUPPLIES
FOR SUFFERING SOLDIERS.
MARY A. LIYERMORE. 401
The Sanitary Commission, to which she appealed, through
its nearest agent, was compelled to reply that its power
dealt with the living, not with the dead ; that it had no
money for burying men ; that she must go to the govern-
ment. But the government authorities declined with equal
decision. The man was discharged. He was no longer a
soldier. He was now a civilian. The nation could not bury
civilians. So, back and forth in vain from one to the other,
the question passed.
Meantime the soldier remained un buried, and the captain
of the steamer, being Southern in his sympathies, as most of
his calling were, peremptorily declared that if that man were
not buried by sundown his body should be put on the levee
and left there. At this, Mrs. Livermore, returning in des-
peration to the military authorities, besieged them by argu-
ments from which there was no appeal. Such an outrage
would be the property of the newspapers in three days.
The whole land would ring with it. She presented the case
in such colors that the official yielded, and agreed to give the
man burial, stipulating that the surgeon in charge of the
party should fill out the necessary blanks.
How tell him there was no surgeon in charge? And the
fact was the last thing to be thought of that twenty-three
wounded men were in the sole care of one woman for trans-
portation to their twenty-three several homes in the broad
Northwest. The woman left the military presence without
remark, herself filled out the poor fellow's blank, regiment,
company, name, cause of death, whatever items she knew,
and they were few enough, and after a moment's desperate
hesitation loyally appended to the paper, for humanity's sake
and the country's, M. A. Livermore , M.D., so buried her
soldier like *a patriot, and quietly went on her way with her
twenty-two. Verify that title, Union soldiers ! M. A. Liv-
ermore, Ma Donna, let her be forever !
Probably the thing most closely connected with her " army
name " was the great Northwestern Sanitary Fair, which oc-
curred in Chicago in 1863.
402 MARY A. LIVERMORE.
This undertaking, in which, of course, the labors of many
women must not be forgotten in the prominence of the few,
is conceded to have been the inspiration of Mrs. Livermore.
She suggested, urged, and carried the immense experiment
through. She supplied the faith, the will, and the fire. Her
co-laborers, at first timid and reluctant, fell in with her pur-
poses, and the thing was begun and done as if failure were an
impossibility and success a divine right. This fair was the
first of the series of great fairs organized throughout the
North for the benefit of the Commission. It netted almost
one hundred thousand dollars.
A contributor to Dr. Brockett's "Women of the Civil
War," who was present at a convention of the women of the
Northwest, summoned to Chicago to consider the feasibility
of that undertaking, gives forcible testimony to the remark-
able influence of Mrs. Livermore : " A brilliant and earnest
speaker, her words seemed to sway the attentive throng.
Her commanding person added to the power of her words.
. . . As all know, this fair, which was about three months
in course of preparation, was on a mammoth scale, and was
a great success ; and this result was no doubt greatly owing
to the presence of that quality, which, like every born leader,
Mrs. Livermore evidently possesses, that of knowing how to
select judiciously her subordinates and instruments."
We are able to give, in Mrs. Livermore's own words, a
few clear-cut pictures from her experience as agent of the
commission. This, clipped from a letter from Louisiana, in
April, 1863, says:
"As the ' Fanny Ogden ' was under orders, and would be
running up and down the river for two or three day^ on
errands for General Grant, we determined to accept the invi-
tation of the Chicago Mercantile Battery, encamped at Milli-
ken's Bend, and try tent-life for a day or two. So we were
put ashore at the landing, and in the fading twilight picked
our way along the levee to the camp. What a hearty wel-
come was accorded us ! What a chorus of cheerful, manly,
familiar voices proclaimed the gladness of the battery at our
MARY A. LIVERMORE. 403
arrival ! Forth from every tent and ' shebang ' swarmed a
little host of the boys, all bronzed to the color of the v Atlan-
tic Monthly' covers, to use one of their own comparisons;
all extending eager hands, . . . hearty, healthy, impatient
to hear from home. . . . Here they were, 'our boys' of
whom we took sad and tearful leave months ago, when we
gave them to God and our country at the altar of the sanc-
tuary, when they alone were brave, calm, and hopeful. Here
they were the same boys, but outwardly how changed.
Then they were boys, slender, fair, with boyish, immature
faces ; now they were men, stalwart, fuller and firmer of
flesh, the fair, sweet boyish look supplanted by a strong,
daring, resolute expression. . . , We told all the news, and
still the hungry fellows asked for more. . . . We examined
photographs of dear ones at home. ... A plain dress-cap
fell from our travelling basket ; the boys instantly hailed it as
a home affair; 'it seemed natural to see it, as their mothers
had heaps of such female toggery lying around at home,'
they would have it ... and the cap was accordingly donned,
greatly to their satisfaction. . . .
" General McClernand's army corps is encamped at Milli-
ken's Bend, and the next day we called at his headquarters,
and informed him that the 'Fanny Ogden,' laden with sanitary
stores, would be at the Bend in the afternoon. He ordered
immediate notice of the same to be sent to every chief sur-
geon of the regiment or battery, which brought them out in
full force on the arrival of the boat. . . . The pleasure was
exquisite when we went to the hospitals, most of them miser-
able affairs, intended for temporary use, and beheld the grate-
ful emotions of the sufferers.
"Ale, eggs, lemons, codfish, condensed milk, tea, and but-
ter were among the articles we furnished. . . . Many insisted
on paying for them ; they could hardly be made to under-
stand that they were the gift of the Northwest. In ward
after ward we repeated the story that the people had sent
these supplies to the Commission, to be distributed to the
sick in hospitals. . . This evidence of kind feeling seemed
404 MARY A. LIVERMORE.
of itself to send a wave of healing through the entire wards.
. . . f And so they don't forget us down here ? That's good
news. We were afraid from what we heard that they were
all turning secesh, and that we'd got to pint our guns 'tother
way,' said one Missouri boy.
ff And here let me say, that in all my intercourse with our
soldiers, in camp and field and hospitals, in the East, West,
and Southwest, from the commencement of the war to the
present time, I have never encountered the least disrespect
in word, manner, tone, or look from officer or private. Had
I been what the sick men in hospitals have so generally called
me, ' mother' to them all, their manner could not have
been more wholly unexceptionable. I cannot nor do I be-
lieve any woman can say the same of the surgeons. ... Of
course there are noble exceptions to this statement. . . . My
observations have also forced upon me the conviction that
our men in the army do not deteriorate morally as greatly
as is represented. I do not believe they are worse than at
home."
She testifies, also, that of the uncounted deathbeds of sol-
diers which she has attended, not one instance can be recalled
where the dying man did not believe in immortality. Upon
being asked how many such death-scenes she witnessed, she
replied that it was impossible to tell. " I wrote seventeen
hundred letters for soldiers in one year." Among the men to
whom death and life were such tremendous facts, she invari-
ably found the expectation of a world to come more or less
clearly fixed. " There was none of this prevailing indifferent-
ism : this ' I don't know anything about it ' spirit ; ' it may be
one way, and it may be another ; nobody can prove it, and
why should I trouble myself? ' "
She also says, that of them all she knew but one who was
afraid to die. This was a moving story. The end was near
at hand, the man uncontrollable, not with physical so much
as mental agony. "I can't die," he cried. "I can't die ! I
have been a wicked man ! A wicked, wicked man ! I am
afraid to die."
MARY A. LIYERMORE. 405
He flung himself from side to side of the mattress on which
he lay upon the floor. He tossed his arms wildly and
writhed for relief from the soul-wound that hurt so much
more than the mangled body.
"He won't last half an hour," said the surgeon, "if he is
not quieted. You must calm him some way."
The best was done, but the raving continued unchecked.
The man demanded a minister ; " he had been a church-mem-
ber once," he said, " and that was the trouble with him ; he
must see a minister." With great difficulty a clergyman was
brought, but when he got there he could do nothing with the
maniac sinner, and was retreating, baffled, from the sickening
scene, when Mrs. Livermore, who saw that the poor fellow
was going, for want of a little nerve-control, to pass on un-
comforted, and that all too soon, herself made a bold stroke.
She got upon the mattress, kneeling beside him, and taking
both his arms, held them like iron in her own. Looking the
dying man straight in the eyes, she sternly said : "Now stop!
Stop this, the whole of it. You can keep quiet, and you
shall. Lie still, and listen to what this man has to say to
you."
" But I'm afraid I've got to die ! " wailed the terrified
creature, "and I have been a wicked man."
" And what if you have got to die ? " rang the womanly
voice which had melted over him so tenderly, now stiffened
into the sternness of a rebuking mother. " Then die like a
man, not like a baby ! You've sent for this minister. Lie
still, and hear what he has to say to you."
Like a child in her arms the man obeyed; the tortured
nerves grew calm ; the soul gathered itself to meet its fate
and its God. The poor fellow listened gently and intelli-
gently to the sacred words, and passed quite reconciled.
Perhaps I cannot better bring to an end the most imperfect
and brief account which time allows me to give of Mrs. Liver-
more's war record than by relating a beautiful story (already
told in the " Youth's Companion ") , which spans, like a slender
golden bridge, the distance between that glorious past and
406 MARY A. LIVERMORE.
this earnest present, between the sacrifices of war and the
consecrations of peace.
Upon a recent lecturing tour, in Albion, Michigan, Mrs.
Livermore was approached after the evening's lecture by an
elderly woman, white-haired, and with a face that time had
sadly graven.
"Mrs. Livermore," she began at once, "Do you remem-
ber writing a letter for John of the One Hundred and
Twenty-seventh Michigan Volunteers, when he lay dying in
the Overton Hospital at Memphis, during the spring of 1863,
and of completing the letter to his wife and mother after he
had died?"
Mrs. Livermore was forced to reply that she could not
recall the case, she wrote so many such letters during the
war. The gray-haired woman drew the letter with trembling
hands from her pocket. It had been torn at the folds, and
sewed together with fine stitches ; it was greatly worn. Mrs.
Livermore recognized her own hand, and silently re-read the
forgotten pages. The first four were dictated by the soldier,
as he lay dying shot through the lungs. After the lips
were still which gave the message to mother and wife those
precious "last words" on which the two had lived for twenty
years, the writer herself had added to the sacred letter
such suggestions as her sympathy wrung from her, in consola-
tion to the inconsolable.
"I think," said the woman, lifting her worn face to the
strong one above her, " my daughter-in-law and I would have
died when w r e heard that John was dead but for that letter.
It comforted us both, and by-and-by when we heard of other
women similarly afflicted, we sent them the letter to read, till
it was torn into pieces. Then w r e sewed the pieces together,
and made copies of the letter, which we sent to those of our
acquaintances whom the war bereft.
" But Annie, my son's wife, never got over John's death.
She kept about, and worked, and went to church, but the life
had gone out of her. Eight years ago she died. One day,
a little before her death, she said :
MARY A. LIVERMORE. 407
" 'Mother, if you ever find Mrs Livermore, or hear of her, I
wish you would give her my wedding-ring, which has never
been off my finger since John put it there, and will not come
off till I am dead. Ask her to wear it for John's sake and
mine, and tell her this was my dying request.'
"I live eight miles from here," added the woman, "and
when I read in the paper that you were to lecture here
to-night I decided to drive over, and if you will accept
it to give you Annie's ring."
Too much moved to speak, Mrs. Livermore held out her
hand, and the lonely woman put the ring upon her finger with
a fervent and solemn benediction.
From war to peace, there may be as I say, a golden
bridge ; or there must be a gaping chasm, in individual, as in
public story. When the thrill is over, when the stir is
stilled, when emergency has given place to routine, excite-
ment and event to calm and monotony, then a life is put
upon its true mettle. Peace has her soldiers no less than
war. That is strength which still finds in the leisure of
daily commonplace its military rank. It were easy to suffer
the collapse of the strong nerve and hot resolve, and so sink
into the mere selfishness of well-earned ease. It were easier,
perhaps, to become the victim of a fatal displeasure with
ordinary conditions, and to find no more the glorious in the
necessary ; to slide off into second-rate ideals and their correl-
ative motives, and pass one's days in the fretful inaptitude of
a nature which has wrung one supreme hour from life, and
never found or never Sought another.
A friend, once asked for material for Charlotte Cushman's
memoir, said : " I have no data. There is only the continuity
of love." So, in dealing with the subject of this sketch, we
seem to have only the continuity of power. Any notice of
Mrs. Livermore would be seriously incomplete which should
not give emphasis to her value in social movement, . She has
pre-eminently the record of a reformer, and this is the more
interesting because the exuberance of her intensely womanly
nature might have easily deflected her course into quieter
408 MARY A. LIVEKMO11E.
choices. When the demands of the war are over, her clear
eyes see the " duty nearest," in directions which still appealed
to the old chivalrous instincts. Now we do not find her con-
tented with the sewing-circle and the newspaper letter and
neighborhood celebrity. It is not enough to relate past army
exploits to admiring vestries, and to fold the hands over a
pleasant reputation for patriotism.
What is the next crisis? Who are the most defenceless?
Where is the coming battle-field ? Which is the authoritative
reveille? What now most needs the sympathy and sense of a
strong woman? , Who so keenly, who so promptly as her
own sad sex? Who so darkly, who so deeply as the tempted
and the outcast?
One of the most touching incidents ever found in woman's
work for women is related of Mrs. Livermore while she was
living in Chicago.
One night while she was busy with her children, a^ sharp
ring at the door summoned her on a strange errand. The
messenger came from a house "whose ways take hold on
death." A woman, an inmate of this place, lay dying, and
had sent for her, desiring her presence as a spiritual adviser
through the final agony.
" Go," said the husband, "you will be safe enough. And
I will see that the police look after you. You'd better
go."
Mrs. Livermore returned the simple and beautiful answer
" that she was putting her children to bed, and would come
as soon as this was done."
"Don't wait for that," pleaded the messenger, " or the girl
may be gone. She's very low, and has set her heart on
seeing you."
So, without delaying to hear the " Amen " to " Now I lay
me," the mother kissed her babies, and went out from her
Christian, home upon her solemn errand. She was received
with great respect in the house of sin. The poor girl was
dying of hemorrhage of the lungs ; she was far sunken away,
but in mental distress that stoutly held death off. She be-
A THRILLING INCIDENT OF CHICAGO LIFE.
1. THE NIGHT SUMMONS FOR MRS. LIVERMORE. 2. AT THE BEDSIDE OF THE
DYING GIRL. 3. NURSING SOLDIERS IN UNION HOSPITALS.
MARY A. LIYERMORE. 409
wailed her sins, she feared her future, she clung to the pure
woman with desperate arms. Mrs. Livermore got upon the
bed beside the girl and held her firmly.
" Who are you, and where are your friends ? Can you tell
me?"
" I'll never tell you ! I'll never tell anybody. They don't
know where I am. They've advertised for me all these
years. My father and mother are respectable people. They
don't know I care, and they never shall know. I won't dis-
grace them so much as to tell you."
The visitor asked if she should not send for a minister, but
the girl clung to her, crying :
" I want you, you ! I want nobody but you ! "
So the pathetic scene went on : " Do you want me to pray
for you?" "Can't you trust in Christ to forgive your sins?
God is your Father. Don't be afraid of your Father ! Can't
you believe that He will save you? Listen, He is glad to
save you. Christ died to save you"
As she prayed the girl interrupted her with piteously hum-
ble cries: "Oh, Lord, hear what she says!" "Yes, God,
listen to her." " Oh, God, do ! " " Do, do ! " as one who
dared not lift up so much as her eyes unto heaven for herself.
After her death, which occurred quickly and quietly, the face
wore, it was said, one of the most pathetic expressions ever
seen upon the dead, " as if she were about to break into tears."
It was afterwards learned that the poor creature was the
daughter of a Methodist minister.
Into the work for the elevation and enfranchisement of
women, and into the temperance movement for the salvation
of men, Mrs. Livermore, after the war released her, turned
her leisure and her force. Both of these movements have
found in her one of their ablest champions, and the leaders in
these causes know what singularly reliable influence they
have found in her, and know how to value it as only toilers
in " causes" can.
Perfectly fearless, thoroughly equipped, as strong as the
hills, and as sweet as the sun, she has sfood serenely in the
410 MARY A. LIVERMORE.
front of every movement against oppression, vice, and ignor-
ance, with which she has identified herself, observing in her
selection a wise reserve, which has given her influence its
remarkable value. " Reform " is a hot-headed charger, drag-
ging at its chariot-wheels a hundred eccentricities. Quiet
people look on warily at the cranks and quips, the mixed
motives, the disorder, the crudeness and rudeness, the ignor-
ance and mischief which often follow the onrush of progress.
The term " agitator " has crystallized the popular distrust of
effort in which there is so much more gust than seems neces-
sary to keep the weather sweet. One such sound, sane life
as Mrs. Livermore's does more to create public confidence in
genuine social improvement, and in the figures that stand
unselfishly in its foreground, than it is possible to over-
estimate. One does not find her mixed in all the "ins " and
"outs." We never see her with the intellectually maudlin
or the morally dubious. Some of us, debarred by circum-
stances from investigating the merits, not of principles
(which must be our own affair), but of applications, are
accustomed to depend on her judgment as we would on a
magnet, in the vexatious decisions which must be made by
the least who has given heart and hand to any philanthropic
or social movement.
What are the merits of this association ? What is the value
of that step ? Who compose the " ring " behind such a vote ?
Which is the safe, wise, delicate way to tread? Where is
the sense of this thing? From the study, or the sick-room, or
the nursery, the remote or busy woman looks off, weighing
perhaps conscientiously the value of her modest name, or
contribution, and hampered by her inevitable ignorance of the
machinery of the world. At a few firm figures she glances
with assurance. Mary Livermore is one of these guide-
boards. Her name on an appeal is a synonym for its wisdom.
Her appearance on the platform of a society is a guarantee of
its good sense. To "follow this leader" is always safe.
Mrs. Livermore's labors as a reformer have been greatly
facilitated, and of late years chiefly expressed, through her
MARY A. LIVERMORE. 411
career as a public speaker. And here we come to the tardy
but magnificent development of her essential gift. Unques-
tionably her genius is the genius of address. She is one of
the few women as yet come to the front of whom we can
safely say that she is a born orator.
As is so often the case, the discovery of the niche for this
statue came late in life. She was almost fifty VGSLYS old when
the fame of the platform found her. She has brought to it,
therefore, ripe womanhood, the very harvest of experience,
the repose which comes only when the past begins to tip the
balance against the future. Her popularity as a public
speaker is one of the marvels of lyceum annals. Tried by
the Midas touch which cannot be escaped as a test of success,
it will be remembered of her that during the year when
lyceum lecturing as a " business " was at a height which it
will never reach again, she was one of four lecturers who
were most in demand, and made the largest terms with the
bureaus ; the other three were men of world-wide fame.
She has delivered more than eight hundred temperance ad-
dresses, nearly a hundred of these in Boston. She lectures five
nights a week for five months in the year, and has done so
for many years. She travels twenty-five thousand miles
yearly, besides keeping vigil late into the night, often into
the morning, to hold her immense correspondence afloat.
This gives some idea of the steady strain upon brain and
body which this woman of iron and fire sustains.
In addition to the regular fulfilment of her contract with
her bureau, and the work as above described, she constantly
receives, and almost as constantly accepts, invitations to
speak on Sunday in the pulpits of Congregationalist, Presby-
terian, Methodist, Baptist, Unitarian, and Universalist
churches, invited usually by the ministers of these churches
to " deliver her message." Often this message is a temperance
address. Sometimes it is called a sermon.
Another of. the demands made upon her is from schools,
colleges, and literary institutions for Commencement and
other educational addresses. Her summer vacation is never
412 MARY A. LIVERMORE.
free from these extra labors. Political conventions and Sun-
day-school conventions add their clamor to the list. " She is
always at work," a friend says of her ; ff never flags, takes little
recreation." Her summers are spent at her own home in Mel-
rose, or in the mountains, or in Europe with her husband.
Mrs. Livermore's manner as a speaker is noticeable for its
dignity. She has a deep, rich voice, of remarkable compass,
capable of filling any audience-room, trained, and flexible.
She begins quietly, but has a grip on the house from the first.
At times she rises to impassioned fervor. There is no femi-
nine squeak or frivolity. The register of her voice is rather
low, reminding one of Mrs. Kemble, or of Charlotte Cushman,
who said, "All I inherited from my grandmother was this
voice. It was my capital in life."
Mrs. Livermore's personal appearance adds to her power
on the platform. She is tall and large, with a fine figure
and dignified carriage. She is eminently well-proportioned,
and one gets a sense of power from every motion. Of her
face, which is very fine, quite beyond any portrait which I
have seen, it is not easy to say the right word. Regular
features, and grave, gray eyes, and the warmest smile in the
world stay by the memory, but chiefly this : that one has
seen the most motherly face that the Lord ever made. As
she pleads for her own sex, crying patience with its weak-
ness, and justice for its wrongs, and compassion on its woes,
her expression rises to one of inspired solemnity, then melts
into a strong tenderness, which reminds one of what was
said of the face of George Eliot, that she " looked as if she
bore the sorrow of all the earth."
The subjects of Mrs. Livermore's lectures are : "What Shall
we Do with our Daughters ? " " Women of the War " ; " Queen
Elizabeth " ; "Concerning Husbands " ; " The Reason Why " ;
" Superfluous Women "; "Harriet Martineau" ; "The Moral
Heroism of the Temperance Reform" ; " The Coming Man" ;
"Beyond the Sea"; "Our Motherland"; "The Boy of To-day."
It is doubtful if there is any other public speaker who so
wins his way, or hers, to the hearts of their opponents. Many
MARY A. LIVERMORE. 413
of her audiences disagree with Mrs. Livermore's views ; few
can be found to disagree with Mrs. Livermore.
I remember once to have heard her on the platform of a
conservative, Calvinistic girls' seminary, where I was not
sure of her hearty welcome. She had lectured in the village
the evening before on some topic connected with the political
enfranchisement of women, and she was the wife of a Univer-
salist clergyman. I anticipated that her reception, though
courteous, might be a trifle chilly. I might have spared myself
my fears. In five minutes every woman in the room listened
to her like a lover, and when, at the close of her talk to the
girls, she was invited by the pious principal to "lead in
prayer," who was there to ask if she prayed orthodoxy?
She prayed Christianity, and she took us with her to the
very heart of Christ. Rarely have I heard a prayer which
moved me as that one did. She swept away everything
between the soul and God herself was cancelled she
was no more an individual whose personality impinged on
our consciousness ; she was an appeal, an outcry from hu-
manity to Divinity. All our mixed motives, and shallow
thoughts, and frail feeling went down before the power of
her religious nature and her religious life. It was impossible
to hear her, and not say, "That is the voice of a consecrated
soul. Take me, too ; take me up thither."
"Of all the speakers who have ever been brought to our
institution," said a trustee of a large charity at the north end
of Boston, "Mrs. Livermore, to my mind, without excep-
tion, made the best address that has ever been made to our
poor people. They never listened to any one else in the way
they listened to her. She never ' talked down ' to them ; she
always said 'we.' Most speakers say 'you' to such audi-
ences. She never once forgot herself; it was always ' we.' "
w I would pay the price of a ticket to her lecture any
time," said a lady, listening to this conversation, " to hear
that woman's voice."
Time urges, the pages slip, my task is all but done, and I
have as yet said nothing of the domestic life of this woman
414 MARY A. LIYERMORE.
whom the public delighteth to honor. The army commis-
sariat, the reformer, the orator, have had their "three souls"
expressed in this one rich life. What of the fourth, which
is the vital one after all ? What of the woman behind this
power? What of the home behind the career? What is the
story beneath the glory ?
It is with a feeling of peculiar pride and thankfulness that
those who would fain believe that public usefulness for a
woman need not imply private uselessness, are able to point
to the symmetrical and beautiful domestic history of one who
for twenty years has given herself so ably to important pub-
lic services. We may be permitted to step across the sacred
threshold of what it is safe to pronounce one of the happiest
homes in the land, so far as to say that we shall never find a
fireside at which the wife and the mother is honored with more
pride and devotion than at this. The very tone of the voice
in which the materials of this sketch were given me, by the
husband of " this great and good woman," was enough. I
needed to ask no questions . The manly pride in womanly use
of human power was itself worth a visit to that home to see.
Be sure that she who has " mothered " half the land that she
who can mother half the land is the last of all living
women to put by the finer grace of the dearer life, or dull in
the heart of child or husband the sacred vision of the mother
and the wife.
After all is said, it is true, and we are glad it is, that the
great natural gifts of the subject of this sketch have been
run in that best and broadest mould which is given by the full
development of a wholesome natural life.
It is good to have her power, her wisdom, her influence,
and her fame. It is better to have her tenderness, her self-
oblivion, her human happiness, and her home. It is best
to know that she has been able to balance these qualities and
quantities with a grace which has not fallen short of greatness,
and that she has accomplished greatness without expunging
grace.
CHAPTER XYIII.
LUCY LARCOM.
BY MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY.
A Happy Name Lucy Larcom's Childhood First Literary Venture
Kemoval of the Family to Lowell Lucy's Mill-life The Little "Dof-
fer" A Glimpse of the Daily Life of a Lowell Mill Girl The
Lowell " Offering "First Meeting with the Poet Whittier His Life-
long Friendship Removal to Illinois Pioneer Life Teaching a Real
" Deestrick " School Incidents in Her Life as Teacher Mysterious
Disappearance of one of Her Pupils An Amusing Incident Return
to Old New England Work as Teacher in Wheaton Seminary Her
Loyalty During the War Editing "Our Young Folks" Work that
will Endure.
UT what is her real name ? "
"That."
" Lucy Larcom ? I always thought it was her
pen-name."
" So it is ; and her birth-name ; and her heart-
and-soul name, also. I fancy it needs not to be
changed much into her heaven-name."
I suppose I have more than a score of times
been the respondent in some colloquy like the
above, in regard to my friend, Lucy Larcom ;
though I do not remember ever adding what I have added
now, about heart and soul and heaven. Yet her name has
always seemed to me one of those born and baptismal appel-
lations which hold a significance and a prophecy. Her name
is a reminder of herself, and herself of her name. I " s'pect,"
like Topsy, that they must needs have " gro wed " together.
"Lucy," the light; "Larcom," the song-bird haunt ; the
combe, or valley-field of larks. For it is no great stretch of
supposition, but a clear probability, that Lark-combe may
have been the origin of the patronymic.
26 415
416 LUCY LARCOM.
She sings ; and she sings of the morning and of the light.
She is Lucy Larcom.
She was born in the pleasant old town of Beverly, on the
northeastern coast of Massachusetts ; and a great part of
her life has been lived, and much of her work done, in that
corner of the old Bay State, to which, with the strongest
home love and instinct, she clings at this day. Taking the
century as a year, she was born at the end of its May. She
belongs to its bloom, and prime, and summer-tide ; she is
passing along through the glory of its harvest, and her life is
rich and ripe and bright in it, and the days are yet long, and
the leaf unfallen. If souls were grouped upon the planet as
they are in the celestial latitudes she would belong at its
equator. Growth and change may illustrate themselves in
such, but there shall never be with them a locked-up winter
or a polar night.
She was the next to the youngest of a family of eight sis-
ters ; and the homes about her that built up the quaint streets
and lane ways of the really New-English village, reminding
one, as it greatly does, or did then, of such villages of Old
England as Miss Mitford writes her pictures of, were full
of neighbor children. In the lanes and field-places, they all
played and grew merrily together ; she, as she expresses it,
having " run wild there under wholesome Puritanic restric-
tions."
She played "Lady Queen Anne," "Mary of Matanzas,"
" Open the Gates as High as the Sky," and all the pretty old
ring and romp and forfeit games of the primitive time. She
had the charmed surrounding which met and helped to shape
her nature ; dwelling between the hill, the river, and the sea.
Up the rocky height that rose from before her father's door,
and looked toward the ocean, she used to climb in such
dreams as accompany the child whose fancy and spirit-eyes
are opening ; she found some " enchanted flower " ; she heard
some secret from a bird ; she caught glimpses of a glory-land
in some still, shining sunset ; and she shut up these things
and pondered them in her heart. To balance and leaven all
LUCY LARCOM.
LUCY LARCOM. 419
this, she was systematically and conscientiously nourished
from the Bible and the shorter catechism ; and she is glad,
to-day, of both sides of her training.
She read, as children had to read in those days, and in her
simple circumstances, that which she could find. She lived,
alternately, and almost indifferently, in the " Pilgrim's Pro-
gress " and the " Scottish Chiefs" ; she got hold of Milton, and
tasted the sweetness of his " Paradise," and exulted in the glory
of the " Heavenly Hierarchies " ; she dipped and drank already
at the springs of that old English literature which has always
been her study and delight, and from which she has dealt so
largely in her ministries of teaching to others. She always
had in her the elements of receptivity and assimilative power,
and of outgiving impulse and power of application, which
have made her the teacher and the worker in the world that
it is her life to be. She began, even at this early time,
to shape, in rude, simple, childish fashion, her receptions
and assimilations. She made verses, and now and then was
found out in making them.
At seven years old she secretly wrote, illustrated with
crude water-colors, and published, to herself, her first
work ; a manuscript volume of little stories and poems.
After enjoying it perhaps as long as the dear public often
enjoys what is done for it in this way, she one day solemnly
consigned it, through a deep, chasmy crack in the old garret,
to the piecemeal criticism of the rats and mice ; and thence,
in the natural order, to oblivion.
After her father's death the home at Beverty was broken
up. Mrs. Larcom turned her thoughts toward Lowell, then
opening its opportunities, in the wise and provident way in
which that field of life and labor was opened to the women of
the, country who would come and work. Girls were wanted,
and were flocking there for employment in the mills. Homes
were wanted, also, in consequence. Good, motherly house-
keepers, not common boarding-mistresses, were sought,
and accepted only with the best credentials, by the corpora-
tion, to occupy its houses and take care of the operatives.
420 LUCY LAKCOM.
Lucy's mother, mother of many girls, was just one such.
She chose the work and went.
Here, being then, at the beginning, ten years old, she
" helped her mother," in the intervals between her hours of
school, "in the household work." It began as it has kept on.
In her woman-childhood she is still, in the great, beautiful
world-sense a " helper in the household work."
It was after two or three years of school-going and the
helping at home that she began mill- work, among the very
youngest of those employed, a little ff doffer " ; taking off
empty bobbins and putting on full ones ; this was at once the
monotony and the significance of her first labors ; between
whiles she had her recreations with her mates, her quiet
little hidings, also, in the dreamland that always followed and
encompassed her, and in whose light the objects and surround-
ings of her actual daily life took an apparition and meaning
unguessed, perhaps, in the merely workaday world wherein
others half lived at her side, with whom no veil was lifted.
Here, as in her earlier childhood, she wove into words her
visions, made verses, told herself stories. She must have
drawn largely to herself from all that went on about her in
that community of young woman-life, which even to us who
only hear about and imagine it, carries such a charm of in-
terest and wealth of suggestion to the thought. There is
something in the community-idea which takes a kind of heav-
enly hold, and I think it was meant to do so, of all minds
not separated and debased into some poor, covetous self-
seeking. The very fact in our history of this Lowell life,
as it then was, tells its story of the changed and changing
age in which we find ourselves to-day, taken further and fur-
ther off from such possibility. Where now do we find the
capitalist, planning his railroad which is to open up new
country, or his company corporation which is to develop a
new resource or apply a new invention, sitting down, as
did Francis Lowell and Nathan Appleton, to weigh and con-
sider first the question of what it will all be to the humanity
concerned <and brought together, or any way affected by the
LUCY LARCOM. 421
work ? But this is not the place to follow out that suggestion
into discussion of all the great problem of investment and
interest, financially, politically, nd socially. It just crops
up by the way, as we are reminded that that life of the
Lowell mill-girl can hardly ever be lived over again, until in
some new moral as well as mechanical phase of our history
we come, out of our present rush and fever of miracle and
money-making, to far-off fresh and better beginnings.
Lucy Larcom, growing into girlhood, was now, however,
in this phase and opportunity.
Companionship. In one way or another, that is what fills
our human need. We filter it into friendships ; we sift it
down into inmost communions, as we live and make our nat-
ural selections ; but nevertheless, the magnetism of the multi-
tude remains, a power and a delight to human-loving spirits.
A great many together of like pursuits, condition, a king-
dom under one rule, from children at school, up through
all social formations, all organizations, scientific, artistic,
benevolent, enterprising, religious, to the gathering into
the great kingdom at last of the multitude that no man can
number, we find ourselves made, not for solitude but for
association. It is not good for anybody to be alone.
Doubtless, then, there was a charm in that living, in the
house in the " red-brick block, with a green door and green
window-blinds ; the third in a row of four brick blocks,
each the exact counterpart of the other." In the family
order, where the daughters and the mill-girls who joined and
made up the household kept their hours and their pleasant
habits under home rules together ; the breakfasts by lamp-
light, the morning labor in the mills, the noon-spell, the leis-
ure evenings, when books and work were brought forth, and
there was the cheerful gathering round the long tables ; when
they "made and mended, wrote and studied"; when they
told each other bits of their earlier histories before their his-
tories had thus run alongside ; when the mountains and the
forests and the sea brought their flavors and their harmonies
together in the talk of the different homes and up-bringings,
422 LUCY LARCOM.
and so a whole world was rounded out, to the shaping of
which each experience and nature lent material and touch.
Then the sweet helpfulnesses and charities among them-
selves, the double work done by the well ones that a
feeble one might rest ; the mutual spur and lift of mental
endeavor ; the Sunday repose and church-going, and Sun-
day freshness of attire, in which each enjoyed, while she
contributed her own to the happy holy-day aspect of the
time :
" The churchward crowd
That filled brick-paven streets and sandy roads
With pleasant color. Maidens robed in white,
With gypsy hats blue-ribboned ; maidens gay
In silk attire; and maidens quaker-prirn,
With gingham gowns, straw bonnets, and smooth hair,
Girl Baptists, Universalists, Methodists,
Girl Unitarians, and Orthodox,
Sought each their separate temple, while a few
Entered the green enclosure of Saint Ann's,
Still left an oasis of vine-wreathed stones
Amid the city's dust."
The way in which Miss Larcom herself tells us the story
of all this, proves how she lived into it, and found together
in it the things she does most joyfully find life in, both
poetry and work.
"While yet a child," she says, "I used to consider it
special good fortune that my home was at Lowell. There
was a frank friendliness and sincerity in the social atmosphere
that wrought upon me unconsciously, and made the place
pleasant to live in. People moved about their every-day
duties with purpose and zest, and were genuinely interested
in one another ; while in the towns on the seaboard it some-
times was as if every man's house was his castle in almost a
feudal sense, where the family shut themselves in, on the
defensive against intruders." Still, she never lost her
love and allegiance for the sea beside which she was born.
Frequent visits kept up the charm, and held the links un-
LUCY LARCOM. 423
broken ; and we have in her written utterances the wealth
of manifold gathering and experience ; both the " Idyl of
Work " in the city of looms and spindles, and the " Wild
Roses of Cape Ann," full of picture and perfume and legend
that could only have been seen and breathed and learned
where the forests lean down to listen to the ocean, and the
waters send up their song and strength and keen, sweet bap-
tism to the hills and trees.
Out of this Lowell living came first the contributions that
helped to give charm and purpose to the pages of the " Offer-
ing," of which, in its manuscript beginning, as the " Diving
Bell," a little periodical of original papers by a literary
club of girls, her sister was the editor; later, and in retro-
spection, she gave us her "Idyl of Work," in the very title
of which she has set what I have hinted before, and which
cannot help being touched every now and then in considering
what she has been and lived, the very key-chord of her
nature, in-seeing and out-doing.
And what are these but the "faith and work" of religion?
To this two-part, primary chord fall in and harmonize all
beautiful relation and utterance. Manhood or womanhood
is completed within them. Loving and giving ; friendship
and service ; motherhood and ministry ; when we have those
watchwords we discern and tell the story of such character
and influence as this. One does not like to venture too much
into personality while sketching a living person ; but the out-
line would be the merest outline if something of the real and
motive being were not presented. Here and there in her
own lines it indicates itself: one feels that notwithstanding
her youth when actually one of those Lowell girls, so that
the literal living-out of the character could scarcely have
been then and there, and notwithstanding the fact, indeed,
that she really meant to set forth the image she had in her
mind of her own elder sister, she unconsciously gives her-
self forth also, and inevitably, perhaps, through family like-
ness, in some touches of her portrayal of "Esther" in the
"Idyl."
424 LUCY LARCOM.
" If I had but a home
To give her mothering in ! "
says this Esther of a pining, sorrowful companion. And
the answer is,
" But, Esther, dear,
To us your heart is mother, shelter, home ;
Let her, too, find it so."
" Not always to be here among the looms,
Scarcely a girl she knew expected that ;
Means to one end their labor was, to put
Gold nest-eggs in the bank, or to redeem
A mortgaged homestead, or to pay the way
Through classic years at some academy ;
More commonly to lay a dowry by
For future housekeeping.
But Esther's thought
Was none of these ; unshaped and vague it lay,
A hope to spend herself for worthy ends."
"A Ruth who never of a Boaz dreamed.
Whatever work came, whoso crossed her path,
Lonely as this pale stranger, wheresoe'er
She saw herself a need, there should be home,
Business, and family."
There is a something, a muchness, rather, to those who
know her even a little, of motherliness in the impression con-
veyed by her whole presence.
" A single woman with a mother's heart
Such as too many a child cries after."
One feels taken kindly home ; soothed, sympathized with ;
there is repose and reliance, a sense of reality and abiding-
ness all through. It is the grandeur and sweetness of
woman-nature.
" Woman can climb no higher than womanhood,
Whatever be her title."
" I think thee is more restful than many people," said her
dear friend Elizabeth to her, one day, as she leaned beside
LUCY LARCOM. 425
her. This motherliness finds expression in the direct way
toward little children; witness her "Childhood Songs," the
tenderness, the entering in of them to children's little ways
and delights and imaginations.
" Through the gladness of little children
Are the frostiest lives kept warm,"
She sings concerning "Prince Hal," her baby nephew.
What then of the summer souls that never knew a frost-touch ;
whom nothing can chill except to a sweet dew-point of feel-
ing or pity ? It came out in her real care and love for her
nieces and nephews, the children of her dearly-loved sister,
of her life with whom we shall hear presently ; it comes out
in her friendships ; it shows even in her way of speaking of
her own childhood ; for the deep mother-feeling, the very
spirit-yearning of the Lord, mothers the soul itself that
knows it ; and in some dim, small likeness learns the mean-
ing, disputed over in dogma, and only revealed to the
nature that has in itself both parenthood and childhood, of
the mystery of the Father and the Son.
It comes out in her love and kinship for the flowers, of
which and for which she interprets so continually with a
heart- wisdom. They are identical to her with human sweet-
nesses ; they come to her with messages from " over the
blank wall of death : "
" Sweet-brier, her soul in thy breath !"
The roses, the daisies, the water-lily, the golden-rod, ferns,
the very " Flower of Grass,"
" That only stirs
To soothe the air, and nothing doth require
But to forget itself in doing good,"
every one of them is a friend, an angel to her. And when
she brings the flowers and the children together, when she
makes fragrant, delicate rhymes that seem to have grown and
been gathered in the fields, about "Pussy Clover," "Red-
Top and Timothy," "Red Sandwort," "A Lily's Word," or
426 LUCY LARCOM.
gathers them all into loving, magic numbers as they come,
"hastening up across the fields," the
" Wayside fairies clad in gowns of gossamer,"
we feel as if we had been children again ourselves, and out
a-summering for weeks of pleasant weather ; and could come
back bringing handfuls of beauty with us, and heartfuls of
happy courage to remember that
"Just to live is joy enough
Though where roads are dull and rough."
But we have gone off, with her, indeed, into the fields,
leaving her, as to the chronicle, among the spindles in
Lowell.
It was at one of the meetings of the literary circle, estab-
lished among the mill-girls, that Miss Larcom first met the
poet Whittier, who was then in Lowell editing a Free-Soil
journal. He became her friend ; showing his real interest in
her at once by criticising her share in the written contri-
butions of the evening. 'She was then very young ; but it
was the beginning of an interest and gratitude that have con-
tinued mutually in an established friendship from that time
to the present. Afterward, when she had come to know and
dearly love the poet's sister, the three were much together
in such intercourse as is rarely enjoyed. In happy sea-
sojourn at Salisbury Beach, near the respective homes at
Amesbury and Beverly, in visits at Amesbury, in counsel and
work together, out of which in recent time have grown the
beautiful compilations of " Child-life," and " Songs of Three
Centuries," these lives, strong, high, helpful and respon-
sive, have run near together and contributed the one to the
other. It is the pride and thankfulness of Lucy Larcom's life
to have so known and been indebted to Whittier.
One after another, sisters married out of the home, until
only two remained ; and at about twenty years of age Lucy
accompanied one of these married sisters, Emeline, who had
been to her that dear friend, half-mother, half-mate, always
LUCY LARCOM. 427
understanding, sympathizing, counselling, that only a sweet,
strong elder sister can be, to the then wild prairies of Illinois.
Here she was to share in the efforts, the deprivations, the
braveries, the new pleasures and contentments also, of a
clergyman's household in the pioneer time and country. It
seemed as if her life were dividing itself into separate epochs
of experience, as departments of life-study ; teaching her
first this side and then that of the world and things, and of
human movement in them, that she might come, through all,
"compacted and built together," to the wise, full-rounded
womanhood that should have learned itself and apprehended
its vocation.
A truly pioneer life was theirs, almost a nomadic one,
as they changed many times from place to place, as ways and
calls opened and summoned onward. It was not much to go
from one rough, hastily-built, temporary sort of house to
another ; scarcely more than to strike tents and encamp again
among possibly more encouraging surroundings ; and once on
the great prairies it was like being upon the sea ; the same
undifferenced vastness, the same easily sliding horizon, the
same instinct, doubtless, to push on until one could really
make land somewhere and go ashore. At any rate, this im-
pulse or the impelling of circumstances, made a sort of Arab
of the early* settler of those days ; and our little household
followed the usual fate and fortune.
Out here, somewhere, I cannot give latitude and longi-
tude, Miss Larcom taught school, in a vacated log building,
to a two-mile neighborhood. In, upon such length of radius-
lines, one of which she herself tracked daily, came her
scholars, big and little, from all the small colonies round
about. It was in the corner of a big township, taking in
pupils from, I think, three counties ; and she taught under
the auspices of a district committee, before whom, previous
to induction to office, the candidate was obliged to hold up
right hand and swear to acquaintance, sufficient to instruct
from, with writing, spelling, arithmetic, and geography.
The emolument accruing to the situation was the noble sum
428 LUCY LARCOM.
of forty dollars for three months ; and once, when the time
for payment arrived, and her brother-in-law visited the com-
mittee-man, whose duty it was to make it, his reminder was
met with the rather startled remark, as if the subject had
never presented itself in so strong a light before: "Forty
dollars ! Well, that's a lot o' money to pay a young woman
for three months' teachin' I She oughter know consider'ble ! "
When the official was reassured by a statement of what Miss
Larcom's antecedents in study and achievement had been, he
could only still more surprised, apparently reiterate with
slight transposition: "Well, that's a good deal for her to
ha' done ! " But I believe he did not complete the inversion
of ideas by adding "she ought to be paid consider'ble !"
He only, as under vague, half-protest still, counted slowly
over the money.
The two-mile pilgrimage to this temple of learning lay
across the unfenced waste, roamed over by great herds of
cattle ; wild creatures whom one would suppose it a daily
heroism to meet ; but neither teacher nor children seem to
have had much thought of fear, or ever to have met with any
accident or hairbreadth 'scape. The beasts had too free
range, and their life and habits were too uncrossed by human
interference and provocation, to be malignant. There was
something of the same untamed incomprehension* of limit or
fetter in the pupils of the prairie themselves. One little fel-
low, upon the opening of the school, on the first day of his
attendance, asked her with delightful freshness and confidence,
as he found himself placed on a bench in a row of silent
scholars: "Is school commenced, Miss Lucy?" On being
answered "yes," he remarked, with the same simplicity:
"Well, then, I hope it'll quit commencing pretty soon, before
it gets very long ! "
Another scholar, a girl, was once put in slight disgrace for
some disobedience. "You may go and stand in the chimney,"
said Miss Larcom.
The chimney was a great, central structure of the log-house,
with a debouchure spacious enough for a common-sized fam-
SCENES IN THE LIFE OF LUCY LARCOM.
1. THE LITTLE DOFFER. 2. PIONEER LIFE IN ILLINOIS. TEACHING SCHOOL
TAT A *' T^TXTTl-TVlT T T7 "NT 17 T /I U TJ f\T> U f\(\n "
LUCY LARCOM. 429
ily dinner-table to be laid therein. Whether the family could
also sit round it, I will not peril my veracity by venturing to
assert. The child obeyed ; but presently had disappeared !
She was no longer in the room, and the great fireplace was
vacant. She had simply, and quite naturally, ascended
through the chimney, and was availing herself of the freedom
of all out-doors.
During some other of their sojournings, her school- work
was done in various lovely, secluded forest-nooks, where she
had restful anchorage from the ail-abroad, perpetual sea-same-
ness of the prairie. It must have been like creeping in a
dream into a corner of New England again.
But oh ! the hills, and oh ! the sea ! How she missed her
one " home-corner of Massachusetts," which she loves so fer-
vently as her very own world !
It was in one of these places that she found herself in the
neighborhood! of an excellent young ladies' school. Ex-
changing, as she says, the position of teacher for that of
scholar, she spent three years at Monticello Female Seminary,
following the full course of study, and the last two years
taking charge of the preparatory department of that institu-
tion. In this, again, we see in circumstance, or indeed in
the wise acceptance and utilizing of circumstance, a parable
and touch of character. Alternately, and always on the two
sides as the right and left of her being, the teacher and the
taught; eager, grateful, modest to receive; purposeful, gen-
erous, strict and faithful to give account in giving forth again
of all ; the attitudes and movements of large, true-balanced,
dedicated life.
But she " could not make up her mind to be a Western
woman." Her heart was among the hills and by the sea.
She longed for the rocks of New England, and for the friend-
ships founded upon the rocks of strength and steadfastness
which she knew were there for her to go home to. So she
went back to Beverly, where, for a year or two, she taught a
class of young ladies ; then accepted a position as teacher in
Wheaton Female Seminary, at Norton, Mass. ; remaining
430 LUCY LARCOM.
there for six years, conducting classes in rhetoric, English
literature, and composition ; sometimes adding history, men-
tal and moral science, or her own dearly favorite pursuit
of botany. Always, one can see, learning and leading in
things that touched most directly human thought and expe-
rience, or drew lesson and analogy from the word written in
lovely created things. Poetry, in its large sense, as the key
and relation in which all life and truth are set, was the ele-
ment and sphere in which her nature ranged and wrought.
Miss Larcom's health began, after this length of time, to
suffer from such a constant strain of teaching- work. Nothing
is more exhausting than the earnest labor of imparting thought.
They who most truly and livingly teach most certainly use
up their own vitality. She found she must relinquish the
regular employment, and did so ; although from time to time,
incidentally, she has been prevailed upon to instruct in lec-
tures upon literature, or to take classes in kindred studies in
young ladies' schools in Boston.
The war called forth all Miss Larcom's intense and gener-
ous humanities, and, as a thing of course, inspired her writ-
ings. How the Massachusetts woman, in her pride and
loyalty, and yet with the heartache of the time, sings of the
momentous springtide when, close upon the snows, and before
a green leaf opens on a tree,
" To her ancient colors true,
Blooms the old town of Boston in red and white and blue !"
And in " Re-enlisted," makes the mother who " smiled to
see him going," cry up through a sob that one can almost
hear swell in the verse :
" And I and Massachusetts share the honor of his birth ;
The grand old State, to me the best in all the peopled earth !
I cannot hold a musket, but I have a son who can ;
And I'm proud for freedom's sake to be the mother of a man ! "
With what indignation she flings out her utterance in the
" Sinking of the Merrimack," the ship that had stained the
LUCY LARCOM. 431
"fair Northern name," so peculiarly dear to her always, that the
sound of the word is as if her own name were called :
" Gone down in the flood, and gone out in the flame !
Then sink them together, the ship and the name ! "
And her " Loyal Woman's No"; it is like a scathe of
swift lightning rushing down from the tf great peaks " of her
higher nature upon the creeping valley-creature !
Her first poem in the " Atlantic " was " The Rose En-
throned." Previously to this, as far back as during her
early residence in Illinois, some poems were published with
the name, and some slight sketch of the writer, in Griswold's
" Female Poets of America " ; and at about the same time
verses of hers were printed in " Sartain's Magazine." During
1852-53, she wrote frequently for the "National Era," of
which Mr. Whittier was corresponding editor. Later, the
" Independent " and the " Boston Congregationalist," and the
various modern magazines, received and published her contri-
butions.
" Hannah Binding Shoes" appeared first in the New York
"Crayon." Perhaps no single poem of hers has been better
known or more heartily admired. She herself has said, I
believe it was " between you and me," but there has always
been, immemorially, a third party admitted to that formula
of confidence, that she tr never thought * Hannah' much of a
poem." Probably because it was one of those simple realities
that sing themselves, and so sing immortally.
But the " Rose Enthroned " is, it seems to me, her greatest
inspiration. It is a parable-epic of creation ; twenty-one
four-line stanzas, of which each group of seven is, doubt-
less from some inherent necessity of the truth, and quite un-
consciously to the writer, like a six-days seon and a Sab-
bath ; the sum of them making the week and Sabbath of
ages, in whose progress the great chaos has seethed, formed,
and blossomed : the Planet has travailed and brought forth
the Rose 1
432 LUCT LAKCOM.
" And ever nobler lives, and deaths more grand,
For nourishment of that which is to come :
While, mid the ruins of the work she planned
Sits Nature, blind and dumb."
That was the first rest !
" And every dawn a shade more clear, the skies
A flush as from the heart of heaven disclose
Through earth and sea and air a message flies
Prophetic of the Rose."
And that is the breath of the second pause. Until
X
" At last a morning comes, . . .
when
" In golden silence, breathless, all things stand ;
What answer waits this questioning repose?
A sudden gush of light and odors bland,
And lo, the Rose! the Rose!"
" What fiery fields of chaos must be won,
What battling Titans rear themselves a tomb,
What births and resurrections greet the sun
Before the Rose can bloom !
" And of some wonder-blossom yet we dream
Whereof the time that is enfolds the seed ;
Some flower of light, to which the Rose shall seem
A fair and fragile weed."
The verse leaves us in the waiting world-time of to-day.
To have written such a poem as this alone is to have been
a poet. No wonder, the "Atlantic" then being published
with a "no-name" table of contents, that it should have
been attributed to Emerson.
And this is the little mill-girl of Lowell who doffed the
bobbins ! Truly, the " Rose Enthroned " bath some touch of
a life-story.
When " Our Young Folks " magazine was started, Miss
Larcom became one of its assistant editors, and had for some
time the hard, preliminary, winnowing work to do. She
sifted the great mass of in-pouring MSS., selected such as were
LUCY LARCOM. 433
worthy of second thought, and handed them up to the second
thinkers. Subsequently, she had nearly all the responsible
charge, and became, indeed, for some time the leading editor.
The year or two during which she occupied that charming
office-room overlooking the Common, and up-looking to Park-
street steeple, are memorable for pleasantness, not only to
herself, but to those who found her there, bright and repose-
ful, ready and responsive, in the midst of her bus} 7 , and one
would think often confusing occupation. " But that," as she
says, " was almost fifteen years ago."
Seven years followed of quiet, independent living, at
housekeeping for herself at Beverly Farms ; when she, as
needs must, went on with her living and thinking, and these
" not to herself alone," though her housekeeping was.
Some one has said that "Miss Larcom may be called
the poet of friendship " ; and so she may ; but it ought
to be added that her friendship takes all the possible
forms. I have spoken of her " motherlmess " ; her single-
hood and yet full womanhood ; and I may dare to do so,
for she tells of it herself ; she cannot help but write " My
Children":
" Too many for one house, you see,
And so I have to let them be
In care of other mothers.
" My darlings! by my mother heart
I have found, I shall find them.
Though some from me are worlds apart,
And thinking of them, tears will start
Into my eyes, and blind them."
Even her Christmas is "Woman's Christmas," her song
the rejoicing of the mother-heart.
" By the close bond of womanhood,
By the prophetic mother-heart,
Forever visioning unshaped good,
Mary, in Him we claim our part.
27
434 LUCY LARCOM.
"What were our poor lives worth, if thence
Flowered forth no world-perfuming good,
No love-growth of Omnipotence ?
The childless share thy motherhood.
" Breathe, weary women everywhere.
The freshness of this heavenly morn ;
The blessing that He is, we share,
For unto us this Child is born!"
And fitly follows her aspiration in her " Woman's Easter" :
" O Sun ! on our souls first arisen,
Give us light for the spirits that grope !
Make us loving and steadfast and loyal
To bear up humanity's hope !
O Friend ! who forsakest us never,
Breathe through us Thy errands forever ! "
The secret is, ministry. The very work of the Spirit.
The " taking of mine, and showing it unto them." Somehow,
she always found a way to do this, even from her earliest in-
stincts. There was something touchingly comical in a fash-
ion she had when a child of alternately helping her mother,
the wearied and worried mother of eight, and a widow,
in little household services, and then, when she could find
nothing else, sitting and reciting or singing in the mother's
hearing, quite as if it only happened so, scraps of hymns ;
especially and often the verses of "Corne, ye disconsolate."
She had large resources to draw upon, for she had learned
hymns by the hundred, as occupation in sermon-time, in her
first attendances at church, when sermons were, pardonably,
wearisome. Maybe she had first learned to apply the
" Come, ye disconsolate,
Where'er ye languish,"
to her own inward sustaining during these sacrificial hours.
O O
In this spirit of ministry she gathered together the lovely
compilation of " Breathings of a Better Life," which has vis-
ited many a troubled and desolate heart with comfort, and
LUCY LARCOM. 435
lifted up and strengthened many a seeker and striver with its
words from " up higher."
The mountains and the rivers are her ministers ; the brook
is " Friend Brook " to her. They are all friends for what
they can give her to bring away to other friends.
" River, O river ! that singest all night,
The words of thy song let me know :
4 1 come, and I go.'
" River, O river ! thy message is clear.
Chant on, for I hear.
What the mountains give me
Bear I forth to the sea.
Life only is thine to bestow.
I come, and I go.
" River, O river ! thy secret of power
I win from this hour ;
Thy rhythm of delight
Is my song in the night :
I am glad with thy gladness ; for, lo !
I come, and I go."
"Roadside Poems," and "Hillside and Seaside," are com-
pilations from readings of nature, such as a reader for herself
could find and choose among works of her kindred. " Child-
life," " Child-life in Prose," " Songs of Three Centuries," are
the sheaves bound up from fields of ripe and beautiful litera-
ture, for which she gleaned in company with Mr. Whittier, and
which he edited. These are the work of recent years ; her
latest, and original writing, has been the volume, "Wild
Roses of Cape Ann ; " in which
" The sea is wedded to the sky, "
the hills and the river-channels and the tides lean, and move
to, and meet each other with their benedictions, the fra-
grances of rose and pine, and the salt strength of the sea-
breath mingle to one delicious atmosphere :
436 LUCY LARCOM.
" The sounds and scents that float by us
They cannot tell whither they go ;
Yet however it fails of its errand,
Love makes the world sweeter, I know.
" I know that love never is wasted,
Nor truth, nor the breath of a prayer ;
And the thought that goes forth as a blessing
Must live as a joy in the air."
Later than any book, come to us from here and there the
things she has wrought out singly, and been dropping, seed
into the furrows, seemingly where it might chance. One
of the very last is a joy-song of fellowship; in toil, she
is in love with toil, and sings it as a lover sings his mistress,
in every busy industry that men and women make, and
hasten to day by day ; in
" All the sweetness and all the mirth
That stir in the bosom of kindly earth ; "
the births and growths and givings of the live world ; flow-
ers, birds, children, friends ; in
"Love and loveliness everywhere."
"I am glad," she cries, at the close of every stanza,
" I am glad that I live in the world with you ! "
Yes, she calls even into the beyond, to the " spirits dear
who have vanished from sight," in the "many mansions whose
home is one," where " the doors are open, and light shines
through,"
" I am glad that I live in the world with you ! "
I cannot close this sketch of her better than in her own
refrain :
" Thank God for the work he lets us do !
I am glad that I live in the world with you ! "
CHAPTER XIX.
MARIA MITCHELL.
BY JULIA WARD HOWE.
Miss Mitchell's Nantucket Home Her Ancestors "Poor but Happy"
Her Early Life Her Father's Love for Astronomy How She Obtained
Her Education Unwearied Devotion to Her Studies A Great Event in
Her Life Discovers a Telescopic Comet Claiming the Prize Offered
by the King of Denmark Difficulty in Obtaining it Edward Everett's
Efforts in Her Behalf Final Recognition of Her Claim Receives
the Gold Medal from the Danish King Her Fame Abroad Visit-
ing the Old World Entertained and Honored by Distinguished Scientists
Her Own Account of Some of Them Amusing Experiences Inter-
esting Incidents Her Life and Daily Work.
MITCHELL, the subject of the present
memoir, was born in Nantucket on the first
day of August, 1818, and was the third in a
family of ten children. The parents were
William Mitchell and Lydia Coleman Mitchell.
She was related, on the mother's side, to
Benjamin Franklin, whose grandmother was
also an ancestress of hers. Her paternal
grandfather was the youngest son of a man re-
puted rich in his time, who, however, expended a
great part of his fortune in the education and establishment
of his elder children. From him this younger son inherited
some thirty thousand dollars.
In the next generation, this sum was subdivided among a
number of heirs, and was further diminished by the war of
1812, so that the inheritance of Maria's father was scarcely
more than one thousand dollars, which covered the cost of
the house in which he lived, and in which his family was
reared.
437
438 MARIA MITCHELL.
From an autobiographical sketch, written by Mr. Mitchell
late in life, and never published, it appears that he was bred
in easy circumstances which allowed him to enjoy the best
educational opportunities afforded by the neighborhood in
that day. These were not great. He relates that the incom-
petency and unkindness of his teachers were such as to give
him a distaste for books, while his father's description of
natural phenomena filled him with enthusiasm. He says in
this connection :
"I have never forgotten his calling me to the door in my
eighth year, and showing me the planet Saturn. My age at
this period I calculated many years afterwards from the
position of the planet. But the claim, if I have any, to
learning, rests on my own exertion, late in my teens."
Here was surely a born astronomer, destined to pursue
his native science through endless difficulties and discouraare-
~ o
ments. At the age of fifteen he learned the trade of a
cooper, which soon proved too severe for his bodily strength.
He presently became a teacher, and at the age of eighteen
principal of a school. In the exercise of this profession he was
happy and successful, but failing health obliged him to seek a
more active occupation, which he found in assisting his father
in the oil and soap business, in which his old trade of cooper-
ing became useful.
The war of 1812 now intervened, and greatly reduced the
fortunes of the family. Mr. Mitchell married in 1813, and
commenced wedded life on a small farm, owned by his
father, "poor but happy." He "went fishing from the
village, and worked between tides, raising corn and potatoes
on land which, by the encroachment of the sea, no longer
exists." He taught school in the winter for a stipend of two
dollars per week.
In this penury his eldest child was born ; but a week later
arrived a ship laden with whale oil, which his father was
commissioned to convert into soap. This revival of business
changed the aspect of affairs, and for seven years thereafter
he lived in comfort, working in partnership with his father.
MARIA MITCHELL.
MAKIA MITCHELL. 441
The latter retiring from business in 1822, Mr. Mitchell again
became a teacher, commencing with a school of his own, and
presently becoming the teacher of the first public grammar-
school established at Nantucket. He established later a
school of his own, but afterwards became secretary of an
insurance company, and finally cashier of the Pacific Bank.
Of all these divers occupations that of pedagogy was the
most congenial to him. He was an adherent to "Friends'
principles," and a birthright member of the society, to which
his ancestors for several generations had belonged.
Maria, at an early age, became a pupil in the public school
taught by her father in Nantucket. At schools of this
character, throughout New England, girls and boys were
taught in classes together, following the same studies and
the same recitations.
Miss Mitchell remembers her mother as a very laborious
woman. The salary of a school-teacher in those da"} r s was
but a slender resource for the support of a large family, and
could only be made to suffice for it by the greatest care and
economy. The labors of the housewife were assisted by one
domestic only, and this was usually a girl in her teens, with
small knowledge and experience. In order to add to his
means, Mr. Mitchell built a small observatory upon a part of
his land, and was enabled to earn one hundred dollars per
annum by astronomical work done for the United States
Coast Survey.
In this thrifty household Maria's task was what she calls,
"an endless washing of dishes," which, weary as it may
sometimes have been, she preferred to needlework. The
drudgery necessarily entailed by narrow circumstances was
however relieved and rendered endurable by the atmosphere
of thought and intelligence which gave its tone to the house.
Concerning this, Miss Mitchell says :
" We always had books, and were bookish people. There
was a public library in Nantucket before I was born. It was
not a free library, but we always paid the subscription of one
dollar per annum, and always read and studied from it. I
442 MARIA MITCHELL.
remember among its books Hannah More's works and
Rollins' Ancient History. I remember, too, that Charles
Folger, the present Secretary of the Treasury, and I had both
read this latter work through before we were ten years old,
though neither of us spoke of it to the other until a later
period."
As Mr. Mitchell's family increased the discrepancy between
its needs and his resources made itself more sensibly felt,
and in the year 1837 he became cashier of the Pacific Bank,
at a salary of twelve hundred dollars per annum. His chil-
dren naturally regarded this change as a rise in life, but he
himself thought otherwise. He still retained his employment
under the Coast Survey, and this connection brought to his
house such persons as the elder Agassiz, Benjamin Pierce,
Prof. Bache, and others, whose society was much appreciated
by the members of the household, and especially by Maria,
who, at the age of seventeen, began to assist her father in his
observatory work.
Mr. Mitchell, who bore at a later day the title of Honorable,
is spoken of in a letter of Edward Everett's as " a skilful
astronomer, a member of the Executive Council of Massa-
chusetts, and a most respectable person."
In 1820 Mr. Mitchell was elected a member of the
Massachusetts convention for the revision of the Constitution
on the occasion of the separation of the State of Maine.
The first President Adams, Daniel Webster, Judge Story,
Josiah Quincy, and James Savage were all members of this
convention. Despite the eloquence shown by more than one
of them, Mr. Mitchell found their much speaking very
burdensome, and confesses that it gave him a strong distaste
for public life. Many years later he was elected and re-elected
as one of Governor Briggs' Council, and was for a number
of years one of the overseers of Harvard College. He was
also elected for one term to the Massachusetts senate.
More congenial were to Mr. Mitchell the scientific pursuits
which he managed, with wonderful perseverance, to combine
with the labors of a life which, he says "was always, pecuu-
MARIA MITCHELL. 443
iarily, a struggle." He started in life with "an innate love
of astronomical inquiries," and, through a natural aptitude for
studies of this kind, was able so to acquire and apply knowl-
edge as to gain for himself an honorable position among the
astronomers of his time. He contributed a number of papers
to " Sillirnan's Journal," and delivered a very acceptable course
of lectures on astronomy, at the invitation of the Boston
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, of which at
that time Daniel Webster was president, and Nathaniel Froth-
ingham secretary. He received the degree of Master of Arts
from Harvard College and from Brown University, and was
early elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences.
Maria Mitchell quitted the public school of Nantucket at
the age of sixteen. She enjoyed after this one year of
tuition at a private school kept by Mr. Pierce, commonly
known as Father Pierce, in the same place.
The daughters of the family were at this time expected to
contribute what they could earn to the expenses of the house-
hold. An elder sister of Maria's became a teacher, at a
salary of three hundred dollars per annum. Maria herself
would have been glad to do as much as this for herself and
the others. She felt, however, the absolute need of some
years of further study, and, in order to command these,
accepted the post of librarian of the Nantucket Athenaeum.
Her salary here was sixty dollars for the first year, seventy-
five dollars for the second, and for each of the eighteen years
that followed, one hundred dollars. Out of this small stipend
she was able to lay by something for future emergencies.
It was during this period of twenty years that Maria
Mitchell, easily performing her duties as librarian, found
time to prosecute the solid scientific studies which have given
her a recognized and honored place among the scientists of
her time.
The writer of this biography lately asked Miss Mitchell
what especial circumstances had led her to the study of
astronomy. The reply was substantially the following :
444 MARIA MITCHELL.
"It was, in the first place, a love of mathematics, seconded
by my sympathy with my father's love for astronomical
observation. But the spirit of the place had also much to do
with the early bent of my mind in this direction. In Nan-
tucket people quite generally are in the habit of observing
the heavens, and a sextant will be found in almost every
house. The landscape is flat and somewhat monotonous, and
the field of the heavens has greater attractions there than in
places which offer more variety of view. In the days in which
I lived there the men of the community were mostly engaged
in sea-traffic of some sort, and " when my ship comes in "
was a literal, not a symbolical expression."
A sister of Miss Mitchell remembers her as rf an exceedingly
shy young girl, not fond of society, but very fond of books
and study, and quite apt at writing little occasional pieces,
generally in verse." We learn from the same source that
Mr. Mitchell never recognized any distinction of sex in the
education of his children. Maria had therefore the same
education with her brothers, and was especially taught navi-
gation. Her sister bears testimony to her persistence in study,
and also to the faithfulness with which she performed her part
of the work of the household, not in the shape of cake and
custard-making, but of solid work. She often studied with
her knitting in her hands, and her father to the day of his
death wore stockings, one yard in length, of her knitting.
In the Nantucket Athenaeum we are glad to hear that :
''She controlled in a large measure the reading of the
young people. She advised them what to read, and had a
way of losing improper books, if there were any. They
usually turned up at the time of the annual examination of
the library, but she never knowingly allowed a boy to have
a hurtful book."
As years passed on, Miss Mitchell began to be spoken of
as a woman of uncommon merit and attainment. The writer
of this sketch remembers to have heard of her as ara astrono-
mer of recognized position as early as the year 1846. She
was living at Nantucket at this time, and had probably no
MARIA MITCHELL. 445
anticipation of the publicity about to be given to her modest
and quiet labors. Fame came to her in the shape of a tele-
scopic comet, which she discovered on the 1st of October,
1847, and described as in a position "nearly vertical, above
Polaris about five degrees." Her father announced the fact
to William C. Bond, at that time director of the observatory
at Cambridge.
It happened that the King of Denmark, sixteen years
before this time, had decreed the foundation of a gold medal
of the value of twenty ducats, to be awarded to the first
discoverer of a telescopic comet. The conditions of this
award, intended to prevent imposture, were such as to in-
crease considerably the difficulty of obtaining it. The first
of these conditions was that the announcement of the dis-
covery should be made by the first post which should leave
the locality thereafter.
Mr. Edward Everett, at this time President of Harvard
College, had had some correspondence on the subject of
telescopic comets with Prof. Schumacher, of the Royal
Observatory at Altona. In this way he had learned the
fact of the medal-foundation.
Hearing of Miss Mitchell's discovery some weeks after Mr.
Mitchell's communication of it to Mr. Bond, of the Cam-
bridge University, he learned also that no steps had been
taken by her or her friends to secure for her the medal to
which he was quite sure that she was entitled. The corre-
spondence undertaken by Mr. Everett in behalf of his dis-
tinguished countrywoman is preserved ia a small pamphlet
which was printed, but not published, in the year 1857. In
an introductory statement, he says :
" Having learned, some weeks after Miss Mitchell's dis-
covery, that no communication had been made on her behalf
to the trustees of the medal, and aware that the regulations
in this respect were enforced with strictness, I was appre-
hensive that it might be too late to supply the omission.
Still, however, as the spirit of the regulations had been com-
plied with by Mr. Mitchell's letter to Mr. Bond, it seemed
446 MARIA MITCHELL.
worth while at least to make the attempt to procure the medal
for his daughter. Although the attempt might be unsuc-
cessful, it would at any rate cause the priority of her dis-
covery to be more authentically established than it might
otherwise have been."
The printed correspondence opens with the letter in which
Mr. Mitchell announced his daughter's discovery to his
friend, William C. Bond. He asks whether any one else
has seen it, and remarks that : " Maria supposes it may be
an old story." This letter bears the date of October 3, 1847,
and thus shows us the infrequericy of mails from the Cape at
that time. Mr. Everett's first letter to Mr. Mitchell is dated
January 10, 1848, and is as follows :
Mr. Edward Everett to Mr. William Mitchell.
" DEAR SIR, I take the liberty to inquire of you whether
any steps have been taken by you, on behalf of your
daughter, by way of claiming the medal of the King of
Denmark, for the first discovery of a telescopic comet."
Here follows a statement of the regulations regarding the
announcement of the discovery, after which Mr. Everett
says : " In consequence of non-compliance with these regula-
tions, Mr. George Bond has on one occasion lost the medal.
I trust this may not be the case with Miss Mitchell."
Mr. Mitchell, replying to Mr. Everett, says :
w No steps were taken by my daughter in claim of the
medal of the Danish King. I urged very strongly that it
(the discovery) should be published immediately, but she
resisted it as strongly. She remarked to me, 'If it is a new
comet, our friends, the B^/nds, have seen it. It may be an
old one so far as relates to the discovery, and one which we
have not followed.' She consented, however, that I should
write to William C. Bond, which I did by the first mail that
left the island after the discovery. This letter did not reach
my friend till the 6th or 7th, having been somewhat delayed
here, and also in the post-office at Cambridge. The stipula-
tions of his Majesty have, therefore, not been complied with.
MARIA MITCHELL. 447
and the peculiar circumstances of the case, her sex, and
isolated position, may not be sufficient to justify a suspen-
sion of the rules. Nevertheless, it would gratify me that the
generous monarch should know that there is a love of science
even in this, to him, remote corner of the earth."
Mr. Everett now wrote to Prof. Schumacher, and to
parties in England, urging Miss Mitchell's claim to the
Danish medal. The discovery of the comet was soon es-
tablished, and it was thenceforth known by the name of
"Miss Mitchell's comet." Her delay in applying for the
medal threw some difficulty in the way of her obtaining it. It
was finally decided, however, that the spirit of the regula-
tions had been complied with by Mr. Mitchell's letter to Mr.
Bond. Thanks to Mr. Everett's perseverance, and to the
energetic efforts of the American Minister at the Court of
Denmark, the award was at last made, and the medal
obtained.
In the year 1857 Miss Mitchell had occasion to visit Eng-
land, and also to make an extensive tour upon the Continent
of Europe. Through the kindness of a member of her
family, the writer has had access to a number of letters, in
which her various experiences are narrated for the benefit of
her family. After some stay in London, which she did not
reach until after "the season," she made various excursions,
one of which carried her to Stratford-upon-Avon, where she
became the guest of the well-known Flower family. She
here learned the sad condition of Miss Bacon, the originator
of the theory which ascribes to Lord Bacon the authorship of
Shakspeare's plays. Miss Mitchell visited her distressed
countrywoman, who was at this time suffering both from
pecuniary embarassment, and from a partial derangement of
her faculties. Miss Mitchell was able in some degree to
assist this unfortunate lady, who died soon after this time.
Miss Mitchell's scientific reputation had preceded her in
England, and easily opened the way for her to much pleasant
intercourse with persons of distinction. Several of her let-
ters describe a visit to Cambridge, whither she went with
448 MARIA MITCHELL.
Mrs. Airy, wife of the Astronomer-royal. Here, she re-
ceived much attention from Dr. Whewell, at that time Master
of Trinity, and well known in the literary and scientific
world by his History of the Inductive Sciences.
Miss Mitchell had a room at the Bull Hotel, but was really
the guest of Dr. Whewell, at whose house she took luncheon
and dinner on the three days of her stay in Cambridge. She
describes this gentleman as "a magnificent looking man,
courteous but condescending in his manner." "He is about
fifty-five years old. His hair is perfectly white and curls a
little. He is large (of stature), has good blue eyes, and
would be handsome if his mouth were good. The expression
of the mouth is not good-tempered."
At a dinner-party of twenty persons, on the day of her
arrival, Miss Mitchell was the honored guest. Of Dr.
Whewell's conversation at dinner, she says :
" Like all Englishmen (twenty-six years ago) he was very
severe upon American writers. He said that Emerson did
not write English and copied Carlyle. I thought his severity
reached really to discourtesy, as I was an American, and I
think he perceived it when he asked me if I knew Emerson,
and I replied that I did, and that I valued my acquaintance
with him. I got a little chance to retort by telling him that
we had outgrown Mrs. Hemans in America, and now read
Mrs. Browning more. He laughed at this, and said Mrs.
Browning was so coarse that he couldn't tolerate it, and that
he was amused to hear that any people had got above Mrs.
Hemans. Washington Irving is the only (American) writer
whom Englishmen tolerate, and a lady on the other side of
Dr. Whewell said to me : " Do you call Irving an Ameri-
can?" I said, "I suppose he must be so called, as he was
born in America." : ' Yes, but his father was born in
Scotland."
Whewell said to Miss Mitchell that he knew how to pro-
nounce the word " Niagara " from the rhyme :
" You must see Niagara
For that is a staggerer."
MARIA MITCHELL. 449
His first remark to her, she says, was : ff We will, as you
Americans say, go the whole hog." At parting, she asked
whether he would, some day, visit America. He replied,
:f Yes, if you behave yourselves and keep quiet."
Among other distinguished persons seen during this visit
to Cambridge, Miss Mitchell mentions Profs. Sedgwick,
Challis, and Adams. She requested the gentleman last
named to show her the spot on which he made his computa-
tions for Neptune, and he was evidently well pleased to do so.
A visit to Sir John and Lady Herschel at Collingwood
was much enjoyed by Miss Mitchell. She reached this place
at dusk, and thus describes the reception given her :
" There was just the light of the coal fire, and as I stood
before it Sir John bustled in an old man. much bent, with
perfectly white hair standing out in every direction. He
reached both hands to me, and said : 'We had no letter, and
did not expect you, but you are always welcome at this house.'"
Miss Mitchell had omitted to acquaint her friends by letter
with the precise time at which she might be expected to
arrive. Her stay with them was full of interest. She had
great pleasure in looking over Sir William Herschel's manu-
scripts and those of his sister Caroline. She found Sir
John not only a ready and able talker, but also a good
listener, the best she had met with in England. As a part-
ing gift, he bestowed upon her a specimen of his aunt's
writing, having already given her one of his own calculations.
Such presents do the learned exchange !
One of Miss Mitchell's letters from London describes an
evening party, called in those days a rout, at the house of
Prof, and Mrs. Baden Powell. Here she met Roget of the
Thesaurus, and Arnott, the well-known author of " Arnott's
Elements of Physics." She describes him as not much over
sixty years in age, short, stout, and vigorous, with white
hair. She says :
"He asked me if I wore as many stockings when I was
observing as the Herschels did. Sir William, he said, put
on twelve pair, and Caroline fourteen."
450 MARIA MITCHELL.
She had hoped to meet Mr. Babbage at this party, and had
asked several times whether he was in the room, to which
question the reply was: "Not yet." She took leave of her
hosts at eleven o'clock, and tells us that just as she " stepped
upon the threshold of the drawing-room to go out a broad
old man stepped upon it to come in. The servant announced,
'Mr. Babbage.' Of course, that glimpse was all I shall ever
have."
After these days, Miss Mitchell made a sojourn of some
weeks in Paris, where she desired to attend scientific lectures,
and to become acquainted with French savants. In order to
extend her familiarity with the French language, she resided
for a time as parlor-boarder in a boarding-school. Sir George
Airy had written to the astronomer Leverrier, to announce
her coming, and Lady Lyell had also given her an intro-
duction to a valued friend, Mrs. Power, a sister of Sir
Francis Homer. Of Leverrier Miss Mitchell says : " His
English was worse than my French." She also made ac-
quaintance in Paris with the sister of the celebrated Arago,
and with other members of that family ; " whose connecting
links," she says, " are astronomers thrust out of employ-
ment." The ladies of the Weston family (sisters of Mrs.
Maria Weston Chapman) were at this time residing in Paris.
From them Miss Mitchell received many friendly attentions,
and among other useful bits of information, this one, that
the Emperor Napoleon III. was not "good society." The
lower classes of French people, as seen in Paris, appeared to
her very superior to those of the same order in England.
In the course of this winter Miss Mitchell found her way
to Rome, in company with the Hawthorne family. Her
impressions of the Eternal City are preserved in numerous
letters to members of her own family. The interest of the
ruins and historical monuments was to her very great, and
she seems to have studied carefully the treasures of the
Vatican. It is interesting to think of her in that holy of
holies which contains four of the greatest pictures in the
world. Among these she was especially impressed with the
MARIA MITCHELL. 451
beauty of Raftaelle's "Transfiguration." Miss Mitchell did
not escape the fascination of studio visiting. The sculptor
Mozier was an especial friend of hers, and her letters have
much to say concerning his works. She knew also Akers
and Bartholomew, and the painter Rothermel. She saw the
Hawthorhes frequently, and promises her father many anec-
dotes of Hawthorne himself, who at this period must have
been gathering many of the facts and fancies which took
shape in his "Marble Faun."
Miss Bremer was in Rome at this time, and Miss Mitchell
describes her as, "a little woman in black, but not so plain.
Her face is a little red, but her complexion is fair, and her
expression very pleasing. She chatted away a good deal,
asked me about astronomy, and how I came to study it. I
told her that father put me to it, and she said that she was
just writing a story on the affection of father and daughter.
She told me that I had good eyes."
From Rome Miss Mitchell travelled to Florence, and
thence to Venice. In the former city she had several inter-
views with Mrs. Somerville, whose personal appearance is
described by her in a letter to her father :
"She is small, very has a small but broad head looks
about sixty, but is really seventy-seven years of age. She
has blue eyes does not look much unlike Miss Bremer, but
has well-cut features."
Miss Mitchell's first visit to this distinguished woman was
rendered unsatisfactory by the volubility of an acquaintance
who volunteered to accompany her. A second visit was more
successful. This time Miss Mitchell took the precaution to
go alone, and thus enjoyed a long talk, of which she speaks
as follows in the letter already cited :
"Mrs. Somerville talks with all the readiness and clearness
of a man, but with no other masculine characteristic. She is
very gentle and womanly. She spoke of Maury, Bond, and
Pierce. She says that a new edition of " The Physical
Sciences " will be out soon, and that she will give me a copy.
She spoke almost severely of Dr. Whewell's book : and in
28
452 MARIA MITCHELL.
the highest terms of Herschel. She is chatty and sociable,
without the least pretence, or the least coldness."
From the same correspondence we will quote an account
of a third and last conversation between these two eminent
votaries of science :
"I paid a last visit to Mrs. Somerville before I left Flor-
ence. She gave me two books, and the promise of two
more, and some six autographs. On the occasion of the first
visit I told her of thy having sent her thy article on comet's
tails, and in the course of the last she voluntarily asked me,
if it was possible, to send her a copy of it. She also desired
me, if I could, to send her a photographed star. She had
never heard of its being done, and saw at once the importance
of such a step. She talks with a strong Scotch accent, and
said to me : " Ye have done yeself great credit," and so on.
From Venice Miss Mitchell journeyed northward to
Vienna, and thence to Berlin. Here she saw the celebrated
astronomer, Encke, whom she describes as, " Sixty-seven
years old the ugliest man that I ever saw shorter than I
am, and careless of dress." Encke waited upon Miss
Mitchell, and, among other attentions, took her to see the
presents made by the cities of Germany to the Princess
Royal, on her marriage :
" The presents were in two rooms, ticketed and numbered,
and a catalogue of them sold. All the manufacturing com-
panies availed themselves of the opportunity to advertise
their commodities, I suppose, as she had presents of all
kinds. What she will do with sixty albums I can't see, but
I can understand the use of two clothes-lines, because she
can lend one to her mother, who must have a large Monday's
wash."
Miss Mitchell had brought with her an introduction to
Alexander von Humboldt. He responded to this at once by
an invitation to call at an appointed hour on the following
day. Miss Mitchell wrote a most interesting account of this
interview to her father. We are allowed to give the follow-
ing extracts from the letter :
MARIA MITCHELL. 453
"The servant showed me into a handsome study, and I had
just time enough to notice that it had a great many worsted-
worked cushions and a handsome sofa when Humboldt came
in. He was a smaller, trigger-looking man than I had
expected. He made a low bow, and thanked me for calling
then shook hands then asked me to sit on the sofa. He
took a chair near me and began to talk. I remained just
half-an-hour, as long as I thought I had any right to remain.
He talked every minute as fast as he could speak on all
manner of subjects and all varieties of people. He spoke of
Kansas, India, China, Observatories of Bache, Maury,
Gould, Ticknor, Buchanan, Jefferson, Hamilton, Briinow,
Peters, Encke, Airy, Leverrier, Mrs. Somerville, and a host
of others. He talked incessantly, but with no incoherence.
He said that we had retrograded morally since he was in
America that we had strong men in the time of Jefferson.
In speaking of astronomers he said : " Gould quarrelled with
Herschel, but Gould was wrong. Maury has been very
useful, but, for the director of an astronomical observatory,
he has published some astonishing things in his " Geography
of the Sea."
In reference to this interview, Miss Mitchell has recently
said :
"Humboldt knew more of America than I did. It was
just at the time of the Albany Observatory quarrel, and he
told me where the prominent officers had gone when they
scattered."
It is pleasant for us that we can have a glimpse of Hum-
boldt's personal appearance through Miss Mitchell's eyes :
" He is handsome his hair is thin and very white his
eyes very blue. He has no teeth, and so his articulation is
indistinct, but his English was perfect. He wore black
clothes, a dark blue silk waistcoat, a white neck-cloth. He
is a little deaf, and so is Mrs. Somerville. He asked me
what instruments I had, and what I was doing, and when I
told him that I was interested in the variable stars, he said
I must go to Bonn, and see Agelander. I told him that I
454 MARIA MITCHELL.
wanted to go home, he said that Bonn was on my way
to London. When I came out he followed me, and insisted
that I should go to see Agelander."
From this interesting tour, involving so varied a view of
the European world, and so gratifying a recognition on the
part of its most eminent scientists, Miss Mitchell returned in
the month of June, 1858, to resume her simple and retired
life on the island of Nantucket. Here her studies and
services were continued on their old footing. In the spring
of 1860, her mother, Lydia Coleman Mitchell, died, after
some three years of failing strength, which followed a life of
uncommon activity and exemption from physical suffering.
In the brief autobiography written by Mr. Mitchell, and
already quoted from, we find the following description of the
beloved wife and mother :
"As she was only known to thee as early as middle life, I
may be permitted to speak of her person in youth. Her
form was perfect in its proportions, rather tall and slender,
and early, as in later life, she was very upright. Her step
was always short, and her motions quick. Her face was not
what would be called handsome. Her features were well-
formed, but her skin was slightly freckled. Her eyes were
her commanding feature. It was in these that the great
qualities of her mind and heart could be read. Her dress
was always according to the manner of Friends, she having
been for some time an overseer in the society, and clerk of
its meetings. White dresses were evidently her prevailing
taste while young, and in these she often appeared as elegant
in person as beautiful in form. She was an intense reader in
her youth. For the use of the books in two circulating
libraries she served each as librarian until she had read every
volume. The substance of her reading through the day
was related to her associates in the evening, myself (in the
years of courtship) being frequently of the number. The
cares of her family took the place of her books in later
years, but after her children reached maturity her reading
was resumed."
MARIA MITCHELL. 455
Clearly on the island of Nantucket, in those days, it did
not appear that the cultivation of intellectual gifts resulted in
incapacitating a woman for the bearing and rearing of a large
family.
In 1861 Mr. Mitchell retired from business, and left the
island, as he says : " without an unpaid debt outside of my
family." This removal was to Lynn, which he chose as a
residence partly because his daughter Maria wished to be
near Boston, and partly because the community had in it a
Quaker element, which promised him congenial worship and
sympathy.
From the small salary already mentioned by us Miss
Mitchell had been able to lay up money enough to make at
this time the purchase of a small house in Lynn, valued at
sixteen hundred and fifty dollars. In this house she now
resided for some years with her father, to whom had been
granted a pension of three hundred dollars per annum.
Maria was now able to earn five hundred dollars yearly by
computations. The pair lived comfortably on their own
resources, " only " says Miss Mitchell, " we were obliged to
keep a girl, for I, having to support myself by computing,
could not do housework."
After a residence of five years in Lynn, Miss Mitchell was
appointed professor of astronomy in Vassar College, Pough-
keepsie. She was at first reluctant, on her father's account,
to accept this position. The care of his declining years
rested upon her, as the only daughter who remained un-
married. Her father was now seventy years of age. She
could not leave him, and feared to take him with her lest the
change should prove prejudicial to him. Mr. Mitchell was,
on the contrary, very anxious that his daughter should
assume the duties of the office which was now pressed upon
her acceptance. She did so, and had every reason to be
satisfied with the result.
Mr. Mitchell survived this change of residence about four
years. In his autobiography he bears testimony both to the
intelligence of the Yassar pupils and to the uniform respect
456 MARIA MITCHELL.
with which they treated him. He says: "Among the
teachers and pupils I have made acquaintances that a prince
might covet."
Miss Mitchell found at Vassar an observatory already
built. This quaint establishment faces the southern point of
the college building, and forms, with its dome, a pretty
feature in the view of Vassar. It has three stories, the first
even with the ground, and the second attainable by a high
flight of stone steps. The ground floor is occupied by a
class-room, in which lessons are given, and a bedroom,
occupied by one or two of Miss Mitchell's pupils. On the
second floor is Miss Mitchell's sitting-room, a neat and
tasteful apartment, well furnished with books and pictures,
and containing a large astronomical clock, and a much-
valued bust of Mrs. Somerville, the gift of Frances Power
Cobbe. Above this is the observatory proper, with its large
telescope.
In the summer of 1869 Miss Mitchell joined the throng of
astronomical and other observers who were drawn to Bur-
lington, Iowa, by its position as a central point of the total
eclipse of the sun predicted to take place on the morning of
August 7. Several pupils from Vassar accompanied her. In
an article contributed by her to " Hours at Home," she gives
a graphic description both of the journey and the event.
The party from Vassar had brought their own instruments
with them. To adjust these for the occasion required both
labor and ingenuity. The scientific observation of an eclipse
is no holiday task, as we may gather from a few passages
quoted here and there from Miss Mitchell's paper :
" In preparing for an observation of time the astronomer
ascertains to a tenth of a second the condition of his chro-
nometer, not only how fast or how slow it is, but how much
that fastness or slowness varies from hour to hour. He notes
exactly the second and part of a second when the expected
event should arrive, and a short time before that he places
himself at the telescope. The assistant counts aloud the
half-second beats of the chronometer ; and the observer, with
MAEIA MITCHELL. 457
the eye upon the point to be watched, and the ear intent on
the assistant's voice, awaits the event.
" At length all was ready. The observers were at the tele-
scopes ; the regular count of the half-seconds began there
were some seconds of breathless suspense, and then the inky
blackness appeared on the burning limb of the sun. All
honor to my assistant, whose uniform count on and on, with
unwavering voice, steadied my nerves. We watched the
movement of the moon's black disk across the less black
spots on the sun's disk. As the moon moved on the crescent
soon became a narrower and narrower golden curve of light,
and as it seemed to break up into brilliant lines and points,
we knew that the total phase was only a few seconds off.
" The Mississippi assumed a leaden hue. A sickly green
spread over the landscape. Venus shone brightly on one
side of the sun, Mercury on the other, Arcturus was gleam-
ing overhead, Saturn was rising in the east. The neigh-
boring cattle began to low, the birds uttered a painful cry ;
fireflies twinkled in the foliage, and when the last ray of
light was extinguished a wave of sound came up from
the village below, the mingling of the subdued voices of the
multitude.
"Instantly the corona burst forth, a glory indeed! it en-
circled the sun with a soft light, and sent off streamers for mil-
lions of miles into space. And now it was quick work ! To
see what could be seen, to make notes, and to mark time, all
in less than three minutes, knowing all the time that narrow
limitation."
In 1873 Miss Mitchell again visited Europe, this time, she
says, for relaxation, which she seems to have found in visit-
ing various educational institutions, and especially in in-
specting the Imperial Observatory at Pultowa. Here she
was the guest of the Astronomer Struve. Her impressions
of Russia afterwards took shape in a lecture on St. Petersburg,
to which the writer has not had access. She is permitted,
however, to quote from some manuscript notes which Miss
Mitchell has preserved :
458 MARIA MITCHELL.
"The observatory was founded by (Emperor) Nicholas in
1838. It takes a despotic government to encourage science,
and Nicholas granted three hundred thousand pounds." The
income of the establishment at the time of her visit was only
twenty-five thousand dollars, which seemed to her niggardly
" after so magnificent a beginning." It is interesting to learn
from these notes that the large telescope used at this obser-
vatory is of the same manufacture and size as that used at the
observatory in Cambridge, Mass. This telescope was, she
found, devoted to the observation of double stars and period-
ical comets. A special drill was at this time in progress
with a view to the intended observation of the transit of
Venus in December, 1874, when a number of instruments,
and even the small buildings containing them, were to be
transported to the coast of Asia, where the observation could
most perfectly be made.
Miss Mitchell was glad to find in Mme. Struve a strenuous
advocate of the higher education of women. Despite the
claims and clamors of a baby, the intelligent mother found
much time to converse with her guest upon this theme, so
interesting to both ladies. " Mme. Struve says that a great
many women (in Russia) are studying medicine, but very
few study any other science. The reason is that other
science does not pay. Neither did medicine pay to women
until it was studied by them as a science. Ways open up
when they are steadily sought."
In the autumn of the year 1874 Miss Mitchell was elected
president of the Association for the Advancement of Women,
succeeding in this office Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, the first
president of the association, then entering upon the third
year of its existence. In this capacity Miss Mitchell pre-
sided over two of the annual congresses of the association,
of which the first was held in Syracuse, N. Y., and the second
in Philadelphia, in October of the Centenary of American
Independence.
Miss Mitchell's presidency proved a very fortunate one.
Contrary to her own anticipations she showed much execu-
MARIA MITCHELL. 459
tive efficiency in dealing with the perplexed business of the
congress, which was at this time overburdened by the num-
ber of papers presented, and the insufficiency of the time
allotted for their consideration. She had felt at the outset
much distrust of her own capacity as a presiding officer.
Her natural shyness and lifelong habits of retirement and
study seemed to her an unfit preparation for a service of so
public a character, requiring such readiness and variety of
resource. The result was quite otherwise, and in accordance
with the Scripture saying that " Wisdom is justified of all her
children."
Miss Mitchell's figure and face were in themselves im-
pressive, the one tall and erect, the other characterized
by thought and observation. Pier fine hair, already touched
with silver, seemed a crown of dignity, while her penetrating,
yet kindly eyes, expressed at once determination and benevo-
lence. Her ruling was always careful, her influence pacific
and harmonizing. Her adherence to principles made her
always direct and uncompromising, while no personal ambi-
tion or prejudice darkened or distorted her relations with her
fellows. Her name had lent persuasion to the invitation by
which the association had originally been called together.
Her presence and influence greatly aided and furthered all
that was solid and good in the undertaking. Her retirement
from the office at the end of her second term of service was
greatly regretted by the whole body.
One feature introduced by Miss Mitchell into the opening
meeting of the congress was the substitution of a silent
prayer, after the manner of Friends, for the vocal prayer which
had introduced the proceedings on former occasions. This
change was much approved, and the silent prayer has been
retained in subsequent years.
Miss Mitchell has never been willing to take upon herself
again the duties of president. As chairman of the committee
on science, she continues to give very efficient aid to the
association, and no congress of the Association for the Ad-
vancement of Women passes without receiving a substantial
460 MARIA MITCHELL.
proof of this interest in a paper from her pen, or from that
of one of her pupils.
Besides the article on the eclipse of 1869, already cited,
Miss Mitchell has contributed, at intervals, to " Silliman's
Journal," and to the "American Journal of Arts and
Sciences." From the latter have been reprinted " Notes on
the Satellites of Saturn, "and from the former, a series of
observations of the satellites of Jupiter, extending from the
winter of 1870-71 to June 19, 1877.
Miss Mitchell has now occupied the chair of professor of
astronomy at Vassar College for seventeen years. During
this period the Yassar Observatory has acquired for itself a
recognized place in the annals of scientific study. Many able
teachers of mathematics have been trained within its walls.
In response to a question lately asked her about the results
of her professional labors, Miss Mitchell said : " The pupils
of Vassar are of great promise. They have been a won-
derful cheer to me." She had not previously known much
of young girls as students, and was surprised to find in them
so much of latent power.
To the same questioner Miss Mitchell has kindly given the
following outline of a working-day at Vassar :
" Morning. I receive two classes.
"Afternoon. I prepare for the next day, and copy observa-
tions.
" Evening. I observe for two hours if the weather is fine.
My assistant watches the sun-spots daily.
"Night ? Formerly, I worked a good deal at night, but of
late, I plan my observing for the evenings, making observa-
tions on Saturn at present (February, 1883) and on some
other planet when that is in a good position in the evening."
Miss Mitchell is now in the sixty-fifth year of her age. In
her mature life she has only once suffered from severe illness,
and in this case her indisposition was attributed to malaria.
Her devotion to scientific pursuits has therefore been sec-
onded by vigorous bodily health, which as yet shows no
symptom of decline. Her carriage is still erect and stately,
MARIA MITCHELL. 461
and her dark eyes retain their penetrating but kindly glance.
She does not adhere to the denomination of Friends, either in
her form of dress or of worship. Nevertheless, a certain
simplicity of taste and directness of speech are marks (valu-
able ones, we think) of her early training in a Quaker church
and household.
In her college life Miss Mitchell has been a valued friend
to pupils, teachers, and president. Although averse to
frivolity, she sympathizes in all the reasonable pleasures of
the young people, and has herself a freshness of feeling and
enjoyment of life which can only accompany a wise use both
of time and of power. That she may long continue in her
honored position must be the earnest wish of all who, know-
ing her worth, have at heart the interests of science and the
higher education of women.
CHAPTER XX.
LUCRETIA MOTT.
BY MARY CLEMMER.
A. Rare Example of Womanhood Ancestry of Lucretia Mott The Women
of Nantucket Celebrating the Fourth of July A Nantucket Tea-
party Lucretia Mott's Marriage A Marvellously Mated Pair A
Perfect Wedded Life of Fifty-seven Years Power as a Preacher
Abhorrence of Slavery How the Colored People Revered Her Name
Surrounded by a Mob Claiming and Receiving Protection from a RufRan
Dauntless Bravery Reception in England Mrs. Mott's Domestic
Life Devotion to Her Children Her Thrift, Industry, and Economy
Her Home a Refuge for Runaway Slaves The Meeting-place of Re-
formers Last Years of Her Life A Great Philanthropist, Great
Preacher, and Perfect Woman.
NY attendant upon the Woman's Suffrage meetings
of the United States to the year 1880, among
the many remarkable women on the platform,
might have seen one who, in her combined
attributes of person, mind, and spirit, was the
most remarkable of all ; and this woman was
Lucretia Mott. In this place the most remark-
able thing about her was the atmosphere created
around her by her unique and exalted personality.
Born of the spirit, it was felt by the indifferent and
the antagonistic, even when it could not be analyzed. If one
was armed with opposing views, mailed in the mind that was
in St. Paul concerning women, it was easy enough to antago-
nize the brilliant esprit of Mrs. Stanton, the aggressive wit
of Susan B. Anthony, the free thought of Ernestine L. Rose ;
but Morgan Dix or St. Paul himself would instinctively
have been mollified, if not persuaded, by that winning,
womanly figure, so essentially feminine in its aspect, with
462
LUCRETIA MOTT. 463
its Quaker garb and meekly-folded kerchief; by the dark,
appealing eyes and gentle mouth, whose benignant sweet-
ness robbed dominant chin and lofty brow of all aggressive
harshness.
Wherever she was she brought with her an atmosphere of
good-will which won everybody. Since her death, a gentle-
man who was never a lover of Woman's Suffrage Conven-
tions, said : " I never felt the slightest antagonism to any-
thing she said, no matter how much I differed from her."
Who could feel any antagonism to such a lovely mother as
that, "whatever she might see fit to believe?"
She was an illustrious example of the potency of per-
sonality in its finest and rarest development. Not her
opinions but she herself was the force that swayed mankind.
Through the alembic of such a nature beliefs and deeds alike
rose to the highest altitude of character, and through it, and
from it, fell in perpetual benediction upon her day and gener-
ation.
I present her to her compatriots, not merely as a philan-
thropist or a reformer, but in every attribute of character and
of action as one of the rarest examples of womanhood
America has yet produced. A woman so exalted herself
that all other women may adore and follow her, not for one
time, but for all time. Nothing could have been more fitting
to her character and her future than that Lucretia Mott
should have been born on the island of Nantucket, where
she first saw this world's light January 3, 1793. She came
from the oldest stock that peopled this memorable island ;
on her father's side from James Coffin and Thomas Macy,
who from Martha's Vineyard and Salisbury, Massachusetts,
came to Nautican in 1659, when it claimed as its inhabitants
three thousand Indians. Thomas Macy fled from the govern-
ment of Massachusetts Bay, that wished to punish him for
being a Quaker, by branding him with iron, scourging him
at the pillory, and cropping his ears. He preferred the
Indians and Nantucket.
The Quaker poet of the island sings of him :
464 LUCRETIA MOTT.
" Far round the bleak and stormy Cape
The vent'rous Macy passed,
And on Nantucket's naked isle,
Drew up his boat at last."
The Coffin family also claimed among its numbers Sir Isaac
Coffin, who was an admiral in the British Nav}^. He was the
son of a Boston Tory, and, with the Nantucket Coffins, was
descended from an ancient North Devonshire English family.
Sir Isaac left Boston for England in 1773, where after various
vicissitudes he was made a baronet in 1804, and full admiral
in 1814. As late as 1826 he visited the island of Nantucket,
and endowed with a fund of twenty-five hundred pounds
sterling the Coffin School which flourishes there to-day. The
father of Lucretia Coffin Thomas Coffin came from a
sturdy race of sea-captains, and, like hundreds of others of
these island captains, pursued the whale in distant seas, while
his wife and little daughters kept the house, kept the shop,
and made periodical commercial voyages to Boston, engaged
in the traffic of oil and candles for provisions and goods of
merchandise. We need not wonder that the woman who as
a child began life in this wise was as careful and thrifty at
eighty years of age as she was at thirteen.
From her mother Lucretia Mott was descended from Peter
Folger, who was another of the original proprietors of Nan-
tucket. He was a remarkable man, the father of the mother
of Benjamin Franklin. His name is still found on deeds
transmitting land from the, natives, it flourishes in family
relics and in family titles, and is honorably borne by the
present Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, Hon.
Charles J. Folger. Inheriting the positive mental and phys-
ical characteristics of a positive race, trained under the dis-
tinctive conditions of development which are sure to stamp
individuality upon any character which receives their force-
ful impressions, Lucretia Coffin grew to her twelfth year
on this island of the sea. A tiny span were these years
in her long and illustrious life, yet it was long enough to
allow the young girl's growth in all the sturdy elements,
LUCRETIA MOTT.
LUCRETIA MOTT. 467
and all the great principles of broad thinking and high
living which distinguished her afterwards. In these few
brief years she came to a perfect consciousness of her love
of knowledge, her love of truth, her love of justice, her
love of the oppressed, of the toiling, for all who had need
of her, and to a perfect acquaintance with all the practical
duties of life. Mrs. Mott writes of these early years in her
diary : " I always loved the good in childhood and desired to
do right. In those early years I was actively useful to my
mother, who, in the absence of my father on his long voyages,
was engaged in the mercantile business, often going to Boston
to purchase goods in exchange for oil and candles, the staple
of the island.
" The exercise of women's talents in this line, as well as
the general care which devolved on them in the absence of
their husbands, tended to develop and strengthen them men-
tally and physically."
This continent could scarcely present another spot whose
conditions of atmosphere, of intelligence, of self-reliance, of
thrift, would all tend to so unique a training, to so distinctive
a life for its women as does Nantucket. It is a foregone fact
that it produces men and women of great intelligence, but
outside of that it is equally true that every Nantucketer is
marked by a quality of mind and habit of thought essentially
his or her own. In contact with the world this may merge
into a larger cosmopolitan life till it seems to be lost till
some fortunate touch of time or place recalls the old memo-
ries, and for the moment the Nantucketer is as perfectly him-
self again as if he had never left his native island.
But a few years since the writer of these lines chanced to
be at Nantucket on the Fourth of July. The historic day
was celebrated in the Fair Grounds about a mile from the
town, and it was celebrated solely by the women of Nan-
tucket. Not only did they move thither in their open carts,
laden with hampers of deliciously-cooked food, with viands
enough to supply a small regiment ; but beside these consola-
tions for the stomach, which they dispensed later with a liberal
468 LUCRETIA MOTT.
hand, they bore the Constitution of the United States and
various orations studiously thought and written out, which,
in addition to extemporaneous addresses, they delivered to
the crowd on the sward with fervent unction and no halting
eloquence. They mounted the platform of their large, shaded
pavilion, and with the ruddy moors stretching away to the
south shore, and the monotone of the waves breaking on San
Coty Head, their voices rose and spread far away into the
purple space, in words of enthusiasm for truth, for temper-
ance, for freedom, for country. Do you w r onder that Lucretia
Mott, born of such a race, nurtured in such an atmosphere,
even at eighteen years of age was an incipient preacher, an
inspired seer?
A few days later your friend was invited to a'tea-party, in-
vited out of human good-will, for she sat a stranger to every
person at the table, and every person but herself was a
native of the island of Nantucket. After delicious strawber-
ries, biscuit, cake, and tea had been dispensed, the hostess,
not stirring from her seat at the head of the table, said to
her guests still gathered around it, " Now the literary ex
ercises of the Tea will begin." Indeed she began them
herself by repeating two quotations of poetry, adding,
"Friend Anne, can thee tell me where I found that?"
Strange to say friend Anne could not tell, from so remote
and difficult a source had it been extracted. But friend
Hannah knew all about it, and its antique author also.
This was the beginning of a pastime covering a wide range
of research and of cultivation. It was a tilt of memory, a
race of wits, an aesthetic garnishing of the mind and the hour
that left no room for gossip about neighbors or servants.
I recall the incident as I read in a brief record of Lucretia
Mott, made at the time of her death, that when she weighed
less than eighty pounds and had lived more than eighty
years, her daily pastime was to sit reciting to herself the
poetry which she had learned generations before in old Nan-
tucket. In the cool of the evening, she would sit repeat-
ing in tones of liquid sweetness whole pages of " Cowper's
LUCRETIA MOTT. 469-
Task," "Young's Night Thoughts," and of Milton when his
lofty strains did not jar upon her wider and clearer sense of
justice. Through her long life her sermons and addresses
were garnished with the tine and eloquent citations from
standard authors which she began to commit to memory, ac-
cording to universal habit, in her girlish days at Nan tucket.
Susan B. Anthony tells us that when she had passed her
eighty-seventh year she spent an entire evening until after
eleven o'clock reading aloud to her household Arnold's ex-
quisite poem "The Light of Asia."
Those who recall that deep and tender voice may thrill in
memory at its moving sweetness, while to the strong, great
souls gathered about her this woman of more than eighty-
seven years read the parting words of the Lord Siddartha to
his w r ife and love, Yascklhara, as he left her to go forth to
save the world :
" Comfort thee, dear ! he said, if comfort lives
In changeless love ; for though thy dreams may be
Shadows of things to come, and though the gods
Are shaken in their seats, and though the world
Stands nigh to know some way of help,
Yet whatsoever fall to thee and me,
Be sure I loved and love Yasodhara."
" I will depart," he spake, " the hour is come !
... I lay aside these realms
Which wait the gleaming of my naked sword ;
My chariot shall not roll with bloody wheels
From victory to victory, till earth
Wears the red record of my name. I choose
To tread its paths with patient, stainless feet,
Making its dust my bed, its loneliest wastes
My dwelling, and its meanest things my mates :
Clad in no prouder garb than outcasts wear,
Fed with no meats save what the charitable
Give of their will, sheltered by no more pomp
Than the dim cave lends or the jungle bosh.
This will I do because the woful cry
Of life and all flesh living cometh up
29
470 LUCRETIA MOTT.
Into ray ears, and all my soul is full
Of pity for the sickness of this world ;
Which I will heal if healing may be found
By uttermost renouncing and strong strife."
" This will I do who have a realm to lose
Because I love my realm, because my heart
Beats with each throb of all the hearts that ache,
Known and unknown, these that are mine and those,
Which shall be mine, a thousand million more
Saved by this sacrifice I offer now."
It is like seeing Lucretia Mott anew to recall her reading
these lines, so completely do they repeat in essence the spirit
that was in her and that moved her through her whole exist-
ence in her relations to the human race.
In 1708 a, woman, Mary Starbuck, called "the Great
Merchant," a woman of deep spiritual convictions as well as
executive thrift, proved not only her executive ability to
engage in the commerce of the world, but was in her own
personality potent enough to win over the entire population
of Nantucket to the faith of the Friends or, in other words,
converted the entire colony to Quakerism.
The momentum of this woman penetrates to-day the mind,
the manners, the very atmosphere of Nantucket. In no other
place in America is its womanhood so distinct, original and
independent, both in thought and action, as on the island of
Nantucket.
Thus Lucretia Mott in the singular sweetness of her nature,
in the equally singular force of her character, the freedom of
her thought, was but the natural sequence of the conditions
in which she was born and nurtured. Her heredity, her
training, the very atmosphere of ber island home made her
what she was. Neither sex nor opposition, contumely nor
persecution, ever lessened one iota the distinctive quality of
her convictions, the breadth of her comprehension, nor the
beneficence of her work as a human being.
When thirteen years of age Lucretia Coffin and an elder
sister were sent to " The Nine Partners," a Friends' boarding
LUCRETIA MOTT. 471
school, in Duchess County, New York. There she remained
two years without a vacation. At fifteen, she became an
assistant teacher in the school, and at the end of the second
year became teacher with the opportunity to offer to a young
sister the means of education. Another teacher at " The
Nine Partners " was young James Mott, the son of an old
Quaker family from Long Island. The two, the young
man and the maid, true counterparts in temperament and in
spirit, in obedience to Nature's primal law, in the beauty of
their youth, loved and wedded.
Lucretia Coffin was in her eighteenth year, and James
Mott had just passed his twentieth, when they entered into
the closest compact of life-long lovers, which with them lasted
more than fifty-seven years.
In speaking of this marvellously mated pair, Eobert Coll-
yer says : " If James and Lucretia had gone around the
world in search of a mate, I think they would have made the
choice that heaven made for them. They had lived together
more than forty years when I first knew them. I thought
then, as I think now, that it was the most perfect wedded
life to be found on earth. They were both of a most beau-
tiful presence. He, large, fair, with kindly blue eyes and
regular features. She, slight, with dark eyes and hair. Both
of the sunniest spirit ; both free to take their own way, as
such fine souls always are, yet their lives were so perfectly
one that neither of them led or followed the other, so far as
one could observe, by the breadth of a line. He could speak
well in a slow, wise way, when the spirit moved him, and the
words were all the choicer because they were so few. But
his greatness for he was a great man lay still in that fine,
silent manhood, which would break into fluent speech while
you sat with him by the bright wood fire in winter, while the
good wife went on with her knitting, putting it swiftly down
a score of times in an hour to pound a vagrant spark which
had snapped on the carpet, or as we sat under the trees in the
summer twilight. Then James Mott would open his heart to
those he loved, and touch you with wonder at the beauty of
472 LUCRETIA MOTT.
his thoughts ; or tell you stories of the city where, when a
young man, he lived ; or of the choice humor of ancient
Quakers, who went through the world esteeming laughter
vain, and yet set the whole world laughing at their own quaint
ways and curious fancies."
But the wonderful unison of spirit and action which made
the married life of James and Lucretia Mott one long har-
mony, complete in every part, was not the mere accident of
congenial temperaments coming together in one house, or of
two happy tempers acting together under one name, but be-
yond everything it was the result of their oneness of moral
purpose, their oneness in devotion to what they believed to
be right, their oneness of sympathy with the oppressed and
wronged everywhere.
Later in life, when attending the marriage of friends, it was
the custom of Lucretia Mott after the ceremony to speak a
few words of counsel to the bridal pair. On one such occa-
sion she told the young couple that she owed the happiness
of her own married life to the fact that her husband and her-
self were one in the deep interest they felt in the sacred
cause of wronged humanity.
She said to a friend : " James and I have loved each other
more than ever since we worked together for a great cause."
Benignantly beautiful in age, her beauty in youth was an
inspiration and delight to all who beheld it. Her figure was
slight and petite. Her features delicate and regular. Her
eyes, widely set and full, were of that limpid-gray that deep-
ens and darkens into black when moved by the excitement of
sympathy, or the animation of conversation. Beside her
husband, who was tall and muscular, she looked a sprite in
her simple dove-colored dress, with the white muslin ker-
chief crossed upon her breast, and the quaint little Quaker
cap framing the noble and beautiful face.
John G. Whittier, who met her first when she was forty
years of age, says of her : " I first met her in the convention
of 1833, which formed the American Anti-Slavery Society.
A woman then comparatively young, singularly beautiful in
LUCRETIA MOTT. 473
feature and expression, dressed in the plain but not inelegant
garb of a Friend, she sat among us, quietly listening, occa-
sionally giving in a. few well-chosen words, her thought on
some point under discussion."
On their marriage James and Lucretia Mott joined her
family in Philadelphia, James entering business with his
father-in-law, Thomas Coffin. The partnership was of short
duration, for Thomas Coffin died suddenly, leaving his widow
in straitened circumstances with five children to support.
Of this season of trial Lucretia writes : tf The fluctuations
of the commercial world, owing to the ' Embargo,' and the
war of 1812, the death of my father and the support of five
children devolving on my mother, surrounded us with diffi-
culties. We resorted to various modes of obtaining a com-
fortable living at one time engaged in the dry-goods busi-
ness, and then resumed the charge of a school, and for
another year I was engaged in teaching." She adds : " These
trials in early life were not without their good effect in dis-
ciplining the mind and leading it to set a just estimate on
worldly pleasures."
Later, James Mott entered the cotton trade, but in the
heyday of financial success relinquished it from conscientious
motives. As his wife had resolved in her devotion to the en-
slaved " to abstain from all slave-grown products," so James
Mott relinquished a remunerative business because its profits
were possible only by slave labor. He finally engaged in the
wool business, and through that won the competency that
gave leisure, travel, books and cultivation to the later years
of this intellectual and devoted pair.
After living a life of concentrated devotion to father and
mother, brothers and sisters, husband and children, till she
had lived twenty-five years, she touched unaware the key-
note of her special power, of her everlasting fame. Of that
crisis in her life she says :
" At twenty-five years of age, surrounded with a family
and many cares, I felt called to a more public life of devotion
to duty, and engaged in the ministry in the Society of Friends,
474 LUCRETIA MOTT.
receiving every encouragement from those in authority until
the separation amongst us in 1827, when my convictions led
me to adhere to those who believed in the sufficiency of light
within, resting on truth for authority rather than authority
for truth.
" I searched the Scriptures daily, often finding a construc-
tion of the text wholly different from that which had been
pressed on our acceptance. The highest evidence of a sound
faith being the practical life of the Christian, I have felt a
far greater interest in the moral movements of the age than
in any theological discussion. . . . My sympathy was early
enlisted for the poor slaves. The ministry of Elias Hicks
and others on the subject of the unrequited labor of slaves,
and their example in refusing the products of slave labor, all
had their effect in awakening a strong feeling in their behalf.
" The unequal condition of women in society also early
impressed my mind. Learning while at school that the
charge for the education of girls was the same as for boys,
and that when they became teachers women received but half
as much as men for their services, the injustice of this was
so apparent that I early resolved to claim for my sex all that
an impartial Creator had bestowed. . . . The temperance
reform early engaged my attention, and for more than twenty-
five years I have practised total abstinence from all intoxicat-
ing drinks. . . . The cause of peace has had a share of my
efforts. . . . The oppression of the working-classes by ex-
isting monopolies and the lowness of wages often engaged
my attention. I have held many meetings with them, and
heard their appeals with compassion and a great desire for a
radical change in the system which makes the rich richer and
the poor poorer. . . . But the millions of downtrodden
classes, being the greatest sufferers, the most oppressed class,
I felt bound to plead their cause in season and out of season,
. . . This duty was impressed upon me at the time I con-
secrated myself to that gospel which anoints to preach deliv-
erance to the captive, ' to set at liberty them that are
bruised/ "
LUCKETIA MOTT. 475
Thus we read in her own simple words the confession of
her faith and the statement of her " call " as a preacher of the
gospel. For perfectly as she performed the humblest duty
of a woman's life, exalted as she was as a fragile woman,
her claim upon the remembrance of posterity is that of a
great-brained, great-hearted philanthropist, a consecrated,
self-forgetting preacher of the truth.
She belonged to that rarest, highest order of human be-
ing whose real potency lies in sheer personality in a per-
sonality, penetrating, pervading, all-inspired, and consecrated.
Lucre tia Mott was in herself a perfect illustration of what
pure spiritual force may be and do in a single personality.
As an embodiment of spiritual force she was the supreme
American woman of her century.
The key to her power and to her place as a public preacher
in the ministry of the Friends is found in her primal declara-
tion : " My convictions led me to adhere to the sufficiency of
the light within us, resting on truth as authority, not on
authority as truth." This declaration of her faith set her at
once beyond the pale of man's authority or theology, as ex-
pressed in the canons of the Universal Church. It left her
unreached by the dictum of St. Paul, as interpreted by his
brethren. Not that she ignored St. Paul, or believed that
she disobeyed him ; but reading his eloquent declarations by
the illumination of her own God-seeking spirit, she stopped
to inquire of no man what she should or should not do. If
she did not desire the praise of men, neither did she fear
their censure, nor heed with spiritual awe their dogmas. Not
that she was puffed up in her own conceit, but because she
sought but two things, mental freedom, spiritual sight, that
through these she might consecrate all that was hers to the
service of humanity and of God. " How," she cried, " can
I follow the light of God without a free, fearless, single-
minded use of the powers He gives me ? " How she should
use these powers she inquired of no man. The history of all
past ages forbade her to do so. Again she declared : " Prov-
ing all things, trying all things, and holding fast only to
476 LUCRETIA MOTT.
that which is good, is the great religious duty of this age.
... I desire to escape the narrow walls of a particular
church, and to live under the open sky, in the broad light,
looking far and wide, seeing with my own eyes, hearing with
my own ears, and following truth meekly but resolutely , how-
ever arduous or solitary may be the path in which she leads.
... I thank God that I live at a time and unde? cir-
cumstances which make it my duty to lay open my whole
mind with freedom and sincerity.'* At a later day we may
thank God that searching the Scriptures daily, daily seek-
ing only to know the truth and to do her duty, she sought
concerning them the command of the inward witness in-
stead of the mandates of men, martinets of theology, who,
in the name of St. Paul, would have stifled at birth the spon-
taneous eloquence and consecrated utterances of this gentle
prophetess of the Friends. When she was " called " to speak,
at eighteen years of age, at the funeral of a friend, she
obeyed the command without pausing to argue her right to
that obedience. But more than thirty years afterwards, in a
National Convention held in Philadelphia, she defended the
position which so quietly yet so firmly she took in her early
youth. After a clergyman had arisen in the open convention
quoting numerous passages from the Scriptures to prove that
rf no lesson is more plainly and frequently taught in the Bible
than woman's subjection," and Mrs. Tracy Cutter had replied
in these words : " It is a pity that those who would recom-
mend the Bible as the revealed will of the all-wise benevolent
Creator, should uniformly quote it on the side of tyranny and
oppression," Mrs. Mott arose and said : " It is not Christianity
but priestcraft that has subjected woman as we find her. . . .
" Instead of taking the truths of the Bible in corroboration
of the right, the practice has been to turn over its pages to
find example and authority for the w r rong for the existing
abuses of society Even admitting that Paul did
mean preach when he used that term, he did not say that the
recommendation of that time was to be applicable to the
churches of all after-time. . . . We should find, comparing
LUCRETIA MOTT. 477
text with text, that a very different construction might be put
upon them. ... In the same epistle to the same church,
Paul gave express directions how women shall prophesy,
which he defines to be preaching, ' speaking to men ' ' for ex-
hortation and comfort.' He recognized them in prophesying
and praying. The word translated servant is applied to a
man in one part of the Scriptures, and in another it is trans-
lated 'minister.' Now that same word you will find might- be
applied to Phosbe, a deaconess. ... In this same epistle the
word prophesying should be preaching preaching godliness."
..." On the occasion of the first miracle which it is said
Christ wrought, a woman went before him and said, ' What-
soever he biddeth you do, that do.' The woman of Samaria
said, 'Come and see the man who told me all the things that
ever I did.' . . . The language of the Bible is beautiful in
its repetition ' Upon my servants and my handmaidens I
will pour out my spirit and they shall prophesy.' "
As early as 1848 , in the convention held at Rochester, Lucretia
Mott arose and said, " Many of the opposers of Woman's Rights
who bid us obey the bachelor St. Paul themselves reject his
counsel. He advises them not to marry, but even a clergy-
man will marry twice or thrice. In general answer I will
quote, ' One is your Master, even Christ.' "
These words of Lucretia Mott are given at length, not as
argument to prove her right to preach, but to prove the spirit
in which she preached.
True in spirit and in fact as these utterances defining her atti-
tude as a public teacher are, they do not and cannot annul the
great fact of nature which makes the duties of priesthood in-
compatible with the functions of ordinary womanhood. But
equally true and equally potent is the fact that from the be-
ginning of time exceptional women have at intervals appeared
in the human race, as if to prove the primal unity of its cre-
ation in the likeness of G-od, women who by governing con-
ditions and special individual gifts have been called forth from
the common lot to fill an uncommon place and to do an un-
common work. All the way down the centuries ecclesiastical
478 LUCRETIA MOTT.
men have protested and tyrannized and told women that they
were nothing if they were not inferior and subordinate. St.
Paul's words have been wrested from their corollaries by ar-
bitrary men to command the subjection and silence of women.
Yet the uplifted woman-seer has never ceased to see the
heavenly vision ; the woman-oracle has never been dumb.
The prophetess has always existed as well as the prophet ;
her sublime strain penetrates all the ages. More than six
hundred years before Homer was born, Miriam joined her
lofty chorus to the glad song of Moses. " And Miriam the
prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand ;
and all the women went out with her with timbrels and
dances." The women of Israel were gathered together not in
the house, for they "went out," and Miriam the prophetess
went before, not a trembling woman, but a rapturous leader
of the exultant women who followed her. " Sing ye to the
Lord for he hath triumphed gloriously ! " she cried ; and,
strange to tell, there was no Knox Little, nor Morgan Dix
standing in the road to command silence and order all these
inferior beings back into the house, lest the very happiness
of their voices bring reproach on Israel.
The second woman elevated by the Almighty to public
dignity and supreme authority was Deborah. "And Deborah,
a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, she judged Israel at that
time." How lofty the femininity, how profound the tender-
ness of her declaration : " The inhabitants of the villages
ceased, they ceased in Israel until that I, Deborah, arose,
that I arose a mother in Israel ! "
She was prophetess, she was judge, she was the leader
of the tribes, but of no one of these functions of authority
did she boast. " I, Deborah, arose a MOTHER in ISRAEL,"
she declared. In her soul the primal womanly function
compassed and covered all other authority. Great in the
motherhood of wisdom, she judged Israel for forty years.
What significance we find in the last words recorded of her :
" And the land had REST for forty years." It requires no
tension of the imagination to think of Lucretia Mott as a
LUCRETIA MOTT. 479
ruler and mother in Israel for forty years. We go back to
these women whose greatness reaches us from the morning
twilight of time. We pause over the meagre records of in-
spired and consecrated women who stand august and holy in
every age, how often sanctified by suffering, exalted by mar-
tyrdom, and while we gaze we marvel that even to-day so
many consecrated men delight to give ecclesiastically the
narrowest instead of the broadest, the most humiliating in-
stead of the most ennobling interpretation of woman's place
and woman's work in the Christian Church.
Clergymen delight to declare often and eloquently the
immeasurable debt owed by women to the Christian Church.
Woman owes everything to the life and words of the Lord
Jesus Christ, who, in all his earthly life and ministry, never
uttered a word that could wound the sensitive heart of a
woman ; who never did a deed to depress or humiliate her in
the scale of being ; who never lectured her from the basis of
sex ; who never told her she was inferior because she was a
woman, but who always addressed her as a human being.
Yes, woman owes everything to Jesus Christ, but how little
she owes to his masculine interpreters ! Christianity as in-
terpreted by men owes to women a debt it can never
pay. How much more has she done for Christianity than
Christianity, as promulgated by men, has ever done for
her!
Suppose a part of the breath and the words now expended
by clergymen in reiterating St. Paul's injunction of silence,
and in preaching woman's inferiority, biblical subjection, and
man's everlasting supremacy, were sometimes used as well
in recalling the name of Miriam, the exalted place of Deborah,
the self-abnegation of Priscilla, who, Paul says, "For
my life laid down her own neck;" of Persis who labored
much in the Lord ; of " the elect lady " of St. John ; of the
four prophetesses of Cesareea? If the minds of men who are
church-members and ministers turned with half the celerity
to these honored names and lives that they do to the per-
petual assertion of their own supremacy and authority, they
480 LUCRETIA MOTT.
would gain unawares a co-operation of women in the service
of the church of which now they do not even dream.
Such now is the mental activity, the intellectual and spirit-
ual aspiration of universal womanhood, that no cause, not
even that of religion, no organization, not even that of the
church, is, or can be, helped by men constantly reminding
woman of her degradation through Eve and her consequent
subjection and inferiority to man. The sooner ministers
accept this fact, and act from it, the better it will be for the
Christian Church and the entire human race. Live and let
live most of all in the Gospel, wherein all are declared to
be one in Christ should be the primal and ever-present
desire of every Christian heart and mind.
Thus lived and preached Lucretia Mott. She was one in
that small but illustrious line of heaven-ordained women
ministers which holds in exalted memory the names of
Susanna Wesley, of Mary Fletcher, Dinah Evans, Eachel
Southcote, Elizabeth Fry, Margaret Von Cott, and Sarah
Smiley.
Robert Collyer, who knew her well, said of her, " It was
not possible that a woman like Lucretia Mott should keep
silent in the churches, because that great brain was created
to think, and the noble heart to beat through, making and
moulding speech, and those fine dark eyes to see what the
prophets see.
" And had she not been reared among those who have
always held the woman to be a minister of God as truly as
the man? . . . An old friend in Lancaster County told
me once of his first hearing her in the early days when she
was almost unknown. ... He had had a dreary time
with the Friends that day, but at last a woman stood up he
had not seen before, whose presence touched him with strange,
new expectations. She looked, he said, as if she had no
great hold on life, and began to speak in low tones, with just
a touch of hesitation as of one who is feeling after her
thought, and there was a tremor as if she felt the burden of
the Spirit. But she found her way out of all this, and then
LUCRETIA MOTT. 481
he began to hold his breath. He had not heard such speak-
ing in all his life. It was so born of all conviction, so surely
out of the inner heart of the truth, and so radiant with the
inward light for which he had been waiting, that he went
home feeling as he supposed they must have felt in the old
time who thought that they had heard an angel."
Robert Collyer goes on to say, "I once heard such an out-
pouring. It was at a wood-meeting up among the hills. She
was well on in years then, but the old fire still burned clear,
and God's breath touched her out of heaven and she pro-
phesied. . . . For two hours she held the multitude
spell-bound, waiting on her words. . . . I have said she
prophesied. No other term would answer to her speech.
Her eyes had seen the glory of the coming of the Lord and
she testified of that she had seen ; and this was all the more
wonderful to me, because it was the habit of her mind in her
later years to reason from premise to conclusion. . . .
But she had seen a vision sitting there in the August splendor,
with the voice whispering of God's presence in the trees, and
the vision had sent the heart high above the brain.
" I think I should not quite have known my friend but for
that wood-meeting, as we should not quite have known Christ
but for the Sermon on the Mount."
An illustration of her power as a preacher despite all pre-
judice is given in an incident which occurred after the World's
Convention. Returning from Europe in a merchant- vessel,
on the voyage Mrs. Mott was moved to hold a religious
meeting among the great number of Irish emigrants in the
steerage. But they objected. They would not hear a woman
preach, for women priests were not allowed in the church.
But the spirit that was pressing on " the woman preacher "
was not to be prevented from delivering its message. She
asked that the emigrants might be asked to come together
to consider with her whether they would have a meeting.
That seemed fair and just, so they came. She explained
to them how different her idea of a meeting was from a church
service to which they were accustomed ; that she had no
482 LUCRETIA MOTT.
thought of saying anything derogatory to that service, nor
of the priests who ministered to them ; that her heart had
been drawn to them in sympathy as they were leaving their
old home for the new one in America; and that she had
wanted to address them as to their habits and aims in their
everyday life in such a way as to help them in the land of
strangers to which they were going. And then asking them
if they would listen (and they were already listening, because
her gracious words and voice had so entranced them that they
could not help it) she said she would give an outline of what
she wanted to say at the meeting. So she was drawn on by
the silent sympathy she had secured until the whole of the
Spirit's message was delivered and only the keenest-witted
of her Catholic hearers waked up to the fact as they were
going out that they had listened to the preaching of the
woman priest after all.
William Adams, a Friend, of Philadelphia, at his death, in
1858, left a diary in which are recorded many of his impres-
sions of Lucretia Mott's ministry as he had sat under it at the
Cherry and Race Street Meeting back to 1841.
Under date of third month, 1841, he writes : " At meeting
this morning there were several speakers, Lucretia Mott as
usual in her plain, close, searching style."
"Eleventh month. Evening meeting was much crowded.
I should say more than two thousand persons assembled to
hear Lucretia Mott deliver one of her most thrilling dis-
courses previous to her leaving the city on a religious visit.
"First month, 1842. Lucretia Mott arose, and in her
usual felicitous manner, explained many texts of Scripture
relative to the atonement in a spiritual sense, too often con-
sidered outwardly.
" Second month. Lucretia Mott arose with the text :
' To do good and to communicate, forget not, for with such
sacrifices God is well pleased.' "
" Sixth month. Lucretia Mott was favored to preach the
Gospel to the heathen in an edifying manner. I am willing
to bear witness to the savor of her testimony on my spirit,
LUCRETIA MOTT. 483
believing that she is commissioned to preach the Gospel as it
is in Jesus.
" Second month, 1845. r That precious handmaid of the
Lord, Lucretia Mott. Great has been her exercise and devo-
tion in the cause of the slave ; may her reward be sure.
Thou precious lamb, thou hast known what it is to be in perils
through false brethren, and to be persecuted for righteous-
ness' sake, and thine is the kingdom of heaven. Let me bear
testimony to thy edifying discourses, and be permitted to say
that I believe thou art not far from the kingdom. Let this
record stand to enduring generations. Amen."
One year later he wrote : " Third month, 1846. Lucretia
Mott occupied most of the meeting with an edifying discourse
before eleven hund, -^1 people. Lucretia, thou beloved hand-
maid of the Lord i Great is thy faith, and great are thy
persecutions."
The first of the persecutions mentioned by her devout
friend in his diary were those that came from her following
Elias Hicks in the division of the Society of Friends. This
father of reform before the year 1825 preached against slavery
in its chosen strongholds, Maryland and Virginia. At that
early day he stood unflinchingly for women's rights, declaring
that under the law there were prophetesses as Avell as proph-
ets, and the effusion of the spirit in the latter days as prophe-
sied by Joel, was to be equally on sons and daughters,
servants and handmaids. To believe otherwise is irrational
and inconsistent with the divine attributes, and would charge
the Almighty with partiality and injustice to one-half of his
rational creation."
This one declaration is a sufficient explanation for Lucretia
Mott's turning from the elder society to follow the fortunes
and the faith of the later and larger teacher. The Orthodox
Friends mourned the loss of two young preachers, the greater
in promise and power being Lucretia Mott. Young as she
was, she was already brave enough to go forth from the
camp with reproach. Many years after, when he stood in a
like strait, she told her friend Robert Colly er all that she suf-
484 LUCKETIA MOTT.
fered at that time. Referring to that confidence he says : " I
have to remember with what a tender pathos she opened her
heart to me when it seemed almost like death to leave my
old mother-church, of the trouble it was to her, when she
had to do this in the days of Elias Hicks, when she had to
part with old friends for the truth, and have the meeting-
house closed to her in which she had loved to meet them,
when she suffered reproach that she might be true to her own
soul. And she told me how then James Mott stepped to the
front, fighting her battles, shielding her as it were behind his
heart. There were times before and after, she said, when he
would question what she said or did, but not in those sad
days. Then his whole anxiety was to help bear her burden
and fight her battle."
According to her own testimony, in early youth Lucretia
Mott's soul was moved by the cruel injustice of negro slavery
as well as by the depressing inequality she saw meted out to
women in education, remuneration, and social condition.
But the utterly unrequited labor of slaves made the first and
deepest demand on her conscience, on her speech, on her un-
tiring efforts for their uplifting. With all their enforced
ignorance, shut out as they were from books, from the read-
ing of public journals, and from all intelligent knowledge of
public affairs, the negro race as if by instinct learned the names
of their real friends, and at an early day many negro chil-
dren were named by their parents for Lucretia Mott. Nor
did the calling of the name end low down in the human scale,
for after visiting her in America, Lord and Lady Amberley
named their first child, born on their return to England,
Lucretia Mott Amberley.
The second persecution that fell upon her was because of
her consistent and entire devotion to the cause of the slave.
Not only did she plead in their behalf with learning, eloquence,
and the deepest spiritual unction, but every act of her life
consistent with her speech made her moral force felt through-
out the land wherever she went or was known. For many
years she would not ride in a public conveyance that would
LUCRETIA MoTT SURROUNDED BY A MOB. A RUFFIAN'S PROTECTION.
LUCRETIA MOTT. 485
not admit colored people, nor would she eat or use any-
thing that was the product of slave labor. Everywhere, amid
howling, stone-throwing mobs, she stood unmoved, as gentle
and unflinching amid pelting eggs and brickbats as when she
sat knitting by her own pleasant fireside. Those who knew
her in those early years tell what she never told herself,
what a force she was in those old battles. How quiet she was
in the uproar, " how with her woman's wit she would
always say the wisest word and hit on the nicest thing to
do." One evening they were being driven out of a public
hall by a mob. It was a time of the utmost peril.
"Take this friend's arm," she said to another woman, "he
will protect thee from the mob."
" But who will protect thee, Lucretia?" anxiously inquired
her friend.
:f This gentleman," she answered, gently touching the arm
of one of the mob. "He will see me safe through."
^
A rough, red-shirted ruffian he was to outward sight, as he
was no doubt in all his outer fibre, yet somewhere deep down
in the core of his being was the kernel of true knighthood
which makes every man by unspoiled nature every woman's
defender. At any rate .the " ruffian " gave Lucretia Mott
his arm, and led her forth from his frenzied comrades to
safety and home.
The leading abolitionists for more than one generation
were deemed raving fanatics, and it is true doubtless that
many of them possessed more zeal than knowledge. Yet
the remarkable fact remains that the two bravest leaders of
all, the two oftenest exposed to indignity and clanger,
William Lloyd Garrison and Lucretia Mott, were never,
amid the wildest tumult, with violent death just before
them, moved from their serenity or their gentleness.
In such hours as these she wrote to her friend Garrison :
" My mind has been especially turned toward those who are
standing in the forefront of the battle ; and my prayer has
gone up for their preservation, not the preservation of their
lives, but the preservation of their minds in humility and
30
486 LUCRETIA MOTT.
patience, faith, hope, and charity. ... If persecution is the
means which God has ordained for the accomplishment of this
great end, emancipation, then in dependence upon HIM for
strength to bear it, I feel as if I could say, Let it come ;
for it is my deepest conviction that this is a cause worth
dying for."
The greatest natures are always greater than their creeds.
Lucretia Mott proved herself to be greater than hers, greater
than her sect, when, in open 'disobedience to its command not
to co-operate with "the world's people, "she joined them so far
as to form with them in 1833 the original Anti-Slavery Soci-
ety of the United States, and to suggest and amend their
second declaration concerning the eternal rights of all men.
At that time the era of prejudice and of mobs was at high
tide. But a few months before William Lloyd Garrison had
been dragged through the streets of Boston at the peril of his
life. Three days later Lucretia Mott addressed a meeting of
anti-slavery women while brickbats were crashing through
the windows ; and the next day, while the building was again
surrounded by rioters, she exhorted the members of the con-
vention to be steadfast and solemn in the prosecution of the
business for which they were assembled.
Of the formation of this society Mrs. Mott writes in her
personal notes : " In 1833 the Philadelphia Female Anti-
slavery Society was formed, and being actively associated in
the efforts for the slaves' redemption, I have travelled thousands
of miles in this country, holding meetings in some of the
slave States, have been in the midst of mobs and violence,
and have shared abundantly in the odium attached to the name
of an uncompromising modern abolitionist, as well as par-
taken richly of the sweet tokens of peace attendant on those
who would f undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go
free."'
In 1838, July 11, his seventieth birthday, John Quincy
Adams wrote in his diary of the evening before, spent at the
house of James and Lucretia Mott : " I had a free conversa-
tion with them till between ten and eleven o'clock upon
LUCRETIA MOTT. 487
slavery, the abolition of slavery, and other topics
Lucretia Mott, the mistress of the house, wife of James Mott,
is sensible and lively, and an abolitionist of the most intrepid
school." The day following this interview the first midnight
assault was made on Bailey's anti-slavery press in Cincinnati.
In 1837 Lovejoy was murdered in Alton, and in 1838
Pennsylvania Hall, dedicated to free discussion, was burned
the fourth day after its opening with the co-operation of
the city authorities of Philadelphia. It was on the day
before that Lucretia Mott addressed an audience of women,
with stones and brickbats pouring through the windows.
Men were excluded from these meetings on the ground of
delicacy and the fitness of things. And it did not take
Lucretia Mott long to express the "hope that such false
notions of delicacy and propriety would not long obtain in
this enlightened country."
In 1840 the question of women speaking before promis-
cuous assemblies became "the sensitive bone " of contention
in the organization of abolitionists. Their unity on the sub-
ject of slavery did not evolve a like unity on the dictum of
St. Paul, and the fact of women "speaking in meeting." The
irreconcilable question divided the society in two bodies.
*And the old organization, as the first abolitionists called
themselves, appointed " our beloved friends, William L.
Garrison, N. P. Rogers, C. L. Kennard, and Lucretia Mott
delegates to the Woi'ld's Anti-Slavery Convention, held in
London in June, 1840, with Thomas Clarkson as president."
It never occurred to the single mind of the gentle Friend
who then had been preaching the gospel of justice and love
for more than thirty years, who was always thinking of the
truth, never of herself, that she would be denied the privilege
of sitting with her fellow delegates, not from any unfitness of
character or lack of mental power, but solely because she
was a woman. She was denied for this cause alone. In the
history of human progression there could scarcely be more
interesting reading than her own account of the reception of
the women delegates at this convention. In her notes she
488 LUCRETIA MOTT.
writes : " In 1840 a World's Anti-Slavery Convention was
called in London. Women from Boston, New York, and
Philadelphia were delegates to that convention. I was one
of the number, but on our arrival in England our credentials
were not accepted because we were women This
brought the woman question more into view, and an increase
of interest on the subject has been the result. In this work,
too, I have been engaged, heart and hand, as my labors,
travels, and public discourses evince. The misrepresentation,
ridicule, and abuse heaped upon this as well as other reforms
do not in the least deter me from my duty. To those whose
name is cast out as evil for the truth's sake, it is a small thing
to be judged of man's judgment."
We must look far to find a human declaration more disin-
terested, larger, or nobler than this.
Born a Friend, educated from babyhood in a Friends' meet-
ing, where woman's equality was unquestioned, freedom of
speech was as natural to her as the air she breathed. Where
women differently trained would have assumed to speak in
public places, Lucretia Mott spake as the bird sings, and thus
carrying her freedom of being, thinking, and speaking every-
where, with no consciousness of it as something she had taken
up, whose possession might be questioned, she never as-
sumed anything or aroused any personal antagonism even
in those who differed from her. Her very gentleness and
freedom from self-consciousness half-veiled and softened her
great ethical force and unconquerable courage. That which
would have been audacity in others was delightful uncon-
sciousness in herself; thus all her life without knowing it
she was the incarnation in herself of woman's cause at its
best.
Though denied her place as a delegate in the World's Con-
vention, she had a pleasant seat given her as a lady in the
gallery which at that date was much for English enlighten-
ment to give, and more than it gives to-day to w^omen in
the gallery of the House of Parliament. While sitting in
this seat " after half the .world had been voted out," Elizabeth
LUCRETIA MOTT. 489
Cady Stanton, then a vivacious and beautiful bride, writes :
" Said I, ' Suppose in spite of the vote of excommunication the
spirit should move you to speak, what would the chairman
do, and which would you obey, the spirit or the convention?'
She promptly replied : ' Where the spirit of God is, there is
liberty.'"
Though the English reformers of 1840 could tolerate no
innovation so aggressive as a woman delegate, nevertheless
they were sufficiently gentlemen to treat her politely, and she
was invited to breakfast with people of high rank. Uncon-
ventionally enough, as every English man and woman knew,
at the breakfast-table she found the opportunity denied her at
the convention, and without parley, she arose and addressed
the brilliant assembly. Sitting at that table were those who
voted against her admission as a delegate.
Amazement filled every feature at her daring but by a
very natural process to the British mind when they saw
dukes and duchesses listening with profound attention, and
sometimes bowing their heads in assent even the British
reformer found it easy to listen also. Through genuine esprit
de corps, perhaps the peer knew her best, so proving the
assertion of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
" I don't wonder Lady Byron liked her," said Emerson.
?< She belongs to the aristocracy."
Notwithstanding the brethren prevented her speaking in
meeting, two very tangible and important results followed
Lucretia Mott's presence in the World's Anti-Slavery Con-
vention. The first was the introduction it afforded to a
younger woman, to whom Lucretia Mott at once became an
inspiration and an oracle. Elizabeth Cady Stanton has done
more than any other one woman, with her clear reasoning
and fine eloquence, to move the minds of thoughtful law-
givers, and to change unjust laws to just ones in behalf of
women in legislatures. At the time of this World's Conven-
tion, which she visited with her young husband, she stood
eagerly questioning on the border-land of her unknown, un-
dreamed-of future. Instinctively she sat down at the feet of
490 LUCRETIA MOTT.
a priestess who had so long inhaled hallowed air that she
gave it back in every breath in exalted prophecy and promise
for womanhood. Mrs. Stanton says : " I had always regarded
a Quaker-woman as one does a Sister of Charity a being
above ordinary mortals, ready to be translated at any mo-
ment. I had never spoken to one before nor been near
enough to touch the hem of a garment. Mrs. Mott was to
me an entire new revelation of womanhood. I sought every
opportunity to be at her side, and continually plied her with
questions, and I shall never cease to be grateful for the pa-
tience and seeming pleasure with which she fed my hunger-
ing soul. ... I found in this new friend a woman emanci-
pated from all faith in man-creeds, from all fear of his
denunciations. Nothing was too sacred for her to question,
as to its rightfulness in principle and practice. It seemed to
me like meeting some being from a larger planet, to find a
woman who dared to question the opinion of popes, kings,
synods, parliaments, w r ith the same freedom that she would
criticise an editorial in the London f Times.' . . . When I
first heard from the lips of Lucretia Mott that I had the same
right to think for myself that Luther, Calvin, and John Knox
had, I felt at once a new-born sense of dignity and freedom ;
it was like suddenly coming into the rays of the noonday
sun after wandering with a rushlight in the caves of the
earth. . . .
rt There are often periods in the lives of earnest, imagina-
tive beings when some new book or acquaintance comes to
them like an added sun in the heavens, chasing every
shadow away. Thus came Lucretia Mott to me at a period
in my young days w r hen all life's problems seemed inextri-
cably tangled. When, like Noah's dove on the waters, my
soul found no solid resting-place in the whole world of thought.
. . . Before meeting Mrs. Mott I had heard a few men of
liberal opinions discuss various political, social, and religious
theories, but w r ith my first doubt of my father's absolute wis-
dom came a distrust of all men's opinions on the character
and sphere of women. . . . Hence I often longed to meet
LUCRETIA MOTT. 491
some woman who had sufficient confidence in herself to frame
and hold an opinion in the face of opposition a woman who
understood the deep significance of life, to whom I could talk
freely ; my longings were answered at last."
The second result of the meeting in London of Lucretia
Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the call for the first
Woman's Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, New York,
July 19 and 20, 1848. After Lucretia Mott, Sarah Pugh,
Abby Kimble, Elizabeth Neal, Mary Grew, all Friends from
Philadelphia and Abby South wick and Emily Winsiow of
Boston, had travelled three thousand miles to take their
seats as delegates in the World's Anti-Slavery Convention, only
to be refused them. Lucretia Mott and her newly-found lover,
Elizabeth Stanton, walked arm-in-arm down Great Queen
street, discussing with their musical voices the great indig-
nity that to their minds that day had been cast on woman-
hood. They then and there resolved on their return to
America to hold a Woman's Rights Convention. They kept
their word. And from that gathering of earnest, brave, but
inexperienced women, who made written additions to the Dec-
laration of Independence to meet their own special demands,
wrongs, and needs, more than forty years ago, have
evolved by a natural law the great, splendidly-organized,
wisely-regulated yearly conventions of women of to-day,
projected and directed by a force of women whose zeal and
devotion in their work can only be measured and equalled by
the experience which directs and the wisdom that compre-
hends human life in all its bearings, human nature in all its
needs, and, beyond all, the unity of humanity in its essence
and in its aspirations.
So much space has been given to the public life and work
of Lucretia Mott one might naturally suppose that there
could be but little inclination, time, or strength left to her for
purely personal domestic life. Yet the potent fact remains,
that the sweetness and fulness of her life as a woman cannot
be measured or told in words, though the placid narrative of
its gentle deeds would of itself fill a large volume. While her
492 LUCRETIA MOTT.
children were young and needed her, her life was devoted to
them. How she served them so faithfully, and yet had some
time left for mental improvement, she has told in her own
words. She says, " My life in the domestic sphere has
passed much as that of other wives and mothers in this
country. I have had six children. Not accustomed to re-
signing them to the care of a nurse, I was much confined dur-
ing their infancy and childhood. Being fond of reading I
omitted much unnecessary stitching and ornamental work in
the sewing for my family, so that I might have more time for
this indulgence and the improvement of my mind. . . .
The * Ladies' Department ' in the periodicals of the day had
no attraction for me."
The thrift and economy she learned so early in the frugal
home in Nantucket never left her. In youth cramping cir-
cumstances compelled her to economize for her own, but
when she lived on to all the opportunities of affluence she
economized no less that she might give of her abundance to
others. Like another great American woman, her friend,
Lydia Maria Child, she pinched herself even in letter-paper
that she might have a little more for charity. A friend tells
of a letter received from her two and a half inches wide by
two and a quarter inches long, written on both sides, contain-
ing one hundred and forty-one words treating of seven dis-
tinct subjects. She apologized for her paper, and enclosed
five dollars for a benevolent object. She was never weary of
sewing tiny rags together to be woven into carpets, never
weary of knitting never, even in extreme age, of walking
from house to house, dealing out with her own hands food
and clothing to the poor. One of her own family tells of the
great cloak and heavy saddle-bags stuffed with good things
which encircled her small person as she sallied forth on these
daily errands of mercy. Shortly before her death, when she
could no longer leave her bed, hearing the voice of her son-
in-law in the hall below, she called his name and he went up
to her room. He found her sitting up in bed environed by a
wooden frame set with shelves and full of pies and delicacies.
LUCRETIA MOTT. 493
" Surely thou hast enough to eat ! " he exclaimed.
" Yes," she replied, with the quiet humor so characteristic
of her ; " but it will not last till to-morrow ; " the under
truth being that all these good things had been made at her
order and placed on the shelves surrounding her, that she
might deal them out with her own hands to the poor as her
Christmas offering to their comfort.
While she believed that she had a duty to religion, to her
country, and to humanity, she lived and died a perfect house-
keeper, attending personally to every detail from garret to
cellar, as if attending to them was the whole duty of her ex-
istence, yet attending them always with that clear vision and
calm wisdom, that grasp of detail, yet command of the whole
which left no chance for fretfulness or fussiness. Mrs.
Stan ton says of her : " When seated around her board, no
two and two side-talk in monotone was ever permissible ;
she insisted that the good things said should be enjoyed by
all. At the close of the meal, while the conversation went
briskly on, with a neat little tray and snowy towel, she washed
up the silver and china as she uttered some of her happiest
thoughts. James Mott at the head of the table maintained
the dignity of his position, ever ready to throw in a qualify-
ing word when these fiery reformers became too intense."
This home, that for many years was the ark of refuge to
runaway slaves, was also a rallying court to many of the
distinguished of the earth. It was long the chosen meeting-
place of such reformers as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell
Phillips, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Gerrit Smith, Ann
Preston, Mary Grew, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Susan B.
Anthony, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton ; and in it
its gentle mistress entertained Frederica Bremer, Harriet
Martineau, Lord Morpeth, Lord and Lady Amberley, Fanny
Kemble, John Quincy Adams, and others equally prominent
in the world of society, thought, and letters.
No characteristic in her was more marked than her free-
dom from all personal littleness. Her superiority to mere sect,
and her keen recognition of, and dauntless love of truth
494 LUCRETIA MOTT.
wherever she found it was nowhere more apparent than in
her devotion to the writings of men claimed as leaders of
thought by opposite sects of Christians. Her whole life a
profound daily student of the Scriptures, her two favorite
writers among divines were William Ellery Channing and
Dean Stanley. She loved Channing in her youth, but in ex-
treme age she had room in her heart and mind for Dean
Stanley, who appealed no less forcibly to the " inward wit-
ness " in her spiritual life. One little book of his, entitled
" Hopes of Theology," taking its name from three sermons
delivered by the Dean of Westminster before the University
of St. Andrew, she kept beside her till her dying day,
offering it for a glance to the visitors that came to her bed-
side. In every sect are always found a few rare souls, dis-
cerning spirits who, beyond the letter, perceive and read by
pure spiritual sight. They are the men and women who in
themselves are more potent than any dogma, larger than any
creed, and two such were both Arthur Penrhyn Stanley and
Lucretia Mbtt.
But ever looking toward that which is heavenly, when
she had lived more than eighty years upon the earth, she held
unabated all her old keen interest in art, in literature, as well
as in religion and the progress of the human race and the
State. Mrs. Belva Lock wood of Washington says that just
before her death she heard her discuss the merits of a paint-
ing then on exhibition in Philadelphia, with all the interest and
more than the intelligence of youth, and, as has been already
said, her pastime in those twilight hours of waning life was not
only to repeat the poetry of buried generations, but to read
with thrilling effect the poems of later days, like Arnold's
"Light of Asia."
With the abolition of slavery and the passage of the Fif-
teenth Amendment, the first great public life-work of Lucretia
Moct ended, yet her interest in the colored race, in the wel-
fare and uplifting of women, in the furtherance of every
good cause for humanity, only ceased for this world with her
last breath. One of the last subjects she discussed was the
LUCRETIA MOTT. 495
policy and personality of President Hayes, speaking of both
with approval, and deprecating every effort made by others
to keep alive old sectional animosity.
Twelve years after the death of her beloved husband,
Lucretia Mott died, not of disease, but because her work
was done, her human life lived out. She passed away
without pain, in peace amid her children, November 11,
1880. As she left the earth the land was flooded with her
praise, public journals of every shade of opinion vying
with each other to pay tributes of honor to the good Ameri-
can woman, great in womanhood.
A nature so many-sided, a humanity so deeply veined, an
intelligence so universal and varied cannot be sounded or
measured by mere words. Her life, though vanished from
human sight, still shines on, a planet whose unfailing light
streams down the centuries, while it reaches upward to other
distant worlds.
Many women have equalled and even surpassed Lucretia
Mott in the development of special faculties, but rarely indeed
has a woman lived who has embodied in herself, in perfect
harmony to an equal degree, so many high intellectual and
moral qualities perfectly balanced. Her charity was as great
as her courage, and neither could be surpassed. Her gentle-
ness equalled her will, and neither ever failed. Her humor
was as real as her seriousness, and neither in their place were
wanting. Her passion for truth never outran her forgiveness
of error. Her dauntless bravery, which never quailed before
danger, was matched only by her modesty, which never as-
sumed anything. Standing amid polemical men in public
places, where another woman might have looked bold and out
of place, she seemed always their better angel, in whom they
recognized and adored the incarnation of that ideal woman
of whom all men dream. Diminutive in figure, she yet had
the look of command. She had the brow and the eyes
which rule through sheer force of intellect and potency of
soul ; but no less she had the playfulness, the tenderness,
the childlikeness which no one fears, but all men love*
496 LUCRETIA MOTT.
Those who had long heard of her as an agitator when they
beheld her were always astonished alike at the gentleness
of her nature and of her manners.
Always listening for the Divine Voice, she never shrank
from uttering its commands without fear and without a thought
of herself. Believing in the unity of the human race, in its
equality of essence, she asked no favors as a woman for her-
self or others. Planting herself upon her human rights, she
simply demanded the removal of all hinderances to the eleva-
tion of woman in the scale of being. From more than fifty
years of perfect marriage without bitterness but full of
happiness and the calm sense of absolute justice, she
claimed equal rights before the law for husband and wife,
father and mother and child.
Her discourses and sermons were frequently printed. She
published a sermon to medical students and a discourse on
" Women," delivered in Philadelphia in 1849 ; but her claim
upon the remembrance of her countrymen is not that of a
great writer, but that of a great philanthropist, of a great
preacher, of a perfect woman. In her personality and in
her work she is a complete illustration of the profound fact,
that a woman as well as a man may do an exceptional work,
fulfil an exceptional mission, without abating one jot the
symmetry of her nature and life in its special functions or
proportions. There is no more remarkable phase of the
many-phased anomaly of man and woman's mingled marriage
and warfare than the world-wide distrust manifested by man
in every age, of the stability of the laws of nature as inher-
ent in woman, which he believes without a doubt to be im-
mutable in himself.
Who ever hears the slightest hint of the danger of a man
getting out of his " sphere ? " No matter what he does him-
self, he is sure of his sex. But he has filled the ages with a
watch-dog gaze and an eternal shout, lest by some inscrutable
quicksand of mental endeavor woman suddenly finds herself
"unsexed." The laws which govern the human creature,
created in the image of God, he seems to believe to be im-
LUCRETIA MOTT. 497
mutable in their application to but one-half of the human
race, that himself. Lucretia Mott is one of the perfect re-
futations of this fatal error which God at intervals sends upon
the earth. She did everything which, as a woman, accord-
ing to the code of mere conventionality, she ought not to have
done, yet hers was, and ever remained, the greatest woman-
hood of all.
We go back to deeds of valor, of prowess, of high em-
prise, to executive force, to conquering ability, to find that
the deeds which live and glow in the dust of the centuries
are those great in love of human nature, great in consecration
to humanity.
In summing up the excellences of Lucretia Mott, men do
not forget to name her thrift, her industry, her economy.
Yet she is not exalted in memory now because she sewed bits
of carpet together with an endless patience, nor because she
wrote letters on tag ends of waste-paper, or made with her
own hands her own pies and puddings she might have done
all these things well without one great thought beyond their
mechanical perfection nor was it because she dared to
question the opinions of popes and potentates, of synods and
parliaments ; nor because she declared the equality in nature
of man and woman. She is revered of all men to-day be-
cause with a perfect love she loved all human nature.
Her carved image is worthy to stand with the greatest of
our great who have died. Yet she has carved no statues.
She has painted no great picture of history. She has not
sung songs of immortality like Milton, nor written books of
raving eloquence, like Carlyle. But in her own exquisite,
exalted personality, she is greater than Carlyle, abiding on
heights of self-conquest, on heights of unselfish devotion,
that he never dreamed of, much less attained. In her power
to transmute high principles into the sweetest and highest liv-
ing of daily life, she was greater than Milton ; for in her own
individual self she was the perfect incarnation of the highest
principles she ever expounded, of the finest aspirations she
ever breathed, of the tenderest emotions she ever felt.
CHAPTER XXI.
LOUISE CHANDLEK MOULTON.
BY HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
A Charming Woman Mrs. Moulton's Parentage Influences that Sur-
rounded Her Childhood Rigid New England Training Girlhood and
School Days First Literary Efforts Publication of Her First Book
Letters to the New York "Tribune" First Visit to Europe Impres-
sions of the Old World Paris Rome Pictures of Italian Life
Venice Cordial Reception in London Honors Shown by Distin-
guished People Flattering Attention Delightful Experiences How
Her Book of Poems was Received in London High Praise from Eminent
Critics A Famous Traveller Personal Appearance Her Grace and
Charm of Manner A Gifted and Popular Woman.
"The lingering charm of a dream that has fled,
The rose's breath when the rose is dead,
The echo that lives when the tune is done,
The sunset glories that follow the sun,
Everything tender and everything fair,
That was, and is not, and yet is there,"
NE thinks of them all, to quote her own words,
in remembering Louise Chandler Moulton after
the spell of her presence is gone. Sherwood
Bonner, in speaking of her once, declared that
she belongs to that class of women who seem
born to charm ; for charm, she sa} r s, is a sweet
arid comprehensive word, meaning to bewitch,
not to madden ; to delight, not to intoxicate ;
to satisfy, not to tantalize ; to please the soul
like the smell of a rose, the song of a brook,
the sight of waving fields. "In her writing, in
her person, in her manner, in her voice, in her
dress, there is the gracious and indefinable charm that would
lend attraction to a mediocre talent and a plain face ; and
which, when joined to a clear, fine intellect, a lovely mobile
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. 499
face, and the exquisite manner of one who has breathed
always the atmosphere of the gently nurtured, results in a
woman worthy to be numbered among the fair ones of a
poet's dream."
Louise Moulton is, perhaps, the most personally popular
among the literary women of our country ; she pleases so
entirely that I doubt if there is a person in the world who
has any but a warm and admiring feeling towards her. She
began this career of conquest early ; for she was not nine-
teen when Mr. Phillips, of the old Boston firm of Phillips
and Sampson, maintained that she was fitter to be President
of these United States than any man he knew. I have often
wondered since how, already, he could so well have known
and understood her, for Louise Moulton, aside from her
literary powers, is an extraordinarily clever woman, capable
of organizing and of carrying out, and one to whom the man-
agement of anything requiring, with energetic action, thought,
tact, and delicacy to a fine degree, might well be intrusted.
Louise was born on the 10th of April, 1835, in the town
of Pomfret, Connecticut. Her mother was Louise Clark, her
father, Lucius L. Chandler. On both sides she came of good
old English stock. One of her ancestors owned all of Pom-
fret in the early days when it was a much larger place in
extent than at present. In her father's family there was
always a good deal of ability ; his grandmother Cleveland
is said to have been a remarkable woman, and one of Louise's
earliest remembrances is hearing her read passages from the
Greek philosophers, long before the little listener could un-
derstand them. Through this lady Louise is connected with
the Rev. Aaron Cleveland, of literary reputation, and dis-
tantly with the poet and critic, Edmund C. Stedman, who
himself regards this Cleveland descent as an inheritance of
intellectual power. Of her father she has spoken to me as
the most tender, uncomplaining, great-hearted man she has
ever known ; and of her mother, as a gentle, gracious woman,
a noted beauty in her youth, but singularly free from the
vanity and selfishness of most noted beauties. Her feeling
500 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
for her mother is, however, better expressed by these lately
published lines than by any words that I could add :
" How shall I, here, her placid picture paint
With touch that shall be delicate, yet sure?
Soft hair above a brow so high and pure,
Years have not soiled it with an earthly taint,
Needing no aureole to prove her saint
Firm mind that no temptation could allure,
Soul strong to do, heart stronger to endure,
And sweet, calm lips that utter no complaint.
So have I seen her in my darkest days,
And when her own most sacred ties were riven,
Walk tranquilly in self-denying ways,
Asking for strength, and sure it would be given,
Filling her life with lowly prayer, high praise
So shall I see her if we meet in heaven."
Her mother, however, is still living in the quiet country
town where her long life has been passed, and her daughter's
successes have been a joy to her declining years. Both of
her parents were rigid Calvinists, with the imaginative side
of their natures somewhat undeveloped, and this child of
theirs, living in her ideal world, may have been puzzling in
many respects to them. But they idolized her, and indulged
her in every way that did not go counter to their ideas of the
immutable right and wrong. They held it ruinous to read
romances, to dance, or to play any game of chance, such as
draughts or backgammon. But although there is something
pathetic in the thought of a childhood so strictly reared, I
doubt not the little maid found her own pleasures in her own
way, a way that did not impair the sunniness of her nature.
The religious sentiments of her parents, nevertheless, ex-
ercised a great power over her, with at times an awful fore-
boding of doom and despair. She would wake when a little
thing, in the depth of the night, cold with horror, saying to
herself, " Why, if I'm not among the elect I carCt be saved,
no matter how hard I try," and would steal along on her little
bare feet to be taken into her mother's bed, with a vague
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTOtf. 503
sense that if in the far future she must be lost she would, at
any rate, have love and comfort now, and caressing arms to
shelter her from the shapeless terrors that mocked her soli-
tude. But she felt differently in the sunlight ; then she was
full of a strong vitality, and exulted in running in the teeth
of a high wind and thinking that she was so much alive surely
nothing ever could kill her ; and then she would try and per-
suade herself that no one really did die, but that certain
people, whose lot it was, took themselves thus out of sight
from time to time, and allowed it to be given out in order to
frighten children into being good. Yet, in spite of the novel
reasoning, and perhaps largely in consequence of those early
impressions, she has all her life held in keener dread than
ordinary what has seemed to her the unutterable mystery and
speechless solitariness of death.
Of course, being an only child, and brought up on such prin-
ciples, she was thrown a good deal upon her own resources for
amusement. She could not have been more than eight years
old when a good part of her play all summer long consisted
in carrying in her head something she called a Spanish drama,
although she then knew little of Spain beyond some high-
sounding Spanish names that took her ear with their music, as
they did Browning's lover in the garden, and which she gave
to her characters. Every day, as soon as she was through
with lessons and tasks, and could get by herself, these char-
acters thronged round her, and she watched their perform-
ance ; it did not seem to her that she created them, but rather
that she summoned them and they came ; sometimes, indeed,
their behavior astonished her, and for one of them, a young
girl who persisted in dying, she really grieved. All her
lonely plays were tinctured with the colors imagination
gave, and she lived far more in the world of fancy than of
fact ; she used to listen for hours at a great keyhole in an
outside door, a keyhole through which the wind blew with
wailing, fantastic sounds which sometimes represented to her
thought far-off bugle-notes, and sometimes the long cries of
despairing souls.
31
504 LOUISE CHANDLEK MOULTON.
Louise was early sent to school, one teacher following an-
other, till at length good fortune threw her in charge of the
Rev. Roswell Park, at that time rector of the Episcopal
church in Pomfret, and also the head of a school called
Christ Church Hall. It was a school for boys as well as
girls ; and one of her schoolmates here, for a season, was
the brilliant, erratic, and audacious artist, James MacNeil
Whistler. She has pictures now that he drew for her in
those days when she was so industrious and happy under Dr.
Park's tuition, when they studied their Latin and German
together.
She was but fifteen when she began to publish the trifles
which for eight years she had delighted to write. It would
be difficult to say what it was that inclined her to a literary
life; she had no literary friends, and no suggestion of the
sort in any quarter. It was like that springing of a plant in
a soil that never knew it before, from a seed brought by some
bird of heaven, as seeds of waving palms are carried to bare
coral reefs, and if it was the union of anything in the two
lives of her ancestry that produced it, as many colors go to
the making of white, it was all so unaware and unconscious
that the child felt her movements must be secret as if she were
committing a crime when she sent off her first verses to a daily
paper published in Norwich, Connecticut. It was on her way
from school one day that she happened to take the paper from
the office ; and, when she opened it, there were the lines,
What ecstasy ! Only her fellow-writers, remembering their
first publication, can fully sympathize with her, and they only
will understand how it seemed to her, as she walked home
on air, a more wonderful and glorious event than any event
has ever seemed since. Three years later, Messrs. Phillips,
Sampson and Company, of Boston, published for her "This,
That, and the Other," a collection of stories and poems
which had appeared in various magazines and newspapers,
and which took the public fancy at once to the extent of
fifteen thousand copies. She was a little shocked to see the
huge posters headed, "Read this book and see what a girl of
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. 505
eighteen can do," but the graciousness of all the newspaper
notices made such happiness for the young girl in her still
life as she would never know again, such happiness as a rose
growing in a dull, dim room might have if suddenly trans-
planted into June sunshine and a whole heavenful of dews
and gentle airs. Among these reviews was one of length in
a Winsted paper, edited by Edmund C. Stedman, then just
graduated from Yale, and it began a friendship that has only
grown with years, and is counted by her among the memor-
able prizes and pleasures of her life. Among other literary
friends that she then made was Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman ;
and her appreciative letters, kept now in a little yellowing,
precious parcel, helped and cheered in the most needful
period.
Directly after the publication of this first book, its young
author went for a final school-year to Mrs. Willard's semi-
nary at Troy ; and she seems there to have combined studying
and writing, and love-making to a rather remarkable degree, as
in the August of 1854, six weeks after leaving the school, she
became the wife of Mr. William Moulton, a gentleman who
edited and published a weekly paper in Boston, to which she
had for some time been a contributor.
In the autumn of the same year the Messrs. Appleton and
Company, of New York, published for her a novel entitled
"Juno Clifford," which she took a fancy to print anony-
mously as a test of her power. It had quite a success, but
would doubtless have done much more with the use of her
name. The next year she began writing for " Harper's
Magazine;" and three years later, in 1859, the Messrs.
Harper issued a collection of the stories in a volume under
the title of "My Third Book."
She was now in her twenty-fifth year, fully launched upon
the literary high-seas, contributing to " Harper's," to the
"Atlantic," the "Galaxy," and " Scribner's," as they came
into existence, and to the "Young Folks," the "Youth's
Companion," and other periodicals for children. Her life
seemed a very fortunate one. She had a charming home in
506 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
Boston, where she met and entertained the most pleasant
people ; her housekeeping duties were fulfilled to a nicety,
and no domestic detail neglected for all her industrious
literary undertakings. A daughter had been born to her,
Florence, the golden-haired little beauty to whom "Bedtime
Stories " were dedicated in some most tender and touching
verses, and, somewhat later, a son whose little life was only
numbered by days.
In 1870 she began writing letters from Boston to the New
York "Tribune," signed by her initials, continuing them for six
years, at the expiration of which time she first went abroad.
She sometimes sent four letters a week, giving items of inter-
est to bookish people, reviewing books in advance of their
publication, and telling to the curious the affairs of the Radi-
cal Club, then in its palmy days, when Emerson frequented
it, and John Weiss, David Wasson, Colonel Higginson, Dr.
Hedge, and a host of other brilliant and inspiring people.
These letters showed the hand of the accomplished letter-
writer ; without degenerating into gossip, they now and then
broke into enthusiasms controlled by a perfect taste that
took the reader along with them ; their fine judgment and
keen discrimination made them eagerly sought for; where
she might need to condemn she was simply silent. A
satirical, stinging, or malicious sentence was never written
by Louise Moulton, although her sense of justice would
make it difficult for her to praise where praise was unde-
served. "And now let me tell you of beautiful Louise
Moulton," wrote some one who had never seen her, in a
letter given in the notice from which I have already quoted :
" Years since when she first wrote her literary letters to the
' Tribune,' when I was shut into myself in a great sorrow, I
came to know her through those columns, then to admire
her, and finally to feel for her that reverence which we cher-
ish towards loftier minds that lead us to higher mental culture.
I feel that those letters have done more towards shaping and
refining my taste for the literature of our age than anything
else of the kind that I have ever seen. She is so chaste, so
LOUISE CHASTDLER MOULTON. 507
refined, so choice ! " Certainly no three epithets in the lan-
guage would better define Louise than those.
She only gave up what she had found such pleasant work in
order to gratify her life-long yearning to visit the lands of song
and story beyond the seas ; and on the 22d of January,
1876, she set forth on a stormy winter sea, Rome being
her goal and Sherwood Bonner her companion. She had pub-
lished, meanwhile, a collection of children's tales, called "Bed-
time Stories," followed in the next year by another, " More
Bedtime Stories," and eventually supplemented in 1880 and
1883 by "New Bedtime Stories " and " Firelight Stories." A
sweet and wholesome atmosphere is that of these little books,
and they seem to me to constitute a sort of permanent memo-
rial to the quiet instructions the writer received from her own
mother. They proclaim the gift of pure story-telling from the
first page ; the young girls in them are maidenly, the young
lads are noble, the thread of the narrative is alluring. Older
children will lingeringly turn the pages of the story of the
" Little Mother "; and not that alone, for every story catches
the interest at the outset and holds it, and a fine naturalness and
power of pathos wrings the unwilling tears from every reader.
The same power is used on a larger scale in her collection of
tales for the older generation, called " Some Women's Hearts,"
also published in 1874. These stories are so simply and
sweetly told that the reader does not at first recognize them
as the works of art which they are, beguiled along until he
finds himself in the midst of careful study on pages where
there are few strokes not meant to tell, and with a complete
characterization and a clear and vivid style which neither hur-
ries nor excites the reader, but lets him feel something of the
calm personality of the writer. Without any extravagance,
they are full of close observation and analysis, of the
love of nature, and of picturesque fact and effect. There
is a sustained strength about the longest story of the book,
" Fleeing From Fate," a courage and a repressed energy, that
promise well for a novel of the three-volume length should
she ever undertake it. A novel in verse, such as Mr. Sted-
508 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
man has often urged her to write, would be, better than other
work, suited to her powers, which would have a scope there
that they have not in any mere genre work. There are
others of her stories more than sufficient for a fresh volume,
but she has not yet made the collection ; and she has cer-
tainly printed poems enough for another book to mate with
"Swallow-Flights."
Her first voyage to England was a long delight, although
it was winter, and they only escaped a huge, black, following
sea. Then tarrying in London only long enough to read the
immemorial names on the street-corners, to realize with a
thrill that she was in Pall Mall, in Westminster Abbey, on
London Bridge, to see the queen open parliament, she made
straightway for her shopping in Paris, where the streets were
an unending pleasure. "As for jewels, if anywhere in the
world there are jewels to surpass those you see in certain
shop-windows in Paris," she says, "it must be that they are
in kings' houses. Fancy exquisite tea-roses, the size of life,
composed altogether of diamonds, so brilliant that they mock
your adjectives with their shining satire. Fancy blue forget-
me-nots made of sapphires ; and violets which look as if they
would smell of Parma, but are fashioned from amethysts !
Such exquisite devices, such fascinating combinations of
precious stones I had never dreamed of until I came to Paris.
The effect they produce on you is curious. You begin by
wanting every glittering gewgaw that you see. You feel as
if your happiness depended upon this brooch or that medal-
lion. But after a few days you see another brooch, another
medallion so much more beautiful that you are sure you
would not have been contented with your first choice. You
transfer your affections again and again, until you finally be-
come accustomed and contented to regard the display of orna-
ments like that of furniture and pictures, as beautiful things
to be looked at and enjoyed, but with wilich you have no
personal concern. When you have thus ceased to wish
for things, you begin thoroughly to delight in the streets of
Paris."
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. 509
But Paris over, came Rome, and twelve weeks of raptures
and ruins, of churches and galleries, old palaces and almond-
trees in flower, the light upon the Alban hills, the kindly
gracious Roman society, all like a dream from which might
come awaking. Certainly no one was ever made to feel the
ancient spell, or to enjoy its beauty more than this sensitive,
sympathetic, and impressible spirit. Stiff Protestant as she
is, she was touched to tears by the benignant old pope's
blessing ; and she abandoned herself to the carnival, as much
a child for the time as the noblest Roman of them all.
"Hitherto the pretty Princess Margarita, since that time
become Queen of Italy, has kept to her balcony, from
which, be sure, she has sent forth no missiles less pleasing
than flowers and bon-bons, and an occasional white dove,"
she writes ; f ' but on the last afternoon she drives up and
down the Corso with the rest. Her carriage and horses are
superb, her stalwart footmen are glorious in red and gold ;
but no one heeds the splendor of her equipage, for the soft
radiance of her own pallid beauty draws all eyes. She is
exquisitely attired, but you scarcely remember what she
wears, you are so much more impressed by what she is, a
fair and gentle lady, smiling sweetly as she bows in response
to the shouts of welcome that greet her approach, the rain of
fragrant posies that fills her carriage full. She bows and
smiles, bows and smiles, with an unvarying graciousness, to
the lofty and the lowly ; but is there not or is it only my
fancy? a lurking sadness in the soft dark eyes, even while
the bright young lips are smiling? Perhaps it is but the
natural expression of her poetical temperament, for the
princess loves passionately verse and art and music ; but one
w r ho has seen her husband, Prince Umberto, a man fierce-
looking, and somewhat sensual, and altogether of the earth
earthy, like his father, King Victor, must needs wonder
whether there can be anything of spiritual kinship between
this man and his rare, pale princess. Behind comes an equip-
age which the Queen of the Fairies must have lent for the
occasion the tiniest of pony phaetons, drawn by four little
510 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
black ponies. On these ponies ride little postilions, gorgeous
in red and gold, like the stalwart servitors of the princess,
and two small footmen sit behind in the rumble. In the
phaeton itself are the prettiest pair in the Corso. This boy,
with his handsome haughty face, is the little Prince of
Naples, the son of Prince Umberto and the Princess Mar-
garita. He has inherited his mother's beauty, and the
haughty self-possession which belongs to the bold, brave
house of Savoy. He will be every inch a king some day.
His costume of green and gold satin, with frills of costly lace,
was magnificent enough for a young emperor. Beside him
was the daughter of a noble house, a little marchesina, who
was like the vision of a dream. She had the dazzling pale-
ness of a blonde Italian. Her eyes were intensely blue, and
bright as stars, and her soft yellow hair floated about her
like a cloud of spun gold. Her costume was of white satin,
heavy with gold embroidery. The princess herself had
scarcely attracted so much attention as this dainty little pair.
They were almost buried in flowers, and they kissed their
hands in return, and bowed with a real childish joyousness
which was a pretty sight to see."
And after Rome came Venice, and the old palaces, where,
in one of them, "everything was of the past except the
flowers, which everywhere ran riot. Marble vases, rifled
from tombs, were full of glowing crimson roses. Bright-
hued blossoms filled the windows, vines trailed over the
walls, fragrance as of a thousand gardens flooded the rooms."
Then the Tyrol, where, at Innspruck, the unutterable loveli-
ness struck her dumb : " I was comforted afresh by the
wonderful glory of this long-enduring world wherein we
brief human creatures flutter like butterflies for a transient
day, and are gone." And after this, for contrast, the London
season !
It was a gay season for the young American. She was in
the same house with Kate Field, who knew her London well,
and was ready to be guide and philosopher, as she long had
been friend, and she had letters of introduction to many
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. 511
choice people, among them Lord Houghton, who is the same
kind of literary centre that the poet Rogers used to be, and
who gave her at once a breakfast, where she met Browning,
Swinburne, Gustave Dore*, and a company of the brightest
and best in London society.
Mrs. Moulton is one of the women whom Americans, with
any wish of impressing the foreigner, may well be proud to
send abroad. She is always and before everything a lady,
an artist even in good manners, with the most winning inno-
cence and grace united to sufficient knowledge of the world,
a perfect dress, destitute of affectation, an attractive face, and
a voice,
" Oh, call it the well's bubbling, the bird's warble ! "
I have never heard such melodious tones from any other
woman's throat. " If I could only photograph your voice ! "
a photographer once boldly said to her. If he could he would
have photographed flute-notes, water-drops tinkling among
cool leaves, the ring of sterling silver, the reedy note of the
Virginia nightingale. It was her voice of which an English
poet wrote,
" As soft as sleep, and pure as lonely springs,
Her voice wherein all sweetnesses abide."
It is easy to see how she made immediately a multitude of
friends. In August she was in Scotland, and later on the
lovely French sea-coast ; then followed a winter in Paris,
and then again London, in the midst of whose renewed
gayeties she was prostrated by an illness from whose effects
she has never fully recovered, its legacy being a slight
trouble of the heart. When she left her sick-room she
was not strong enough for another sea-voyage in the win-
try weather, and she remained in London ; and there, in
the February of 1878, the Macmillans brought out her
poems, which, published in America simply under the title
of " Poems," in the English edition were aptly named " Swal-
low-Flights."
512 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
It was, as one may imagine, a trying moment to Louise,
when she saw her book ready to be sent out to the reviewers.
She was almost an utter stranger to the London press, and
had been told that they seldom hospitably entreated the Am-
erican, how frigid or how cutting might not her reception
be ! A friend said he had asked permission to review the
book for the " Examiner," but had been refused, as the editor
was to review it himself. Modest to painfulness, she could
not believe so brilliant a critic as William Minto would
trouble himself to make an example of her ; she dared not
believe that he would praise her. But at last the paper came
the first London review she had received. It occupied a
page of the " Examiner," and praised her more cordially than
her best friend would have dared to do. After noting the
power and individuality of the verses, the freshness, direct-
ness, and spontaneity, the originality and independence of
models, and the rich and pure music, it declared that it might
be doubted if George Eliot had " ever succeeded in express-
ing the same intensity of feeling in verse of equal fulness and
equally free from that taint of over-excitement which is so
fatal to high art." It quoted the sonnet " One Dread" as
something that might have been written by Sir Philip Sidney ;
and furthermore said : "It is, perhaps, a good augury for the
future of American poetry that the spirit with which these
poems have most in common is the spirit of the forerunners of
the great Elizabethan period. They are not at all archaic in
form ; but they deal with the simple, primitive emotions, and
again and again, as we read them, we are reminded of Wyatt
and Sidney, and the casual lyrics gathered in such collections
as f England's Helicon.'" The " Athenaeum " followed in an
equally generous spirit. " Mrs. Moulton," it said, " has a
real claim to attention. It is not too much to say of these
poems that they exhibit delicate and rare beauty, marked
originality, and perfection of style. What is still better,
they impress us with a sense of vivid and subtle imagination,
and that spontaneous feeling which is the essence of lyrical
poetry;" and, at another time, the "Athenaeum," in making
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. 513
a classification of sonnet-writers, used her name as that of
the only American worthy of such rank. Then came Peter
Bayne, telling of "beauty and power" in two pages of the
" Literary World " ; a page of the " Academy " in such per-
fect appreciation as might make any singer's blood tingle in
the veins, speaking again of lyrical spontaneity, of felicity
of epithet, brilliant word-painting, healthy tone and vigorous
execution, subtlety and suggestiveness of ideas, imaginative
force pervaded by the depth and sweetness of perfect woman-
hood, and the simple, unstrained beauty of it all. The " Tat-
tler " also, while declaring that here was to be found a true poet
who sings because she must and not because she will, added
that Mrs. Moulton was a mistress of form, resembling the
great artists who could afford to take liberties with rules, be-
cause they have mastered them all, that the poems teemed
with artistic perfection, and satisfied the most exacting de-
mands of criticism, even going so far as to say that England
never had a poet in such full, unquestioning sympathy with
woods and hills and winds and waves. " They belong to no
school. One cannot help feeling that they are as absolutely
native to the heart, and therefore as fresh to the sense as the
songs of Burns or of BeVanger. ... It implies genius,"
said this review. :t We have read Mrs. Moulton's poems
with the inevitable result of finding in her well-nigh the one
absolutely natural singer in an age of aesthetic imitation.
She gives the effect of the sudden note of the thrush, heard
through a chorus of mocking-birds and piping bullfinches.
And it follows that poems which give this effect must needs
contain something of their own not to be found elsewhere. .
. . Mrs. Moulton owes nothing unless, indeed, to her own
heart and to nature at first hand. One sees her, and her only,
in her work, and yet finds no taint, of the self-consciousness
which blights the best work that is characteristic of these
days. She is as spontaneous as Walter Von der Vogelweide."
There was a column of equally warm praise in both the
" Times " and the " Morning Post " ; the " Pall Mall Gazette "
found itself reminded of the " exquisitely lyrical feeling which
514 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
gives a unique charm to the songs of Heine, " and the "Spec-
tator," the "London," the "May Fair," the "Scotsman," and
others followed in welcoming praise. Those beautiful verses,
the " House of Death " was the poem that struck most forci-
bly the hearts of the readers then :
" Not a hand has lifted the latchet
Since she went out of the door
No footstep shall cross the threshold
Since she can come in no more.
" There is rust upon locks and hinges,
And mold and blight on the walls,
And silence faints in the chambers,
And darkness waits in the halls
" Waits as all things have waited
Since she went, that day of spring,
Borne in her pallid splendor
To dwell in the court of the King :
" With lilies on brow and bosom,
With robes of silken sheen,
And her wonderful frozen beauty
The lilies^ and silk between.
" Red roses she left behind her,
But they died long, long ago
'Twas the odorous ghost of a blossom
That seemed through the dusk to glow*
" The garments she left mock the shadows
With hints of womanly grace,
And her image swims in the mirror
That was so used to her face.
" The birds make insolent music
Where the sunshine riots outside,
And the winds are merry and wanton
With the summer's pomp and pride.
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. 515
" But into this desolate mansion,
Where love has closed the door,
Nor sunshine nor summer shall enter,
Since she can come in no more."
Another of the poems that divided favor with the critics,
who had very pleasant things to say of it, was "How
Long?"
" If on my grave the summer grass were growing,
Or heedless winter winds across it blowing,
Through joyous June, or desolate December,
How long, sweetheart, how long would you remember
How long, dear love, how long ?
" For brightest eyes would open to the summer,
And sweetest smiles would greet the sweet new-comer,
And on young lips grow kisses for the taking,
When all the summer buds to bloom are breaking,
How long, dear love, how long ?
" To the dim land where sad-eyed ghosts walk only,
Where lips are cold, and waiting hearts are lonely,
I would not call you from your youth's warm blisses,
Fill up your glass and crown it with new kisses
How long, dear love, how long ?
" Too gay in June you might be to regret me,
And living lips might woo you to forget me ;
But ah, sweetheart, I think you would remember
When winds were weary in your life's December
So long, dear love, so long ! "
Innumerable letters came to her also from the long-estab-
lished poets. Philip Bourke Marston wrote her of "the
most exquisite and natural blending of strong emotion with
the sense of external nature," in her work. He declared
" How Long " almost matchless, concluding with, " The
divine simplicity, strength, subtlety, the intense, fragrant, gen-
516 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
uine individuality of your poems, will make them imperish-
able." Other letters of congratulation were received from
other prominent poets, from Matthew Arnold, Austin Dob-
son, Frederick Wedmore, Gosse, O'Shaughnessy, Frederick
Locker, and William Bell Scott, poet and painter, the friend
of Rossetti, whose picture, the " Gate of Memory," illustrated
one of his poems, and a volume of whose verses is illustrated
by Alma Tadema. Another letter ran, " I close the book
only when needs I must, at page the last, with music in my
ears and flowers before my eyes, not without thoughts
across the brain. Pray continue your flights, and be assured
of the sympathetic observance of yours truly, Robert Brown-
ing." At this time her songs were set to music by Francesco
Berger and Lady Charlemont ; Lord Houghton gave her
again a round-table lunch at which George Eliot, Kinglake,
Sir Charles Dilke, Browning, and several others turned the
gloomy February day into summer. She was invited every-
where in short, and had rare opportunities of seeing the in-
side of English houses, visiting, among other places, at the
home of Doctor Westland Marston, the father of the poet,
and himself a poet, whose daughter, Cicety, was her most
devoted friend, and died suddenly one day while making
her a morning visit. It was to her that three touching
sonnets, entitled " Her Ghost," published subsequently in
the "Atlantic," referred. Struck one day of this period
by the beauty of a painting by Burne Jones, a red-gowned
Venus, she published some verses to the purpose in the
" Athenaeum "
" Pallid with too much longing,
White with passion and prayer ;
Goddess of love and beauty,
She sits in the picture there
" Sits, with her dark eyes seeking
Something more subtle still
Than the old delights of loving
Her measureless days to fill.
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTOK 517
" She has loved and been loved so often,
In her long immortal years,
That she tires of the worn-out rapture,
Sickens of hopes and fears.
" No joys or sorrows move her,
Done with her ancient pride ;
For her head she found too heavy
The crown she has cast aside.
" Clothed in her scarlet splendor,
Bright with her glory of hair ;
Sad that she is not mortal,
Eternally sad and fair,
" Longing for joys she knows not,
Athirst with a vain desire,
There she sits, in the picture,
Daughter of foam and fire ! "
w I think," Burne Jones wrote her in reply, " you must
know how glad all workers are of such sympathy as you have
shown me, and I don't know of any other reward that one
ever sets before one's self that can be compared for a moment
with the gratified sense of being understood, it's like
hearing one's tongue in a foreign land. I do assure you I
worked all the more confidently the day your letter came.
Confidence and courage do often fail, and when all the
senses are thoroughly tired with work, and the heart
discouraged, a tribute like the one you sent me is a real
refreshment."
As high praise, in the meantime, as her lyrics received
was awarded to her sonnets. She was frequently pronounced
to be one of the few who had mastered all the difficult
art of the sonnet. In Hall Caine's " Sonnets of Three
Centuries," one of hers, called "Inter Manes," was in-
cluded, and more recently in a collection, entitled " One
Hundred Sonnets," the following formed one of the one
hundred :
518 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTOBT.
" Wilt thou forget me in that other sphere
Thou who hast shared my life so long in this
And straight grown dizzy with that greater bliss,
Fronting heaven's splendor strong and full and clear,
No longer hold the old embraces dear
When some sweet seraph crowns thee with her kiss?
Nay, surely from that rapture thou wouldst miss
Some slight small thing that thou hast cared for here.
I do not dream that from those ultimate heights
Thou wilt come back to seek me where I bide ;
But if I follow, patient of thy slights,
And if I stand there, waiting by thy side,
Surely thy heart with some old thrill will stir,
And turn thy face toward me, even from her."
In relation to these, and other of her sonnets, Mr. George
H. Boker, the poet, wrote her : " I especially am charmed
with your sonnets, with their harmony, dignity, and the pro-
priety of their themes. You have the true insight as to the
province and capabilities of that stanza ; and it seems to me
that in your ability to make a sonnet all that it should be,
you easily surpass all your living tuneful sisterhood." Some
of these sonnets are impassioned in their beauty, some of
them are distinguished for lines that strike clear and strong
as bell tones,
" Through the large stormy splendors of the night,"
one begins, taking the ear at the start ;
" Oh, let me drift, and dream, and fall on sleep,"
another one ends, a distinction, however, not confined to
the sonnets, as witness the opening line of her book,
" Forth from the wind-swept country of my heart."
They are replete too, with such happiness of expression as
this is,
" The sense of that divine tumultuous stir
When spring awakes."
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTOK 519
Still others are heavy with sadness, none more so than that
great one, " In Pace."
" When I am dead, with mockery of praise
Thou shall not vex the stillness of my sleep ;
Leave me to long tranquillity and deep,
Who, through such weary nights and lonesome days,
Such hopeless stretch of uncompanioned ways,
Have come at length my quiet rest to keep
Where nettles thrive, and careless brambles creep,
And things that love the dark their dull brood raise.
After my restless years I would have rest,
Long rest after so many restless years,
Peace after strife, a dreamless sleep and blest,
Unmocked by hope, set free from haunting fears;
Since the old pain might waken at thy tread,
Come Thou not nigh when I am lying dead."
In the next summer she came home. But it is no wonder
that every year when spring winds blow she has a yearning
to renew the pleasures of that period, and set her foot upon
her ship and sail away to the English strand again. She does
it all the more easily for the fact that she enjoys the sea,
never having suffered a moment's sea-sickness. In the sum-
mer of 1882 her stay abroad was briefer than usual, as she
delayed at home for the marriage of her daughter Flor-
ence to Mr. William Shaefer, now of Charleston, S. C., in
whom she found a son after her own heart. Her charming
little " Random Eambles "was published in 1881, after several
of these foreign trips ; and that in connection with her letters
to the "Tribune," and her hundreds of stories both for children
and grown people, have possibly made her more widely known
as a prose writer than as a poet. But it is poetry that is her
passion, which most assails her with its claim to be written,
which best expresses her, and in which she has had the highest
recognition. Books are a sort of people to her ; Emerson
and Hawthorne, Thackeray and George Eliot are like friends ;
and although above all other poets she exalts Browning, yet
she sometimes says that she is thankful to have lived in the
32
520 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
same time with Tennyson, Rossetti, Morris, Matthew Ar-
nold, Swinburne, and the rest, and is sorry for the eighteenth
century. She is an extremely sympathetic reader, sensitive,
receptive, taking the color of a mood, the sparkle of a
thought ; she is not herself a steady worker, . naving times
and seasons of working as they come to her, accomplishing
much then with swift hand and swifter brain. For the last
year or so she has done a good deal of work on social matters
for "The Continent," and it has brought her in communica-
tion with a large class of readers and correspondents who,
impressed by her gentleness and wisdom, give her their con-
fidences, ask her direction of important affairs in their lives,
and send her by-and-by the fortunate results of their obed-
ience to her advice. All her friends find in her this same
gentleness and wisdom, a charm now just tinged with
melancholy, and now varying into natural gladness. They
find her, also, a delightful talker, full of wit and brilliancy and
ready repartee and grace, full of generosity and never-failing
kindness. For the rest, her face with its delicate features,
the long dark lashes of its shining eyes, the fairness of its
waving bright brown hair, the winsomeness of its smile, is
itself an expression of her sweet and sunny temperament.
CHAPTER XXII.
HAEEIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
BY ROSE TERRY COOKE.
Mrs. Spofford's Parentage Anecdotes of Her Childhood A Novel Expedi-
tion Girlhood Days Writing Dramas for School Exhibition First
Literary Efforts Her Brilliant Debut The Story that First Made Her
Famous How it was Received The Commotion it Created Her Won-
derful Command of Language Newburyport and its Surroundings A
City by the Sea Some of its Odd People A Locality Justly Famed for
its Noted Persons Old Traditions and Associations Amusing Anec-
dote Why the Colored Woman Named her Baby Genevieve instead of
Harriet Mrs. Spofford's Present Home on Deer Island A Romantic
Spot Genuine Hospitality A Charming New England Home.
N the history of nations we find their character as
nations strongly affected by their geographic
surroundings ; not in smiling, fertile, inland
plains has ever been the home of tribes noted
for their maritime powers, or of marauders,
who need the fortress of rock and mountain in
which to shelter themselves from retaliation and
hide their spoils.
It was from the stormy North, where man's
perpetual warfare with nature, necessary to perpet-
uate life, made him strong, hardy, courageous, and
active, that the mighty horde of Goth and Visigoth swept
down upon languid and luxurious Italy, and woke her people
from their indolence to fight the fresh strength that was to
renovate their land in spite of their efforts to repel its youth-
ful vigor and subversive overflow.
And it is equally true of the individual, that to appreciate
character justly we must study and understand not only hered-
itary influences, but those which are external ; for never has
man or woman born and nurtured in the artificial atmosphere
521
522 HAERIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
of a city been the true lover and recorder of nature that he
is whose childhood has been spent by hill and shore, by dash-
ing waters, or under deep forest boughs ; whom the wild
flowers have companioned, the birds sung to careless slum-
bers, or the low song of ocean soothed in childish grief or
pain.
Harriet Prescott Spofford was born in Calais, Maine, April
3, 1835. Her father, Mr. Joseph N. Prescott, was then a
lumber merchant in that place ; afterward he studied and
practised law. He is said by those who knew him best to
have been a brilliant, tender-hearted, and prodigally generous
man, courteous and genial, of the best old New-England
blood ; and all these reminiscences of his character interpret
the nature of his daughter. After some years spent in
Calais, Mr. Spofford, in 1849, became attracted by the fasci-
nations of the Pacific coast, and, leaving liis family in their
Maine home, went out among the host of pioneers in that
famous year to seek fortune in the farthest West. He was
one of the founders of the city of Oregon, and three times
elected its mayor ; but he was seized in the midst of arduous
work with the subtlest foe humanity contends with, lingering
paralysis, and for twenty years lived on in that dim prison
of the bodly senses, till merciful death unbarred the door
forever.
Mrs. Spofford's mother was Sarah Bridges, a beautiful,
proud, and intellectual girl, worthy of the grand old name
" Sarah," for she was " a lady " indeed ; and though worn in
later years with sorrow and loss, in the high-bred, delicate
outline of her face, and the instinctive courteousness of her
gracious welcome, even from the depths of physical suffering,
there still remained the royal insignia of nature's true nobility.
She died April 1, 1883, at Deer Island, Newburyport, in
her daughter's house.
Born of such parents, Harriet Prescott began her life
among the rocks, woods, and waters of Maine. Much light
is thrown on her nature by the "anecdotes still told of her
early childhood. Her aunt, who recorded most of these
HARRIET PRESCOTT SFOFFORD.
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. 525
things, was accustomed to read the Bible to her at night after
the child was in bed. One night she said :
" Choose for yourself, Hal, what I shall read you to-night."
" Oh, aunty," said the baby of four, " I want you to read
in the first part of the Bible where God said, ' Let there be
light ! and there was light,' and then " her tones growing
eager, and her blue eyes ablaze with thoughts beyond her
speech " then over in the middle, where it says, ' The heavens
declare the glory of God, and the firmament sho \veth His
handiwork,'" adding in a tone of rapture, with her hands
clasped, "It is so beautiful."
Another night she said : " Aunty, I wish you would read
to me about Abraham offering up Isaac ; " and when the story
was finished, said, with her pathetic voice, " Aunty, why did
God want Abraham to offer Isaac up ? "
" To show his faith and obedience, dear."
She stopped to think the troublesome story out, and then
" Did Abraham want to do it ? " she asked, earnestly.
" No ; he loved his son, but he wanted to obey God."
" But was it right? Wouldn't Abraham have been hung?"
said the child, in tones of deep awe.
"No, Hal. God commanded him to do it."
After a pause she lifted herself from the pillow, and clench-
ing her little fingers tightly together, exclaimed, with a per-
fect passion of tears :
" Oh ! I hope God won't ask me to offer up my little sister,
for I'm afraid I shouldn't want to do it ! "
The same passionate devotion to those she loved was shown
a year or two later, when her baby brother died, and on
entering the room she fainted dead away ; and being the next
day missed for a long time, and sought everywhere but in
the drawing-room where the tiny crib stood that held the
child's body? she was at last found there, covering the couch
with pale primroses from the garden, and bitter leaves of
wormwood ; even then instinctively recognizing the symbol-
ism that makes
u Your voiceless lips, oh, flowers," be " living preachers."
526 HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
So wild was her grief, so deep her dejection, that she was
threatened with congestion of the brain for a time.
At another time, being then but four, filled with childish
curiosity, and having in her mind a distinct picture of the end
of the world not its final end of destruction and judg-
ment, but what another child called the "jumping-off place"
she coaxed a playmate to set off with her on an expe-
dition to find it. Had they been grown women or men
and begun a quest of as little use or promise, such as
finding the North Pole, they would have gone openly
escorted by sympathy and loaded with supplies ; watched,
waited for ; and if seas and icebergs, grizzly bears and Esqui-
maux, let them escape alive, received with public acclamation
and private rapture ; but they were only babies ! Children
of a larger growth monopolize all the immunities ; and their
exploration ended ignominiously, for a passing farmer picked
them up, and in spite of every sobbing or indignant remon-
strance, carried them home in his wagon, after they had
tramped a mile and a half on that hot summer morning,
"dirty and footsore, but persevering."
How much better would the world have been had some
wandering Hercules picked up our luckless Arctic explorers,
packed them into a Brobdignag's wagon, and rumbled back
with the crowd over an astonished continent ! What linger-
ing agonies of cold, starvation and despair ; what worn-out
hopes, what breaking and broken hearts, what useless lavish
expense of life and riches, would have been spared to both
England and America had all the expeditions both nations
have sent out been ended so safely and expeditiously.
A lithe, active child, full of quaint wit and keen question-
ing, she ran wild through her earlier years in the pure air and
fragrant breath of pine-forests and sea-breezes, laying the
foundation of her exceptional health and strength.
Her childish plays were full of daring : light as a woodland
sprite of old mythology, it was her delight to skip about on
the logs in the boom, careless that one false step would
plunge her forever into the icy waters of the flood below ; or
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. 527
ride the great trunks that slid along with hopeless fatality to
meet the huge saw careering up and down in the saw-mill,
and elude its teeth just at the right minute. She balanced
herself on planks that went shooting down the arrowy water
in the sluiceway of the mill, and came out dripping, laughing,
and triumphant ; or made brief voyages on the rafts that
abounded on that Northern river.
Few American women who have lived to her age can look
back on but one illness in their lives, and that the result of
over-exertion ; and few anywhere can boast of the sound
mind in a sound body that is her possession.
Descended from what Dr. Holmes has aptly called the
Brahmin race of New England, she took eagerly to the learn-
ing, which was an inborn taste. "Prescott" is a corruption
of "Priest's cote," or priest's house, and tells of long descent
from that privileged class who were the fountains and
guardians of literature from its earliest dawn. Surely there
is something 1 in a name when it is in itself a tradition
o
something to be proud of an inheritance to be respected
and preserved.
With this surname her Christian name does not seem to
harmonize. "Harriet" suggests the prim, acrid, delicate
piece of property of Sir Charles Grandison's days, a creature
altogether too good for this world, and too disagreeably
punctilious for a better ; and a little anecdote told of Mrs.
Spofford during her Washington life shows how certain is
instinct even in these finer matters. A colored woman, who
was once in her service there, asked leave to name her baby
after the beloved mistress, but when the pickaninny was
brought for inspection its name proved to be Genevieve.
" Why," said Mrs. Spofford, " I thought it was to be called
Harriet, after me?"
"Oh yes, Mis' Poffit," replied the smiling mother, "but
Genevieve 'spresses you a great sight better'n Harriet does."
The hardy, active, bright child grew up to be fourteen
before she left her home in Calais ; then she went to her
aunt, Mrs. Betton, in Newburyport, to obtain better means
528 HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
of education than the little border town which was her birth-
place offered her.
Here also the surroundings of her life were peculiar,
and fostered the bent of her nature. Newburyport is one of
those grand old towns whose trade and substance is derived
from the ocean. Once it was the home of many a Massa-
chusetts aristocrat ; its streets are lined still with their old-
fashioned stately houses, standing high on terraces of grass,
and wearing a sort of reserve and dignity, though their
builders and makers have long since ceased to live upon
earth ; and the revolutions of American life have filled their
lordly chambers with the children of those whom they
"would not have set with the dogs of their flock."
" It is the servants now who fill the master's house," said
an old inhabitant to me, sadly. Here stands yet the house
of that eccentric old " Lord," Timothy Dexter, who made his
fortune by sending to the West Indies blankets and warming-
pans, eagerly bought by the planters of Cuba and Hayti as
strainers and dippers for their sugar-cane syrup, the very
irony of fate making this man's fortune out of his ignorance
and folly.
Here, too, is the old house where Caleb Gushing lived, and
here are traditions of Hannah F. Gould, one of New Eng-
land's earlier poets, a strong-minded, angular, strapping
woman, eccentric in dress, abrupt in manner, but bright,
independent, kindhearted, and not without talent. Indeed
the Massachusetts coast as it radiates from Boston is alight
with the glories of literary genius, long the proud boast of
that old and beautiful city. Lucy Larcorn, the poet of daily
life, the self-made woman, the delightful friend, dates from
Beverly. Whittier, the master of New England poetry, the
knight whose keen lance is ever at rest to charge with chival-
rous zeal upon injustice, cruelty, wrong in any shape and in
any quarter ; whose fiery heart throbs like a Paladin's under
his Quaker vest, well-nigh ready for such frays as should
belie the peaceful introversion of his religious birthright and
training, lived for many years in Amesbury, only a few miles
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. 529
from Newburyport ; and there his modest home still stands, a
shrine for loving and admiring pilgrims to visit ; and every
year he returns to his old haunts for a time to wander on the
hills, or break the silver rest of the gently flowing river with
the oars of his beloved boat. Near at hand is Salem, forever
famous as the home of Hawthorne, whose genius is one of
America's proudest boasts, and whose fame is world- wide.
Other and lesser names of honor are abundant hereabouts.
The air is redolent with unwritten poems and unspoken
romance ; and into this atmosphere came the slight, active
Maine girl to study, as she thought, unconscious that here
fame should find her, and love, that is so infinitely more
precious than fame, fix her life and her happiness in the old
city by the sea. Here she won the prize for an essay on
Hamlet, offered by a few gentlemen to the children of the
Putnam Free School. This essay attracted the attention of
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a well-known author, who
became a friend at once of this brilliant girl, and developed
by kindly counsel and generous encouragement the dormant
genius his penetration had discovered. Here she also made
herself famous among her schoolmates by writing various
dramas for their use on days of school exhibition ; for these
plays she used historic facts, and poured into them so much
of her surprising knowledge and vivid language, making
these dry bones of the valley of vision clothe themselves
with palpitating flesh once more, and spring up to life, love,
and battle ; that her fame still clings to the traditions of the
school, and makes the otherwise ordinary building wear a
certain halo of memory in the eyes of those who were her
companions in study through that period of her life.
Soon after this time Mrs. Prescott, with her younger chil-
dren moved to Derry, N. H., and after Harriet had graduated
at the Putnam school, she finished her education at Pinkerton
Academy. But the bright, careless girl had turned even so
early to the dreaming woman ; she had left her heart behind
in Newburyport, and no doubt added the weight of strong
will and wish to such family counsels as resulted in the
530 HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
removal of her mother and sisters to a permanent home in
the city by the sea. Here ensued a period of struggle and
deprivation, and the slight creature, whose lithe and delicate
shape seemed to indicate a continual need of ease, luxury,
and rest, showed of what fibre she was made. She began to
write stories for what are commonly called " story papers,"
and worked with persistent energy for small gains, small, yet
needful to help those nearest and dearest to her, the toiling
mother, the young sisters, the helpless father.
What she wrote in those days has never been collected,
perhaps never known except by her own family, and is there-
fore safe from criticism ; but her after-work leaves no doubt
that even these earlier efforts were lit with the spark of
genius, and that this unwearied practice gave to her hand the
power and skill with which the public were soon to be
astonished.
We all know how delicate and pallid are the blossoms of
our New England hills ; what scant gray vegetation covers
their rocks ; what hardy verdure, in what half-toned tints,
decks our villages and forests except in their gorgeous death ;
we traverse field after field to find nothing more than pathetic
and fragile bunches of the fairy-like "innocents," the soft
gray " pussy," the abundant but scanty-petalled saxifrage ;
or, hidden under withered grass and driven dead leaves, the
baby blossoms of shy arbutus ; and when in summer's glow
and prime we hunt the solitary steeps for some bloom that
shall express the long-delayed heats of the year, and harmon-
ize with burning sun and flashing storm, we see only the
humiliated low stars of the five-finger, the dull blue fruit of
the dwarfed and stiff huckleberry, the late dandelion here
and there, or the half-budded aster in funereal purple, for as
yet the rod of Aaron has not evolved its golden tips ; but
suddenly, in the dust and heat and gray ness, we come upon a
flame ; here, on the arid roadside springs up a lily, lavish
and gorgeous as the cactus of Mexican plains, lifting its vase
of fire to drink the concentred sunbeams, and flecked within
with passionate gloom and velvet luxury. It was with a sen-
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. 531
sation akin to his who suddenly comes upon this tropic-souled
fire-lily, in the typical New England landscape, that readers
of the " Atlantic Monthly" took up the February number of
its third volume, the volume of 1858-59, and lost themselves
in the story " In a Cellar."
Hitherto the fiction of this young magazine had been
chiefly of the distinctive American type, and Americans, like
the English footman, do "love a lord ;" the joys and sorrows
of our next neighbor grow uninteresting even to the few, and
are " caviare to the general ; " but this new and brilliant con-
tribution dazzled us all with the splendors, the manners, the
political intrigues, the sin-spiced witchery of Parisian life.
The literary world of the day quivered with a new excite-
ment : who had done this wonderful thing? Was it or
or naming by turns the most cultivated travellers
of this country, and the most practised authors abroad ; it
could hardly be believed, except by her own confidants and
kin, that the still, shy, brown-haired, blue-eyed Maine girl,
who lived in Newburyport as quietly as a gentle Quakeress,
had truly written this scintillation of genius and culture.
But as time went on, and story after story glittered in the
"Atlantic" pages, as older contributors laid down their pens
in despair, not unmingled with envy, and ceased to compete
with the new contributor, Harriet Prescott vindicated any
doubt of her power or authorship of "In a Cellar." Under
her quiet aspect, wistful regard, and shy manner, lay a soul
full of imagination and passion, and a nature that revelled in
the use of words to express this fire and force. In her hands
the English language became sonorous, gorgeous, and burn-
ing. She poured out such luxury of image, such abundant
and splendid epithet, such derivative stress, and such lavish
color and life, that the stiff old mother-tongue seemed to
have been molten and fused in some magic crucible, and
turned to liquid gold and gems.
And through all her fiction here and there a brief verse
sung itself to the motif of the situation, or the caprice of the
character, that showed she had also in reserve the heart and
532 HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
tongue of a poet, though her poetry was as yet unrhymed,
and wore the alias of prose. But not only in the lavishness
of imagination, in depicting passion, luxury, and sensuous
situation, was her genius to expend itself.
Newburyport has, beyond its mansions, its bowery streets,
its spired churches, and its gray gardens, a waterside, where
fishermen live, and from whose poor huts they push out on
the savage and treacherous ocean to toil for their daily bread.
Here the dreadful romance of poverty and danger dwells,
and haunts the beholder ; from these battered homes wives
and mothers watch the outgoing boats that will return no
more ; they watch in vain from these house-tops, and stare
with weary eyes from the low windows, perhaps to see the
men they love and live for tossed from their vessels by the
angry, bellowing waves, and dashed to death on the pitiless
rocks, or swallowed in the great rolling, foaming waters that
break over the harbor bar.
To a stranger the outlook is bewildering and lovely. At
low tide and toward sunset the coloring of sea and land is
wonderful ; shades of green no painter ever imagined or
could ever reproduce, melt and mingle on the still surface of
the harbor ; a pink haze dims and glorifies the further shore,
shadowy bars of rose and amber glow in the western sky, and
in tender refrets change and interchange with the green
shadows of the sea ; cold and clear the evening star rises
above this riot of delicate color, and the sky deepening to
sapphire above can only recall the pavements beneath the
divine throne "as the body of heaven in its clearness."
But the fishermen's wives and daughters do not live in the
beauty of the sea, rather in its dread and terror ; and fully
entering into the tragic significance of their lives, Miss Pres-
cott wrote one of her best stories, "The South Breaker," a
story of humble life, but of the passion, sin, suffering, and
late-delaying peace that is not the experience of low or high
class, but of all humanity ; and through the sad excitement
of the vivid recital breathes the very atmosphere of ocean.
You can hear the recoil and thunder of its crested beryl
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. 533
waves ; feel the swing and force of its cruel bosom ; cringe
at the sweep and wail of its winds ; and feel in your very
heart how mournfully true it is that " there is sorrow on the
sea ; it cannot be quiet."
It has been said of Miss Prescott's work by certain object-
ing critics that she does not write with a definite moral pur-
pose ; that the stern rectitude of the New England character
is not exploited in her stories. No doubt they are all the
more readable and popular for this undeniable fact. Yet who
can re-read ff Sir Rohan's Ghost" re-read, 1 say, for its
wonderful diction and luxuriant coloring serve to hide its
strength on a first perusal Avithout perceiving that it is a
strong and trenchant exposition of the awful power of con-
science? that the ghost of the story was the conscious
memory of a sin never expiated or atoned for, avenging itself
on the sinner by the mere but unerring result of natural laws
acting in their ordinary sequence on a human soul. And the
resistless force of moral law breathes its stern diapason
through " The South Breaker," like the note of threatening
waves on the reef itself, or the sullen roar that preludes and
gives warning of a storm.
Such also is the tone and temper of " A Thief in the
Night," another powerful and dramatic tale, worthy of
repeated readings ; an unintended sermon on those awful
words, " The wages of sin is death."
In 1865, after many years of engagement, Miss Prescott
was married to Mr. Richard S. Spoflbrd, a lawyer of New-
buryport, and the boy and girl in whose childish hearts beat
mutually the great throb of life even on their first meeting,
now man and woman, entered into that domestic companion-
ship sacred even from the comment of a friend. Yet so
much is said about the incapacity of literary women for
domestic life, so many sneers are hurled at them as a class,
that it is certainly a duty owed to them to record the truth
that Mrs. SpofFord is as devoted a wife, sister, and friend as
the most uncultured of her sex could be, and withal a careful
and intelligent housekeeper.
534 HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
That there are literary women who earn and deserve such
sneers it is vain to deny, for they are women of like passions
and short-comings with those who earn their bread or amuse
their leisure in another manner; but it is hard to say
that they are unpractical, unreasonable, and jealous be-
cause they are literary. There are hundreds of women
who sew, who teach, who work in mills, or stand in shops,
quite as erring in these matters as are authors and poets
of the same sex; and there are many writing- women who
would be loved, respected, and admired in all the duties
and relations of life, wherever or however they earn their
bread, even though it be at the pen-point or the editorial
desk.
In the second year of her marriage Mrs. Spofford's only
child was born, and yet in its infancy left her to mourn as
only mothers can mourn, refusing to be comforted.
Some years after his son's death Mr. Spofford purchased an
old house, picturesquely situated between Newburyport and
Amesbury, on Deer Island. Removed from its position
slightly, and turned about so that it no longer faced the high-
way, judiciously altered and repaired, with a French roof
added to its already hospitable interior, it became the ideal
home of a poet and author.
The taste that knew already how to choose the purest and
most vivid garments for the lofty thought or faithful descrip-
tion now lent itself to the less arduous labor of making an old
house beautiful and homelike, and to-day no one can enter
this dwelling without admiration and delight. Even in
winter the rooms are full of cheer and sunshine, and illumi-
nated with royal hospitality, and though all the land about
lies deep in its dazzling shroud, the gnarled old pines that
shelter the spot spread their dusky velvet boughs against the
whiteness, and vaunt their fadeless spring : while the rushing
blue river sparkles on every tiny ripple of its broad breast,
and flows, like a self-appointed guardian about the home of its
celebrator and lover, toward the unseen ocean she has also
loved and celebrated.
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. 535
The whole place is curiously significant of its inhabitants ;
insulated by position from the outer world, its solitude is
bridged on either hand, and just in front of the house, cross-
ing both bridges in a brief space, runs an artery of living
communication from the world without, a line of street-cars
connecting Newburyport and Amesbury.
The banks of the river on the mainland sides are thickly
set with young pine woods, soft and green, with fragrant
shadow ; and on a hill just in view stands the house once in-
habited by Sir Edward Thornton, a picturesque castellated
mansion that in the distance shows like stone, though it is but
a wooden pretence.
Here in this charming dwelling, Harriet Prescott Spofford
need ask nothing from the outer world of homage or happi-
ness, for here, like the woman of Shunam, she "dwells among
her own peqple," and opens both heart and home to her
friends, whose name is legion.
Of late years she has written other things than fiction. A
trenchant series of articles on the servant question show that
she, too, has the keen and clear New England sense which is
the birthright of its daughters. Dealing here with a difficult
problem, one which has perplexed and saddened many a
woman's heart, she has shown herself capable of justice as
well as charity, and sees the relation as it should be seen,
from the side of the maid as well as the mistress.
Here, too, under the singing pines she has gathered for an
eager public the Aeolian strains of her own poems, floating
verses of which so long tantalized us in her stories ; and in
them we find echoes clear and true of the nature she so
deeply loves and thoroughly appreciates. She sings as
she speaks, in soft, true, vibrating accents, hinting here and
there of unrevealed treasures, depths not for the world to
explore, yet giving the anointed eye glimpses of a garden
like Aladdin's, full of fruits that are jewels, and paved with
fine gold.
What can be more powerful and beautiful than her poem
of " The Pine Tree" which we extract?
536 HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
"THE PINE TREE.
" Before your atoms came together
I was full-grown, a tower of strength,
Seen by the sailors out at sea,
With great storms measuring all my length,
Making my mighty minstrelsy,
Companion of the ancient weather.
"Yours! Just as much the stars that shiver
When the frost sparkles overhead !
Call yours as soon those viewless airs,
That sing in the clear vault, and tread
The clouds ! Less yours than theirs
The fish-hawks swooping round the river !
" In the primeval depths embowering
My broad boughs with my branching peers,
My gums I spilled in precious drops
Ay, even in those elder years .
The eagle building in my tops,
Along my boughs the panther cowering.
" Beneath my boughs the red man slipping,
Himself a shadow, stole away;
A paler shadow follows him !
Races may go or races stay,
The cones upon my loftiest limb,
The winds will many a year be stripping ;
" And there the hidden day be throwing
His fires, though dark the dead prime be
Before the bird shakes off the dew.
Ah ! what songs have been sung to me :
What songs will yet be sung, when you
Are dust upon the four winds blowing."
And who has written anything more tenderly pathetic than
the following lines ?
" SECOND SIGHT."
" Under the apple-boughs she sits,
The sunshine in her flying hair ;
Dimpling and laughing through the fall
Of rosy flakes about her there.
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. 537
" And as I gaze I picture me,
Beside this darling of our souls,
Two innocents with softer locks,
Half ringlets and half aureoles.
" They frolic with her in the grass ;
They listen to the bird, the bee ;
They catch the petals as they float ;
They babble music in their glee.
" They teach the little earthling how
The cherubs play in hallowed courts ;
With some great, gracious angel near,
And smiling on them at their sports.
" Oh, do I really look upon
Those lost delights of vanished years,
Or do I only dream them there
Because I see her through my tears ? "
Here she wrote a practical and exhaustive book on house-
hold decorative art, which was first printed in "Harpers
Bazaar," a book full of research, curious information, and
help for the blundering souls who want to make their homes
beautiful, but have neither skill nor knowledge how to do so.
And here, too, lives Mary N. Prescott, Mrs. Spoiford's
sister, whose charming stories are so eagerly looked for by
every reader of our best magazines, and who may well com-
pete with her eldest sister for the honor of being a remark-
able writer of short stories, a gift far more rare and a capa-
city far more in demand than that of the novel writer.
Mrs. Spofford has published, in the course of her literary
career, ten books, L e., "Sir Rohan's Ghost," "The Amber
Gods," "Azarian," "The Thief in the Night," " New England
Legends," "Art Decoration Applied to Furniture," "The
Servant Question," "The Marquis of Carabas," "Hester
Stanley at St. Mark's," and, still in the prime of her intel-
lect, America has much more to expect from her. Yet who
can dare say that a woman beyond the need of labor now,
happy in every human relation, the centre of a charming and
33
538 HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
loving family, the queen of a delightful home, will care for
the demand of an insatiable reading public, who are forever
crying, " Give ! give ! "
Women who are driven by the necessities of their lives to
write, as others are to sew, to teach, or to nurse, do not
cease their labors till the pen drops from their weary hand,
and the exhausted brain refuses to feed the laboring lingers.
" Work ! work ! work ! " is not only the " Song of the
Shirt," but the song of the Woman, and under that stringent
cry we reel off pages of fiction, overridden by the dreamy facts
of need, like the spider, spinning not only our dwellings, but
our grave-clothes from our own breasts. Happy is she who
need not so outwear heart and brain in the effort to live, dying
daily ; who is not forced to encounter that publicity and com-
ment from which every true woman shrinks with real pain,
but who can lay down her weapons of war, enter upon her
rest and peace in this world, intrenched in " Honor, love, obedi-
ence, troops of friends," and dwell while life lasts in the dig-
nities and felicities of home, like Harriet Prescott Spoffbrd.
CHAPTER XXIII.
ELIZABETH PKENTISS.
BY MARION HARLAND.
Childhood of Elizabeth Payson Her Parentage Death of Her Father
The Struggle with Adversity A Glimpse of Her Life at Nineteen
"The Night Before Thanksgiving" Fondness and Facility for Writing
Preparing to Become a Teacher Early Religious Experiences
Marriage to Rev. Dr. Prentiss Wife and Mother Mrs. Prentiss' First
Books A Peep into Her Domestic Life Cares of a Pastor's Wife
Ill-health and Suffering Patience in Affliction Marvellous In-
dustry and Courage Writing under Difficulties How "Stepping
Heavenward" was Written Its Wonderful Sale Fortitude and Resig-
nation of a Noble Christian Woman.
,N a glorious July day in 1878, a company of
tourists turned aside from the public road that
leaves the parish church of Arreton on the
left to visit a grave, on which the English sod
has thickened during eighty years.
" Pardon ! " said' a Frenchman, who having
seen others remove their hats, held his in his
hand ; " but have the goodness to tell me what
it is we have come here to see ! "
The reply was reverently given : " The grave
of a very good woman."
Legh Richmond tells us little more than this of
Elizabeth Walbridge, the dairyman's daughter, whose simple
headstone pilgrims regard as devout men once looked upon a
shrine.
In the mountain cemetery of Dorset, Vermont, is a tomb
lettered with the name of another Elizabeth, beside which the
visitor to this picturesque region stands with bowed head and
heart too full for commonplace speech.
539
540 ELIZABETH PRENTISS.
"The grave of a very good woman ! " And a great if
to sway the hearts, to direct the thoughts, and shape the eter-
nal destinies of tens of thousands go to make up human
greatness ; if the act of gathering the riches of a life crowned
with love and honor, and offering them in singleness of heart
upon one altar be sublime.
Elizabeth Prentiss was the fifth child of Dr. Edward Pay-
son, and was born in Portland, Maine. When the baby-
daughter, longed-for by the tender mother, was two days old,
he gives in a letter to his parents what sounds to us now like
the key-note of the weirdly-sweet refrain running through the
life of the woman who, with her father's genius, inherited a
nervous organization so fine and so susceptible that the purest
joy was never divorced from its complement of exquisite pain :
" Still God is kind to us. Louisa and the babe continue as
well as we could desire. I can still scarcely help thinking
that God is preparing me for some severe trial, but if He
will grant me His presence as he does now, no trial can seem
severe."
The man who trembled to look upon a draught of earthly
delight, in the presentiment that dregs of peculiar bitterness
must lurk in the bottom of the cup, dated a letter written on
his deathbed, " The Land of Beulah," and spoke of the dark
river as " an insignificant rill." At the early age of forty-
five he laid down the body racked and rent by years of incon-
ceivable tortures, often mistaken by him for the bufletings of
Satan.
We are pained, but in nowise surprised, when Elizabeth,
at twenty-two, says quietly, " I never knew what it was to
feel well." In her "Life and Letters"* than which no
nobler memorial was ever raised by conjugal love, we read
that "severe pains in the side, fainting turns, sick headaches,
and other ailments troubled her from infancy. Her whole
being was so impressionable that things pleasant and things
painful stamped themselves upon it as with 4he point of a
* " Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss. " By George L. Prentiss.
A. D. F. Randolph, New York.
ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 541
diamond. Whatever she did, whatever she felt, she felt and
did as for her life."
The father, whom she passionately loved, cherishing all her
life a vivid recollection of everything pertaining to his last
months on earth, died when Elizabeth was nine years old,
and the close wrestle with circumstances, so familiar to the
readers of biographies of pastor and missionary, began for
Dr. Pay son's widow and children. Louisa, the eldest
daughter, at eighteen, opened a girls' school in New York,
the family removing to that city. During the one year they
spent there Elizabeth, a slender, dark-eyed child of twelve,
thoughtful and intelligent beyond her years, joined the Pres-
byterian church.
The school established by Louisa in 1832 in Portland was
very successful. Mrs. Pay son's conduct of the boarding-
department and her management of her fast-growing boys
and girls were alike loving and judicious. To an active mind
and much strength of character she joined a warm heart and
practical wisdom that enabled her to supplement Louisa's
patient toil by skilful economies. The school was the main,
if not the sole support of the household. She had been
delicately nurtured as the petted daughter of a wealthy mer-
chant, but the spirit that had not broken when adversity fol-
lowed bereavement did not bend under the sustained press-
ure of homelier trials, the accommodation of enlarging wants
to a narrow and non-expansive income. That her daughters
became admirable housewives was almost an inevitable con-
sequence of such tutelage. tf Lizzy " was her sister's most
promising pupil. Louisa Payson was a woman of extraor-
dinary intellectual gifts and acquirements, proficient in
modern languages, an earnest student of Greek, Hebrew, and
Latin, of metaphysics and theology, and a writer so graceful
and pertinent that she at length exchanged teaching for
remunerative authorship. She married Professor Hopkins
of Williamstown, and but for the confirmed invalidism into
which she soon afterward fell would have attained to a high
o
place among American literati.
542 ELIZABETH PRENTISS.
At the age of sixteen Elizabeth was the grateful occupant
of a " snuggery " of her own, a certain " Blue Room," assigned
her by the mother who best understood her love of quiet
hours for meditation and writing. Her father's desk was hers,
and on it she penned, at the suggestion of Mr. Nathaniel
Willis, short stories and verses for the " Youth's Companion."
Most of these were collected twenty years later, into a little
volume entitled, " Only a Dandelion." Here is a hint of how
life went on with her at nineteen :
" NIGHT BEFORE .THANKSGIVING.
" I have been busy all day and am so tired I can scarcely
hold a pen. Amidst the beating of eggs, the pounding of
spices, the furious rolling of pastry of all degrees of short-
ness, the filling of pies with pumpkins, mince-meat, apples,
and the like, the stoning of raisins and washing of currants,
the beating and baking of cake, and all the other ings,
thoughts of your ladyship have somehow squeezed themselves
in. We have really bidden adieu to f Pumpkin Place,' and
established ourselves in a house formerly occupied by old
Parson Smith. . . .
" In the midst of our ' moving,' after I had packed and
stowed and lifted, and been elbowed by all the sharp corners
in the house, and had my hands all torn and scratched, I spied
the new 'Knickerbocker' 'mid a heap of rubbish, and was
tempted to peep into it. Lo, and behold, the first thing that
met my eye was the 'Lament of the Last Peach.' I didn't
care to read more, and forthwith returned to fitting of carpets
and arranging tables and chairs and bureaux but all the
while meditating how I shoulii be revenged upon you."
The verses in question had been given to her friend, and
sent without the author's knowledge to the " Knickerbocker."
With all her fondness for and facility in the use of her pen
the exercise was at this date mere pastime. She threw off
sketch and poem as carelessly as she wrote the letters that
add vivacity and glow to her biography. Naturally shy with
strangers, and reserved with mere acquaintances, she wrote bet-
ter than she talked, except to intimate friends. In her home-
ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 543
circle her brilliant sallies and graver disquisitions met with
loving appreciation, but even there Louisa's remarkable endow-
ments would seem to have cast the talents of the younger
sister into the shade. This is the only explanation of the
fact that Louisa's successes in literature, and the encourage-
ment given by the founder of " Youth's Companion " and his
son, N. P. Willis, to Elizabeth's essays in the same direction,
did not suggest to her or her relatives the expediency of adopt-
ing authorship as her profession and serious pursuit. The
educated New England woman of her day, if obliged to
maintain herself, knew of but one way in which this could be
done in comfortable respectability. Miss Payson resolutely
put aside manuscripts and curbed the rebellious flutterings of
imagination, forbidding it to soar or sing, and " prepared her-
self" to become a teacher.
Before she received the call that was to withdraw her from
the studious seclusion of the Blue Room and the shelter of
the mother's wing, there came what she ever afterwards
termed the " turning-point " in her career. In her twenty-
first year occurred an epoch in the spiritual history of this
girl, who "did everything as for her life," at the reading
of which shallow souls are perplexed and incredulous,
upon which those who can enter in some degree into the com-
prehension of the depths out of which her cry arose to a deaf
God, dwell in wonder and compassion that almost break the
heart they move. Her father, had he been alive and with
her, would have sympathized, pang for pang, in her anguish
under the crushing conviction that she had rejected the Saviour
and grieved away the wooing Spirit, and incurred the just
wrath of the Father, in the despair with which she contrasted
her own guilt and impotency with the holiness and power of
her estranged God. Her husband's sound, sweet nature and
clear insight thus explain the glooms of this mediaeval
period :
" The indications are very plain that her morbidly-sensitive,
melancholy temperament had much to do with this experi-
ence. Her account of it shows, also, that her mind was un-
544 ELIZABETH PKENTISS.
happily affected by certain false notions of the Christian life
and ordinances then, and still, more or less prevalent notions
based upon a too narrow and legal conception of the gospel."
It is impossible to read the chapter in which this awful,
mysterious "passion" is recorded without recalling the preg-
nant words, " The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the
children's teeth are set on edge."
Yet we cannot overlook the effect of this winter of the soul
in strengthening and maturing the faith that lived through it,
the perfected fruitage of which was for the refreshment and
healing of many souls.
" Do not hesitate," she writes to a favorite cousin, "to direct
me over and over again to go with difficulties and tempta-
tions and sin to the Saviour. I love to be led there and left
there. Sometimes when the ' exceeding sinfulness of sin ' be-
comes painfully apparent, there is nothing for the soul to
do but to lie in the dust before God without a word of ex-
cuse ; and that feeling of abasement in His sight is worth
more than all the pleasures in the world."
The simple humility of this utterance, made soon after the
passing of the great horror of darkness, is like the dewy
breath of a May morning following a black frost.
In 1840 the summons to active duty sounded. She be-
came a teacher in Mr. Persico's seminary for girls in Rich-
mond, Virginia. With her acceptance of the principal's
offer began for her that stern discipline of character and dis-
position which is wrought by external influences. With less
time for dreamy introspection, and subject to the call of pro-
saic duties, she was daily stronger and happier, in spite of
homesickness and much that was uncongenial in the appoint-
ments and companions of her new abode. To one corre-
spondent she confesses that she suffers "excruciating pain"
from what some doctors pronounced to be angina pectoris;
to another, that the warm weather made her " feel as if she
were in an oven with hot melted lead poured over her brain."
In close and almost inevitable connection comes the mention
of her " encouragement in reading my father's memoir, in
ELIZABETH PKENTISS. 545
reflecting that he passed through greater spiritual conflicts
than will probably ever be mine."
Nevertheless, her letters, and the journal she was pre-
rented in later years from destroying by her husband's re-
monstrances, show the continued triumph of the blithe,
brave, growing inner woman over disease, weariness, and
loneliness.
" There is sunshine enough in my heart to make any old
hole bright," she scribbles in "a dowdy chamber, which is
in one view a perfect den. I am as merry as a grig from
morning till night. The little witches down-stairs love me
de"arly, everybody is kind, and and and when every-
body is locked out, and I am locked into this same room, this
low attic, there's not a king on earth so rich, so happy as I."
We smile, well pleased, over this sentence: "We rushed
into a discussion about proprieties, and I maintained that a
mind was not in a state of religious health if it could not
safely indulge in thoughts as funny as funny could be."
Her year of teaching was so marked in its success that Mr.
Persico sent an urgent recall to her in November, 1842.
There were changes in the administration of the affairs of the
seminary that made the second session far less pleasant than
the first. The principal lost heart after his wife's death,
could not pay his teachers, and was hopelessly indebted to
others. Miss Payson stood gallantly at her post through
pecuniary loss and mental discouragement until the dreary
summer term closed in the " dog-days " which well nigh
exhausted her feeble reserves of physical vigor.
There was more heroism in this than those about her dreamed
of, more than her best friends knew at the time. With
infinite tact and delicacy her biographer has withheld from
us very many passages of letters and journal that the kind-
liest stranger-eyes should not read, yet allows us to discern
in the tone of these records tokens of a coming change.
From between the leaves of her epistles to her dearest girl-
friend, the "Anna Prentiss" whose close intimacy with
herself only ceased with the beautiful life of the former,
546 ELIZABETH PRENTISS.
and from the coyly-opened "Diary," steals subtle fragrance
that revives our own memories of life's blossom-season.
Fortitude in the endurance of crosses becomes buoyancy, the
hope of better days is glad certainty. We are sure what all
this portends before we read such hurried, palpitating jot-
tings-down as these :
" AUGUST 22. Came home. Oh, so very happy ! Dear,
good home !
"AUGUST 23. Callers all day, the second of whom was
Mr. P.
" SEPTEMBER 9. Cold, blowy, and disagreeable. Went to
see Carrie H. Came home and found Mr. P. here. He
stayed to tea."
Then falls an eloquent silence upon the girlish prattle. We
know, but not from herself, that September 11 was hence-
forward her " white day." The one other entry in this year's
diary is the solemnly significant quotation from " Corinne " :
" Celle qui a besoin d'admirer ce qu'elle aime, celle, dont le
jugement est p6ntrant, bien que son imagination exaltee, il
n'y a pour elle qu'un objet dans 1'univers.
"Celui qu'on aime, est le vengeur des fautes qu'on a
commis sur cette terre ; la Divinite lui prete son pouvoir."
The world is better, hearts are fresher and stronger for the
modest relation, which is hardly more than a beautiful sug-
gestion of such a love-story as began on that "white day."
In brief, manly phrase, the biographer tells us :
" Love in a word, was to her, after religion, the holiest and
most wonderful reality of life ; and in the presence of its
mysteries she was to use her own comparison Hike a
child standing upon the seashore, watching for the onward
rush of the waves, venturing himself close to the water's
edge, holding his breath and wooing their approach, and then,
as they came dashing in, retreating with laughter and much
fear, only to tempt them anew.'"
On April 16, 1845, Elizabeth Payson married Rev. George
Jj. Prentiss, then the pastor of a church in New Bedford,
'Mass.
ELIZABETH PKENTISS. 547
There is no need that this page should bear witness to the
scholarship, eloquence, and piety of a divine so distinguished
and beloved. But as a woman I linger pridefully upon the
truth that to other qualities which challenge respect he united
that rare nobility of nature that enabled him to value aright
the talents of the woman he had wedded ; to foster these
wisely and generously, and to rejoice sincerely in her renown.
The growth of their dual being into oneness and beauty was
never warped or checked by jealousy of a strain we would
brand as " unmanly," could we do away with the truth that
that man is exceptionally magnanimous, and his self-poise
phenomenally steady, who takes pleasure in hearing his wife
extolled for the exercise of such powers as he believes him-
self to possess.
The chrism of wedded love consecrated Mrs. Prentiss to a
new mission. Had she never given a printed line to the
world, her labors as a pastor's wife would have entitled her
to honorable mention among the representative women of our
country and time. Her husband's parish was filled with " our
people." Her great, warm heart, ready sympathies, her love
for little children, and the nameless magnetism by which they
were drawn into her arms ; her efficiency as nurse and house-
wife, above and animating all, the fervent piety that moved
her to love for the household of faith and tender solicitude
for the irreligious these, with a genuine womanliness and
tact that never failed her, fitted and endowed her royally for
the station in which her marriage set her. With gain of
years and confidence in her own talents she became a leader
in church enterprises. Her Bible readings before large audi-
ences of her own sex won plaudits from those best qualified
to judge of such exercises.
"I was impressed," says an eminent clergyman, "with her
ability to combine rarest beauty and highest spirituality of
thought with the uttermost simplicity of language and the
plainest illustrations. Her conversation was like the mystic
ladder which was ' set up on the earthj and the top of it
reached to Heaven .'"
548 ELIZABETH PRENTISS.
Passing reluctantly over the idyllic pictures of her early
home in New Bedford, we find the busy, popular wife of the
pastor of the Mercer Street Presbyterian Church in New
York writing to a friend on the last day of the year 1851 :
" How little we know what the New Year will bring forth ! "
It brought her a weight of woe that was a strain even upon
the Everlasting Arms. She had kept a mother' s journal of the
babyhood of her first boy, the " Robbie" of " Little Susy's
Six Birthdays," the "Ernest" of "Stepping Heavenward."
The last entry in this bears date of January 16, 1852.
"Oh," said the gardener, as he passed down the garden
walk: 'Who plucked that flower?' His fellow-servants an-
swered: 'The Master.' And the gardener held his peace."
Twenty years later she wrote : " Such a child could not
go hence without rending and tearing its way out of the heart
that loved it."
A second cloud swept dark and fast upon the first.
"Our darling Eddy died on the 16th of January. The
baby he had so often spoken of was born the 17th of April.
I was too feeble to have any care of her. I had her in m^,
arms but twice ; once, the day before she died, and once
while she was dying. I never saw her little feet."
A pencilled scrap of paper found among her manuscripts
is entitled,
"MY NURSERY, 1852.
"I thought that prattling boys and girls
Would fill this empty room ;
That my rich heart would gather flowers
From childhood's opening bloom.
One child and two green graves are mine,
This is God's gift to me ;
A bleeding, fainting, broken heart
This is my gift to Thee."
In 1853 she wrote "Little Susy's Six Birthdays," reading
each chapter as she went on to her husband, brother, and daugh-
ter. She had published nothing in thirteen years, a period of
continual accumulation. Sorrow had deepened the channels of
ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 549
thought ; study, shrewd observation of the wider world to
which she had been transferred, and association with scholars,
had filled the sluice-ways ; love and loving made her life
round and rich.
Those of us in whose homes this inimitable nursery-classic
is an ever fresh delight do not wonder at the glad acclaim
with which it was at once received. We take Susy into our
embrace from the moment she " doubles up her lips and gives
her mamma the funniest little bit of a kiss you can imagine,"
on the day she is one year old. She is a real flesh-and-blood
baby not a " goody-goody " image of barley-sugar, or an
impossible china manikin, a thing to be cuddled, and
hugged, and petted, and as she grows in age and intelligence,
is bewitching in her naughtiness, mishaps, and pranks. We
grieve over the nine little white blisters on the burnt fingers,
and are ready to smother her with kisses when she plays
doctor to Eobbie and her doll, equipped in cap and spectacles
and armed with papa's gold-headed cane.
In 1854 "The Flower of the Family" was published. It
had a cordial reception in America, was issued in France as
*' La Fleur de Famille" and in Germany as " Die Perk der
Familie"
From this time her pen was seldom idle. The prosperity
of her books in the thing whereto she sent theni moved to
gratitude, hardly to surprise, the devout mind that dictated
this confession to the friend of her girlhood :
"I long to have it do good. I never had such desires
about anything in my life, and I never sat down to write
without first praying that I might not be suffered to write
anything that would do barm, and that, on the contrary, I
might be taught to say what would do good. And it has
been a great comfort to me that every word of praise I ever
have received from others concerning it has been ' It will
o
do good.' This I have had from so many sources that, amid
much trial and sickness ever since its publication, I have had
rays of sunshine creeping in, now and then, to cheer and
sustain me."
550 ELIZABETH PRENTISS.
Among the trials were the long illness of her baby her
fourth child the deaths of valued friends, and harder to
bear than her own intense physical sufferings growing
solicitude on account of her husband's failing health.
In 1856 mothers and children, with almost equal degrees of
enthusiasrr, read " Little Susy's Six Teachers," awarding it a
place in their affections only second to that given to the " Six
Birthdays."
In 1858 Dr. Prentiss was compelled by enfeebled health to
resign the charge of his church, and he decided to take his
whole family to Switzerland. They remained abroad two
years. Not the least interesting division of the " Life and
Letters " is Mrs. Prentiss' lively and earnest word-painting
of domestic scenes and travelling experiences.
On their return Dr. Prentiss became the head and heart of
a new church enterprise, having for its object the formation
of an up-town parish, under the style of "The Church of
the Covenant." Of the period at which this was begun
he says :
" Domestic and personal interests were entirely overshad-
owed by the one supreme interest of the hour that of the
imperilled national life. It was for Mrs. Prentiss a period
of almost continuous ill-health. The sleeplessness from
which she had already suffered so much assumed more and
more a chronic character, and aggravated by other ailments,
and by the frequent illness of her younger children, so under-
mined her strength that life became at times a heavy burden.
She felt often that her days of usefulness were past."
How far she was mistaken in this impression the next ten
years revealed. In 1862 Mrs. Hopkins, the sister from
whom Elizabeth Prentiss had taken her intellectual coloring,
whose example of Christian heroism had taught her latterly
other and more precious lessons the tale of whose years
of pain is told in "wondrous pitiful" snatches, usually but a
few lines in length, but all the invalid could pen entered
into rest. The last entry in her diary shows how perfectly
attuned were the souls of the twain :
ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 551
" I need not be afraid to ask to be, first, holy and without
blame before Him in love ; second, filled with all the fulness
of God; third"
She finished the petition in the face-to-face audience of the
King.
From the low-lying shadow of bodily anguish Mrs. Pren-
tiss never fully emerged until she dropped the load of mor-
tality. In 1864 there is pathetic but patient allusion to the
"horrid calamity," hereditary insomnia, that filled nights
with dread and days with languor. "Still," she writes, "we
are a happy family in spite of our ailments. It seems to
me that the sound of my six little feet is the very pleasantest
sound in the world. Often when I lie in bed racked with
pain, and exhausted from want of food, for my digestive
organs seem paralyzed when I have neuralgia, hearing
these little darlings about the house compensates for every-
thing, and I am inexpressibly happy in the mere sense of
possession."
Such passages excite in us a wonder of admiration at the
industry, the unflinching courage, and the love of the work
she felt was laid to her hand, that added in seven years to
the list of her published productions, "Little Susy's Little
Servants," "Tales of Early Childhood" (a translation from
the German), and "The Little Preacher," the scene of which
was laid in the Black Forest. Never, in all this season of
toil and pain, were domestic and church duties neglected.
From her well-ordered kitchen came palatable food for her
own family and delicacies for the sick. Wherever sorrow
and disease went she followed, as obeying a direct call from
Him who pleased not Himself. She was never too busy to
console the bereaved with spoken or written words ; to help
her children with their lessons ; to study treatises on science,
metaphysics, and theology, and to have a spare hour for
lighter current literature. Maternity was with her more
than instinct ; it was a passion, triumphing over debility,
pain, and the engrossments of literary and pastoral life.
w Mamma" was always, when at home, within call, and sel-
552 ELIZABETH PRENTISS.
dom so ill that she could not be referee, counsellor, and
playfellow. If the suspicion of mysticism obtrudes itself
upon him who reads of religious fervors too exalted for the
appreciation of the average Christian, he cannot deny that
the product of conflict and ecstasy was intensely practical
piety. Her achievements for the good of her kind would
have been remarkable for a robust woman, to whom headache
and sleeplessness were strangers. In her they were simply
inexplicable, unless we refer them, as she did, to ever-renewed
supplies of strength from an inexhaustible Source.
In 1867 she reorganized her household in the new parson-
age in Thirty-fifth street, selected the sight of and planned
the cottage home in Dorset, wrote "Little Lou's Sayings,"
and began " Stepping Heavenward," penning whole chapters
of it with her motherless little nephew on her lap. Soon
after the completion of this book, and the first summer passed
in the beloved Dorset retreat, she was called to receive the
last sigh of her sister-in-law, Mrs. Stearns, the "Anna" who
had been to her, for thirty years, tenfold dearer than the ties
of blood and name, or the accident of companionship could,
in and of themselves, have made her. There is nothing in
English literature more touching and graphic than the letter
describing this death-scene. She draws it with few and
masterly lines, that give it into the keeping of our memories
as if we had ourselves watched the translation and marvelled
at the transfiguration that preceded the body's dissolution.
" After her eyes were fixed, hearing Mr. S " (her hus-
band) "groan, she stopped dying, turned, and gave a parting
look," is a thrilling passage, set down with the unconscious-
ness of childhood, and true genius.
In all reverence of sympathy we are reminded, in perusing
this and many other transcripts of her daily living and
thinking, how " Himself took our infirmities, and bore our
diseases." The earnestness with which she threw herself into
the joys and griefs of those she loved was a terrible strain
upon nervous forces that were tenuous and tangled when she
inherited them.
ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 553
Her biographer says of her " relentless activity " of hand,
heart, and brain, "Incessant work seemed to be in her case
a sort of substitute for natural rest, and a solace for the want
of it."
"I believe," she writes to a friend, "that God arranges our
various burdens and fits them to our backs, and that He sets
off a loss against a gain. I have to make it my steady object
throughout each day so to spend time and strength as to
obtain sleep enough to carry me through the next."
Yet this very friend said of Mrs. Prentiss that she " seemed
to be always in a flood of joy." When mind and body were
faint to exhaustion the unconquerable spirit made sport of her
own evil plight. Letters and sketches sparkle with clear fun.
Chiding a correspondent who thought General Assembly a
bagatelle to a housekeeper, she goes on in this fashion :
" As if two hundred and fifty ministers haven't worn streaks
in the grass around the church, haven't (some of 'em) been
here to dinner and eaten my strawberry short-cake and cot-
tage-puddings, and praised my coffee and drunk two cups
apiece all round, and as if I hadn't been set up on end for
those of them to look at who are reading ' Katy,' and as if
going furiously to work, after they'd all gone, didn't use me
up and send me f lopping' down on sofas, sighing like a
what's-its-name. ... I can't imagine why I break down so,
for I don't know when I have been so well as during this
spring ; but Mr. P. and A. say I work like a tiger, and I sup-
pose I do without knowing it."
" Katy " is the heroine of " Stepping Heavenward." It had
appeared as a serial in "The Advance," and was issued in
book-form in 1869. " Every word of that book was a prayer,
and seemed to come of itself," she tells us.
It was an angel of mercy to thousands of homes ; balm
and benediction to hundreds of thousands of women. The
story of Katy's loves and mistakes, her aspirations and her
despairs, her frolics and her bereavements ; of her steady pro-
gress in the way that grew less steep as she learned to walk,
and not run, toward the brightening and widening horizon,
34
554 ELIZABETH PRENTISS.
was read with tears and laughter, and sobbed thanksgivings
for the strength infused into weary hearts by the practical
spirituality of its teachings. Nearly seventy thousand copies
were sold in America prior to the author's death. It was
reprinted by five London booksellers and in a Tauchnitz
edition at Leipsic ; a German translation " Himmelan"
had an immense sale and was extolled by German critics ; and
the French " Marchant vers le del " was scarcely less popular.
She was not elated by the renown that astonished her, but
across the page lettered "1870," the loving biographer
writes " Satisfied:' He calls it the " bright consummate
flower of her life." In the rich waves of incense that arose
from the heart sun- warmed to its depths, the glad humility
of her piety is wondrous in sweetness.
Just after the celebration of her "silver wedding," she
writes :
" I have a very curious feeling about life, a satisfied one,
and as if it could not possibly give me much more than I now
have.
"'/ have lived, I have loved 9 (quoting Thekla's *Ich habe
gelebt und geliebef). " People often say they have so much to
live for. I can't say so, though I am not only willing but
glad to live while my husband and children need me and
yet and yet to have this problem solved and to be forever
with the Lord ! "
While no one who knew her would dream that she had
described her own life in "Katy's," still less of identifying
the clumsy, tactless " Ernest " with the courteous, scholarly
gentleman whose watchfulness of devotion to his fragile wife
was proverbial, there were not wanting critics and com-
mentators whose surmises elicited bursts of whimsical vexa-
tion :
"Everybody is asking if I meant in 'Katy'to describe
myself. I have no doubt that if I should catch an old toad,
put on her a short gown and petticoat and one of my caps,
everybody would walk up to her and say, 'Oh, how do you
do, Mrs. Prentiss ? you look more like yourself than com-
ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 555
mon. I recognize the picture you have drawn of yourself in
' Stepping Heavenward' and in 'The Percys,' etc.,' ad nau-
seam. The next book I write I'll make my heroine black,
and everybody will say, 'Oh, here you are again, black to
the life ! ' "
From the Dorset paradise, where she was most happily and
joyfully herself, she sends a lively bit of pastoral, an alfresco
charcoal sketch to her eldest daughter who was travelling in
Europe :
" M. took me yesterday to see a nest in the orchard which
was full of birds, parted into fours not a crack between,
and one of them so crowded that it filled about no space at
all. The hymn says, ' Birds in their little nests agree,' and
I should think they would, for they have no room to disagree
in. They all four stared at us with awful, almost embarrass-
ing solemnity, and each had a little yellow moustache."
An able critic, in a journal * that cannot be accused of a bias
toward orthodox denominationalism, says of the " Life and
Letters " : " It is a genuine memoir, singularly transparent in
its naturalness and simplicity, and leading us among the green
pastures of a life from whose hidden springs came such spon-
taneous outflows as her best work, ' Stepping Heavenward.' "
It deserves all this, and how much more the space allotted
to this paper will not allow me to attempt to tell. Nor can
we dwell upon the peculiar phase of religious thought of
which " Urbane and his Friends " is the expression.
Of her poetical writings the exquisite hymn, "More Love
to Thee, O Christ," too well known to be repeated here, is
also the most nearly faultless in form and melodious utter-
ance, and would have given her a place in the heart of
Christendom had she written nothing else.
On the threshold of 1878 we linger to read that " her weekly
Bible-reading, painting in oils and in water-colors, needlework
and other household duties left her no idle moments."
" My fire is so full of irons," she complains in her sprightly
vein, "that I do not know which one to take out."
* ''Springfield Republican."
556 ELIZABETH PRENTISS.
i
Since " Stepping Heavenward " she had published : " Nid-
worth and his Three Magic Wands," "The Percys," " The
Story Lizzie Told," " Six Little Princesses," " Aunt Jane's
Hero," "UrbanS and his Friends," "Griselda" (translated
from the German), "The Home of Greylock," and " Pema-
quid, a Story of Old Times in New England."
"I have just finished a short story called 'Gentleman
Jim,'" she tells a correspondent under date of January 20,
1878. Then after mentioning a letter "the most discrimi-
nating I ever received about Greylock" she gives us
the key to the singular equanimity with which she sustained
the praises of her writings. " After the first rush of pleasure,
the Evil One troubled me off and on for two or three hours,
but at last I reminded him that I long ago chose to cast in my
lot with the people of God, and so be off the line of human
notice or applause."
In her answer to the appreciative reader (Mr. J. Cleave-
land Cady, the popular architect) she strikes the same chord
more strongly. " I am not sorry that I chose the path in life
I did choose. A woman should not live for, or even desire
fame. ... If I had not steadily suppressed all such
ambition I might have become a sour, disappointed woman,
seeing my best work unrecognized. . . . God has only
taken me at my word. I have asked Him a thousand times
to make me smaller and smaller, and crowd the self out of
me by taking up all the room Himself."
This sublimity of self-abnegation endues with powerful
meaning what is sometimes considered a mystic phrase "a
life hid with Christ in God." Mrs. Prentiss knew, as did
her husband he feeling it far more than did she that
while the rapid sales and translations of her books and the
multitude of private testimonials to the blessing they had
brought to individual hearts were evidence that she had not
spent her strength in vain, still the press in general was
strangely reserved as to their literary merit.
f The organs of literary intelligence and criticism scarcely
noticed them at all," Dr. Prentiss says frankly.
ELIZABETH PKENTISS. 557
When the bright, far-seeing eyes were sealed in the dream-
less sleep denied so long to restless brain and tense nerves,
critics awoke to recognition and confession of the truth that
the Christian woman whose highest ambition was " to do
good," had possessed genius of no mean order ; that she had
wrought artistically as well as prayerfully ; that human skill
was blent with divine power in the utterances that made our
hearts burn within us as she talke'd with us by the way. She
sketched only what she saw, but the drawing is spirited, the
management of light and shade masterly. In character por-
traits she catches a likeness at a glance, gives it with a few
rapid strokes, as graceful as bold. In her gayest mood she
never degrades her art to the trickery of caricature. She
sang only what she felt, but the heart-throbs are set to
music that moves us to tears and lifts the soul to holy thought
and prayer.
The last stage of the journey that had bruised sorely her
delicate feet, was short, sharp, and all brightness.
On August 5, returning, happy and unwearied, from a
woodland ramble with her two daughters (" we three girls,"
she loved to style the trio), she worked on the lawn and
among her flowers so long as to be overcome by the heat.
While she seemed to rally from the prostration and nausea
that kept her on bed and lounge for two days, there
is no doubt that the fatal "stroke" fell on that August
noon.
On the 8th she insisted that she was "well, only weak,"
arid drove in the afternoon to keep an appointment her
weekly Bible-reading. She was unusually cheerful, even for
her, all day, interested in flower-painting, in watering her
plants, and other light duties. " Pray one little prayer
for me!" she said, emphatically and sweetly, lifting her
forefinger archly, as her husband put her into the carriage.
One who was her life-long friend gives this description of
her person : " In silvering her clustering locks, time only
added to her aspect a graver charm. Her eyes were black,
and, at times, wonderfully bright and full of spiritual power,
558 ELIZABETH PRENTISS.
but they were shaded by deep, smooth lids, which gave them,
when at rest, a most dove-like serenity. Her other features
were equally striking, the lips and chin exquisitely moulded
and marked by great strength as well as beauty. Her face
in repose wore the habitual expression of deep thought and a
soft earnestness, like a thin veil of sadness."
Her aspect as she took her seat before the ladies assembled
in the lecture-room, on this day, was ethereal in its beauty.
Her face was pale, but clear and radiant as with the out-
shining of an inward glory ; her voice was tender and thrill-
ing. Her theme was " Witnessing for Christ." Had she
known that the reading would be her last, she would prob-
ably have selected the same. One part of the talk was im-
printed forever by what ensued upon the memories of her
auditors :
"Dying grace is not usually given until it is needed.
Death to the disciple of Jesus is only stepping from one room
to another and far better room of Our Father's house. And
how little all the sorrows of the way will seem to us when we
get to the home above ! I suppose St. Paul, amidst the bliss
of Heaven, fairly laughs at the thought of what he suffered
for Christ in this brief moment of Time ! "
She had not strength to answer a letter that came on
this or the next day from a young English mother who had
read " Stepping Heavenward " fifty times, but she drove out
with her husband on the 10th, talked animatedly upon many
topics, and strolled through the woods she loved so well, in
company with her daughter, gathering wild-flowers, and, as
much from the force of habit as the wish to transplant it to
her lawn, kneeling to dig up a fine root with her scissors.
Dr. Prentiss had gone up the glen with a guest, and espied
his wife on his return, sitting near the brook, "resting," she
acknowledged " for she was very tired.'' As he led her
back to the carriage, she exclaimed, in admiration of a cluster
of clematis in full flower, and he cut it for her. It was the
last loverly office of this nature he was ever to perform for
her whose lightest wish had with him the weight of law. When
ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 559
they reached home she was "very ill." In four days she
stepped quietly across the threshold of the " other and far
better room."
"It is not pain! It is a distress an agony!" was her
calm answer to the physician who questioned her as to the
paroxysms of pain. With it all, she uttered neither cry nor
groan. In an interval of ease, she asked her husband, who
was watching beside her, "Darling, don't you think you
could ask the Lord to let me go ? " While speaking of the
probability of her death as "too good to be true," she gave
directions that, should her decease be accomplished at this
time, she should be buried at Dorset. The mysterious radi-
ance that had illumined her face at her last public " witnessing
for Christ " did not leave it when she lay, in the early morning
of August 13, with heaveless breast and closed lids that had
fallen together in the gentle sleep from which she passed into
the abiding rest. On the wall above her, placed by herself
where her waking glance would fall on them with each
returning day, were two illuminated German mottoes
" Gehuld, mein Herz!" (Patience, my Heart!)
"Stille, mein Wille!" (Be still, my Will !)
Oh, grand and loving heart ! Oh, meek and steadfast
will!
"Beyond the frost-chain and the fever"
the body that was the fair tenement of a fairer soul rests in
the sweet seclusion of Maplewood Cemetery, Dorset. A
delicately-sculptured passion-flower is cast at the foot of a
short flight of white marble steps leading up to a crowned
cross. Besides her name and age, the monument bears these
lines from one of her own poems :
" "No more tedious lessons,
No more sighing and tears,
But a bound into home immortal,
And blessed, blessed years ! ! '
CHAPTER XXIY.
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS,
BY ELIZABETH T. SPRING.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps' Ancestry Her Childhood The Old Home at
Andover Her Story-telling Faculty Improvising Stories for Her School-
matesHer Education Pen-portrait of Miss Phelps at Sixteen Mem-
ories of the War An Unwritten Story An Incident in Her School-life
"Thimble or Paint-Brush, Which" ? First Literary Ventures The
Abbott Mission "The Gates Ajar" Its Enormous Sale and Helpful
Influence Miss Phelps as a Lecturer Power Over Her Audiences
Her Summer Home by the Sea Her Winter Study Interest in
Reform Movements Personal Work Among the Gloucester Fishermen
The Strength and Sweetness of Her Writings.
MERSON must have been right in saying that we
can never get away from our ancestors. He him-
self might have doubted it if he had watched
the rushing currents of life on a frontier, the
heaving and swaying tides of prairie seas ; but
in New England it is peculiarly true. It is
noticeably a fact where generation after gener-
ation is subjected to the same influences, where
every ray of light, falling unobstructed through the
pure air, strikes in hereditary colors. It is like the
trailing arbutus, which blossoms pinkest from soil where
the pine-tree needles have gathered in accumulating layers
through uncounted autumns. One remembers mayflowers,
and whatever else is most clearly characteristic of New Eng-
land, in thinking of Miss Phelps.
She was born August 31, 1844, in Boston, during her
father's six years' pastorate in that city. In her fourth May
she was removed to Andover, Mass., on her father's taking a
professorship in the Theological Seminary there, and Andover
560
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. 561
has been the family home ever since. For her it was only
returning to play under the same trees and to breathe the
same air that had nourished the genius of her mother and her
grandfather.
Her mother, Elizabeth Stuart, was the eldest daughter of
Moses Stuart, one of the bright lights of the Seminary in the
days when Andover was a main centre of intellectual and
theological life in Massachusetts. Professor Stuart was known
o
as a man of moods and variable power, but of exceptional
fascination and brilliancy. His daughter Elizabeth inherited
the literary gift from him, and though in a style subdued to
the tone of the surrounding atmosphere, she wrote several
charming stories, largely read at the time. Professor Austin
Phelps is known through his widely-circulated book, "The Still
Hour." The literary quality was thus present in both parents.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps was the eldest of three children,
and the only daughter ; and naturally enough as soon as she
gave any sign of herself at all the story-telling faculty was
indicated in a marked way. She spun amazing yarns for the
children she played with, while dolls were still in the ascend-
ant ; and her schoolmates of the time a little farther on talk
with vivid interest of the stories she used to improvise for
their entertainment.
With this unusual imagination she developed a conscien-
tiousness as definite, and while to bend her will was the most
difficult of tasks for those who trained her childhood, her
truthfulness could be counted on whatever the storm or
stress. .
With her surroundings and her nature it was inevitable
that her religious development should be precocious. A
certain repressed intensity found vent in this direction, and
added a deeper tint to what might otherwise have been only
the cool spring blossoming of the soul.
She was christened Mary Gray, for an intimate friend of her
mother's ; but on her mother's death, which happened when the
child was eight years old, the name Elizabeth was given to
her instead. The change had a sort of unguessed pathetic
562 ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.
significance, for in spite of all that the wisdom and tenderness
which were left could do life was altered. The mother had
singular fitness for watching over the growth of so sensitive
and finely organized a child, and her death was no common
loss. The little girl had never been exactly gleeful or merry.
She had not quite the temperament keyed for joy, and her
almost premature thoughtfulness prevented life even then
from seeming like a sunlit holiday. So early the hours began
to lose their free dancing step and to follow her day with
shadowed faces.
It was in many respects fortunate for her, at least since
women's colleges were not then more than a dream of the
future, that so good a school as that of Mrs. Prof. Edwards
existed in Andover. The course was thorough, equal except
in Greek to that of the best boys' schools of the day. The
curriculum indeed more resembled that of the college than it
was usual at that time to find in the educational facilities for
women. This girl's bent was towards rhetorical and philoso-
phical studies. The natural sciences, except physiology and
astronomy, which seemed to her more clearly to assert their
raison d'etre, did not attract her, nor especially did mathe-
matics.
In spite of De Quincey's assertion that curiosity as to the
personal appearance of an author is absurdly irrelevant, it is
impossible for those who care for what is written not to care
a little even for the face of the person who wrote. There is a
photograph taken of Miss Phelps at sixteen, which shows a tall,
slender figure, a classically turned head with a mass of bright
brown hair, a sensitive mouth, and an expression of mingled
strength and sweetness. There is an air of timidity in the
face, but nothing of uncertainty, and a mature impression
wholly unusual at that age. Looking at this picture one
cannot avoid the belief that a skilful teacher, who was strong
enough, might have guided her into almost any fields as
her mind developed ; but at nineteen she left school.
White flowers and martial music in May, with dim tradi-
tions of battle and inarch are chiefly what the civil war means
ffl
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. 565
now to the young girls who live in the day that followed that
darkness ; but there does not live the tragic bard to say what
it meant to those whom its midnight overtook. The Greek
Simonides tells us of the heroes " Their country's quench-
less glory," who " won for themselves the dusky shroud of
death " and " live by that same death and its echoing story ; "
yet freedom may owe as much to the limitations, the inter-
ruptions, the conscious and unconscious sacrifices of the
daughters " who give up more than sons."
It was Dr. Holmes who prophesied at the close of the war
that the generation which had passed through the terrible
strain would have shorter lives, that many years had been
compressed into that brief and fiery epoch. However this
prophecy may prove, it is certain that the unwritten story
of the period, the story with its sequel, would tell of
more battles of the wilderness and more prisons than all the
histories.
Many, like Miss Phelps, devoted themselves at the close
of the war to philanthropic work. For a few months after
leaving school she threw all her energy into mission work in
Abbott Village, a little factory settlement a mile or two from
her home ; but the forces in her, for which this gave no
scope, soon began to assert themselves, and in the spring
of 1863 she sent a war story, called "A Sacrifice Con-
sumed," to " Harper's Magazine." The editor returned her a
generous check for it, with the request that she should write
for them again. It was appreciation for which she has
always been grateful, coming as it did when she was uncer-
tain of her own power and peculiarly in need of encourage-
ment. She has been a frequent contributor to that magazine
from then till now. " Harper's never refused a story of mine
in all my life," she says, " with one single exception that
not when I was a beginner. To this uniform encouragement
I attribute more than to any other one thing what literary
success I afterwards had."
rt The Tenth of January" appeared in the "Atlantic" later,
and gained literary recognition, besides exciting profound
566 ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.
*
interest. It was a story of the burning of the Pemberton
Mills at Lawrence, a realistic picture, quite as vivid as any
the author has made since.
She had written a little at intervals before ; the first thing
she printed being a story in the "Youth's Companion." She
was then thirteen.
The artist element was strong in her nature. She had ex-
treme sensibility to color, and no little skill with brush and
pencil. While she was still walking in the bright mist of her
young girlhood, seeing the future through eager eyes, though
dimly, the artist life was one of her dearest dreams.
With this went a certain distaste for the usual feminine
employments, arising from a vague opinion that to sew meant
to do little else, and from a positive rebellion against being
cramped away from her full native bent. It was in a mood
of this sort she one day held up to a school friend a thimble
in one hand and a paint-brush in the other, saying : " It is a
choice between the two."
As might be guessed, no poet was dearer to her in those
days than Mrs. Browning, and nothing kindled her enthu-
siasm more than reminders of women who had risen above
conventional low tides and dared to be themselves.
Gradually the play of various forces conveyed her possi-
bilities mainly into the literary channel, though her sympathy
with suffering, quickened by the experiences which gave color
to the rest of her life blended with her native earnestness,
made certain that active philanthropy in some form would go
side by side with the other.
When the first effort to throw all life into the mission work
at Abbott Village had passed, and after the two stories had
spoken out like the first notes of a bird after a storm at
twenty the plan of " The Gates Ajar " began to form itself in
her mind. She was busy in writing this book for two years.
It lay for two years in the publisher's hands, and came out in
1868. Although the first, it is the best known of all her books.
It reached in this country a circulation of about one hundred
thousand copies, and has had a very large English sale.
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. 567
It has been reprinted in Scotland, and translated into Ger-
man, French, Dutch, and Italian. Most of the successive
books by the same hand have been thus reprinted and trans-
lated.
A friend of Miss Phelps, travelling a few years ago, was
introduced to an officer of rank in the Prussian court, and
Miss Phelps' name being mentioned, he said, "Ah, that book,
f The Gates Ajar ; ' I understand it has made more Christians
than all the preachers."
Like most books that have had positive and helpful in-
fluence, it originated in honest questioning and honest search.
There had long brooded over the church of America and
England, the shadow of prescribed silence on everything re-
lating to the future life. Speculation had been frowned upon,
as baseless and irreverent, hope had been forbidden to think,
and the " better land" lay far off in a frozen mist of negative
and unreal glory.
One could turn to Dante's "Paradise," sombre and massive
as Gothic architecture, or mediaeval theology, but the trees
by his river of life have little for human nature's daily food.
There is something so vague, remote, impersonal in the
atmosphere that we do not wonder Ary Schaeffer painted no
rapture in the reunion of Dante with his lost Beatrice.
At the opposite extreme there has been Swedenborg
mild as Dante was stern, full of spiritual insight and genius
for expanding the tiny tent of certain testimony into a canopy
large enough to cover the widest yearnings of human love
and aspiration. But Swedenborg had gathered a sect about
him. His teachings as to the coming existence were so over-
laid, too, with other speculations that they were hardly avail-
able for the every-day comfort of sad and wistful souls who
need something appreciable and readily grasped. Eyes tired
with weeping for lost friends cannot search through tedious
volumes for words of suggestion and hope. Surely it was
time for a woman's gentle word a sweet fireside word as
far withdrawn from Italian terrors as it was from Swedish
dreams.
568 ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.
"The Gates Ajar" was at first doubtfully received by
many. The graver part of the community were forced to
read but inclined to frown. Pianos and gingerbread seemed
startling and trivial contrasted with seas of glass and cheru-
bim and seraphim, hitherto made so prominent as features of
the home of human beings set free from earthly hindrance.
Others eagerly welcomed the new suggestions, for under
the teaching that had prevailed, owing to a crude habit of
biblical interpretations, so dim, monotonous, and narrow had
been the representations of heaven, that to most ardent souls
or active minds annihilation seemed hardly less dreary. The
framework of the book was so simple and the method of
treating the subject so fresh that very many failed to detect at
first that its logic might not be less conclusive because it was
not ponderous. They forgot that it is a very old tradition
which makes the angel come at dawn, in the cheerful morn-
ing twilight, to guide the souls of the good to paradise, and
that twilight fancies are the sober truth of twilight, as mathe-
matics may be the truth of noon. In story form, and by
suggestion, the book attempts to show that the heavenly life
must provide for the satisfaction of the whole nature, as well
as for the technically religious side, the one department which
seeks God directly in personal affection and worship. On
reflection, those who had most rigidly confined their hopes
of future to white robes and singing, discovered that even
" The stainless years
That breathed beneath the Syrian blue "
were filled with much besides direct prayer or praise to the
heavenly Father, so that imperfection could not attach to this
idea of roundness ; and gradually it befell that many who came
to scoff remained to be comforted. The book was practically
a new gospel. Indeed, "The Gates Ajar" did more than ex-
pand into appreciable size and surface the neglected germs of
truth relating to the unseen world. It marked in a gentle,
unaccented way, but it marked the beginning of a change
whose end we can hardly foretell.
ELIZABETH STUAKT PHELPS. 569
The world has long enough seen in every gallery the infant
Christ in the arms of a woman ; but it has not always seen
that through womanhood it is to receive some essential revel-
ation of Christianity. It has understood only the surface
meaning of Madonnas, and has tired of that ; but at last what
art has dimly been foretelling is beginning to be actual.
Whether in the cap and 'kerchief of Sister Dora and Sister
Augustine, or with the red-crass badge of Clara Barton, or
wearing the unmarked dress of those who feed the hungry
and teach the ignorant near and far oft', new Madonnas are
revealing something more beautiful than beauty, and holier
than any image in shrine.
Miss Phelps now devoted herself to short stories, which
were collected under the title, " Men, Women, and Ghosts."
So far as vivacity, proportion, and firmness of touch are con-
cerned, they contain some of her best work. The "Tenth
of January" is included in this collection. There is a study in
spiritualistic science called " The Day of My Death " which
ends more happily than most of her tales, and goes far to
disprove what some critic asserted about her " inevitable tug
at the heart-strings."
Her definite moral purpose became distinct so early in her
literary career. As Millet would paint peasants no other
than they were, whatever Delaroche might say, she would
have sorrowful things show their sadness that they might be
helped, and wrong things their evil that they might be
righted.
In the autumn of 1877 a venture full of interest absorbed
Miss Phelps' thought and strength ; the delivery of a course
of lectures on "Representative Modern Fiction" before the
Boston University. It was the first thing of the sort ever
attempted by a woman in this part of the world, and in the
minds of those most interested there was the air of a renais-
sance in the undertaking.
The intense vividness with which the ideal presented itself
to her, combined with a sensitive timidity which amounted to
terror, robbed her of sleep for weeks before the course began,
570 ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.
and prostrated her with illness after it closed ; yet while
constantly under the physician's care she met each engage-
ment bravely, and left only one regret in the minds of her
friends, that her health had not allowed her to speak in a
much larger hall. The lectures have never been published,
so that personal impressions are all that we have.
Her power over the audience is said to have been remark-
able. While her voice in conversation is singularly low and
sweet, some peculiar penetrative quality made it distinct
without the slightest effort for the listener in every part of a
large hall. The audience was of students of both sexes and
different ages, from various departments of the University. At
the close of every lecture," says one who was present, " they
would gather round her, and it seemed as if they would
devour her, following her as far as possible when she went
away." Something in her face seemed to ask more for love
than praise. To them it seemed as if a new and gentler
Hypatia had come to speak a sweeter sort of wisdom. Mr.
Whittier, who on another occasion heard the lectures, says
of them : " They were admirable in manner and matter. I
have never heard a woman speak with such magnetic power."
In treating modern fiction she concentrated her analysis
on George Eliot as representative. President Warren of the
University says, "The genius of George Eliot has never been
analyzed with superior, if with equal subtility of sympathy
and clearness of discrimination."
So serious were the physical penalties for that use of her
undoubted power that she has been obliged to abandon
public speaking ; though she made several experiments after
this both in hall and parlor reading in every other respect,
she says "among the most delightful experiences of her life."
An interesting account is furnished of her reading one of her
stories for a charity in a private parlor in Boston. It was an
audience composed of fashionable ladies, and the story was a
very simple one, but before she finished her reading it was
said there was not a dry eye in the room a kind of
compelling sweetness drew their hearts towards her and pity.
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. 571
In the same autumn of her work at the Boston University,
"The Story of Avis" came out. The public feel something
in it like the deepening of a singer's voice, as life teaches
its lessons, a strength born of patience, and a pathos that no
unreflecting outcry can hold.
The world seems to be divided into three classes : those
who do not know there is a sphinx ; those who do, and will
not look at it ; and those who, seeing it, are willing to make
some sort of eifort to unlock the silent lips, to read the riddle
of the past into the prophecy of the future.
For the first, Avis must be as if it had not been written,
while to the multitude of those who do not want to be made
uncomfortable by thinking of hard things it will not be
exactly welcome. There must be many who are willing to
think even of perplexities, for many have prized Avis, and
have called it Miss Phelps' best work. It is said that Long-
fellow kept it lying on his table, and re-read it often with
sympathetic appreciation.
Avis is a woman such as one has seen strong, gentle,
true, with a genius for painting. There is no happier stroke
in the book than that which makes her not simply in love
with her art and ambitious to excel, but gravely conscious of
responsibility for the use of her talent. Her course looks
simple and direct till Philip Ostrander, and with him love
and the question of marriage, confronts her, sweeping into
her life as the tide into the harbor. She resists love, but
when her denied lover comes back wounded from the war,
the woman asserts herself above the artist. " The deep
maternal yearning over suffering, more elemental in woman
than the yearning of maiden or of wife," conquers where his
pleading had failed, and by exquisite gradations, possible
only to a woman of equal fineness and exceptional individ-
uality, she yields and becomes his wife.
The very idealizing nature that made her able to paint
sphinxes, made her mistake in Philip Ostrander subtlety of
appreciation,, sympathy, and the genius of adaptation for
something deeper. It is made clear that a man less refined
35
572 ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.
and less sensitive could not have won her, and no less evident
that refinement often binds the artist-eye to weakness, and
that the quicksilver temperament fascinates where ]t cannot
hold.
Large, sweet, genuine, like Dorothea, Avis does the only
thing possible to such a woman, buries her short-lived ideal
and takes Philip into the same pitying tenderness which
broods over her children ; endures and strives and loves as
nobly as any other could who was not conscious of unpainted
pictures or any missed vocation.
Eecent American fiction has given us various types of
women. We have Marcia in "A Modern Instance," weak,
passionate, unreasonable Marcia, swept under by the first
swell in the domestic flood. Mr. James has drawn Isabel
Archer best of all the women he has tried, and he has made
her almost lovable, or would if he knew about women's
souls. Despair and flight are her resort when disenchant-
ment is complete, and pain grows heavy. He makes us
sympathize with her ; but she seems vague, shadowy, and
weak beside the nobler figure of Avis. It is impossible to
imagine poor Marcia being anything else than petty ; unfit
to reform Bartley and unworthy of the better man's devo-
tion ; and with all that is genuine and earnest in Isabel Archer,
it is difficult to think of her in Avis' place, bending with
conscientious good sense to conquer the homely details of
housekeeping, or substitute with so silent a gentleness the
maternal for the wifely feeling towards the weaker nature
which foiled her.
There are touches in one of the closing chapters of "Avis"
which remind us for delicate, fervent purity of faith and
insight of the sayings of Lamartine's "Stone-Cutter." In
the farewell Philip and Avis whisper to each other when he
lies dying in the Florida forest, we can almost hear Claude
saying, " Life is so small a thing, it is not worth stopping
to weep over." Indeed some of the most exquisite qual-
ities of Miss Phelps appear in " Avis " more clearly than in
any other book. Only a pure and exalted soul could have
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. 573
conceived it ; and only a genuine artist could have given it its
cast.
Six years ago Miss Phelps built a little cottage for a sum-
mer home on the rocks of Eastern Point, at one side of
Gloucester harbor. There is hardly a more rugged spot on
Cape Ann, or one more lacking in the lovely surroundings
those who know her best would have chosen as fit and natural
for her. But one forgets all but the picturesqueness of the
shore in looking out on the harbor with the quaint old town
of Gloucester at its head. The harbor is one of the finest on
the Atlantic coast, and there, from June to November, the
infinite language of the sea repeats to her its story of beauty
and mystery.
All coasts are lonely in some moods of water and sky, but
Gloucester harbor is wide enough to shelter a fleet, and there
are always sails standing in or out to sea, playing hide-and-
go-seek with the mist, and taking the light and shadow at
every turn in new and exquisite tones. A mile away, across
the sheltering rim of land, the narrow strip that curves
around the harbor's mouth, the surf breaks on the rocks, or
rolls in on the sandy shore of the coves that follow one an-
other out to the extreme point of the cape.
Miss Phelps still makes Andover her winter home. Her
present winter study is in the summer-house of her father's
garden, whose windows look out on a lovely grove, and be-
hind, towards the west, across to the brows of Wachuset ;
but her summers, which begin early and end late, find her on
the Gloucester rocks.
The first years of her life here she used to row in her little
dory quite across the harbor, an exercise of which she was
very fond. Lack of strength has compelled her to relinquish
it of late, and the dory lies idly by the rocks, except when
she occasionally steps into it for a few strokes of the oars out
into the sunset. What the sea has told her she has mean-
while given to us in different forms. In her volume of
" Poetic Studies," most of the rhymes are tinged with the
opal and beryl of the waves ; and we feel through them the
574 ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.
ebb and flow of tides. Several of her songs have been set to
music words and notes blending in a kind of twilight
aspiration an unaccented appeal.
" On the Bridge of Sighs " is an original and apt analogue,
fit to be written under that picture of sun opposite to shadow
which every traveller brings home from Venice :
" O palace of the rose sweet sin,
How safe the heart that does not enter in
O blessed prison wall ! how true
The freedom of the soul that chooseth you."
" What the Shore says to the Sea " and " What the Sea says
to the Shore," and the last poem in the collection, " All the
Rivers," are perhaps the best translations she has made of
that speech she has heard where there is no voice nor lan-
guage. " O Love ! " the shore says at ebb-tide to the sea :
" Steal up and say, is there below, above ;
In height or depth, or choice or unison
Of woes, a woe like mine,
To lie so near to thine,
And yet forever and forever to lie still ? "
And at flood-tide the sea answers
" Till thou and I were riven apart,
Never was it known by any one
That storms could tear an ocean's heart.
When unheard orders bid me go
Obedient to an unknown Will,
The pain of pains selects me, so
That I must go and thou lie still !
" All the rivers is a word of peace
All the rivers run into the sea,
Why the passion of a river ?
The striving of a soul ?
Calm the eternal waters roll
Upon the eternal shore
At last whatever
Seeks it finds the sea."
1. SUMMER LIFE BY THE SEA. 2. AN INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF ELIZABETH
STUART PHELPS. "THIMBLE ou PAINT BRUSH, WHICH?"
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. 575
Yet the poetry of the ocean has not made her deaf to its
tragic prose.
" Sealed Orders," a collection of short stories published not
long after " Avis," has one or two pictures, not easily forgot-
ten, of winter storms in the ice-bound harbor, the cruel
struggles of the fishermen for scanty bread, and the more
cruel watching and waiting at home "for those who will
never come back to the town."
Critics have called "The Lady of Shalott," one of the
sketches in this collection, the best American short story.
It shows, like the rest, the subjection of the sesthetical to the
ethical, the artistic to the sympathetic in her nature; but
here as elsewhere the unused brush and palette assert them-
selves in spite of denial. What she sees inevitably shapes
itself into a picture, and what she might have done had she
chosen to paint with her pen all such pictures as would
charm, we can only guess. If she had, we should have
known less about the lonely little dressmaker in "No.
Thirteen," or the two brothers in "Cloth of Gold," trying to
get to Florida with far too little money, and walking where
they could not ride, with Dan, between his coughs, insisting
that he felt very strong, and that it did not hurt him at alL
We should not have cried over the "Lady of Shalott," and
tenement houses with death in the cellar, and nankeen vests
at sixteen and a quarter cents a dozen, and the blessed
"Flower Mission," and we should not have felt as whoever
reads such tales will that something must be done to help
those who cannot help themselves.
It adds always to the force of one of these lessons in phi-
lanthropy or reform to know that the teacher is herself in
earnest, and "recks the rede" she gives.
That Miss Phelps' roses have all true stems that will not
wither we can tell by tracing her life. She was trying to
save the tempted in the Abbott mission when she wrote
" Hedged In " ; and the evils of factory life depicted in " A
Silent Partner" she learned by personal work for factory
girls ; and from her loyalty to the purer, larger, and freer
576 ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.
womanhood that all dream of and wait for she has never
swerved. Hers was not the only sensitive intuition that fore-
saw, when slavery and the war rolled away together in fire
and smoke, that the right development of women would be
the next great question for America.
It is said that Warwick Castle in England is so arranged
that the visitor who looks through the outside keyhole looks
at the same time through those of the thirty or forty apart-
ments that lie beyond ; and so in this matter of making the
higher, larger womanhood a fact, one cannot begin without
finding that woman is so entangled in the heart of things that
all must be righted if she is.
The first glance told that her physique must be improved.
As early as 1869 Miss Phelps was invited to give an address
before the New England Woman's Club of Boston on health-
ful dress for women. The time was ripe, and the sugges-
tions of the speaker's practical common sense were instantly
adopted. Eooms were opened for the manufacture and sale
of improved garments ; competition followed, and the dress
reform, so widespread and increasingly influential now, is
said to have grown from this. Miss Phelps' address, some-
what enlarged, was published, with the title, "What to
Wear," and she herself adopted and has always adhered to
the system proposed, abjuring trains, and excessive trim-
mings, and tight waists, and modifying her theory only in
such non-essential points as experience and good taste dic-
tated. It seems hardly possible now that, at the time she
took this course, a lady could not walk the length of a hotel
drawing-room in a short dress without an embarrassing sense
of singularity, so universal was the absurdity of sweeping
skirts everywhere and on all occasions.
No sooner was Miss Phelps' summer home planted on the
Gloucester shore than the temperance movement appealed to
her as vitally connected with the object of her lasting enthu-
siasm. She saw how intemperance on Eastern Point added
a cruel weight to the hard lot of fishermen's families, and
through her efforts a Reform Club of sixty-five members was
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. 577
sustained there. A club-room had been otherwise secured ;
it was brightened with pictures and music ; addresses were
delivered and sermons preached to the men ; but her per-
sonal work was of a deeper and more wearing sort. She
made herself the friend of each one. They came to her
house with their hopes and despair, their temptations and
troubles. As might have been feared, this nervous strain of
sympathy and anxiety, in connection with her literary work,
was an overtax, and four years ago her strength gave way,
forcing her to drop the care. From this nearly fatal break
she has not yet physically recovered.
Since 1879 we have had two books from her, both origi-
nally published as serials in the "Atlantic Monthly," and
aside from these, some noticeable magazine articles of a
semi-theologic cast in the " Atlantic " and " North American
Review." ^The one in the "Atlantic," entitled, "Is God
Good?" called out an amount of discussion surprising when
one considers how long ago it was that mild old Dr. Paley
ventured to speak of "The goodness of God as proved from
nature."
Her argument is that immortality is necessary to justify
the earthly life, and is not more than a deduction from the
gently suggested premise no one quarrels with from the
lips of St. Pierre, " If life be a punishment, we ought to
wish for its end ; if it is a trial, we may ask that it may be
short."
"Friends a Duet," has been variously criticised, a cer-
tain intensity of adjectives and repetition of favorite words,
which some objected to in "Avis," giving fresh offence to re-
viewers in this book.
It may be worth while to mention that Miss Phelps never
reads any reviews or notices of her own books, thinking per-
haps the nervous force required for this better expended in
persistent effort to speak out in her own way the things life
has taught her. She has certainly a sufficiently illustrious
precedent for her habit in this respect, since it is said that
George Eliot herself had the same practice.
578 ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.
" Friends " is a study of a new phase of the same old
mystery. A delicate, difficult phase, but pressing as the
question how to manage steam, fire, or electricity. The
voices in the "Duet" are better harmonized than were those
of Philip and Avis. In the rise and fall of gentle and sweet
music, the question and answer of a simple natural progress,
there is a wistful search for knowledge whether between men
and women there cannot be, as in other times there has been,
friendship without love and marriage ; a May of tenderness
and mutual help that does not " glide outward into June "
affection without passion. It ends as some songs end, with
a strain, more an appeal than a conclusion, a little sad
as if we heard again Schiller say " Never can the there be
here"
There is something about it all that makes one think of the
wild pink roses with which the downs of Eastern Point are
covered in the summer, and with which Miss Phelps' house is
always filled. There is a delicate mirth, a sweet, refined,
protected atmosphere in it, yet though more hidden than
sometimes, we find on it the same sign of the cross as before.
Still, as Millet's seashore " Storm " or " Angelus " would do
more than make us note the massing of clouds and the rage of
the water, or the wide peace of the fields at the hour of even-
ning prayer ; as he is not content till we ask, " What can be
done for the bowed and laden creatures who are the centre of
the scene? " so, in "Friends," we are compelled to do more
than watch the rose-red glow that slowly and faintly kindles
in the gray sky that overhangs the principal figures. The
story leaves us as the "Scarlet Letter" does, looking toward
the time " when the whole relation of men and women shall
be established on a surer ground of mutual happiness."
" Dr. Zay," Miss Phelps' last story, is pitched in the major
key. It has been a surprise to the public, so long used to
listen for the minor in every strain of hers. There is morn-
ing in this picture. " Avis " was sad because there was in it
only the wish for the day. " Dr. Zay " stands out clearly in
the light of dawn.
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. 579
Miss Phelps has felt the change of atmosphere within the five
years, since she said at the close of "Avis," " Horizons with
which her own youth was unacquainted beckoned before her ;
the hills looked at her with a foreign face ; the wind told her
that which she had not heard ; in the air, strange melodies
rang out." One of these melodies is caught and rendered
for us here. It is a glimpse of
" Man and woman
Solving the riddle old."
It seemed to have occurred to none but Mr. Howells before
(unless we except Charles Keade), that there is suddenly a
new type of woman for the novelist to deal with, and " Dr.
Zay " was already half- written when " Dr. Breen's Practice "
appeared in the " Atlantic." Mr. Howells* woman physician
has not however "the scientific mind." She was, after all,
only the old sort of woman he knows so well, masquerading
with a medicine-case. Dr. Zay means it all and does it too.
Without a stretch or twist, very simply and naturally,
though we must believe not without intention, the ordinary
conditions are precisely reversed. It is her chance patient,
Waldo Yorke, who is passive, unoccupied, "a beggar for a
kind word." It is she who is preoccupied, active, happy in
a full and satisfied life. That marriage is not to be entered
into unadvisedly in the new order of things is made suffi-
ciently plain by her long hesitation hesitation under his
wooing, and by the high-mindedness with which she refuses
to let him err through any glamour of gratitude, loneliness,
or circumstance. Not till his choice is tested by change and
absence, and hers by persistent work, does she yield, like
other women who cannot prescribe carbo vegetabilis or set
broken arms.
The book is full of smiles and west wind and hope, in-
stinct with prophecy, already beginning to turn to facts. It
is all natural and direct, quite free from morbid or one-sided
views. Whoever reads it is apt to be carried on by Miss
Phelps' theories in spite of himself, since he finds such a new
580 ELIZABETH STUAKT PHELPS.
kind of woman as Dr. Zay proves to be, a very charming
and inspiring sort of creature. He inclines to agree with
Mrs. Isaiah Butter well, that there might be worse things
than "having a woman like Doctor to turn to, sharin' the
biggest cares and joys a man has got, not leanin' like a water-
soaked log against him when he feels slim as a pussy-willow
himself, poor fellow, but claspin' hands as steady as a statue
to help him on."
The vigor and sparkle of " Dr. Zay " make us believe we
have better things yet to expect from Miss Phelps in spite of
the baffling, almost crushing, hindrance of ill-health. That
bar once removed, what fine insights, what holy inspirations,
what pictures of the droll as well as the pathetic side of
things, may we not anticipate from a nature so strong and
beautiful, gifted with so rare a genius of expression?
If fate should deny it, her life and work, as they stand, are
among our choicest treasures. Her high-minded constancy
to her difficult ideals adds to her personal charm the haunting
fragrance of a purely spiritual force, and wherever her words
fall, unfading flowers spring up.
In her, and in her writings, force and sweetness so blend
that we cannot tell whether it is the beautiful that draws us,
or the good and the true that stimulate and content us. If
the flower is a lily, it is an Easter lily, with comfort and
ministry in its grace, an ethereal and immortal meaning
folded in its rare, white petals.
CHAPTER XXY.
HAEEIET BEECHEK STOWE.
BY HOSE TERRY COOKE.
Mrs. Stowe's Father, Rev. Dr. Lyman Beecher His Fame and Worth His
Wife, Roxana Foote Mrs. Stowe's Early Training Incidents in Her
Childhood A Famous School Reminiscences of Her Girlhood Early
Passion for Writing Marriage to Prof. Calvin E. Stowe Life on the
Banks of the Ohio Where and How She Received Her First Impres-
sions of Slavery What Led to the Writing of " Uncle Tom's Cabin "
Difficulties Under Which it was Written How it was Received
Excitement it Created Mrs. Stowe's Visit to England Her Recep-
tion The True Story of "A Vindication of Lady Byron" Celebrating
Mrs. Stowe's Seventy-first Birthday Her Two Homes Looking Toward
the Other Side of Jordan.
ARRIET ELIZABETH BEECHER was born at
Litchfield, Conn., June 14, 1811.
She was the seventh child of the Rev. Lyman
|: Beecher and Roxana Foote, his wife. Her
; parents were both remarkable people. Mr.
Beecher was a man of keen intellect, great
moral courage and energy, whose mental force
gave him almost directly after he entered the
ministry a high place among his compeers. His
inauguration of the temperance reform ; his strug-
gles for the permanent establishment of the church of Christ
in New England at a time when heresy and infidelity
threatened its existence as an organization ; his advocacy of
revivals, and his active agency in bringing them about, will
keep his name famous in the ecclesiastical annals of Con-
necticut as long as those records last ; and his name will be
always revered at Lane Seminary, near Cincinnati, Ohio, as
not only the head of that institution for many years, but its
founder in a sense more vital far than the mere contribution
581
582 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
of funds. Beside his deep piety, his stern courage and devo-
tion, he was a man of infinite humor and playfulness, and
made his children thoroughly happy as children.
Roxana Foote, his wife, was a woman of rare virtues : culti-
vated, highly educated, and accomplished ; in the simplicity
of her nature and the purity of her warm young heart she mar-
ried this penniless minister, and took up the work of a minis-
ter's wife with unshrinking devotion ; she was indeed the
intended woman of Paradise, "a helpmeet unto him." In
poverty, in sorrow, in struggle of every kind, the heart of her
husband trusted in her, and leaned upon her as a strong staff;
and when she died he said afterwards that his " first sensation
was a sort of terror, like that of a child suddenly shut out alone
in the dark." Yet she, with all her clarity of mind, her ful-
ness of lofty thought, and keen enjoyment of literature and
art, never cried out for her " rights," or clamored for suf-
frage. Calm, serene, tender,
" A perfect woman, nobly planned
To warn, to comfort, to command.
But yet a spirit still, and bright
With something of an angel light,"
she moved on through the crowding duties of an arduous life,
became the mother of nine children, one of whom went before
her, and died in a peace that was triumph and a strength
that was rapture.
Beside these pillars of the home temple, Harriet Beecher
was also compassed about with other and similar stimulating
companionships. Her aunt, Mary Hubbard, a beautiful and
fascinating girl, who married early a West-Indian planter, and
after a few years of sinking health and failing heart came
home to die, rallied in her native air, and filled the Beecher
homestead with sparkling life for a few short years.
Although 'Harriet was but a baby when this aunt died, no
doubt what she heard of her in the family tradition, especially
of her horror of slavery, sank into that receptive mind and
was brooded over till an ardent sympathy was established
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 583
there, ready to welcome the fugitive American slave when
she lived on the banks of the Ohio in later years, and to
appreciate with her great tender heart the sorrows of those
men and women whose crime was being born, not of another
blood, but with another skin than their masters.
Her mother's mother, with whom the child spent much
time, was a serene and kindly lady of the old days ; a great
reader and thinker ; and Harriet Foote, the aunt, whose
name Harriet Beecher bore, was a woman of keen and versa-
tile wit ; while Esther Beecher, her father's sister, was a prac-
tical, unselfish, utterly devoted woman of vigorous intellect
and quiet humor, who measured out the things of this life as
conscientiously and accurately as if they were the outer court
service of the temple in which her inner soul devoutly
adored.
Born of such parents, living in such an atmosphere, it is
not wonderful that the children grew up so remarkable in
their development and individuality, that an old saying was
readapted for them, and it became a proverb that " There
are three kinds of people in the world : the good, the bad,
and the Beechers."
Nor, in the wisdom of her home training, was the pre-
cocious child allowed to sacrifice her health ; her home was
on that wide and breezy hill in Litchfield from which can
be seen still a long stretch of characteristic New England
scenery ; rolling hills, sad brown stretches of fallow field and
rocky upland, here and there a glimmering pond ; then, great
sweeps of forest, far and near ; and over all a broad, bright
sky, its vast azure expanse swept with fleecy clouds, darkened
with the black banners of the thunder, or livid with north-
eastern rains. She ran wild among these trees and hills,
went nutting in the gorgeous haze and blaze of October ; or
gathered the wistful delicate blooms of spring; the red
strawberries, fragrant and sweet beyond the giants of to-day,
enticed her into the June-sweet pastures ; and the gorgeous
lilies of the hay-field tempted her in summer ; there was
nothing foreign or unknown to her in the kindly fruitage of
584 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
the earth about her, and she learned at the very lips of the
great mother those ineffable lessons only to be so learned.
As she says herself: r 'I was educated, first and foremost
by nature, wonderful, beautiful, ever-changing as she is in
that cloudland, Litchfield."
Yet her home-life went hand in hand with the out-of-door ;
her heart kept even beat with the cheery, social, mirthful,
happy course of her daily living ; and her mind was fed with
conversation of the sort that is not concerned with the day's
gossip, or the hasty and hard judgment of neighbor and friend.
In that crowded parsonage, about the fire at night, books
and authors were discussed ; the awful realities of religion
reverently explored ; the moral situation of the church and
the world expounded and agitated ; and all regarded from but
one standpoint, that outlook from the side of God the Crea-
tor and Governor, which lifts the human soul above' the misty
passions of earth and gives to its vision the width and clear-
ness of heaven.
In the light of her after-life it is significant that she heard
and remembered an incident which happened one day in her
childhood, and is best recorded in" her own words : .
" I remember hearing father relate the account of Byron's
separation from his wife ; and one day hearing him say with
a sorrowful countenance, as if announcing the death of some
one very interesting to him :
"My dear, Byron is dead, gone.''
" After being a while silent, he said :
e * Oh, I'm sorry Byron is dead. I did hope he would have
lived to do something for Christ. What a harp he might
have swept ! '
" The whole impression made upon me by the conversation
was solemn and painful. I remember taking my basket for
strawberries that afternoon and going over to a strawberry-
field on Chestnut Hill, but I was too dispirited to do anything,
so I lay down among the daisies and looked up into the blue
sky, and thought of that great eternity into which Byron
had entered, and wondered how it might be with his soul."
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 585
When Harriet Beecher was but five years old her beautiful,
tender mother, after a brief illness, went home to the land
which indeed she seemed only to have left for a short time to
bless this earth, leaving behind her an undying memory, an
unfading love and sorrow. Eight motherless children were
left to mourn her, and not one could recollect an impatient
word, an unjust judgment, even when Harriet, like a very
little pickle as she was, beguiled her brothers and sisters to
eat up a bag of rare tulip-roots under the impression that they
were onions and very nice, using thereto all the persuasion
her baby-language and coaxing eyes could bring to the sub-
ject. She herself says that when her mother entered on the
scene,
"There was not even a momentary expression of impa-
tience, but she sat down, and calmly, sweetly, told them what
lovely tulips would have risen from those roots had they
spared them."
Perhaps only as passionate a lover of flowers as Roxana
Beecher was can appreciate this wonderful temper.
A year passed by under dear and good Aunt Esther's house-
hold rule, and then a new mother came to govern and guide
at the parsonage. She too was a lovely and gifted woman,
and, as far as any woman can, filled a mother's place to the
children. She liked the home she came to from the first,
and relates that Harriet, with her instinctive love of justice
ignorantly aflame, said to her : "Because you have come and
married my father, when I am big enough I mean to go and
marry your father ! "
But for all the quaint child's threat, she admired and loved
the beautiful young stepmother heartily, who in turn speaks
of her as " amiable, lovely, affectionate and bright, as ever I
saw."
Catherine, the oldest sister, herself afterward a distinguished
and excellent woman, records how Harriet, not yet seven
years old, "is a very good girl. She has been to school
all this summer, and has learned to read very fluently. She
has committed to memory twenty-seven hymns and two long
586 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
chapters in the Bible. She has a very retentive memory, and
will make a good scholar. She says she has got a new
mother, and loves her very much, and means to be a good
child."
Yet this forward scholar was also a hearty, rosy, strong
girl ; with flying curls of sunny brown, and sweet, keen, blue-
gray eyes ; ready for fun and play ; a happy, childish creature,
"quite pretty," rejoicing in this life, yet weighted to some
extent with the prospects of the life which is to come,
never ignored or neglected in that hill-top parsonage.
We hear of her a year or two later, begging for an
w epithet " for the grave of her beloved cat ; and discern the
germ of that humane spirit that in her womanhood loved and
recorded the lives and doings of so many of these tf spirits in
prison, " from "Mr. Black Trip," to "Hum the Son of Buz."
Litchfield was then the very place for a child like Harriet
Beecher to develop in. The Wolcotts, Judge Gould, John
Allen, Jabez Huntington, Uriel Holmes, Seth P. Beers, Dr.
Sheldon, John P. Brace, Judge Tapping Reeve, Mrs. Sarah
Pierce, the Tallmadges, and the Champions are all names that
in Connecticut were synonymous with learning, intellect, and
high character. On this isolated hill clustered a society of
the most cultivated kind, and the minister's family, ex officio,
took rank, with the highest. Lyman Beecher's household did
honor to the rank ; from no other house in that wide green
street did such fame and worth send out representatives into
the world.
And here, too, was situated the best school in Connecticut.
Nominally under the conduct of Mrs. Sarah Pierce, a well-
educated and superior woman, its real head and guide was
her nephew, John Pierce Brace, a teacher still held in grate-
ful remembrance, and one to whom the writer of this article
owes a debt of deep gratitude for the zeal, the patience, and
the affection that not only stimulated, but guided and sweet-
ened her continuous school-life.
No teacher can ever have " educated " his pupils in the true
sense of the word better than Mr. Brace : less of a martinet
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 587
and drill-master than the modern schoolmaster, he understood
by some subtle intelligence the way to influence every mind
brought into contact with his own ; he knew what we were
and what we needed with infallible instinct, and made study
a keen delight when he taught, whatever was the lesson.
Under the name of "Jonathan Rossiter" Mrs. Stowe has
described him in the latter part of "Oldtown Folks" with a
vigor and detail that paint him to the life. And she says in
a letter to her brother, "Mr. Brace was one of the most
stimulating and inspiring instructors I ever knew. He was
himself widely informed, an enthusiast in botany, mineralogy,
and the natural sciences generally, beside being well read in
English classical literature.
" He exceeded all teachers I ever knew in the faculty of
teaching composition. In my twelfth year, by two years of
constant practice under his training, I had gained so far as to
be appointed one of the writers for the annual exhibition.
. . . The subject was f Can the Immortality of the Soul be
Proved by the Light of Nature?' ... I 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 compositions were read
aloud. When rnine was read, I noticed that father, who was
sitting on high beside Mr, Brace, brightened and looked
interested, and at the close I heard him say,
' 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."
No doubt, long years after, when his teaching days were
over, and his heart wrung with loss and disappointment,
when the daughter of all his children most like her fathsr lay
in an early grave, and life grew dark before him, John P.
Brace looked back upon this child of genius, and smiled to
think of the wonderful "composition" which she had then
36
,088 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
but just sent out for an astonished world to hear. It was to
his care that the child of seven was committed, and in this
school she says, " I ran loose, a little girl, at the foot cf a
school of a hundred grown-up girls."
And here her destiny and duty began to be manifest.
"From early childhood I had a passion for writing, and
printed my meditations and reflections before I learned to
write, and scribbled incessantly afterward. Miss Pierce used
to hold me up as a dreadful warning, one who, as she phrased
it, was always bowing down to the idol ' scribble ; ' and she
predicted all sorts of dreadful results, which never came to
pass."
Here she studied history, rhetoric^ and wrote compositions
every week ; taking still her vivid interest in nature all
abroad, in the prowess of her father's fishing-rod, in the
"wood-spells " of winter, in the little brothers and sisters now
and then added to the fulness of the " minister's blessings,"
in dogs, cats, cows, in all living things ; for, like the dear
Aunt Esther, she knew and "sought out" the "works of the
Lord," being one who found "pleasure therein."
But a change of base was coming. Catherine, the oldest
of the family, engaged to Professor Fisher, of Yale College,
a man of great promise and already distinguished perform-
ance, was suddenly bereaved by his death. On the way to
Europe, where he proposed to study and travel for a year,
the vessel in which he sailed was lost. Of all its passengers
and crew only one was saved to tell the tale ; and the brilliant
girl, whose heart, full of love and hope, was wrecked with her
lover, fell into a sfate of rebellious melancholy, which her
helpful spirit and practical education fought against nobly.
She had already learned, or perhaps instinct taught her, that
work is God's remed} r for grief of any kind ; and a year later
she setup a school for girls in Hartford, Conn., which became
a success, and in the end famous.
To this sister's care and teaching Harriet, now twelve
years old, was confided. No more scrambles now over hill
and dale after huckleberries or honeysuckle apples ; no more
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 589
nutting frolics or fishing excursions to Bantam Pond ; apple-
cuttings, wood-spells, strawberry-hunts, and expeditions after
winter-green were all over ; she must " buckle-down " now to
serious work without these alleviations ; and beside her own
studies she taught Latin and translated Virgil into English
heroic verse, becoming in due time an assistant pupil in the
school then and still known as the Hartford Female Seminary,
and flourishing for many years after Miss Beecher left it
under the rule of the same John P. Brace who was previously
her teacher.
In November, 1825, Harriet Beecher became a member of
her father's church in Litchfield, a fact recorded with joy by
Mr. Beecher, whose heart's desire it was that all his children
should be converted to Christ. It is pathetic to see in the
record of this good man's life how faithfully and eagerly he
exhorted, watched, and prayed for the souls of all his family ;
it was the burden of his days and nights, and at last his song
of thankfulness, that they were all gathered into the church
on earth before he departed for the church in heaven.
In 1826 Mr. Beecher, after a long and anxious self-com-
muning, made up his mind that he had no right to live longer
in debt for want of a sufficient salary. It has always been
the disgrace of New England that her country ministers have
had to starve or accept charity. Many of them have been
forced to eke out the pittance allotted to them by farming on
week-days instead of studying, or by writing school-books or
compiling histories, or in later days taking agencies for
popular articles ; but none of these things were available to
Mr. Beecher ; he believed it his duty to devote all his time
and strength, just as far as it could be spared from the abso-
lute needs of rest or relaxation, to the work of the ministry ;
and the father of eleven children could not, in any case, have
provided that hearty and hungry flock with food and clothing
for eight hundred dollars a year.
He took no counsel of man, but in the silence of his study
made up his mind to leave Litchfield as soon as he could find
a more remunerative parish, and twelve hours after, a letter
590 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
reached him inviting him to the Hanover Street church, Bos-
ton, Mass.
But here his influence was so powerful, his controversies
with Unitarianism and the Finney systems of revivals so
trenchant and triumphant, that his fame went abroad in all
the land ; and he seemed to be the man of all others to help
build up a Western school of theology.
He was called to a professorship in Lane Seminary, Cin-
cinnati, in 1832, and his whole family followed him. Here
Catherine and Harriet set up another school, and here the
latter, at the age of twenty-five, on January 4, 1836, married
Calvin E. Stowe, Professor of Biblical Criticism and Oriental
Literature in Lane Seminary.
Her life on the banks of the Ohio river, the boundary line
between the Western slave and free States, opened to Mrs.
Stowe a new field of observation and sympathy.
In the constant occupations and toil of a wife and mother,
hampered by narrow means and those necessities of position
which make it so much harder to be respectably poor than to
be poor without respectability, she never lost her broad,
observant outlook on the aspects of our common humanity,
or her ready and abundant sympathy with human loss and
woe.
Here she was in the very seethe and foam of slavery's des-
peration ; on the other edge of the broad Ohio men and
women were bought, sold, tortured, and murdered, with no
help from earth or heaven ; on her side the slave was free,
but only nominally, for the hunters of men forced the laws to
their side of the question, and not till his foot touched the
cold soil of Canada was the fugitive free indeed.
Mrs. Stowe's husband and all her own family were ardent
Abolitionists. What else could be expected of men who had
been trained from birth to look at the right and wrong of all
things, instead of their expediency or profit?
Whenever opportunity offered these brave men held out
both hands to welcome and aid the escape of their brethren
in bonds ; riding by night to conceal them ; planning by day
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 591
how to forward them to their final safety, and being brethren
indeed to the despised and lowly.
Here Mrs. Stowe saw and heard the agonies of mothers
torn from their children, of husbands hopelessly separated
from their wives, knowing they were sold into the black
depths of involuntary sin and helpless crime. She educated
her own children herself, and finding there was no school
whatever in Cincinnati for colored children, she admitted as
many as she could care for to her own little flock, and shared
with them her instructions.
One of these children was claimed as the w asset " of an
estate in Kentucky, and the weeping and wailing mother
came to tell the beloved teacher that her bright boy was a
slave, and was about to be haled back as a chattel into the
hell from which she had recovered him. Mrs. Stowe promptly
came to the rescue, and taking up subscriptions in her neigh-
borhood was able to pay the boy's ransom and return him to
the arms of his grateful mother.
Here, too, in Cincinnati, during her life there, began a
series of agitations on the slavery question which kept it
seething in her mind ; here Theodore Weld lectured and
prayed, and a great proportion of the Lane Seminary stu-
dents became ardent Abolitionists ; mobs raged and raved
about the city, and the " fanatics " were threatened with their
lives ; the very excitement and fury that the vexed subject
caused showed how deep was the volcano which so flamed
and roared. Dr. Bailey, " a wise, temperate, and just man, a
model of courtesy in speech and writing," who proposed to
discuss slavery openly and fairly, was driven from the city
by a mob of Kentucky slaveholders, and went to Wash-
ington, where afterward he printed Mrs. Stowe's greatest
work in his paper, the " National Era."
And here, too, the wife and mother began her public
literary career, writing " A New-England Story," in competi-
tion for a prize of fifty dollars, which she gained. This
story, afterward published in " The Mayflower," was a faithful,
touching reproduction of those old-time Yankee characters,
592 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
full of humor and pathos, whom she has so often chronicled
to the life.
Finding herself able to add to her resources in this way,
she wrote other slight sketches, but nothing of importance,
till with her young family she returned to New England.
Professor Stowe removed to Brunswick, Maine, just as the
Northern States began to be excited and aroused by the
passage of the Fugitive Slave Law.
Hitherto Mrs. Stowe had not thought of slavery except as
a dreadful gulf of horror, despair, and guilt ; into which no
Curtius could leap except to give it cause to boil up and rage
anew, like the Icelandic geysers ; a wrong and shame that
could only be relegated to the shades where hope never enters,
and treated after the wisdom of the old Roman proverb,
" Ne moveas Camerina" But the voluntary stupor of
Southern self-interest was at last broken by the lashing of a
sullen Northern tempest of awakened opinion ; and, aroused
to the need of aid and furtherance from the free States, the
South framed and pushed through this iniquitous law, which
meant death and destruction to happy families and peaceful
homes. Mrs. Stowe heard constantly from her many friends
in Boston heartrending tales of the results of this law among
the respectable colored people who had escaped to that city,
and were quietly earning their bread there.
A reign of terror had begun, and even in the pulpits of
Christian churches no man cared or dared to lift up a voice
of demur or warning ; tr no man cared for their souls ; " the
church and the world joined hands against the oppressed, and
openly or tacitly sided with the oppressor.
It seemed to Mrs. Stowe that slavery as it really was must
be unknown to these people, who would not have tolerated
tyranny or oppression anywhere else. Her heart burned
within her, and in those sacred flames arose and flashed scene
after scene, founded on incidents she had seen or known in
the dark life of slavery. Even at the communion-table the
pictures filled her soul ; she went home to write down what
were to her real inspirations, and her young children burst
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 593
into tears as she read to them the story that was yet to draw
like tears from millions of readers. For this wonderful book
was indeed "the voice of one crying in the wilderness,
Behold ye the way of the Lord, make His path straight ! "
She was like a pen in the hand of a strong angel, and while
the woman might well have cried out, " How can I sing the
Lord's song in a strange land? " the soul within answered,
" Speak ! Lord, for thy servant heareth."
Worn down with the duties of a mother, to whose little
flock a baby had been lately added, the only New-England-
born of them all ; with pupils resident in the famity, whom
she taught with her older children ; harassed by the ineffi-
ciency of servants, and the myriad trials of a housekeeper in
the country ; still the inspiration laid hold of her, and w r ould
not be ignored ; she had in her soul if not upon her lips the
words of her Master : fr How am I straitened until it be
accomplished ! " for in His power and following His footsteps
she also brought life and liberty to them that were lost in the
shadow of great darkness.
This story of stories was first offered to Dr. Bailey, for
the " National Era," and the offer eagerly accepted ; though at
first it was only proposed to run through a few numbers of the
paper, but the tale was too mighty for the teller to say " thus
far shalt thou go and no farther." It held her as the ancient
mariner held the wedding-guest, and like that listener she
"could not choose but hear."
While it was in course of publication in the " Era," a young
publisher of Boston proposed to issue 'it in book-form, and
Mrs. Stowe consented ; but Mr. Jewett, seeing how the tale
progressed, objected ; he wrote to the author that it was out-
growing the limits of one volume, and the subject was too
unpopular to bear further elaboration, but she replied, as a
prophetess might have, that she could not control the length
of the story, it "made itself," and she could not stop writing
it till it was done.
And when at last it was done, a deep and heavy depression
came over her ; the inspiration had fled, the " afflatus " was
594 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
gone ; and the woman, no longer a prophetess, began to
wonder at her folly. Who would read these incendiary
volumes? Who would turn aside from the respectabilities
of law and order to hear the trumpet-tones of the Gospel
story? She felt despair enter her soul like an iron spear;
but she was not born of the plucky little parson on Litchfield
Hill to deny his good blood in her veins when need came ;
she determined to help on her message in every way her
good sense and brave spirit could suggest. She wrote a
letter to Prince Albert, whose name was a synonym for good-
ness and justice, and whose consort was queen of a realm
whose boast it is that slaves cannot breathe in its air. She
wrote to Macaulay, whose father had once been a prominent
anti-slavery man ; to Charles Dickens, whose nature was
widely sympathetic, as his writings showed ; to Charles
Kingsley, then an ardent believer in the freedom of man, and
to Lord Carlisle, accompanying each letter with an early
copy of her volume.
But she needed no help from the great of the earth ; her
word had been in its measure the word of the Lord ; nat-
urally the weak and weary woman trembled under her mes-
sage and doubted its acceptance ; but He who said of old,
"It shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish that
which I please, and prosper in the thing whereto I sent it,"
kept his promise therein.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" was published March 20, 1852.
Ten thousand copies were sold in a few days, and over three
hundred thousand within a year. Eight presses were run
day and night to supply the enormous demand.
No book of human origin w"as ever so rapidly sold, so
widely and universally read ; the author had herself felt in
the depths of her heart what she wrote out with tears and
righteous indignation, and the throbs of millions of other
hearts replied to the true beat of hers. Far and wide the
light of its burning truth shone and lit up the habitations
of cruelty ; the latent sympathy of thousands who had sinned
in ignorance awoke to action, and the colored race testified
1. PORTRAIT OF HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 2. BROUGHT TO BAY. A RUNAWAY SLAVE
TRACKED BY BLOODHOUNDS. 8. UNCLE TOM AND LITTLE EVA.
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 595
to a direct and surprising change in their treatment by the
whites.
Part of its success was owing to its candid justice. Mrs.
Stowe painted the limitations, the hard position, the kindly
feeling of many slaveholders as truly and pitifully as she
drew the woes and disasters of the slave. Letters poured in
upon her from all quarters, letters of praise, of sympathy, of
congratulation, but also of hate, insult, threats, blasphemy,
and all uncleanness. The South as one man reviled and
abused her ; they could not even appreciate the justice of her
portraits, she had laid the axe at the root of the tree, and
all the foul birds in its branches rent the air with their cries
of fury ; no less a tribute to her wonderful success than the
laud and glory of her admirers.
It was not the artistic value of this book that made its suc-
cess, for its author has since written much more careful and
delicate studies of life and character, and painted with tender
and more exquisite colors the beauty of humanity and nature ;
but " Uncle Tom's Cabin " touched the deepest springs of
humanity's heart, and bade the imprisoned waters arise and
overflow. The hour had come for this good grain to be sown,
and a woman's hand had scattered it. Many a tedious day
wore on before its harvest waved on hillside and savanna, to
be reaped in tears and blood instead of sun and dew, with
swords instead of sickles, and gathered in with cries of battle
in place of the gleaner's song. But at last that mighty fruit-
age is garnered, and the slave is free forever ! Brief words
to write or read, but eternal fact and immortal reality.
Not only in America did this book achieve its wonderful
success ; England also was moved from its wonted cold con-
tempt for her offshoot; and the sneering question, "Who
reads an American book ? " received once for all its answer
" Everybody ! "
When Mrs. Stowe went abroad a year after "Uncle Tom"
was published, she was received with the highest honors.
Addresses were poured in upon her signed by thousands of
women of every class, and from the inhabitants of separate
596 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
cities and towns, all expressing their esteem for, and sym-
pathy with, the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Brief
sympathy, it is true, for when the war of the rebellion began,
the English nation forgot the sorrows of the slave and held
out pitiful hands to the slaveholder as the " aristocrat " of
America besieged by its commonalty !
One incident of Mrs. Stowe's experience in England was
almost prophetic. She was presented with a solid gold
bracelet made in shape of a slave's fetters, inscribed with the
words, " We trust it is a memorial of a chain that is soon to
be broken." On one link was engraved the date of the abo-
lition of the slave-trade, and on another that of the abolition
of slavery in all England's territories. To-day this bracelet
bears upon its other links the dates of emancipation in the
District of Columbia ; of the President's proclamation abol-
ishing slavery in rebel States ; of freedom proclaimed in
Maryland and in Missouri ; while the clasp bears the date of
the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery forever in
the United States. Its record is finished, and its wearer has
the sublime and blessed consciousness that she laid the train
which has blown the direst work of hell on earth to utter de-
struction, and left it only an ignominious memory.
But not only where its native language was spoken has
this book been read ; it has been translated into nineteen dif-
ferent tongues. Twelve French editions by various transla-
tors have been issued, and eleven German. In the eloquent
verse of Dr. Holmes, read upon Mrs. Stowe's seventieth
birthday, at a garden party, given by Messrs. Houghton
and Mifflin in her honor, he alludes to this peculiar circum-
stance :
" If every tongue that speaks her praise
For whom I shape my tinkling phrase
Were summoned to the table,
The vocal chorus that would meet,
Of mingling accents harsh or sweet,
From every land and tribe, would beat
The polyglots of Babel.
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 597
" Briton and Frenchman, Swede and Dane,
Turk, Spaniard, Tartar of Ukraine,
Hidalgo, Cossack, Cadi,
High Dutchman and Low Dutchman, too,
The Russian serf, the Polish Jew,
Arab, Armenian, and Mantchoo,
Would shout, We know the lady ! ' "
In the library of the British Museum there are thirty-five
editions of the original English, complete, and eight abridg-
ments or adaptations.
But after such a success the triumphant pen could not be
idle ; Mrs. Stowe's visit abroad was chronicled in a charming
volume called < r Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands." She
wrote then a small "Geography for my Children," and that
was followed by a powerful tale of slavery, called "Dred,"
afterwards renamed "Nina Gordon." Then came a slighter
sketch on the training of children, " Our Charley" ; and then,
published first as a serial in the "Atlantic Monthly," "The
Minister's Wooing," an exquisite story of old New England,
full of pathos, delicate humor, subtle character-painting, and
high religious thought. Mary Scudder is a picture of a
Puritan maiden, almost too saintly for real life, yet true to
such a life as in those days did sometimes flower into " a lily
of the Lord " ; Miss Prissy, the queer, kindly, penetrating
old maid ; Mrs. Scudder, pious, thrifty, ambitious, and stern ;
sad Mrs. Marvyn, worn out in soul and body with the awful
weight of theologic questions and morbid conscientiousness ;
gay, capricious, sunny, and stormy Madame de Frontignac ;
and plausible, courtly, devilish Aaron Burr, set over against
the great-hearted and high-souled doctor, make a portrait-
gallery of real personages in the memory of the reader ; and
show what power and versatility belong to that genius which
had already electrified the world.
This was followed by " Agnes of Sorrento," the scene of
which is laid in Italy, and does not afford room for the free-
dom and grace with which the author writes of her own land
and people.
598 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
Next was " The Pearl of Orr's Island," a touching story of
our New England coast ; with characteristic touches of de-
scription that show how keen and appreciative is the writer's
observation of nature ; and how vivid her enjoyment of all
its manifestations.
After this came " Oldtown Folks," a story of country life
in New England ; part of which is laid amid the scenes
familiar to her in Litchfield, her early home, and which dis-
plays a panorama of village life and society, true in every
racy detail, sparkling with humor, and solemn with theologic
contemplations and controversies.
After this came " Sam Lawson's Fireside Stories," dear to
every heart that keeps a youthful throb, and longs to be a
boy again at the old story-teller's knee. This was followed
by a few papers on family life, called "The Chimney-Corner,"
and in natural sequence by M House and Home Papers," a
volume which vindicates the practical, household, feminine
side of Mrs. Stowe's nature ; and prove her not only to be a
great and unique genius in a literary point of view, but one
who deserves the praise of Lemuel's mother in that chronicle
of the " virtuous woman " whose " price is far above rubies,"
whose " children arise up and call her blessed, her husband
also, and he praiseth her"; for truly "strength and honor
are her clothing," and her house is the home of peace, cheer,
health, and kindly Christian living.
After these came a small volume of "Religious Poems,"
full of pure aspiration and unfaltering faith. Mrs. Stowe is
no bigot ; a member of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, whose
pastor is her well-known and distinguished brother, Henry
Ward Beecher, she fraternizes with the Episcopal church in
Mandarin, her winter home, and enters into all their good
works ; and in her " Religious Poems " sectarianism finds no
place ; they are simply and earnestly religious.
The poems were followed by a small book called " Little
Foxes" articles on domestic ethics. Then came "My Wife
and I," "We and Our Neighbors," "Pink and White Tyranny"
~- all household stories ; and after them the second great sensa-
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 599
tion created by Mrs. Stowe in her literary career an article
published in the " Atlantic Monthly " called " A Vindication
of Lady Byron."
While Mrs. Stowe was abroad she became very intimate
with that unfortunate lady, who confided to her under the
seal of absolute secrecy as long as Lady Byron herself lived
the reasons for her separation from her husband. Mrs.
Stowe, however, was requested by Lady Byron, if ever a
necessity arose after her death, to make her secret known to
the public.
When a "Life of Byron," edited by the notorious Countess
Guiccioli, was published in England, and aroused new inter-
est in the poems and character of Byron, being written by a
woman who had shared his licentious and indecent life, Mrs.
Stowe felt that the time had come when Lady Byron's char-
acter as a wife needed to be vindicated from the implied or
open assertions of Byron's mistress ; and, accordingly, she
gave to the public the painful and not by any means delicate
story of Lady Byron's wrong and suffering.
In doing this, Mrs. Stowe was impelled, as all who knew
her thoroughly understood, by a generous and brave affection
for the dead woman who had been her lovely, living friend.
It was an act of heroic justice, such as such a woman alone
could have done.
Whether Lady Byron was deranged at the time her sor-
rows and her solitude began, or whether by long brooding
over her loss in her worse than widowed loneliness, she created
out of her suspicions what seemed to her grief an actual fact,
or whether her story was indeed true to the letter, is still
a matter of conjecture with most people ; but it is certain
that Mrs. Stowe believed her story implicitly, and was filled
with the deepest pity and indignation when she heard it ; and
made its revelation in a conscientious desire to do good and
not evil.
But a tale like this, which in vindicating the character of
one woman blasted in a peculiarly dreadful manner the repu-
tation of another, and involved, collaterally, persons yet liv-
600 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
ing, in the black shame and crime of near and dear relatives,
could not fail to arouse a storm of indignation and disgust in
England, and give rise to much low scoff and vulgar comment
wherever it was read.
It is a melancholy reflection on human nature that it is
never safe to trust its nobler instincts in a matter like this,
the story which Mrs. Stowe's best friends must regret that
she ever published became a weapon in the hands of her
enemies ; and instead of vindicating her deceased friend from
the attacks of post-mortem slander, she not only aroused them
to fresh vigor, but drew upon herself a cloud of misrepresen-
tation and scandalous sarcasm that pained all her myriad
admirers, and must, no doubt, have wounded and discom-
fited her woman's delicate nature.
Still, with the rare, unflinching courage of her birthright,
which has ever been one of her prominent characteristics, she
says to-day, under her own hand, "I am never sorry for
having written it, spite of the devil and all his angels ! "
"Poganuc People," a sketch of old Litchfield and its in-
habitants, is the latest volume from her pen, though she still
writes brief articles for the public. But her working days
are merged at last in the rest which she has so well earned
and deserved.
On the occasion of her seventy-first birthday her Boston pub-
lishers, Messrs. Houghton and Mifflin, gave a garden party
in her honor, at the house of Governor Claflin, of Newton,
Mass., near Boston. Here were assembled all those brethren
of the literary guild who delighted to honor their queen, and
here too were the veterans of the abolition " Old Guard ; "
quaint, simple, " fanatical " as ever, but calm and satisfied as
never before, for their prophetess had ceased to prophesy,
fulfilment having come. On a stage, under the kindly shade
of a great tent, sat the sweet, kindly-faced woman whose
clustering curls had whitened to snow-wreaths in the service
of humanity ; praise was showered upon her like incense ;
poems read in her honor ; and before her gathered a crowd of
friends with love and laud in every eye, on every lip ; but it
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 601
was not for the praise of man to ruffle her serene countenance
or disturb the dreamy peace of her eyes, that seemed bent on
some far distance, where the babble of earth is heard no
more, but the silent welcome of heaven is ready and waiting.
She received her ovation with the calm simplicity of a
child, and in a few words of gracious thanks and counsel dis-
missed her guests when all their speech had been uttered,
and went out with her husband, her son, and her grand-
children into the fresh June air, the young summer verdure,
and the crowding flowers, and away to her home and its
duties, as a saint to her cell, untouched by the hot breath of
flattery, unmoved by the loud plaudits of men, calm in that
mild consciousness of devotion and duty that is deeper and
dearer than this life's most earnest homage, or its richest
gifts.
She says of herself, " I am seventy-two years old, and am
more interested in the other side of Jordan than this, though
this still has its pleasures."
Mrs. Stowe has two homes : one in Hartford, Connecticut,
where she spends her summers ; and one in Mandarin,
Florida, where her winters are passed. Long may it be,
prays every soul that knows her, before she leaves them for
the city which is in heaven.
Earth will be bereft indeed when her gracious presence
forsakes it to go home forever ; and leaves us only a memory,
holy and mighty though that memory be, of America's great-
est woman, Harriet Beecher Stowe.
CHAPTER XXVI.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
BY LAURA CURTIS BULLARD.
George Sand's Inquiry Mrs. Stanton as the Originator of the Woman Suf-
frage Movement Birth and Parentage Early Sympathies with ill-treated
Women Tries to be a Boy Studies Law in Her Father's Office Her
Marriage and Wedding-Tour Meets Lucretia Mott, and Decides upon a
Future Career Calls the First Woman Suffrage Convention Frederick
Douglass Her only Helper Effect of the Convention Progress of the
Movement Lectures and Addresses Edits * ' The Revolution ' ' Travels
in France and England Her Wit Anecdotes Her Personal Appear-
ance and Characteristics The Future of the Cause.
you know Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton? was
the first question put to me by Madame George
Sand, when I met her a few years ago in Paris.
" Yes, I know her well," I replied. The fa-
mous Frenchwoman inquired minutely concern-
ing my distinguished friend her personal ap-
pearance, her views and purposes, her style as
a writer and speaker, and her method of reform-
atory agitation. As I then found it no easy
matter, even during a long and free conversa-
tion, to answer all these queries, so now I find it still more
difficult to make a fit record, in a few pages, of the busy
career and varied labors of a lady who, in addition to the
cares of a large family, has been the originator of one of the
chief public movements of our times, and who has also been
an active participant in many kindred reforms. For although
Mrs. Stanton is best known as the leader of the agitation for
woman suffrage, she is not "a person of one idea," but has
been among the foremost of the many zealous laborers, both
American and English, who have striven for the abolition of
602
ELIZABETH CADY STANTOK 603
slavery for temperance for a working day of eight hours
for the suppression of usury for the co-education of the
sexes for co-operative industry and last, but not least,
for international arbitration and peace. In fact, a complete
biography of this representative woman would include a his-
tory of the political, social, and, religious thought of the last
two generations. Moreover, not even such a history could
reflect a faithful image of such a life's work ; for Mrs. Stan-
ton's public efforts have taken the evanescent form of lectures,
speeches, resolutions, protests, criticisms, and editorials
all growing out of the events of the day, and which it is not
possible to reproduce at a later period in their original vital-
ity, however accessible they may be in the archives of the
various movements which have called them forth. But
though her finest intellectual productions have been of an
ephemeral type, like those of any other speaker or journalist,
yet in her representative capacity as the head and front of a
movement peculiarly her own a novel reform whose nov-
elty seems never to wear out Elizabeth Cady Stan ton, now
in her green and sunny old age, is still what she has been
for the last thirty years an object of affection to one class
of her countrywomen, of aversion to another, and of curiosity
to all.
As the movement for woman suffrage has proved of suffi-
cient vitality, since it was first set on foot by Mrs. Stanton in
this country, to have made itself seriously felt also in other
lands, and notably in England, France, and Italy, I will
detail with some minuteness the early beginnings, in this able
woman's mind, of those strong and bold thoughts which she
was the first to promulgate nearly forty years ago, and which
have since resulted in a new system of political philosophy.
She was born November 12, 1816, at Johnstown, N.Y.
Her father, Judge Daniel Cady, was a jurist whose legal
learning and blameless life have passed into the traditions of
the bar of the Empire State. Her mother, Margaret Liv-
ingstone, at the time of Elizabeth's birth, was a young lady
of high spirit, dash, and vivacity, retaining to a remarkable
37
604 ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
degree these qualities of her youth to an octogenarian age.
It was natural that the daughter of such parents should in-
herit (as she did) the chief intellectual traits of both ren-
dering her equally skilful at the logical argument, or a witty
repartee. From her father she imbibed a love of philosophy,
and from her mother that dauntless independence of thought
and speech which, for want of a better name, is called the
courage of one's convictions.
Elizabeth Cady became a champion of women long before
she was herself a woman ; in fact, I feel warranted in saying
that the whole after-bent of her life and career was fixed even
before she was nine years old ; in other words, as soon as she
could intelligently read. I have seen a letter of hers in which
she says, " In my earliest girlhood I spent much time in my
father's office. There, before I could understand much of the
talk of the older people, I heard many sad complaints, made
by women, against the injustice of the laws. We lived in a
Scotch neighborhood, where many of the men still retained
the old feudal ideas of women and property. Thus, at a
man's death, he might will his property to his eldest son ;
and the mother would be left with nothing in her own right.
It was not unusual, therefore, for the mother who had per-
haps brought all the property into the family to be made
an unhappy dependant on the bounty of a dissipated son.
The tears and complaints of these women, who thus came to
my father for legal advice, touched my heart *and I would
often childishly inquire into all the particulars of their sor-
row, and would appeal to my father for some prompt remedy.
On one occasion he took down a law-book, and tried to show
me that something called r the laws ' prevented him from put-
ting a stop to these cruel and unjust things ; in this way my
heart was filled with a great anger against those atro-
cious laws. Whereupon the students in the office, to
amuse themselves by exciting my feelings, would always tell
me of any unjust laws which they found during their studies.
My mind was thus so aroused against the barbarism of the
laws thus pointed out, that I one day marked them with a
ELIZABETH CADY STANTOK 605
pencil, and decided to take a pair of scissors and cut them
out of the book supposing that my father and his library
were the beginning and end of the law ! I thought that if I
could only destroy those laws the poor women would have
no further trouble. But when the students informed my
father of -my proposed mutilation of his volumes, he explained
to me how fruitless my childish vengeance would have been,
and taught me that bad laws were to be abolished in quite a
different way. As soon as I fairly understood how the thing
could be accomplished, I vowed that, when I became old
enough, I would have such abominable laws changed. And
I have kept my vow."
During the same early period of life to which she refers in
the preceding extract, the little Elizabeth became the pet of an
old Scotch clergyman in Johnstown, the Rev. Simon Hosack,
who loved to take her with him in his buggy on his daily
drives. The bright-eyed girl, who had a boy's love for a
horse (and who afterwards became a Di Vernon in equestrian
exercise), would take the reins in her small hands, and while
she gently urged the parson's slow-going steed the old man
would read aloud to her, or answer her questions concerning
the birds and flowers, or repeat to her the Indian traditions
of her birthplace. The early influence which Dr. Hosack
exerted upon her has lasted till this day. I have seen tears
in her eyes at the mention of this old clergyman's name fifty
years after his death.
Judge Cady entertained the feudal notion (not yet extinct)
that the dignities and honors of a fine old family like his own
ought to descend from father to son, and not from father to
daughter. His hopes of the perpetuation of his name and
estate had centered on a favorite and only boy a youth of
great promise. The sequel shall now be told by Mrs.
Stanton herself. " I was about ten years old," she writes,
" when my only brother, who had just graduated at Union
College with high honors, came home to die. He was my
father's pride and joy. It was easily seen that, while my
father was kind to us all, the one son filled a larger place in
606 ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
his affections and future plans than the five daughters together.
I well remember going into the large dark parlor to look at
my brother's corpse, and finding my father there, pale and
immovable, by his side. For a long time my father took no
notice of me. At last I slowly approached him, and climbed
upon his knee. He mechanically put his arm about me, and,
with my head resting against his beating heart, we sat a long,
long time in silence. At length he heaved a deep sigh and
said, f O my daughter, I wish you were a boy!' 'Then I
will be a boy,' said I, 'and will do all my brother did.' All
that day, and far into the night, I pondered the problem of
boyhood. I thought the chief thing was to be learned and
courageous, as I fancied all boys were. So I decided to learn
Greek, and to manage a horse. Having come to that conclu-
sion I fell asleep. My resolutions, unlike most of those made
at night, did not vanish in the morning. I rose early to put
them into execution. They were resolutions never to be
forgotten, destined to mould my whole future career. As
soon as I was dressed I hastened down to meet our good
pastor in his garden, which joined our own. Finding him
there at work as usual, I said, ' Doctor, will you teach me
Greek ? ' f Yes,' he replied. ' Will you give me a lesson now ? '
' Yes, to be sure,' he added. Laying down his hoe, and taking
my hand, f Come into my study,' said he, ' and we will begin
at once.' Having no children, he loved me very much, entered
at once into the sorrow which I had felt on discovering that
a girl was less in the scale of being than a boy, and praised
my determination to prove the contrary. The old grammar
which he had studied in the University of Glasgow was soon
in my hand, and the Greek article was learned before break-
fast. For months afterwards, at twilight, I went with my
father to the new-made grave. Near it stood a tall poplar,
against which I leaned, while my father threw himself upon
the grave with outstretched arms, as if to embrace his child.
The good doctor and I kept up our lessons. I taxed every
power in hope some day to hear my father say, ' Well, a girl
is as good as a boy, after all.' But he never said it. When
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. 607
the doctor would come to spend the evening with us I would
whisper in his ear, 'Tell my father how fast I get on.' And
he would tell him, and praise me, too. But my father would
only pace the room and sigh, ' Ah, she should have been a
boy ! ' At length I entered the academy, and, in a class
mainly of boys, studied mathematics, Latin, and Greek. As
two prizes were offered in Greek I strove for one and got it.
' Now,' said I, ' my father will be satisfied.' I hastened home,
rushed into his office, laid the new Greek Testament (which
was my prize) on his lap, and exclaimed, ' There, I have got
it.' He took the book, looked through it, asked me some
questions about the class, the teachers, and the spectators,
appeared to be pleased, handed the book back to me, and
when I was aching to hear him say something which would
show that he recognized the equality of the daughter with the
son, he kissed me on the forehead, and exclaimed with a sigh,
'Ah, you should have been a boy ! ' That ended my pleas-
ure. I hastened to my room, flung the book across the
floor, and wept tears of bitterness. But the good doctor, to
whom I went, gave me help and courage ; at last one day, as
we sat alone, and he was ill and nigh to death, he said, 'Dear
child, it is your mission to help mould the world anew.
Promise me one thing, and that is that you will always say
what you think. My old Greek lexicon, Testament, and
grammar, which you and I have thumbed so often together,
I shall leave to you when I die.' After his death, when his
will was opened, sure enough, there was a clause in it, saying,
' My Greek lexicon, Testament, and grammar I give to Eliza-
beth Cady.'"
In her fifteenth year, on leaving the Johnstown Academy,
she set her heart on filling her dead brother's place as
a student at Union College, then under the famous presi-
dency of Dr. Nott. Never once had the thought occurred
to her that her sex would be a barrier to her admission.
Some of the chief colleges and universities of the world
are now partially open to women ; but the co-education of
the sexes (except of children) was a thing undreamed of in
608 ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
those days. On being informed by her father that in order
to enter any college she should have been born a boy, her
vexation was a little short of rage ; for she felt that the dis-
crimination against her on account of her sex was equivalent
to saying that girls did not possess sufficient capacity to
pursue a college course ; nor was she appeased when, as
some compensation for not being allowed to enter college,
she was sent to the celebrated female seminary, of which Mrs.
Willard was at the head, in Troy. " If there is any one
thing on earth," wrote Mrs. Stanton twenty years later,
" from which I pray God to save my daughters, it is a girls'
seminary. The two years which I spent in a girls' seminary
were the dreariest years of my whole life."
During the next seven years, a period which, as yet, was
one of
" Maiden meditation, fancy free,"
she lived at her father's house, or rather in her father's law-
office. She found what I suppose hardly any other young
woman (except, perhaps, Portia) ever did find ; and that
w r as a fascination in reading law-books. Elizabeth's vivacious
mother, it is true, insisted that her daughter should be daily
bound down for a few hours to music, water-colors, and
embroidery ; but the old jurist (who was much his wife's
senior, and who regarded these occupations as fashionable
follies), counterpoised their levity by giving his daughter
Blackstone, Kent, Story, and even the Revised Statutes.
"Read these books," said he ; " they will give you something
sensible to say to Mr. Spencer and Mr. Reynolds when they
next make us a visit," referring to well-known practi-
tioners who came periodically to attend his court.
If I seem to have lingered too long over these details of
o o
Mrs. Stan ton's early life it is because they foreshadow her
subsequent career ; for the powerful impressions produced
upon her in her father's law office made her what she after-
wards became, the legal advocate of all her sex.
I must add another to the early motive powers which
directed her later life. This was the stormy contention
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. 609
against negro slavery. She had a Northern woman's sym-
pathy for the chattel of the cotton-field. It was an era of
mobs. In the early and most trying days of this great agita-
tion, when it required more moral courage to speak against
slavery at a public meeting than it afterwards did to fight
against it on the battle-field, Miss Cady not only gave her
heart to the anti-slavery cause, but gave her hand to an anti-
slavery orator. This was Mr. Henry B. Stanton, whose
early celebrity as one of the best of platform speakers has
been followed by a later and well-earned repute as a lawyer
and editorial writer. Their wedding-tour was to London,
her husband bearing a commission as a delegate to the
World's Anti-Slavery Convention at Freemason's Hall, in
that city, June 12, 1840. It was a meeting which has ever
since been historic, not because of any known influence
which it exerted for the abolition of slavery, but because it
excluded from its deliberations a large number of able and
eminent women excluded them simply because they were
women ; for in those days women were supposed to have no
right to appear on any other public stage than that of a
theatre, opera-house, or concert-hall. Among the women
who attended as spectators were Lady Byron, Elizabeth Fry,
Mary Howitt, and Amelia Opie. Among the women who
presented themselves as delegates from America were Lucre-
tia Mott and others. The fair bride, Elizabeth Stanton, was not
a delegate. Nevertheless the aifront offered to these other and
elder ladies was resented by the young wife just as warmly as
she had resented, during her girlhood, every similar imputa-
tion of inferiority cast upon her sex. I am sure that Mrs. Stan-
ton with her studious tastes and her love of domestic life
had never planned for herself a public career, until goaded
to it by the bitterness of spirit under which she groaned
during her attendance on this convention. In a fortunate
hour she opened her heart to Lucretia Mott that noble
woman who, I think, possessed the loftiest moral nature
which has ever been seen in our country, whether among
women or men. " Mrs. Mott," said Mrs. Stanton to me,
610 ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
" was the first liberal-minded thinker whom I had ever met
among my own sex. She was a revelation to me ; she put
into words all that I had ever thought and felt concerning
women ; she seemed to understand, as no other woman did,
the wrongs, the rights, the capabilities, and the aspirations
of all womankind." Mrs. Mott, during her London visit,
may be said to have laid her hands upon the head of her
young friend, Mrs. Stanton, and to have consecrated her for
her future work. Lucretia Mott was a cousin of Benjamin
Franklin, and, like him, exerted a remarkable personal
influence on other minds. She used to say that on the island
of Nantucket, where she was born, women were always
counselled with by men concerning the fisheries, the markets,
the schools, the municipal government, and the church. She
imbued Mrs. Stanton fully with the idea that women have an
equal duty and responsibility with men in all these interests
and institutions. The seed was sown in prepared ground.
Mrs. Stanton at once resolved that, so far as was compatible
with the new domestic duties which she had assumed in
marriage, she would devote her life to the social and moral
elevation of her sex.
I have had from Mrs. Stanton an interesting anecdote of
the first day which she and Mrs. Mott spent together. It
was during that vexing month of June, 1840. They had
proposed to solace themselves by visiting the British Museum ;
but on reaching the great building, and sitting down to rest
for a few minutes at the entrance before giving themselves up
to sight-seeing, they began to talk of woman's sphere and
rights, and continued to sit, until, in their absorption in each
other, they at last found that they had sat and talked for
three hours ; whereupon they came away, never having gone
a step further into the Museum ! To a friend in America,
who afterwards put to Mrs- Stanton the question, "What
most interested you in all London?" she replied, "Lucretia
Mott." In later years, after Mrs. Mott's death, Mrs. Stanton
told me, with deep feeling, that she owed to her dear dead
friend as great a debt as one mind could owe to another.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTW. Gil
On returning to her native land, in 1840, Mrs. Stanton
gave the next half-dozen years to the duties and delights of a
young mother ; but in the intervals of her household cares
she pursued a systematic study of the position of woman in
all times and lands. This long course of reading convinced
her that the advocates of woman's higher interests had hither-
to failed to perceive one of the most essential of them all,
namely, woman's proper position in the body-politic. Mrs.
Mott had claimed for her sex the right to a wider range of
remunerative employment, the right to hold property after
marriage, the right to a university education, and especially
the right of private judgment in religion the latter being a
topic on which, forty years ago, many able thinkers, both
women and men, were far less enlightened than at present.
Being a Quaker preacher, Mrs. Mott's supreme topic was
always religion. But Mrs. Stanton the daughter of a
jurist, the wife of an advocate, and the student of law-books
felt that if there ever was to be an improved status of
woman, its basis must be laid in the law of the land ; in other
words, that the political safeguards of the two sexes should
be identical. This was a claim which had not, in our gener-
ation, been made either 5y women or for women. Of course,
I do not forget that in New Jersey, in the early part of this
century, under a liberal construction of a loosely- worded
statute, a few women voted at occasional elections ; but this
constructive liberty did not long avail them, for it was
promptly abolished by a positive repeal.
There were abolitionists before William Lloyd Garrison,
and there were women suffragists before Elizabeth Cady Stan-
ton ; but if it can, with any justice, be said that Mr. Garrison
originated the American anti-slavery crusade, it can be said
still more undeniably that Mrs. Stanton originated the Ameri-
can woman-suffrage movement. Indeed, Mr. Garrison had
an immediate predecessor in Benjamin Lundy of Baltimore,
to say nothing of the British nation, which had just abolished
slavery in the West Indies, when he first demanded its aboli-
tion in the United States. But Mrs. Stanton was without a
612 ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
national example, or an individual forerunner. Her re-
formatory movement was the product of her own mind and
heart.
She gave the enterprise its debut in June, 1848, at the
town of Seneca Falls, N.Y., where she issued a call for a
public convention, to be held in the Wesleyan Chapel ; and
to attract the public she promised that Lucretia Mott would
be present. The call has been preserved as a relic, and I
copy from it a single phrase to show its scope : " The ob-
ject of the convention," it says, "is to discuss the social,
civil, and religious condition and rights of women." It will
be observed that no mention is here made of political rights.
Mrs. Stanton often relates, with a twinkle of humor, the
somewhat comical interior history of that famous first con-
vention. Although the word " political " was not in the call,
she meant that women's political rights should be brought
prominently before the meeting. Accordingly she prepared
in advance a declaration of sentiments, and a series of resolu-
tions, to form a basis for the discussions. This declaration
was closely modeled after Jefferson's Declaration of Inde-
pendence, and may be called a serious parody on that docu-
ment. I will quote a few necessary extracts : " The his-
tory of mankind," says this close copy, " is a history of re-
peated injuries and usurpations on the part of man towards
woman, having in direct object the establishment of an abso-
lute tyranny over her. To prove this let facts be submitted
to a candid world.
" He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable
right to the elective franchise.
" He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law civilly
dead.
" After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if
she be single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to
support a government which recognizes her only when her
property can be profitable to it.
" He has denied her the facilities for obtaining an educa-
o
tion, all colleges being closed against her.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. (>13
ff He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the
world a different code of morals for rnen and women, where-
by moral delinquencies, which exclude women from society,
are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in man.
" He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself,
claiming to assign for her a sphere of action, when that be-
longs to her conscience and her God."
In addition to the foregoing extracts from Mrs. Stanton' s
declaration of sentiments, I will quote only a single one of
the eleven resolutions with which she accompanied it ; but
that one became the keynote of the new movement : " Re-
solved, that it is the duty of the women of this country to
secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective fran-
chise."
The preceding extracts constitute the earliest recorded
public demand made for woman suffrage within the memory
of persons now living. The instinct for heirlooms, which has
preserved the table on which Magna Charta was signed at
Runnymede, has led a patriotic Quaker family in Philadelphia
to preserve the table on which Mrs. Stanton wrote the char-
ter of her new reform.
As the young reformer had called the convention on her
own impulse, and in her own town, and as she had never, up
to that time, made a public speech, she began to be terrified
as the hour of assembly drew nigh ; and she has unheroically
confessed to me that she felt like ff suddenly abandoning all
her principles and running away." Her husband, who had
drawn up for presentation to the convention a series of ex-
tracts from laws bearing unjustly against woman's property
interests, was thunderstruck when she showed him, confiden-
tially, her proposed demand for the ballot. He -remonstrated
with her against her intention to introduce such a novelty into
the meeting, and begged her to abandon her purpose. " No,"
she replied, " I must declare the truth as I believe it to be."
" You will turn the proceedings," replied her husband tf into
a farce ; I wash my hands of the whole business ; I shall not
enter the chapel during the session." Mrs. Stanton adhered
614 ELIZABETH CADY STAXTON.
to her plan ; and her husband kept his word. Lucretia Mott
also the idolized monitress of Mrs. Stanton said,
"Lizzie, thou wilt make the convention ridiculous." But
Lizzie was of a different opinion ; and she withstood Mrs. Mott
with modest courage and independence a fact to which Mrs.
Mott was fond of alluding in after years. Mrs. Stanton has
told me that she found only one person among the delegates
who was willing from the first to champion her novel demand.
This was the brave and high-souled Frederick Douglass, to
whom she successfully appealed, saying, " You, like myself,
belong to a disfranchised class, and must see that the root of all
our social and legal disabilities lies in our deprivation of the
right to make laws for ourselves. Will you urge the conven-
tion to adopt this protest against injustice? I have never
spoken in public, and cannot defend my own resolutions. I
want your help." " You shall have it," was the reply. Mr.
Douglass, with his ready genius as an orator, proved more
than equal to the occasion. Mrs. Stanton, too, greatly to her
surprise, found that her tongue was loosed, and that she
could rise and reply to objections with happy success. It is
a remarkable tribute to her woman's tact and wit, to her ex-
tensive knowledge of her subject, and to her earnest enthu-
siasm, that the convention, after two days' discussion, adopted
unanimously her declaration of sentiments and her eleven
resolutions, including her demand for the elective franchise
exactly as she had originally drafted it.
The popular effect of this initial convention exceeded all
anticipation. One-half the newspapers treated it with de-
rision, and the other half assumed a tone of virtuous indig-
nation. Friends and sympathizers, the convention had none
or too few to make themselves felt. Even some of the
delegates, who had signed the declaration and resolutions,
requested in a few days the expunging of their names. But
the reform itself could not be blotted out ; the revolution was
begun, not to go backward.
I will not stop to mention the many early conventions
which quickly followed, and which, like a series of Ley den
ELIZABETH CADY STANTOtf. 615
jars, gave a succession of electric shocks first in New York,
then in Ohio, and soon afterwards in other States. These
belong rather to a history of woman suffrage than to a
biography of Mrs. Stanton. But I ought to record one
interesting fact connected with these early meetings ; and that
is, that at many of them the leading spirit was Lucretia Mott,
who no longer said, " Lizzie, thou wilt make the convention
ridiculous." Mrs. Mott had, in fact, become the chief
advocate of Mrs. Stanton's demand for the ballot. When
this demand received more and more public favor, Mrs. Mott
addressed a great convention in Cleveland in 1853, and
proposed the adoption of the declaration of sentiments put
forth at Seneca Falls in 1848 a proposition which, at her
suggestion, was unanimously carried. " She thought," says
the official report of the proceedings, "that this would be a
fitting honor to her who initiated these movements in behalf
of the women of our country Mrs. Elizabeth Cady
Stanton."
When Mrs. Stanton's reform was two years' s old, she made
the acquaintance of a woman who was henceforth to be her life-
long co-worker and friend Miss Susan B. Anthony. These
two names belong, not only to the history of woman suffrage,
but to the history of what William R. Alger styles " the
friendships of women." To anybody who has long known
Miss Anthony's zeal for woman suffrage, it may be surprising
to learn that there ever was a time when this " Napoleon of the
struggle," as William H. Channing has called her, was filled
with laughter at the new reform, and had to be argued with
before she was persuaded to become a woman suffragist !
But so it was. Mrs. Stanton's pronunciamento at Seneca
Falls originally seemed to Miss Anthony as ridiculous as it
did to Mrs. Mott. But when Mrs. Stanton won over Miss
Anthony to her side, she gained the same kind of doughty
help which Bismarck found in Moltke. Mrs. Stanton's
mission has ever since been to furnish to the movement its
philosophy and rhetoric, while Miss Anthony's has been to be
its executive manager and superintendent. During more
616 ELIZABETH CADY ST ANTON.
than a quarter of a century, these two woman have been so
inseparable that to speak of the one has been to think of the
other. Their union in toil has been as close as that of the
brothers de Goncourt, or of Erckmann and Chatrain. It is
to the equal honor of both ladies that no petty jealousies, and
no dissensions as to their joint methods of work, have ever
interrupted the steady course of their warm and loyal friend-
ship. Although many other able women have devoted their
best years to this cause among whom I am proud to mention
such early names as Ernestine L. Rose, Paulina Wright
Davis, Frances D. Gage, Lucy Stone, Antoinette Blaokwell,
Olympia Brown, Clarina Nichols, and, of later date, Julia
Ward Howe, Mary A. Livermore, and Lillie Devereux
Blake yet it is simply a fact of history that the founder of
the reform was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and its chief practical
manager has been Susan B. Anthony. " Never forget,"
writes Mrs. Stanton, "that if I have done anything for the
women of my country it is not I it is Susan and I."
In 1866 Mrs. Stanton, who had previously become a
resident of the city of New York, offered herself to the electors
of its eighth congressional district as a candidate to represent
them at Washington. The self-nomination of candidates is a
common practice in England ; and she adopted it in New York
in order to remind the people that, though the constitution of
the Empire State denies to woman the right to vote, it does
not deny to her the right to be voted for. Mrs. Stanton
announced her candidacy in a pithy card, in which she said :
" Belonging to a disfranchised class, I have no political ante-
cedents to recommend me to your support ; but my creed is
free speech, free press, free men, and free trade the car-
dinal points of democracy." Her chief opponent was the
Hon. James Brooks, then the democratic "leader of the
House." There have been candidates who were fairly
elected and unfairly " counted out ; " Mrs. Stanton never
complained that she was a victim of this political injustice.
Out of nearly twenty-three thousand votes polled she
received exactly two dozen 1
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. 617
In 1868 she joined with Miss Anthony, Parker Pillsbury,
and others in establishing and editing "The Kevolution,"
a journal in the interests of woman's rights, and which, at a
later period, I also had the honor for two years to conduct.
The paper was at length merged in " The Liberal Christian,"
then edited by the Eev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D., as an organ
of the Unitarian faith. When " The Revolution " had thus
finally lost its indentity in that of a religious weekly, Mrs.
Stanton facetiously remarked that " it had found Christian
burial in consecrated ground."
After her discontinuance of her editorship, she devoted
herself for fourteen years (during the winter seasons) to
public lecturing ; appearing before nearly all the lyceums of
New England and the Western States, and also attending, as
opportunity offered, woman's rights conventions. Her
lectures and addresses are written with care, and often rise to
eloquence. Few American orators, whether men or women,
have so frequently been called to speak on "great occasions."
One such occasion was that of her address before the joint
session of the New York Legislature, on the proper legal
status of women ; another, a speech in San Francisco to an
audience of women exclusively, three thousand in number, on
the duty and dignity of maternity ; another, an address to a
similar audience during the Richardson and McFarland trial ;
another, a memorial discourse pronounced in Lincoln Hall, at
Washington, on the death of Lucretia Mott. On these and
other occasions the platform has usually been decorated with
flowers ; and the spectacle of the wrapt audience, listening to
the dignified speaker, has been most impressive.
In a biography of Mrs. Stanton by her friend and confrere,
Theodore Tilton, " I have seen," he says, " the old and tat-
tered manuscript of the first set speech which she ever deliv-
ered;" and he mentions that it was lost for many years, and
that at last, when the author recovered it, she wrote upon the
margin this inscription :
" ' DEAR MAGGIE AND HATTIE, This is my first lecture. It
was delivered several times immediately after the first woman's
618 ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
rights convention. It contains all I knew at that time. I did not
speak again for several years. The manuscript has ever since
been a wanderer through the land. Now, after a separation of
nearly eighteen years, I press my first-born to my heart once more.
As I recall my younger days, I weep over the apathy and indif-
ference of women concerning their own degradation. I give this
manuscript to my precious daughters, in the hope that they will
finish the work which I have begun."
Mrs. Stanton, after having travelled many thousand miles
a year, for fourteen years, in fulfilment of her public engage-
ments, has of late ceased from these exhausting pilgrimages,
and now lives in her library, writing and compiling a " His-
tory of Woman Suffrage," a work to be comprised in three
huge volumes, of a thousand pages each, in which she will
preserve all the principal documents that have marked the
successive stages of the movement, together with biographical
sketches and engraved portraits of the most eminent women
who have devoted themselves to this reform. Associated in
this literary project with Mrs. Stanton are Miss Anthony and
Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage. The prefaces, the introduction,
and the general arrangement of the three volumes are Mrs.
Stanton's own ; and the work contains also her principal dis-
courses, letters, and reports, though, with characteristic
modesty, she has displayed the labors of others to the over-
shadowing of her own.
Mrs. Stanton's views on other topics than woman's rights
are briefly these : As to her political preferences, she feels
that she has little to choose between the Republican and
the Democratic parties, since she is disfranchised by both.
As to her social theories, she holds to the sacredness of mar-
riage (like all other good women) ; but when an unhappy
marriage destroys the ideal family relation, and when the
children born of such a union are the innocent and wretched
victims of the vices or mistakes of their parents, she believes
as John Milton did) in a wise freedom of divorce. As to
political economy, she has a doctrinaire's devotion to free
trade, to co-operative industry, and to the rights of labor as
ELIZABETH CADY ST ANTON. 619
opposed to the tyranny of capital though her chief interest
in these questions is because, as she says, "Woman is the
great unpaid laborer of the world." As to religion, like many
another person brought up under the Calvinistic system, she
first passed through a long period of mental suffering in a vain
attempt to solve problems which lie beyond the finite mind, and
at last abandoned what she calls "a theology inconsistent with
enlightened reason, and inadequate to the wants of the soul."
In 1882 Mrs. Stanton went to France, on a visit to her son
Theodore and his wife, and spent three months at the Convent
of La Sagesse, in the old city of Toulouse. This son, as
warm an enthusiast for woman suffrage as his mother is, gave
her a glad surprise by putting into her hands the manuscript
of an elaborate treatise which he had written (and has since
published) on the " Status of Women in Europe."
In 1883 she held conferences in England with John Bright
and many other public characters, both men and women, on
her favorite theme. Her residence while in that country was
with her gifted daughter, Mrs. Harriet Stanton Blatch, at
Basingstoke. Mrs. Stanton may thus be said to have three
homes, one in America, another in France, and another in
England ; and she has lived to find her name a household
word among the advanced thinkers of three nations.
In conversation Mrs. Stanton is quick and apt in her
retorts. During the civil war, Horace Greeley said to her :
" Madame, the bullet and the ballot go together. If you want
to vote, are you ready to fight?" " Certainly, sir," said she,
to the amusement of the company ; " I am ready to fight just
as you have fought by sending a substitute." At the close
of one of her addresses before a State Legislature, one of the
auditors, a highly conservative lady, said to her : " When you
go before the public, what do you do with your children ? "
w Oh," replied Mrs. Stanton, " it takes me no longer to come
here to speak than it does you to come to listen. What have
you done with your children during the two hours you have
been sitting here ? " Lord Shaftesbury, at a parlor meeting
at his house, said to her : " I fear the effect of woman suf-
38
620 ELIZABETH CADY STANTOtf.
frage on domestic harmony ; for what if husband and wife
should differ in politics?" "What if they should," she
replied ; " would you, my lord, deny the right of a woman
to go to church simply because she might happen to be more
orthodox than her husband? " After holding a convention in
Newport, during the fashionable season, she was accosted by
a lady who commented on the immodesty of a woman's speak-
ing in public. " Keally," replied Mrs. Stanton, " you surprise
me. Our convention this morning was not more public than
your ball-room last evening ; and as to female modesty, it is
a question whether it is less modest to be plainly dressed,
and to speak words of soberness and truth on a public plat-
form, than to exhibit one's bare arms and shoulders at a public
dance, in the embrace of a strange gentleman."
It is always pleasant to know something of the personal
appearance of a distinguished man or woman ; but, as a rule,
nothing is more illusive and shadowy than a verbal descrip-
tion, and nothing more vague than the impression made by
such a portrait upon one who has never seen the subject of
it. I will try, however, to tell what manner of woman Mrs.
Stanton is. First, then, she is noticeably fine looking : in any
crowded assembly she would command attention, and people
would wish to know who she was. She is above the medium
height ; rotund of figure ; fair of complexion ; with bright,
fearless, and sparkling blue eyes, and a rosy, wholesome
mouth, filled with fine white teeth, which she shows in her
frequent smiles ; for she is pre-eminently a mirthful, sunny-
tempered woman, abounding in
" Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks and wreathed smiles."
Her features are all regular, and her white hair, which curls
naturally, is so abundant and beautiful that many a young
girl might envy its quality and profusion. She has often
been likened in looks to Martha Washington. Her manners
are genial and courteous, and she has the rare gift of putting
everybody at ease who comes into her presence ; while she
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. 621
herself is equally at home in the simplest cottage in the
far West, or in the fine residences of the nobility of England,
where she has been cordially welcomed. She is a democrat,
pure and simple, and values individuals according to their
just deserts, quite apart from their social surroundings. She'
does not despise a man because he is rich (as some radicals
do) any more than she looks down on one because he is poor.
She ignores every mere external consideration in her estimate
of people, and weighs their moral and intellectual worth,
judging them accordingly. She is a woman of scientific and
philosophic tastes ; but still more she is a practical worker
for humanity ; and she loves her fellow-beings as if they all
were near of kin to her. Her temperament is sweet and buoy-
ant, and she has borne all the vicissitudes of a life full of
labors and duties most cheerfully. She once said to me,
" Submit to the inevitable, for it is the true philosophy of
life ; " and she has acted on her own theory not only sub-
mitting, but submitting gracefully. " The ills of life," she
says, ?f are sufficiently hard to bear without adding to them the
wear and tear of discontent and rebellion."
Mrs. Stanton is the mother of seven children (five sons and
two daughters) , all of whom are living. Her sons are young
men of culture, two of whom are successfully following their
father in the law. Both her daughters are married and
beginning life for themselves. All these children, in the
words of the Wise Man, " rise up and call her blessed." John
Stuart Mill said long since that the homes of clever and
public-spirited women were the pleasantest which he had ever
seen. Mrs. Stanton has been one of the most successful
home-makers in the land. Of late years she has lived at
Tenafly, N.J., where as a visitor I have witnessed her skill
in the art of housekeeping, and have seen her matronly cheeks
aglow from sporting with her full-grown children in the open
air under her ancient chestnut and cedar trees. It is a pet
theory of this model mother that one of the first rights of the
child is the right to individual development. She believes in
the widest liberty and the fullest education, not only as the
622 ELIZABETH CADY ST ANTON.
salvation of the state, but as the perfection of the home circle.
Like Herbert Spencer, she thinks a man should be educated
with reference to the system of government under which he
is to live. She not only disapproves of a European training
for a youth who is to make America his residence, but believes
that the first lesson of a child who is to be an American
citizen should be self-respect and self-restraint, and not as
people of the old school (and many of the present day) main-
tain, unquestioning obedience to authority. She regards
sickness as a crime, since it is an evidence of a violation of
some physical law ; and I have heard her say that she hoped
and believed the time would come when people would be as
much ashamed to admit that they had headache or indigestion
as they would be to admit that they had committed theft or
told a lie. Her own health is so perfect, and her spirit so
joyous, that she seems like a woman who has never had an
ache to endure, or a grievance to redress. I have seen some
women who excelled her in animal spirits, but never one who
possessed an equal measure of habitual cheeriness in all
situations.
It is from this hopefulness of nature this habit of looking
at the bright side of things that she borrows her impetuous
methods of appealing to the public mind. She is always see-
ing the goal, not as afar off, but as near at hand. Years ago,
Mr. Mill said to me that while he admired Mrs. Stanton
greatly, he thought she was sometimes premature in her
public utterances ; and he added that after he had written his
book on the " Subjection of Women," he retained it in his
writing-desk for twenty years before venturing on its publi-
cation. Mrs. Stanton, on the other hand, has said, "The
time is ripe for the expression of any thought as soon as the
person is found who is ready to utter it." It is a favorite
idea with her that " There is no use in saying what people are
ready to hear." .On making the acquaintance of Daniel
O'Connell, during the Repeal excitement, she asked him if
he really expected to secure a repeal of the Union. " Oh,
no," he replied, " but I claim everything, that I may be sure of
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. 623
getting something." This has ever since been her method like-
wise. Thus, during our national discussion of the fourteenth
amendment, which provided the franchise for the freedmen, she
insisted that the same amendment should be so interpreted as to
secure the like privilege to women. But what seems radical
to-day becomes conservative to-morrow. Mrs. Stanton has
long since outlived (as Lucy Stone has done) the early
criticisms which denounced both these women as visionaries
and fanatics. The world has a good habit of outgrowing
itself, and is thereby getting better and better. With each
successive generation women become freer, wiser, and more
capable. In 1790, after our forefathers had been awakened
by the American Ke volution to a new perception of the rights
of men, they suddenly caught a clearer glimpse of the capaci-
ties of women. As a consequence, the novel practice of
school-teaching by the female sex was then for the first time
introduced. But the New England "schoolmarm" is now
not only a person, but an institution no longer a radical
innovation, but a conservative safeguard of society. If it
took so long a time and so great a crisis to prove to the
American people that a woman could safely be a school-
teacher, it may take an equal time and struggle to show that
she may properly be a voter. I will hazard no prophecy of
my own concerning the future triumph of woman suffrage,
whether it be remote or at hand ; but I may quote what has
been predicted of it by so acute a discerner of politics as
Senator Anthony of Rhode Island. " The time has not come
for it," says he, "but it is coming; it is coming with the
progress of civilization and the general amelioration of the
race ; it is coming with the triumph of truth, justice, and
equal rights." These words were spoken in the Senate of
the United States by the senator of longest service in that
body. If they be sound and valid, as I believe they are,
their fulfilment (whether soon or late) will confer upon
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, either in her lifetime or after her
death, a name of perennial eminence in our political history.
CHAPTER XXVII.
MAEY VIRGINIA TERHUNE.
("MARION HARLAND").
BY KATE SANBORN.
Popular Fallacy "Marion Harland" A Versatile and Successful
Author A Visit to Her Home Her Domestic Life A Peep into Her
Kitchen An Inviting Place Her Husband, Rev. Dr. E. P. Terhune ;
the Man and His Power A Characteristic Letter from " Marion Har-
land" An Interesting Bit of Autobiography Her Own Account of
Her Early Life Reminiscences of Her Girlhood Her First Book Its
Marked Success Career as a Novelist A New Departure Her
" Cookery Books" Their Enormous Sale A Boon to Housekeepers
Her Love for Little Folks What She says about Santa Claus Sound
Advice to Girls and Wise Words for Wives A Gifted Woman.
ITERARY and unpractical have been synony-
mous terms for years in connection with
women who have devoted a part of their time
to authorship, or who were suspected of hav-
ing a tinge of " blue " about them. And al-
though we are gaining ground, there is still
in the hearts of many men an innate shrinking
from a blue-stocking.
An engraving in an English annual of thirty
years ago illustrates the popular sentiment at that time. A
luckless husband is walking the floor with a screaming baby,
his expression indicative of insanity or deep despair ; while
Madame, his scribbling spouse, all unconscious of the situa-
tion, unless perhaps annoyed by the cries of one or the
heartfelt groans of the other, is perched up in bed, with
tangled locks flowing, and eyes wildly rolling, as she rounds
some fine sentence, or with gaze uplifted is waiting for fur-
ther inspirations.
624
MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE. 625
You have all seen pictures of this type, and the prejudice
behind the burlesque has been real and intense, and this in
spite of the cheering and convincing facts on the other side.
Both in England and this country there are many literary
women who are also good wives and mothers ; women in
happy homes of their own, with husbands proud and fond,
and may I add sure of three square meals a day, and
every button on !
And the vast array of spinster authors are by no means
ignorant of homely duties.
Go back to the days of Dr. Johnson and listen to his testi-
mony about Elizabeth Carter, the best Greek scholar in Eng-
land. He said : " A man is in general better pleased when
he has a good dinner upon his table than when his wife talks
Greek. My old friend, Mrs. Carter, could make a pudding
as well as translate Epictetus, and work a handkerchief as
well as compose a poem." Eliza Leslie and Catherine
Beecher prepared excellent cooking-books. Hannah More
and Harriet Martineau were capital housekeepers, and both
made nearly two hundred thousand dollars by their pens.
If it comes to money-making, remember that dear Mary
Mitford supported her disreputable old father for years, and
there is a large army of literary women who support half a
dozen relatives and never boast of the fact. All this has been
suggested by writing Mrs. Terhune's name at the head of this
article, for she is my crowning illustration of the fact that a
woman can make a fortune by her pen, attain a most enviable
reputation as a versatile and successful author, and yet be
a perfect housekeeper, a model minister's wife (as well as
the wife of a model minister !), a devoted mother, a queen in
society, and a sympathetic, satisfying friend. That sounds
extravagant and perhaps fulsome, but as it is strictly true I
glory in saying it ; I do not know any other woman who
combines so many virtues. And all this without one bit of
pedantry, parade, or pretension.
If, with all her other achievements, Mrs. Terhune was a
slovenly housekeeper, she would then be a most uncommon
626 MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE.
woman, but I know the beautiful method by which her house
is managed, and her thorough acquaintance with everything
from attic to cellar, and parlor to kitchen. Her kitchen, by
the way, is one of the most attractive places in the whole
establishment, everything arranged in the wisest manner for
convenience, neatness, and comfort. I always feel when I go
through it a longing to stay and try my luck with some of her
receipts. I have been so fortunate as to be a frequent visitor
in her happy home, and trust these bits of confidence will
not seem in bad taste, for I know there is nothing she desires
more eagerly than to disabuse the public of the silly and false
notion that a woman cannot be both literary and domestic,
and shine in each department.
I remember her words as we were talking once on this
subject : " It is my ambition to relieve literary domesticity
from the odium that now rests on it." So let me assure the
incredulous world that Mrs. Terhune does not come down to
breakfast in a dingy, tattered wrapper, with dishevelled hair,
and shocking slippers, a pen behind her ear, ink on her
second finger, manuscript sticking out of her pocket, and
in a generally helpless and oblivious condition. But that
she is the first of the family to appear, overlooks the morn-
ing meal, gives the final touches to the table, and often
finds time to write a paragraph or two while her family are
assembling.
It is unnecessary to say that her table is a picture at all
times, with its tasteful arrangement of color in the china, etc. ;
and with the delicious things to eat, and the charming con-
versation, there is a threefold treat.
I must emphasize her habit of saving or occupying every
minute that might otherwise be wasted the secret of her
being able to do so much more than the rest of us. Mrs.
Delaney, you remember, did some wonderful embroidery
while waiting for her tea to cool, and Madame de Genlis
compiled a huge and valuable volume of early French poetry
during the daily quarter of an hour that the Duchess de
Ghartres kept the dinner waiting.
MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE.
" MARION HARLAND."
MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE. 629
You have heard of the wise remark of the old Indian to
one who complained of lack of time. "You have all the
time there is ! " growled the red man ; and I always think of
this, and make a host of good resolutions after a visit to my
friend. But it seems miserably selfish to be talking in a
superior manner of my visits to Mrs. Terhune. I will now
invite you all to go with me and see for yourselves.
She lives in Springfield, Mass., in a very attractive house,
designed entirely by her husband and herself. " Let's play,"
as the little girls say, that we are at the door and have rung
the bell. Peep in through the glass and see the benignant
face of Longfellow looking a welcome from an easel opposite.
Walk in, and while we are waiting for the lady look about
at the pictures, books, and bric-a-brac just enough. Every-
thing in harmony, nothing crowded. No effort at the antique
or aesthetic. That crayon head is the best picture I have yet
seen of Mrs. Terhune, but her face is not one that is fairly
represented by a picture. Those water-colors are by her,
also that pen-and-ink sketch, and the dining-room has several
of her oil-paintings of fish and fowl. The library is just
opposite the parlor, and the room at the end, separated from
us by that heavy portiere, is her sanctum. There she works
and there her friends enjoy many a cosy chat and delicious cup
of tea.
"How does she ever find time for painting? " Well, that I
confess is a mystery to me.
The furniture of her chambers is most beautifully decorated,
and with such originality that I wander from one room to
another, wishing for the power to copy such dainty designs.
I remember one on a bureau called "Summer's Dead," a
picture of an empty nest, swung by a bit of red yarn, which
had been woven in, to a bare twig ; a bit of grape-vine, and
a few withered grapes above, a faded leaf just hanging to the
branch below a breath would send it fluttering down.
But here she comes ; a bright-faced, keen-eyed, self-poised
woman, with a great deal of individuality and energy.
Perfectly natural, a fine talker, full of anecdote, repartee, and
630 MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE.
humor, with a latent power of sarcasm, which is seldom used.
She is most even in her manner to her friends, and as you see
her to-day you will find her always if you are deserving of
her regard. But she has her bonnet on, and you hear her say
that she is expected to preside at a missionary meeting this
very hour, so let us leave ; and if you like to come in fancy to
my sanctum I will go on with my monologue.
So few literary women in this country have husbands, and
those few have generally married late, and a man considerably
younger than themselves, that I rejoice in Mrs. Terhune's
ideal home life, and have a real pride in speaking of the Rev.
Mr. Terhune, who is never by any chance thought of as
"Marion Harland's husband," but is widely known for his
own sake and by his own grand work. Even the hackman
whom I asked to drive me to Mrs. Terhune's on the occasion
of my first visit said, "I s'pose ye mean Minister Terhune's,
don't ye?" Every inch a man, every inch a gentleman ; and
when those inches amount to a generous six feet, with well-
proportioned breadth, that is a good deal to say.
A clergyman who met and listened to him while they were
both in Rome says : " His voice is singularly adapted to the
pulpit. There is a solemnity in its tones without the slightest
affectation of solemnity. It seems to be gauged by his sub-
ject, and not to his subject. His gestures are appropriate,
and, when occasion requires, emphatic. He does not make
them ; they are quite spontaneous. His analysis of a text
and deductions from it are as natural as the branches of a
cedar of Lebanon. It seems as if he just tapped his text
and the essence runs out. You never feel that he is wander-
ing from the subject. He uses no stereotyped phrases in his
prayers, no cant in his exhortations. His manner as well as
matter is solemn and impressive. Out of the pulpit he is
exceedingly genial, but never so much so as to detract from
true dignity."
This extract gives after all a feeble conception of the man
and his power. In his crowded church, or with his large
Sabbath-school class, you feel that God is near him. His
MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE. 631
earnestness and personal magnetism have the divine blessing
constantly added. He is a thoroughly trained physician as
well, and gives much of his time to healing the poor of his
congregation, and yet is remarkably well-read, up with the
times in every particular, a man with whom you cannot talk
five minutes without learning something fresh and delightful.
And I am sufficiently sentimental to enjoy looking back to
those romantic idyllic days, when the eloquent young minister
fell in love with and wooed the brilliant young Southern girl,
already known to the public as a successful writer. We all
like genuine sentiment the story never grows old. As a
gentleman said to me yesterday when speaking of the first
time he met his wife : "We always fancy that that is the
perfect day of the year. It is always bright and sunshiny."
And he added smiling : "I too have been in Arcadia."
A great deal of stuff has been written about the " wives
of literary men " and the marriages of literary people in gen-
eral. I assert that these marriages are as happy as those of
other people, only a calcium light is placed on the back-door
step of every notable, and a keen ear is at the keyhole of the
bed-chamber, and every minute detail, every petty bit of
gossip, is proudly paraded before the public.
We hear of the unhappiness, of the jarring moods, from
letters that should never have been published, from careless
words that should have never been repeated, and we say that
people of genius are unendurable in the marriage relation.
Mrs. Norton, Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Jameson did have most
ungracious and ungrateful specimens for husbands ; but con-
trast with them Mrs. Browning, Mrs. Howitt, Mrs. S. C.
Hall, Mrs. Craik, and many others in England and America,
in whose homes happiness reigns the year round.
I wish this fallacy could be placed with the equally false
idea of a literary woman, as given earlier, and packed off into
everlasting obloquy.
At any rate, I can say with entire truth that I have found
the choicest companionship, the most perfect hospitality, and
the best things to eat ! in the homes of my literary friends,
>632 MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE.
happy homes, where every year the love grows stronger and
deeper, and the characters develop into new power and
beauty. Mr. and Mrs. Terhune have three living children,
and the daughters are trained to have a profession that is, a
specialty by which they can support themselves the eldest
is now making a practical and most successful test of her
knowledge of literature.
Now, after this general view, I will go back to the begin-
ning and proceed more systematically. But I shall not start
with a date. As Madame de Genlis said, in writing her
autobiography : " What has a woman to do with dates ? " It
spoils the charm in talking of a dear and living friend to pin
myself to statistics.
I wrote to Mrs. Terhune for a few facts, and she kindly sent
the following as " a bone or two" for my skeleton, which I
do not like to mar by any changes of my own :
" 151 MAPLE STREET,
"SPRINGFIELD, MASS., March 3, 1883.
" MY DEAR Miss SANBORN, I confess that my sentiments
on the subject of a biographical notice may be summed up in
the needy knife-grinder's exclamation, ' Story ! Lord bless
me, sir ! I have none ! ' None that would interest the public.
To myself, and in myself, life has been very full and round
and rich, and sorrow has made the channels of some years
very deep. He who sent the grief knows why and for what
end. With this the world has nothing to do.
w Please don't give a post-mortem air to your paper by re-
cording the date of my birth, with a blank left for death. I
enclose a newspaper article written ten years ago, from which
you may extract something. It turned up the other day in
the bottom of an old trunk. I have never kept such as a
rule, or notices of my books. Cui bono 9 Being a believer
in heredity, I take genuine pleasure in tracing what authorly
gifts I have back to my maternal grandmother, Mrs. Judith
Smith of Olney, Virginia, a woman of rare intellectual and
personal gifts. A part of her library and volumes of her
correspondence that have descended to me corroborate family
MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE. 633
and friendly traditions of her tastes and accomplishments.
She died before my birth, but my very handwriting and
voice are said to resemble hers. My mother was a refined,
gentle lady, born and bred with quiet domestic and literary
tastes, faithful and conscientious in all things. My father was
a man. If I have pith and earnestness, if my ends are wor-
thy, I may thank him, under God, for it. His library was
such as was found in many Virginia homesteads at that day
a collection of British classics that would give strength and
dignity to f complete ' modern book-shelves. He had a whole-
some horror of ' light reading,' and his rule of his household
being somewhat autocratic, I remember devouring by stealth,
on rainy Saturdays, an old ' Shakspeare,' from which both
backs were gone, under the impression that he might confis-
cate the treasure-trove if he found me at it. I was then ten
years old. I could not have been more than eleven when I
started guiltily at his hand on my shoulder, one summer after-
noon, as I sat curled up on the stairs deep in (don't laugh I)
the fifth volume of 'Kollin's Ancient History.' I had ab-
stracted it, one volume at a time, from the shelves in his sit-
ting-room, thinking it best not to ask permission lest it should
be denied. I can see his face now, the massive, mobile
visage that f set' the weather daily in our home, as he read
the title of the page before me, and glanced into my fright-
ened eyes, with a smile half-quizzical, half-fond.
' That won't hurt you,' he said. ' Whenever you want
books of that sort ask me for them. When you have read
those in the house, I'll buy all you will read.'
" My sister and I read ' The Spectator ' aloud to our mother
as she sat busy with fine needlework, and learned whole books
of Cowper's ' Task ' and Thomson's ' Seasons ; ' knew ' Para-
dise Lost ' as girls do Tennyson in this day ; rushed
through Plutarch's 'Lives' with breathless eagerness no
novelist could now provoke ; believed in James Montgomery,
and on Sundays pored over f Pilgrim's Progress,' Pollok's
* Course of Time,' and Young's ' Night Thoughts.' Our
mother took ' The New York Mirror ' and ' Graham,' and
634 MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE.
' Godey,' and the ' Saturday Evening Courier.' Mrs. Caro-
line Lee Hentz, Mrs. Emma C. Embury, Mrs. Ann S.
Stephens, and Miss Leslie were the favorite contributors
to these. On winter nights my father relaxed his objec-
tions to light reading so far as to read aloud from these col-
umns, and the two girls who had been snugly bestowed in
the bedroom adjoining early in the evening, hearkened as to
fairy talcs to reading and comment.
" At nine years of age I was so happy as to fall under the
care of a governess who thought me f quite old enough to
write compositions.' I had often thought I could do some-
thing like the neat essays given in on Monday mornings by
the older girls. They hated the work, and what they did
was very stupid reading; but the proposal that I should
write something on any subject I pleased was indescribably
tempting.
" One Friday night my father talked at supper-time of the
almost certainty that ' The President ' was lost at sea. Other
gentlemen were present, and their conjectures as to the man-
ner of her fate held my eyes waking long into the night-
watches. The next day I drew my favorite playfellow aside
in a corner of the garden and showed her a copy of four
'verses' in pencil, 'On the Loss of the President.' I have
forgotten all about them except that two lines ran somewhat
in this fashion :
" l She started full of life and hope,
Being strong in every mast and rope.'
But I have never been so stirred by the writing of anything
else.
Miss won't let you copy poetry for compositions ! '
said my critic, disdainfully. f Compositions must be made up
out of your own head ! '
' I made that ! ' said I, coloring hotly with the confession.
"To this day I shrink from saying '/wrote that,' and talk,
except with intimate friends, of my books is indefinably and
inexpressibly painful to me.
MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE. (535
" She did not believe me. The governess did, and so did
my father.
" f lt is not poetry, of course, my daughter,' said he, judi-
ciously, 'but I think you have some talent for composition.
I want you to improve it.'
" From that hour until the day of his death, twenty-seven
years later, he believed in me. He was a sharp critic of the
crude essays and sketches which I began at fourteen to send
anonymously to daily and weekly papers. But if my heart
quailed as I saw his brows drawn together over the printed
column I tremblingly owned as my production, there was
always genuine appreciation of what merited any portion of
praise, and his hearty ' Try again, child ! ' was like a trumpet-
call to my daunted spirit.
" One night how well I remember it I took advantage
of a benignant mood to bring forward a subject I had been
revolving for months. Diplomacy never wrought well with
his straightforwardness. I plunged in medias res.
" f Father, I have been writing a book ! '
" ' Ah ! ' in nowise surprised. ' For how long? '
r I wrote the rough draught three years ago. Within a
year I have written it out in full. I should like to publish it.'
" 'Very well,' knocking the ashes from, his cigar, ? I will
see about it.'
"The Richmond bookseller to whom the MS. was com-
mitted, gave it to his reader the late John R. Thompson,
editor of the r Southern Literary Messenger ' for examina-
tion. Mr. Thompson kept it for three months, and on my
father's demand that it should be returned, sent the publisher
a note to the following effect :
" * I send back MS. of Alone,' by Marion Harland. I regret
that the young author's impatience to regain possession of her
bantling has rendered it impossible for me to read more than three
pages of the story. From what I have read, however, I judge
that it would not be safe to publish it on speculation.'
f I never meant that you should,' retorted my father, to
whom the publisher showed the note. ' Bring it out in good
636 MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE.
style, printing and binding, advertise it properly, and send
bills to me.' "
And here I must interpolate that "Alone" appeared in
1854. More than one hundred thousand copies were sold in
twenty years in America, and within two years it received
the honor of a Tauchnitz edition. All that Mrs. Terhune
writes has the selling quality, a great point gained in an
author's career. At sixteen she published a story in
" Godey's Lady's Magazine," called " Marrying through Pru-
dential Motives," which was copied into an English paper,
translated into French for a Parisian journal, re-translated
into an English periodical, finally copied in America as an
English story.
Mrs. Terhune alludes modestly to the large sale of all of
her books : " Why they sold I frankly confess myself
unable to decide. They are pure, as far as morals go, and
deal naturally with every-day life. Had I my life-work to go
over again I should avoid, resolutely, compliance with tne re-
quests of editors and publishers, and write one book where I
have written five. I love them all, my simple tales, but I
wish I could ' boil them down,' to use a culinary phrase."
This certainly shows her entire freedom from conceit, and
her constant desire for improvement and growth, for we re-
member how eagerly her novels were sought for, indeed
demanded, by her admirers. I do think it true that with
most novelists (excepting of course the very highest names)
the first book is written because it was in the author's mind
and heart, and it must come into permanent form ; those that
follow for pay, or fame, or because the publisher has advertised
it in advance. We meet the same type of hero and heroine in
each effort, only each time more unreal and monotonous. This
not as a criticism upon Mrs. Terhune's numerous novels, but
as a general remark. I seldom use that word "criticism," or
attempt to play the critic in a small way without thinking of
my own utter inability to approach the work I might be in-
clined to crush as florid, crude, stilted, or unnatural. There
is nothing that amuses me so much in literature as the pom-
MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE. 637
pous, high and lofty, ex cathedra criticisms of the day on art
by a man who couldn't draw a cat so that it would be recog-
nized ; on music by omniscient beings who couldn't get
through "Money Musk" successfully; on novels by persons
doubtless well read and wonderfully wise, but who would
utterly fail to make a story interesting.
That's the art. And when a novel sells by thousands and
tens of thousands, and another is straightway called for, and
the publisher is getting his pockets filled, and the author is
able to go to Europe on the profits I do not feel inclined to
smile or sneer. There must be power and tact and magnet-
ism behind the pen, and I admire the ability to create such a
genuine success. " It is the first duty of the novelist to con-
struct an interesting story." Mrs. Terhune has certainly
done this, and I agree with Mr. Warner, who says in his
recent able article on " Modern Fiction," that " the faculty of
telling a story is a much rarer thing than the ability to ana-
lyze character, and even than the ability truly to draw char-
acter. It is a natural gift, and it seems that no amount of
culture can attain it, any more than learning can make a
poet." So much for Mrs. Terhune's career as a novelist.
The " Common Sense Series " was a new departure from the
beaten track. When she proposed a " Cookery Book" to Mr.
Carleton, who had long been her lucky publisher, he laughed
outright. He was poisoned by the popular prejudice, you see,
and he suffered by it, for, not caring to be ridiculed when she
proposed to give to American housewives her precious, oft-
tried store of receipts, she went quietly to Scribner and
offered the volume. Mr. Scribner was a semi-invalid at the
time, and lying on the lounge in his private office ; he heard
from a partner her proposition. It struck him also as a little
comical, a little hopeless and unfeasible, but he knew the
lady's reputation and power. So he said, " Tell her we shall
be glad to publish it," but added, "It will probably be a loss,
but in that case we may get her next novel ! "
Publishers are shrewd, far-seeing ; they want only the best
thing. Just so with the anxious young wives of this land
39
638 MARY VIRGINIA TERHTOE.
and the overworked women of more experience. They too
wanted the best. And they found it in Marion Harland's
" Common Sense Series." In ten years one hundred thou-
sand copies sold, and there is no flagging in the demand.
From my earliest days I have revelled in reading receipts.
The blissful possibilities, the luscious capabilities of a brief
series of directions, the tempting permutations of sugar and
butter, and eggs, and flour, with the "two teaspoonfuls of
cream-tartar, one of soda, and spice to your taste." My hap-
piest hours in young girlhood were positively spent in the
kitchen, away from satin and long seams, with my fingers
sticky and a big smirch of flour on my glowing cheeks.
Mrs. Terhune's books bring back that peculiar feeling, that
epicurean glow. I know how " awfully " good all her delica-
cies are, and my mouth fairly waters as I taste in imagination
her various dainty dishes.
I like her off-hand, familiar, friendly fashion of talking
straight to the young and perplexed. She not only gives
plain directions, but you are sure of her sympathy. If your
cake should fall just as you take it out of the oven, when you
have carefully tested it with a bit of broom, you know that
she too would be heartily sorry.
In her directions for making mince pies occurs this rather
unusual but delightful digression : " I take this opportunity
of warning the inexperienced reader against placing any con-
fidence whatever in dried currants. I years ago gave over
trying to guess who put the dirt in them. It is always
there ! Gravel-stones, lurking under a specious coating of cur-
ranty-looking paste, to crucify grown people's nerves and
children's teeth ; mould that changes to mud in the mouth ;
twigs that prick the throat, not to mention the legs, wings,
and bodies of tropical insects a curious study to one in-
terested in the entomology of Zante. It is all dirt, although
sold at currant prices." After urging a thorough soaking,
cleansing, and draining, she closes with : " Then spread them
upon a large dish, and enter seriously upon your geological
and entomological researches."
MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE. 639
And how true is this which so few remember : " The recom-
mendation of the eye to the palate is a point no cook can
afford to disregard. If you can offer an unexpected visi-
tor nothing better than bread and butter and cold ham,
he will enjoy the luncheon twice as much if the bread is
sliced thinly and evenly, spread smoothly, each slice folded
in the middle upon the buttered surface, and piled sym-
metrically ; if the ham be also cut thin, scarcely thicker
than a wafer, and garnished with parsley, cresses, and
curled lettuce. Set on mustard and pickles ; let the table-
cloth and napkin be white and glossy ; the glass clear and
plate shining clean, and add to these accessories of comfort
a bright welcome." Follow such sensible advice, and all
necessity for excuses and embarrassment over a chance guest
will be needless.
All women who do a grand work in the world are in danger
of killing themselves while trying to fulfil the claims laid
upon them and keep up with their own ambition. The
" advanced " woman of the day tries to do the work of three
ordinary women, and usually breaks down. No wonder that
men say we are unfitted for such a life when in our enthu-
siasm we take three times too heavy a load. This is a lesson
that the American woman has not yet learned. The only
teacher that produces any impression on them is " nervous
prostration" with its attendant horrors. They then have
time to think and realize their wicked waste of vitality and
brain power, and if they are strong enough to ever get up
again they are usually more prudent.
Mrs. Terhune writes on this point with feeling : " Not until
I broke down physically, under the combined pressure of pub-
lic charities, church duties, social calls, literary work, and
the death of my precious, gifted child, did I understand that
the labor we delight in may be carried beyond bounds. I
had a hard two years' lesson, one that may add length of
years and understanding to me."
But that two years was also a period of helpful rest abroad,
and gave to her the health she longed for, and to us her
640 MART VIRGINIA TERHUNE.
"Letterings in Pleasant Paths," another fresh and chatty record
of a woman's travels in Europe, full of historical allusions,
anecdotes, and practical information, written in a most pleas-
ing and informal style, like home letters from a bright
woman.
Mrs. Terhune does not aspire to poetical honors, and in-
sists that she only " rhymes " now and then when her heart is
full ; but I shall give you two specimens, that you may see
her versatility. These verses will compare favorably with
many that are published as poetry :
"BABES ALWAYS."
BY MARION HARLAND.
'Tis late in my lone chamber,
Borne through the echoing hall,
I hear the wind's hoarse sobbing,
The raindrops' plashing fall.
The street-lamp on the ceiling
Throws many a restless form,
Tree-shadows, swinging madly
In the fury of the storm.
Called I my vigil lonely?
The door is shut and fast;
O'er threshold and o'er carpet
No mortal foot has passed ;
No rustle of white raiment
Or warm breath stirs the air,
Yet I speak aloud my greeting,
" My darlings ! are you there ? "
Not the three who by me kneeling,
Said " Our Father " hours ago,
Whose cheeks now dent the pillows,
Live roses on the snow.
They dream not of the graveyard
And of the hillocks twain,
Snow-heaped to-night (Lord, help me!)
And glazed by wintry rain.
MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE. 641
Twelve years ! a manly stripling
Our boy by now had grown.
Is it four years or twenty
Since I kissed the eyelids down
Of her whose baby-sweetness
Was our later gift from God,
And straightened in the coffin
Wee feet that never trod ?
These are not stranger-glances
That joyfully meet mine ;
I know the loving straining
Of the arms that me entwine.
Thou hast kept them babes, O Father !
Who, not in heaven's bowers,
Learning the speech of angels,
Forget this home of ours,
Or her who braved death-anguish
To win them to her breast.
If they fled into the sunshine,
Free birds from narrow nest,
They come to me when longing
And pain are at their height
To tell me of the safety,
The love, and the delight
Of that eternal dwelling
(Our name is on the door!)
The ring of baby-voices
Gladdens f orevermore ;
Till 'neath the tender soothing
I lift my heart and smile,
And gather faith and courage
To wait my "little while."
642 MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE.
A SUNSET PROPHECY.
BY MARION HARLAND.
" Jerusalem the Golden !
I languish for one y learn
Of all thy beauty, f olden
In distance and in dream.
My thoughts, like palms in exile,
Climb up to look and pray
For a glimpse of that dear country
That lies so far away ! "
Up to my window thrills the fresh young voice.
I drag me from my bed of pain,
Where through the heartless sheen of sunny hours
I and my old, old grief have lain.
All the heat has passed from the western sky
(Pale-green, and barred with sunset glow)
'Mid the burnished leaves of the maple-boughs
A girl swings lightly to and fro.
" Jerusalem the Golden !
When sunset's in the West
It seems the gate of glory,
Thou city of the blest ! "
Ah ! but the way is long, the gate is high,
The shining stair is hard to win ;
Glory is there my load of care is here,
Present my sorrow. Is it sin
That voices spent with weeping cannot shout ?
Remember, Lord, the finger laid
Upon Thy garment's hem, and turn to me
With " Daughter ! peace ! be not afraid ! "
" Jerusalem the Golden!
Where loftily they sing,
O'er pain and sorrow olden,
For ever triumphing ! "
I think, were I this very hour to stand
In that dear Land, unbound and free,
I should not even hear the echoing psalms
That tell the singers' mastery.
With scarred hands crossed, with tired lids folded down
On eyes that could know tears no more,
I'd lie a battered shallop, moored at last,
In some calm inlet of the Shore.
MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE. 643
" Jerusalem the Golden !
There all our birds that flew,
Our flowers but half-unfolden,
Our pearls that turned to dew ! "
Our birds, that fled from frost and bitter skies ;
Our buds that perished on the stalk ;
Dew-pearls, that slid between our careful hands,
And wasted on Life's dusty walk !
We weep, by day, the priceless, scattered gems,
In deathless love, our withered flowers,
And for the vanished songsters of our homes,
Mourn sore in midnight's silent hours.
" Jerusalem the Golden I
I toil on, day by day.
Heart-sore each night with longing
I stretch my hands and pray
That midst thy leaves of healing
My soul may find her nest
Where the wicked cease from troubling,
The weary are at rest I"
How long ? how long, O Healer ? Thou dost know
It is not in me to " hold still " ;
In meekness, like Thy saintly ones, to wait
Th' unfolding of Thy gracious will.
Yet, weak and restless, with blurred eyes I gaze
Upward to Thine, and kiss the rod
"Which shows my chastened soul the steps that lead
O'er heights Thy blessed feet have trod.
Still swings the girl 'mid scarlet maple-leaves,
And chants her sunset prophecy.
Sun-gleam and blossom, tree and singing-bird,
Rapture to her, and soothing unto me.
Down steadfast lines of light, set ladder-wise,
To both, God's viewless angels come ;
" Jerusalem the Golden ! " still she sings,
And I " Jerusalem my Home ! "
Three years since Mrs. Terhune published a little book
entitled " Our Daughters : What Shall we Do with Them?"
which was a " Talk with Mothers," a fitting prelude to her
644 MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE.
more elaborate work, "Eve's Daughters," which consists of
plain talks with the daughters themselves. Both are full of
good advice which, if followed, would bring forward the
millennium in this country. But advice is the only vice that
we don't take to easily. As some one said on hearing that all
things that were lost went to the moon : " Bless me ! what a
lot of good advice there must be up there ! " " Experience,
like the stern-lights of a ship, only illumines the path over
which we have passed."
Mrs. Terhune believes in marriage, and home, and the old-
fashioned mother, and plenty of healthy, happy, rosy babies in
the home nest. She believes that babies have their rights,
especially fr the right of babies to have mothers," and despises
the present woful deficiency of maternal instinct. " We do
not, as a class, appreciate the dignity I use the word
advisedly the dignity and privilege of maternity. In this
respect our English sisters are far ahead of us. The Hebrew
women under the Theocracy understood it better still, Avhen
Rachel pined in her quiet tent for the murmur of baby-voices
and the touch of baby-fingers, and Hannah knelt in the court
of the temple to supplicate, with strong crying and tears,
that the holy fountains of motherly love within her heart
might flow out upon offspring of her own. In those days it
was the childless wife, and not she who had borne many sons
and daughters, who besought that her reproach might be taken
away ; that she might be accounted worthy to be intrusted
with the high duty of rearing children to swell the ranks of
the Lord's chosen people."
I give the following to show her genuine love for the little
folks:
" Never deny the babies their Christmas ! It is the shining
seal set upon a year of happiness. If the preparations for it
the delicious mystery with which these are invested ; the
solemn parade of clean, whole stockings in the chimney-
corner ; or the tree, decked in secret, to be revealed in glad
pomp upon the festal day if these and many other features
of the anniversary are tedious and contemptible in your sight,
MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE. 645
you are an object of pity ; but do not defraud your children
of joys which are their right, merely because you have never
tasted them. Let them believe in Santa Glaus, or St. Nicho-
las, or Kriss Kringle, or whatever name the jolly Dutch saint
bears in your region. Some latter-day zealots, more puritani-
cal than wise, have felt themselves called upon, in schools,
and before other juvenile audiences, to deny the claims of the
patron of merry Christinas to popular love and gratitude.
Theirs is a thankless office, both parents and children feeling
themselves to be aggrieved by the gratuitous disclosure ; and
this is as it should be. If it be wicked to encourage such a
delusion in infant minds, it must be a transgression that leans
very for indeed to virtue's side.
"All honor and love to dear old Santa Glaus! May his
stay in our land be long, and his pack grow every year
more plethoric ! And when, throughout the broad earth, he
shall find on Christmas night an entrance into every home,
and every heart throbbing with joyful gratitude at the
return of the blessed day that gave the Christ-child to
a sinful world, the reign of the Prince of Peace will
have begun below ; everywhere there will be rendered,
f Glory to God in the highest ; ' and ' Good- will to men '
will be the universal law. AVe shall all have become as
little children:'
It is a grand thing to grow; to write with more maturity,
thought, and power, as one goes on. This Mrs. Terhune has
done most noticeably. Her short stories, collected under
the title of "Handicapped," are a decided advance in the
story-telling line. Sad, all of them, as life is sad, but show-
ing a deeper knowledge of character, and more skill in
depicting it. " E^e's Daughters " is the best of all her books.
Each chapter is crammed with truth, and the whole book is
written in such a clear, straightforward style that no one can
fail to profit by it.
Marion Harland has a genuine love for girls, and honestly
desires to help them. She appreciates their position, its
delights, and its dangers ; and with infinite tact and purity
646 MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE.
she has told them what to do and what to avoid doing in
order to secure health, and the best and highest development
in brain and body. A few extracts will show the general
tenor of the work :
" What is the remedy for the nerve-waste, the abnormal or
violent metamorphosis of tissue that comes of worry ;
from the fearful looking-forward of impatient womankind ? I
answer first, self-control learned most easily in youth.
Hold imagination in check, and compel yourself, while you
work, to think only of the business in hand, the appointed
tale of bricks for the day. Enjoy, in like singleness of mind,
the pleasures belonging to each hour and season. Cultivate
an eye for lights rather than for shadows. Do not despise
the small fruits of spring-time in longing for peaches and
nectarines. That you are alive and moderately comfortable
this day is an earnest of sufficient grace for the next, for this
is the dreaded to-morrow of yesterday. Make the best of the
present. The poet bids you ' Enjoy it. It is thine.' It, at
least, will never return to be righted or to be delighted in.
That time and care are thrown away that are spent on a
future that may never be.
" Next to the faculty of concentrating and guiding thought,
I rank in value among soul-powers the ability to control the
nerves, to equalize and rightly to distribute the crude forces
whose zeal is not according to knowledge, and instruct them
by rigid discipline to obey will rather than feeling. In
more direct language, keep feeling out of work as much as
possible. Make resolution and industry to depend upon con-
science. The ability to do this argues excellent mental
training, and is not incompatible with a hearty enjoyment of
work for its own sake. On the other hand, feeling, heart,
all that is loosely generalized under the head of the emotions,
is too apt, if pressed into a service for which it is not
fitted, to lose morale, like other injudiciously-applied agen-
cies, and to degenerate into morbid sentimentality. If you
would test the truth of this assertion, ask yourself how many
of your mates are depressed into misery by the anticipated
MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE. 647
loss of a place in class, and cry over discouraging lessons ;
how many older women break down over a vexatious piece
of work, or the disarrangement caused by an accident, and
weep as for the loss of father or brother.
" It sounds well to say that ' she throws her whole heart
into whatever she undertakes, be it a great or small matter.'
In effect, it is senseless trifling with a delicate and precious
thing. Except when royalty goes through the pretty farce
of laying the corner-stone of public buildings, silver trowels
are not used for spreading mortar. It is as proper to take up
ashes with a gold spoon as to excite feeling to hysterical
vehemence in conning a lesson in trigonometry. If you
would prove your brain to be sexless, divorce it from the
heart. In this respect, at any rate, require it to do a man's
work in a man's way. And do not fear that the process will
make of your womanly self an 'intellectual abstraction.'
The body is the handmaid of the mind. Never forget that,
nor that the mistress toils at a fearful disadvantage who is
constantly obliged to make allowances for the weakness, or
to supplement the incompetency of her servant. Also, that
in a well-balanced household, mistress and maid have, each,
her separate task, and that the most obliging subordinate will
weary and turn surly if called off too often from her appointed
business to ' lend a hand ' to what her employer has under-
taken to perform. She f didn't hire for that kind of work,'
she informs you. Your nervous system tells you the same
thing, and as positively, many times a day, but since the pro-
test is not coupled with a month's or week's notice to quit,
you pay no heed to the warning voice.
" Be just to your mind in bestowing upon it the proper
nutriment. Be merciful to it in giving it enough of this to
sustain its powers. I wish that I could make you' understand
now, before you make the experiment on your own account,
how the frivolities of the stereotyped girl-life, the hours
appropriated to dress, and the shams of etiquette ; the froth
of chit-chat that passes for conversation ; the so much
worse than froth of gossip about one's neighbors and friends,
648 MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE.
in brief, the refined do-nothingism of society lower
mental and moral tone and belittle the whole being. Avoid
this latter evil, belittling and narrowing, almost as sedu-
lously as you would impurity. Stand firmly upon the higher
plane won by familiar intercourse with master-minds. Know
and maintain for yourself that life has nobler aims than the
fascination, for vanity's sake, of so many gallants per season.
Reject the temptation to terminate the unworthy triflings ; to
curb the waywardness of your fancy ; to gratify your prudent
Avell-wishers, and essay the novelties of an untried estate by
entering upon a marriage which, however eligible in the eyes
of others, is not, as you own in your secret soul, what you
would have chosen of 3^0111* unbiassed will.
" So far from the election and study of professions by women
acting unfavorably upon domestic life, I believe firmly, after a
tolerably thorough examination of arguments and examples
on both sides of the question, that the highest and purest
interests of the home are promoted by these. She who need
not marry unless won to the adoption of the state of wife by
pure love for him who seeks her, is likely to make a more
deliberate and a wiser choice of a husband than she who has
done little since she put off long-clothes but dream, and long,
and angle for her other half.
" Men make very merry over the episodes of early married
life. I cannot, any more than I can amuse myself with
the real but baseless terrors of a weeping child. Marriage is
such a momentous affair, such a portentous All to us that we
tremble at the remotest menace of peril which may wreck
hope and heart. The folly of your fears consists in exagger-
ation of their cause. The wine of your husband's happi-
ness settles sooner upon its lees than does yours. Accus-
tomed to contemplate the actualities of life, with critical
note of their value ; to keep the emotional part of his nature
out of sight of the associates of business-hours, in adjusting
the machinery of the day into the old running order, he
fashions his demeanor accordingly, with never a dream that
you object to the resumption of his former routine. If be
MAEY VIRGINIA TERHUNE. 649
does not spend hours in swearing how dearly he loves you,
and how willingly he would die for you, he proves both on
that mighty * silent side ' of his nature by redoubled dili-
gence in the calling that is to bring comfort and beauty into
your sheltered nest, to make that shelter sure. Do not be
guilty of the frightful mistake of being jealous of his devo-
tion to business ; the business for which you care so little,
but which stands with him for respectability, honor, wealth,
the happiness of wife and children. Regard it, instead, as
the ' chance ' the Father has given him to do a man's work in
the world, and help him to do it to the utmost of your ability.
" Study his profession or craft in general principle and in
detail, until you can converse intelligently with him of the
schemes that engage his brain and hands. Encourage him to
'talk out' his cares and worries before you try to soothe
them. Extract the splinter before applying the salve. When
the heart of your husband can safely trust in you in this sense
no less than in the keeping of his honor, you have bound him
to you by ties that will outlast beauty and sprightliness.
Better lose his affection than his respect.
" I want you to re-read that sentence and study its mean-
ing. If more wives acted upon the pregnant lesson it conveys
we should have fewer careless husbands, careless in talk of
women and in the practice of domestic virtues.
"As you are your husband's standard of wifely fidelity, be
also his criterion of purity of language and thought. Elevate,
not commonize, his estimate of womanhood. Show, by silent
gravity, that whatever approximates ribald talk distresses
you. In becoming your mate in the nearest and tenderest
relation of the human species he should be more, not less,
the gentleman than when, as a gallant, he was the pink of
courtesy. From the day your Lares and Penates are in-
stalled let the gospel of conventionalities be established like-
wise as the rule of your household. Dress, talk, and keep
the house for him as carefully and tactfully as for a stranger.
Do not make him boorish or awkward by reserving the
gentler forms of address, the fine linen, and best china for
650 MAEY VIRGINIA TERHUNE.
visitors. Unless he is exceptionally au fait to traditional by-
laws of social usage you are better informed on such subjects
than he. Initiate him into these minor graces of polite society
gradually and ingeniously, with no appearance of schooling or
dictation. This is an undertaking requiring much wis-
dom, or rather finesse. If John has not been reared in
the house with his mother and sisters he will be rough in
seeming to your finer perceptions. He will probably have
'ways.'"
Mrs. Terhune is up to the present moment as busy as ever.
I see her love-stories, and articles on homely themes, as dish-
washing and " left-overs," her poems, and talks on hygiene,
widely scattered through our best papers. She is continually
implored by editors and publishers to do more than would be
possible for any ten women to accomplish. And of course
she commands fancy prices.
The critic says with usual profundity, "O, yes ! What
does she know that is new about washing dishes ? My old
cook Betsey could give us the same information. But
'Marion HarlandV name is up, so it carries all before it,
and no matter what she writes it will be printed. Lots of
humbug about that sort of thing ! " Yes, dear sir, or madam,
but did you ever realize what it means to have won a name
that carries such prestige with it? Suppose you write an
article on " left-overs," it will doubtless be true to its title.
There must be a long struggle, a weary up-hill climb before
one reaches the heights ; and you sit in your easy chair way
down in the valley and find fault.
I have no doubt that Mrs. Terhune has some plan for a new
book on a new theme in her fertile brain. I know she hopes
to do still better work in the future.
I have written so many sketches of famous women long
since dead and gone, and the killing them off gracefully has
been such a relief at the end of a long lecture, that with a
dear and living friend I actually feel awkward in closing
without any close, just at the meridian height of life, success,
and endeavor.
MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE. 651
Women seldom do know when to stop. They can't stop
short. Some witty man affirms that a woman could never be
a military commander because she could never say halt!
but, '' Now, men, I want you all, every one of you, to keep
perfectly still, when I say" etc., etc., etc.
What a libel ! I disprove it.
Lons; live fc Marion Harland ! "
o
CHAPTER XXYIII.
MES. A. D. T. WHITNEY.
BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
The Influence of Good Literature in the Formation of Character Mrs.
A. D. T. Whitney Her Childhood Early Life and Surroundings
Memories of Good Old Days Education and Religious Training
Marriage Faculty for Portraying Domestic Life Why She Excels
in Painting Perfect Homes Books She has Written Selections
from her Poems Sympathy with Young People Gaining an In-
sight into Practical Questions The Sparkle and Humor of Her Writings
The Soundness of their Teachings Their Great Influence for Good
Comparison between Her Books and Miss Edgeworth's Extracts Illus-
trating their Religious Tendencies.
HERE was once a careful mother who was bring-
ing up a bright young daughter, with a young
girl's eager fondness for story-books. In her
thirteenth year the mother presented this child
with a complete set of the stories of Maria
5^ Edge worth, and gave her unlimited permission
to read them. The result was twofold : first,
the girl was preserved from reading a great deal
of ordinary trash, and secondly, she insensibly
had her mind and character and tastes very materi-
ally formed and guided by their influence, so that trashy writ-
ing became distasteful to her.
We have in New England a lady writer who for our times
and manners has done very much the work for young people
that Miss Edgeworth did in hers ; while her writings are
spicy and amusing, they have a decided influence upon the
character, an influence any parent might be thankful for.
This writer, Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney, was the daughter of
Enoch Train, who with his cousin, Samuel Train of Med-
ford, did an extensive mercantile business, owning vessels,
and trading to Russia and South America ; Mr. Enoch Train
652
MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY. 653
in later years establishing his line of packet ships between
Boston and Liverpool, since known as the "Warren Line";
Mr. Warren having been connected with the Liverpool house
of Train & Co., and ultimately succeeding to the business.
In the story of "The Gayworthys" Mrs. Whitney has
enlisted much of what came under her notice in early life, in
visiting ships, and listening to the talk of voyages and the
incidents of sea-life. She says : " None of the characters in
that book were portraits, though the scenes and minor incidents
are chiefly gathered from old days, when we lived in Boston,
but had our summer vacation in journeys to Hillsborough by
carriage, my father driving, and stopping in the old-fashioned,
delightful way, for meals and sleep. Then there were the
never-forgotten visits to my grandmother's old farm among
the hills, in company with young aunts and cousins, visitors
like ourselves. I have gone to school in the country with
aunts and uncles, with dinner-pails deliciously filled have
rested under old apple-trees on the * half-way rock,' sat on the
hard benches, watched the classes made up of all the country
folk, from the little barefoot boys to the pretty and well-
dressed young girls of the more important families. I have
been to church in the meeting-house on the hill, with square-
railed pews, and seats that were lifted in prayer-time and let
down at the ' amen ' with a bang ; have studied the grave-
stones in the old graveyard. I thought a great deal of the
things that were preached about from pulpits and graveyards
in those days of a childhood quite unlike the childhood of
to-day."
The circumstances of Mrs. Whitney's more mature educa-
tion were all mostly Bostonian. She was mainly the outcome
of the culture, intellectual and moral, of that city.
In the church and Sunday school of Dr. Lyman Beecher,
and his successor, Mr. Hubbard Winslow, she received her
first religious impressions. Afterwards, on her father's sec-
ond marriage with a lady who belonged to the Unitarian
church, the family changed their connection to the West
church, under the care of Dr. Lowell. " Here," she says, w I
40
654 MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY.
found a somewhat different, though not antagonistic teaching,
for those were the early days when there was still a simple
faith, even among those who had unbound it from the Puritan
rigidity. To Dr. Lowell, Dr. Bartol, and Mrs. Bartol, who
as Miss Howard, was my Sunday-school teacher, I owe the
beginning of my most earnest thinking."
Like many other Boston girls, Mrs. Whitney was educated
in the school of Mr. George B. Emerson, entering in her
thirteenth year and remaining till her eighteenth, with the
exception of one year spent at Northampton, under the care
of Miss Margarette D wight. Mr. G. B. Emerson was a Uni-
tarian, Miss D wight a Calvinist. In those days there was an
excited controversial division between the Unitarian and the
Orthodox, but Mrs. Whitney had the art of drawing only
what is best from both sides. Of the final results of this
eclecticism, she thus speaks in a recent letter to the writer :
" After what has been said, incidentally, concerning alter-
nating religious training and influences, I may suitably say
that the result of all has been that I have recently connected
myself with the church of the 'Apostles' Creed,' finding
there the germ and foundation of all that has either broad-
ened or narrowed from it ; and am content to rest in that
body which recognizes f the blessed company of all faithful
people,' claiming the right to interpret those words with all
the liberalism which they imply."
Mrs. Whitney's is not the only case where souls of great
earnestness who wish to unite definite faith with wide charity,
have found what they sought in the Episcopal church. Her
beautiful, ancient, devout liturgy expresses feelings and emo-
tions in which differing intellectual beliefs can unite, since
the diversities among Christian believers are far more in rela-
o
tion to definition and abstract dogmas than in the emotions
of the heart or the practical aims of life.
To continue our narrative, we record that in November,
1843, Miss Train was married to Mr. Seth D. Whitney of
Milton, Mass., being then in her nineteenth year, and from
that time, whether as wife and mother or authoress, Mrs.
MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY.
MES. A. D. T. WHITNEY. 657
Whitney's sphere has been home and domestic life. She excels
in painting simple, lovely, perfect homes, and nice, agreeable,
natural young people. She has been the mother of three
daughters and a son. One daughter died in infancy ; another
married Major Suter, a United States army officer, stationed
at St. Paul, Minn., and died after little more than a year.
The other daughter married Mr. James A. Field, of Beloit,
Wisconsin. Mrs. Whitney's son has been for fourteen years in
the Western country, engaged in the work on the great rivers
which has been in charge of Major Suter, stationed at St. Louis.
Recently he has removed to Lake wood, New Jersey, where
his sister and her husband were already established. Mrs.
Whitney has, in the two families, five boys who call her, or
will grow to call her, grandmother. These particulars are
given to show how appropriate^ she has been in her stories
an illustrator and teacher of domestic life.
Mrs. Whitney first began authorship in the " Religious Mag-
azine," published by Dr., afterward Bishop Huntington. In
the winter of 1859 Rudd & Carleton published for her
" Mother Goose for Grown Folks," a little "jeu d'esprit"
for Christmas. In 1861 she wrote "Boys at Chequasset,"
for which, doubtless, her own boy, in his ornithological re-
searches, furnished material. They were then residing in
Milton, where they had the full benefit of country surround-
ings. In June, 1862, came out "Faith Gartney's Girlhood."
Both these books were issued by Loring in Boston, and had
an immediate success. In 1864 came out under the same
publisher "The Gayworthys," this was published simul-
taneously in England, by Sampson, Low, Son & Co.
In 1866 she issued as a serial in " Our Young Folks " " A
Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life." This was published
the same year by Fields, Osgood & Co.
In the space from 1868 to 1870 she wrote as a serial in
the " Christian Register," " Patience Strong's Outings," which
was published by Loring. She also furnished a serial
called "We Girls" to "Our Young Folks," which was
published in book form by Fields, Osgood & Co.
658 MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY.
In 1869 she published " Hitherto," which appeared simul-
taneously in England, Mrs. Whitney securing copyright by
being in Montreal at the time of publication.
To these followed " Real Folks," and "The Other Girls,"
published by Osgood & Co., in 1872-73. After this followed
" Sights and Insights," detailing the experiences of a party
travelling in Europe. In the winter of 1877 Mrs. Whitney
compiled a cook-book entitled " Just How," and in the spring
of 1879 she published her story entitled " Odd or Even " with
the firm of Osgood & Co.
After the issue of " Odd or Even," Messrs. Houghton &
Osgood, having previously purchased of Loring the plates of
all Mrs. Whitney's other books, prepared a uniform edition
of all her works.
From time to time Mrs. Whitney has published in the
" Atlantic Monthly," or other papers, poems of no mean order.
These have been collected in a little volume called " Pansies,"
published by Osgood & Co. in 1872.
There is a breadth and depth of feeling in these poems, a
delicacy of spiritual insight that makes one wish that she had
written more of them. We cite for one example a poem
written during the late war, when the sons and hopes of so
many homes were going into that desperate struggle :
" So moved they when false Pharaoh's legions pressed,
Chariots and horsemen following furiously,
Sons of old Israel, at their God's behest,
"Under the cloud and through the swelling sea.
" So passed they fearless, where the parted wave
With cloven crest uprearing from the sand,
A solemn aisle before, behind a grave
Rolled to the beckoning of Jehovah's hand.
" So led He them in desert marches grand,
By toils sublime, with test of long delay,
On to the borders of that Promised Land,
Wherein their heritage of glory lay.
MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY. 659
" And Jordan raged along his rocky bed,
And Amorite spears flashed keen and angrily ;
Still the same pathway must their footsteps tread,
Under the cloud and through the threatening sea.
" God works no otherwise. No mighty birth,
But comes by throes of mortal agony ;
No man-child among nations of the earth,
But findeth baptism in a stormy sea.
w Sons of the saints who faced their Jordan flood
In fierce Atlantic's unretreating wave ;
Who by the Red Sea of their glorious blood,
Reached to the freedom that your blood must save ;
" O countrymen ! God's day is^iot yet done !
He leaveth not his people utterly ;
Count it a covenant, that He leads us on,
Under the cloud and through the crimson sea ! "
We cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of citing here
another most characteristic poem of hers. It is written in
another and tenderer vein :
"Do Saints keep holiday in heavenly places?
Does the old joy shine new in angel faces ?
Are hymns still sung the night when Christ was born,
And anthems on the Resurrection morn ?
" Because our little year of earth is run,
Do they keep record there beyond the sun ?
And in their homes of light so far away,
Mark with us the sweet coming of this day?
"What is their Easter? For they have no graves,
No shadow there the holy sunrise craves,
Deep in the heart of noontide marvellous,
Whose breaking glory reaches down to us.
"How did our Lord keep Easter? With his own!
Back to meet Mary where she grieved alone,
With face and mien all tenderly the same,
Unto the very sepulchre he came.
660 MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY.
" Ah ! the dear message that He gave her then,
Said for the sake of all bruised hearts of men,
'Go tell those friends who have believed in me,
I go before you into Galilee !
" * Into that life so poor, and hard, and plain,
That for a while they must take up again ;
My presence passes ! Where their feet toil slow,
Mine, shining swift with love, still foremost go.
" Say, Mary, I will meet them by the way,
To walk a little with them ; where they stay
To bring my peace. Watch, for ye do not know
The day or hour when I may find you so ! '
" And I do think, as Christ came back to her,
The * many mansions ' may be all astir
With tender steps that hasten on their way,
Seeking their own upon this Easter day.
" Parting the veil that hideth them about,
I think they do come, softly wistful, out
From homes of heaven that only seem so far,
To walk in gardens where the new tombs are ! "
In the Apostles' Creed, on which Mrs. Whitney has found
rest, is the article " I believe in the communion of saints,"
and Mrs. Whitney in this poem has beautifully expressed the
idea of the primitive church, of a living, unbroken sympathy
between their departed friends and themselves. They believed
that in the services of the church their beloved ones once
more drew near to them, and as in family prayers the whole
family in heaven and on earth united. So, they understood
the passage in the communion service, " Wherefore with
angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven we
praise Thy glorious name." If this view could enter into our
lives as a reality of faith it would soothe the bitterness of
many a bereavement ; and as good food prevents morbid crav-
ing, so this blessed truth would keep the soul from running
into the wild vagaries of modern spiritualism. There is
"communion of saints," but it is to be sought not by juggling
MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY. 661
with spirit-rappings, but in those higher exercises of the
church that enable the human soul to rise to the heights
where the blessed ones ever dwell.
The most suggestive and comprehensive of Mrs. Whitney's
stories in our view is " The Other Girls." In her other stories
she has given us amiable, sprightly, interesting young people,
growing up under circumstances of ease and comfort, with
means for a free, unembarrassed development. But in " The
Other Girls " we have life questions as they present them-
selves to those to whom life is a perplexity and a battle, and
in this field Mrs. Whitney has the great advantage of a heart
full of motherly sympathy. There is no innocent natural
feeling of the young female heart for which she has not kindly
comprehension and tolerance.
After the recent great Boston fire, which threw multitudes
of working-girls into distress, a relief committee of ladies
was organized, and upon this committee Mrs. Whitney served
for three months, and thus gained an insight into many prac-
tical questions which she uses to excellent purpose in her
story. We recollect hearing a noble-minded and excellent
woman who served on that same committee lamenting the
hard, unsympathetic, professional way in which some of these
good ladies conducted their inquiries and dispensed their
charities in particular how stern and severe they were upon
any small attempts at personal adornment, which the poor
applicants still retained. There are some who think them-
selves Christians who seem to be of opinion that even the
desire for personal adornment and refinements of dress in
girls who have their own living to get ought to be met with
stern reprobation. Now, even the good old Bible, on which
they found their faith, says : " Can a maid forget her orna-
ments " as if it were one of the recognized impossibilities
of woman's nature.
But in Mrs. Whitney's story we find the tenderest motherly
sympathy for this natural feeling of the young girl's heart.
Some of the prettiest pages of " The Other Girls " are given
to a description of the raptures and tremors of the beautiful
662 MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY.
young country girl, Bel Bree, when acting as a lay figure in
trying on an exquisite dress which she and her old auntie were
making up for a customer. The dress is described as only
Mrs. Whitney can describe. " There was a certain silk
evening dress of singular and indescribably lovely tint a
tea-rose pink, just the color of the blush and creaminess that
mingle in that exquisite flower. It looked fragrant. It con-
veyed a subtle sense of flavor ; it fed and provoked every
perceptive sense." When the business-like old auntie says,
"I shall want you by-and-by for a figure to try this on."
r May I have it all on? " says Bel, eagerly. " Do, auntie ; I
should like to be in such a dress once just a minute ! "
" I don't see any reason why not. You couldn't do any
hurt to it, if 'twas made for a queen," responded Aunt Blin.
Then, after describing the pretty girl dressing and arranging
her golden hair, she comes to the climax thus :
"Now!
" The wonderful, glistening, aurora-like robe goes over her
head ; she stands in the midst with the tender glowing color
sweeping out from her on the white sheet pinned down on the
carpet. The bare neck and dimpled arms showed from among
the creamy pink tints like the high white lights upon the
rose ! "
Then there is a suggestion of an admiring spectator of the
other sex, lodging in the same house, who catches through
the half-open door a glimpse of all this loveliness. So far
there has been only sympathy with young girlhood, but when
the story goes on to show how this same admirer, Morris
Hewland, captivated by the girl's loveliness, yet unwilling to
offend his aristocratic relations, offers her protection and sup-
port without marriage, Mrs. Whitney makes Bel Bree show
the brave and Christian resistance that a good girl ought to
show. She goes to Aunt Blin's great Bible for guidance, and
when her suitor comes for his answer, points him to the pas-
sage, "For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and
cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. Where-
fore they are no more two, but one. What, therefore, God
MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY. 663
hath joined together let not man put asunder." " Is that the
way you will make a home and give it to me before them
all ? " she said ; and when she sees in his silent confusion that
this is not what he means, the story goes on :
" Her young face grew paler and became stern. She looked
steadfastly at him for one instant, and then she shut the book
and turned away, delivering him from the condemning light
of her presence. ' No ; I will not go to that little home with
you,' she said, with grief and scorn mingling in her voice, as
they might have been in the voice of an angel. When she
looked around again he was gone. Their ways had parted."
This shows that with all her tenderness, Mrs. Whitney's
atmosphere is a bracing and wholesome one for that too much
tried and tempted class on whom comes early the burden of
self-support. There is no dallying with temptation no
stopping to deliberate before sin and dishonor speciously pre-
sented. No shop-girl will ever be the worse for a book of
Mrs. Whitney's. This is all the better, because her books are
in no sense prosy or " preachy." They sparkle with humor, and
sometimes overflow with sympathy with the fun and frolic of
young people. For a bit of charming humor we can think of
nothing better than the description of Aunt Blin and Bel Bree
going to housekeeping, together with a venerable old cat on
the auntie's part, and a frisky young canary-bird on Bel's.
The scene in which Aunt Blin becomes convinced, in regard
to the animal creation, that the millennium is not yet arrived,
is well worth reading, and may prove a wholesome warning
to all who are too credulously confiding in cat virtues.
In treating of the chances, mischances, fortunes, and mis-
fortunes of " The Other Girls," Mrs. Whitney, of course,
strikes directly across the much-mooted " woman question "
of our day, and here she takes her stand firmly on the ground
that family life and the creation of home and its influences is
the first duty and the greatest glory of woman. She has
nothing to say, of course, against those women evidently
called by exceptional talent and exceptional circumstances
out of the common walks of womanhood, but she gives a
MRS - A - D - T - WHITNEY.
strong weight of influence against a general drift of woman-
kind in this direction.
She gives the instance of a young girl who, on the strength
of her youthful prettiness, and a lesson or two in elocution,
chooses to try the life of a platform reader, and shows the
dangers that beset such a course : its interference with
womanly duties and family ties, and the slightness of the
advantages it brings compared with those which are sacrificed.
In contrast come ever so many pretty scenes, as, for instance,
when Bel Bree and Kate Senserbo go to live as "help" in a
charming young family, where there is mutual appreciative-
ness and mutual care on the part both of employer and em-
ployed. No mother and housekeeper can read that charming
chapter of "The Other Girls," entitled "Living In," without
feeling what a blessing to the world would be such arrange-
ments as are there described.
When some of this young housekeeper's skeptical friends
remark that " it's all very lovely, but not to be counted upon
or expected generally," the pretty Asenath responds :
" Bad things have lasted lon<* enough ; I don't see why good
ones should not last, now they have begun." She adds after-
wards, " everything begins with exceptions, and happens first
in spots. I shouldn't wonder if it were an excellent way to
make life as exceptional as you can in all unexceptionable
directions."
So when this exceptional young mistress discovers that
Bel Bree has a pretty turn for versification, she sends her
clever verses to a magazine, and presents to her a publisher's
check for fifteen dollars, adding,
:? You see I'm very unselfish, Bel I'm going to work the
very way to lose you. When you can write verses like this
I should not expect to keep you in my kitchen."
"Why, I might never do it again in all my life," sen-
sible Bel replied, "and I hope you will keep me." And
so Bel remains, a comfort in the family, satisfied to be ap-
preciated and treated as a friend. The writer of this
sketch knows from actual experience and observation that
MRS A. D. T. WHITNEY. 665
just such cases as this of Bel Bree have actually happened in
real life.
We began by comparing Mrs. Whitney to Miss Edge worth.
But Miss Edgeworth, with all her keen, practical sense and
high principle, had no spiritual element in her writings, and
never alluded to religion as help or motive.
Mrs. Whitney is intensely spiritual. All her sympathies
and judgments are baptized with the spirit of Christianity,
and we cannot imagine any one reading her works without
being made purer and better.
There is a peculiar quality to her religious thinking ; as she
says of one of her maiden saints, Miss Euphemia Kirkbright,
" She was a Swedenborgian, not after Swedenborg, but by
the living gift itself." Mrs. Whitney has perceived that
divine arrangement by which all the surroundings and cir-
cumstances of our earthly life are capable of being made illus-
trations of the higher and future life ; how human fatherhood
illustrates God's paternity ; human homes, with their love,
their peace and rest, image the heavenly home, and the house
itself becomes a sacred image of "the house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens.'*
The thinking religious mind of New England has in many
directions received precious helps from the mind of Sweden-
borg, and whoever has learned to see this spiritual teaching in
the events of this present life has gained a key that unlocks
many a mystery and opens many a treasury of consolation
and hope.
The religious teachings of Mrs. Whitney's books have no
cant phraseology, but they show how the spirit of Christ may
be brought into actual life. There are in "The Other Girls "
suggestions full of practical helpfulness to those who wish to
carry on the work that Christ began, of helping the weak,
comforting the sorrowful, guiding the perplexed, and shielding
the tempted ; and we rejoice to think that such good works
as she describes actually abound in our day.
Some of Mrs. Whitney's religious teachings are so well ex-
pressed and full of comfort and hope that we cannot better
666 MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY.
close our article than by a citation of some of these as we
marked them in reading "The Other Girls."
One of her characters who had been recently reduced from
affluence to poverty by the sudden death of a father, leaving
her in charge of a delicate, helpless mother, says to Miss
Kirkbright (one of the saints) : w All that comes hard to me is
the changing; the not staying of anything anywhere. My
life seems all broken and mixed up, Miss Kirkbright. Noth-
ing goes right on as if it belonged." " Lo, it is I, be not
afraid," repeats Miss Kirkbright, softly, " when things work
against us and change in spite of us we may know it is the
Lord working. That is the comfort, the certainty."
w Real work disposes and qualifies a man to believe in a
real destiny a real God. A carpenter can see that nails
are never driven for nothing. It is, perhaps, the sham work
of our day that shakes forth its purpose and unity.
" The sense of accomplishment is the Sunday feeling. It is
the very feeling in which God himself rested, and out of His
own joy bade all His sons rest likewise in their turn every
time they should end a six-days' toil.
" Prayers and special providences ! Are these thrust out of
the scheme, because there is a scheme, and a steadfastness
of administration in God's laws? Is there no use in praying
for rain, or the calming of a storm, or a blessing on the
medicine we give the sick ? When it was all set going was
not prayer provided for? It was answered a million years
ago in the heart of God, who put it into your heart and
nature to pray. The more law you have the more all things
come under its foresight."
"God let his Christ die suffer for the whole world.
Christ lets those whom he counts worthy suffer die for
their world. The Lamb is forever slain ; the sacrifice of the
holy is forever making. It is thus that they come at last to
MKS. A. D. T. WHITNEY. 667
walk in white with Him, because they have washed their
robes in His blood partaken of His sacrifice."
A daughter suffering the late remorse of love for a mother
o o
for whom she did not do enough while living, says : " I want
to love and do for her what I did not do here. Can I ever
have my chances given me back again?"
Her minister answers, "You have them now go and do
something for ' the least of these ' that is how we can work
for our friends that have been ' lifted up.' Do their errands,
enter into their work, be a link yourself in the divine chain,
and feel the joy and the life of it. The moment you give
yourself, you will feel all that you shall know that you
are joined to them. You need not wait to go to heaven ;
you can be in heaven now."
This is high teaching but not too high.
We rejoice that Mrs. Whitney's works have 'attained such
popularity, and heartily wish them even more readers in the
future than in the past.
CHAPTER XXIX.
ANNE WHITNEY.
BY MARY A. LIVERMORE.
Anne Whitney's Girlhood Schooldays Testimony of One of Her Teachers
Her Literary Talents Book of Poems The Circumstance that turned
Her Thoughts to Art An Interesting Incident Beginning Her Work in
Sculpture First Attempts Marvellous Skill Her Statue of " Godiva "
Attention it attracted " Africa " " The Lotus-Eater " Studies
and Travels Abroad " Roma" " A Thinking Statue " Commission
from the State of Massachusetts Statue of Samuel Adams Miss Whit-
ney's Studio Devotion to Her Art Work that will endure.
EARS ago I was permitted free access to the studio
of an artist, while he was painting the por-
trait of a lady of whose grace and beauty I had
heard, but whom I had never met. I watched
the growth of the picture with great interest ;
but when, at last, it was completed, and looked
forth from the canvas as a living reality, it was
to me a vision of impossible loveliness. " It is
not a portrait," I said ; " it is an almost ideal
conception."
One day the lady herself entered the studio. On the
instant, the picture seemed to suffer loss. It was as ex-
quisite in color as before, and its fineness suggested the
spiritual elevation which characterized the original. But the
portrait wore always the same expression, while the radiant
woman whom it copied changed with every passing thought.
Hers was a many-sided personality, which defied transcrip-
tion. " No artist can do justice to such a woman in a pic-
ture," was now my criticism. w Those who have never seen
ANNE WHITNEY. 669
her will call your portrait an exaggeration ; to her friends it
will be a failure."
I have remembered this experience while attempting a
brief sketch of the woman artist whose name stands at the
head of this page. For it is not possible, in the limited
space at command, to make other than an incomplete pen-
picture of one who, as woman, friend, poet, and sculptor, has
won the highest place in the esteem of all who know her,
through her worth and her work. To sketch her as she is
o
revealed to her friends would be considered the partial
utterance of uncritical affection. The word painting would
be regarded an exaggeration.
To present her faithfully as a poet, gifted with exceptional
poetic instinct beyond most writers of modern times as a
sculptor, whose work takes rank with that of artists at home
and abroad, who have won world- wide reputation from their
skill in evoking life and beauty from the shapeless marble
this calls for an elaboration and detail not compatible with
the space allotted. In the imperfect sketch that follows, the
materials for which have been gathered from the personal
friends of Miss Whitney, and from artists familiar with her
work, there is given little more than the outlines of a diligent,
earnest, well-rounded life and character. To the imagination
of the reader must be left the filling in of details.
Fortunate in her parentage, and in her early training, Anne
Whitney passed through childhood and youth into woman-
hood under most favorable conditions. Never was there any
lack in the wise and kind intentions of her parents. From
them she has inherited the fine physique which has enabled
her, without peril, to overcome the manual difficulties of her
art. The simplicity and nobleness of nature which strongly
marked the parents are traits in the daughter, as are their
individualism, their strength of character, their loftiness of
moral tone. She has also inherited an interest in public
affairs and in reform, an unconquerable aversion to any and
every form of injustice, and a vital belief in human better-
ment.
670 ANNE WHITNEY.
As a child she was bright and joyous, overflowing with
animal spirits, the object of an encompassing tenderness to
brothers and sisters, of whom she was youngest. Never was
a child more tenderly loved or more wisely cared for. The
best schools and the best teachers were provided her ; and to
these she bore a receptive spirit and a facile nature.
"Never did she enter the school-room," says one of her
teachers, "that my eyes and my heart did not go forth to
welcome her. She always brought in with her such a sense
of freshness and purity that, instinctively, I thought of the
coming in of the morning. Every teacher in the school
observed her, and all rejoiced in her. In all that she said 0*
did she manifested character. When she read or recited, it
was in the low tone that needs " to rise half a note to catch
attention." But the raising of her voice was never necessary,
as the hum of the school-room died instantly, in the desire of
her mates to enjoy her always intelligent, distinct enunciation,
which brought out the full meaning of the text. A gentle
gravity, a sweet intelligence of infrequent speech, and a per-
vasive kindliness of manner marked her intercourse with her
fellow-students, it being always apparent that she was with,
but not of them."
As the girlhood of Anne Whitney merged into womanhood,
it was impossible that she should escape the pain and suffer-
ing that come to all gifted natures. Death made a sad gap
in the family circle, when, for the first time, she felt the
" Dreadful odds 'twixt live and dead,
That make us part as those at Babel did
Through sudden ignorance of a common tongue."
" For a long time after, everything smelt of the grave," she
once said.
A high order of imaginative power was hers, and "the
sorrowful great gift, conferred on poets, of a twofold life
as if one were not enough for pain." Keenly alive to the
beautiful in all things, she was perplexed by the pettiness and
meanness, the wrong and injustice, that so largely enter into
ANNE WHITNEY. 671
and deform human life. Thrilling to the joyousness of
nature, with a soul attuned to its subtlest harmonies, she was
smitten with sore pain as she looked out on the conflict and
turmoil of life, with its doing and undoing, its sinning and
repenting, its loving and grieving, its incompleteness and
unrest. Glowing with divine aspiration to climb " the altar
stairs that slope through darkness up to God," she measured
the vast distance that must stretch forever between her
highest ideal and her attainment of it.
" Capacity for pain " is not unfrequently tf a mark of rank
in nature." It is not possible for one to speak nobly who
does not feel profoundly, and nature has so blended suffering
with power, that it sometimes has the relation of cause to
effect. The outcome of this time of early perplexity and
suffering, of profound feeling and thinking, was a book of
poems, as original as they are vigorous. Their quality is
remarkable. They are mostly expressed in stateliness of
rhythm, and there is not a morbid line in them. Largeness
of thought and greatness of feeling inspire them, and they
palpitate with earnestness, strength, and courage.
The ablest reviewers of the time pronounced them " un-
excelled in modern times." One of the ablest critics of the
day, Samuel Johnson, thus sums up his estimate of them :
" They descend into the deeper and sadder experiences of
life, and deal with the highest problems and mysteries, while
they are yet full of cheer and health. They send the repose
of absolute truth and spiritual intuition through the aspira-
tions and conflicts of life, and give us its poetry and highest
philosophy. The author will have the deepest thanks of
many, who will not know how to express the enjoyment and
the good they find in them."
It is evident that the poet has come off conqueror in
whatever mental conflict she has struggled ; that she has
learned the mission of suffering, has attained to that patience
which is power, to that peace which is diviner than hap-
piness. For, as she soars far up into the blue, she sings
exultingly :
41
672 ANNE WHITNEY.
" Thou sett' st me above Time's annoy :
I found delight, and it was pain :
Thou gavest pain, and it was joy,
Token of unaccomplished growth,
Stern pledge of immortality.
Through all the earth's perplexed domain,
Just God ! I would that there should be
No living thing that should not suffer PAIN."
That our poet has divined the secret of noble living is also
manifest, for she writes :
" All that he has or is, who gives,
With whom no earth-born wish survives
To hoard his little grief or bliss,
God his great debtor surely is,
And pays infinity. Who meet
The coming fate half-way, and fling
Their blessed treasures at her feet,
Shall feel through all her clamoring,
Her hard eye quail. She knows "'twere vain
To empty what God brims again"
W r riting while the country was in the throes of the anti-
slavery agitation, it was not possible for Miss Whitney to
ignore the nation's sin and shame ; for there is reformatory
blood in her veins, and her love of justice rendered her hate
of slavery peculiarly strong. Such of her poems as touch the
national evil read as though the heart's hot blood were cours-
ing through the lines.
Conspicuous for the spirit of beauty which glows within
them, are "Five Sonnets relating to Beauty." Two of these
are given, not as the best that could be quoted, but because
they seem to foreshadow the career of the author in which
love of beauty and love of form were to be united, and on
which she presently entered :
" Largess from sevenfold heavens, I pray, descend
On all who toil for Beauty ! Never feet
Grow weary that have done her bidding sweet
About the careless world ! For she is friend
ANNE WHITNEY. 673
And darling of the universe ; and day by day,
She comes and goes, but never dies,
So precious is she in the eternal eyes.
Oh, dost thou scorn her, seeing what fine way
She doth avenge ? For heaven,- because of her,
Shall one day find thee fitter. How old hours
Of star-rapt night about thy heart had curled,
And thou hadst felt the morning's golden stir,
And the appealing loveliness of flowers,
Yea, all the saving beauty of the world."
" And for that thou art Beauty, and thy name
Transcends all praise of thee, and doth but leave
Thyself for thy true rendering, I grieve
O'er idle words. Oh, never dost thou blame,
But seekest to inspire me all the same,
With thine immortal freshness ! Through the night
The moon comes large and slow, winging with light
The joyous sea ; while sunset's last red flame,
Baring the heavens for glories to succeed,
Goes softly out, with endless farewell gleams,
Ebbing along the yellow marge of day ;
Glides slow, with backward gaze ; sadly, indeed,
And slow, as from the heart which new love claims,
An older memory doth steal away."
Miss Whitney's book of poems was so warmly welcomed
that it was hoped she would devote her life to poetry ; and it
seemed certain, at one time, that she would choose literature
as the field for the exercise of her talents. A seemingly
slight circumstance gave a different bent to her genius. She
had been modelling for some time, for her own pleasure, and
with no definite purpose, sometimes using snow, sometimes
wet sand, clay, or any other convenient plastic material.
One day, having overturned a pot of sand in the green-house,
which, from its dampness, readily took impressions, she
began to model it, keeping at the work for hours, and return-
ing to it next day with zest, till she had wrought out her
idea. Her thought had taken visible form ; and it gave her
such satisfaction that she then and there decided to make sculpt-
74 ANNE WHITNEY.
ure the pursuit of her life, and began to work immediately and
in earnest. For a long time she modelled in a studio in the
garden of her country home, for the mere pleasure of the
work, not caring for a wider theatre of effort.
The change from poetry to sculpture is very great. To
the largest success in either art the very highest power of
imagination is necessary. There can be no power in art
without it, no grand work. But poetry is a vague, indefi-
nite, fluent mode of expressing ideas ; while sculpture
compels a close defining of them, that they may be given
expression within certain fixed limits. This change in her
methods of expression wrought a corresponding change in
Anne Whitney ; and those who watched her progress saw
that her conceptions, embodied no longer in verse, but in
plaster and marble, took on diviner grace and beauty, with
intenser strength and power.
If we accept the latest scientific teaching, we must believe
that great power in art manifestation can only come from a
high level of art attainment in the community. But facts,
brought from near and remote times, do not seem to sustain
this inference. Not to go back to other lands and distant
centuries in search of greater names, it is enough to recall
the fact that our two most eminent painters, Allston and
Stuart, sprang from the unlikely soil of puritan New England.
The art idea had not then dawned as an inspiration on the
minds of the few, or been taken up as a superficial catch-
word on the lips of the many. When Anne Whitney first
began to dream of the possibility of embodying in form the
thoughts that, heretofore, she had expressed in verse, tnere
were not more than a dozen persons in New England who
were known as working in the same direction. There were
no teachers; there was no interest in sculpture as having
anything to do with to-day, except in the way of parlor-
mantel ornamentation, or plaster reproductions of the antique,
no intelligent sympathy anywhere. Criticism was poor,
always from the point, as is much of what is called criti
cism to-day, and praise was poorer.
ANNE WHITNEY. 675
On such times she fell. She pursued her way, guided by
what is called genius ; and certainly one cannot but perceive
in her that instinctive feeling of the requirements of art that
guided her in its pursuit. She did not felicitate herself on
this state of things. She has always felt as if her birthright
had been squandered ; that she might have been saved the
severe drill to which she subjected herself, by the experience
of others, and that the long results of time should have
been poured into her lap. To be sure, drill will not make
an artist, however courtesy may dispense titles, any more
than the study of prosody will make a poet. Seeing and
feeling are indispensable to any real knowing, and all other
knowledge is only chaff. On the other hand, whoever has
the " vision " knows better than any other how the " faculty "
is strengthened and enlarged by early habit and training, and
that the present is better and richer for all of the past that
can be poured into it. At one period Anne Whitney thought
she had found a teacher, but this proved an illusion. Her
native force saved her in this emergency.
As to the motives that ruled her, she once said, in a letter
to a friend : " I hold that art, at its best, is only an expres-
sion of the life of the people, in infinite adaptation, and
that its scope is correspondingly broad and varied. I hate the
pedantry of prescriptions. Whoever prescribes limits to this
expression, and labels his article, " Art for art's sake only,"
or, " Beauty is the sole end of art," or, " No art without
a moral purpose," I hold to be a weak brother, deserving
commiseration."
Anne Whitney began her work in sculpture by making
portrait busts of her father and mother and friends, which
were full of life and spirit, working in a studio in the garden
of her home. These proved that she had not mistaken her
vocation. She then attempted her first ideal work, modelling
and putting into marble her beautiful conception of " Lady
Godiva," which occupied her a year. The moment of the
legend, of which this statue is the graceful embodiment, was
most happily chosen. As Tennyson gives us the tale, in his
676 ANNE WHITNEY.
matchless poem, " Godiva, wife to that grim Earl," who
overtaxed his people till they starved, entreated him to remit
the tax. To his scornful reply that she ft would not let her
little finger ache for such as they," she made the woman's
answer, " But I would die ! Prove me what it is I would not
do ! " "Ride you naked through the town, and I repeal the
tax ! " was his rough answer.
Moved by pity she accepted the hard condition. The
artist has seized the moment when divine compassion has
triumphed over a protracted conflict of passion and feeling.
The heroic spirit which dares so much to redeem an over-
burdened people looks out from the marble upturned face,
seeking resolution from the skies, and the graceful woman's
figure seems to dilate with the lofty purpose which sways her
soul. One hand has unclasped the "wedded eagles" of her
girdle, the other sweeps off the half-fallen mantle. The
beautiful feminine figure is instinct with a grand impulse ; and
one feels the tenderness and modesty, as well as the strength
and will, that almost breathe from the marble.
The "Godiva" was exhibited in the old art-gallery of
Messrs. Childs & Jenks, Boston. A few months later, Miss
Whitney added to her growing fame by placing at its side her
"Africa," a colossal statue of another type, the expression
of a grander and broader thought. Her deep interest in the
slaves of the South, her ability to forecast the inevitable
sequence of the heroic events that hastened, one on the heels
of the other, for it was during the war, uplifted her to
the summit of prophecy, and she saw in the near future the
deliverance of a race from imbruting bondage, and, later,
the illumination of the dark continent from which it sprang.
This grand and mighty conception she sought to embody in
form. If the attempt savored of audacity, undertaken at
that early stage of Miss Whitney's art career, she was justi-
fied, not only by the blood of the reformer that thrilled in
her veins, but by her remarkable success.
The symbolization is that of a colossal Ethiopian woman,
in a half recumbent position. The immense proportions of
ANNE WHITNEY. 677
the statue express the teeming luxuriance of the tropics in
which she had her birth. She has been sleeping for ages in
the glowing sands of the desert, out of which she is lifting
herself. The measured tramp of armies, marching for her
deliverance, the thunder of artillery, the shock and roar of
battle, have awakened her. Half rising, with sleep yet heavy
on her eyelids, she supports herself on the left hand and arm,
while she listens with fear and wonder to the sound of broken
chains and shackles falling around her. The glory of a new
day shines full upon her, and with her right hand she shades
her eyes from the painful light. Doubt, fear, wonder, hope,
pain, are all marvellously blended in the half-awakened face.
The base of the statue bore the inscription, " And Ethiopia
shall soon stretch out her hands to God." It was a masterly
design, wrought out in a most triumphant manner. It im-
itated no model, followed no tradition, copied no antique, but
was a fresh, original masterpiece of genius, contributed to
the art and history of the time.
Its reception by the public was most gratifying. Not only
in Boston, but in New York, where it was exhibited with the
"Godiva," it attracted attention to the artist, who was de-
clared " not merely high among female artists, but high in art
itself, that knows no sex." The African race was then the
subject of absorbing interest. All the air was 'astir with
nobler interpretations of liberty than had been dreamed of
before, and on all lips thrilled the inquiry, " What is to be
the future of this newly-freed people ? " The throngs that
visited the gigantic " Africa " stood dumb before her. So
legible and well-expressed was the sentiment of the artist,
that even the uninstructed in art throbbed in sympathy with
it. It received much intelligent and some extravagant praise,
as did the " Godiva," and also much criticism, which its
author welcomed. For no one can criticise her work more
severely than herself, her ideal being very high, and her
character unblemished by weak egotism.
It is to be regretted that Miss Whitney has had no oppor-
tunity to put this statue into enduring bronze. Not only the
678 ANNE WHITNEY.
nobleness of the conception, but the fact that it was inspired
by one of the grandest incidents of American history, should
confer on it the immortality of bronze or marble. To future
generations it would take high rank as a historic statue, keep-
ing green the memory of the time when, on the top wave of
a nation's righteous wrath with slavery, four million of slaves
were lifted to the level of freemen.
Miss Whitney's next work was a translation into form of
the old fable of the ancients, which Tennyson has reproduced
in his poem, " The Lotus-Eater." This was, in some respects,
a more ambitious work than any of its predecessors. For it
was an undraped figure, and there were difficulties to be over-
come that she had not met in her other works. Her success-
ful treatment of them indicated a yet farther advance in her
art. She represented the " Lotus-Eater " as a youth n the
early flush of manhood. He has eaten of the seductive fruit
"whereof who tastes forgets his native country," and loses all
desire to return 'to it, but ever after gives himself to pleasure-
seeking. With half-shut eyes that " seem falling asleep in a
half dream," muscles relaxed in purposeless idleness, senses
steeped in delicious languor, he leans against the trunk of a
palm-tree, the head, splendidly set on the shoulders, being
supported by the upraised right arm.
And now came the time so long anticipated, so dear to the
artist, when, accompanied by her inseparable friend, herself a
worker in another domain of art, whose tastes are akin to her
own, and whose life is united with hers in a beautiful friend-
ship, Miss Whitney went abroad. Here she spent five years,
chiefly in Rome, but pursuing her work also in Florence,
Munich, and Paris, studying, drawing and modelling, as she
had opportunity. "The study of ancient sculpture," she
says, " was my greatest help." With drawing in the galleries,
and practice and study from life in her studio, the time went
on. She secluded herself from general society, never going
into large companies, as is her habit, for the most part, at
home. When expostulated with because of this seclusion,
and assured that it would be injurious to her health, and hei 1
ANNE WHITNEY. 679
popularity as well, she answered, "You must consider my
limitations. I really have the power to do but one of two
things. Choose."
o
What benefit was to be derived from the criticism of artists
and friends, she eagerly availed herself of, especially of the
clear intelligence, and native and instructed feeling for art, of
the friend who accompanied her. She sought after a better
and completer technique, that she might more adequately ex-
press her ideal, not differing in this respect from other artists.
But while all artists believe that art is only a mode of ex-
pression, Miss Whitney bore with her to Europe, along with
the ideals of half a lifetime, a keen sensitiveness to real
tilings, as distinguished from the superficial motives that pre-
sent themselves in what may be new or picturesque. She
enjoyed and appreciated the studies of her brother-artists in
Italy. But however great her admiration of their flights into
the realms of fancy, their translation of Greek myths, and
representation of marble modern gods, her own bent was
always grave ; and if her work was not representative of
something in the depths of her own being, she had little
satisfaction in it.
While abroad she made many sketches, and modelled sev-
eral fine statues. One of these was a male figure, the "Chal-
dean Astronomer," standing reverently in the midnight,
intently studying the silent stars, and measuring " celestial
spaces " with parted fingers. She moulded a charming group
of three baby-figures, rounded and dimpled, perfectly indic-
ative of the infantile innocence and unconsciousness which
she sought to copy . They were exquisite in their sweetness
of expression and truthfulness to nature.
Miss Whitney's strong feeling against slavery once more
uttered itself in a work of art. The subject of her next
sketch was one of the most remarkable men of the last gen-
eration, the great St. Domingo chief, statesman, and gov-
ernor, Toussaint L'Ouverture, an unmixed negro, born a
slave, with no drop of white blood in his veins. He was
the hero of Harriet Martineau's thrilling book, "The Hour
ANNE WHITNEY.
and the Man." Wendell Phillips made him the subject of a
superb lecture, delivered hundred's of times during the anti-
slavery struggle of our country, in the leading towns and
cities of the North.
Gathering the materials for Toussaint's biography from the
lips of his enemies, he graphically recounted the royal career
of the man, from day to day, when, in 1791, St. Domingo
was convulsed by a war of races, and a war of nations,
" the white race against the mulatto and black, the black
against both ; the Frenchman against the English and Span-
iard, the Spaniard against both." Step by step he led his
audiences down the years in which Toussaint, a Metternich
and a Washington united, calmed the insurrection, created an
invincible army out of negroes demoralized by two centuries
of slavery, hurled them like a thunderbolt against both
Frenchmen and Spaniards, conquering both, " sent the Eng-
lish skulking home to Jamaica," and restored to the negro the
liberty God gave him.
Then with "peace restored to every household on the
island, the valleys laughing with fertility, culture climbing the
mountains, the commerce of the world anchoring in its har-
bors," order reigning unbroken through all its highways and
by-ways, Toussaint made the only mistake of his life. He
disbanded his army, and, loyal to the French government, he
trusted in the perfidious first Napoleon, and yielded to him the
government of St. Domingo. Ordered to Paris, the self-
made Emperor flung him into jail, and then honored still fur-
ther the confidence of the black hero, by incarcerating him
in a stone dungeon of a castle in Switzerland, and leaving
him "a sunny child of the tropics " to die of cold and
starvation.
" Fifty years hence," says Wendell Phillips, in the sublime
peroration of his marvellous lecture, " when truth gets a hear-
ing, the Muse of History will put Phocion for the Greek, and
Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for England, and Fayette for
France, choose Washington as the bright consummate flower
of our earlier civilization, and John Brown as the ripe fruit
ANNE WHITNEY 681
of our noonday, and then, dipping her pen in the sunlight,
will write in the clear blue above them all, the name of the
soldier, the statesman, the martyr Toussaint L'Ouverture."
It was this noble Haytien, whom the world would proudly
remember in immortal marble but for his unpardonable crime
of wearing a black skin over his white soul, that Anne Whit-
ney chose for her next sketch. Could she have Delected a
worthier subject? The event of his life which she has em-
bodied in her representation, is his imprisonment by Napo-
leon. He sits alone in his stony dungeon, nude, save for a
rude covering about the waist. With tropical blood in his
veins, there is ice on his floor in winter, and water in sum-
mer. He writes to his Emperor : " Sire, I am a French citi-
zen. I never broke a law. By the grace of God, I saved for
you the best island of your realm. Sire, of your mercy,
grant me justice ! " No answer is returned. He is scorned,
betrayed, ignored, doomed he must die. Above the lust
of gold, pure in private life, generous in the use of power,
always obedient to law, he is yet to die, ignominiously,
starved, like a rat in his hole. He comprehends it all.
But not a line of his face betrays weakness or fear, not a
shade of bitterness or hate darkens it. Instead of this, it is
noble in its expression of endurance and heroism. Intensely
serious and sad, he leans forward, looking you straight in the
face, while his right hand indicates the inscription he has traced
on the floor, " Dieu se charge!" Forsaken by all, justice
denied him, and a dishonored grave awaiting him, he is yet
brave and strong; for a just God is in the heavens. With
Him he rests his case. The lines of the figure are admira-
ble ; and, while the face and form are full of force and
character, there is great simplicity in Miss Whitney's treat-
ment of the subject. The technique of the sketch is so
completely subordinated to the grand idea, that one forgets
to observe the methods by which it has been wrought,
and looks beyond to the hero whom it commemorates, with a
heart full of sympathy for his hard fate, and eyes dim with
tears, for his unrecognized greatness.
682 A"OTE WHITNEY.
It was while she was in Rome that Miss Whitney conceived
the idea of a statue that must rank with the best sculpture of
modern times, and which took such hold of her imagination
that she wrought it out in a wonderfully forcible and impres-
sive manner. Her "Roma," like her " Africa," is grand in
conception. It has been fitly called a "thinking statue/'
Only an artist of the highest power could have designed it.
It is the Borne of Pio Nono's time that is represented,
" Childless and crownless in her voiceless woe."
Miss Whitney has personified Rome as a Roman beggar,
whose aged and wrinkled face shows traces of early, majestic
beauty. She sits on a broken Corinthian capital, with her
head thrown forward in a profound revery. She is looking
back mournfully into the past, and memories of her glorious
history defile before her. Her robes flow about her in simple,
classic folds, her gown revealing something of its former
magnificence ; for it is bordered with medallions of her antique
sculptures, the precious art treasures of the world, which it is
an art education to see and to study. She who wears it was
once the mistress of the world, although now its fringes are
rent, its hem is tattered, its glory and beauty are tarnished.
Her left hand, resting loosely at her side, barely holds the
badge which the beggars of that day were compelled to wear,
a medal, on which is stamped, " Questvante in Roma,'"
licensed to beg in Rome, with the number of the license on
it. Her right hand lies listlessly in her lap, and from her
nerveless fingers the coins, grudgingly given her, drop
unheeded ; for her thoughts are far away, and she recks not
now of gifts or givers. " But for the awful fame of Michael
Angelo," writes an art critic, " one would almost dare to
match her face with that of the Cumaean sybil, it is so lined
and scarred with traces of her marvellous experience of joy
and sorrow."
Of what is she thinking? Of the glory of her past, when
all the world paid tribute to her, and she was the leader of
its highest civilization? Of the provinces she conquered,
AN1STE WHITNEY. 683
which enriched her with their art, and skill, and learning, and
fresh, untainted blood? Of the roads she built, and the
bridges with which she spanned the rivers, over which
marched the Roman legions to conquest? Of the legal code
she formulated, which has been the basis of the world's
jurisprudence from that day to the present ? Of the advent
of a new, simple, pure religion, when Christianity opened to
her the possibilities of a glorious future, until its priests
prostituted it to the basest purposes, and it became the ally
of ignorance, the nurse of superstition, and the strong arm of
tyranny and injustice? Possibly. For at her left side, there
is half concealed the triple papal mitre, symbolic of the cause
of her pauperism, ignorance, and woe.
It is impossible to fitly describe this statue, so as to give
an idea of the impression it makes on the beholder, or the
vastness of its meaning, the more thoroughly it is studied.
It is not strange that it caused a great sensation in Rome,
where its meaning was fully understood. To the Italians, it
dilated with significance, which angered or thrilled them,
according as they were the friends of the church and the
government, or aspired to that better day, which has since
dawned, when Rome should be free from the temporal rule
of the pope, and dismembered Italy be unified, under a free,
wise, strong, liberal government. Its power was so deeply
felt in Rome, as showing the world's enthralling city in all
the woe of her decadence, that it was thought necessary for
its safety to send it to Florence, where it was welcomed to
the house of the American Minister, and kept till it was sent
to America. Although this remarkable work has been put
into marble, it should be duplicated in bronze, when it would
be enduring, and, like Miss Whitney's "Africa," would take
rank with the historic statues of the world, telling the story
of the past more forcibly than can the printed page.
Returning home with a completer technical skill, with
enlarged conceptions of art, and the inspiration born of years
of contact and communion with the great masterpieces of
the world, Miss Whitney resumed her diligent work in the
ANNE WHITNEY.
studio, and continued to design and to model. She executed
several commissions for portrait busts, which gave entire
satisfaction to the large constituencies interested, and evoked
almost unqualified praise from art critics. One was a bust,
in marble, of President Stearns, made for Amherst College.
Another, a bust in bronze of President Walker of Harvard
College, was designed for the cloisters at Memorial Hall.
She has since duplicated it in marble for the church of which
President Walker was formerly the minister. Both are re-
markable for their strong grasp of character, for the impres-
sive dignity of the expression, and for their admirable likeness,
which is acknowledged by all familiar with Dr. Walker's face.
A bust in marble of William Lloyd Garrison is an excellent
characterization of this eminent man, who was so widely
known, and who has so recently left us, that his face and
figure are fresh in all memories. The easy pose of the head,
the kindliness of the wise smile, and the benignity and noble-
ness of the face are finely wrought out in an almost perfect
representation. Miss Whitney also made a marble head of
Keats, which is exquisite in beauty and grace. It is modelled
from an authentic cast, from accurate portraits, from a
knowledge of the man derived from a study of his poems,
and from first sources. It gives one the satisfaction of a
perfect work, and the more thoroughly it is studied, the
keener is one's delight in it. It is alive with intellect,
sensibility and grace, and appeals eloquently to the heart by
its tender delicacy, which suggests the broken life of the
poet, who mourned that his " name was writ in water."
But of all Miss Whitney's heads in marble, that of her
inseparable friend and home companion is most charming. It
is the head of a beautiful woman, as simple and unaffected as
a flower, with no artificial posing, no straining after effect, no
hint of self-consciousness. No lovelier portrait of young
womanhood could be made, nor one more suggestive of the
finest feminine qualities.
It became necessary for Miss Whitney to make a second
visit to Europe. She received from the state of Massachu-
ANNE WHITNEY. 685
setts a commission to make a statue, in marble, of Samuel
Adams, the Revolutionary patriot, to be placed in the national
gallery of the Capitol, in Washington. The committee de-
sired that the work should be done in Italy.
Samuel Adams was a leader of the Revolution, an orator,
whose fiery speech kindled the latent patriotism of the colo-
nists to flame, a man of unflinching courage, who never
quailed before a menace, or in the presence of a danger, a
man of prompt, decisive action, a lover of freedom, a hater
of tyranny ; modest, self-sacrificing, to whom country was
everything and all else secondary. Miss Whitney has been
singularly successful in her conception of the early patriot,
treating the subject with severe simplicity. Following the
plain citizen's dress of the time, she has subdued it to grace
and dignity. You see in her Adams a man of character, erect
and strong, with a noble bearing and a fine good face, both
face and figure instinct with energy, power, and thought.
He stands in perfect repose, with one leg slightly ad-
vanced. His arms are folded ; his head elevated ; there is
fiery earnestness in his manner. He demands of Governor
Hutchinson the immediate withdrawal of the British troops,
which have been stationed in the town of Boston for the last
eighteen months, a steady menace to its peace. His authority
is the vote of the town-meeting, which he holds, and which
is couched in indignant and peremptory language. Defiant,
he awaits the answer of the quailing official.
It is told of Michael Angelo, that, gazing long in admira-
tion at the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, at the
Roman Capitol, he exclaimed at last, " Cammina !" "Step
on ! " A lesser critic of our day, standing long in admiration
before Miss Whitney's statue of Adams, said, He will obtain
his demand presently ; then he will step down and walk away ! "
This almost breathing statue, full of resolve and fire, has
been reproduced in bronze, and stands in Dock Square, Bos-
ton, where it receives the silent greeting of the mighty
throngs that daily pass it, on the way from the railway sta-
tions in the northern part of the city.
J686 ANNE WHITNEY.
It was proposed to erect in Boston a statue to Charles
Simmer, and designs for a sitting statue were solicited by a
committee of gentlemen, of whom, contrary to European
custom, not one was an artist. Neither was there a woman
on the committee, although many American women, through
their genius and culture, and by their years of art study
abroad in the studios of the masters, and in the great gal-
leries, are better fitted to serve on art committees than are
some of the men elected to them, who are necessarily ab-
sorbed in business and politics.
Miss Whitney made a model for a sitting statue of Sumner,
which she sent to the competitive exhibition. It was the only
competition of her art career. The model was itself a work
of uncommon excellence, and suggested a statue of higher
merit than Americans are accustomed to see in their public
places. Mr. Sumner is represented seated, and the blazon
of the arms of the United States on the back of the chair
indicates the locality as the Senate Chamber.
The costume is such as Mr. Sumner was accustomed to
wear ; but the genius of the artist has subordinated the un-
graceful garments of the day to the refined, scholarly, strong
man who wears them, and the figure is clothed with dignity.
The character of the great statesman permeates and glorifies
the whole, the serene thought fulness of the face being recog-
nized as the habitual expression of the man, who had seen the
great cause with which he was identified carried to a grand
success. Around the pedestal, in high relief, is a procession
of figures symbolizing the emancipation of the American
slaves, classical in beauty, and typical of the great work of
Sumner's life. This model was exhibited to the public, not
only in Boston, but in New York, at the Union League Club,
from whose doors a colored regiment had marched to the war.
George William Curtis, whose opinion, both as a man of artistic
taste and culture and as a warm personal friend of Sumner, is
worthy of consideration, said of it in " Harper's Weekly " :
" In the sketch Mr. Sumner is represented sitting, and the
expression of his face and person is perfectly reproduced in
ANNE WHITNEY. 687
a free, graceful, and forcible manner, so that to all who knew
him personally, and to those who knew him only as a public
man, identified with a great cause, it is an admirable and most
satisfactory work."
Nevertheless, Miss Whitney, to the great disappointment
of all competent art judges, did not receive the award of the
committee. But as there is but one statue of Charles Sumner
in existence, and that not satisfactory, nor famed for excel-
lence, others are sure to be made. And the day is quite
certain to come when her statue, with increased beauty and
strength, will adorn some one of the public places of the
land, perpetuating his great memory, who "lent to the dumb
his voice," who gave to their darkness his light, and exchanged
his ease and restfulness for their life-long pain.
Miss Whitney spent a year in France during her second
journey abroad, familiarizing herself with the superior skill
of the French artists, and, their wonderful knowledge of the
human figure. She passed two months in a peasant village,
some twenty or thirty miles from Paris, modelling and study-
ing. Here she made three heads one, the head of a beau-
tiful girl, full of wild, free beauty, untrained and undevel-
oped. Another was the head of a peasant child, a frolicsome,
roguish little elf, with merriment lurking in every feature of
her face. The third was the head of an old woman, coiffed
with the marmotte, the ancient head-dress of the peasant
woman. The old woman was a model sent Miss Whitney on
application. But she came with the damaged reputation of
fulling asleep the moment she seated herself in the studio,
and consequently of being worthless as a model. Finding it
impossible to keep her awake, a sudden impulse seized Miss
Whitney to model her asleep? which she proceeded to do,
carrying her effort to a triumphant conclusion in a work of
realistic art.
This " delightfully ugly head," as some one calls it, abounds
in character. The French artists were delighted with the
quick wit of their transatlantic contemporary, who had seized
on a peculiarity which had thrown them into despair, and so
42
688 ANNE WHITNEY.
treated it as to make it illustrative of her versatile power.
These three differing heads received the high commendation
of French artists. When Miss Whitney applied to them for
instruction, wishing to work with one of them in the studio,
he replied : " Why do you want to study with French artists ?
You have nothing to learn from them."
Miss Whitney has put the head of the sleeping peasant
woman into bronze, so that perpetuity will be given to this
excellent work of realistic art. " If that peasant's head had
been dug up somewhere in Italy," says an artist friend, ff it
would be regarded as an undoubted antique, it has such direct
truth to nature, such perfect simplicity, and is so free from
the affectation of modern sculpture." Whatever the idea of
the artist, this bronze head fitly symbolizes France, broken
by revolutions, worn out by war, overcome by domestic
violence, degraded by submission to a despotism under the
name of a republic desiring only rest.
The latest great work of art which has occupied Miss Whit-
ney is a sitting statue of Harriet Martineau, a grand English-
woman of the last generation, whose long life of seventy-four
years was one of untiring industry, and of immense accom-
plishment. To all lovers of freedom, to all advocates of
justice, to all who believe in human progress, to all women
with a high ideal of womanhood, who rebel against the
infringement of their rights, and demand for women large
opportunity and complete justice, the memory of Harriet
Martineau is unspeakably dear. There are hundreds of
women, both in the old world and the new, many of them
in the afternoon of life, whose pulses beat at the mention of
her name.
The statue of Miss Martineau represents her in her prime,
sitting in a garden chair, on her terrace, as she was accus-
tomed, when in thought or study. A manuscript lies in her
lap, which she has been reading, and the beautiful hands are
folded over it. A shawl has dropped from her shoulders,
and partially drapes the figure. The hair falls softly about
the broad forehead, and is gathered in a simple coil low in
ANNE WHITNEY. 689
the neck. A lace head-dress, habitual to her in life, falls
gracefully on either side the head, and softens the features.
The head is lifted, and the eyes look out into space with a
far-reaching gaze, as if she were in deep thought, and felt a
reverential sense of something above her apprehension,
something above and beyond her. The attitude, the expres-
sion, the pose of the noble head, the face, instinct with grand
thoughts, the dignified repose of the figure, with a certain
sense of reserved power in the tout ensemble of the statue, all
grow upon you the longer it is studied. It is now being
reproduced in marble, symbolic of the purity of her whom it
will commemorate.
From the highest story of her home on the western slope
of Beacon Hill, Anne Whitney's studio commands a pictu-
resque landward view of her chosen city, chosen, notwith-
standing its perhaps undeserved reputation among sculptors,
of being unfriendly to their career. Few views of Boston
are more enchanting than this, whether it be seen by moon
or morning light. But, when beyond the Common and
the Public Garden, the towers and spires relieved above
the wide horizon line, "the perfect day shuts softly in,"
the view is unequalled. Here passes her diligent and de-
voted life, and here are clustered many of her loveliest
sketches; for her studio is peopled with "the beings of her
mind.''
A model of Garrison, soon to be put in bronze, sitting
easily in his chair, confronts you. He leans forward slightly,
one hand upon his knee, the kindly eyes, the parted lips, and
earnest face testifying to his interest in the question he is
discussing with a friendly guest.
Turn a little to one side, for another sketch invites your
attention, that of an equestrian statue. You recognize im-
mediately the thoughful face of the noble young officer, sitting
his horse firmly, to whom an important command has been
entrusted. Farewell, brave, unsullied young hero ! you are
riding away to death on the battlefield. To-night you will
lie cold and still among the brave dead of your command ;
690 ANNE WHITNEY.
to-morrow History will write your name in letters of living
light, for you die that a race may live !
Across the room stands out a sketch of a different order.
It palpitates with life, as its vis-d-vis is shaded with coming
death. It is a model of Lief, the young Norseman, the dar-
ing son of Eric, who, nearly nine centuries ago, discovered
America, and knew it not. Sailing from his native Norway,
skirting Iceland and Greenland, and coasting southward from
Labrador, he sailed into Massachusetts Bay, and discovered
the New World, which he called "Vineland." Clad in his
corslet, he has landed, and, raising himself to his full height,
gazes far out before him with eager expectancy. On his face
is wonder and a look of inquiry. He shades his eyes, for
the morning sun blinds him ; the morning air plays with his
clustering locks ; it is the morning of his young life, and he
is full of hope ; there is morning in his soul, for he has dis-
covered a world. How grandly would his eager, expectant
figure stand out against the blue, cut in colossal marble, and
surmounting a lofty column.
These, and other sketches, for mere mention of which space
is lacking, hold their places in her studio. Here also are
reminiscences of foreign travel, in bits of sculpture, antique
casts, photographs of Rome, and gems of the great art col-
lections. Here, until death stills the busy brain, and robs
the hand of its cunning, will Anne Whitney continue her
career; for her art is her life, and she is wedded to it in a
marriage that will never know divorce. Here will she con-
tinue to embody her beautiful conceptions, which, sometimes
faulty in detail, and sometimes in graces of finish, some-
times daring to audacity, and sometimes, as she herself
declares, needing severe critical judgment, are yet moulded
by feeling under the lead of thought, manifesting that high
ideal quality which marks the artist as distinguished from
the artisan.
CHAPTER XXX.
FRANCES E. WILLABD.
BY KATE SANBORN.
An After-dinner Speech An Amusing Incident A Southern Clergyman's
Opinion Miss VVillard's Ancestry Memories of Childhood's Days
Scenes from the Past Amusing Extract from Her Diary Her Keen
Sense of Humor Climbing the Pyramids "Genteel" Gymnastics
"Paul Tucker, of New York, Aged 18*" Miss Willard's Life-work
Delivering Her First Lecture A Genuine Sensation Enlisting in the
Temperance Work Liberality and Sense of Justice Religious Nature
Specimen of Her Oratory Marvellous Command of Language Ex-
periences in the South A Southern Welcome How She is Appreciated
at Home Universally Loved, Honored, and Respected.
E live so fast nowadays that it is becoming
the custom to publish biographies of our
notables while they are yet with us. Emer-
son, Whittier, and Lowell have all been
served up by eager admirers. If you are at
all distinguished in any direction from poli-
tics to pugilism, literature or leather ; if you 've
made an effort to perch on the North Pole or
1 cross the Atlantic in a row-boat ; if you do
nothing in particular, but live on to an unconscion-
able period, you may be sure that in many a snug
pigeon-hole several paragraphs are filed away which will tell
the public at the earliest moment after your demise every
important event in your career from cradle to grave.
If Queen Victoria hurts her knee, or Bismarck has an
unusual twinge of sciatica, or President Arthur labors under
a spring siege with catarrh, or a stray shot through a carriage
long after a prominent statesman has left it, gives rise to a
report of "attempted assassination," then the elaborate obit-
uary notices are taken out, revised, and brought down to
latest date.
691
692 FRANCES E. WILLARD.
I used to marvel at the celerity and exactness of these
mortuary tributes ; now they strike me as very much like
that famous impromptu of Sheridan's, which startled England
by its brilliancy, but which was found in a desk after his
death, written in many forms, labored over, touched and
retouched, polished until it shone a perfect gem.
Harriet Martineau, always prudent and provident, wrote her
own obituary for the London " daily " with which she had
corresponded for years, a very good idea. I only hope
Miss Willard may not have a suppressed wish to write mine
after reading the closing pages of this book, for I have
promised to "do" that noble woman, and as the various
sketches are to be arranged alphabetically, I am sure W is the
last letter that can boast of being the initial letter of any
famous American name. It was Gail Hamilton, I think,
who said with wit and truth that there was a strong tendency
among American women to sit down on the curbstone and
o
write each others lives. I feel the awkwardness of the situa-
tion, and would like to run away, as I once did after listening
to the heroine of my story. May I tell you about it?
It was two years ago, at the anniversary dinner of
w Sorosis," in New York, and I had half promised the persua-
sive president (Jennie June), that I would say " something."
The possibility of being called up for an after-dinner speech !
Something brief, terse, sparkling, original, satisfactory oh,
you know the agony ! I had nothing in particular to say ;
wanted to be quiet and enjoy the treat. But between each
course, from oysters to black coffee, I tried hard, while appar-
ently listening to my neighbor, to think up something " neat and
appropriate." To those who have not the gift of ready, grace-
ful, off-hand utterance before a crowd, this coming martyrdom,
which increases in horror as you advance with deceptive gayety
from roast to game, and game to ices, is really one of the
severest trials of social life. Miss Willard happened to be
one of the honored guests that day, and was called on first.
I had previously indulged in an ignorant and extremely fool-
ish horror of those crusading temperance fanatics.
FRANCES E. WILLARD.
FRANCES E. WILLARD. 695
When Miss Willard rose and began to speak I felt
instantly that she had something to say ; something that she
felt it was important we should hear, and how beauti-
fully, how impressively, how simply it was said ! not a
thought of self, not one instant's hesitation for a thought or
word. Every eye was drawn to her earnest face ; every
heart was touched. As she sat down I rose, leaving the
room rather rapidly, and when my name was called, and my
little speech was expected, I was walking up Fifth Avenue,
thinking about her and her grand work. The whole thing
was a revelation to me. I had never met such a woman. No
affectation, nor pedantry, nor mannishness to mar the effect.
Of course it was the humiliating contrast between her soul-
stirring words and my miserable little society effort, that
drove me from the place, but all petty egotism vanished
before the wish to be of real use to others with which her
earnestness had inspired me. This is the effect she produces,
this the influence she exerts.
Do you remember one of the poems in the second volume
of " Hymns of the Ages," beginning,
" Late to our town there came a maid,
A noble woman, true and pure,
Who, in the little while she stayed,
Wrought works that shall endure."
The last lines of this verse express the blessed results of
her daily efforts.
A clergyman who came in late on the occasion of her
lecture in Charleston, said: "I expected to find a cropped-
haired, masculine-looking individual, with hands in pocket
and voice keyed up to high C, and could scarcely believe my
eyes when I saw a graceful, beautiful woman, simply and yet
tastefully dressed, standing modestly in front of the pulpit,
and in soft, sweet tones, pleading for those who could not
plead for themselves. I had not listened two minutes before
I surrendered, and I could now no more doubt her call to the
work she is engaged in than I could question my own call to
the ministry."
696 FRANCES E. WILLARD.
If you ask why Miss Willard took up the work to which
she is devoting her life, I should answer as I firmly believe,
she was called of God. Let me run over rapidly the princi-
pal events of her life, that most of the space allotted be given
to her own words. Blood tells, and you will always find
that a strong man or women has good " stock" to draw from.
It would take too long to name all the famous ancestry, for
the line goes back to the Conquest ; and I agree with Charles
Lamb, who thought that dwelling with too much pride
on one's genealogy made one too much like a potato
all that was best of you under the ground. Suffice it to
state that one of the Willards was president of Harvard
College, and another figured as vice-president ; still another
was pastor of the veritable "Old South," another was the
architect of Bunker Hill Monument, another helped to
found Concord, Mass. That is a record to satisfy the bluest
blood of Boston !
Frances was born in Churchville, New York, but her parents
removed to Oberlin, Ohio, when she was but three years of age.
They had both been teachers and were now anxious to pursue
their studies further. The father was soon a leader at the
West in politics, agriculture, education, and finance; the
mother, God bless her ! a woman far in advance of her a<?e,
o '
and determined to give her daughters every possible advan-
tage. " She held that nature's standard ought to be restored ;
and that woman's influence and enfranchisement are the foun-
tains of healing for the majority of ills in civil service. Her
ideal was that if our disabilities were removed it would bring
about the summum bonum of human desire and aspiration,
and argued that the going forth of the two halves of hu-
manity would help solve the problem that so puzzles the
thinking part of the world, viz. : " Why are the balance of
soul-forces so hopelessly out of plumb ? "
^ With her only brother Oliver, and her darling sister Mary,
Frances now spent thirteen years on a large form near Janes-
ville, Wisconsin. Oh, the good times they had ! the merry
romps and ingenious games and imitations of mature life ; and
FRANCES E. WILLARD. 697
who can doubt that this constant communion with nature had
its effect?
The little folks got up an infinite variety of amusements.
They organized a board of public works, laid out towns and
villages, dabbled with clay in their "Art Club," and you may
be sure that literature was not forgotten. Frances not only
edited a newspaper, but wrote a long novel, poured forth her
soul in rhyme and kept a journal. She read what books
she could find, but the library was extremely limited, and an
occasional newspaper brought home in the father's pocket was
a rare treat. What a pretty word-picture she gives of the
home :
" You ask for my memories of those young years. Were
I a poet I might sing of them so that vistas in the woods, the
murmur of streams, the odor of moss and violets, and the
taste of nuts and berries should come to your imagination as
you heard me. O Nature ! glorious mirror of Divinity !
What constant students were we of thy myriad forms and
mysteries all through those years of childhood !
" As I write, separated by hundreds of miles from the dear
old home, past scenes rise before me, sounds once familiar
are in my ears. Away in the pasture the cow-bell's mellow
tinkle is heard, bringing suggestions of cool and shady places,
of odors moist and sweet. The drowsy, dreamy feeling
comes ao'ain, the same which the music of the bells brought
o ' O
with it long ago. Again the wind is making that endless,
breathing sound among the tree-tops ; again the liquid notes
of the blackbirds join in chorus, in the poplar grove down
by the river ; again the complaint of the mourning dove,
sweetest and saddest of songs, comes from the lonely depths
of the woods. And so the spell is upon me, and I will
picture a few scenes from the past.
" A queer old cottage with rambling roof, gables, dormer-
windows, and little porches, crannies, and out-of-the-way
nooks scattered here and there, was our home. The bluffs,
so characteristic of Wisconsin, rose about it on the right and
left. The beautiful Kock River flowed at the west side ; to
698 FRANCES E. WILLARD.
the east a prairie stretched away to meet the horizon, yellow
with grain in summer, fleecy with snow in the winter of the
year. Groves of oak and hickory are on either hand ; a
miniature forest of evergreens almost conceals the cottage
from the view of passers-by ; a vine the Virginia creeper
twines at will around the pillars of the piazza and over the
parlor windows, while its rival, the Michigan rose, clambers
over trellis and balustrade to the roof. The air is laden with
the perfume of flowers. Through the thick and luxuriant
growth of shrubbery paths stray off aimlessly, tempting the
feet of the curious down their mysterious aisles."
Bits from her diary at sixteen show how perfectly natural
and girlish she was at an age when young ladies are now fitted
for college :
" Caught a blue-jay in my trap out in the hazel thicket. I
knew that he wasn't 'game,' and let him go. The school-house
in our district is just finished. I shall attend regularly, visit-
ing my traps on the way." Later, " Sister and I got up long
before light to prepare for the first day at school. Put all
our books in mother's satchel. Had a nice tin pail full of
dinner. Study arithmetic, geography, grammar, reading, and
spelling, 'which takes up every minute of my time. Stood
next to Pat O'Donahue in spelling, and Pat stood at the
head."
"This is my seventeenth birthday and the oath of my
martyrdom. Mother insists that I shall have my hair done
up woman fashion, and my dress made to trail like hers.
She says she shall never forgive herself for letting me run
wild so long. We had a great time over it all, and here I sit
like another Sampson shorn of my strength. That figure
wont do though, for the greatest trouble with me is I shall
never be shorn again; my back-hair is twisted up like a
corkscrew. I carry eighteen hairpins ; my head aches ; my
feet are entangled in the skirt of my new gown. I can never
jump over a fence again so long as I live. As for chasing the
sheep down in the shady pasture it's out of the question, and
FRANCES E. WILLARD. 699
to climb to my eagle's-nest seat in the big burr-oak would
ruin this new frock beyond repair. Altogether, I recognize
the fact that my occupation's gone."
This was indeed her last glimpse of perfect freedom. Soon
came a term of study with Miss Catherine Beecher, then a
year at a ladies' seminary, from which she graduated with
honor, having attended school in all but thirty-six months.
Of course, the next question was, "What shall I do?"
and in her readiness for work she taught school in a little red
hovel a regular " deestrict " school. And from that she
went on and up until she was preceptress of the Genesee
Wesleyan Seminary at Seneca, N. Y. It was about this time
that she wrote a touching tribute to her sister Mary, who had
been taken from the happy circle. In " Nineteen Beautiful
Years " their childhood and home life is perfectly reproduced.
Next came two years and more in Europe with a friend,
Miss Willard, studying and observing as she travelled,
writing home her experiences for various papers.
From her lecture on " The Pyramids " I give an extract to
show her power of graphic portraiture and her keen sense of
humor :
" We cross the limits of the belt of green, which is old
father Nile's perpetual gift to Egypt ; the desert's golden edge
comes nearer, and at last, our white-robed Arab checks his
steed at the foot of Cheops' pyramid, where shade of
great Pharaoh, forgive prosaic Yankees ! the Cheops
restaurant treats us all to Smyrna dates and Turkish coffee.
A banditti of Bedouins, fierce-eyed and unsavory, surrounds
us as we emerge from our retreat, and clamor for their priv-
ilege of pulling and pushing, twisting and hallooing us up
the saw-tooth side of the monster pyramid. We get speed-
ily to windward, assure them that, as for us, we've " not the
least idea of going up " (at least not now) , and turn aside to
visit the tomb-pits at the left, hoping to shake off the odious
crew. But you might just as well try to dismiss the plague
by a dancing-room bow ; the old lady Fates by raising your
hat; or the neighborhood bore by a glance at your chro-
700 FRANCES E. WILLARD.
nometer. They career before us, a tatterdemalion throng ;
they lag behind us, they dance about us, they grin, they
groan, they lay their hands upon their hearts and point with
melodramatic finger to the serene heights they would gladly
help us climb ; while the one refrain from which, for two con-
secutive breaths, they are utterly incapable of refraining, is,
"Goin' up, mister madame ! Yankee Doodle, goin' up!
Ver good, thankee. Yankee Doodle go up ebery time ! "
And her description of the " getting up-stairs " when fairly
started, is capital, but too long to quote. She says :
" Just try, some day, in the solitude of your apartment, to
step 'genteelly' from floor to mantlepiece, or on top of the
bureau ; do this one hundred times in fourteen minutes, and
see if the achievement is'nt a feat.
"Above the solemn doorway of the King's tomb, in letters
several feet long, done in black paint, we had the mortifica-
tion of seeing this inscription :
* PAUL TUCKER, or NEW YORK/
" All the way up the Nile, even to Philae, we had found this
same epitaph of American refinement. But on a tablet so
tempting as the front angle of the ' Big Pyramid,' the con-
fiding Paul had vouchsafed a bit of personal history, else-
where withheld. Beneath his name he had printed in strag-
gling capitals, this time not more than a foot apiece in
altitude
' AGED 18J.'
" It was a pleasant and consoling thing to know how tender
were his years."
During her stay abroad her attention was drawn to the dis-
tressing condition of women in the East, and indeed in the
greater part of Europe, and she was led to ask, " What can
be done to make the world a wider place for women ? " But
she has never been in the least an extremist on the "woman
question." It is the "human" question that thrills every
fibre of her heart, " believing that whatever dwarfs woman
FRANCES E. WILLARD. 701
dwarfs man, and that her low estate has been the check on civil-
ization." She is a true lover of woman, a woman's woman.
On her return she was appointed Dean of the Woman's Col-
lege at Evanston, Illinois, where she labored faithfully and
with marked success for three years. Says Miss Gordon :
Were one to ask the salient features of her work as a
teacher, the reply would be, the development of individual
character along intellectual and moral lines, the revelation to
her pupils of their special powers and vocation as workers,
her constantly recurring question being not only " What are
you going to be in the world ? " but " What are you going to
do ? " So that after six months under her tuition each of her
scholars had a definite idea of a life-work.
In a series of " Talks to Girls," written for the ft Chicago
Post," she says, "Let me now, for a brief space, coming
freshly from the field of active service, where the banners
wave and squadrons wheel, try to talk to you of the condi-
tions of success in this wonderful battle of life. First of all
I would say, keep to your specialty to the doing of the
thing you accomplish with most satisfaction to yourself and
most benefit to those around you. Keep to this, whether it
is raising turnips or tunes, painting screens or battle-pieces ;
studying political economy or domestic receipts."
She had wonderful power over the girls under her charge,
and the system of self-government which she instituted at
Evanston, in order to develop womanly self-respect and dig-
nity of character, was a success while she presided over the
large household, her " unwritten laws " and her personal influ-
ence being a stronger control for good than any amount of
strict and humiliating regulations. Dr. Arnold, of Rugby,
was her ideal teacher, and she was as grand in her place as
he in his.
Fully two thousand pupils have been under her influence
and instruction, and I venture to affirm that not one of all
that number but was led at least to think of the nobility of a
steadfast Christian life, and to wish to be something better
and nobler through her words and daily deeds. Even the
702 FRANCES E. WILLARD.
unconscious influence of such a life has power beyond ex-
pression.
Just about this time she addressed a woman's missionary
meeting in Chicago, and a gentleman who was present was so
much struck by her fitness for a public speaker that he called
on her the next day and urged that she develop this gift, add-
ing, "If you will within three weeks prepare a lecture on
any subject you choose, I will present you with as fine an
audience as can be got together in Chicago." With this he
gave her fifty dollars as prepayment. Said Miss Willard :
" The proposition quite took my breath away, but I went at
once and laid it before mother ; she replied, ' By all means,
my child, accept enter every open door,' and so I sat down
and wrote a lecture on ' The New Chivalry,' the substance of
which was that the chivalry of the nineteenth century is not
that of knights and troubadors, but the plain, practical chiv-
alry of justice, which gives to woman a fair chance to be all
that God gave her power to be. In it I stated that my bro-
ther had just entered a theological course just what his sis-
ter would have done if the world had not said ' No.' " This
maiden effort was a pathetic protest against the hindrances in
woman's way of advancement. " The lecture was ready,"
continued Miss Willard, " at the expiration of three weeks,
and with no manuscript visible I appeared before an elegant
audience in Centenary Church. The manuscript was with me
in portfolio, ready for reference in case of failure ; but I
did'ntfail"
The lecture produced such a genuine sensation that within
two weeks she had nearly one hundred engagements to speak,
and her career as a public orator was fairly begun.
Up to the time of the "Woman's Crusade" in Ohio, her
attention had never been called particularly to the tempe-
rance question, but with that solemn crisis there came to her
what she calls " an arrest of thought" on this subject, and as
a result she felt called to give up all her other interests and
devote herself, heart, brain, body, to the work of saving men
from the cruel temptations of the saloons.
FRANCES E. WILLARD. 703
There have been two occasions when for the sake of others
she has devoted herself to other work her labors in Boston
as an assistant of Mr. Moody during his revival meetings in
that city, and her brief editorship of the " Chicago Evening
Post," after the sudden death of her brother Oliver.
Miss Willard believes thoroughly in finding out what you
can do best, and working persistently at that one thing.
Conscience alone must have decided her course in life, for her
genius and versatility would naturally lead her in various
directions. With her power as a writer, her marvellous com-
mand of language, her keen literary judgments, and her fond-
ness for books, it is evident that she could easily have dis-
tinguished herself as a lecturer, literateur, author, and
remained in the quiet of student life, which she so thoroughly
enjoyed.
There are various ways of looking at the temperance ques-
tion. The cool-headed scientist regards all excitement over
the fact that " intemperance is yearly dragging a hundred
thousand of the men and women of our country down to the
grave," as " a gush of sloppy sympathy," and states seriously
that " intemperance, while doing some harm, as is usually the
case with natural agents, is also doing an immense amount of
good. By far the greater portion of those who succumb to
alcholization and to deadily practices that usually accompany
it, are thieves, thugs, prostitutes, gamblers, sharpers, ruf-
fians, and other members of the criminal and quasi-criminal
classes, upon whom whiskey accommodatingly performs the
office of judge and executioner, cutting their careers off at an
average of five years, when without this interruption they
would be extended to possibly twenty or thirty. The cer-
tainty and celerity with which it ferrets out and destroys these
classes recommends it strongly over the ordinary process of
justice."
Then there is the moderate view, which permits good wine
on the tables of the rich, but fights and legislates against the
poor and adulterated liquors of the grog-shops, which are
all the workingman can ever hope to enjoy, and brands as
704 FRANCES E. W1LLARD.
fools and criminals the unfortunate wretches who from inher-
ited tastes or lack of will-power, slip over the line from
moderate drinking into a drunkard's grave.
This is a pleasant way of quieting one's conscience, if it will
be stilled by such reasoning. We all pity or loathe the
drunkard. We all think that poor folks are better off with-
out any liquor, but we, in our comfortable homes do not
intend to give up our light wines or an occasional bottle of
champagne. Wine is a blessing if properly indulged in, like
any other good thing. There is nothing quite so satisfying
as a glass of Bass's ale or Milwaukee lager, with a little lunch
at noon ; and at night it brings the sweetest sleep. And in
case of a severe cold there is nothing like a hot whiskey
punch. Oh, no ! Wine is an excellent thing, and a dinner is
never elegant without it. The old patriarchs beloved of God
used it freely, and it would be difficult to find much in the
Bible against the use of wine in moderation.
This seems to me the utterly selfish and look-out-for-the-
comfort-of-No.-l view. Extremely pleasant and easy. By
this convenient plan, a reverend servant of the Lord can hold
a sparkling glass of Pommery Sec in his hand at dinner, de-
lighting in its stimulating, cheering, blessed influence, and
then sit down and argue eloquently that the number of rum-
holes be diminished and the poor be properly punished if
they indulge too freely in the strychnine and logwood, tannin
and prussic acids, for which they squander their hard earnings.
This, I regard as an extremely comfortable doctrine for the
well-to-do to practise, and I do not wonder at its popularity.
But such a letter as the following from my " Tribune " of to-
day makes one wonder if this is exactly the most Christlike
course :
" I have just been reading a description of Dundee by the
American reporter. It is enough to make every Scottish
man blush for shame. It is not a bit exaggerated. It un-
derstates the real condition of thousands of the people. It is
a desecration of the word home to call the abode of the
drunkard by that hallowed name. The women and the chil-
LOOKED OUT. THE PRAYING BAND PRAYING IN THE STUEET AT THE
DOOR OF A SALOON
FRANCES E. WILLARD. 705
dren suffer wrongs in these dens equal in their horror to the
darkest deeds of the slave passage. They are crowded into
chambers without air or sunshine, they lie on beds of filth and
rags, they are without food for days together, and they are
denied all that makes health, not to speak of comfort, pos-
sible. Their life is one long tale of woe. In country vil-
lages the abode of the drunkard is the same. The spring
returns ; the soft air stirs among bare but budding branches,
and the crocus and snowdrop proclaim that the winter is over
and gone. Amid scenes of surpassing beauty, beside our
noble river, below the green Law, by mountain, stream, and
hamlet, with roofs glittering in the sun, surrounded by all
that makes Scotland so fair and so beautiful, are scenes of
moral pollution which ought to startle and alarm us all.
" The evil is not known. Our church-goers in thousands
pass by on the other side and close their eyes to the misery
which is so near. They never see the worst. They wonder
at the zeal of those who have gone down and seen with their
own eyes the true condition of our people. The sufferings
of the children, especially of the little girls, may well goad
wise men into fury. Giildren with bright eyes never see
anything that is pure or lovely, their little ears are filled with
cursing. Every avenue to their soul is choked with unutter-
able filth. More than five-and-twenty thousand people in
Dundee live in single rooms, with nearly four persons to the
room. Let that one fact be considered."
The guest at a dinner whence the hostess had banished
wine was met by practical logic when he petulantly mur-
mured in the ear of his next neighbor, " At this rate it won't
be long till these fanatics will announce that we must dis-
pense with mustard on our roast beef ! " And the lady
replied, " If taking too much mustard on roast beef had
saddled this country with taxes, disrupted its homes, dis-
honored its manhood, agonized its women and children,
emptied its churches, and crowded its jails and poor-houses
to overflowing, I think I would be willing to take my roast
beef without the mustard to the end of time."
43
706 FKANCES E. WILLAKD.
\
There is a certain text in the Bible which bears rather hard
on the moderate drinker, and which has become the watch-
word of those who are willing to deny themselves a positive
pleasure, that those who are not so strong may be strength-
ened, and sheltered, and perhaps saved. " It is good neither
to eat flesh nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy
brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak."
Miss Willard is the last woman in the world to act from
any desire of notoriety. When the summons came to her to
go out and plead for others she was studying quietly in her
country home, and had never given serious thought to the
liquor traffic ; was accustomed to drink wine when abroad ;
" but her heart was so stirred by the simple story of women
who cared for the tragedy in other women's lives enough to
reach out a helping hand that the whole current of her life
was changed. Under a steady fire of opposition from friendly
ranks the blows that tell most she enlisted in the tempe-
rance work." With what efficiency and pleasure her own
words will best tell.
She never forgets Christ, and his presence seems ever with
her. Her spirit will be seen in the following quotation :
f " My friend has implied in his kind words of introduction
that there is one important thing in this life, and that is,
Christ must be King. This is the one important truth of all.
Since I have been going about to and fro, talking to the
people, I find that there is nothing after all that I like so
well as to be in a place like this, among Christian women and
men and children, and talk to them of Christ. And when I
speak on the question of temperance, I do not like to set
aside those addicted to habits of intemperance as a peculiar
class of sinners, for though those who drink bear visible
scars, were the marks of other sins so apparent, how few
would escape ! "
Her beautiful liberality and sense of justice is seen in her
refusing to remain with Mr. Moody as his co-laborer in the
great meetings in Boston, because the good man in his zeal
for what was strictly evangelical " forbade her to speak at
FEANCES E. WILLARD. 707
the same meetings with Mrs. Livermore, who is universally
regarded as a devoted Christian but belongs to the Universal-
ists. Miss Willard "could not but feel fellowship with every
honest and intelligent worker in the dear cause so close to
her heart." In this she proved herself far superior to her
leader.
Her decision in favor of total abstinence, which some con-
sider narrow and unnecessarily rigid, springs from her broad
philanthrophy, her desire that every tempted man or woman
should have all the safeguards possible, and that none should
meet their doom in the homes of their friends. She says :
w There may be those here who think that a glass of wine now
and then doesn't make so much difference, after all, and call
me fanatical because I urge total abstinence who forget
that the influences of society wine-drinking are the hardest
we have to contend with. The drops of wine in the banquet
have their sequel in the salt tear-drops on somebody's cheek.
Let us not be content with looking out for ourselves. Let's
make society a kind of larger home. Let's rally around and
shield the tempted man.
" We temperance women of America believe in One who
shall yet be crowned King of Nations, and we are ready to
do and die for Him. O Christ ! it is not brute force that has
carried on the triumph of the cross, since the little proces-
sion of fishermen and women started out along the hillside of
Judea. No, it has been one mightier far ; for love-force has
won the battles by which Thy cross grows regnant day by
day. Prayer-force is mighty to the pulling down of 'strong-
holds. Prayer has been raising a citadel around our work-
ers, high as the hope of a saint, deep as the depths of a
drunkard's despair. If prayer and womanly influence are
doing so much as forces for God by indirect methods,
how shall it be when that electric force is brought to bear
through the battery of the ballot-box, along the wires of
law?"
And her steady push is seen in the closing words : " We
mean to go straight on. We mean to be as good-natured as
708 FRANCES E. WILLARD.
sunshine, but as persistent as fate.'* And again : " Success
does'nt ' happen.' It is organized, pre-empted, captured, by
consecrated common sense.
An extract from her speech on the ?f Prevention of the Sale
of Liquor to Minors " will give an idea of her more impas-
sioned oratory. One lady tells me that after hearing her she
felt that she could go out and be a " praying band " all by
herself :
" My brothers, you will stand again before the ballot-box
to make this same decision. Oh, when you do so, listen to the
pleading voices of those you love the best the women who
pray and watch to see these streets made safer for the boys
who must soon go out to take their chances with the rest.
Hear the temperance workers of the land, whose ears are
weary with the moans of the heart-broken and the lost, as
they bid you gaze upon the panorama so often seen by them,
as they look out over the Republic in this hour of its struggle
and its humiliation. Look yonder at the pitiful procession
led off by hundreds of poor creatures, most of them young.
Note their wandering, uncertain footsteps, weak, aimless
hands, gibbering lips, vacant faces, and poor dim eyes, where
royal reason never was enthroned the idiots of Illinois
fifty per cent, of them made so by alcohol ; and following
these with rapid, random step, see this long line of maniacs
whose eyes gleam with a lurid light that tells of horrid and
distorted thoughts, whose manacled hands clank the chains
they evermore must wear, and remember, more than half of
these were made the wrecks they are by the beverage around
whose sale your ballot throws the guarantee and the safe-
guards of the State.
" But do not vote yet ! Listen ! Yonder they come can
you not hear the shuffle of the prison-gang ? See the men
in striped garments, and with close-cropped hair, fully one-
half of them are young men, too, and think of all their in-
dustry and skill might have achieved for the home and for
the State ; but your money helps to build living tombs for
them where between bolts and bars you pay also for their
FRANCES E. WILLARD. 709
board and clothes. But eighty per cent, of their crimes were
committed in the craze of the alcohol dream.
" But do not vote yet ! Here marches solemnly in sable
garments the heart-broken mothers who loved and cared for
these boys who are lost, the sisters who once were fond and
proud of them, and had been still except for drink. Shall
their tearful eyes and mournful voices appeal to you in vain?
" But do not vote yet ! See the long procession that now
follows the reformed men of Illinois with ribbons red and
blue. Remember that they have made a holy resolve against
a desperate appetite, and that in keeping that resolve they
have worked by the help of God. Then think about their daily
struggle. Think of the vow they have taken against a des-
perate appetite ; think of their daily struggle in a snare your
vote shall help to tighten or to loosen ; see in each worn but
manly face, a plea for help from you, and then in God's sight,
friend, decide upon your duty.
" But do not vote yet ! For last of all and most significant,
I catch the pattering steps of the little soldiers, newly mus-
tered in this army of temptation and of sin, the tender little
feet that walk the dusty road and choose where two paths
meet, the narrow or the broad. Oh, I plead with you to make
it safer on our streets for the feet of the ninety and nine that
went not astray before their unsuspecting steps shall cross its
threshold ; I pray you close that open door to shame and
death ! Duties are ours, events are God's ! Now vote, and
may God deal with you as you shall deal with these your
brothers and your sisters and with God's little ones." ^
As president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union,
Miss Willard has shown an amount of tact, energy, and organ-
izing ability that are extraordinary. She is constantly de-
veloping methods of work and individual workers, and has
already created forty distinct departments in this grand army
of women, who are working cheerfully and steadily under her
wise direction. " She is without doubt foremost of workers
among Christian women of America. Rare by endowment,
of superior education and high purpose, she has also entire
710 FRANCES E. WILllARD.
freedom from conceit and other forms of selfishness, possess-
ing fidelity, enthusiasm, simplicity, and sweetness of spirit.
It is enough to say that she has a great soul, and swiftly
recognizes greatness of soul in others. If any one has a
good trait, Frances Willard is sure to find it out. Such
qualities render her pre-eminent, and entitle her to
wear the crown of leadership. She is not a hobbyist,
nor a particle one-sided, but has consecrated unusual talent
to a noble cause, and works persistently and conscientiously
for it.
" She is the originator of the ' Home Protection move-
ment,' i.e., the ballot in woman's hands as a weapon for the
protection of her home.
" In the early days she encountered great opposition because
of this, but now there is practical unanimity in the ranks,
and the phrase ' home protection ' is part and parcel of the
Independent Prohibition party."
When the petition, which contained the signatures of over
thirty thousand earnest men and women, was presented to the
House Committee on the Judiciary, Miss Willard made an
address which was remarkable for its logic, condensation,
eloquence, and bristling with facts that would convince any
but those who were determined for personal and political
reasons not to be convinced. She anmed that women should
o
have the right of suffrage in order to regulate the traffic in
Co o
intoxicating liquors.
And at the close she said : " I thought I ought to have the
ballot when I paid the hard-earned taxes on my mother's
cottage home, but I never said as much for though I honor
those who speak in the name of justice, pure and simple, I
never had the bravery to work along that line. For my own
sake I had not courage, but for thy sake, dear native land, I
have. For love of the dear homes whose watch-fires are as
beacon-lights of heaven, for love of you, heart-broken wives,
whose tremulous lips have blessed me ; for you sweet mothers,
who in the cradle's shadow kneel to-night beside your infant
sons ; and for you, sorrowful little children who, with faces
FRANCES E. WILLARD. 711
strangely old, listen to-night for him whose footsteps frighten
you, it is for love of you that I have dared to speak."
At another time she spoke of " the habit of strong drink,
which changes the human features and the human heart so
that even a man's mother would hardly know him, so that
even God would hardly know him. The fight for temperance
is a war in which the women should have a hand. Year by
year a long procession is passing through the drunkard's
door into a drunkard's eternity. The army is constantly
being recruited from the ranks of the boys of the land, who
are being led away to the drunkard's awful doom. The Bible
and the Gospel of Christ have no enemy so great and mighty
as the liquor traffic, and the Sermon on the Mount and the
Ten Commandments are voted up or voted down as the voters
at the ballot-boxes vote for or against prohibition. It is
curious that nobody's home can have any insurance on it,
although the grog-shops have the freedom of the place and
are licensed to do their deadly work if they will only pay the
money. Traps and gins to catch men are legalized and set in
the streets, and into them the heedless and unwary fall under the
protection of the laws. I hate the sin, but I love the sinner ;
I hate the liquor traffic, but I would do all within my power to
get the men engaged in it employed in some better business/'
I can think of no surer proof of Miss Willard's pre-emi-
nent fitness and qualifications for her mission than in the
reception that has been universally accorded her at the South.
She is a Northern temperance woman, and a woman who
addresses large audiences from platform and pulpit. This
was something decidedly heretical, but clergymen of the
most fastidious ideas, bishops who had hitherto agreed -with
Paul about woman's keeping silence in churches, and culti-
vated Southern ladies who had been strongly secession in
their sympathies during the war, all extended to Miss Willard
the most cordial greeting, and her visits to the South have
been one- long ovation. No money was asked for, no collec-
tions taken, but the people spontaneously anticipated all
expenses. The best room at hotels, the best seat in palace-
712 FRANCES E. WILLARD.
car were generously given her. She says : " The people of
highest social and religious standing rally to the cause with a
gladness of heart which it is good to see. They have
received me as a sister, trusted and loved. Their hospitality
is boundless. I am showered with invitations, and there are
calls, flowers, dainties, and drives with no limit but time to
enjoy them. The Southern ladies take up these lines of
work with a zeal and intelligence which I have never seen
equalled."
A well-known Southern lady says of her : " From the sea-
board to the old Palmetto State there is yet to be spoken the
first word of unfavorable criticism."
She was commended by press, pulpit, and people, and
organized fifty auxiliaries to the Temperance Union.
Paul H. Hayne, the invalid poet of the South, whose own
life is one of constant heroism, contributed a poem to the
National Temperance Union Meeting at Louisville in Novem-
ber of 1882.
Temperance poetry as a rule seems to be painfully ground
out you always wish it hadn't been concocted. But Mr.
Hayne's verses show that the fault is not in the theme.
As a Southerner's welcome to Northern women it is ex-
quisitely gracious, and while the horrors of the deadly traffic
are painted forcibly, the music and rhythm of the poetry is
never lost.
" Thrice welcome, oh sisters ! we meet you,
Heaven's chosen, invincible bands ;
Thrice welcome, oh sisters ! we greet you
Brave spirits and resolute hands !
We would stir a deep fountain of cleansing,
More fruitful of life-giving balms,
Than the far-haunted pool of Bethesda,
That starred the fair Valley of Palms.
" At the touch of your tenderness fervid
The pure tides of healing shall rise ;
So the blinded of soul gazing Godward,
With purged and beautified eyes;
FKANCES E. WILLARD. 713
So the leprous of mind as of conscience
Receive the wave's kisses and thrill ;
As the hardened defilement melts slowly,
And the hot pulse of anguish grows still.
" Let us join hands and hearts for that Circe,
Whose charm of unsanctified spells
The strength, beauty, virtue of Ages
Hath lured to fierce, fathomless hells.
Unquelled and unquenched in her passions,
Still merciless, maddens and mars,
Till the sunshine is sad where she passes
And her shadow throws gloom on the stars.
" Ah ! Christ ! the fair homes she has blasted !
The young loves made arctic in spring !
The eagle ambitious dragged earthward,
All palsied in purpose as wing.
Ah ! Christ ! her malign desolations,
Her doom to the midnight and mire,
The stern savage sweep of her scourges,
The hiss of her serpents of fire.
" So come from your streams of the northland,
Flashed down into cataract lights,
From the sheen of your mountains majestic,
Grown softer through multiplied heights.
Come southward, serene as the morning
Emerged from night's mystical cope,
Brave heralds of love as of warning,
Bright angels of rescue and hope."
This all sounds easy and charming, poems, orations popu-
larity, but who can realize the anxieties, the fatigue, the
responsibilities of such a position ! No organization ever did
or ever will run without constant friction. Her family
motto, " Gaudet patientia duris" (patiences rejoices in hard-
ships) lias been faithfully exemplified in her own life. But a
private letter from Miss Willard when she had been censured
and criticised after trying to do the best for all will show the
secret of her strength :
714 FRANCES E. WILLARD.
" Am badgered to death and yet not worried a hair. What
do you make of that? I fancy the explanation is, that unless
I am an awfully deceived woman I am desirous of doing
God's will, and so the clamor on this little footstool of His
is like the humming of mosquitoes outside the curtain. It
rather lulls me into quiet."
We have seen how Miss Willard is regarded by the public,
but let me give a tribute paid her in her own home recently
by a life-long friend. It was said at a Union Missionary
meeting in Evanston, Illinois : " I am reminded just here
of what Frances E. Willard, my friend and yours, once said
to me in one of our quiet talks " :
"'I've given up much in literature and art, and things I
love, that seemed so necessary once, but now I think there
will be time enough in heaven. The world is waiting ; souls
must be redeemed.' If I might digress a little, it would be
to thank God for this brave soul who has gone to be a
Deborah in the army of the Lord. Here, in her Evanston
home, my heart throbs a little quicker as I remember those
first days and months when she entered upon this new mis-
sion, and set out upon her errand of love. The difficulties
and trials of those days, the weary journey ings since, the
efforts to raise the low, to cheer and stimulate the depressed,
to uplift the weak, the tempted, the fallen, these are known
only in the heart of the King. Stopping to-day among her
neighbors and friends, my heart is moved to a more loving
appreciation of this large-minded, tender-hearted Evanston
girl, and I rejoice that from your midst has gone out one of
the noblest representatives of American Christian woman-
hood."
You must see by this time why Miss Willard is universally
loved, honored, and reverenced. "As an educator of women
in the wider sense, as an emancipator from conventionalities,
prejudices, narrowness, and as a representative on a spiritual
plane of the new age upon which we are entering, she takes
her place with the foremost women of her time." She says
herself : " It is good not to have been born earlier than the
FRANCES E. W1LLARD. 715
nineteenth century ; and, for myself, I could have rested
content until the twenty-fifth, by which date I believe our
hopeful dawn of reason, liberty, and worship will have grown
to noonday. Oh! native land the world's hope, the gos-
pel's triumph, the millennium's dawn, f are all with thee.' "
I must add that it was at Miss Willard's suggestion that
Haystack Mountain was christened Mount Garfield during
those dragging, anxious days of the President's illness. She
said : " Surely he is entitled, by the grandeur of his charac-
ter, the height of his fortitude, and the depth of the people's
love for him, to the apotheosis of these everlasting hills."
That was just like Miss Willard, to think of the right thing
at the right time, and see that it was done. She needs no
mountain re-christened to perpetuate her name. If every
man and woman who have been influenced for good by her
life and aims (pure as the ice-capped peaks and higher than
any earthly measurement) could assemble in one place to give
her thanks, would it not be a blessed thing? May she meet
them all in the life beyond, towards which she ever looks
with firm confidence and hope. And of her, in closing, let
me give the Bible text which comes to my mind : " They that
be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament ; and
they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever
and ever."
234381
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