The life of an unpretending Christian woman is never lost. Written or
unwritten, it is and ever will be an active power among the elements
that form and advance society. Yet the written life will speak to the
larger number, will be wholly new to many, and to all may carry a
healthy impulse. There are none who are not strengthened and blessed by
the knowledge of a meek, firm, consistent character, formed by religious
influences, and devoted to the highest ends. And where this character
has belonged to a daughter, wife, and mother, who has been seen only in
the retired domestic sphere, there may be the more reason that it be
transferred to the printed page and an enduring form, because of the
very modesty which adorned it, and which would never proclaim itself.
Such are our feelings in regard to the subject of the following Memoir,
and such our reasons for offering it to the public. It has not been
without scruple, and after an interval of years, that the family and
nearest friends of Mrs. Ware have consented to the publication of facts
and thoughts so private and sacred as many which must appear in a
faithful transcript of her life. Perhaps this reluctance always exists,
particularly in regard to a woman and a mother. In this instance it has
been very strong, and it is but just that it be made known. Never was
there a woman, we may believe, more retiring or peculiarly domestic than
she of whom we are to speak. Never, we are sure, were the materials of a
life more entirely private, and in one sense confidential, than those
which we are to use; for letters are all the materials we have, and
letters written in the unrestrained freedom of personal friendship, in
the midst of pressing cares, and with a rapidity and unstudied
naturalness, which will appear in all the extracts, but are still more
manifest in the entire originals. Her correspondence was voluminous, to
an extent unsurpassed perhaps in a life so quiet, with no pretence to
literary character, and nothing ever written except for the eye of the
receiver. How would the writer have felt, had she supposed these letters
were ever to be opened to the public eye? It is a question which many
ask,--some with pain, some with decided disapproval. It is a question
which we have asked ourselves, and we prefer to answer it before we
enter upon the work.
To answer it unfavorably, to yield to this natural reluctance to publish
any thing designed to be private, and in its nature personal, would
deprive us of the best biographies that are written. It would restrict
to single families, and to a brief period, the knowledge of facts and
features, of all most reliable, most valuable. Indeed, it is this very
fact of humility and reserve, of freedom and naturalness, indulged in
confidential communion and the quiet of home, that reveals most the
reality of virtue, force of character, disinterested nobleness, and the
power of religion. Who is willing that the knowledge of such examples
should be withheld from the many who crave it, and whom it would
stimulate and bless? Shall we make no sacrifice of our own feelings,
supposing it to require one, shall we hoard exclusively for our own use
the richest of God's gifts, when those by whom the gifts have come to us
spent their lives in service and sacrifice for us? To these obvious
considerations, we will add our firm faith in the knowledge which
departed friends have of the motives from which we are acting, and of
the influence which their own modest virtues and lowly efforts on earth
may exert upon those remaining here; thus continuing, in a higher and
surer way, the very work for which the loved and the pure always live,
and are willing to die.
It is in point, not only for our immediate purpose, but for the
exhibition in part of the character we would delineate, to say that
these were the feelings of Mrs. Ware herself, in regard to a memoir of
her husband. Public as a large portion of his life was, she shrunk from
the exposure of that which was private, and which seemed to be sacredly
committed to her own keeping. She remembered, too, his peculiar
sensitiveness in this connection, and the injunctions he gave when under
the influence of disease and depression. But another voice came to her
from his present higher abode and larger vision; and thus she wrote to a
friend, of the conflict and the decision, in language applicable now to
her own case:--"I cannot tell you the agony it has given me at times, to
realize that that sacred inner life, which I had felt was my own
peculiar trust, was no longer mine, but was to be shared by the whole
world. But this was sinful, selfish, earthly; and I have gradually left
it all far behind, and can now only be glad that such a life is shown
for the aid and encouragement of others."
It is our desire to give to this Memoir as much as possible of the
character of an autobiography. We have few facts except those found in
the letters, with the advantage of an intimate intercourse for more than
twenty years. In the several hundred letters and notes that have been
put into our hands, there is nothing that might not appear, so far as
any one else is concerned. This fact is well worthy of note, as
belonging to the character, and revealing a remarkable elevation and
purity of thought,--that in such a mass of free epistolary writing, from
different countries and to persons of every age, not a single severe
stricture, not one unkind allusion or offensive personality, much less
any approach to petty gossip, can be found. We feel the greater freedom
in making copious extracts; and shall attempt little more than so to
arrange and connect them as to give a fair view of the whole life, or
rather of the mind and character that appear in every part of the life.
That a life so private contained such a variety of incident, and a
measure of unavoidable publicity, was the ordering of Providence; and
may serve to show that the sphere of woman, even the most domestic and
silent, is broad enough for the most active intellect and the largest
benevolence.