In recalling Mrs. Stowe's life, with the remembrance of what she has
been to her friends, to her country, and to the world, I am overborne
by the sense of a soul instinct from its early consciousness with
power working in her beyond her own thought or knowledge or will. Her
attitude seemed by nature to be that of contemplation. Her heart was
like a burning coal laid upon the altar of humanity; and when she
stole up, as it were, in the night and laid it down for the slave with
tears and supplications, it awakened neither alarm nor wonder in her
spirit that in the morning she saw a bright fire burning there and
lighting the whole earth.
Mrs. Stowe had already passed through this great experience when I saw
her for the first time in Italy. It was only a few weeks before the
war against slavery was openly declared, and she was like one who
having "done all" must now "stand." This year indeed was one of the
happiest of her life. She did not yet see the terrible feet of War
already close upon us, yet she was convinced that the end of slavery
was at hand. She was released at last from the toils which poverty had
laid upon her overtasked body. Her children were with her, and she was
enjoying, as few persons know how to enjoy, the loveliness of Italy.
She delighted, too, in the congenial society of Mr. and Mrs. Browning
and the agreeable friends who were that winter grouped around them.
After her long trial and her years of suffering she was to have "her
day" in the world of beauty and love which lay about her.
In one of her early letters to Georgiana May, in 1833, she says,
speaking of some relaxation which had come to her friend: "How good it
would be for me to be put into a place which so breaks up and
precludes thought. Thought, intense emotional thought, has been my
disease. How much good it might do me to be where I could not but be
thoughtless." This letter was written when she was twenty-two years
old, and there had never been any respite in her life until those
sweet Italian days of the winter of 1859 and '60.
It was only about a year later than the date of the above letter when
the subject of slavery was first brought under her own observation
during a brief visit in Kentucky. Her father had received a call in
Boston, where he had been preaching for six years, to go to
Cincinnati, which at that period was considered the far West and
almost like banishment; but the call was one not to be refused; the
need of such preaching as Dr. Beecher's being greatly felt at that
distant post. About a year after their arrival an invitation came to
Harriet to cross the river and to see something of Kentucky in company
with a young friend. She found herself on the estate which was later
known as Colonel Shelby's in "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Her companion said
later, in recalling their experience: "Harriet did not seem to notice
anything in particular that happened, but sat most of the time as
though abstracted in thought. When the negroes did funny things and
cut up capers, she did not seem to pay the slightest attention to
them. Afterwards, however, in reading Uncle Tom, I recognized scene
after scene of that visit portrayed with the utmost fidelity, and knew
at once where the material for that part of the story had been
gathered."
To show how completely her "style" was herself, there is a passage
from one of her early letters describing her experience at Niagara
which burns with her own fire. "Let me tell you," she says, "if I can,
what is unutterable.... I did not once think if it were high or low;
whether it roared or didn't roar.... My mind whirled off, it seemed to
me, in a new strange world.... That rainbow, breaking out, trembling,
fading, and again coming like a beautiful spirit walking the waters.
Oh, it is lovelier than it is great; it is like the Mind that made it;
great, but so veiled in beauty that we gaze without terror. I felt as
if I could have gone over with the waters; it would be so beautiful a
death; there would be no fear in it. I felt the rock tremble under me
with a sort of joy. I was so maddened I could have gone, too, if that
had gone."
The first wife of Mr. Stowe was her most intimate friend, and his
suffering at her death moved her to intense pity, which finally
ripened into love. At the last moment of her maidenhood she wrote
again to Georgiana May: "In about half an hour more your old friend,
companion, schoolmate, sister, etc., will cease to be Hatty Beecher
and change to nobody knows who. My dear, you are engaged and pledged
in a year or two to encounter a similar fate, and do you wish to know
how you shall feel? Well, my dear, I have been dreading and dreading
the time, and lying awake all last week wondering how I should live
through this overwhelming crisis, and lo! it has come and I feel
_nothing at all_."
Her marriage with Professor Stowe was a congenial one. He discovered
very early what her career must be and wrote to her once during a
brief absence: "God has written it in his book that you must be a
literary woman, and who are we that we should contend against God?"
His admiration for her was perfect, a feeling which she reciprocated
in a somewhat different form. "I did not know," she once wrote to him,
"until I came away how much I was dependent upon you for information.
There are a thousand favorite subjects on which I could talk with you
better than with any one else. If you were not already my dearly loved
husband, I should certainly fall in love with you."
She can speak to him with an openness which she uses to no one else;
she says, and in this sentence she gives the secret of much which has
appeared inexplicable to the world: "One thing more in regard to
myself. The absence and wandering of mind and forgetfulness that so
often vexes you is a physical infirmity with me. It is the failing of
a mind not calculated to endure a great pressure of care, and so much
do I feel the pressure I am under, so much is my mind darkened and
troubled by care that life seriously holds out few allurements,--only
my children." She used to say laughingly sometimes in later years, "My
brother Henry and I are something like anacondas: we have our winter;
when we are tired we curl up and disappear, within ourselves, as it
were; nobody can get anything out of us; we move about and attend to
our affairs and appear like other folks perhaps, but we are not
there."
The trouble was that no one could be prepared for these vanishings,
not even herself. Perhaps a dinner company of invited guests were
eagerly listening to her conversation, when at some suggestion of a
new train of ideas, she would suddenly become silent and hardly speak
again. Occasionally at a reception she would wander away, only to be
found strolling about in the conservatory, if there were one, or
quietly observant in some coign of vantage where she was not likely to
be disturbed.
My first meeting with Mrs. Stowe found her in one of her absent moods.
We were in Florence, and she was delighting herself in the
fascinations of that lovely city. Not alone every day but every second
as it passed was full of eager interest to her.
She could say with Thoreau, "I moments live who lived but years." We
had both been invited to a large reception, on a certain evening, in
one of the old palaces on the Arno. There were music and dancing, and
there were lively groups of ladies and gentlemen strolling from room
to room, contrasting somewhat strangely in their gayety with the
solemn pictures hanging on the walls, and a sense of shadowy presence
which seems to haunt those dusky interiors. An odd discrepancy between
the modern company and the surroundings, a weird mingling of the past
and the present, made any apparition appear possible, and left room
only for a faint thrill of surprise when a voice by my side said,
"There is Mrs. Stowe."
In a moment she approached and I was presented to her, and after a
brief pause she passed on. All this was natural enough, but a wave of
intense disappointment swept over me. Why had I found no words to
express or even indicate the feeling that had choked me? Was the fault
mine? Oh, yes, I said to myself, for I could not conceive it to be
otherwise, and I looked upon my opportunity, the gift of the gods, as
utterly and forever wasted. I was depressed and sorrowing over the
vanishing of a presence I might perhaps never meet again, and no
glamour of light, or music or pictures or friendly voices could recall
any pleasure to my heart. Meanwhile, the unconscious object of all
this disturbance was strolling quietly along, leaning on the arm of a
friend, hardly ever speaking, followed by a group of traveling
companions, and entirely absorbed in the gay scene around her. She was
a small woman; and her pretty curling hair and far-away dreaming eyes,
and her way of becoming occupied in what interested her until she
forgot everything else for the time, all these I first began to see
and understand as I gazed after her retreating figure.
Mrs. Stowe's personal appearance has received scant justice and no
mercy at the hand of the photographer. She says herself, during her
triumphal visit to England after the publication of "Uncle Tom:" "The
general topic of remark on meeting me seems to be that I am not so bad
looking as they were afraid I was; and I do assure you, when I have
seen the things that are put up in the shop windows here with my name
under them, I have been lost in wondering imagination at the boundless
loving-kindness of my English and Scottish friends in keeping up such
a warm heart for such a Gorgon. I should think that the Sphinx in the
London Museum might have sat for most of them. I am going to make a
collection of these portraits to bring home to you. There is a great
variety of them, and they will be useful, like the Irishman's
guideboard which showed 'where the road did not go.'" I remember once
accompanying her to a reception at a well-known house in Boston,
where, before the evening was over, the hostess drew me aside, saying,
"Why did you never tell me that Mrs. Stowe was beautiful?" And indeed,
when I observed her in the full ardor of conversation, with her
heightened color, her eyes shining and awake, but filled with great
softness, her abundant curling hair rippling naturally about her head
and falling a little at the sides (as in the portrait by Richmond), I
quite agreed with the lady of the house. Nor was that the first time
her beauty had been revealed to me, but she was seldom seen to be
beautiful by the great world, and the pleasure of this recognition was
very great to those who loved her.
She was never afflicted with a personal consciousness of her
reputation, nor was she trammeled by it. The sense that a great work
had been accomplished through her only made her more humble, and her
shy, absent-minded ways were continually throwing her admirers into
confusion. Late in life (when her failing powers made it impossible
for her to speak as one living in a world which she seemed to have
left far behind) she was accosted, I was told, in the garden of her
country retreat, in the twilight one evening, by a good old retired
sea captain who was her neighbor for the time. "When I was younger,"
said he respectfully, holding his hat in his hand while he spoke, "I
read with a great deal of satisfaction and instruction 'Uncle Tom's
Cabin.' The story impressed me very much, and I am happy to shake
hands with you, Mrs. Stowe, who wrote it." "I did not write it,"
answered the white-haired old lady gently, as she shook the captain's
hand. "You didn't?" he ejaculated in amazement. "Why, who did, then?"
"God wrote it," she replied simply. "I merely did his dictation."
"Amen," said the captain reverently, as he walked thoughtfully away.
This was the expression in age of what lay at the foundation of her
life. She always spoke and behaved as if she recognized herself to be
an instrument breathed upon by the Divine Spirit. When we consider how
this idea absorbed her to the prejudice of what appeared to others a
wholesome exercise of human will and judgment, it is not wonderful
that the world was offended when she once made conclusions contrary to
the opinion of the public, and thought best to publish them.
Mrs. Stowe was a delightful talker. She loved to gather a small circle
of friends around a fireside, when she easily took the lead in fun and
story telling. This was her own ground, and upon it she was not to be
outdone. "Let me put my feet upon the fender," she would say, "and I
can talk till all is blue."
It appeared to those who listened most frequently to her conversation
that a large part of the charm of her tales was often lost in the
writing down; yet with all her unusual powers she was an excellent
listener herself. Her natural modesty was such that she took keen
pleasure in gathering fresh thought and inspiration from the
conversation of others. Nor did the universal homage she received from
high and low leave any unworthy impression upon her self-esteem. She
was grateful and pleased and humble, and the only visible effect
produced upon her was the heightened pleasure she received from the
opportunities of knowing men and women who excited her love and
admiration. Her name was a kind of sacred talisman, especially in New
and Old England. It was a banner which had led men to battle against
slavery. Therefore it was often a cause of surprise and social
embarrassment when the bearer of this name proved to be sometimes too
modest, and sometimes too absent-minded, to remember that anything was
expected of her or anything arranged for her special entertainment.
She was utterly taken by surprise once in a foreign city by being
invited out to breakfast, as she supposed privately, and finding
herself suddenly in a large hall, upon a raised platform crowded with
local dignitaries, and greeted before she could get her breath by a
chorus of children's voices singing an anthem in her honor, especially
composed for the occasion. Her love of fun was greatly excited by this
unexpected situation, and she used to relate the anecdote, with
details about her unprepared condition which were irresistibly
amusing. In a letter home she refers incidentally to the large
breakfast party and says: "I could not help wondering if old mother
Scotland had put into 'the father of all the tea-kettles' two thousand
teaspoonfuls of tea for the company and one for the teapot, as is our
good Yankee custom."
The tributes paid to her were ceaseless, and her house in Hartford
testifies to many of them. "There," as her friend and neighbor the
Reverend Joseph Twichell wrote once in a brief sketch of her--a sketch
full of deep feeling--"there, an observant stranger would soon
discover whose house he was in, and be reminded of the world-wide
distinction her genius has won and of that great service of humanity
with which her name is forever identified. He would, for instance,
remark on its pedestal in the bow-window a beautiful bronze statuette
by Cumberworth called 'The African Woman of the Fountain,' and on an
easel in the back parlor a lovely engraving of the late Duchess of
Sutherland and her daughter--a gift from her son, the present Duke of
that name, subscribed 'Mrs. Stowe, with the Duke of Sutherland's kind
regards, 1869.' Should he look into a low oaken case standing in the
hall, he would find there the twenty-six folio volumes of the
'Affectionate and Christian Address of Many Thousands of Women in
Great Britain and Ireland to their Sisters in the United States of
America' pleading the cause of the slave, and signed with over half a
million names, which was delivered to Mrs. Stowe in person at a
notable gathering at Stafford House, in England, in 1853; and with it
similar addresses from the citizens of Leeds, of Glasgow, and
Edinburgh, presented at about the same time. The house, indeed, is a
treasury of such relics, testimonials of reverence and regard,
trophies of renown from many lands, enough to furnish a museum, all of
the highest historic interest and value.... There are relics, too, of
more private sort; for example, a smooth stone of two or three pounds
weight, and a sketch or study of it by Ruskin made at a hotel on Lake
Neuchâtel, where he and Mrs. Stowe chanced to meet.... One of her most
prized possessions is a gold chain of ten links, which, on occasion of
the gathering at Stafford House that has been referred to, the Duchess
of Sutherland took from her own arm and clasped upon Mrs. Stowe's,
saying, 'This is the memorial of a chain which we trust will soon be
broken.' On several of the ten links were engraved the great dates in
the annals of emancipation in England; and the hope was expressed that
she would live to add to them other dates of like import in the
progress of liberty this side the Atlantic. That was in 1853. Twelve
years later every link had its inscription, and the record was
complete."
It was my good fortune to be in Mrs. Stowe's company once in Rome when
she came unexpectedly face to face with an exhibition of the general
feeling of reverence and gratitude towards herself. We had gone
together to the rooms of the brothers Castellani, the world-famous
workers in gold. The collection of antique gems and the beautiful
reproductions of them were new to us. Mrs. Stowe was full of
enthusiasm, and we lingered long over the wonderful things which the
brothers brought forward to show. Among them was the head of an
Egyptian slave carved in black onyx. It was an admirable work of art,
and while we were enjoying it one of them said to Mrs. Stowe, "Madam,
we know what you have been to the poor slave. We ourselves are but
poor slaves still in Italy: you feel for us; will you keep this gem as
a slight recognition of what you have done?" She took the jewel in
silence; but when we looked for some response, her eyes were filled
with tears, and it was impossible for her to speak.
This feeling often found less refined manifestation. One day when she
was shopping in Boston, after making her purchase she gave her name in
a low but distinct voice to the clerk who was to send the goods. "Dear
me," said a lively woman, audibly by my side, "I should be ashamed to
give that name; I should as soon think of giving Angel Gabriel!" Of
course we were all greatly amused by this sally, but Mrs. Stowe smiled
quietly according to her wont and passed on.
Great human tenderness was one of her chief characteristics. Although
she was a reformer by nature there was no sternness in her
composition. Forgetfulness of others there was certainly sometimes,
arising from her hopeless absent-mindedness and the preoccupation
consequent upon her work; but her whole life was swayed and ruled by
her affections.
Her love was a sheet anchor which held in the stormiest seas. Of her
household devotion it is impossible to speak fitly; but there are few
natures that can be said to have been more dependent upon human love.
Her tender ways were inexpressibly touching.
Early in life she had written to her brother while hardly more than a
girl: "I wish I could bring myself to feel perfectly indifferent to
the opinions of others. I believe there never was a person more
dependent on the good and evil opinions of those around than I am.
This desire to be loved forms, I fear, the great motive for all my
actions."
Such a nature was quite unlikely to play the part of a famous woman of
the world with any success, and she did not attempt it. She was always
reaching out to the friends of her adoption and drawing them closer to
her side.
In those days of our early acquaintance in Italy we had ample
opportunity to discover the affectionate qualities of her character.
If my first interview was a disappointment, her second greeting a few
days later had the warmth of old acquaintance. From that moment we (my
husband and I) were continually meeting her, in galleries and out of
them; at Bellosguardo, which Hawthorne had just quitted, but where Isa
Blagden and Frances Power Cobbe still lingered, or in Florence itself
with Francesca Alexander and her family; at the Trollopes', or
elsewhere, while our evenings were commonly spent in each other's
apartments. As the hours of our European play-days drew near the end,
she began to lay plans for returning home in the steamer with those
who had grown dear to her, and in one of her notes of that period she
wrote to me:--
"On the strength of having heard that you were going home in the
Europa June 16th, we also have engaged passage therein for that time,
and hope that we shall not be disappointed.... It must be true, we
can't have it otherwise.... Our Southern Italy trip was a glory--it
was a rose--a nightingale--all, in short, that one ever dreams; but
alas! it is over."
It was a delightful voyage homeward in every sense. At that period a
voyage was no little matter of six days, but a good fourteen days of
sitting together on deck in pleasant summer weather, and having time
enough and to spare. Hawthorne and his family also concluded to join
the party. Mrs. Hawthorne, who was always the romancer in
conversation, filled the evening hours by weaving magic webs of her
fancies, until we looked upon her as a second Scheherazade, and the
day the head was to be cut off was the day we should come to shore.
"Oh," said Hawthorne, "I wish we might never get there." But the good
ship moved steadily as fate. Meanwhile, Mrs. Stowe often took her turn
at entertaining the little group. She was seldom tired of relating
stories of New England life and her early experiences.
When the ship came to shore, Mrs. Stowe and her daughters went at once
to Andover, where Professor Stowe had remained at his post during
their long absence in Europe. She went also with equal directness to
her writing-desk; and though there are seldom any dates upon her
letters, the following note must have been written shortly after her
return:--
MY DEAR MR. FIELDS,--"Agnes of Sorrento" was conceived on the spot,--a
spontaneous tribute to the exceeding loveliness and beauty of all
things there.
One bright evening, as I was entering the old gateway, I saw a
beautiful young girl sitting in its shadow selling oranges. She was my
Agnes. Walking that same evening through the sombre depths of the
gorge, I met "Old Elsie," walking erect and tall, with her piercing
black eyes, Roman nose, and silver hair,--walking with determination
in every step, and spinning like one of the Fates glittering silver
flax from a distaff she carried in her hands.
A few days after, our party, being weatherbound at Salerno, had resort
to all our talents to pass the time, and songs and stories were the
fashion of the day. The first chapter was my contribution to that
entertainment. The story was voted into existence by the voices of all
that party, and by none more enthusiastically than by one young voice
which will never be heard on earth more. It was kept in mind and
expanded and narrated as we went on to Rome over a track that the
pilgrim Agnes is to travel. To me, therefore, it is fragrant with love
of Italy and memory of some of the brightest hours of life.
I wanted to write something of this kind as an author's introduction
to the public. Could you contrive to print it on a fly-leaf, if I get
it ready, and put a little sort of dedicatory poem at the end of it? I
shall do this at least in the book, if not now.
A network of difficulties seems to have closed about her at this time,
because in spite of her interest in the new story and the hopeful view
which she took of its speedy completion, several months passed by
before anything definite came respecting her literary plans.
Meanwhile she had been tempted into beginning a story for "The
Independent," which proved to be "The Pearl of Orr's Island," a story
good enough, if she had been left to herself and not overridden by
greedy editors and publishers, to have added a lustre even to her
name. It is to this she refers in the following letter when she speaks
of her "Maine story." Unhappily this first number drew off power which
belonged to "Agnes of Sorrento," and Agnes served to prevent her from
ending "The Pearl of Orr's Island" in a manner worthy of its first
promise.
She says, writing in January, 1861, "Authors are apt, I suppose, like
parents, to have their unreasonable partialities. Everybody has,--and
I have a pleasure in writing 'Agnes of Sorrento' that gilds this icy
winter weather. I write my Maine story with a shiver, and come back to
this as to a flowery home where I love to rest.
"My manuscripts are always left to the printers for punctuation,--as
you will observe,--I have no time for copying."
Mrs. Stowe's health was not vigorous at this period. Incessant drafts
upon her energy had enfeebled her; but her spirit was indomitable, and
when she was weary a brief visit to Boston was, she considered,
sufficient to restore her nervous force. During these visits she
sometimes rehearsed the story of the early days of her married life,
when she fought her way through difficulties and under the burden of
sorrows which would have crushed many another woman.
The tale of the arrival of the family on a wintry day in Brunswick,
Me., where her husband had been appointed to a professorship in
Bowdoin College, of the dreary season, the bitter cold, the unopened
door of an empty house, their future home, left a vivid impression
upon the minds of her listeners; not because of its forlornness, but
because of the splendid energy and patience which she brought to the
occasion and the light she was able to cast over the grimness of
circumstance. Of course, at the date in which this is written, it is
difficult to conceive anything like grimness as associated with the
comfortable and social town of Brunswick, but we must not fail to
remember how rapid the growth of winter comfort has been throughout
New England. This house in the village of Brunswick was the birthplace
of "Uncle Tom's Cabin;" but long before her pen could be allowed to
touch the paper the door of the house must be unlocked, the fire made,
and her little children warmed and fed. The walls too must be freshly
papered and painted with her own unassisted hands, and a long table
spread which could serve as a family dining-table and her own and only
place for writing. Here, as Mr. Fields once said in one of his
lectures, "A New England woman once wrote a great novel while beset
with difficulties, pinched by poverty, and surrounded by hard work
from sunrise to midnight, year in and year out. She was a pallid,
earnest, tired little body, who sat in her white cottage down in
Brunswick in the state of Maine. She had been busy all day, perhaps
painting a room, for her means would not allow her to hire it done.
Besides that labor she cooked for the family, and had done all her
other household duties, without assistance, and without flinching or
groaning. The children were hushed to sleep; all was still about the
house, and she trimmed the solitary lamp for a long session at her
writing-table.
"Thus she sat many a night and wrote, and wept, and wrote again, until
she had poured out her soul before the Lord for humanity's sake. And
then came, a little slowly at first, but rolling surely with an awful
sound, that great universal response; the voice of the people of the
whole earth speaking as one."
The labor, the shock, were past, but the fatigue and the strain of the
long struggle for freedom which she carried always on her own heart
could never be over-lived. She was already, as Mrs. Hawthorne used to
say, "tired far into the future." The woman who had written "Uncle
Tom" was not to continue a series of equally exciting stories, but she
was to bear the burden and heat of much everyday labor with the
patience and the rejoicing of all faithful souls.
We are reminded, as we study Mrs. Stowe's life, of Swinburne's noble
tribute to Sir Walter Scott after reading his Journals which appeared
in full only five or six years ago. He says: "Now that we have before
us in full--in all reasonable or desired completeness--the great man's
own record of his troubles, his emotions, and his toils, we find it,
from the opening to the close, a record, not only of dauntless
endurance, but of elastic and joyous heroism.... It is no longer pity
that any one may presume to feel for him at the lowest ebb of his
fortunes or his life; it is rapture of sympathy, admiration, and
applause. 'This was a man.'"
The war, the enlistment of her second son, the eldest having already
died, filled her heart and mind afresh with new problems and
anxieties. She wrote the following hurried note from Hartford in 1862,
which gives some idea of her occupations and frame of mind: "I am
going to Washington to see the heads of departments myself, and to
satisfy myself that I may refer to the Emancipation Proclamation as a
reality and a substance, not a fizzle out at the little end of the
horn, as I should be sorry to call the attention of my sisters in
Europe to any such impotent conclusion.... I mean to have a talk with
'Father Abraham' himself, among others."
Mrs. Stowe lost no time, but proceeded to carry out her plan as soon
as practicable. Of this visit to Washington she says little in her
letters beyond the following meagre words: "It seems to be the opinion
here, not only that the President will stand up to his proclamation,
but that the Border States will accede to his proposition for
emancipation. I have noted the thing as a glorious expectancy!... To-
day to the home of the contrabands, seeing about five hundred poor
fugitives eating a comfortable Thanksgiving dinner, and singing, 'Oh,
let my people go!' It was a strange and moving sight."
It was left for others to speak of her interview with President
Lincoln. Her daughter was told that when the President heard her name
he seized her hand, saying, "Is this the little woman who made this
great war?" He then led her apart to a seat in the window, where they
were withdrawn from other guests, and undisturbed. No one but those
two souls will ever know what waves of thought and feeling swept over
them in that brief hour.
Afterwards she heard these words pronounced in the Senate Chamber in
the Message of President Lincoln; it was in the darkest hour of the
war, Mrs. Stowe wrote, when defeat and discouragement had followed the
Union armies and all hearts were trembling with fear: "If this
struggle is to be prolonged till there be not a home in the land where
there is not one dead, till all the treasure amassed by the unpaid
labor of the slave shall be wasted, till every drop of blood drawn by
the lash shall be atoned by blood drawn by the sword, we can only bow
and say, 'Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints'!"
During her Boston visits Mrs. Stowe was always interested to observe
the benevolent work going on about her and to lend a hand if it were
possible. One incident flavored with a strong touch of the ludicrous
still lingers in my memory. We had fallen in somewhere with a poor
little waif of a boy, one easily to be recognized by the practiced eye
of to-day as a good specimen of the street Arab. This little being was
taken up by us and brought home. His arrival was looked upon with
horror by the servants, who recognized existing facts and foresaw
future miseries veiled from our less educated vision. A visit to the
bathroom was at once suggested; but as none of the house maidens
offered to take charge of the business, Mrs. Stowe announced herself
as more than equal to the occasion, and proceeded to administer the
first bath probably ever known to that specimen of the human family.
Hawthorne's clasping the leprous child was but a shadow compared to
that hour, but happily Mrs. Stowe was not Hawthorne and she combed and
scrubbed faithfully.
I cannot recall the precise ending of the tale. I can only remember
the whole house being aroused at some unearthly hour of that night by
the child's outcries, from his unusual indulgence in a good supper,
and Mrs. Stowe's amusement at the situation. She declared the
household was far better constituted to look after young cherubim than
young male humans. Something of the canary-bird order would be much
more in its line, she said. I believe he ran away the next day,
probably understanding the fitness of things better than ourselves. At
any rate I find a comforting note on the subject from Andover saying:
"If we can do no more we must let him go. He certainly stands a better
chance in his life's journey for the little good we have been able to
put into him. When we try a little to resist the evil current and to
pull here and there one out, we learn how dreadful is the downward
gravitation, the sweep and whirl of the maelstrom. Let us hope all
these have a Father, who charges himself with them somewhere further
on in their eternal pilgrimage when our weak hold fails."
In the autumn of 1862 a plan for leaving Andover altogether was
finally matured. She wrote, "You have heard that we are going to
Hartford to live, and I am now in all the bustle of house planning, to
say nothing of grading, under-draining, and setting out trees around
our future home. It is four acres and a half of lovely woodland on the
banks of a river and yet within an easy walk of Hartford; in fact, in
the city limits; and when our house is done you and yours must come
and see us. I would rather have made the change in less troublous
times, but the duties here draw so hardly on Mr. Stowe's strength that
I thought it better to live on less and be in a place of our own, and
with no responsibilities except those of common gentlefolk."
Mrs. Stowe's love of home, of the fireside, and her faith in family
ties were marked characteristics of her nature. For the first time in
her life she was now to make the material house at least after her own
idea, and for many months she was entirely absorbed in the enjoyment
of forming plans for her Hartford home.
In November, 1862, she was in Hartford superintending the growing
establishment. She wrote: "My house with _eight_ gables is
growing wonderfully. I go over every day to see it. I am busy with
drains, sewers, sinks, digging, trenching, and above all with manure!
You should see the joy with which I gaze on manure heaps in which the
eye of faith sees Delaware grapes and D'Angoulême pears, and all sorts
of roses and posies, all which at some future day I hope you will be
able to enjoy.
"Do tell me if our friend Hawthorne praises that arch-traitor Pierce
in his preface and your loyal firm publishes it. I never read the
preface, and have not yet seen the book, but they say so here, and I
can scarcely believe it of you, if I can of him. I regret that I went
to see him last summer. What! patronize such a traitor to our faces! I
can scarce believe it."
In the month of May, 1863, came her first letter from the new place.
Already we find that the ever-present need has driven her on to print
her thoughts about "House and Home."
HARTFORD, OAKWOLD, May 1st.
My dear friend,--I came here a month ago to hurry on the preparations
for our house, in which I am now writing, in the high bow window of
Mr. Stowe's study, overlooking the wood and river. We are not moved in
yet, only our things, and the house presents a scene of the wildest
chaos, the furniture having been tumbled in and lying boxed and
promiscuous.
I sent the sixth number of "House and Home" papers a week ago, and,
not having heard from it, am a little anxious. I always want faith
that a bulky manuscript will go safe,--for all I never lost one.... I
should like to show you the result here when we are fairly in, and the
spring leaves are out. It is the brightest, cheerfullest, homeliest
home that you could see,--not even excepting yours.
The pursuit of literature under such circumstances is neither natural
nor profitable. In Mrs. Stowe's case it proved that she was pursuing,
not literature, but the necessities of life. Everything in the
household economy now depended upon her; and however strong her
tendencies were naturally, she no longer possessed the reserved
strength to forge the work from her brain. In the writing of "Uncle
Tom," great as were the odds against her, she had been preparing to
that end from the moment of her birth. Her father's fiery powers of
expression; her mother's nature absorbed in one still dream of love
and duty; her own solitary childhood in spite of the enormous
household in which she was brought up; above all her brooding nature
quietly absorbing and assimilating the knowledge and thought which
were finding expression around her; the first years of married life in
Cincinnati, where the slaves were continually harbored and assisted,
notwithstanding the risks to life and property;--everything, in short,
within and around her was nourishing the child of her genius which was
to leap into being and gather the armies of America.
On the whole we may rather wonder at the high average value of the
literary work by which she lived, especially when we follow the hints
given in her letters of her interrupted and crowded existence.
In June, 1863, she says: "I wrote my piece in a sea of troubles. I
had, as you see, to write by amanuensis, and yet my little senate of
girls say they like it better than anything I have written yet." It
was a touching characteristic to see how the "senate of girls," or of
such household friends as she could muster wherever she might be, were
always called in to keep up her courage and to give her a sympathetic
stimulus. During the days when she was writing, it was never safe to
be far away, for she was rapid as light itself, and before a brief
hour was ended we were pretty sure to hear her voice calling "Do come,
come and hear, and tell me how you like it."
Her June letter continues: "Can I begin to tell you what it is to
begin to keep house in an unfinished home and place, dependent on a
carpenter, a plumber, a mason, a bell-hanger, who come and go at their
own sweet will, breaking in, making all sorts of chips, dust, dirt,
going off in the midst leaving all standing,--reappearing at uncertain
intervals and making more dust, chips, and dirt. One parlor and my
library have thus risen piecemeal by disturbance and convulsions. They
are now almost done, and the last box of books is almost unpacked, but
my head aches so with the past confusion that I cannot get up any
feeling of rest. I can't enjoy--can't feel a minute to sit down and
say 'it is done.'
"The fountain plays, the plants flourish, and our front hall minus the
stair railing looks beautifully; my pictures are all hung in parlor
and library, and yet I feel so unsettled. Well, in a month more
perhaps I shall get my brains right side up."
The following year was made memorable in Mrs. Stowe's life by the
marriage of her youngest daughter. Again I find that no description
can begin to give as clearly as the glimpses in her own letters the
multifarious responsibilities which beset her. She says: "I am in
trouble,--have been in trouble ever since my turtledoves announced
their intention of pairing in June instead of August, because it
entailed on me an immediate necessity of bringing everything out of
doors and in to a state of completeness for the wedding exhibition in
June. The garden must be planted, the lawn graded, harrowed, rolled,
seeded, and the grass up and growing, stumps got out and trees got in,
conservatory made over, belts planted, holes filled,--and all by three
very slippery sort of Irishmen who had rather any time be minding
their own business than mine. I have back doorsteps to be made, and
troughs, screens, and what not; papering, painting, and varnishing,
hitherto neglected, to be completed; also spring house-cleaning; also
dressmaking for one bride and three ordinary females; also ---- and
---- and ----'s wardrobes to be overlooked; also carpets to be made
and put down; also a revolution in the kitchen cabinet, threatening
for a time to blow up the whole establishment altogether." And so the
letter proceeds with two more sheets, adding near the end: "I send
you to-day a 'Chimney-Corner' on 'Our Martyrs,' which I have written
out of the fullness of my heart.... It is an account of the martyrdom
of a Christian boy of our own town of Andover, who died of starvation
and want in a Southern prison on last Christmas Day."
Just one month before the marriage she writes again: "The wedding is
indeed an absorbing whirlpool, but amid it all I have the next
'Chimney-Corner' in good train and shall send it on to-morrow or next
day."
How small a portion of the world outside can understand the lives of
writers, actors, and those whose professions compel them to depend
directly upon the public! No private joy, no private sorrow, no rest,
no change, is recognized by this taskmaster. It is well: on the whole
we would not have it otherwise; because those who can minister to the
great Public embrace their profession in a spirit of conscious or
unconscious self-denial. In either case the result is the same:
development, advancement, and sometimes attainment.
The wedding is not two days over when another letter arrives full of
her literary work, yet adding that she longs for rest and if we will
only tell her where Campton is, whither we had gone, she would gladly
join us. "I was a weary idiot," she continues, "by the time the
wedding was over, and said 'yes ma'am' to the men and 'no sir' to the
women in sheer imbecility."
Nevertheless she did not get to Campton, but kept on, with the
exception of a few brief visits at Peekskill and elsewhere until the
autumn. In one of her notes she says: "I have returned to my
treadmill. A---- is to leave as soon as she can get ready, and I am
trying to see her off--helping her to get her things together, and
trying to induce her to take a new stand in a new place and make
herself a respectable woman. When she is gone a load will be off my
back. If it were not for the good that is still left in our fellows
our task would be easier than it is; we could cut them adrift and let
them swim; but while we see much that may be turned to good account in
them we hang on, or let them hang on, and our boat moves slow. So
behold me fighting my good fight of womanhood against dust and
disorganization and the universal downward tendency of everybody,
hoping for easier times by and by."
With her heroic nature she was always ready to lead the forlorn hope.
The child no one else was willing to provide for, the woman the world
despised, were brought into her home and cared for as her own.
Unhappily, her delicate health at this time (though she was naturally
strong), her constant literary labors, her uncertain income, her
private griefs, all united, caused her to fall short in ability to
accomplish what she undertook; hence there were often crises from
sudden illness and non-fulfillment of engagements which were very
serious in their effects, but the elasticity of her spirits was
something marvelous and carried her over many a hard place.
In the autumn of 1864 she wrote: "I feel I need to write in these
days, to keep from thinking of things that make me dizzy and blind,
and fill my eyes with tears so that I cannot see the paper. I mean
such things as are being done where our heroes are dying as Shaw died.
It is not wise that all our literature should run in a rut cut through
our hearts and red with our blood. I feel the need of a little gentle
household merriment and talk of common things, to indulge which I have
devised the following."
Notwithstanding her view of the need and her skillfully devised plans
to meet it, she soon sent another epistle, showing how impossible it
was to stem the current of her thought.
November 29, 1864.
My dear friend,--I have sent my New Year's article, the result of one
of those peculiar experiences which sometimes occur to us writers. I
had planned an article, gay, sprightly, wholly domestic; but as I
began and sketched the pleasant home and quiet fireside, an
irresistible impulse _wrote for me_ what followed,--an offering
of sympathy to the suffering and agonized whose homes have forever
been darkened. Many causes united at once to force on me this vision,
from which generally I shrink, but which sometimes will not be
denied,--will make itself felt.
Just before I went to New York two of my earliest and most intimate
friends lost their oldest sons, captains and majors,--splendid fellows
physically and morally, beautiful, brave, religious, uniting the
courage of soldiers to the faith of martyrs,--and when I went to
Brooklyn it seemed as if I were hearing some such thing almost every
day; and Henry, in his profession as minister, has so many letters
full of imploring anguish, the cry of hearts breaking that ask help of
him....
It was during one of Mrs. Stowe's visits to Boston in the ensuing year
that she chanced to talk with greater fullness and openness than she
had done with us before on the subject of Spiritualism. In the
simplest way she affirmed her entire belief in manifestations of the
nearness and individual life of the unseen, and gave vivid
illustrations of the reasons why her faith was thus assured. She never
sought after such testimony, so far as I am aware, unless it may have
been to sit with others who were interested, but her conclusions were
definite and unvarying. At that period such a declaration of faith
required a good deal of bravery; now the subject has assumed a
different phase, and there are few thinking people who do not
recognize a certain truth hidden within the shadows. She spoke with
tender seriousness of "spiritual manifestations" as recorded in the
New Testament and in the prophets. From his early youth her husband
had possessed the peculiar power of seeing persons about him who could
not be perceived by others; visions so distinct that it was impossible
for him to distinguish at times between the real and the unreal. I
recall one illustration which had occurred only a few years previous
to their departure from Andover. She had been called to Boston one day
on business. Making her preparations hurriedly, she bade the household
farewell, and rushed to the station, only to see the train go out as
she arrived. There was nothing to do but to return home and wait
patiently for the next train; but wishing not to be disturbed, she
quietly opened a side door and crept noiselessly up the staircase
leading to her own room, sitting down by her writing-table in the
window. She had been seated about half an hour when Professor Stowe
came in, looked about him with a preoccupied air, but did not speak to
her. She thought his behavior strange, and amused herself by watching
him; at last the situation became so extraordinary that she began to
laugh. "Why," he exclaimed, with a most astonished air, "is that you?
I thought it was one of my visions!"
It may seem a singular antithesis to say of the writer of one of the
greatest stories the world has yet produced that she was not a student
of literature. Books as a medium of the ideas of the age, and as the
promulgators of morals and religion, were of course like the breath of
her life; but a study of the literature of the past as the only true
foundation for a literature of the present was outside the pale of her
occupations, and for the larger portion of her life outside of her
interest. During the riper season of her activity with the pen, the
necessity of studying style and the thoughts of others gained a larger
hold upon her mind; but she always said, with a twinkle of amusement
and pride, that she never could have done anything without Mr. Stowe.
He knew everything, and all she had to do was to go to him. Of her
great work she has written, in that noble introduction to the
illustrated edition of "Uncle Tom" speaking of herself in the third
person: "The story can less be said to have been composed by her than
imposed upon her.... The book insisted upon getting itself into being,
and would take no denial."
It is easily seen that it was neither a spirit of depreciation of
knowledge nor lack of power to become a student which made her fail to
obtain adjuncts indispensable to great writers, but her feet were led
in other paths and her strength was needed for other ends. Madame
George Sand said, writing of "Uncle Tom" soon after its publication:
"If its judges, possessed with the love of what they call 'artistic
work,' find unskillful treatment in the book, look well at them to see
if their eyes are dry when they are reading this or that chapter.... I
cannot say that Mrs. Stowe has talent, as one understands it in the
world of letters, but she has genius, as humanity feels the need of
genius,--the genius of goodness, not that of the rules of letters, but
of the saint."
All her life she stimulated the activity of her pen rather by her
sympathy with humanity than by studies of literature. In one of her
letters she says: "You see whoever can write on home and family
matters, on what people think of and are anxious about and want to
hear from, has an immense advantage. The success of the 'House and
Home Papers' shows me how much people want this sort of thing, and now
I am bringing the series to a close I find I have ever so much more to
say; in fact, the idea has come in this shape.... A set of papers for
the next year to be called 'Christopher's Evenings,' which will allow
great freedom and latitude; a capacity of striking anywhere when a
topic seems to be in the public mind and that will comprise a little
series of sketches or rather little groups of sketches out of which
books may be made. You understand Christopher writes these for the
winter-evening amusement of his family. One set will be entitled 'An
Account of the Seven Little Foxes that spoil the Vines.' This will
cover seven sketches of certain domestic troubles. Another set is the
'Cathedral; or, the Shrines of Home Saints,' under which I shall give
certain sketches of home characters contrasting with that of the
legends of the saints: the shirt-making, knitting, whooping-cough-
tending saints, the Aunt Esthers and Aunt Marias.... Hum (her humming
bird) is well--notwithstanding the dull weather; we keep him in a
sunny upper chamber and feed him daily on sugar and water, and he
catches his own mutton."
Thus in swift succession we find, not only charming little idylls here
and there like her story of "Hum the Son of Buzz" in the "Young Folks
Magazine," being the tale of her captured and tamed humming-bird, but
also "Little Foxes," "The Chimney-Corner," a volume of collected
Poems, "Oldtown Folks," "Sam Lawson's Fireside Tales" and others,
following with tireless rapidity, bearing the same stamp of living
sympathy with difficulties of the time and breathing a spirit of
helpfulness and faith.
At this period, as she had an accessible home in the pleasant city of
Hartford, strangers and travelers often sought and found her. In one
of her familiar notes of 1867 she wrote: "The Amberleys have written
that they are coming to us to-morrow, and of all times, accordingly,
our furnace must spring a leak. We are hoping to make all right before
they get here, but I am really ashamed to show such weather at this
time of year. Poor America! It's like having your mother expose
herself by a fit of ill temper before strangers.... Do, I beg, write
to a poor sinner laboring under a book." And again, a little later:
"_The book_ is almost done--hang it! but done _well_, and
will be a good thing for young men to read, and young women too, and
so I'll send you one. You'll find some things in it, I fancy, that I
know and you don't, about the times before you were born, when I was
'Hush, hush, my dear-ing' in Cincinnati.... I smell spring afar off
--sniff--do you? Any smell of violets in the distance? I think it comes
over the water from the Pamfili Doria."
Among other responsibilities assumed by her at this time was that of
getting Professor Stowe to consent to publish a book. This was no
laughing matter; at first the book was planned merely as an article on
the "Talmud" for the "Atlantic Magazine." Afterwards Professor Stowe
enlarged the design. Later in speaking of his manuscript she says:
"You must not scare him off by grimly declaring that you must have the
_whole manuscript complete_ before you set the printer to work;
you must take the three quarters he brings you and at least make
believe begin printing, and he will immediately go to work and finish
up the whole; otherwise what with lectures and the original sin of
laziness, it will all be indefinitely postponed. I want to make a
crisis that he shall feel that _now_ is the accepted time, and
that this must be finished first and foremost."
And again she says: "My poor _Rab_ has been sick with a heavy
cold this week, and if it hadn't been for me you wouldn't have had
this article which I send in triumph. I plunged into the sea of Rabbis
and copied Mr. Stowe's insufferable chaldonic characters so that you
might not have your life taken by wrathful printers.... Thus I have
ushered into the world a document which I venture to say condenses
more information on an obscure and curious subject than _any_ in
the known world--Hosanna!"
In these busy years she went away upon her Boston trips more and more
rarely, but she writes after her return from one of them in 1868: "I
don't think I _ever_ enjoyed Boston so much as in this visit. Why
was it! Every cloud seemed to turn out its silver lining, everybody
was delightful, and the music has really done me good. I feel it all
over me now. I think of it with a sober certainty of waking bliss! our
little 'hub' is a grand 'hub.' Three cheers for it!... I have had sent
me through the War Department a French poem which I think is full of
real nerve and strength of feeling. I undertook the reading only as a
duty, but found myself quite waked up. The indignation and the feeling
with which he denounces modern skepticism, that worst of all unbelief,
the denial of all good, all beauty, all generosity, all heroism, is
splendid. He is a live man this, and I wish you would read his poem
and send it to Longfellow, for it does one's heart good to see the
French made the vehicle of so much real heroic sentiment. The
description of a slave hunt is splendidly and bitterly satirical and
indignant and full of fine turns of language. Thank God _that_ is
over. No matter what happens to you and me, _that_ great burden
of sin and misery has tumbled off from our backs and rolled into the
sepulchre, where it shall never arise more.... I have been the most
industrious of beings since my return, and am steaming away on the
obstacle that stands between me and my story, which I long to be
at.... I want to get one or two special bits of information out of
Garrison, and so instead of sending my letter at random to Boston I
will trouble you (who have little or nothing to do!) to get this
letter to him. _My own book_, instead of cooling, boils and
bubbles daily and nightly, and I am pushing and spurring like fury to
get to it. I work like a drag-horse, and I'll _never_ get in such
a scrape again. It isn't my business to make up books, but to make
them. I have lots to say."...
The story which had so taken possession of her mind and heart was
"Oldtown Folks," the one which she at the time fancied the best
calculated of all her works to sustain the reputation of the author of
"Uncle Tom's Cabin." The many proofs of her own interest in it seem to
show that she had been moved to a livelier and deeper satisfaction in
this creation than in any of her later productions. She writes
respecting it: "It is more to me than a story; it is my résumé of the
whole spirit and body of New England, a country that is now exerting
such an influence on the civilized world that to know it truly becomes
an object." But there were weary lengths of roads to be traveled by a
woman already overladen with responsibilities and in delicate health
before such a book could reach its consummation.
"I must cry you mercy," she begins one of the notes to her publisher,
"and explain my condition to you as well as possible." The "condition"
was frequently to be explained! Proofs were not ready when they were
promised, the press was stopped, and both author and publisher
required all the tender regard they really had for each other and all
the patience they possessed to keep in tune. She says, "I am sorry to
trouble you or derange your affairs, but one can't always tell in
driving such horses as we drive where they are going to bring up."
She started off in this long journey very hopefully, writing that she
would like to begin printing at once, because "to have the first part
of my book in type will greatly assist me in the last." A month later
she writes: "Here goes the first of my nameless story, of which I can
only say it is as unlike everything else as it is like the strange
world of folks I took it from. There is no fear that there will not be
as much matter as 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,'--there will. There could be an
endless quantity if I only said all I can see and think that is
strange and curious. I partake in ----'s disappointment that it is not
done, but it is of that class of things that cannot be commanded; as
my friend Sam Lawson (_vide_ MSS.) says, 'There's things that can
be druv and then agin there's things that can't,' and this is that
kind--as had to be humored. Instead of rushing on, I have often turned
back and written over with care, that nothing that I wanted to say
might be omitted; it has cost me a good deal of labor to elaborate
this first part, namely, to build my theatre and to introduce my
actors. My labor has all, however, been given to the literary part. My
printers always inform me that I know nothing of punctuation, and I
give thanks that I have no responsibility for any of its absurdities!
Further than beginning my sentence with a capital, I go not,--so I
hope my friend Mr. Bigelow, who is a direct and lineal descendant of
'my Grandmother,' will put those things all right."
Who so well as authors can fully understand and sympathize with the
burden of a long story in the head, long bills on the table, tempting
offers to write for this and that in order to bring in two hundred
dollars from a variety of pleasant editors who desire the name on
their list, house and grounds to be looked after, cooks to be
pacified, visits to be made;--it is no wonder that Mrs. Stowe wrote:
"The thing has been an awful tax and labor, for I have tried to do it
well. I say also to you confidentially, that it has seemed as if every
private care that could hinder me as woman and mother has been crowded
into just this year that I have had this to do."
Happily more peaceful days were in store for her. Her daughters, now
grown to womanhood, were beginning to take the reins of home work and
government into their own hands; and as the darkest hour foreruns the
dawn, so almost imperceptibly to herself her cares began to fade away
from her.
A new era opened in Mrs. Stowe's life when she made her first visit to
Florida, in the winter of 1867. She was tired and benumbed with care
and cold. Suddenly the thought came to her that she would go to the
South, herself, and see what the stories were worth which she was
constantly hearing about its condition. In the mean time, if she
could, she would enjoy the soft air, and find retirement in which she
might continue her book. She says in one of her letters:--
"Winter weather and cold seem always a kind of nightmare to me. I am
going to take my writing-desk and go down to Florida to F----'s
plantation, where we have now a home, and abide there until the heroic
agony of betweenity, the freeze and thaw of winter, is over, and then
I doubt not I can write my three hours a day. Meanwhile, I have a
pretty good pile of manuscript.... The letters I have got about
blossoming roses and loungers in linen coats, while we have been
frozen and snowed up, have made my very soul long to be away. Cold
weather really seems to torpify my brain. I write with a heavy
numbness. I have not yet had a _good_ spell of writing, though I
have had all through the story abundant clairvoyance, and see just how
it must be written; but for writing some parts I want _warm_
weather, and not to be in the state of a 'froze and thawed apple.'...
The cold affects me precisely as extreme hot weather used to in
Cincinnati,--gives me a sort of bilious neuralgia. I hope to get a
clear, bright month in Florida, when I can say something to purpose.
"I did want to read some of my story to you before I went. I have read
it to my husband; and though one may think a husband a partial judge,
yet mine is so nervous and so afraid of being bored that I feel as if
it were something to hold him; and he likes it--is quite wakeful, so
to speak, about it. All I want now, to go on, is a good _frame_,
as father used to say about his preaching. I want calm, soft, even
dreamy, enjoyable weather, sunshine and flowers. Love to dear A----,
whom I so much want to see once more."
Unhappily, she could not get away so soon as she desired. There were
contracts to be signed and other business to arrange. These delays
made her visit southward much shorter than she intended, but it proved
to be only the introduction, the first brief chapter, as it were, of
her future winter life in Florida. Before leaving she wrote as follows
to her publisher:--
"I am so constituted that it is absolutely fatal to me to agree to
have _any_ literary work done at certain dates. I _mean_ to
have this story done by the 1st of September. It would be greatly for
my pecuniary interest to get it done before that, because I have the
offer of eight thousand dollars for the newspaper use of the story I
am planning to write after it. But I am bound by the laws of art.
Sermons, essays, lives of distinguished people, I can write to order
at times and seasons. A story comes, grows like a flower, sometimes
will and sometimes won't, like a pretty woman. When the spirits will
help, I can write. When they jeer, flout, make faces, and otherwise
maltreat me, I can only wait humbly at their gates, watch at the posts
of their doors.
"This story grows even when I do not write. I spent a month in the
mountains in Stockbridge _composing_ before I wrote a word.
"I only ask now a good physical condition, and I go to warmer climes
hoping to save time there. I put everything and everybody off that
interferes with this, except 'Pussy Willow,' which will be a pretty
story for a child's 'series.'"
At last she sailed away, about the 1st of March, 1867, with that
delightful power of knowing what she wanted, and being content when
she attained her end, which is too rare, alas! Her letters glowed and
blossomed and shone with the fruit and flowers and sunshine of the
South. It was hardly to be expected that her literary work could
actually reach the printers' hands under these circumstances as
rapidly as if she had been able to write at home: therefore it was
with no sense of surprise that we received from her, during the summer
of 1868, what proved to be a chapter of excuses instead of a chapter
of her book: "I have a long story to tell you of _what_ has
prevented my going on with my story, which you must see would so
occupy all the nerve and brain force I have that I have not been able
to write a word except to my own children. To them in their needs I
_must_ write _chapters_ which would otherwise go into my
novel."
About this period she found herself able to come again to Boston for a
few days' visit. There were often long croonings over the fire far
into the night; her other-worldliness and abstractions brought with
them a dreamy quietude, especially to those whose harried lives kept
them only too much awake. Her coming was always a pleasure, for she
made holidays by her own delightful presence, and she asked nothing
more than what she found in the companionship of her friends.
After her return to Hartford and in December of the same year, I find
some curious notes showing how easily she was attracted by new
subjects of interest away from the work she had in hand; not that she
saw it in that light, or was aware that her story was in the least
retarded by such digressions, but her keen sympathy with everything
and everybody made it more and more difficult for her to concentrate
her power upon the long story which she considered after all of the
first importance. She writes to the editor of the "Atlantic Monthly:"
"I see that all the leading magazines have a leading article on
'Planchette.'
"There is a lady of my acquaintance who has developed more remarkable
facts in this way than any I have ever seen; I have kept a record of
these communications for some time past, and everybody is very much
struck with them.
"I have material to prepare a very curious article. Shall you want it?
And when?"
We can imagine the feeling of a publisher waiting for copy of her
promised story on reading this note! Also the following of a few days
later:--
"I am beginning a series of articles called 'Learning to Write,'
designed to be helpful to a great many beginners.... I shall instance
Hawthorne as a model and speak of his 'Note Book' as something which
every young author aspiring to write should study.... My materials for
the 'Planchette' article are really very extraordinary,... but I don't
want to write it now when I am driving so hard upon my book.... It
costs some patience to you and certainly to me to have it take so
long, yet I have conscientiously done all I could, since I began. Now
the end of it is in plain sight, but there is a good deal to be done
to bring it out worthily, and I work upon it steadily and daily. I
never put so much work into anything before."