SARAH CHAUNCEY WOOLSEY (Susan Coolidge) was born in Cleveland, Ohio,
January 29, 1835. Her father, John M. Woolsey, a New Yorker, had come
to Cleveland to attend to property owned by his father, and had there
met Jane Andrews, a charming and graceful girl from Connecticut, whom
he made his wife.
Their home was on Euclid Avenue, and comprised about five acres in
house-lot, garden, orchard, pasture, and woodland. Here came into the
world a family of four girls and a boy,—all vigorous and active and
full of life. Sarah was the eldest and the predestined leader of the
little tribe. They grew up as children of that day did under similar
conditions. There was the regular old-fashioned schooling, not too
exacting or strenuous, and much wholesome out-of-door life. There were
horses and dogs and cattle and birds for the children to care for and
play with, and much climbing and romping were permitted in a place
where no near neighbors could be disturbed. To the other children
life was a joyous holiday, diversified with small disappointments
and dismays; but to Sarah the sky and the earth held boundless
anticipations and intentions, and the world was a place of enchantment.
She was always individual from the moment she first opened her big
brown eyes—passionately loving and passionately wilful, with heroic
intentions and desires, and with remorse and disappointments in
proportion. Part of the woodland where the axe had not yet done
its work of cutting and clipping was given to the children for a
playground. They called it “Paradise,” and for all of them it was a
place of rapture and mystery. To the others it was full of hiding
places,—to little Sarah the hiding places were bowers. They looked for
eggs and birds’ nests, and had thrilling encounters with furry wild
creatures, which fled at their approach; but her intercourse was all
with the fairies and elves and gnomes which peopled the place. After a
time they felt the presence of the fairies too; but it was under the
influence of her enthusiastic imagination, which controlled their
own more mundane perceptions. With her for a leader they often passed
into a new world of romance and adventure and high undertakings. They
lived in battlemented castles, attended by knights and squires, with
danger on all sides met by lofty courage; or they rode on elephants
in India, always on dignified missions, attended by great pomp and
ceremony; or they lived with fairies, whose gifts might crop up under
every toadstool. To be sure, the elephant on which they made their
proud progress might at other times, stripped of his trappings, be
serviceable as a nursery table, and the fairy gifts were apt to bear
a prosaic resemblance to certain well-known and well-worn nursery
properties; but invested with the mystery and romance cast upon them by
Sarah’s vivid imagination, the little band went, as she led them, into
the land of dreams, and felt no incongruity.
Her education went on much as she chose. The best teachers available
were employed, and to each in turn she became a favorite and
interesting pupil; but though her quick intelligence enabled her
to pass excellent examinations and gave her a foremost place in
her classes, she really assimilated and retained only what she
enjoyed. Mathematics she ignored entirely. All scientific problems
fascinated her by their results; but she would not open her mind to
the processes by which the results were reached. For languages she
had no predilections, though she used her own with singular grace and
precision, drawing her words from an apparently limitless vocabulary.
Through life this charming use of language, combined with her keen
humor and sympathetic appreciation of all that makes life stirring and
vital, made her a most fascinating companion. Her delight in literature
was her real education. From her early youth she revelled in books,
reading so rapidly that it seemed impossible that she could remember
what she read; but, in fact, remembering it all! To have looked over a
poem two or three times was enough to make it a permanent possession.
She devoured history, biography, romances, and poetry, and with
intuitive judgment and taste revelled in what was really beautiful and
interesting, and discarded the second-rate and commonplace. She began
writing at a very early age,—fairy stories, verses, and romances,—but
she never published anything until she had reached full maturity.
Meantime she grew to vigorous, active womanhood, full of interests and
friendships and delightful experiences of one sort and another. She
was much loved, and gave such a wealth of self-forgetting, idolizing,
ardent affection in return that her friends were all lovers. She drew a
circle of loving admirers about her wherever she went, and was always
totally unconscious of the charm she worked by her very sweet voice and
manner, brilliant fun, and warm sympathy.
The Civil War broke out just as she passed from girlhood to young
womanhood. It aroused in her a passion of enthusiasm and devotion,
and she threw herself with all her heart and soul into work for the
soldiers at home and afield. In the Soldiers’ Hospital at New Haven
she was an enthusiastic helper, in the wards, or storeroom, or linen
closet, wherever her energy was most needed. And her leisure was
filled with knitting or sewing or preparing special diet for the sick
and wounded. She was a tireless worker then and ever, and nature had
endowed her with great practical gifts. She was an excellent cook
and an expert needlewoman, both in plain sewing and the most dainty
embroidery, and all work was done with such rapidity and perfection
that it was a despair for the race of plodders even to watch her swift
achievements.
From New Haven she went to the Convalescent Hospital established at
Portsmouth Grove, and was one of a band of excellent workers there
during the second year of the war. It was a very developing and vivid
experience, and one which she counted among the greatest points of
interest in her life.
When the war was over, her old career of busy, never-slackening
industry and purpose began again. It was full, as ever, of friendships
which could not possibly claim more than she was willing to give.
She naturally drew around her the cleverest men and women of her
acquaintance, and her society was sought far and near.
But she did not really begin her life as an author until a few years
later, when in a grove at Bethlehem, N. H., sitting on a fallen tree,
she sketched the outline of “The New Year’s Bargain.” She had sent a
few fugitive articles to certain magazines before this, but only now
did she take up writing as a real work. That dainty little book, with
its fantastic and graceful imaginings, was so well received by the
public that she went on in a different vein, through the series of the
“Katy Did” books, where fact and fiction, experience and fancy, were
so blended that it was hardly possible to say in answer to the eager
questionings of some of her little readers where the one ended and the
other began. Katy found a large audience, and her biographer went on
from children’s books to verses or historical studies, such as “Old
Convent Days,” or mere editor’s work, like the condensations of those
famous old diaries of Mrs. Delany and Miss Burney. She was consulting
reader for Roberts Company in the days when the hall-mark of that firm
was a proof of excellence. She was very industrious, but her literary
work never seemed the most absorbing part of her life. This was partly
because of her intense and vivid interest in the rest of life,—the
journeys, the visits, and above all the friends,—and largely because
she was absolutely devoid of literary vanity or self-consciousness.
She seldom talked of her work or referred in any way to her success.
Her verses found a warm welcome in many hearts whose owners were all
unknown to her, and sometimes she acknowledged, with a sort of tender
surprise, that it was a great reward to have been able to help and
encourage others. But anything like flattery or mere compliment was
very distasteful to her, and she sometimes owned impatiently that
“Susan Coolidge” bored her to death, and she wished she had never heard
of her!
While literature became the chief occupation of her life, her artistic
temperament and love of the beautiful found expression in many other
ways. She instinctively surrounded herself with beautiful objects and
colors. Her taste was almost unerring, and harmony of design and softly
shaded tints seemed to be her natural setting. She transformed every
room she lived in, were it for a week only.
She thought little of her drawings in water color. They were all
flower pieces studied from life, and she was conscious of the little
instruction she had received and her ignorance of technique. But all
the same these lovely panels were a joy to those who were fortunate
enough to possess them. As was once said by one who was no mean
artist himself, “She can do what many artists—adepts in technique—fail
in. She gives us the flower in all its life and spirit.” Her china
painting—necessarily more conventional—was still charming, holding
something of her individuality.
This vivid life of purpose and energy and never-failing zest appeared
to bubble up from such an inexhaustible fountain of vitality that it
seemed as if it might go on for ever. But gradually a shadow stole
over it—not a very dark one at first, but inexorable. She fought with
it, played with it, defied it, but it was always there! She could not
acknowledge defeat and was always planning for the future with gay
self-confidence; but the shadow grew! By and by the narrowing limits
shut her in her chamber, but even then she looked out upon the days
to come with undaunted courage. The chamber was not like a sick room.
It was bright with sunshine and the sparkle of fire, and scented and
gay with the flowers she so dearly loved. Here she read and wrote and
saw her many friends. From hence came words of rejoicing for all her
dear ones who were happy, and words of truest sympathy for those who
were sad. She was one of the few people to whom the joys and sorrows
of others are of equal importance to their own. She pondered over the
lives of her friends with never-ending interest, and gave at every turn
and crisis the truest and most comprehending sympathy. No wonder that
so many warmed hands and hearts by that generous flame!
Slowly the shadow deepened. She was disturbed by it, but still wrote
happily of the future and filled it with plans and purposes. But one
day, April 9, 1905, very gently, Death’s finger touched her. She was
not conscious of pain or trouble, “only a new sensation,” but she
closed her eyes, and without a word of farewell, was gone away from us.
It is hard to sum up such a life. It was a very full and happy one.
She gave much, but received much. She loved beauty, and she was always
surrounded by it. She loved friendship, and nobody had more or better
friends. She gave them of her best, but she drew their best from them.
Hers was an ideal companionship, so full of appreciative interest and
sympathy, so illuminated by wit and humor. She was ardent and eager
in her plans of life. Nothing could exceed the absorption and energy
with which she carried them out. But she accepted disappointment, after
a little struggle, with a gay _insouciance_. So when the final defeat
came she seemed to resign herself without struggle to the inevitable,
and to those of us who loved her best it seemed as if that sweet and
brilliant and unwearied spirit had only folded its wings for a moment
before taking a longer and surer flight.