LIVES
OF
GIRLS WHO BECAME FAMOUS.
BY
SARAH K. BOLTON,
AUTHOR OF "POOR BOYS WHO BECAME FAMOUS," "SOCIAL STUDIES IN ENGLAND,"
ETC.
1914
"_Earth's noblest thing, a woman perfected._"
--JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
"_Sow good services; sweet remembrances will grow from them_."
--MADAME DE STAEËL.
TO
MY AUNT,
MRS. MARTHA W. MILLER,
Whose culture and kindness I count
among the blessings of
my life.
PREFACE.
All of us have aspirations. We build air-castles, and are probably the
happier for the building. However, the sooner we learn that life is
not a play-day, but a thing of earnest activity, the better for us and
for those associated with us. "Energy," says Goethe, "will do anything
that can be done in this world"; and Jean Ingelow truly says, that
"Work is heaven's hest."
If we cannot, like George Eliot, write _Adam Bede_, we can, like
Elizabeth Fry, visit the poor and the prisoner. If we cannot, like
Rosa Bonheur, paint a "Horse Fair," and receive ten thousand dollars,
we can, like Mrs. Stowe and Miss Alcott, do some kind of work to
lighten the burdens of parents. If poor, with Mary Lyon's persistency
and noble purpose, we can accomplish almost anything. If rich, like
Baroness Burdett-Coutts, we can bless the world in thousands of ways,
and are untrue to God and ourselves if we fail to do it.
Margaret Fuller said, "All might be superior beings," and doubtless
this is true, if all were willing to cultivate the mind and beautify
the character.
S.K.B.
CONTENTS.
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE Novelist
HELEN HUNT JACKSON Poet and Prose Writer
LUCRETIA MOTT Preacher
MARY A LIVERMORE Lecturer
MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI Journalist
MARIA MITCHELL Scientist
LOUISA M ALCOTT Author
MARY LYON Teacher
HARRIET G HOSMER Sculptor
MADAME DE STAËL Novelist and Political Writer
ROSA BONHEUR Artist
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING Poet
"GEORGE ELIOT" Novelist
ELIZABETH FRY Philanthropist
ELIZABETH THOMPSON BUTLER Painter
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE Hospital Nurse
LADY BRASSEY Traveller
BARONESS BURDETT-COUTTS Benefactor
JEAN INGELOW Poet
* * * * *
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
[Illustration: HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.]
In a plain home, in the town of Litchfield, Conn., was born, June 14,
1811, Harriet Beecher Stowe. The house was well-nigh full of little
ones before her coming. She was the seventh child, while the oldest
was but eleven years old.
Her father, Rev. Lyman Beecher, a man of remarkable mind and sunshiny
heart, was preaching earnest sermons in his own and in all the
neighboring towns, on the munificent salary of five hundred dollars a
year. Her mother, Roxana Beecher, was a woman whose beautiful life has
been an inspiration to thousands. With an education superior for those
times, she came into the home of the young minister with a strength of
mind and heart that made her his companion and reliance.
There were no carpets on the floors till the girl-wife laid down a
piece of cotton cloth on the parlor, and painted it in oils, with a
border and a bunch of roses and others flowers in the centre. When one
of the good deacons came to visit them, the preacher said, "Walk in,
deacon, walk in!"
"Why, I can't," said he, "'thout steppin' on't." Then he exclaimed, in
admiration, "D'ye think ya can have all that, _and heaven too_?"
So meagre was the salary for the increasing household, that Roxana
urged that a select school be started; and in this she taught
French, drawing, painting, and embroidery, besides the higher English
branches. With all this work she found time to make herself the idol
of her children. While Henry Ward hung round her neck, she made dolls
for little Harriet, and read to them from Walter Scott and Washington
Irving.
These were enchanting days for the enthusiastic girl with brown curls
and blue eyes. She roamed over the meadows, and through the forests,
gathering wild flowers in the spring or nuts in the fall, being
educated, as she afterwards said, "first and foremost by Nature,
wonderful, beautiful, ever-changing as she is in that
cloudland, Litchfield. There were the crisp apples of the pink
azalea,--honeysuckle-apples, we called them; there were scarlet
wintergreen berries; there were pink shell blossoms of trailing
arbutus, and feathers of ground pine; there were blue and white and
yellow violets, and crowsfoot, and bloodroot, and wild anemone, and
other quaint forest treasures."
A single incident, told by herself in later years, will show the
frolic-loving spirit of the girl, and the gentleness of Roxana
Beecher. "Mother was an enthusiastic horticulturist in all the small
ways that limited means allowed. Her brother John, in New York, had
just sent her a small parcel of fine tulip-bulbs. I remember rummaging
these out of an obscure corner of the nursery one day when she was
gone out, and being strongly seized with the idea that they were good
to eat, and using all the little English I then possessed to persuade
my brothers that these were onions, such as grown people ate, and
would be very nice for us. So we fell to and devoured the whole; and I
recollect being somewhat disappointed in the odd, sweetish taste, and
thinking that onions were not as nice as I had supposed. Then mother's
serene face appeared at the nursery door, and we all ran toward her,
and with one voice began to tell our discovery and achievement. We had
found this bag of onions, and had eaten them all up.
"There was not even a momentary expression of impatience, but she sat
down and said, 'My dear children, what you have done makes mamma very
sorry; those were not onion roots, but roots of beautiful flowers;
and if you had let them alone, ma would have had next summer in the
garden, great, beautiful red and yellow flowers, such as you never
saw.' I remember how drooping and disappointed we all grew at this
picture, and how sadly we regarded the empty paper bag."
When Harriet was five years old, a deep shadow fell upon the happy
household. Eight little children were gathered round the bedside of
the dying mother. When they cried and sobbed, she told them, with
inexpressible sweetness, that "God could do more for them than she had
ever done or could do, and that they must trust Him," and urged her
six sons to become ministers of the Gospel. When her heart-broken
husband repeated to her the verse, "You are now come unto Mount Zion,
unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an
innumerable company of angels; to the general assembly and church of
the first-born, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of
all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the
Mediator of the New Covenant," she looked up into his face with a
beautiful smile, and closed her eyes forever. That smile Mr. Beecher
never forgot to his dying day.
The whole family seemed crushed by the blow. Little Henry (now the
great preacher), who had been told that his mother had been buried
in the ground, and also that she had gone to heaven, was found one
morning digging with all his might under his sister's window, saying,
"I'm going to heaven, to find ma!"
So much did Mr. Beecher miss her counsel and good judgment, that he
sat down and wrote her a long letter, pouring out his whole soul,
hoping somehow that she, his guardian angel, though dead, might see
it. A year later he wrote a friend: "There is a sensation of loss
which nothing alleviates--a solitude which no society interrupts. Amid
the smiles and prattle of children, and the kindness of sympathizing
friends, I am _alone; Roxana is not here_. She partakes in none of my
joys, and bears with me none of my sorrows. I do not murmur; I only
feel daily, constantly, and with deepening impression, how much I have
had for which to be thankful, and how much I have lost.... The whole
year after her death was a year of great emptiness, as if there was
not motive enough in the world to move me. I used to pray earnestly
to God either to take me away, or to restore to me that interest in
things and susceptibility to motive I had had before."
Once, when sleeping in the room where she died, he dreamed that Roxana
came and stood beside him, and "smiled on me as with a smile from
heaven. With that smile," he said, "all my sorrow passed away. I awoke
joyful, and I was lighthearted for weeks after."
Harriet went to live for a time with her aunt and grandmother, and
then came back to the lonesome home, into which Mr. Beecher had
felt the necessity of bringing a new mother. She was a refined and
excellent woman, and won the respect and affection of the family. At
first Harriet, with a not unnatural feeling of injury, said to her:
"Because you have come and married my father, when I am big enough, I
mean to go and marry your father;" but she afterwards learned to love
her very much.
At seven, with a remarkably retentive memory,--a thing which many of
us spoil by trashy reading, or allowing our time and attention to
be distracted by the trifles of every-day life,--Harriet had learned
twenty-seven hymns and two long chapters of the Bible. She was
exceedingly fond of reading, but there was little in a poor minister's
library to attract a child. She found _Bell's Sermons_, and _Toplady
on Predestination_. "Then," she says, "there was a side closet full of
documents, a weltering ocean of pamphlets, in which I dug and toiled
for hours, to be repaid by disinterring a delicious morsel of a _Don
Quixote_, that had once been a book, but was now lying in forty or
fifty _dissecta membra_, amid Calls, Appeals, Essays, Reviews, and
Rejoinders. The turning up of such a fragment seemed like the rising
of an enchanted island out of an ocean of mud." Finally _Ivanhoe_ was
obtained, and she and her brother George read it through seven times.
At twelve, we find her in the school of Mr. John P. Brace,
a well-known teacher, where she developed great fondness for
composition. At the exhibition at the close of the year, it was
the custom for all the parents to come and listen to the wonderful
productions of their children. From the list of subjects given,
Harriet had chosen, "Can the Immortality of the Soul be proved by the
Light of Nature?"
"When mine was read," she says, "I noticed that father brightened
and looked interested. 'Who wrote that composition?' he asked of Mr.
Brace. '_Your daughter, sir!_' was the answer. There was no mistaking
father's face when he was pleased, and to have interested _him_ was
past all juvenile triumphs."
A new life was now to open to Harriet. Her only sister Catharine,
a brilliant and noble girl, was engaged to Professor Fisher of Yale
College. They were to be married on his return from a European tour,
but alas! the _Albion_, on which he sailed, went to pieces on the
rocks, and all on board, save one, perished. Her betrothed was never
heard from. For months all hope seemed to go out of Catharine's life,
and then, with a strong will, she took up a course of mathematical
study, _his_ favorite study, and Latin under her brother Edward. She
was now twenty-three. Life was not to be along the pleasant paths she
had hoped, but she must make it tell for the future.
With remarkable energy, she went to Hartford, Conn., where her brother
was teaching, and thoroughly impressed with the belief that God had a
work for her to do for girls, she raised several thousand dollars and
built the Hartford Female Seminary. Her brothers had college doors
opened to them; why, she reasoned, should not women have equal
opportunities? Society wondered of what possible use Latin and moral
philosophy could be to girls, but they admired Miss Beecher, and
let her do as she pleased. Students poured in, and the seminary soon
overflowed. My own school life in that beloved institution, years
afterward, I shall never forget.
And now the little twelve-year-old Harriet came down from Litchfield
to attend Catharine's school, and soon become a pupil-teacher, that
the burden of support might not fall too heavily upon the father.
Other children had come into the Beecher home, and with a salary of
eight hundred dollars, poverty could not be other than a constant
attendant. Once when the family were greatly straitened for money,
while Henry and Charles were in college, the new mother went to bed
weeping, but the father said, "Well, the Lord always has taken care of
me, and I am sure He always will," and was soon fast asleep. The next
morning, Sunday, a letter was handed in at the door, containing a $100
bill, and no name. It was a thank-offering for the conversion of a
child.
Mr. Beecher, with all his poverty, could not help being generous. His
wife, by close economy, had saved twenty-five dollars to buy a new
overcoat for him. Handing him the roll of bills, he started out to
purchase the garment, but stopped on the way to attend a missionary
meeting. His heart warmed as he stayed, and when the contribution-box
was passed, he put in the roll of bills for the Sandwich Islanders,
and went home with his threadbare coat!
Three years later, Mr. Beecher, who had now become widely known as
a revivalist and brilliant preacher, was called to Boston, where he
remained for six years. His six sermons on intemperance had stirred
the whole country.
Though he loved Boston, his heart often turned toward the great West,
and he longed to help save her young men. When, therefore, he was
asked to go to Ohio and become the president of Lane Theological
Seminary at Cincinnati, he accepted. Singularly dependent upon his
family, Catharine and Harriet must needs go with him to the new home.
The journey was a toilsome one, over the corduroy roads and across the
mountains by stagecoach. Finally they were settled in a pleasant
house on Walnut Hills, one of the suburbs of the city, and the sisters
opened another school.
Four years later, in 1836, Harriet, now twenty-five, married the
professor of biblical criticism and Oriental literature in the
seminary, Calvin E. Stowe, a learned and able man.
Meantime the question of slavery had been agitating the minds of
Christian people. Cincinnati being near the border-line of Kentucky,
was naturally the battle-ground of ideas. Slaves fled into the
free State and were helped into Canada by means of the "Underground
Railroad," which was in reality only a friendly house about every ten
miles, where the colored people could be secreted during the day, and
then carried in wagons to the next "station" in the night.
Lane Seminary became a hot-bed of discussion. Many of the Southern
students freed their slaves, or helped to establish schools for
colored children in Cincinnati, and were disinherited by their fathers
in consequence. Dr. Bailey, a Christian man who attempted to carry on
a fair discussion of the question in his paper, had his presses broken
twice and thrown into the river. The feeling became so intense, that
the houses of free colored people were burned, some killed, and the
seminary was in danger from the mob. The members of Professor Stowe's
family slept with firearms, ready to defend their lives. Finally
the trustees of the college forbade all slavery discussion by the
students, and as a result, nearly the whole body left the institution.
Dr. Beecher, meantime, was absent at the East, having raised a large
sum of money for the seminary, and came back only to find his labor
almost hopeless. For several years, however, he and his children
stayed and worked on. Mrs. Stowe opened her house to colored children,
whom she taught with her own. One bright boy in her school was claimed
by an estate in Kentucky, arrested, and was to be sold at auction. The
half-crazed mother appealed to Mrs. Stowe, who raised the needed money
among her friends, and thus saved the lad.
Finally, worn out with the "irrepressible conflict," the Beecher
family, with the Stowes, came North in 1850, Mr. Stowe accepting a
professorship at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine. A few boarders
were taken into the family to eke out the limited salary, and Mrs.
Stowe earned a little from a sketch written now and then for the
newspapers. She had even obtained a prize of fifty dollars for a New
England story. Her six brothers had fulfilled their mother's dying
wish, and were all in the ministry. She was now forty years old, a
devoted mother, with an infant; a hard-working teacher, with her hands
full to overflowing. It seemed improbable that she would ever do other
than this quiet, unceasing labor. Most women would have said, "I can
do no more than I am doing. My way is hedged up to any outside work."
But Mrs. Stowe's heart burned for those in bondage. The Fugitive Slave
Law was hunting colored people and sending them back into servitude
and death. The people of the North seemed indifferent. Could she not
arouse them by something she could write?
One Sunday, as she sat at the communion table in the little Brunswick
church, the pattern of Uncle Tom formed itself in her mind, and,
almost overcome by her feelings, she hastened home and wrote out the
chapter on his death. When she had finished, she read it to her two
sons, ten and twelve, who burst out sobbing, "Oh! mamma, slavery is
the most cursed thing in the world."
After two or three more chapters were ready, she wrote to Dr. Bailey,
who had moved his paper from Cincinnati to Washington, offering the
manuscript for the columns of the _National Era_, and it was accepted.
Now the matter must be prepared each week. She visited Boston, and
at the Anti-Slavery rooms borrowed several books to aid in furnishing
facts. And then the story wrote itself out of her full heart and
brain. When it neared completion, Mr. Jewett of Boston, through the
influence of his wife, offered to become the publisher, but feared if
the serial were much longer, it would be a failure. She wrote him that
she could not stop till it was done.
_Uncle Tom's Cabin_ was published March 20,1852. Then came the
reaction in her own mind. Would anybody read this book? The subject
was unpopular. It would indeed be a failure, she feared, but she would
help the story make its way if possible. She sent a copy of the book
to Prince Albert, knowing that both he and Queen Victoria were deeply
interested in the subject; another copy to Macaulay, whose father
was a friend of Wilberforce; one to Charles Dickens; and another
to Charles Kingsley. And then the busy mother, wife, teacher,
housekeeper, and author waited in her quiet Maine home to see what the
busy world would say.
In ten days, ten thousand copies had been sold. Eight presses were run
day and night to supply the demand. Thirty different editions appeared
in London in six months. Six theatres in that great city were playing
it at one time. Over three hundred thousand copies were sold in less
than a year.
Letters poured in upon Mrs. Stowe from all parts of the world. Prince
Albert sent his hearty thanks. Dickens said, "Your book is worthy of
any head and any heart that ever inspired a book." Kingsley wrote,
"It is perfect." The noble Earl of Shaftesbury wrote, "None but a
Christian believer could have produced such a book as yours, which has
absolutely startled the whole world.... I live in hope--God grant it
may rise to faith!--that this system is drawing to a close. It seems
as though our Lord had sent out this book as the messenger before
His face to prepare His way before Him." He wrote out an address of
sympathy "From the women of England to the women of America," to
which were appended the signatures of 562,448 women. These were in
twenty-six folio volumes, bound in morocco, with the American eagle on
the back of each, the whole in a solid oak case, sent to the care of
Mrs. Stowe.
The learned reviews gave long notices of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_.
_Blackwood_ said, "There are scenes and touches in this book which no
living writer that we know can surpass, and perhaps none can equal."
George Eliot wrote her beautiful letters.
How the heart of Lyman Beecher must have been gladdened by this
wonderful success of his daughter! How Roxana Beecher must have looked
down from heaven, and smiled that never-to-be-forgotten smile!
How Harriet Beecher Stowe herself must have thanked God for this
unexpected fulness of blessing! Thousands of dollars were soon paid to
her as her share of the profits from the sale of the book. How restful
it must have seemed to the tired, over-worked woman, to have more than
enough for daily needs!
The following year, 1853, Professor Stowe and his now famous
wife decided to cross the ocean for needed rest. What was their
astonishment, to be welcomed by immense public meetings in Liverpool,
Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee; indeed, in every city which they
visited. People in the towns stopped her carriage, to fill it with
flowers. Boys ran along the streets, shouting, "That's her--see the
_courls!_" A penny offering was made her, given by people of all
ranks, consisting of one thousand golden sovereigns on a beautiful
silver salver. When the committee having the matter in charge visited
one little cottage, they found only a blind woman, and said, "She will
feel no interest, as she cannot read the book."
"Indeed," said the old lady, "if I cannot read, my son has read it to
me, and I've got my penny saved to give."
The beautiful Duchess of Sutherland entertained Mrs. Stowe at her
house, where she met Lord Palmerston, the Duke of Argyle, Macaulay,
Gladstone, and others. The duchess gave her a solid gold bracelet
in the form of a slave's shackle, with the words, "We trust it is a
memorial of a chain that is soon to be broken." On one link was the
date of the abolition of the slave trade, March 25, 1807, and of
slavery in the English territories, Aug. 1, 1834. On the other
links are now engraved the dates of Emancipation in the District of
Columbia; President Lincoln's proclamation abolishing slavery in the
States in rebellion, Jan. 1, 1863; and finally, on the clasp, the date
of the Constitutional amendment, abolishing slavery forever in the
United States. Only a decade after _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ was written,
and nearly all this accomplished! Who could have believed it possible?
On Mrs. Stowe's return from Europe, she wrote _Sunny Memories of
Foreign Lands_, which had a large sale. Her husband was now appointed
to the professorship of sacred literature in the Theological Seminary
at Andover, Mass., and here they made their home. The students found
in her a warm-hearted friend, and an inspiration to intellectual work.
Other books followed from her pen: _Dred_, a powerful anti-slavery
story; _The Minister's Wooing_, with lovely Mary Scudder as its
heroine; _Agnes of Sorrento_, an Italian story; the _Pearl of Orr's
Island_, a tale of the New England coast; _Old Town Folks; House and
Home Papers; My Wife and I; Pink and White Tyranny_; and some others,
all of which have been widely read.
The sale of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ has not ceased. It is estimated that
over one and a half million copies have been sold in Great Britain and
her colonies, and probably an equal or greater number in this country.
There have been twelve French editions, eleven German, and
six Spanish. It has been published in nineteen different
languages,--Russian, Hungarian, Armenian, Modern Greek, Finnish,
Welsh, Polish, and others. In Bengal the book is very popular. A lady
of high rank in the court of Siam, liberated her slaves, one hundred
and thirty in number, after reading this book, and said, "I am wishful
to be good like Harriet Beecher Stowe, and never again to buy human
bodies, but only to let them go free once more." In France the sale
of the Bible was increased because the people wished to read the book
Uncle Tom loved so much.
_Uncle Tom's Cabin_, like _Les Miseràbles_, and a few other novels,
will live, because written with a purpose. No work of fiction is
permanent without some great underlying principle or object.
Soon after the Civil War, Mrs. Stowe bought a home among the orange
groves of Florida, and thither she goes each winter, with her family.
She has done much there for the colored people whom she helped to make
free. With the proceeds of some public readings at the North she
built a church, in which her husband preached as long as his health
permitted. Her home at Mandarin, with its great moss-covered oaks and
profusion of flowers, is a restful and happy place after these most
fruitful years.
Her summer residence in Hartford, Conn., beautiful without, and
artistic within, has been visited by thousands, who honor the noble
woman not less than the gifted author.
Many of the Beecher family have died; Lyman Beecher at eighty-three,
and Catharine at seventy-eight. Some of Mrs. Stowe's own children are
waiting for her in the other country. She says, "I am more interested
in the other side of Jordan than this, though this still has its
pleasures."
On Mrs. Stowe's seventy-first birthday, her publishers, Messrs.
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., gave a garden party in her honor, at the
hospitable home of Governor Claflin and his wife, at Newton, Mass.
Poets and artists, statesmen and reformers, were invited to meet the
famous author. On a stage, under a great tent, she sat, while poems
were read and speeches made. The brown curls had become snowy white,
and the bright eyes of girlhood had grown deeper and more earnest. The
manner was the same as ever, unostentatious, courteous, kindly.
Her life is but another confirmation of the well-known fact, that the
best work of the world is done, not by the loiterers, but by those
whose hearts and hands are full of duties. Mrs. Stowe died about
noon, July 1, 1896, of paralysis, at Hartford, Conn., at the age of
eighty-five. She passed away as if to sleep, her son, the Rev. Charles
Edward Stowe, and her daughters, Eliza and Harriet, standing by her
bedside. Since the death of her husband, Professor Calvin E. Stowe, in
1886, Mrs. Stowe had gradually failed physically and mentally. She was
buried July 3 in the cemetery connected with the Theological Seminary
at Andover, Mass., between the graves of her husband and her son,
Henry. The latter was drowned in the Connecticut River, while a member
of Dartmouth College, July 19, 1857.
HELEN HUNT JACKSON.
[Illustration: HELEN HUNT JACKSON.]
Thousands were saddened when, Aug. 12, 1885, it was flashed across the
wires that Helen Hunt Jackson was dead. The _Nation_ said, "The news
will probably carry a pang of regret into more American homes than
similar intelligence in regard to any other woman, with the possible
exception of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe."
How, with the simple initials, "H.H.," had she won this place in
the hearts of the people? Was it because she was a poet? Oh no! many
persons of genius have few friends. It was because an earnest life was
back of her gifted writings. A great book needs a great man or woman
behind it to make it a perfect work. Mrs. Jackson's literary work will
be abiding, but her life, with its dark shadow and bright sunlight,
its deep affections and sympathy with the oppressed, will furnish a
rich setting for the gems of thought which she gave to the world.
Born in the cultured town of Amherst, Mass., Oct. 18, 1831, she
inherited from her mother a sunny, buoyant nature, and from her
father, Nathan W. Fiske, professor of languages and philosophy in the
college, a strong and vigorous mind. Her own vivid description of the
"naughtiest day in my life," in _St. Nicholas_, September and October,
1880, shows the ardent, wilful child who was one day to stand out
fearlessly before the nation and tell its statesmen the wrong they had
done to "her Indians."
She and her younger sister Annie were allowed one April day, by their
mother, to go into the woods just before school hours, to gather
checkerberries. Helen, finding the woods very pleasant, determined to
spend the day in them, even though sure she would receive a whipping
on her return home. The sister could not be coaxed to do wrong, but a
neighbor's child, with the promise of seeing live snails with horns,
was induced to accompany the truant. They wandered from one forest to
another, till hunger compelled them to seek food at a stranger's home.
The kind farmer and his wife were going to a funeral, and wished to
lock their house; but they took pity on the little ones, and gave
them some bread and milk. "There," said the woman, "now, you just make
yourselves comfortable, and eat all you can; and when you're done, you
push the bowls in among them lilac-bushes, and nobody'll get 'em."
Urged on by Helen, she and her companion wandered into the village,
to ascertain where the funeral was to be held. It was in the
meeting-house, and thither they went, and seated themselves on the
bier outside the door. Becoming tired of this, they trudged on. One
of them lost her shoe in the mud, and stopping at a house to dry their
stockings, they were captured by two Amherst professors, who had come
over to Hadley to attend the funeral. The children had walked four
miles, and nearly the whole town, with the frightened mother, were
in search of the runaways. Helen, greatly displeased at being caught,
jumped out of the carriage, but was soon retaken. At ten o'clock at
night they reached home, and the child walked in as rosy and smiling
as possible, saying, "Oh, mother! I've had a perfectly splendid time!"
A few days passed, and then her father sent for her to come into his
study, and told her because she had not said she was sorry for running
away, she must go into the garret, and wait till he came to see her.
Sullen at this punishment, she took a nail and began to bore holes
in the plastering. This so angered the professor, that he gave her
a severe whipping, and kept her in the garret for a week. It is
questionable whether she was more penitent at the end of the week than
she was at the beginning.
When Helen was twelve, both father and mother died, leaving her to
the care of a grandfather. She was soon placed in the school of the
author, Rev. J.S.C. Abbott, of New York, and here some of her happiest
days were passed. She grew to womanhood, frank, merry, impulsive,
brilliant in conversation, and fond of society.
At twenty-one she was married to a young army officer, Captain,
afterward Major, Edward B. Hunt, whom his friends called "Cupid" Hunt
from his beauty and his curling hair. He was a brother of Governor
Hunt of New York, an engineer of high rank, and a man of fine
scientific attainments. They lived much of their time at West Point
and Newport, and the young wife moved in a fashionable social circle,
and won hosts of admiring friends. Now and then, when he read a paper
before some learned society, he was proud to take his vivacious and
attractive wife with him.
Their first baby died when he was eleven months old, but another
beautiful boy came to take his place, named after two friends, Warren
Horsford, but familiarly called "Rennie." He was an uncommonly bright
child, and Mrs. Hunt was passionately fond and proud of him. Life
seemed full of pleasures. She dressed handsomely, and no wish of her
heart seemed ungratified.
Suddenly, like a thunder-bolt from a clear sky, the happy life was
shattered. Major Hunt was killed Oct. 2, 1863, while experimenting in
Brooklyn, with a submarine gun of his own invention. The young widow
still had her eight-year-old boy, and to him she clung more tenderly
than ever, but in less than two years she stood by his dying bed.
Seeing the agony of his mother, and forgetting his own even in that
dread destroyer, diphtheria, he said, almost at the last moment,
"Promise me, mamma, that you will not kill yourself."
She promised, and exacted from him also a pledge that if it were
possible, he would come back from the other world to talk with
his mother. He never came, and Mrs. Hunt could have no faith in
spiritualism, because what Rennie could not do, she believed to be
impossible.
For months she shut herself into her own room, refusing to see her
nearest friends. "Any one who really loves me ought to pray that I may
die, too, like Rennie," she said. Her physician thought she would die
of grief; but when her strong, earnest nature had wrestled with itself
and come off conqueror, she came out of her seclusion, cheerful as
of old. The pictures of her husband and boy were ever beside her, and
these doubtless spurred her on to the work she was to accomplish.
Three months after Rennie's death, her first poem, _Lifted Over_,
appeared in the _Nation_:--
"As tender mothers, guiding baby steps,
When places come at which the tiny feet
Would trip, lift up the little ones in arms
Of love, and set them down beyond the harm,
So did our Father watch the precious boy,
Led o'er the stones by me, who stumbled oft
Myself, but strove to help my darling on:
He saw the sweet limbs faltering, and saw
Rough ways before us, where my arms would fail;
So reached from heaven, and lifting the dear child,
Who smiled in leaving me, He put him down
Beyond all hurt, beyond my sight, and bade
Him wait for me! Shall I not then be glad,
And, thanking God, press on to overtake!"
The poem was widely copied, and many mothers were comforted by it.
The kind letters she received in consequence were the first gleam of
sunshine in the darkened life. If she were doing even a little good,
she could live and be strong.
And then began, at thirty-four, absorbing, painstaking literary work.
She studied the best models of composition. She said to a friend,
years after, "Have you ever tested the advantages of an analytical
reading of some writer of finished style? There is a little book
called _Out-Door Papers_, by Wentworth Higginson, that is one of
the most perfect specimens of literary composition in the English
language. It has been my model for years. I go to it as a text-book,
and have actually spent hours at a time, taking one sentence after
another, and experimenting upon them, trying to see if I could take
out a word or transpose a clause, and not destroy their perfection."
And again, "I shall never write a sentence, so long as I live, without
studying it over from the standpoint of whether you would think it
could be bettered."
Her first prose sketch, a walk up Mt. Washington from the Glen House,
appeared in the _Independent_, Sept. 13, 1866; and from this time she
wrote for that able journal three hundred and seventy-one articles.
She worked rapidly, writing usually with a lead-pencil, on large
sheets of yellow paper, but she pruned carefully. Her first poem in
the _Atlantic Monthly_, entitled _Coronation_, delicate and full of
meaning, appeared in 1869, being taken to Mr. Fields, the editor, by a
friend.
At this time she spent a year abroad, principally in Germany and
Italy, writing home several sketches. In Rome she became so ill that
her life was despaired of. When she was partially recovered and went
away to regain her strength, her friends insisted that a professional
nurse should go with her; but she took a hard-working young Italian
girl of sixteen, to whom this vacation would be a blessing.
On her return, in 1870, a little book of _Verses_ was published. Like
most beginners, she was obliged to pay for the stereotyped plates.
The book was well received. Emerson liked especially her sonnet,
_Thought_. He ranked her poetry above that of all American women,
and most American men. Some persons praised the "exquisite musical
structure" of the _Gondolieds_, and others read and re-read her
beautiful _Down to Sleep_. But the world's favorite was _Spinning_:--
"Like a blind spinner in the sun,
I tread my days;
I know that all the threads will run
Appointed ways;
I know each day will bring its task,
And, being blind, no more I ask.
* * * * *
"But listen, listen, day by day,
To hear their tread
Who bear the finished web away,
And cut the thread,
And bring God's message in the sun,
'Thou poor blind spinner, work is done."
After this came two other small books, _Bits of Travel_ and _Bits of
Talk about Home Matters_. She paid for the plates of the former. Fame
did not burst upon Helen Hunt; it came after years of work, after it
had been fully earned. The road to authorship is a hard one, and only
those should attempt it who have courage and perseverance.
Again her health failed, but not her cheerful spirits. She travelled
to Colorado, and wrote a book in praise of it. Everywhere she made
lasting friends. Her German landlady in Munich thought her the kindest
person in the world. The newsboy, the little urchin on the street
with a basket full of wares, the guides over the mountain passes, all
remembered her cheery voice and helpful words. She used to say, "She
is only half mother who does not see her own child in every child. Oh,
if the world could only stop long enough for one generation of mothers
to be made all right, what a Millennium could be begun in thirty
years!" Some one, in her childhood, called her a "stupid child" before
strangers, and she never forgot the sting of it.
In Colorado, in 1876, eleven years after the death of Major Hunt, she
married Mr. William Sharpless Jackson, a Quaker and a cultured banker.
Her home, at Colorado Springs, became an ideal one, sheltered under
the great Manitou, and looking toward the Garden of the Gods, full
of books and magazines, of dainty rugs and dainty china gathered
from many countries, and richly colored Colorado flowers. Once, when
Eastern guests were invited to luncheon, twenty-three varieties of
wildflowers, each massed in its own color, adorned the home. A friend
of hers says: "There is not an artificial flower in the house, on
embroidered table-cover or sofa cushion or tidy; indeed, Mrs. Jackson
holds that the manufacture of silken poppies and crewel sun-flowers
is a 'respectable industry,' intended only to keep idle hands out of
mischief."
Mrs. Jackson loved flowers almost as though they were children. She
writes: "I bore on this June day a sheaf of the white columbine,--one
single sheaf, one single root; but it was almost more than I could
carry. In the open spaces, I carried it on my shoulder; in the
thickets, I bore it carefully in my arms, like a baby.... There is a
part of Cheyenne Mountain which I and one other have come to call 'our
garden.' When we drive down from 'our garden,' there is seldom room
for another flower in our carriage. The top thrown back is filled, the
space in front of the driver is filled, and our laps and baskets are
filled with the more delicate blossoms. We look as if we were on our
way to the ceremonies of Decoration Day. So we are. All June days are
decoration days in Colorado Springs, but it is the sacred joy of life
that we decorate,--not the sacred sadness of death." But Mrs. Jackson,
with her pleasant home, could not rest from her work. Two novels
came from her pen, _Mercy Philbrick's Choice_ and _Hetty's Strange
History_. It is probable also that she helped to write the beautiful
and tender _Saxe Holm Stories_. It is said that _Draxy Miller's Dowry_
and _Esther Wynn's Love Letters_ were written by another, while Mrs.
Jackson added the lovely poems; and when a request was made by the
publishers for more stories from the same author, Mrs. Jackson was
prevailed upon to write them.
The time had now come for her to do her last and perhaps her best
work. She could not write without a definite purpose, and now the
purpose that settled down upon her heart was to help the defrauded
Indians. She believed they needed education and Christianization
rather than extermination. She left her home and spent three months
in the Astor Library of New York, writing her _Century of Dishonor_,
showing how we have despoiled the Indians and broken our treaties with
them. She wrote to a friend, "I cannot think of anything else from
night to morning and from morning to night." So untiringly did she
work that she made herself ill, and was obliged to go to Norway,
leaving a literary ally to correct the proofs of her book.
At her own expense, she sent a copy to each member of Congress. Its
plain facts were not relished in some quarters, and she began to taste
the cup that all reformers have to drink; but the brave woman never
flinched in her duty. So much was the Government impressed by her
earnestness and good judgment, that she was appointed a Special
Commissioner with her friend, Abbott Kinney, to examine and report on
the condition of the Mission Indians in California.
Could an accomplished, tenderly reared woman go into their _adobe_
villages and listen to their wrongs? What would the world say of its
poet? Mrs. Jackson did not ask; she had a mission to perform, and the
more culture, the more responsibility. She brought cheer and hope
to the red men and their wives, and they called her "the Queen." She
wrote able articles about them in the _Century_.
The report made by Mr. Kinney and herself, which she prepared largely,
was clear and convincing. How different all this from her early life!
Mrs. Jackson had become more than poet and novelist; even the leader
of an oppressed people. At once, in the winter of 1883, she began to
write her wonderfully graphic and tender _Ramona_, and into this, she
said, "I put my heart and soul." The book was immediately reprinted in
England, and has had great popularity. She meant to do for the Indian
what Mrs. Stowe did for the slave, and she lived long enough to see
the great work well in progress.
This true missionary work had greatly deepened the earnestness of the
brilliant woman. Not always tender to other peoples' "hobbies," as she
said, she now had one of her own, into which she was putting her life.
Her horizon, with her great intellectual gifts, had now become as
wide as the universe. Had she lived, how many more great questions she
would have touched.
In June, 1884, falling on the staircase of her Colorado home, she
severely fractured her leg, and was confined to the house for several
months. Then she was taken to Los Angeles, Cal., for the winter. The
broken limb mended rapidly, but malarial fever set in, and she was
carried to San Francisco. Her first remark was, as she entered the
house looking out upon the broad and lovely bay, "I did not imagine it
was so pleasant! What a beautiful place to die in!"
To the last her letters to her friends were full of cheer. "You must
not think because I speak of not getting well that I am sad over it,"
she wrote. "On the contrary, I am more and more relieved in my mind,
as it seems to grow more and more sure that I shall die. You see that
I am growing old" (she was but fifty-four), "and I do believe that my
work is done. You have never realized how, for the past five years, my
whole soul has been centered on the Indian question. _Ramona_ was
the outcome of those five years. The Indian cause is on its feet now;
powerful friends are at work."
To another she wrote, "I am heartily, honestly, and cheerfully ready
to go. In fact, I am glad to go. My _Century of Dishonor_ and _Ramona_
are the only things I have done of which I am glad now. The rest is
of no moment. They will live, and they will bear fruit. They already
have. The change in public feeling on the Indian question in the last
three years is marvellous; an Indian Rights Association in every large
city in the land."
She had no fear of death. She said, "It is only just passing from one
country to another.... My only regret is that I have not accomplished
more work; especially that it was so late in the day when I began to
work in real earnest. But I do not doubt we shall keep on working....
There isn't so much difference, I fancy, between this life and the
next as we think, nor so much barrier.... I shall look in upon you
in the new rooms some day; but you will not see me. Good-bye. Yours
affectionately forever, H.H." Four days before her death she wrote to
President Cleveland:--
"From my death-bed I send you a message of heart-felt
thanks for what you have already done for the Indians.
I ask you to read my _Century of Dishonor_. I am
dying happier for the belief I have that it is your hand
that is destined to strike the first steady blow toward
lifting this burden of infamy from our country, and
righting the wrongs of the Indian race.
"With respect and gratitude,
"HELEN JACKSON."
That same day she wrote her last touching poem:--
"Father, I scarcely dare to pray,
So clear I see, now it is done,
That I have wasted half my day,
And left my work but just begun;
"So clear I see that things I thought
Were right or harmless were a sin;
So clear I see that I have sought,
Unconscious, selfish aim to win
"So clear I see that I have hurt
The souls I might hare helped to save,
That I have slothful been, inert,
Deaf to the calls Thy leaders gave.
"In outskirts of Thy kingdoms vast,
Father, the humblest spot give me;
Set me the lowliest task Thou hast,
Let me repentant work for Thee!"
That evening, Aug. 8, after saying farewell, she placed her hand in
her husband's, and went to sleep. After four days, mostly unconscious
ones, she wakened in eternity.
On her coffin were laid a few simple clover-blossoms, flowers she
loved in life; and then, near the summit of Cheyenne Mountain, four
miles from Colorado Springs, in a spot of her own choosing, she was
buried.
"Do not adorn with costly shrub or tree
Or flower the little grave which shelters me.
Let the wild wind-sown seeds grow up unharmed,
And back and forth all summer, unalarmed,
Let all the tiny, busy creatures creep;
Let the sweet grass its last year's tangles keep;
And when, remembering me, you come some day
And stand there, speak no praise, but only say,
'How she loved us! It was for that she was so dear.'
These are the only words that I shall smile to hear."
Many will stand by that Colorado grave in the years to come. Says a
California friend: "Above the chirp of the balm-cricket in the grass
that hides her grave, I seem to hear sweet songs of welcome from the
little ones. Among other thoughts of her come visions of a child and
mother straying in fields of light. And so I cannot make her dead,
who lived so earnestly, who wrought so unselfishly, and passed so
trustfully into the mystery of the unseen."
All honor to a woman who, with a happy home, was willing to leave
it to make other homes happy; who, having suffered, tried with a
sympathetic heart to forget herself and keep others from suffering;
who, being famous, gladly took time to help unknown authors to win
fame; who, having means, preferred a life of labor to a life of ease.
Mrs. Jackson's work is still going forward. Five editions of her
_Century of Dishonor_ have been printed since her death. _Ramona_ is
in its thirtieth thousand. _Zeph_, a touching story of frontier
life in Colorado, which she finished in her last illness, has been
published. Her sketches of travel have been gathered into _Glimpses
of Three Coasts_, and a new volume of poems, _Sonnets and Lyrics_, has
appeared.
LUCRETIA MOTT.
[Illustration: Lucretia Mott.]
Years ago I attended, at some inconvenience, a large public meeting,
because I heard that Lucretia Mott was to speak. After several
addresses, a slight lady, with white cap and drab Quaker dress, came
forward. Though well in years, her eyes were bright; her smile was
winsome, and I thought her face one of the loveliest I had ever looked
upon. The voice was singularly sweet and clear, and the manner had
such naturalness and grace as a queen might envy. I have forgotten
the words, forgotten even the subject, but the benign presence and
gracious smile I shall never forget.
Born among the quiet scenes of Nantucket, Jan. 3, 1793, Lucretia grew
to girlhood with habits of economy, neatness, and helpfulness in
the home. Her father, Thomas Coffin, was a sea-captain of staunch
principle; her mother, a woman of great energy, wit, and good sense.
The children's pleasures were such as a plain country home afforded.
When Mrs. Coffin went to visit her neighbors, she would say to her
daughters, "Now after you have finished knitting twenty bouts, you
may go down cellar and pick out as many as you want of the smallest
potatoes,--the very smallest,--and roast them in the ashes." Then
the six little folks gathered about the big fireplace and enjoyed a
frolic.
When Lucretia was twelve years old, the family moved to Boston. At
first all the children attended a private school; but Captain Coffin,
fearing this would make them proud, removed them to a public school,
where they could "mingle with all classes without distinction." Years
after Lucretia said, "I am glad, because it gave me a feeling of
sympathy for the patient and struggling poor, which, but for this
experience, I might never have known."