Mrs. Stowe had early and very practical acquaintance with the art of
housekeeping. It strikes one at first as a little incongruous that an
author who devoted her great powers to stirring the conscience of a
nation should from time to time, and at one period especially, give
her mind to the ordering of family life, but a moment's consideration
will show that the same woman was earnestly at the bottom of each
effort. In a letter to the late Lord Denman, written in 1853, Mrs.
Stowe, speaking of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, said: "I wrote what I did
because, as a woman, as a mother, I was oppressed and heartbroken with
the sorrows and injustice which I saw, and because, as a Christian, I
felt the dishonor to Christianity." Not under the stress of passionate
emotion, yet largely from a sense of real responsibility as a woman, a
mother, and a Christian, she occupied herself with those concerns of
every-day life which so distinctly appeal to a woman's mind. How to
order a household, how to administer that little kingdom over which a
woman rules, and, above all, how to make family life stable, pure, and
conservative of the highest happiness, these were the questions which
she asked herself constantly, and which she tried to solve, not only
incidentally in her fiction, but directly in her essays, and in that
field of one tenth fiction and nine tenths didacticism, which
constitutes most of the present volume.
_A Scholar's Adventures in the Country_ and _Trials of a Housekeeper_
appeared in the miscellany to which she gave the name of _The
Mayflower_, and reflect humorously the Cincinnati experiences which
again are playfully recounted in letters published in her son's
_Life_. The former, contributed in 1850 to _The National Era_, was
drawn pretty closely from the experiments of Professor Stowe. It is
noticeable that in this paper and in _Our Second Girl_, which was
contributed to _The Atlantic Monthly_ for January, 1868, the author
poses as the masculine member of the household, as if this assumption
gave her some advantage in the point of view. At any rate, she adopted
the same role when she came more deliberately to survey a wide field
in a series of articles.
_The House_ and _Home Papers_ were contributed first to _The Atlantic
Monthly_, and afterward published in book form as the production of
one Christopher Crowfield, though there was not the slightest attempt
otherwise at disguising the authorship. The immediate occasion of the
papers was no doubt the removal of the Stowes from Andover and their
establishment in Hartford, an event which took place shortly before
the papers began to appear in _The Atlantic_. The years which followed
during the first Hartford residence saw also a marriage in the family
and new problems of daily life constantly presenting themselves, so
that a similar series appeared in the same magazine, purporting to be
from the same householder, entitled _The Chimney Corner_. This series,
indeed, entered rather more seriously into questions of social
morality, and deepened in feeling as it proceeded. The eleventh
section is a warm appreciation of the woman who figured so largely in
Mrs. Stowe's early life, and the last two papers rose, as the reader
will see, to the height of national memories. Mrs. Fields has
preserved for us, in her _Days with Mrs. Stowe_, a striking record of
the mingling of the great and the near in this writer's mind. The
period of which she writes is that in which _The Chimney Corner_
series was drawing to a close:--
"In the autumn of 1864 she wrote: 'I feel I need to write in these
days, to keep me 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.'"...