I think about your writings a great deal, and one

element in them always attracts me. It is their pitiful

and sympathetic vein, the pity for poor, struggling

human nature. In this I feel that you must be very near

and dear to Him whose name is Love.

You wrote some verses once that have got into the

hymn-books, and have often occurred to me in my most

sacred hours as descriptive of the feelings with which

I bear the sorrows and carry the cares of life. They

begin,--

"Love Divine, that stooped to share."

I have not all your books down here, and am haunted by

gaps in the verses that memory cannot make good; but it

is that "Love Divine" which is my stay and comfort and

hope, as one friend after another passes beyond sight

and hearing. Please let me have it in your handwriting.

I remember a remark you once made on spiritualism.

I cannot recall the words, but you spoke of it as

modifying the sharp angles of Calvinistic belief,

as a fog does those of a landscape. I would like to

talk with you some time on spiritualism, and show

you a collection of very curious facts that I have

acquired through mediums _not_ professional. Mr. Stowe

has just been wading through eight volumes of "La

Mystique," by Goerres, professor for forty years past

in the University of Munich, first of physiology and

latterly of philosophy. He examines the whole cycle of

abnormal psychic, spiritual facts, trances, ecstasy,

clairvoyance, witchcraft, spiritualism, etc., etc., as

shown in the Romish miracles and the history of Europe.

I have long since come to the conclusion that

the marvels of spiritualism are natural, and not

supernatural, phenomena,--an uncommon working of

natural laws. I believe that the door between those

_in_ the body and those _out_ has never in any age

been entirely closed, and that occasional perceptions

within the veil are a part of the course of nature, and

therefore not miraculous. Of course such a phase of

human experience is very substantial ground for every

kind of imposture and superstition, and I have no faith

whatever in mediums who practice for money. In their

case I think the law of Moses, that forbade consulting

those who dealt with "familiar spirits," a very wise

one.

Do write some more, dear doctor. You are too well

off in your palace down there on the new land. Your

Centennial Ballad was a charming little peep; now give

us a full-fledged story. Mr. Stowe sends his best

regards, and wishes you would read "Goerres."[16] It is

in French also, and he thinks the French translation

better than the German.

Yours ever truly,

H. B. STOWE.

Writing in the autumn of 1876 to her son Charles, who was at that time

abroad, studying at Bonn, Mrs. Stowe describes a most tempestuous

passage between New York and Charleston, during which she and her

husband and daughters suffered so much that they were ready to

forswear the sea forever. The great waves as they rushed, boiling

and seething, past would peer in at the little bull's-eye window of

the state-room, as if eager to swallow up ship and passengers. From

Charleston, however, they had a most delightful run to their journey's

end. She writes: "We had a triumphal entrance into the St. John's, and

a glorious sail up the river. Arriving at Mandarin, at four o'clock,

we found all the neighbors, black as well as white, on the wharf to

receive us. There was a great waving of handkerchiefs and flags,

clapping of hands and cheering, as we drew near. The house was open and

all ready for us, and we are delighted to be once more in our beautiful

Florida home."

In the following December she writes to her son: "I am again entangled

in writing a serial, a thing I never mean to do again, but the story,

begun for a mere Christmas brochure, grew so under my hands that I

thought I might as well fill it out and make a book of it. It is

the last thing of the kind I ever expect to do. In it I condense my

recollections of a bygone era, that in which I was brought up, the ways

and manners of which are now as nearly obsolete as the Old England of

Dickens's stories is.'

"I am so hampered by the necessity of writing this story, that I am

obliged to give up company and visiting of all kinds and keep my

strength for it. I hope I may be able to finish it, as I greatly desire

to do so, but I begin to feel that I am not so strong as I used to be.

Your mother is an old woman, Charley mine, and it is best she should

give up writing before people are tired of reading her.

"I would much rather have written another such a book as 'Footsteps

of the Master,' but all, even the religious papers, are gone mad on

serials. Serials they demand and will have, and I thought, since this

generation will listen to nothing but stories, why not tell them?"

The book thus referred to was "Poganuc People," that series of

delightful reminiscences of the New England life of nearly a century

ago, that has proved so fascinating to many thousands of readers.

It was published in 1878, and, as Mrs. Stowe foresaw, was her last

literary undertaking of any length, though for several years afterwards

she wrote occasional short stories and articles.

In January, 1879, she wrote from Mandarin to Dr. Holmes:--

DEAR DOCTOR,--I wish I could give to you and Mrs.

Holmes the exquisite charm of this morning. My window

is wide open; it is a lovely, fresh, sunny day, and a

great orange tree hung with golden balls closes the

prospect from my window. The tree is about thirty feet

high, and its leaves fairly glisten in the sunshine.

I sent "Poganuc People" to you and Mrs. Holmes as

being among the few who know those old days. It is

an extremely quiet story for these sensational days,

when heaven and earth seem to be racked for a thrill;

but as I get old I do love to think of those quiet,

simple times when there was not a poor person in the

parish, and the changing glories of the year were the

only spectacle. We, that is the professor and myself,

have been reading with much interest Motley's Memoir.

That was a man to be proud of, a beauty, too (by your

engraving). I never had the pleasure of a personal

acquaintance.

I feel with you that we have come into the land of

leave-taking. Hardly a paper but records the death of

some of Mr. Stowe's associates. But the river is not so

black as it seems, and there are clear days when the

opposite shore is plainly visible, and now and then

we catch a strain of music, perhaps even a gesture of

recognition. They are thinking of us, without doubt, on

the other side. My daughters and I have been reading

"Elsie Venner" again. Elsie is one of my especial

friends,--poor, dear child!--and all your theology in

that book I subscribe to with both hands.

Does not the Bible plainly tell us of a time when there

shall be no more pain? That is to be the end and crown

of the Messiah's mission, when God shall wipe all tears

away. My face is set that way, and yours, too, I trust

and believe.

Mr. Stowe sends hearty and affectionate remembrance

both to you and Mrs. Holmes, and I am, as ever, truly

yours,

H. B. STOWE.

About this time Mrs. Stowe paid a visit to her brother Charles, at

Newport, Fla., and, continuing her journey to New Orleans, was made to

feel how little of bitterness towards her was felt by the best class

of Southerners. In both New Orleans and Tallahassee she was warmly

welcomed, and tendered public receptions that gave equal pleasure to

her and to the throngs of cultivated people who attended them. She was

also greeted everywhere with intense enthusiasm by the colored people,

who, whenever they knew of her coming, thronged the railway stations in

order to obtain a glimpse of her whom they venerated above all women.

The return to her Mandarin home each succeeding winter was always

a source of intense pleasure to this true lover of nature in its

brightest and tenderest moods. Each recurring season was filled with

new delights. In December, 1879, she writes to her son, now married and

settled as a minister in Saco, Me.:--

DEAR CHILDREN,--Well, we have stepped from December

to June, and this morning is sunny and dewy, with a

fresh sea-breeze giving life to the air. I have just

been out to cut a great bunch of roses and lilies,

though the garden is grown into such a jungle that I

could hardly get about in it. The cannas, and dwarf

bananas, and roses are all tangled together, so that I

can hardly thread my way among them. I never in my life

saw anything range and run rampant over the ground as

cannas do. The ground is littered with fallen oranges,

and the place looks shockingly untidy, but so beautiful

that I am quite willing to forgive its disorder.

We got here Wednesday evening about nine o'clock, and

found all the neighbors waiting to welcome us on the

wharf. The Meads, and Cranes, and Webbs, and all the

rest were there, while the black population was in a

frenzy of joy. Your father is quite well. The sea had

its usual exhilarating effect upon him. Before we left

New York he was quite meek, and exhibited such signs of

grace and submission that I had great hopes of him. He

promised to do exactly as I told him, and stated that

he had entire confidence in my guidance. What woman

couldn't call such a spirit evidence of being prepared

for speedy translation? I was almost afraid he could

not be long for this world. But on the second day at

sea his spirits rose, and his appetite reasserted

itself. He declared in loud tones how well he felt,

and quite resented my efforts to take care of him. I

reminded him of his gracious vows and promises in the

days of his low spirits, but to no effect. The fact

is, his self-will has not left him yet, and I have now

no fear of his immediate translation. He is going to

preach for us this morning.

The last winter passed in this well-loved Southern home was that of

1883-84, for the following season Professor Stowe's health was in

too precarious a state to permit him to undertake the long journey

from Hartford. By this time one of Mrs. Stowe's fondest hopes had

been realized; and, largely through her efforts, Mandarin had been

provided with a pretty little Episcopal church, to which was attached a

comfortable rectory, and over which was installed a regular clergyman.

In January, 1884, Mrs. Stowe writes:--

"Mandarin looks very gay and airy now with its new villas, and our new

church and rectory. Our minister is perfect. I wish you could know him.

He wants only physical strength. In everything else he is all one could

ask.

"It is a bright, lovely morning, and four orange-pickers are busy

gathering our fruit. Our trees on the bluff have done better than any

in Florida.

"This winter I study nothing but Christ's life. First I read Farrar's

account and went over it carefully. Now I am reading Geikie. It keeps

my mind steady, and helps me to bear the languor and pain, of which I

have more than usual this winter."

FOOTNOTES:

[15] Andrew Johnson.

[16] _Die Christliche Mystik_, by Johann Joseph Görres, Regensburg,

1836-42.

CHAPTER XVIII.

OLDTOWN FOLKS, 1869.

PROFESSOR STOWE THE ORIGINAL OF "HARRY" IN "OLDTOWN

FOLKS."--PROFESSOR STOWE'S LETTER TO GEORGE

ELIOT.--HER REMARKS ON THE SAME.--PROFESSOR STOWE'S

NARRATIVE OF HIS YOUTHFUL ADVENTURES IN THE WORLD OF

SPIRITS.--PROFESSOR STOWE'S INFLUENCE ON MRS. STOWE'S

LITERARY LIFE.--GEORGE ELIOT ON "OLDTOWN FOLKS."

THIS biography would be signally incomplete without some mention of the

birth, childhood, early associations, and very peculiar and abnormal

psychological experiences of Professor Stowe. Aside from the fact of

Dr. Stowe's being Mrs. Stowe's husband, and for this reason entitled to

notice in any sketch of her life, however meagre, he is the original of

the "visionary boy" in "Oldtown Folks;" and "Oldtown Fireside Stories"

embody the experiences of his childhood and youth among the grotesque

and original characters of his native town.

March 26, 1882, Professor Stowe wrote the following characteristic

letter to Mrs. Lewes:--

MRS. LEWES,--I fully sympathize with you in your

disgust with Hume and the professing mediums generally.

Hume spent his boyhood in my father's native town,

among my relatives and acquaintances, and he was a

disagreeable, nasty boy. But he certainly has qualities

which science has not yet explained, and some of his

doings are as real as they are strange. My interest in

the subject of spiritualism arises from the fact of

my own experience, more than sixty years ago, in my

early childhood. I then never thought of questioning

the objective reality of all I saw, and supposed that

everybody else had the same experience. Of what this

experience was you may gain some idea from certain

passages in "Oldtown Folks."

The same experiences continue yet, but with serious

doubts as to the objectivity of the scenes exhibited. I

have noticed that people who have remarkable and minute

answers to prayer, such as Stilling, Franke, Lavater,

are for the most part of this peculiar temperament.

Is it absurd to suppose that some peculiarity in the

nervous system, in the connecting link between soul and

body, may bring some, more than others, into an almost

abnormal contact with the spirit-world (for example,

Jacob Boehme and Swedenborg), and that, too, without

correcting their faults, or making them morally better

than others? Allow me to say that I have always admired

the working of your mind, there is about it such a

perfect uprightness and uncalculating honesty. I think

you are a better Christian without church or theology

than most people are with both, though I am, and always

have been in the main, a Calvinist of the Jonathan

Edwards school. God bless you! I have a warm side for

Mr. Lewes on account of his Goethe labors.

Goethe has been my admiration for more than forty

years. In 1830 I got hold of his "Faust," and for two

gloomy, dreary November days, while riding through the

woods of New Hampshire in an old-fashioned stagecoach,

to enter upon a professorship in Dartmouth College, I

was perfectly dissolved by it.

Sincerely yours,

C. E. STOWE.

In a letter to Mrs. Stowe, written June 24, 1872, Mrs. Lewes alludes

to Professor Stowe's letter as follows: "Pray give my special thanks

to the professor for his letter. His handwriting, which does really

look like Arabic,--a very graceful character, surely,--happens to be

remarkably legible to me, and I did not hesitate over a single word.

Some of the words, as expressions of fellowship, were very precious to

me, and I hold it very good of him to write to me that best sort of

encouragement. I was much impressed with the fact--which you have told

me--that he was the original of the "visionary boy" in "Oldtown Folks;"

and it must be deeply interesting to talk with him on his experience.

Perhaps I am inclined, under the influence of the facts, physiological

and psychological, which have been gathered of late years, to give

larger place to the interpretation of vision-seeing as subjective than

the professor would approve. It seems difficult to limit--at least

to limit with any precision--the possibility of confounding sense

by impressions derived from inward conditions with those which are

directly dependent on external stimulus. In fact, the division between

within and without in this sense seems to become every year a more

subtle and bewildering problem."

In 1834, while Mr. Stowe was a professor in Lane Theological Seminary

at Cincinnati, Ohio, he wrote out a history of his youthful adventures

in the spirit-world, from which the following extracts are taken:--

[Illustration: Signature: C. S. Stowe.]

"I have often thought I would communicate to some scientific physician

a particular account of a most singular delusion under which I lived

from my earliest infancy till the fifteenth or sixteenth year of my

age, and the effects of which remain very distinctly now that I am past

thirty.

"The facts are of such a nature as to be indelibly impressed upon my

mind they appear to me to be curious, and well worth the attention of

the psychologist. I regard the occurrences in question as the more

remarkable because I cannot discover that I possess either taste or

talent for fiction or poetry. I have barely imagination enough to

enjoy, with a high degree of relish, the works of others in this

department of literature, but have never felt able or disposed to

engage in that sort of writing myself. On the contrary, my style has

always been remarkable for its dry, matter-of-fact plainness; my mind

has been distinguished for its quickness and adaptedness to historical

and literary investigations, for ardor and perseverance in pursuit of

the knowledge of facts,--_eine verständige Richtung_, as the Germans

would say,--rather than for any other quality; and the only talent of a

higher kind which I am conscious of possessing is a turn for accurate

observation of men and things, and a certain broad humor and drollery.

"From the hour of my birth I have been constitutionally feeble, as were

my parents before me, and my nervous system easily excitable. With

care, however, I have kept myself in tolerable health, and my life

has been an industrious one, for my parents were poor and I have

always been obliged to labor for my livelihood.

"With these preliminary remarks, I proceed to the curious details of

my psychological history. As early as I can remember anything, I can

remember observing a multitude of animated and active objects, which

I could see with perfect distinctness, moving about me, and could

sometimes, though seldom, hear them make a rustling noise, or other

articulate sounds; but I could never touch them. They were in all

respects independent of the sense of touch, and incapable of being

obstructed in any way by the intervention of material objects; I could

see them at any distance, and through any intervening object, with as

much ease and distinctness as if they were in the room with me, and

directly before my eyes. I could see them passing through the floors,

and the ceilings, and the walls of the house, from one apartment to

another, in all directions, without a door, or a keyhole, or crevice

being open to admit them. I could follow them with my eyes to any

distance, or directly through or just beneath the surface, or up and

down, in the midst of boards and timbers and bricks, or whatever

else would stop the motion or intercept the visibleness of all other

objects. These appearances occasioned neither surprise nor alarm,

except when they assumed some hideous and frightful form, or exhibited

some menacing gesture, for I became acquainted with them as soon as

with any of the objects of sense. As to the reality of their existence

and the harmlessness of their character, I knew no difference between

them and any other of the objects which met my eye. They were as

familiar to me as the forms of my parents and my brother; they made

up a part of my daily existence, and were as really the subjects of

my consciousness as the little bench on which I sat in the corner by

my mother's knee, or the wheels and sticks and strings with which I

amused myself upon the floor. I indeed recognized a striking difference

between them and the things which I could feel and handle, but to me

this difference was no more a matter of surprise than that which I

observed between my mother and the black woman who so often came to

work for her; or between my infant brother and the little spotted

dog Brutus of which I was so fond. There was no time, or place, or

circumstance, in which they did not occasionally make their appearance.

Solitude and silence, however, were more favorable to their appearance

than company and conversation. They were more pleased with candle-light

than the daylight. They were most numerous, distinct, and active when

I was alone and in the dark, especially when my mother had laid me in

bed and returned to her own room with the candle. At such times, I

always expected the company of my ærial visitors, and counted upon it

to amuse me till I dropped asleep. Whenever they failed to make their

appearance, as was sometimes the case, I felt lonely and discontented.

I kept up a lively conversation with them,--not by language or by

signs, for the attempt on my part to speak or move would at once break

the charm and drive them away in a fret, but by a peculiar sort of

spiritual intercommunion.

"When their attention was directed towards me, I could feel and respond

to all their thoughts and feelings, and was conscious that they could

in the same manner feel and respond to mine. Sometimes they would take

no notice of me, but carry on a brisk conversation among themselves,

principally by looks and gestures, with now and then an audible word.

In fact, there were but few with whom I was very familiar. These few

were much more constant and uniform in their visits than the great

multitude, who were frequently changing, and too much absorbed in

their own concerns to think much of me. I scarcely know how I can

give an idea of their form and general appearance, for there are no

objects in the material world with which I can compare them, and no

language adapted to an accurate description of their peculiarities.

They exhibited all possible combinations of size, shape, proportion,

and color, but their most usual appearance was with the human form

and proportion, but under a shadowy outline that seemed just ready to

melt into the invisible air, and sometimes liable to the most sudden

and grotesque changes, and with a uniform darkly bluish color spotted

with brown, or brownish white. This was the general appearance of

the multitude; but there were many exceptions to this description,

particularly among my more welcome and familiar visitors, as will be

seen in the sequel.

"Besides these rational and generally harmless beings, there was

another set of objects which never varied in their form or qualities,

and were always mischievous and terrible. The fact of their appearance

depended very much on the state of my health and feelings. If I was

well and cheerful they seldom troubled me; but when sick or depressed

they were sure to obtrude their hateful presence upon me. These were a

sort of heavy clouds floating about overhead, of a black color, spotted

with brown, in the shape of a very flaring inverted tunnel without a

nozzle, and from ten to thirty or forty feet in diameter. They floated

from place to place in great numbers, and in all directions, with a

strong and steady progress, but with a tremulous, quivering, internal

motion that agitated them in every part.

"Whenever they approached, the rational phantoms were thrown into great

consternation; and well it might be, for if a cloud touched any part of

one of the rational phantoms it immediately communicated its own color

and tremulous motion to the part it touched.

"In spite of all the efforts and convulsive struggles of the unhappy

victim, this color and motion slowly, but steadily and uninteruptedly,

proceeded to diffuse itself over every part of the body, and as fast as

it did so the body was drawn into the cloud and became a part of its

substance. It was indeed a fearful sight to see the contortions, the

agonizing efforts, of the poor creatures who had been touched by one of

these awful clouds, and were dissolving and melting into it by inches

without the possibility of escape or resistance.

"This was the only visible object that had the least power over the

phantoms, and this was evidently composed of the same material as

themselves. The forms and actions of all these phantoms varied very

much with the state of my health and animal spirits, but I never could

discover that the surrounding material objects had any influence upon

them, except in this one particular, namely, if I saw them in a neat,

well furnished room, there was a neatness and polish in their form

and motions; and, on the contrary, if I was in an unfinished, rough

apartment, there was a corresponding rudeness and roughness in my ærial

visitors. A corresponding difference was visible when I saw them in the

woods or in the meadows, upon the water or upon the ground, in the air

or among the stars.

"Every different apartment which I occupied had a different set of

phantoms, and they always had a degree of correspondence to the

circumstances in which they were seen. (It should be noted, however,

that it was not so much the place where the phantoms themselves

appeared to me to be, that affected their forms and movements, as the

place in which I myself actually was while observing them. The apparent

locality of the phantoms, it is true, had some influence, but my own

actual locality had much more.)

"Thus far I have attempted only a general outline of these curious

experiences. I will now proceed to a detailed account of several

particular incidents, for the sake of illustrating the general

statements already made. I select a few from manifestations without

number. I am able to ascertain dates from the following circumstances:--

"I was born in April, 1802, and my father died in July, 1808, after

suffering for more than a year from a lingering organic disease.

Between two and three years before his death he removed from the house

in which I was born to another at a little distance from it. What

occurred, therefore, before my father's last sickness, must have taken

place during the first five years of my life, and whatever took place

before the removal of the family must have taken place during the

first three years of my life. Before the removal of the family I slept

in a small upper chamber in the front part of the house, where I was

generally alone for several hours in the evening and morning. Adjoining

this room, and opening into it by a very small door, was a low, dark,

narrow, unfinished closet, which was open on the other side into a

ruinous, old chaise-house. This closet was a famous place for the

gambols of the phantoms, but of their forms and actions I do not now

retain any very distinct recollection. I only remember that I was very

careful not to do anything that I thought would be likely to offend

them; yet otherwise their presence caused me no uneasiness, and was not

at all disagreeable to me.

"The first incident of which I have a distinct recollection was the

following:--

"One night, as I was lying alone in my chamber with my little dog

Brutus snoring beside my bed, there came out of the closet a very

large Indian woman and a very small Indian man, with a huge bass-viol

between them. The woman was dressed in a large, loose, black gown,

secured around her waist by a belt of the same material, and on her

head she wore a high, dark gray fur cap, shaped somewhat like a lady's

muff, ornamented with a row of covered buttons in front, and open

towards the bottom, showing a red lining. The man was dressed in a

shabby, black-colored overcoat and a little round, black hat that

fitted closely to his head. They took no notice of me, but were rather

ill-natured towards each other, and seemed to be disputing for the

possession of the bass-viol. The man snatched it away and struck upon

it a few harsh, hollow notes, which I distinctly heard, and which

seemed to vibrate through my whole body, with a strange, stinging

sensation. The woman then took it and appeared to play very intently

and much to her own satisfaction, but without producing any sound that

was perceptible by me. They soon left the chamber, and I saw them go

down into the back kitchen, where they sat and played and talked with

my mother. It was only when the man took the bow that I could hear the

harsh, abrupt, disagreeable sounds of the instrument. At length they

arose, went out of the back door, and sprang upon a large heap of straw

and unthreshed beans, and disappeared with a strange, rumbling sound.

This vision was repeated night after night with scarcely any variation

while we lived in that house, and once, and once only, after the family

had removed to the other house. The only thing that seemed to me

unaccountable and that excited my curiosity was that there should be

such a large heap of straw and beans before the door every night, when

I could see nothing of it in the daytime. I frequently crept out of bed

and stole softly down into the kitchen, and peeped out of the door to

see if it was there very early in the morning.

"I attempted to make some inquiries of my mother, but as I was not as

yet very skillful in the use of language, I could get no satisfaction

out of her answers, and could see that my questions seemed to distress

her. At first she took little notice of what I said, regarding it

no doubt as the meaningless prattle of a thoughtless child. My

persistence, however, seemed to alarm her, and I suppose that she

feared for my sanity. I soon desisted from asking anything further, and

shut myself more and more within myself. One night, very soon after

the removal, when the house was still, and all the family were in bed,

these unearthly musicians once made their appearance in the kitchen of

the new house, and after looking around peevishly, and sitting with a

discontented frown and in silence, they arose and went out of the back

door, and sprang on a pile of cornstalks, and I saw them no more.

"Our new dwelling was a low-studded house of only one story, and,

instead of an upper chamber, I now occupied a bedroom that opened into

the kitchen. Within this bedroom, directly on the left hand of the

door as you entered from the kitchen, was the staircase which led to

the garret; and, as the room was unfinished, some of the boards which

inclosed the staircase were too short, and left a considerable space

between them and the ceiling. One of these open spaces was directly in

front of my bed, so that when I lay upon my pillow my face was opposite

to it. Every night, after I had gone to bed and the candle was removed,

a very pleasant-looking human face would peer at me over the top of

that board, and gradually press forward his head, neck, shoulders,

and finally his whole body as far as the waist, through the opening,

and then, smiling upon me with great good-nature, would withdraw in

the same manner in which he had entered. He was a great favorite of

mine; for though we neither of us spoke, we perfectly understood, and

were entirely devoted to, each other. It is a singular fact that the

features of this favorite phantom bore a very close resemblance to

those of a boy older than myself whom I feared and hated: still the

resemblance was so strong that I called him by the same name, Harvey.

"Harvey's visits were always expected and always pleasant; but

sometimes there were visitations of another sort, odious and frightful.

One of these I will relate as a specimen of the rest.

"One night, after I had retired to bed and was looking for Harvey,

I observed an unusual number of the tunnel-shaped tremulous clouds

already described, and they seemed intensely black and strongly

agitated. This alarmed me exceedingly, and I had a terrible feeling

that something awful was going to happen. It was not long before I saw

Harvey at his accustomed place, cautiously peeping at me through the

aperture, with an expression of pain and terror on his countenance.

He seemed to warn me to be on my guard, but was afraid to put his

head into the room lest he should be touched by one of the clouds,

which were every moment growing thicker and more numerous. Harvey soon

withdrew and left me alone. On turning my eyes towards the left-hand

wall of the room, I thought I saw at an immense distance below me the

regions of the damned, as I had heard them pictured in sermons. From

this awful world of horror the tunnel-shaped clouds were ascending,

and I perceived that they were the principal instruments of torture in

these gloomy abodes. These regions were at such an immense distance

below me that I could obtain but a very indistinct view of the

inhabitants, who were very numerous and exceedingly active. Near the

surface of the earth, and as it seemed to me but a little distance from

my bed, I saw four or five sturdy, resolute devils endeavoring to carry

off an unprincipled and dissipated man in the neighborhood, by the name

of Brown, of whom I had stood in terror for years. These devils I saw

were very different from the common representations. They had neither

red faces, nor horns, nor hoofs, nor tails. They were in all respects

stoutly built and well-dressed gentlemen. The only peculiarity that I

noted in their appearance was as to their heads. Their faces and necks

were perfectly bare, without hair or flesh, and of a uniform sky-blue

color, like the ashes of burnt paper before it falls to pieces, and of

a certain glossy smoothness.

"As I looked on, full of eagerness, the devils struggled to force Brown

down with them, and Brown struggled with the energy of desperation to

save himself from their grip, and it seemed that the human was likely

to prove too strong for the infernal. In this emergency one of the

devils, panting for breath and covered with perspiration, beckoned to

a strong, thick cloud that seemed to understand him perfectly, and,

whirling up to Brown, touched his hand. Brown resisted stoutly, and

struck out right and left at the cloud most furiously, but the usual

effect was produced,--the hand grew black, quivered, and seemed to

be melting into the cloud; then the arm, by slow degrees, and then

the head and shoulders. At this instant Brown, collecting all his

energies for one desperate effort, sprang at once into the centre of

the cloud, tore it asunder, and descended to the ground, exclaiming,

with a hoarse, furious voice that grated on my ear, 'There, I've got

out; dam'me if I haven't!' This was the first word that had been spoken

through the whole horrible scene. It was the first time I had ever

seen a cloud fail to produce its appropriate result, and it terrified

me so that I trembled from head to foot. The devils, however, did

not seem to be in the least discouraged. One of them, who seemed to

be the leader, went away and quickly returned bringing with him an

enormous pair of rollers fixed in an iron frame, such as are used in

iron-mills for the purpose of rolling out and slitting bars of iron,

except instead of being turned by machinery, each roller was turned by

an immense crank. Three of the devils now seized Brown and put his feet

to the rollers, while two others stood, one at each crank, and began to

roll him in with a steady strain that was entirely irresistible. Not

a word was spoken, not a sound was heard; but the fearful struggles

and terrified, agonizing looks of Brown were more than I could endure.

I sprang from my bed and ran through the kitchen into the room where

my parents slept, and entreated that they would permit me to spend

the remainder of the night with them. After considerable parleying

they assured me that nothing could hurt me, and advised me to go back

to bed. I replied that I was not afraid of their hurting me, but I

couldn't bear to see them acting so with C. Brown. 'Poh! poh! you

foolish boy,' replied my father, sternly. 'You've only been dreaming;

go right back to bed, or I shall have to whip you.' Knowing that there

was no other alternative, I trudged back through the kitchen with all

the courage I could muster, cautiously entered my room, where I found

everything quiet, there being neither cloud, nor devil, nor anything of

the kind to be seen, and getting into bed I slept quietly till morning.

The next day I was rather sad and melancholy, but kept all my troubles

to myself, through fear of Brown. This happened before my father's

sickness, and consequently between the four and six years of my age.

"During my father's sickness and after his death I lived with my

grandmother; and when I had removed to her house I forever lost sight

of Harvey. I still continued to sleep alone for the most part, but in

a neatly furnished upper chamber. Across the corner of the chamber,

opposite to and at a little distance from the head of my bed, there

was a closet in the form of an old-fashioned buffet. After going to

bed, on looking at the door of this closet, I could see at a great

distance from it a pleasant meadow, terminated by a beautiful little

grove. Out of this grove, and across this meadow, a charming little

female figure would advance, about eight inches high and exquisitely

proportioned, dressed in a loose black silk robe, with long, smooth

black hair parted up her head and hanging loose over her shoulders.

She would come forward with a slow and regular step, becoming more

distinctly visible as she approached nearer, till she came even with

the surface of the closet door, when she would smile upon me, raise her

hands to her head and draw them down on each side of her face, suddenly

turn round, and go off at a rapid trot. The moment she turned I could

see a good-looking mulatto man, rather smaller than herself, following

directly in her wake and trotting off after her. This was generally

repeated two or three times before I went to sleep. The features of

the mulatto bore some resemblance to those of the Indian man with the

bass-viol, but were much more mild and agreeable.

* * * * *

"I awoke one bright, moonlight night, and found a large, full-length

human skeleton of an ashy-blue color in bed with me! I screamed out

with fright, and soon summoned the family around me. I refused to tell

the cause of my alarm, but begged permission to occupy another bed,

which was granted.

"For the remainder of the night I slept but little; but I saw upon

the window-stools companies of little fairies, about six inches high,

in white robes, gamboling and dancing with incessant merriment.

Two of them, a male and female, rather taller than the rest, were

dignified with a crown and sceptre. They took the kindest notice of

me, smiled upon me with great benignity, and seemed to assure me of

their protection. I was soothed and cheered by their presence, though

after all there was a sort of sinister and selfish expression in their

countenances which prevented my placing implicit confidence in them.

"Up to this time I had never doubted the real existence of these

phantoms, nor had I ever suspected that other people had not seen

them as distinctly as myself. I now, however, began to discover with

no little anxiety that my friends had little or no knowledge of the

ærial beings among whom I have spent my whole life; that my allusions

to them were not understood, and all complaints respecting them were

laughed at. I had never been disposed to say much about them, and this

discovery confirmed me in my silence. It did not, however, affect

my own belief, or lead me to suspect that my imaginations were not

realities.

"During the whole of this period I took great pleasure in walking

out alone, particularly in the evening. The most lonely fields, the

woods, and the banks of the river, and other places most completely

secluded, were my favorite resorts, for there I could enjoy the sight

of innumerable ærial beings of all sorts, without interruption.

Every object, even every shaking leaf, seemed to me to be animated

by some living soul, whose nature in some degree corresponded to its

habitation. I spent much of my life in these solitary rambles; there

were particular places to which I gave names, and visited them at

regular intervals. Moonlight was particularly agreeable to me, but most

of all I enjoyed a thick, foggy night. At times, during these walks,

I would be excessively oppressed by an indefinite and deep feeling

of melancholy. Without knowing why, I would be so unhappy as to wish

myself annihilated, and suddenly it would occur to me that my friends

at home were suffering some dreadful calamity, and so vivid would be

the impression, that I would hasten home with all speed to see what

had taken place. At such seasons I felt a morbid love for my friends

that would almost burn up my soul, and yet, at the least provocation

from them, I would fly into an uncontrollable passion and foam like a

little fury. I was called a dreadful-tempered boy; but the Lord knows

that I never occasioned pain to any animal, whether human or brutal,

without suffering untold agonies in consequence of it. I cannot, even

now, without feelings of deep sorrow, call to mind the alternate fits

of corroding melancholy, irritation, and bitter remorse which I then

endured. These fits of melancholy were most constant and oppressive

during the autumnal months.

"I very early learned to read, and soon became immoderately attached

to books. In the Bible I read the first chapters of Job, and parts

of Ezekiel, Daniel, and Revelation, with most intense delight, and

with such frequency that I could repeat large portions from memory

long before the age at which boys in the country are usually able to

read plain sentences. The first large book besides the Bible that

I remember reading was Morse's 'History of New England,' which I

devoured with insatiable greediness, particularly those parts which

relate to Indian wars and witchcraft. I was in the habit of applying

to my grandmother for explanations, and she would relate to me, while

I listened with breathless attention, long stories from Mather's

'Magnalia' or (Mag-nilly, as she used to call it), a work which I

earnestly longed to read, but of which I never got sight till after my

twentieth year. Very early there fell into my hands an old school-book,

called 'The Art of Speaking,' containing numerous extracts from Milton

and Shakespeare. There was little else in the book that interested

me, but these extracts from the two great English poets, though there

were many things in them that I did not well understand, I read again

and again, with increasing pleasure at every perusal, till I had

nearly committed them to memory, and almost thumbed the old book into

nonentity. But of all the books that I read at this period, there was

none that went to my heart like Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress.' I read

it and re-read it night and day; I took it to bed with me and hugged it

to my bosom while I slept; every different edition that I could find

I seized upon and read with as eager a curiosity as if it had been a

new story throughout; and I read with the unspeakable satisfaction of

most devoutly believing that everything which 'Honest John' related

was a real verity, an actual occurrence. Oh that I could read that

most inimitable book once more with the same solemn conviction of its

literal truth, that I might once more enjoy the same untold ecstacy!

"One other remark it seems proper to make before I proceed further

to details. The appearance, and especially the motions, of my ærial

visitors were intimately connected, either as cause or effect, I cannot

determine which, with certain sensations of my own. Their countenances

generally expressed pleasure or pain, complaisance or anger, according

to the mood of my own mind: if they moved from place to place without

moving their limbs, with that gliding motion appropriate to spirits, I

felt in my stomach that peculiar tickling sensation which accompanies a

rapid, progressive movement through the air; and if they went off with

an uneasy trot, I felt an unpleasant jarring through my frame. Their

appearance was always attended with considerable effort and fatigue

on my part: the more distinct and vivid they were, the more would my

fatigue be increased; and at such times my face was always pale, and my

eyes unusually sparkling and wild. This continued to be the case after

I became satisfied that it was all a delusion of the imagination, and

it so continues to the present day."

It is not surprising that Mrs. Stowe should have felt herself impelled

to give literary form to an experience so exceptional. Still more

must this be the case when the early associations of this exceptional

character were as amusing and interesting as they are shown forth in

"Oldtown Fireside Stories."

None of the incidents or characters embodied in those sketches are

ideal. The stories are told as they came from Mr. Stowe's lips, with

little or no alteration. Sam Lawson was a real character. In 1874 Mr.

Whittier wrote to Mrs. Stowe: "I am not able to write or study much,

or read books that require thought, without suffering, but I have Sam

Lawson lying at hand, and, as Corporal Trim said of Yorick's sermon, 'I

like it hugely.'"

The power and literary value of these stories lie in the fact that they

are true to nature. Professor Stowe was himself an inimitable mimic

and story-teller. No small proportion of Mrs. Stowe's success as a

literary woman is to be attributed to him. Not only was he possessed of

a bright, quick mind, but wonderful retentiveness of memory. Mrs. Stowe

was never at a loss for reliable information on any subject as long as

the professor lived. He belonged to that extinct species, the "general

scholar." His scholarship was not critical in the modern sense of the

word, but in the main accurate, in spite of his love for the marvelous.

It is not out of place to give a little idea of his power in

character-painting, as it shows how suggestive his conversation and

letters must have been to a mind like that of Mrs. Stowe:--

NATICK, _July 14, 1839._

I have had a real good time this week writing my

oration. I have strolled over my old walking places,

and found the same old stone walls, the same old

foot-paths through the rye-fields, the same bends in

the river, the same old bullfrogs with their green

spectacles on, the same old terrapins sticking up their

heads and bowing as I go by; and nothing was wanting

but my wife to talk with to make all complete.... I

have had some rare talks with old uncle "Jaw" Bacon,

and other old characters, which you ought to have

heard. The Curtises have been flooding Uncle "Jaw's"

meadows, and he is in a great stew about it. He says:

"I took and tell'd your Uncle Izic to tell them 'ere

Curtises that if the Devil didn't git 'em far flowing

my medder arter that sort, I didn't see no use o'

havin' any Devil." "Have you talked with the Curtises

yourself?" "Yes, hang the sarcy dogs! and they took

and tell'd me that they'd take and flow clean up to my

front door, and make me go out and in in a boat." "Why

don't you go to law?" "Oh, they keep alterin' and er

tinkerin'-up the laws so here in Massachusetts that a

body can't git no damage fur flowing; they think cold

water can't hurt nobody."

Mother and Aunt Nabby each keep separate

establishments. First Aunt Nabby gets up in the morning

and examines the sink, to see whether it leaks and

rots the beam. She then makes a little fire, gets her

little teapot of bright shining tin, and puts into it a

teaspoonful of black tea, and so prepares her breakfast.

By this time mother comes creeping down-stairs, like

an old tabby-cat out of the ash-hole; and she kind o'

doubts and reckons whether or no she had better try to

git any breakfast, bein' as she's not much appetite

this mornin'; but she goes to the leg of bacon and cuts

off a little slice, reckons sh'll broil it; then goes

and looks at the coffee-pot and reckons sh'll have a

little coffee; don't exactly know whether it's good

for her, but she don't drink much. So while Aunt Nabby

is sitting sipping her tea and munching her bread and

butter with a matter-of-fact certainty and marvelous

satisfaction, mother goes doubting and reckoning round,

like Mrs. Diffidence in Doubting Castle, till you see

rising up another little table in another corner of the

room, with a good substantial structure of broiled ham

and coffee, and a boiled egg or two, with various et

ceteras, which Mrs. Diffidence, after many desponding

ejaculations, finally sits down to, and in spite of

all presentiments makes them fly as nimbly as Mr.

Ready-to-Halt did Miss Much-afraid when he footed it

so well with her on his crutches in the dance on the

occasion of Giant Despair's overthrow.

I have thus far dined alternately with mother and Aunt

Susan, not having yet been admitted to Aunt Nabby's

establishment. There are now great talkings, and

congresses and consultations of the allied powers,

and already rumors are afloat that perhaps all will

unite their forces and dine at one table, especially

as Harriet and little Hattie are coming, and there is

no knowing what might come out in the papers if there

should be anything a little odd.

Mother is very well, thin as a hatchet and smart as

a steel trap; Aunt Nabby, fat and easy as usual; for

since the sink is mended, and no longer leaks and rots

the beam, and she has nothing to do but watch it,

and Uncle Bill has joined the Washingtonians and no

longer drinks rum, she is quite at a loss for topics of

worriment.

Uncle Ike has had a little touch of palsy and is rather

feeble. He says that his legs and arms have rather

gi'n out, but his head and pluck are as good as they

ever were. I told him that our sister Kate was very

much in the same fix, whereat he was considerably

affected, and opened the crack in his great pumpkin of

a face, displaying the same two rows of great white

ivories which have been my admiration from my youth

up. He is sixty-five years of age, and has never lost

a tooth, and was never in his life more than fifteen

miles from the spot where he was born, except once, in

the ever-memorable year 1819, when I was at Bradford

Academy.

In a sudden glow of adventurous rashness he undertook

to go after me and bring me home for vacation; and he

actually performed the whole journey of thirty miles

with his horse and wagon, and slept at a tavern a whole

night, a feat of bravery on which he has never since

ceased to plume himself. I well remember that awful

night in the tavern in the remote region of North

Andover. We occupied a chamber in which were two beds.

In the unsuspecting innocence of youth I undressed

myself and got into bed as usual; but my brave and

thoughtful uncle, merely divesting himself of his coat,

put it under his pillow, and then threw himself on to

the bed with his boots on his feet, and his two hands

resting on the rim of his hat, which he had prudently

placed on the apex of his stomach as he lay on his

back. He wouldn't allow me to blow out the candle,

but he lay there with his great white eyes fixed on

the ceiling, in the cool, determined manner of a bold

man who had made up his mind to face danger and meet

whatever might befall him. We escaped, however, without

injury, the doughty landlord and his relentless sons

merely demanding pay for supper, lodging, horse-feed,

and breakfast, which my valiant uncle, betraying no

signs of fear, resolutely paid.

Mrs. Stowe has woven this incident into chapter thirty-two of "Oldtown

Folks," where Uncle Ike figures as Uncle Jacob.

Mrs. Stowe had misgivings as to the reception which "Oldtown Folks"

would meet in England, owing to its distinctively New England

character. Shortly after the publication of the book she received the

following words of encouragement from Mrs. Lewes (George Eliot), July

11, 1869:--

"I have received and read 'Oldtown Folks.' I think that few of your

readers can have felt more interest than I have felt in that picture

of an elder generation; for my interest in it has a double root,--one

in my own love for our old-fashioned provincial life, which had its

affinities with a contemporary life, even all across the Atlantic,

and of which I have gathered glimpses in different phases from my

father and mother, with their relations; the other is my experimental

acquaintance with some shades of Calvinistic orthodoxy. I think your

way of presenting the religious convictions which are not your own,

except by the way of indirect fellowship, is a triumph of insight and

true tolerance.... Both Mr. Lewes and I are deeply interested in the

indications which the professor gives of his peculiar psychological

experience, and we should feel it a great privilege to learn much more

of it from his lips. It is a rare thing to have such an opportunity of

studying exceptional experience in the testimony of a truthful and in

every way distinguished mind."

"Oldtown Folks" is of interest as being undoubtedly the last of Mrs.

Stowe's works which will outlive the generation for which it was

written. Besides its intrinsic merit as a work of fiction, it has a

certain historic value as being a faithful study of "New England life

and character in that particular time of its history which may be

called the seminal period."

Whether Mrs. Stowe was far enough away from the time and people she

attempts to describe to "make (her) mind as still and passive as

a looking-glass or a mountain lake, and to give merely the images

reflected there," is something that will in great part determine the

permanent value of this work. Its interest as a story merely is of

course ephemeral.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE BYRON CONTROVERSY, 1869-1870.

MRS. STOWE'S STATEMENT OF HER OWN CASE.--THE

CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER WHICH SHE FIRST MET LADY

BYRON.--LETTERS TO LADY BYRON.--LETTER TO DR. HOLMES

WHEN ABOUT TO PUBLISH "THE TRUE STORY OF LADY BYRON'S

LIFE" IN THE "ATLANTIC."--DR. HOLMES'S REPLY.--THE

CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER.

IT seems impossible to avoid the unpleasant episode in Mrs. Stowe's

life known as the "Byron Controversy." It will be our effort to deal

with the matter as colorlessly as is consistent with an adequate

setting forth of the motives which moved Mrs. Stowe to awaken this

unsavory discussion. In justification of her action in this matter,

Mrs. Stowe says:--

"What interest have you and I, my brother and my sister, in this short

life of ours, to utter anything but the truth? Is not truth between man

and man, and between man and woman, the foundation on which all things

rest? Have you not, every individual of you, who must hereafter give

an account yourself alone to God, an interest to know the exact truth

in this matter, and a duty to perform as respects that truth? Hear me,

then, while I tell you the position in which I stood, and what was my

course in relation to it.

"A shameless attack on my friend's memory had appeared in the

'Blackwood' of July, 1869, branding Lady Byron as the vilest of

criminals, and recommending the Guiccioli book to a Christian public

as interesting from the very fact that it was the avowed production

of Lord Byron's mistress. No efficient protest was made against

this outrage in England, and Littell's 'Living Age' reprinted the

'Blackwood' article, and the Harpers, the largest publishing house in

America, perhaps in the world, republished the book.

"Its statements--with those of the 'Blackwood,' 'Pall Mall Gazette,'

and other English periodicals--were being propagated through all

the young reading and writing world of America. I was meeting them

advertised in dailies, and made up into articles in magazines, and thus

the generation of to-day, who had no means of judging Lady Byron but by

these fables of her slanderers, were being foully deceived. The friends

who knew her personally were a small, select circle in England, whom

death is every day reducing. They were few in number compared with the

great world, and were _silent_. I saw these foul slanders crystallizing

into history, uncontradicted by friends who knew her personally, who,

firm in their own knowledge of her virtues, and limited in view as

aristocratic circles generally are, had no idea of the width of the

world they were living in, and the exigency of the crisis. When time

passed on and no voice was raised, I spoke."

It is hardly necessary to recapitulate, at any great length, facts

already so familiar to the reading public; it may be sufficient simply

to say that after the appearance in 1868 of the Countess Guiccioli's

"Recollections of Lord Byron," Mrs. Stowe felt herself called upon

to defend the memory of her friend from what she esteemed to be

falsehoods and slanders. To accomplish this object, she prepared for

the "Atlantic Monthly" of September, 1869, an article, "The True Story

of Lady Byron's Life." Speaking of her first impressions of Lady Byron,

Mrs. Stowe says:--

"I formed her acquaintance in the year 1853, during my first visit to

England. I met her at a lunch party in the house of one of her friends.

When I was introduced to her, I felt in a moment the words of her

husband:--

"'There was awe in the homage that she drew;

Her spirit seemed as seated on a throne.'"

It was in the fall of 1856, on the occasion of Mrs. Stowe's second

visit to England, as she and her sister were on their way to Eversley

to visit the Rev. C. Kingsley, that they stopped by invitation to lunch

with Lady Byron at her summer residence at Ham Common, near Richmond.

At that time Lady Byron informed Mrs. Stowe that it was her earnest

desire to receive a visit from her on her return, as there was a

subject of great importance concerning which she desired her advice.

Mrs. Stowe has thus described this interview with Lady Byron:--

"After lunch, I retired with Lady Byron, and my sister remained with

her friends. I should here remark that the chief subject of the

conversation which ensued was not entirely new to me.

"In the interval between my first and second visits to England, a lady

who for many years had enjoyed Lady Byron's friendship and confidence

had, with her consent, stated the case generally to me, giving some of

the incidents, so that I was in a manner prepared for what followed.

"Those who accuse Lady Byron of being a person fond of talking upon

this subject, and apt to make unconsidered confidences, can have known

very little of her, of her reserve, and of the apparent difficulty she

had in speaking on subjects nearest her heart. Her habitual calmness

and composure of manner, her collected dignity on all occasions, are

often mentioned by her husband, sometimes with bitterness, sometimes

with admiration. He says: 'Though I accuse Lady Byron of an excess of

self-respect, I must in candor admit that, if ever a person had excuse

for an extraordinary portion of it, she has, as in all her thoughts,

words, and deeds she is the most decorous woman that ever existed, and

must appear, what few I fancy could, a perfectly refined gentlewoman,

even to her _femme de chambre_.'

"This calmness and dignity were never more manifested than in this

interview. In recalling the conversation at this distance of time, I

cannot remember all the language used. Some particular words and forms

of expression I do remember, and those I give; and in other cases I

give my recollection of the substance of what was said.

"There was something awful to me in the intensity of repressed emotion

which she showed as she proceeded. The great fact upon which all turned

was stated in words that were unmistakable."

Mrs. Stowe goes on to give minutely Lady Byron's conversation, and

concludes by saying:--

Of course I did not listen to this story as one who

was investigating its worth. I received it as truth,

and the purpose for which it was communicated was not

to enable me to prove it to the world, but to ask

my opinion whether she should show it to the world

before leaving it. The whole consultation was upon the

assumption that she had at her command such proofs as

could not be questioned. Concerning what they were I

did not minutely inquire, only, in answer to a general

question, she said that she had letters and documents

in proof of her story. Knowing Lady Byron's strength

of mind, her clear-headedness, her accurate habits,

and her perfect knowledge of the matter, I considered

her judgment on this point decisive. I told her that

I would take the subject into consideration and give

my opinion in a few days. That night, after my sister

and myself had retired to our own apartment, I related

to her the whole history, and we spent the night in

talking it over. I was powerfully impressed with the

justice and propriety of an immediate disclosure;

while she, on the contrary, represented the fatal

consequences that would probably come upon Lady Byron

from taking such a step.

Before we parted the next day, I requested Lady Byron

to give me some memoranda of such dates and outlines

of the general story as would enable me better to keep

it in its connection, which she did. On giving me the

paper, Lady Byron requested me to return it to her

when it had ceased to be of use to me for the purpose

intended. Accordingly, a day or two after, I inclosed

it to her in a hasty note, as I was then leaving London

for Paris, and had not yet had time fully to consider

the subject. On reviewing my note I can recall that

then the whole history appeared to me like one of those

singular cases where unnatural impulses to vice are

the result of a taint of constitutional insanity. This

has always seemed to me the only way of accounting for

instances of utterly motiveless and abnormal wickedness

and cruelty. These, my first impressions, were

expressed in the hasty note written at the time:

LONDON, _November 5, 1856._

DEAREST FRIEND,--I return these. They have held mine

eyes waking. How strange! How unaccountable! Have you

ever subjected the facts to the judgment of a medical

man, learned in nervous pathology? Is it not insanity?

"Great wits to madness nearly are allied,

And thin partitions do their bounds divide."

But my purpose to-night is not to write to you fully

what I think of this matter. I am going to write to you

from Paris more at leisure.

(The rest of the letter was taken up in the final

details of a charity in which Lady Byron had been

engaged with me in assisting an unfortunate artist. It

concludes thus:)

I write now in all haste, _en route_ for Paris. As to

America, all is not lost yet. Farewell. I love you, my

dear friend, as never before, with an intense feeling

that I cannot easily express. God bless you.

H. B. S.

The next letter is as follows:--

PARIS, _December 17, 1856._

DEAR LADY BYRON,--The Kansas Committee have written

me a letter desiring me to express to Miss ---- their

gratitude for the five pounds she sent them. I am not

personally acquainted with her, and must return these

acknowledgments through you.

I wrote you a day or two since, inclosing the reply of

the Kansas Committee to you.

On that subject on which you spoke to me the last time

we were together, I have thought often and deeply.

I have changed my mind somewhat. Considering the

peculiar circumstances of the case, I could wish that

the sacred veil of silence, so bravely thrown over the

past, should never be withdrawn during the time that

you remain with us. I would say then, leave all with

some discreet friends, who, after both have passed

from earth, shall say what was due to justice. I am

led to think this by seeing how low, how unworthy, the

judgments of this world are; and I would not that what

I so much respect, love, and revere should be placed

within reach of its harpy claw, which pollutes what

it touches. The day will yet come which will bring to

light every hidden thing. "There is nothing covered

that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not

be known;" and so justice will not fail.

Such, my dear friend, are my thoughts; different from

what they were since first I heard that strange, sad

history. Meanwhile I love you forever, whether we meet

again on earth or not.

Affectionately yours,

H. B. S.

Before her article appeared in print, Mrs. Stowe addressed the

following letter to Dr. Holmes in Boston:--

HARTFORD, _June 26, 1869._

DEAR DOCTOR,--I am going to ask help of you, and I feel

that confidence in your friendship that leads me to be

glad that I have a friend like you to ask advice of. In

order that you may understand fully what it is, I must

go back some years and tell you about it.

When I went to England the first time, I formed a

friendship with Lady Byron which led to a somewhat

interesting correspondence. When there the second

time, after the publication of "Dred" in 1856, Lady

Byron wrote to me that she wished to have some private

confidential conversation with me, and invited me to

come spend a day with her at her country-seat near

London. I went, met her alone, and spent an afternoon

with her. The object of the visit she then explained

to me. She was in such a state of health that she

considered she had very little time to live, and

was engaged in those duties and reviews which every

thoughtful person finds who is coming deliberately, and

with their eyes open, to the boundaries of this mortal

life.

Lady Byron, as you must perceive, has all her life

lived under a weight of slanders and false imputations

laid upon her by her husband. Her own side of the story

has been told only to that small circle of confidential

friends who needed to know it in order to assist her

in meeting the exigencies which it imposed on her.

Of course it has thrown the sympathy mostly on his

side, since the world generally has more sympathy with

impulsive incorrectness than with strict justice.

At that time there was a cheap edition of Byron's

works in contemplation, meant to bring them into

circulation among the masses, and the pathos arising

from the story of his domestic misfortunes was one

great means relied on for giving it currency.

Under these circumstances some of Lady Byron's friends

had proposed the question to her whether she had not a

responsibility to society for the truth; whether she

did right to allow these persons to gain influence

over the popular mind by a silent consent to an utter

falsehood. As her whole life had been passed in the

most heroic self-abnegation and self sacrifice, the

question was now proposed to her whether one more act

of self-denial was not required of her, namely, to

declare _the truth_, no matter at what expense to her

own feelings.

For this purpose she told me she wished to recount the

whole story to a person in whom she had confidence,--a

person of another country, and out of the whole sphere

of personal and local feelings which might be supposed

to influence those in the country and station in life

where the events really happened,--in order that I

might judge whether anything more was required of her

in relation to this history.

The interview had almost the solemnity of a death-bed

confession, and Lady Byron told me the history which I

have embodied in an article to appear in the "Atlantic

Monthly." I have been induced to prepare it by the run

which the Guiccioli book is having, which is from first

to last an unsparing attack on Lady Byron's memory by

Lord Byron's mistress.

When you have read my article, I want, _not_ your

advice as to whether the main facts shall be told, for

on this point I am so resolved that I frankly say

advice would do me no good. But you might help me,

with your delicacy and insight, to make the _manner of

telling_ more perfect, and I want to do it as wisely

and well as such story can be told.

My post-office address after July 1st will be Westport

Point, Bristol Co., Mass., care of Mrs. I. M. Soule.

The proof-sheets will be sent you by the publisher.

Very truly yours,

H. B. STOWE.

In reply to the storm of controversy aroused by the publication of this

article, Mrs. Stowe made a more extended effort to justify the charges

which she had brought against Lord Byron, in a work published in 1869,

"Lady Byron Vindicated." Immediately after the publication of this

work, she mailed a copy to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, accompanied by

the following note:--

BOSTON, _May 19, 1869._

DEAR DOCTOR,--... In writing this book, which I now

take the liberty of sending to you, I have been in

... a "critical place." It has been a strange, weird

sort of experience, and I have had not a word to say

to anybody, though often thinking of you and wishing

I could have a little of your help and sympathy in

getting out what I saw. I think of you very much, and

rejoice to see the _hold_ your works get on England

as well as this country, and I would give more for

your opinion than that of most folks. How often I have

pondered your last letter to me, and sent it to many

(friends)! God bless you. Please accept for yourself

and your good wife, this copy.

From yours truly,

H. B. STOWE.

Mrs. Stowe also published in 1870, through Sampson Low & Son, of

London, a volume for English readers, "The History of the Byron

Controversy." These additional volumes, however, do not seem to have

satisfied the public as a whole, and perhaps the expediency of the

publication of Mrs. Stowe's first article is doubtful, even to her most

ardent admirers. The most that can be hoped for, through the mention

of the subject in this biography, is the vindication of Mrs. Stowe's

purity of motive and nobility of intention in bringing this painful

matter into notice.

While she was being on all hands effectively, and evidently in some

quarters with rare satisfaction, roundly abused for the article, and

her consequent responsibility in bringing this unsavory discussion so

prominently before the public mind, she received the following letter

from Dr. O. W. Holmes:--

BOSTON, _September 25, 1869._

MY DEAR MRS. STOWE,--I have been meaning to write to

you for some time, but in the midst of all the wild and

virulent talk about the article in the "Atlantic," I

felt as if there was little to say until the first fury

of the storm had blown over.

I think that we all perceive now that the battle is

not to be fought here, but in England. I have listened

to a good deal of talk, always taking your side in a

quiet way, backed very heartily on one occasion by

one of my most intellectual friends, reading all that

came in my way, and watching the course of opinion.

And first, it was to be expected that the Guiccioli

fanciers would resent any attack on Lord Byron, and

would highly relish the opportunity of abusing one who,

like yourself, had been identified with all those moral

enterprises which elevate the standard of humanity at

large, and of womanhood in particular. After this scum

had worked itself off, there must necessarily follow a

controversy, none the less sharp and bitter, but not

depending essentially on abuse. The first point the

recusants got hold of was the error of the two years

which contrived to run the gauntlet of so many pairs

of eyes. Some of them were made happy by mouthing and

shaking this between their teeth, as a poodle tears

round with a glove. This did not last long. No sensible

person could believe for a moment you were mistaken in

the essential character of a statement every word of

which would fall on the ear of a listening friend like

a drop of melted lead, and burn its scar deep into the

memory. That Lady Byron believed and told you the story

will not be questioned by any but fools and malignants.

Whether her belief was well founded there may be

positive evidence in existence to show affirmatively.

The fact that her statement is not peremptorily

contradicted by those most likely to be acquainted

with the facts of the case, is the one result so far

which is forcing itself into unwilling recognition. I

have seen nothing, in the various hypotheses brought

forward, which did not to me involve a greater

improbability than the presumption of guilt. Take

that, for witness, that Byron accused himself, through

a spirit of perverse vanity, of crimes he had not

committed. How preposterous! He would stain the name of

a sister, whom, on the supposition of his innocence,

he loved with angelic ardor as well as purity, by

associating it with such an infamous accusation.

Suppose there are some anomalies hard to explain in

Lady Byron's conduct. Could a young and guileless

woman, in the hands of such a man, be expected to

act in any given way, or would she not be likely to

waver, to doubt, to hope, to contradict herself, in the

anomalous position in which, without experience, she

found herself?

As to the intrinsic evidence contained in the poems,

I think it confirms rather than contradicts the

hypothesis of guilt. I do not think that Butler's

argument, and all the other attempts at invalidation of

the story, avail much in the face of the acknowledged

fact that it was told to various competent and honest

witnesses, and remains without a satisfactory answer

from those most interested.

I know your firm self-reliance, and your courage to

proclaim the truth when any good end is to be served

by it. It is to be expected that public opinion will

be more or less divided as to the expediency of this

revelation....

Hoping that you have recovered from your indisposition,

I am

Faithfully yours,

O. W. HOLMES.

While undergoing the most unsparing and pitiless criticism and brutal

insult, Mrs. Stowe received the following sympathetic words from Mrs.

Lewes (George Eliot):--

THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, _December 10, 1869._

MY DEAR FRIEND,-- ... In the midst of your trouble I

was often thinking of you, for I feared that you were

undergoing a considerable trial from the harsh and

unfair judgments, partly the fruit of hostility glad

to find an opportunity for venting itself, and partly

of that unthinking cruelty which belongs to hasty

anonymous journalism. For my own part, I should have

preferred that the Byron question should never have

been brought before the public, because I think the

discussion of such subjects is injurious socially. But

with regard to yourself, dear friend, I feel sure that,

in acting on a different basis of impressions, you were

impelled by pure, generous feeling. Do not think that

I would have written to you of this point to express a

judgment. I am anxious only to convey to you a sense

of my sympathy and confidence, such as a kiss and a

pressure of the hand could give if I were near you.

I trust that I shall hear a good account of Professor

Stowe's health, as well as your own, whenever you

have time to write me a word or two. I shall not be

so unreasonable as to expect a long letter, for the

hours of needful rest from writing become more and more

precious as the years go on, but some brief news of

you and yours will be especially welcome just now. Mr.

Lewes unites with me in high regards to your husband

and yourself, but in addition to that I have the sister

woman's privilege of saying that I am always

Your affectionate friend,

M. H. LEWES.

CHAPTER XX.

GEORGE ELIOT.

CORRESPONDENCE WITH GEORGE ELIOT.--GEORGE ELIOT'S FIRST

IMPRESSIONS OF MRS. STOWE.--MRS. STOWE'S LETTER TO MRS.

FOLLEN.--GEORGE ELIOT'S LETTER TO MRS. STOWE.--MRS.

STOWE'S REPLY.--LIFE IN FLORIDA.--ROBERT DALE OWEN AND

MODERN SPIRITUALISM.--GEORGE ELIOT'S LETTER ON THE

PHENOMENA OF SPIRITUALISM.--MRS. STOWE'S DESCRIPTION

OF SCENERY IN FLORIDA.--MRS. STOWE CONCERNING

"MIDDLEMARCH."--GEORGE ELIOT TO MRS. STOWE DURING REV.

H. W. BEECHER'S TRIAL.--MRS. STOWE CONCERNING HER LIFE

EXPERIENCE WITH HER BROTHER, H. W. BEECHER, AND HIS

TRIAL.--MRS. LEWES' LAST LETTER TO MRS. STOWE.--DIVERSE

MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THESE TWO WOMEN.--MRS.

STOWE'S FINAL ESTIMATE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM.

IT is with a feeling of relief that we turn from one of the most

disagreeable experiences of Mrs. Stowe's life to one of the most

delightful, namely, the warm friendship of one of the most eminent

women of this age, George Eliot.

There seems to have been some deep affinity of feeling that drew them

closely together in spite of diversity of intellectual tastes.

George Eliot's attention was first personally attracted to Mrs. Stowe

in 1853, by means of a letter which the latter had written to Mrs.

Follen. Speaking of this incident she (George Eliot) writes: "Mrs.

Follen showed me a delightful letter which she has just had from Mrs.

Stowe, telling all about herself. She begins by saying, 'I am a little

bit of a woman, rather more than forty, as withered and dry as a pinch

of snuff; never very well worth looking at in my best days, and now a

decidedly used-up article.' The whole letter is most fascinating, and

makes one love her."[17]

The correspondence between these two notable women was begun by Mrs.

Stowe, and called forth the following extremely interesting letter from

the distinguished English novelist:--

THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, _May 8, 1869._

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I value very highly the warrant to

call you friend which your letter has given me. It

lay awaiting me on our return the other night from a

nine weeks' absence in Italy, and it made me almost

wish that you could have a momentary vision of the

discouragement,--nay, paralyzing despondency--in which

many days of my writing life have been passed, in order

that you might fully understand the good I find in such

sympathy as yours, in such an assurance as you give me

that my work has been worth doing. But I will not dwell

on any mental sickness of mine. The best joy your words

give me is the sense of that sweet, generous feeling in

you which dictated them. I shall always be the richer

because you have in this way made me know you better. I

must tell you that my first glimpse of you as a woman

came through a letter of yours, and charmed me very

much. The letter was addressed to Mrs. Follen, and

one morning I called on her in London (how many years

ago!); she was kind enough to read it to me, because it

contained a little history of your life, and a sketch

of your domestic circumstances. I remember thinking

that it was very kind of you to write that long letter,

in reply to inquiries of one who was personally unknown

to you; and, looking back with my present experience,

I think it was kinder than it then appeared, for at

that time you must have been much oppressed with the

immediate results of your fame. I remember, too, that

you wrote of your husband as one who was richer in

Hebrew and Greek than in pounds or shillings; and as an

ardent scholar has always been a character of peculiar

interest to me, I have rarely had your image in my mind

without the accompanying image (more or less erroneous)

of such a scholar by your side. I shall welcome the

fruit of his Goethe studies, whenever it comes.

I have good hopes that your fears are groundless as

to the obstacles your new book ("Oldtown Folks") may

find here from its thorough American character. Most

readers who are likely to be really influenced by

writing above the common order will find that special

aspect an added reason for interest and study; and

I dare say you have long seen, as I am beginning to

see with new clearness, that if a book which has any

sort of exquisiteness happens also to be a popular,

widely circulated book, the power over the social mind

for any good is, after all, due to its reception by a

few appreciative natures, and is the slow result of

radiation from that narrow circle. I mean that you can

affect a few souls, and that each of these in turn may

affect a few more, but that no exquisite book tells

properly and directly on a multitude, however largely

it may be spread by type and paper. Witness the things

the multitude will say about it, if one is so unhappy

as to be obliged to hear their sayings. I do not

write this cynically, but in pure sadness and pity.

Both traveling abroad and staying at home among our

English sights and sports, one must continually feel

how slowly the centuries work toward the moral good of

men, and that thought lies very close to what you say

as to your wonder or conjecture concerning my religious

point of view. I believe that religion, too, has to

be modified according to the dominant phases; that

a religion more perfect than any yet prevalent must

express less care of personal consolation, and the more

deeply awing sense of responsibility to man springing

from sympathy with that which of all things is most

certainly known to us,--the difficulty of the human

lot. Letters are necessarily narrow and fragmentary,

and when one writes on wide subjects, are likely to

create more misunderstanding than illumination. But I

have little anxiety in writing to you, dear friend and

fellow-laborer; for you have had longer experience than

I as a writer, and fuller experience as a woman, since

you have borne children and known a mother's history

from the beginning. I trust your quick and long-taught

mind as an interpreter little liable to mistake me.

When you say, "We live in an orange grove, and are

planting many more," and when I think you must have

abundant family love to cheer you, it seems to me

that you must have a paradise about you. But no list

of circumstances will make a paradise. Nevertheless,

I must believe that the joyous, tender humor of your

books clings about your more immediate life, and

makes some of that sunshine for yourself which you

have given to us. I see the advertisement of "Oldtown

Folks," and shall eagerly expect it. That and every

other new link between us will be reverentially valued.

With great devotion and regard,

Yours always,

M. L. LEWES.

Mrs. Stowe writes from Mandarin to George Eliot:--

MANDARIN, _February 8, 1872._

DEAR FRIEND,--It is two years nearly since I had your

last very kind letter, and I have never answered,

because two years of constant and severe work have made

it impossible to give a drop to anything beyond the

needs of the hour. Yet I have always thought of you,

loved you, trusted you all the same, and read every

little scrap from your writing that came to hand.

One thing brings you back to me. I am now in Florida

in my little hut in the orange orchard, with the broad

expanse of the blue St. John's in front, and the

waving of the live-oaks, with their long, gray mosses,

overhead, and the bright gold of oranges looking

through dusky leaves around. It is like Sorrento,--so

like that I can quite dream of being there. And when I

get here I enter another life. The world recedes; I am

out of it; it ceases to influence; its bustle and noise

die away in the far distance; and here is no winter, an

open-air life,--a quaint, rude, wild wilderness sort of

life, both rude and rich; but when I am here I write

more letters to friends than ever I do elsewhere. The

mail comes only twice a week, and then is the event

of the day. My old rabbi and I here set up our tent,

he with German, and Greek, and Hebrew, devouring all

sorts of black-letter books, and I spinning ideal webs

out of bits that he lets fall here and there.

I have long thought that I would write you again when I

got here, and so I do. I have sent North to have them

send me the "Harper's Weekly," in which your new story

is appearing, and have promised myself leisurely to

devour and absorb every word of it.

While I think of it I want to introduce to you a friend

of mine, a most noble man, Mr. Owen, for some years our

ambassador at Naples, now living a literary and scholar

life in America. His father was Robert Dale Owen, the

theorist and communist you may have heard of in England

some years since.

Years ago, in Naples, I visited Mr. Owen for the

first time, and found him directing his attention

to the phenomena of spiritism. He had stumbled upon

some singular instances of it accidentally, and he

had forthwith instituted a series of researches and

experiments on the subject, some of which he showed me.

It was the first time I had ever seriously thought of

the matter, and he invited my sister and myself to see

some of the phenomena as exhibited by a medium friend

of theirs who resided in their family. The result at

the time was sufficiently curious, but I was interested

in his account of the manner in which he proceeded,

keeping records of every experiment with its results,

in classified orders. As the result of his studies

and observations, he has published two books, one

"Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World," published

in 1860, and latterly, "The Debatable Land Between this

World and the Next." I regard Mr. Owen as one of the

few men who are capable of entering into an inquiry of

this kind without an utter drowning of common sense,

and his books are both of them worth a fair reading. To

me they present a great deal that is intensely curious

and interesting, although I do not admit, of course,

all his deductions, and think he often takes too much

for granted. Still, with every abatement there remains

a residuum of fact, which I think both curious and

useful. In a late letter to me he says:--

"There is no writer of the present day whom I more

esteem than Mrs. Lewes, nor any one whose opinion of my

work I should more highly value."

I believe he intends sending them to you, and I hope

you will read them. Lest some of the narratives should

strike you, as such narratives did me once, as being a

perfect Arabian Nights' Entertainment, I want to say

that I have accidentally been in the way of confirming

some of the most remarkable by personal observation....

In regard to all this class of subjects, I am of the

opinion of Goethe, that "it is just as absurd to deny

the facts of spiritualism now as it was in the Middle

Ages to ascribe them to the Devil." I think Mr. Owen

attributes too much value to his facts. I do not think

the things contributed from the ultra-mundane sphere

are particularly valuable, apart from the evidence they

give of continued existence after death.

I do not think there is yet any evidence to warrant

the idea that they are a supplement or continuation of

the revelations of Christianity, but I do regard them

as an interesting and curious study in psychology,

and every careful observer like Mr. Owen ought to be

welcomed to bring in his facts. With this I shall

send you my observations on Mr. Owen's books, from

the "Christian Union." I am perfectly aware of the

frivolity and worthlessness of much of the revealings

purporting to come from spirits. In my view, the worth

or worthlessness of them has nothing to do with the

question of fact.

Do invisible spirits speak in any wise,--wise or

foolish?--is the question _a priori_? I do not know

of any reason why there should not be as many foolish

virgins in the future state as in this. As I am a

believer in the Bible and Christianity, I don't need

these things as confirmations, and they are not likely

to be a religion to me. I regard them simply as I do

the phenomena of the Aurora Borealis, or Darwin's

studies on natural selection, as curious studies into

nature. Besides, I think some day we shall find a law

by which all these facts will fall into their places.

I hope now this subject does not bore you: it certainly

is one that seems increasingly to insist on getting

itself heard. It is going on and on, making converts,

who are many more than dare avow themselves, and for my

part I wish it were all brought into the daylight of

inquiry.

Let me hear from you if ever you feel like it. I know

too well the possibilities and impossibilities of a

nature like yours to ask more, but it can do you no

harm to know that I still think of you and love you as

ever.

Faithfully yours,

H. B. STOWE.

THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, REGENT'S PARK, _March 4, 1872._

DEAR FRIEND,--I can understand very easily that the

two last years have been full for you of other and

more imperative work than the writing of letters not

absolutely demanded either by charity or business. The

proof that you still think of me affectionately is very

welcome now it has come, and more cheering because it

enables me to think of you as enjoying your retreat

in your orange orchard,--your western Sorrento--the

beloved rabbi still beside you. I am sure it must be

a great blessing to you to bathe in that quietude, as

it always is to us when we go out of reach of London

influences and have the large space of country days to

study, walk, and talk in....

When I am more at liberty I will certainly read Mr.

Owen's books, if he is good enough to send them to me.

I desire on all subjects to keep an open mind, but

hitherto the various phenomena, reported or attested

in connection with ideas of spirit intercourse and so

on, have come before me here in the painful form of the

lowest charlatanerie....

But apart from personal contact with people who get

money by public exhibitions as mediums, or with

semi-idiots such as those who make a court for a Mrs.

----, or other feminine personages of that kind, I

would not willingly place any barriers between my mind

and any possible channel of truth affecting the human

lot. The spirit in which you have written in the paper

you kindly sent me is likely to touch others, and

arouse them at least to attention in a case where you

have been deeply impressed....

Yours with sincere affection,

M. L. LEWES.

(Begun April 4th.)

MANDARIN, FLORIDA, _May 11, 1872._

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I was very glad to get your dear

little note,--sorry to see by it that you are not in

your full physical force. Owing to the awkwardness

and misunderstanding of publishers, I am not reading

"Middlemarch," as I expected to be, here in these

orange shades: they don't send it, and I am too far

out of the world to get it. I felt, when I read your

letters, how glad I should be to have you here in our

Florida cottage, in the wholly new, wild, woodland

life. Though resembling Italy in climate, it is wholly

different in the appearance of nature,--the plants, the

birds, the animals, all different. The green tidiness

and culture of England here gives way to a wild and

rugged savageness of beauty. Every tree bursts forth

with flowers; wild vines and creepers execute delirious

gambols, and weave and interweave in interminable

labyrinths. Yet here, in the great sandy plains back

of our house, there is a constant wondering sense

of beauty in the wild, wonderful growths of nature.

First of all, the pines--high as the stone pines of

Italy--with long leaves, eighteen inches long, through

which there is a constant dreamy sound, as if of

dashing waters. Then the live-oaks and the water-oaks,

narrow-leaved evergreens, which grow to enormous size,

and whose branches are draped with long festoons of the

gray moss. There is a great, wild park of these trees

back of us, which, with the dazzling, varnished green

of the new spring leaves and the swaying drapery of

moss, looks like a sort of enchanted grotto. Underneath

grow up hollies and ornamental flowering shrubs, and

the yellow jessamine climbs into and over everything

with fragrant golden bells and buds, so that sometimes

the foliage of a tree is wholly hidden in its embrace.

This wild, wonderful, bright and vivid growth, that

is all new, strange, and unknown by name to me, has a

charm for me. It is the place to forget the outside

world, and live in one's self. And if you were here,

we would go together and gather azaleas, and white

lilies, and silver bells, and blue iris. These flowers

keep me painting in a sort of madness. I have just

finished a picture of white lilies that grow in the

moist land by the watercourses. I am longing to begin

on blue iris. Artist, poet, as you are by nature, you

ought to see all these things, and if you would come

here I would take you in heart and house, and you

should have a little room in our cottage. The history

of the cottage is this: I found a hut built close to

a great live-oak twenty-five feet in girth, and with

overarching boughs eighty feet up in the air, spreading

like a firmament, and all swaying with mossy festoons.

We began to live here, and gradually we improved the

hut by lath, plaster, and paper. Then we threw out

a wide veranda all round, for in these regions the

veranda is the living-room of the house. Ours had to be

built around the trunk of the tree, so that our cottage

has a peculiar and original air, and seems as if it

were half tree, or a something that had grown out of

the tree. We added on parts, and have thrown out gables

and chambers, as a tree throws out new branches, till

our cottage is like nobody else's, and yet we settle

into it with real enjoyment. There are all sorts of

queer little rooms in it, and we are accommodating at

this present a family of seventeen souls. In front,

the beautiful, grand St. John's stretches five miles

from shore to shore, and we watch the steamboats plying

back and forth to the great world we are out of. On

all sides, large orange trees, with their dense shade

and ever-vivid green, shut out the sun so that we can

sit, and walk, and live in the open air. Our winter

here is only cool, bracing out-door weather, without

snow. No month without flowers blooming in the open

air, and lettuce and peas in the garden. The summer

range is about 90°, but the sea-breezes keep the air

delightfully fresh. Generally we go North, however, for

three months of summer. Well, I did not mean to run on

about Florida, but the subject runs away with me, and I

want you to visit us in spirit if not personally.

My poor rabbi!--he sends you some Arabic, which I fear

you cannot read: on diablerie he is up to his ears in

knowledge, having read all things in all tongues, from

the Talmud down....

Ever lovingly yours,

H. B. STOWE.

[Illustration: H B Stowe]

BOSTON, _September 26, 1872._

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I think when you see my name again

so soon, you will think it rains, hails, and snows

notes from this quarter. Just now, however, I am in

this lovely, little nest in Boston, where dear Mrs.

Fields, like a dove, "sits brooding on the charmed

wave." We are both wishing we had you here with us,

and she has not received any answer from you as yet

in reply to the invitation you spoke of in your last

letter to me. It seems as if you must have written,

and the letter somehow gone astray, because I know,

of course, you would write. Yesterday we were both out

of our senses with mingled pity and indignation at

that dreadful stick of a Casaubon,--and think of poor

Dorothea dashing like a warm, sunny wave against so

cold and repulsive a rock! He is a little too dreadful

for anything: there does not seem to be a drop of warm

blood in him, and so, as it is his misfortune and

not his fault, to be cold-blooded, one must not get

angry with him. It is the scene in the garden, after

the interview with the doctor, that rests on our mind

at this present. There was such a man as he over in

Boston, high in literary circles, but I fancy his wife

wasn't like Dorothea, and a vastly proper time they had

of it, treating each other with mutual reverence, like

two Chinese mandarins.

My love, what I miss in this story is just what we

would have if you would come to our tumble-down, jolly,

improper, but joyous country,--namely, "jollitude."

You write and live on so high a plane! It is all

self-abnegation. We want to get you over here, and into

this house, where, with closed doors, we sometimes

make the rafters ring with fun, and say anything and

everything, no matter what, and won't be any properer

than we's a mind to be. I am wishing every day you

could see our America,--travel, as I have been doing,

from one bright, thriving, pretty, flowery town to

another, and see so much wealth, ease, progress,

culture, and all sorts of nice things. This dovecot

where I now am is the sweetest little nest imaginable;

fronting on a city street, with back windows opening on

a sea view, with still, quiet rooms filled with books,

pictures, and all sorts of things, such as you and

Mr. Lewes would enjoy. Don't be afraid of the ocean,

now! I've crossed it six times, and assure you it is

an overrated item. Froude is coming here--why not you?

Besides, we have the fountain of eternal youth here,

that is, in Florida, where I live, and if you should

come you would both of you take a new lease of life,

and what glorious poems, and philosophies, and whatnot,

we should have! My rabbi writes, in the seventh heaven,

an account of your note to him. To think of his

setting-off on his own account when I was away!

Come now, since your answer to dear Mrs. Fields is yet

to come; let it be a glad yes, and we will clasp you to

our heart of hearts.

Your ever loving,

H. B. S.

During the summer of 1874, while Mrs. Stowe's brother, the Rev. Henry

Ward Beecher, was the victim of a most revolting, malicious, and

groundless attack on his purity, Mrs. Lewes wrote the following words

of sympathy:--

MY DEAR FRIEND,--The other day I had a letter from

Mrs. Fields, written to let me know something of you

under that heavy trouble, of which such information as

I have had has been quite untrustworthy, leaving me

in entire incredulity in regard to it except on this

point, that you and yours must be suffering deeply.

Naturally I thought most of you in the matter (its

public aspects being indeterminate), and many times

before our friend's letter came I had said to Mr.

Lewes: "What must Mrs. Stowe be feeling!" I remember

Mrs. Fields once told me of the wonderful courage and

cheerfulness which belonged to you, enabling you to

bear up under exceptional trials, and I imagined you

helping the sufferers with tenderness and counsel, but

yet, nevertheless, I felt that there must be a bruising

weight on your heart. Dear, honored friend, you who are

so ready to give warm fellowship, is it any comfort to

you to be told that those afar off are caring for you

in spirit, and will be happier for all good issues that

may bring you rest?

I cannot, dare not, write more in my ignorance, lest

I should be using unreasonable words. But I trust in

your not despising this scrap of paper which tells you,

perhaps rather for my relief than yours, that I am

always in grateful, sweet remembrance of your goodness

to me and your energetic labors for all.

It was two years or more before Mrs. Stowe replied to these words of

sympathy.

Orange-blossom time, MANDARIN, _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. We have around

us a little settlement of neighbors, who like ourselves

have a winter home here, and live an easy, undress,

picnic kind of life, far from the world and its cares.

Mr. Stowe has been busy on eight volumes of Görres on

the mysticism of the Middle Ages.[18] This Görres was

Professor of Philosophy at Munich, and he reviews the

whole ground of the shadow-land between the natural and

the supernatural,--ecstacy, trance, prophecy, miracles,

spiritualism, the stigmata, etc. He was a devout Roman

Catholic, and the so-called facts that he reasons on

seem to me quite amazing; and yet the possibilities

that lie between inert matter and man's living,

all-powerful, immortal soul may make almost anything

credible. The soul at times can do anything with

matter. I have been busying myself with Sainte-Beuve's

seven volumes on the Port Royal development. I like him

(Sainte-Beuve). His capacity of seeing, doing justice

to all kinds of natures and sentiments, is wonderful. I

am sorry he is no longer our side the veil.

There is a redbird (cardinal grosbeak) singing in

the orange trees fronting my window, so sweetly and

insistently as to almost stop my writing. I hope, dear

friend, you are well--better than when you wrote last.

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. And in

this last book I read, I feel more with you in some

little, fine points,--they stare at me as making an

amusing exhibition. For, my dear, I feel myself at

last as one who has been playing and picnicking on the

shores of life, and waked from a dream late in the

afternoon to find that everybody almost has gone over

to the beyond. And the rest are sorting their things

and packing their trunks, and waiting for the boat to

come and take them.

It seems now but a little time 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. I saw him through

college, and helped him through the difficult love

affair that gave him his wife; and then he and my

husband had a real German, enthusiastic love for each

other, which ended in making me a wife. Ah! in those

days we never dreamed that he, or I, or any of us, were

to be known in the world. All he seemed then was a

boy full of fun, full of love, full of enthusiasm for

protecting abused and righting wronged people, which

made him in those early days write editorials, and wear

arms and swear himself a special policeman to protect

the poor negroes in Cincinnati, where we then lived,

when there were mobs instigated by the slaveholders of

Kentucky.

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, just as the crisis

of the great anti-slavery battle came on, and the

Fugitive Slave Law was passed. I was then in Maine,

and 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 then that 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 Vallambrosa,"

and so came "Uncle Tom," and Plymouth Church became a

stronghold where the slave always found refuge and a

strong helper. One morning my brother found sitting on

his doorstep poor old Paul Edmonson, weeping; his two

daughters, of sixteen and eighteen, had passed into

the slave warehouse of Bruin & Hill, and were to be

sold. My brother took the man by the hand to a public

meeting, told his story for him, and in an hour raised

the two thousand dollars to redeem his children. Over

and over again, afterwards, slaves were redeemed at

Plymouth Church, and Henry and Plymouth Church became

words of hatred and fear through half the Union. From

that time until we talked together about the Fugitive

Slave Law, there was not a pause or stop in the battle

till we had been through the war and slavery had been

wiped out in blood. Through all he has been pouring

himself out, wrestling, burning, laboring everywhere,

making stump speeches when elections turned on the

slave question, and ever maintaining that the cause

of Christ was the cause of the slave. 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, a property of millions

annihilated by emancipation, a proud and powerful slave

aristocracy reduced to beggary, 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-worshippers, adoring Him as the Image of 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 has 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. I remember being at

his house one evening in the time of early flowers, and

in that one evening came a box of flowers from Maine,

another from New Jersey, another from Connecticut,--all

from people with whom he had no personal acquaintance,

who had read something of his and wanted to send him

some token. I said, "One would think you were a _prima

donna_. What does make people go on so about you?"

My brother is hopelessly generous and confiding. His

inability to believe evil is something incredible, and

so has come all this suffering. You said you hoped

I should be at rest when the first investigating

committee and Plymouth Church cleared my brother almost

by acclamation. Not so. The enemy have so committed

themselves that either they or he must die, and there

has followed two years of the most dreadful struggle.

First, a legal trial of six months, the expenses

of which on his side were one hundred and eighteen

thousand dollars, and in which he and his brave wife

sat side by side in the court-room, and heard all that

these plotters, who had been weaving their webs for

three years, could bring. The foreman of the jury was

offered a bribe of ten thousand dollars to decide

against my brother. He sent the letter containing the

proposition to the judge. But with all their plotting,

three fourths of the jury decided against them, and

their case was lost. It was accepted as a triumph

by my brother's friends; a large number of the most

influential clergy of all denominations so expressed

themselves in a public letter, and it was hoped the

thing was so far over that it might be lived down and

overgrown with better things.

But the enemy, intriguing secretly with all those

parties in the community who wish to put down a public

and too successful man, have been struggling to bring

the thing up again for an ecclesiastical trial. The

cry has been raised in various religious papers that

Plymouth Church was in complicity with crime,--that

they were so captivated with eloquence and genius that

they refused to make competent investigation. The six

months' legal investigation was insufficient; a new

trial was needed. Plymouth Church immediately called a

council of ministers and laymen, in number representing

thirty-seven thousand Congregational Christians, to

whom Plymouth Church surrendered her records,--her

conduct,--all the facts of the case, and this great

council unanimously supported the church and ratified

her decision; recognizing the fact that, in all the

investigations hitherto, nothing had been proved

against my brother. They at his request, and that of

Plymouth Church, appointed a committee of five to whom

within sixty days any one should bring any facts that

they could prove, or else forever after hold their

peace. It is thought now by my brother's friends that

this thing must finally reach a close. 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 that 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 spake

no slander, no, nor listened to it.

Never have I known a nature of such strength, and

such almost childlike innocence. He is of a nature

so sweet and perfect that, though I have seen him

thunderously indignant at moments, I never saw him

fretful or irritable,--a man who continuously, in

every little act of life, is thinking of others, a

man that all the children on the street run after,

and that every sorrowful, weak, or distressed person

looks to as a natural helper. In all this long history

there has been no circumstance of his relation to any

woman that has not been worthy of himself,--pure,

delicate, and proper; and I know all sides of it, and

certainly should not say this if there were even a

misgiving. Thank God, there is none, and I can read my

New Testament and feel that by all the beatitudes my

brother is blessed.

His calmness, serenity, and cheerfulness through all

this time has uplifted us all. Where he was, there was

no anxiety, no sorrow. My brother's power to console

is something peculiar and wonderful. I have seen him

at death-beds 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. You cannot conceive how

he is beloved, by those even who never saw him,--old,

paralytic, distressed, neglected people, poor

seamstresses, black people, who have felt these arrows

shot against their benefactor as against themselves,

and most touching have been their letters of sympathy.

From the first, he has met this in the spirit of

Francis de Sales, who met a similar plot,--by silence,

prayer, and work, and when urged to defend himself said

"God would do it in his time." God was the best judge

how much reputation he needed to serve Him with.

In your portrait of Deronda, you speak of him as one

of those rare natures in whom a private wrong bred

no bitterness. "The sense of injury breeds, not the

will to inflict injuries, but a hatred of all injury;"

and I must say, through all this conflict my brother

has been always in the spirit of Him who touched and

healed the ear of Malchus when he himself was attacked.

His friends and lawyers have sometimes been aroused

and sometimes indignant with his habitual caring for

others, and his habit of vindicating and extending

even to his enemies every scrap and shred of justice

that might belong to them. From first to last of this

trial, he has never for a day intermitted his regular

work. Preaching to crowded houses, preaching even in

his short vacations at watering places, carrying on

his missions which have regenerated two once wretched

districts of the city, editing a paper, and in short

giving himself up to work. He cautioned his church not

to become absorbed in him and his trials, to prove

their devotion by more faithful church work and a

wider charity; and never have the Plymouth missions

among the poor been so energetic and effective. He

said recently, "The worst that can befall a man is to

stop thinking of God and begin to think of himself;

if trials make us self-absorbed, they hurt us." Well,

dear, pardon me for this outpour. I loved you--I love

you--and therefore wanted you to know just what I felt.

Now, dear, this is over, don't think you must reply to

it or me. I know how much you have to do,--yes, I know

all about an aching head and an overtaxed brain. This

last work of yours is to be your best, I think, and I

hope it will bring you enough to buy an orange grove in

Sicily, or somewhere else, and so have lovely weather

such as we have.

Your ancient admirer,[19] who usually goes to bed at

eight o'clock, was convicted by me of sitting up after

eleven over the last installment of "Daniel Deronda,"

and he is full of it. We think well of Guendoline, and

that she isn't much more than young ladies in general

so far.

Next year, if I can possibly do it, I will send you

some of our oranges. I perfectly long to have you enjoy

them.

Your very loving H. B. STOWE.

P. S. I am afraid I shall write you again when I

am reading your writings, they are so provokingly

suggestive of things one wants to say.

H. B. S.

In her reply to this letter Mrs. Lewes says, incidentally: "Please

offer my reverential love to the Professor, and tell him I am

ruthlessly proud of having kept him out of his bed. I hope that both

you and he will continue to be interested in my spiritual children."

After Mr. Lewes's death, Mrs. Lewes writes to Mrs. Stowe:--

THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, _April 10, 1879._

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I have been long without sending you

any sign (unless you have received a message from me

through Mrs. Fields), but my heart has been going out

to you and your husband continually as among the chief

of the many kind beings who have given me their tender

fellow-feeling in my last earthly sorrow.... When your

first letter came, with the beautiful gift of your

book,[20] I was unable to read any letters, and did not

for a long time see what you had sent me. But when I

did know, and had read your words of thankfulness at

the great good you have seen wrought by your help, I

felt glad, for your sake first, and then for the sake

of the great nation to which you belong. The hopes

of the world are taking refuge westward, under the

calamitous conditions, moral and physical, in which we

of the elder world are getting involved....

Thank you for telling me that you have the comfort of

seeing your son in a path that satisfies your best

wishes for him. I like to think of your having family

joys. One of the prettiest photographs of a child that

I possess is one of your sending to me....

Please offer my reverential, affectionate regards to

your husband, and believe me, dear friend,

Yours always gratefully,

M. L. LEWES.

As much as has been said with regard to spiritualism in these pages,

the subject has by no means the prominence that it really possessed in

the studies and conversations of both Professor and Mrs. Stowe.

Professor Stowe's very remarkable psychological development, and the

exceptional experiences of his early life, were sources of conversation

of unfailing interest and study to both.

Professor Stowe had made an elaborate and valuable collection of the

literature of the subject, and was, as Mrs. Stowe writes, "over head

and ears in _diablerie_."

It is only just to give Mrs. Stowe's views on this perplexing theme

more at length, and as the mature reflection of many years has caused

them to take form.

In reference to professional mediums, and spirits that peep, rap, and

mutter, she writes:--

"Each friend takes away a portion of ourselves. There was some part

of our being related to him as to no other, and we had things to say

to him which no other would understand or appreciate. A portion of

our thoughts has become useless and burdensome, and again and again,

with involuntary yearning, we turn to the stone at the door of the

sepulchre. We lean against the cold, silent marble, but there is no

answer,--no voice, neither any that regardeth.

"There are those who would have us think that in _our_ day this doom

is reversed; that there are those who have the power to restore to us

the communion of our lost ones. How many a heart, wrung and tortured

with the anguish of this fearful silence, has throbbed with strange,

vague hopes at the suggestion! When we hear sometimes of persons of the

strongest and clearest minds becoming credulous votaries of certain

spiritualist circles, let us not wonder: if we inquire, we shall

almost always find that the belief has followed some stroke of death;

it is only an indication of the desperation of that heart-hunger which

in part it appeases.

"Ah, _were_ it true! Were it indeed so that the wall between the

spiritual and material is growing thin, and a new dispensation

germinating in which communion with the departed blest shall be among

the privileges and possibilities of this our mortal state! Ah, were

it so that when we go forth weeping in the gray dawn, bearing spices

and odors which we long to pour forth for the beloved dead, we should

indeed find the stone rolled away and an angel sitting on it!

"But for us the stone must be rolled away by an _unquestionable_ angel,

whose countenance is as the lightning, who executes no doubtful juggle

by pale moonlight or starlight, but rolls back the stone in fair, open

morning, and sits on it. Then we could bless God for his mighty gift,

and with love, and awe, and reverence take up that blessed fellowship

with another life, and weave it reverently and trustingly into the web

of our daily course.

"But no such angel have we seen,--no such sublime, unquestionable,

glorious manifestation. And when we look at what is offered to us,

ah! who that had a friend in heaven could wish them to return in such

wise as this? The very instinct of a sacred sorrow seems to forbid

that our beautiful, our glorified ones should stoop lower than even to

the medium of their cast-off bodies, to juggle, and rap, and squeak,

and perform mountebank tricks with tables and chairs; to recite over

in weary sameness harmless truisms, which we were wise enough to say

for ourselves; to trifle, and banter, and jest, or to lead us through

endless moonshiny mazes. Sadly and soberly we say that, if this be

communion with the dead, we had rather be without it. We want something

a little in advance of our present life, and not below it. We have read

with some attention weary pages of spiritual communication purporting

to come from Bacon, Swedenborg, and others, and long accounts from

divers spirits of things seen in the spirit land, and we can conceive

of no more appalling prospect than to have them true.

"If the future life is so weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable as we

might infer from these readings, one would have reason to deplore an

immortality from which no suicide could give an outlet. To be condemned

to such eternal prosing would be worse than annihilation.

"Is there, then, no satisfaction for this craving of the soul? There

is One who says: "I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold I am

alive for evermore, and I have the keys of hell and of death;" and this

same being said once before: "He that loveth me shall be loved of my

Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself unto him." This

is a promise direct and personal; not confined to the first apostles,

but stated in the most general way as attainable by any one who loves

and does the will of Jesus. It seems given to us as some comfort for

the unavoidable heart-breaking separations of death that there should

be, in that dread unknown, one all-powerful Friend with whom it is

possible to commune, and from whose spirit there may come a response to

us. Our Elder Brother, the partaker of our nature, is not only in the

spirit land, but is all-powerful there. It is he that shutteth and no

man openeth, and openeth and no man shutteth. He whom we have seen in

the flesh, weeping over the grave of Lazarus, is he who hath the keys

of hell and of death. If we cannot commune with our friends, we can at

least commune with Him to whom they are present, who is intimately with

them as with us. He is the true bond of union between the spirit world

and our souls; and one blest hour of prayer, when we draw near to Him

and feel the breadth, and length, and depth, and heighth of that love

of his that passeth knowledge, is better than all those incoherent,

vain, dreamy glimpses with which longing hearts are cheated.

"They who have disbelieved all spiritual truth, who have been

Sadduceeic doubters of either angel or spirit, may find in modern

spiritualism a great advance. But can one who has ever really had

communion with Christ, who has said with John, "Truly our fellowship is

with the Father and the Son,"--can such an one be satisfied with what

is found in the modern circle?

"For Christians who have strayed into these inclosures, we cannot but

recommend the homely but apt quotation of old John Newton:--

"'What think ye of Christ is the test

To try both your word and your scheme.'

"In all these so-called revelations, have there come any echoes of

the _new song_ which no man save the redeemed from earth could learn;

any unfoldings of that love that passeth knowledge,--anything, in

short, such as spirits might utter to whom was unveiled that which eye

hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath entered the heart of man to

conceive? We must confess that all those spirits that yet have spoken

appear to be living in quite another sphere from John or Paul.

"Let us, then, who long for communion with spirits, seek nearness to

Him who has promised to speak and commune, leaving forever this word to

his church:--

"'I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you.'"

FOOTNOTES:

[17] George Eliot's Life, edited by J. W. Cross, vol. i.

[18] _Die Christliche Mystik._

[19] Professor Stowe.

[20] _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, new edition, with introduction.

CHAPTER XXI.

CLOSING SCENES, 1870-1889.

LITERARY LABORS.--COMPLETE LIST OF PUBLISHED

BOOKS.--FIRST READING TOUR.--PEEPS BEHIND

THE CURTAIN.--SOME NEW ENGLAND CITIES.--A

LETTER FROM MAINE.--PLEASANT AND UNPLEASANT

READINGS.--SECOND TOUR.--A WESTERN JOURNEY.--VISIT

TO OLD SCENES.--CELEBRATION OF SEVENTIETH

BIRTHDAY.--CONGRATULATORY POEMS FROM MR. WHITTIER AND

DR. HOLMES.--LAST WORDS.

BESIDES the annual journeys to and from Florida, and her many interests

in the South, Mrs. Stowe's time between 1870 and 1880 was largely

occupied by literary and kindred labors. In the autumn of 1871 we find

her writing to her daughters as follows regarding her work:--

"I have at last finished all my part in the third book of mine that is

to come out this year, to wit 'Oldtown Fireside Stories,' and you can

have no idea what a perfect luxury of rest it is to be free from all

literary engagements, of all kinds, sorts, or descriptions. I feel like

a poor woman I once read about,--

"'Who always was tired,

'Cause she lived in a house

Where help wasn't hired,'

and of whom it is related that in her dying moments,

"'She folded her hands

With her latest endeavor,

Saying nothing, dear nothing,

Sweet nothing forever.'

"I am in about her state of mind. I luxuriate in laziness. I do not

want to do anything or go anywhere. I only want to sink down into lazy

enjoyment of living."

She was certainly well entitled to a rest, for never had there been a

more laborious literary life. In addition to the twenty-three books

already written, she had prepared for various magazines and journals

an incredible number of short stories, letters of travel, essays,

and other articles. Yet with all she had accomplished, and tired as

she was, she still had seven books to write, besides many more short

stories, before her work should be done. As her literary life did not

really begin until 1852, the bulk of her work has been accomplished

within twenty-six years, as will be seen from the following list of her

books, arranged in the chronological order of their publication:--

1833. An Elementary Geography.

1843. The Mayflower.

1852. Uncle Tom's Cabin.

1853. Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin.

1854. Sunny Memories.

1856. Dred.

1858. Our Charley.

1859. Minister's Wooing.

1862. Pearl of Orr's Island.

1863. Agnes of Sorrento.

1864. House and Home Papers.

1865. Little Foxes.

1866. Nina Gordon (Formerly "Dred").

1867. Religious Poems.

1867. Queer Little People.

1868. The Chimney Corner.

1868. Men of Our Times.

1869. Oldtown Folks.

1870. Lady Byron Vindicated.

1871. The History of the Byron Controversy (London).

1870. Little Pussy Willow.

1871. Pink and White Tyranny.

1871. Old Town Fireside Stories.

1872. My Wife and I.

1873. Palmetto Leaves.

1873. Library of Famous Fiction.

1875. We and Our Neighbors.

1876. Betty's Bright Idea.

1877. Footsteps of the Master.

1878. Bible Heroines.

1878. Poganuc People.

1881. A Dog's Mission.

In 1872 a new and remunerative field of labor was opened to Mrs. Stowe,

and though it entailed a vast amount of weariness and hard work, she

entered it with her customary energy and enthusiasm. It presented

itself in the shape of an offer from the American Literary (Lecture)

Bureau of Boston to deliver a course of forty readings from her own

works in the principal cities of the New England States. The offer was

a liberal one, and Mrs. Stowe accepted it on condition that the reading

tour should be ended in time to allow her to go to her Florida home

in December. This being acceded to, she set forth and gave her first

reading in Bridgeport, Conn., on the evening of September 19, 1872.

The following extracts from letters written to her husband while on

this reading tour throw some interesting gleams of light on the scenes

behind the curtain of the lecturer's platform. From Boston, October

3d, she writes: "Have had a most successful but fatiguing week. Read

in Cambridgeport to-night, and Newburyport to-morrow night." Two weeks

later, upon receipt of a letter from her husband, in which he fears he

has not long to live, she writes from Westfield, Mass:--

"I have never had a greater trial than being forced to stay away from

you now. I would not, but that my engagements have involved others in

heavy expense, and should I fail to fulfill them, it would be doing a

wrong.

"God has given me strength as I needed it, and I never read more to my

own satisfaction than last night.

"Now, my dear husband, please do _want_, and try, to remain with us yet

a while longer, and let us have a little quiet evening together before

either of us crosses the river. My heart cries out for a home with you;

our home together in Florida. Oh, may we see it again! Your ever loving

wife."

From Fitchburg, Mass., under date of October 29th, she writes:--

"In the cars, near Palmer, who should I discover but Mr. and Mrs. J. T.

Fields, returning from a Western trip, as gay as a troubadour. I took

an empty seat next to them, and we had a jolly ride to Boston. I drove

to Mr. Williams's house, where I met the Chelsea agent, who informed

me that there was no hotel in Chelsea, but that they were expecting to

send over for me. So I turned at once toward 148 Charles Street, where

I tumbled in on the Fields before they had got their things off. We had

a good laugh, and I received a hearty welcome. I was quickly installed

in my room, where, after a nice dinner, I curled up for my afternoon

nap. At half-past seven the carriage came for me, and I was informed

that I should not have a hard reading, as they had engaged singers

to take part. So, when I got into the carriage, who should I find,

beshawled, and beflowered, and betoggled in blue satin and white lace,

but our old friend ---- of Andover concert memory, now become Madame

Thingumbob, of European celebrity. She had studied in Italy, come out

in Milan, sung there in opera for a whole winter, and also in Paris and

London.

"Well, she sings very sweetly and looks very nice and pretty. Then we

had a little rosebud of a Chelsea girl who sang, and a pianist. I read

'Minister's Housekeeper' and Topsy, and the audience was very jolly and

appreciative. Then we all jogged home."

The next letter finds Mrs. Stowe in Maine, and writing in the cars

between Bangor and Portland. She says:--

MY DEAR HUSBAND,--Well, Portland and Bangor are over,

and the latter, which I had dreaded as lonesome and

far off, turned out the pleasantest of any place I

have visited yet. I stayed at the Fays; he was one of

the Andover students, you remember; and found a warm,

cosy, social home. In the evening I met an appreciative

audience, and had a delightful reading. I read Captain

Kittridge, apparently to the great satisfaction of the

people, who laughed heartily at his sea stories, and

the "Minister's Housekeeper" with the usual success,

also Eva and Topsy.

One woman, totally deaf, came to me afterwards and

said: "Bless you. I come jist to see you. I'd rather

see you than the Queen." Another introduced her little

girl named Harriet Beecher Stowe, and another, older,

named Eva. She said they had traveled fifty miles to

hear me read. An incident like that appeals to one's

heart, does it not?

The people of Bangor were greatly embarrassed by the

horse disease; but the mayor and his wife walked over

from their house, a long distance off, to bring me

flowers, and at the reading he introduced me. I had

an excellent audience notwithstanding that it rained

tremendously, and everybody had to walk because there

were no horses. The professors called on me, also

Newman Smith, now a settled minister here.

Everybody is so anxious about you, and Mr. Fay made

me promise that you and I should come and spend a

week with them next summer. Mr. Howard, in Portland,

called upon me to inquire for you, and everybody was so

delighted to hear that you were getting better.