self-dependent self-governed being you have known me," she writes to a
friend, "I have learned to look to another for guidance and
happiness." She is "as happy as mortal can be." Indeed it was almost
too much for earth. "It has made me," she says, "more willing to leave
the world and enjoy the happiness of heaven than I ever thought I
should be. Strange that a thing from which of all others, I should
have expected the very opposite effect, should have done this."
The year following the marriage of these saintly lovers,--one can call
them nothing less,--was one of exceeding happiness and of immense
activity to both. It is not said, but we can see that each must have
been a tonic to the other. Considerate persons felt a scruple about
taking any of the time of their pastor's wife. "Mrs. Ware," said one,
"at home and abroad, is the busiest woman of my acquaintance," and
others felt that way. Before the year ended, Mrs. Ware had a boy baby
of her own to increase her occupations and her happiness. It lived a
few bright years, long enough to become a very attractive child and to
give a severe wrench to her heart when it left her. This experience
seems to have a certain fitness in a life in which every joy was to
bring sorrow and every sorrow, by sheer will, was to be turned to joy.
Of Mr. Ware, it is said that this first year "was one of the most
active and also, to all human appearance, one of the most successful
of his ministry." He put more work into his sermons, gave increased
attention to the details of his parish, delivered a course of
lectures, and undertook other enterprises, some of which are
specified; and, during a temporary absence of Mrs. Ware, wrote her
that he had hoped he had turned over a new leaf, "but by foolish
degrees, I have got back to all my accustomed carelessness and waste
of powers, and am doing nothing in proportion to what I ought to do."
But man is mortal, and there is a limit to human endurance. Mr. Ware
could not lash himself into greater activity; but he was in good
condition to be ill. In a journey from Northampton, he was prostrated
by inflammation of the lungs, with hemorrhages, and after several
weeks, Mrs. Ware, herself far from well, went to him and finally
brought him home. This was the beginning of what became a very regular
annual experience. I met a lady who was brought up on the Memoirs of
Mary L. Ware, and who briefly put what had impressed her most, in this
way: She said, "It seemed as though Mr. Ware was always going off on a
journey for his health, and that Mrs. Ware was always going after him
to bring him home"; if we remember this statement, and add the fact
that these calls came more than once when Mrs. Ware was on the sick
list herself, we shall be able greatly to shorten our history.
This was the end of Mr. Ware's parish work. He was nursed through the
winter and, in early spring, Mrs. Ware left her baby and took her
invalid husband abroad, in pursuit of health, spending a year and a
half in England, Holland, Switzerland, and Italy. It was, she
afterward said, the most trying period of her life. Mr. Ware
alternated between being fairly comfortable and very miserable, so
that these Memoirs say "He enjoyed much, but suffered more." Still the
travels would be interesting if we had time to follow them.
Near the close of the first year abroad, Mrs. Ware's second child was
born in Rome, and, although this was as she would have said,
"providential," never was a child less needed in a family. Mrs. Ware
had then two babies on her hands, and of these, her invalid husband
was the greater care. In the following August, Mrs. Ware arrived in
Boston with her double charge, and had the happiness to know that Mr.
Ware was somewhat better in health than when he left home, a year and
a half before.
His parish, during his absence, had been in the care of a colleague,
no other than the Rev. Ralph Waldo Emerson. If you remember the New
Year's Eve sermon of Mr. Ware, it will be evident that he must have
left behind him a very conservative parish, and you will not be
surprised that in about four years, Mr. Emerson found his chains
intolerable.
Mr. Ware had been invited to a professorship in the Harvard Divinity
School, and it was to this and not to his parish that he returned. For
the steady, one might say monotonous, duties of his professorship, Mr.
Ware's health was generally sufficient. The lecture room did not exact
the several hundred parish calls then demanded by a large city church,
nor the exhausting effort which Mr. Ware and Dr. Channing put into the
delivery of a sermon; and the lectures, once prepared, could be
delivered and re-delivered from year to year. Real leisure was
impossible to one of Mr. Ware's temperament, but here was a life of
comparative leisure; and for Mrs. Ware, who shared all the joys and
sorrows of her husband, the twelve years that follow brought a settled
existence and very much happiness. Neither her own health nor that of
her husband was ever very firm, and there was always a great emptiness
in the family purse, but with Mrs. Ware, these were, as with Paul,
"light afflictions" which were but for a moment, and she did not let
them disturb her happiness.
Impossible as it may seem, they contributed to her happiness. She made
them contribute to it. She says in a letter of 1831, "Of my winter's
sickness I cannot write; it contained a long life of enjoyment, and
what I hoped would be profitable thought and reflection." She repeats
this statement to another correspondent, and says, with apparent
regret, that the illness did not bring her "to that cheerful
willingness to resign my life, after which I strove." You cannot send
this woman any trial which she will not welcome, because she wants to
be made to want to go to heaven, and she is as yet not quite ready for
it.
Mr. Ware has been dangerously ill, and of course she could not spare
herself for heaven until he recovered, but this trial did something
quite as good for her: "My husband's danger renewed the so oft
repeated testimony that strength is ever at hand for those who need
it, gave me another exercise of trust in that mighty arm which can
save to the uttermost, and in its result is a new cause for gratitude
to Him who has so abundantly blessed me all the days of my life." It
is good to see what the old-fashioned doctrine that God really is,
and is good, did for one who actually believed.
That first baby, whom she left behind when she went abroad with her
invalid husband, died in 1831; the mother fainted when the last breath
left the little body; but this is the way she writes of it: "I have
always looked upon the death of children rather as a subject of joy
than sorrow, and have been perplexed at seeing so many, who would bear
what seemed to me much harder trials with firmness, so completely
overwhelmed by this, as is frequently the case."
After that, one is almost ashamed to mention the trifle that the
income of this family was very small. Mr. Ware, after 1834 _Dr._ Ware,
held a new professorship, the endowment of which was yet mostly
imaginary. The social demands took no account of the family income;
the unexpected guest always dropping in; at certain times, it is said,
"shoals of visitors;" and the larder always a little scantily
furnished. If one wants to know how one ought to live under such
circumstances, here is your shining example. "There were no apologies
at that table," we are told. "If unexpected guests were not always
filled, they were never annoyed, nor suffered to think much about it."
"I remember," says a guest, "the wonder I felt at her humility and
dignity in welcoming to her table on some occasion a troop of
accidental guests, when she had almost nothing to offer but her
hospitality. The absence of all apologies and of all mortification,
the ease and cheerfulness of the conversation, which became the only
feast, gave me a lesson never forgotten, although never learned."
The problem of dress was as simple to Mrs. Ware as was the
entertainment of her guests. "As to her attire," says an intimate
friend, "we should say no one thought of it at all, because of its
simplicity, and because of her ease of manners and dignity of
character. Yet the impression is qualified, though in one view
confirmed, by hearing that, in a new place of residence, so plain was
her appearance on all occasions, the villagers suspected her of
reserving her fine clothes for some better class." There are those who
might consider these circumstances, very sore privations. What Mrs.
Ware says of them is, "I have not a word of complaint to make. We are
far better provided for than is necessary to our happiness." I am
persuaded that this is an immensely wholesome example and that more of
this kind of woman is needed to mother the children of our generation.
In a letter to one of her daughters, she says she has great sympathy
with the struggles of young people, that she had struggles too and
learned her lessons young, that she found very early in life that her
own position was not in the least affected by these externals, "I soon
began to look upon my oft-turned dress with something like pride,
certainly with great complacency; and to see in that and all other
marks of my mother's prudence and consistency, only so many proofs of
her dignity and self-respect,--the dignity and self-respect which grew
out of her just estimate of the true and the right in herself and in
the world."
We have seen enough of this woman to discover that she could not be
made unhappy, and also to discover why. It was because her nature was
so large and strong and fine. Sometimes she thinks Dr. Ware would be
better and happier in a parish, "But I have no care about the future
other than that which one must have,--a desire to fulfil the duties
which it may bring." Surely that is being,
"Self-poised and independent still
On this world's varying good or ill."
In 1842, Dr. Ware's health became so much impaired that Mrs. Ware
entertains an unfulfilled desire. It is to get away from Cambridge,
which had become so dear to them all. "I scruple not to say that a
ten-foot house, and bread and water diet, with a sense of rest to
_him_, would be a luxury." The family removed to Framingham, where Dr.
Ware died, a year later. Whatever tribulations might be in store for
Mrs. Ware, anxiety on his account was not to be one of them.
Death came on Friday; on Sunday, Mrs. Ware attended church with all
her family, and the occasion must have been more trying for the
minister who preached to her than for herself. A short service was
held that Sunday evening at six, and "Then," she says, "John and I
brought dear father's body to Cambridge in our own carriage; we could
not feel willing to let strangers do anything in connection with him
which we could do ourselves." Think of that dark, silent lonely ride
from Framingham to Cambridge! But here was a woman who did not spare
herself, and did not ask what somebody would think of her doings.
After this event, the Memoirs tell us that a gentleman in Milton gave
her a very earnest invitation to go there and take the instruction of
three little children in connection with her own. In this occupation
she spent six years of great outward comfort and usefulness. There is
much in these years, or in the letters of these years, of great
interest and moral beauty. Even with young children to leave, she
speaks of death as serenely as she would of going to Boston. "I do not
feel that I am essential to my children. I do not feel that I am
competent to train them."
Of her last illness, one of her children wrote, "Never did a sick room
have less of the odor of sickness than that. It was the brightest spot
on earth." "Come with a _smile_," she said to a friend whom she had
summoned for a last farewell, and so went this remarkable and
exceptionally noble woman.
III
LYDIA MARIA CHILD
[Illustration: LYDIA MARIA CHILD]
In the second quarter of the nineteenth century, few names in American
literature were more conspicuous than that of Lydia Maria Child, and
among those few, if we except that of Miss Sedgwick, there was
certainly no woman's name. Speaking with that studied reserve which
became its dignity, the _North American Review_ said of her: "We are
not sure that any woman of our country could outrank Mrs. Child. This
lady has been before the public as an author with much success. And
she well deserves it, for in all her works, nothing can be found which
does not commend itself by its tone of healthy morality and good
sense. Few female writers if any have done more or better things for
our literature in the lighter or graver departments."
Mrs. Child began her literary career in 1824 with "Hobomok, a Tale of
Early Times," and she closed it with a volume of biography, entitled
"Good Wives," in 1871. Between these two dates, covering forty-seven
years, her publications extended to more than thirty titles, and
include stories, poems, biographies, studies in history, in household
economics, in politics, and in religion. "Her books," says Col.
Higginson, "never seemed to repeat each other and belonged to almost
as many different departments as there are volumes"; and while writing
so much, he adds, "she wrote better than most of her contemporaries."
If she had not done many things so well, she would still have the
distinction of having done several things the first time they were
ever done at all. It has been claimed that she edited the first
American magazine for children, wrote the first novel of puritan
times, published the first American Anti-Slavery book, and compiled
the first treatise upon what is now known as "Comparative Religions,"
a science not then named, but now a department in every school of
theology.
Mrs. Child's maiden name was Francis, and under that name she won her
first fame. She was born in Medford, Mass., Feb. 11, 1802. Her father,
Convers Francis, is said to have been a worthy and substantial
citizen, a baker by trade, and the author of the "Medford Crackers,"
in their day second only in popularity to "Medford Rum." He was a man
of strong character, great industry, uncommon love of reading,
zealous anti-slavery convictions, generous and hospitable. All these
traits were repeated in his famous daughter. It was the custom of Mr.
Francis, on the evening before Thanksgiving to gather in his
dependents and humble friends to the number of twenty or thirty, and
feast them on chicken pie, doughnuts and other edibles, sending them
home with provisions for a further festival, including "turnovers" for
the children. Col. Higginson, who had the incident from Mrs. Child,
intimates that in this experience she may have discovered how much
more blessed it is to give than to receive. Certainly, in later life,
she believed and practiced this doctrine like a devotee.
Mrs. Child began to climb the hill of knowledge under the instruction
of a maiden lady known as "Ma'am Betty," who kept school in her
bedroom which was never in order, drank from the nose of her
tea-kettle, chewed tobacco and much of it, and was shy to a degree
said to have been "supernatural," but she knew the way to the hearts
of children, who were very fond of her and regularly carried her a
Sunday dinner. After "Ma'am Betty," Mrs. Child attended the public
schools in Medford and had a year at a Medford private seminary.
These opportunities for education were cut off at the age of twelve
apparently by some change in the family fortunes which compelled the
removal of Maria to Norridgewock, Maine, on the borders of the great
northern wilderness, where a married sister was living. An influence
to which she gave chief credit for her intellectual development and
which was not wholly cut off by this removal was that of Convers
Francis, her favorite brother, next older than herself, afterward
minister in Watertown, and professor in the Divinity School of Harvard
University. In later life, Dr. Francis was an encyclopedia of
information and scholarship, very liberal in his views for the time.
Theodore Parker used to head pages in his journal with, "Questions to
ask Dr. Francis."
Dr. Francis began to prepare for college when Mrs. Child was nine
years old. Naturally the little girl wanted to read the books which
her brother read, and sometimes he seems to have instructed her and
sometimes he tantalized her, but always he stimulated her. Years
afterward she wrote him gratefully, "To your early influence, by
conversation, letters, and example I owe it that my busy energies
took a literary direction at all."
Norridgewock, her home from her twelfth to her eighteenth year, was
and is a very pretty country village, at that era the residence of
some very cultivated families, but hardly an educational center. As we
hear nothing of schools either there or elsewhere we are led to
suppose that this twelve year old girl had finished her education. If
she lacked opportunities for culture, she carried with her a desire
for it, which is half the battle, and she had the intellectual
stimulus of letters from her brother then in college, who seems to
have presided over her reading. What we know of her life at this
period is told in her letters to this brother.
The first of these letters which the editors let us see was written at
the age of fifteen. "I have," she says, "been busily engaged reading
Paradise Lost. Homer hurried me along with rapid impetuosity; every
passion that he portrayed I felt; I loved, hated, and resented just as
he inspired me. But when I read Milton I felt elevated 'above this
visible, diurnal sphere.' I could not but admire such astonishing
grandeur of description, such heavenly sublimity of style. Much as I
admire Milton, I must confess that Homer is a much greater favorite."
It is not strange that a studious brother in college would take
interest in a sister who at the age of fifteen could write him with so
much intelligence and enthusiasm of her reading. The next letter is
two years later when she has been reading Scott. She likes Meg
Merrilies, Diana Vernon, Annot Lyle, and Helen Mac Gregor. She hopes
she may yet read Virgil in his own tongue, and adds, "I usually spend
an hour after I retire for the night in reading Gibbon's Roman Empire.
The pomp of his style at first displeased me, but I think him an able
historian."
This is from a girl of seventeen living on the edge of the northern
wilderness, and she is also reading Shakspere. "What a vigorous grasp
of intellect," she says, "what a glow of imagination he must have
possessed, but when his fancy drops a little, how apt he is to make
low attempts at wit, and introduce a forced play upon words." She is
also reading the Spectator, and does not think Addison so good a
writer as Johnson, though a more polished one.
What she was doing with her ever busy hands during this period we are
not told, but her intellectual life ran on in these channels until
she reaches the age of eighteen, when she is engaged to teach a school
in Gardiner, Maine, an event which makes her very happy. "I cannot
talk about books," she writes, "nor anything else until I tell you the
good news, that I leave Norridgewock as soon as the travelling is
tolerable and take a school in Gardiner." It is the terrible month of
March, for country roads in the far north, "the saddest of the year."
She wishes her brother were as happy as she is, though, "All I expect
is that, if I am industrious and prudent, I shall be independent."
At the conclusion of her school, she took up her residence with her
brother in Watertown, Mass., where one year before, he had been
settled as minister of the first parish. Here a new career opened
before her. Whittier says that in her Norridgewock period, when she
first read Waverly at the house of her physician, she laid down the
book in great excitement, exclaiming, "Why cannot I write a novel?"
Apparently, she did not undertake the enterprise for two years or
more. In 1824, one Sunday after morning service, in her brother's
study, she read an article in the _North American Review_, in which it
was pointed out that there were great possibilities of romance in
early American history. Before the afternoon service, she had written
the first chapter of a novel which was published anonymously the same
year, under the title of "Hobomok: a Tale of Early Times."
A search through half a dozen Antique Book stores in Boston for a copy
of this timid literary venture I have found to be fruitless, except
for the information that there is sometimes a stray copy in stock, and
that its present value is about three dollars. It is sufficient
distinction that it was the first attempt to extract a romantic
element from early New England history. Its reception by the public
was flattering to a young author. The Boston Athenaeum sent her a
ticket granting the privileges of its library. So great and perhaps
unexpected had been its success that for several years, Mrs. Child's
books bore the signature, "By the author of Hobomok." Even "The Frugal
Housewife" was "By the author of Hobomok."
In 1825, the author of Hobomok published her second novel, entitled,
"The Rebels: a Tale of the Revolution." It is a volume of about 300
pages, and is still very readable. It ran rapidly through several
editions, and very much increased the reputation of the author of
Hobomok. The work contains an imaginary speech of James Otis, in
which it is said, "England might as well dam up the Nile with
bulrushes as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in
this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of
Scotland or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of
Switzerland." This supposed speech of Otis soon found its way into the
School Readers of the day, as a genuine utterance of the Revolutionary
patriot, and as such Col. Higginson says he memorized and declaimed
it, in his youth.
This literary success was achieved at the age of twenty-three, and the
same year Miss Francis opened a private school in Watertown, which she
continued three years, until her marriage gave her other occupations.
In 1826, she started _The Juvenile Miscellany_, as already mentioned,
said to be the first magazine expressly for children, in this country.
In it, first appeared many of her charming stories afterward gathered
up in little volumes entitled, "Flowers for Children."
In 1828, she was married to Mr. David Lee Child, then 34 years of age,
eight years older than herself. Whittier describes him, as a young and
able lawyer, a member of the Massachusetts legislature, and editor of
the _Massachusetts Journal_. Mr. Child graduated at Harvard in 1817
in the class with George Bancroft, Caleb Cushing, George B. Emerson,
and Samuel J. May. Between 1818 and 1824, he was in our diplomatic
service abroad under Hon. Alexander Everett, at that time, Charge
d'Affaires in the Netherlands. On his return to America, Mr. Child
studied law in Watertown where, at the house of a mutual friend, he
met Miss Lydia Maria Francis. She herself reports this interesting
event under date of Dec. 2, 1824. "Mr. Child dined with us in
Watertown. He possesses the rich fund of an intelligent traveller,
without the slightest tinge of a traveller's vanity. Spoke of the
tardy improvement of the useful arts in Spain and Italy." Nearly two
months pass, when we have this record: "Jan. 26, 1825. Saw Mr. Child
at Mr. Curtis's. He is the most gallant man that has lived since the
sixteenth century and needs nothing but helmet, shield, and
chain-armor to make him a complete knight of chivalry." Not all the
meetings are recorded, for, some weeks later, "March 3," we have this
entry, "One among the many delightful evenings spent with Mr. Child. I
do not know which to admire most, the vigor of his understanding or
the ready sparkle of his wit."