March 18, 1876.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I always think of you when the orange-trees are in
blossom; just now they are fuller than ever, and so many bees are
filling the branches that the air is full of a sort of still murmur.
And now I am beginning to hear from you every month in "Harper's." It
is as good as a letter. "Daniel Deronda" has succeeded in awaking in
my somewhat worn-out mind an interest. So many stories are tramping
over one's mind in every modern magazine nowadays that one is
macadamized, so to speak. It takes something unusual to make a
sensation. This does excite and interest me, as I wait for each number
with eagerness. I wish I could endow you with our long winter
weather,--not winter, except such as you find in Sicily. We live here
from November to June, and my husband sits outdoors on the veranda and
reads all day. We emigrate in solid family; my two dear daughters,
husband, self, and servants come together to spend the winter here,
and so together to our Northern home in summer. My twin daughters
relieve me from all domestic care; they are lively, vivacious, with a
real genius for practical life.... It was very sweet and kind of you
to write what you did last. I suppose it is so long ago you may have
forgotten, but it was a word of tenderness and sympathy about my
brother's trial; it was womanly, tender, and sweet, such as at heart
you are. After all, my love of you is greater than my admiration, for
I think it more and better to be really a woman worth loving than to
have read Greek and German and written books....
It seems now but a little while since my brother Henry and I were two
young people together. He was my two years junior, and nearest
companion out of seven brothers and three sisters. I taught him
drawing and heard his Latin lessons, for you know a girl becomes
mature and womanly long before a boy.... Then he married and lived a
missionary life in the new West, all with a joyousness, an enthusiasm,
a chivalry, which made life bright and vigorous to us both. Then in
time he was called to Brooklyn.... I well remember one snowy night his
riding till midnight to see me, and then our talking, till near
morning, what we could do to make headway against the horrid cruelties
that were being practiced against the defenseless blacks. My husband
was then away lecturing, and my heart was burning itself out in
indignation and anguish. Henry told me he meant to fight that battle
in New York; that he would have a church that would stand by him to
resist the tyrannic dictation of Southern slaveholders. I said: "I,
too, have begun to do something; I have begun a story, trying to set
forth the sufferings and wrongs of the slaves." "That's right,
Hattie," he said; "finish it, and I will scatter it thick as the
leaves of Vallombrosa,"--and so came "Uncle Tom," and Plymouth Church
became a stronghold....
And when all was over, it was he and Lloyd Garrison who were sent by
government once more to raise our national flag on Fort Sumter. You
must see that a man does not so energize without making many enemies.
Half of our Union has been defeated ... and there are those who never
saw our faces that to this hour hate him and me. Then he has been a
progressive in theology. He has been a student of Huxley and Spencer
and Darwin,--enough to alarm the old school,--and yet remained so
ardent a supernaturalist as equally to repel the radical
destructionists in religion. He and I are Christ-worshipers, adoring
Him as the Image in the Invisible God and all that comes from
believing this. Then he has been a reformer, an advocate of universal
suffrage and woman's rights, yet not radical enough to please that
reform party who stand where the socialists of France do, and are for
tearing up all creation generally. Lastly, he had had the misfortune
of a popularity which is perfectly phenomenal. I cannot give you any
idea of the love, worship, idolatry, with which he has been
overwhelmed. He has something magnetic about him, that makes everybody
crave his society, that makes men follow and worship him....
My brother is hopelessly generous and confiding. His inability to
believe evil is something incredible, and so has come all this
suffering.... But you see why I have not written. This has drawn on my
life,--my heart's blood. He is myself; I know you are the kind of
woman to understand me when I say I felt a blow at him more than at
myself. I who know his purity, honor, delicacy, know that he has been
from childhood of an ideal purity,--who reverenced his conscience as
his king, whose glory was redressing human wrong, who spoke no
slander, no, nor listened to it.... My brother's power to console is
something peculiar and wonderful. I have seen him at deathbeds and
funerals, where it would seem as if hope herself must be dumb, bring
down the very peace of Heaven and change despair to trust. He has not
had less power in his own adversity....
Well, dear, pardon me for this outpour. I loved you,--I love you,--and
therefore wanted you to know just what I felt....
This friendship was one that greatly enlisted Mrs. Stowe's sympathies
and enriched her life. Her interest in any woman who was supporting
herself, and especially in any one who found a daily taskmaster in the
pen, and above all when, as in this case, the woman was one possessed
of great moral aspiration half paralyzed in its action because she
found herself in an anomalous and (to the world in general) utterly
incomprehensible position, made such a woman like a magnet to Mrs.
Stowe. She inherited from her father a faith in the divine power of
sympathy, which only waxed greater with years and experience. Wherever
she found a fellow-mortal suffering trouble or dishonor, in spite of
hindrance her feet were turned that way. The genius of George Eliot
and the contrasting elements of her life and character drew Mrs. Stowe
to her side in sisterly solicitude. Her attitude, her sweetness, her
sincerity, could not fail to win the heart of George Eliot. They
became loving friends.
It was the same inborn sense of fraternity which led her, when a
child, on hearing of the death of Lord Byron, to go out into the
fields and fling herself, weeping, on the mounded hay, where she might
pray alone for his forgiveness and salvation. It is wonderful to
observe the influence of Byron upon that generation. It is on record
that when Tennyson, a boy of fifteen, heard some one say, "Byron is
dead," he thought the whole world at an end. "I thought," he said one
day, "everything was over and finished for every one; that nothing
else mattered. I remember that I went out alone and carved 'Byron is
dead' into the sandstone."
From this time forward Mrs. Stowe was chiefly bound up in her life and
labors at the South. In 1870, speaking of some literary work she was
proposing to herself, she said: "I am writing as a pure recreative
movement of mind, to divert myself from the stormy, unrestful
present.... I am being _châtelaine_ of a Florida farm. I have on
my mind the creation of a town on the banks of the St. John. The three
years since we came this side of the river have called into life and
growth a thousand peach-trees, a thousand orange-trees, about five
hundred lemons, and seven or eight hundred grapevines. A peach
orchard, a vineyard, a lemon grove, will carry my name to posterity. I
am founding a place which, thirty or forty years hence, will be called
the old Stowe place.... You can have no idea of this queer country,
this sort of strange, sandy, half-tropical dreamland, unless you come
to it. Here I sit with open windows, the orange buds just opening and
filling the air with sweetness, the hens drowsily cackling, the men
planting in the field, and callas and wild roses blossoming out of
doors. We keep a little fire morning and night. We are flooded with
birds; and by the bye, it is St. Valentine's Day.... I think a uniform
edition of Dr. Holmes's works would be a good thing. Next to Hawthorne
he is our most exquisite writer, and in many passages he goes far
beyond him. What is the dear Doctor doing? If you know any book good
to inspire dreams and visions, put it into my box. My husband chews
endlessly a German cud. I must have English. Has the French book on
Spiritualism come yet? If it has, put it in.... I wish I could give
you a plateful of our oranges.... We had seventy-five thousand of
these same on our trees this year, and if you will start off quick,
they are not all picked yet. Florida wants one thing,--grass. If it
had grass, it would be paradise. But nobody knows what grass is till
had grass, it would be paradise. But nobody knows what grass is till
they try to do without it."
Three months later she wrote: "I hate to leave my calm isle of Patmos,
where the world is not, and I have such quiet long hours for writing.
Emerson could _insulate_ himself here and keep his electricity.
Hawthorne ought to have lived in an orange grove in Florida.... You
have no idea how small you all look, you folks in the world, from this
distance. All your fusses and your fumings, your red-hot hurrying
newspapers, your clamor of rival magazines,--why, we see it as we see
steamboats fifteen miles off, a mere speck and smoke."
Again she writes: "You ought to see us riding out in our mule-cart.
Poor 'Fly!' the last of pea-time, who looks like an animated hair-
trunk and the wagon and harness to match! It is too funny, but we
enjoy it hugely. There are now in our solitude five Northern families,
and we manage to have quite pleasant society.
"But think of our church and school-house being burned down just as we
were ready to do something with it. I feel it most for the colored
people, who were so anxious to have their school and now have no place
to have it in. We have all been trying to raise what we can for a new
building and intend to get one up by March.
"If I were North now I would try giving some readings for this and
perhaps raise something."
It was a strange contrast and one at variance with her natural taste,
which brought her before the public as a reader of her own stories in
the autumn and winter of 1872-73. She was no longer able to venture on
the effort of a long story, and yet it was manifestly unwise for her
to forego the income which was extended to her through this channel.
She wrote: "I have had a very urgent business letter, saying that the
lyceums of different towns were making up their engagements, and that
if I were going into it I must make my engagements now. It seems to me
that I cannot do this. The thing will depend so much on my health and
ability to do. You know I could not go round in cold weather.... I
feel entirely uncertain, and, as the Yankees say, 'didn't know what to
do nor to don't. My state in regard to it may be described by the
phrase 'Kind o' love to--hate to--wish I didn't--want ter.' I suppose
the result will be I shall not work into their lecture system."
In April she wrote from Mandarin: "I am painting a _Magnolia
grandiflora,_ which I will show you.... I am appalled by finding
myself booked to read. But I am getting well and strong, and trust to
be equal to the emergency. But I shrink from Tremont Temple, and--does
not think I can fill it. On the whole I should like to begin in
Boston." And in August she said: "I am to begin in Boston in
September.... It seems to me that is a little too early for Boston,
isn't it? Will there be anybody in town then? I don't know as it's my
business, which is simply to speak my piece and take my money."
Her first reading actually took place in Springfield, not Boston, and
the next day she unexpectedly arrived at our cottage at Manchester-by-
the-Sea. She had read the previous evening in a large public hall, had
risen at five o'clock that morning, and found her way to us. Her next
readings were given in Boston, the first, in the afternoon, at the
Tremont Temple. She was conscious that her effort at Springfield had
not been altogether successful,--she had not held her large audience;
and she was determined to put the whole force of her nature into this
afternoon reading at the Tremont Temple. She called me into her
bedroom, where she stood before the mirror, with her short gray hair,
which usually lay in soft curls around her brow, brushed erect and
standing stiffly. "Look here, my dear," she said; "now I am exactly
like my father, Dr. Lyman Beecher, when he was going to preach," and
she held up her forefinger warningly. It was easy to see that the
spirit of the old preacher was revived in her veins, and the afternoon
would show something of his power. An hour later, when I sat with her
in the anteroom waiting for the moment of her appearance to arrive, I
could feel the power surging up within her. I knew she was armed for a
good fight.
That reading was a great success. She was alive in every fibre of her
being: she was to read portions of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" to men, women,
and children many of whom had taken no part in the crisis which
inspired it, and she determined to effect the difficult task of making
them feel as well as hear. With her presence and inspiration they
could not fail to understand what her words had signified to the
generation that had passed through the struggle of our war. When her
voice was not sufficient to make the audience hear, the people rose
from their seats and crowded round her, standing gladly, that no word
might be lost. It was the last leap of the flame which had burned out
a great wrong. From this period, although she continued to write, she
lived chiefly for several winters in the retirement of the Florida
orange grove, which she always enjoyed. Her sympathy was strong with
the new impetus benevolent work in cities had received, and she helped
it from her "grotto" in more ways than one. Sometimes she would write
soothing or inspiriting letters, as the case might demand, to
individuals.
The following note, written at the time of the Boston fire in 1872,
will show how alive she was to the need of that period.
"I send inclosed one hundred dollars to the fund for the Firemen. I
could wish it a hundred times as much, and then it would be inadequate
to express how much I honor those brave, devoted men who put their own
lives between Boston and mine. No soldiers that fell in battle for our
common country ever deserved of us all greater honor than the noble
men whose charred and blackened remains have been borne from the ruins
of Boston; they are worthy to be inscribed on imperishable monuments.
"I would that some such honorary memorial might commemorate their
heroism."
Meanwhile, the comfort she drew in from the beauty of nature and the
calm around her seemed yearly to nourish and renew her power of
existence. Questions which were difficult to others were often solved
to her mind by practical observation. It amused her to hear persons
agitating the question as to where they should look to supply labor
for the South. "Why," she remarked once, "there was a negro, one of
those fearfully hot days in the spring, who was digging muck from a
swamp just in front of our house, and carrying it in a wheelbarrow up
a steep slope, where he dumped it down, and then went back for more.
He kept this up when it was so hot that we thought either one of us
would die to be five minutes in the sun. We carried a thermometer to
the spot where he was working, to see how great the heat was, and it
rose at once to one hundred and thirty-five degrees. The man, however,
kept cheerfully at his work, and when he went to his dinner sat with
the other negroes out in the white sand without a bit of shade.
Afterward they all lay down for a nap in the same unsheltered
locality. Toward evening, when the sun was sufficiently low to enable
me to go out, I went to speak to this man. 'Martin,' said I, 'you've
had a warm day's work. How do you stand it? Why, I couldn't endure
such heat for five minutes.' 'Hoh! hoh! No, I s'pose you couldn't.
Ladies can't, missus.' 'But, Martin, aren't you very tired?' 'Bress
your heart, no, missus.' So Martin goes home to his supper, and after
supper will be found dancing all the evening on the wharf near by!
After this, when people talk of bringing Germans and Swedes to do such
work, I am much entertained."
Many were the pleasant descriptions of her home sent forth to tempt
her friends away from the busy North. "Here is where we read books,"
she said in one of her letters, written in the month of March. "Up
North nobody does,--they don't have time; so if ---- will mail his
book to Mandarin, I will 'read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.' We
are having a carnival of flowers. I hope you read my 'Palmetto
Leaves,' for then you will see all about us.... Our home is like a
martin-box.... I cannot tell you the quaint odd peace we have here in
living under the oak. 'Behold, she dwelleth under the oak at Mamre.'
All that we want is friends, to whom we may say that solitude is
sweet. We have some neighbors, however, who have made pretty places
near us. Mr. Stowe keeps up a German class of three young ladies, with
whom he is reading Faust for the nine hundred and ninety-ninth time,
and in the evening I read aloud to a small party of the neighbors. We
have made up our home as we went along, throwing out a chamber here
and there, like twigs out of the old oak.... The orange blossoms have
come like showers of pearl, and the yellow jessamine like golden
fleeces, and the violets and the lilies, and azaleas. This is
glorious, budding, blossoming spring, and we have days when merely to
breathe and be is to be blessed. I love to have a day of mere
existence. Life itself is a pleasure when the sun shines warm, and the
lizards dart from all the shingles of the roof, and the birds sing in
so many notes and tones the yard reverberates; and I sit and dream and
am happy, and never want to go back North, nor do anything with the
toiling, snarling world again. I do wish I could gather you both in my
little nest."
She was like her father, Dr. Lyman Beecher, in many things. The
scorching fire of the brain seemed to devour its essence, and she
endured, as he did before her, some years of existence when the motive
power almost ceased to act. She became "like a little child,"
wandering about, pleased with flowers, fresh air, the sound of a
piano, or a voice singing hymns, but the busy, inspiring spirit was
asleep.
Gradually she faded away, shrouded in this strange mystery, hovered
over by the untiring affection of her children, sweet and tender in
her decadence, but "absent."
At the moment when this brief memorial was receiving a final revision
before going to the press, the news reached me of the unloosing of the
last threads of consciousness which bound Mrs. Stowe to this world.
The sweetness and patience of her waiting years can only be perfectly
told by the daughters who hung over her. She knew her condition, but
there was never a word of complaint, and so long as her husband lived
she performed the office of nurse and attendant upon his lightest
wishes as if she felt herself strong. Her near friends were sometimes
invited to dine or to have supper with her at that period, but they
could see even then how prostrated she became after the slightest
mental effort. It was upon occasion of such a visit that she told me,
with a twinkle of the eye, that "Mr. Stowe was sometimes inclined to
be a little fretful during the long period of his illness, and said to
her one day that he believed the Lord had forgotten him." "Oh, no, He
hasn't," she answered; "cheer up! your turn will come soon."
She was always fond of music, especially of the one kind she had known
best; and the singing of hymns never failed to soothe her at the last;
therefore when the little group stood round her open grave on a lovely
July day and sang quite simply the hymns she loved, it seemed in its
simplicity and broken harmony a fitting farewell to the faded body she
had already left so far behind.
A great spirit has performed its mission and has been released. The
world moves on unconscious; but the world's children have been blessed
by her coming, and they who know and understand should praise God
reverently in her going. "As a teil tree, and as an oak, whose
substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed
shall be the substance thereof." In the words of the prophet we can
almost hear her glad cry:--
"My sword shall be bathed in heaven."