slowly on.... I am going to tell the plain, unvarnished truth, as
clearly as I can understand it, and let Christians and Infidels,
Orthodox and Unitarians, Catholics, Protestants, and Swedenborgians
growl as they like. They will growl if they notice it at all: for each
will want his own theory favored, and the only thing I have
conscientiously aimed at is not to favor any theory at all." She may
have failed in scientific method; but here is a scientific spirit. "In
her religious speculations," says Whittier, "Mrs. Child moved in the
very van." In Wayland, she considered herself a parishioner of Dr.
Edmund H. Sears, whom she calls, "our minister," but she was
somewhat in advance of Dr. Sears. Her opinions were much nearer akin
to those of Theodore Parker. Only a Unitarian of that type could
perhaps at this early period have conceived the history of religion as
an evolution of one and the same spiritual element "through successive
ages."
She had not much time to dream over her chest of artistic treasures
when the assault of Preston S. Brooks upon Senator Sumner called her
to battle of such force and point that Dr. William H. Furness said, it
was worth having Sumner's head broken.
When death released her from the care of her father, she took
"Bleeding Kansas" under her charge. She writes letters to the
newspapers; she sits up till eleven o'clock, "stitching as fast as my
fingers could go," making garments for the Kansas immigrants; she
"stirs up the Wayland women to make garments for Kansas"; she sends
off Mr. Child to make speeches for Kansas; and then she writes him in
this manner: "How melancholy I felt when you went off in the morning
darkness. It seemed as if everything about me was tumbling down; as if
I were never to have a nest and a mate any more." Surely the rest of
this letter was not written for us to read: "Good, kind, magnanimous
soul, how I love you. How I long to say over the old prayer again
every night. It almost made me cry to see how carefully you had
arranged everything for my comfort before you went; so much kindling
stuff split up and the bricks piled up to protect my flowers." Here is
love in a cottage. This life is not all prosaic.
Old anti-slavery friends came to see her and among them Charles
Sumner, in 1857, spent a couple of hours with her, and left his
photograph; she met Henry Wilson at the anti-slavery fair and talked
with him an "hour or so." Whittier says, "Men like Charles Sumner,
Henry Wilson, Salmon P. Chase, and Governor Andrew availed themselves
of her foresight and sound judgment of men and measures."
When John Brown was wounded and taken prisoner at Harper's Ferry,
nothing was more in character for Mrs. Child than to offer her
services as his nurse. She wrote him under cover of a letter to Gov.
Wise, of Virginia. The arrival of Mrs. Brown, made Mrs. Child's
attendance unnecessary, but the incident led to a lively
correspondence between Mrs. Child and Gov. Wise, in which Mrs.
Senator Mason, of Virginia, joined. Neither of her distinguished
correspondents possessed the literary skill of Mrs. Child. The entire
correspondence was collected in a pamphlet of which 300,000 copies
were sold. On a visit to Whittier at Amesbury, a delegation from a
Republican political meeting called upon her, saying they wanted to
see the woman who "poured hot shot into Gov. Wise."
In 1863, after saying that she is "childish enough to talk to the
picture of a baby that is being washed," she writes her friend, Mrs.
Shaw, "But you must not suppose that I live for amusement. On the
contrary I work like a beaver the whole time. Just now I am making a
hood for a poor neighbor; last week I was making flannels for the
hospital; odd minutes are filled up ravelling lint; every string that
I can get sight of I pull for poor Sambo. I write to the _Tribune_
about him; I write to the _Transcript_ about him; I write to private
individuals about him; and I write to the President and members of
Congress about him; I write to Western Virginia and Missouri about
him; and I get the articles published too. This shows what progress
the cause of freedom is making." Not everything went to her mind
however. If we think there has been a falling from grace in the public
life of our generation, it may do us good to read what she says in
1863: "This war has furnished many instances of individual nobility,
but our national record is mean."
In 1864, she published "Looking Toward Sunset," a book designed to
"present old people with something wholly cheerful." The entire
edition was exhausted during the holiday season; 4,000 copies were
sold and more called for. All her profits on the book, she devoted to
the freedmen, sending $400 as a first instalment. Not only that, but
she prepared a volume called "The Freedman's Book," which she printed
at an expense of $600, and distributed among the freedmen 1200 copies
at her own cost. She once sent Wendell Phillips a check of $100 for
the freedmen, and when he protested that it was more than she could
afford, she consented to "think it over." The next day, she made her
contribution $200. She contributed $20 a year to the American
Missionary Association toward the support of a teacher for the
freedmen, and $50 a year to the Anti-Slavery Society. A lady wished,
through Mr. Phillips, to give Mrs. Child several thousand dollars for
her comfort. Mrs. Child declined the favor, but was persuaded to
accept it, and then scrupulously gave away the entire income in
charity. It is evident she might have made herself very comfortable,
if it had not given her so much more pleasure to make someone else
comfortable.
Her dress, as neat and clean as that of a Quakeress, was quite as
plain and far from the latest style. A stranger meeting her in a stage
coach mistook her for a servant until she began to talk. "Who is that
woman who dresses like a peasant, and speaks like a scholar?" he asked
on leaving the coach. Naturally, it was thought Mrs. Child did not
know how to dress, or, more likely, did not care for pretty things.
"You accuse me," she writes to Miss Lucy Osgood, "you accuse me of
being indifferent to externals, whereas the common charge is that I
think too much of beauty, and say too much about it. I myself think it
one of my greatest weaknesses. A handsome man, woman or child can
always make a pack-horse of me. My next neighbor's little boy has me
completely under his thumb, merely by virtue of his beautiful eyes and
sweet voice." There was one before her of whom it was said, "He
denied himself, and took up his cross." It was also said of him,
"Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor." He never had a
truer disciple than Mrs. Child.
Not that she ever talked of "crosses." "But why use the word
sacrifice?" she asks. "I never was conscious of any sacrifice." What
she gained in moral discipline or a new life, she says, was always
worth more than the cost. She used an envelope twice, Wendell Phillips
says; she never used a whole sheet of paper when half of one would do;
she outdid poverty in her economies, and then gave money as if she had
thousands. "I seldom have a passing wish for enlarging my income
except for the sake of doing more for others. My wants are very few
and simple."
In 1867, Mrs. Child published "A Romance of the Republic," a pathetic
story, but fascinating, and admirably written; in 1878, appeared a
book of choice selections, entitled, "Aspirations of the World"; and
in 1871, a volume of short biographies, entitled "Good Wives," and
dedicated, to Mr. Child: "To my husband, this book is affectionately
inscribed, by one who, through every vicissitude, has found in his
kindness and worth, her purest happiness and most constant incentive
to duty."
Mr. Child died in 1874 at the age of eighty, and Mrs. Child followed
him in 1880, at the age of seventy-eight. After her death, a small
volume of her letters was published, of which the reader will wish
there were more. Less than a month before her death, she wrote to a
friend a list of benevolent enterprises she has in mind and says, "Oh,
it is such a luxury to be able to give without being afraid. I try not
to be Quixotic, but I want to rain down blessings on all the world, in
token of thankfulness for the blessings that have been rained down
upon me."
It is too late to make amends for omissions in this paper, but it
would be unjust to Mrs. Child to forget her life-long devotion to the
interests of her own sex. In 1832, a year before her "Appeal in behalf
of that class of Americans called Africans,"--eleven years before the
appearance of Margaret Fuller's "Woman in the Nineteenth Century,"
Mrs. Child published "A History of the Condition of Women in all ages
and nations," showing her disposition to begin every inquiry with a
survey of the facts, and also that the "woman question" was the first
to awaken her interest. Her greatest contribution to the advancement
of women was herself; that is, her own achievements. To the same
purpose were her biographies of famous women: "Memoirs of Mme. de
Stael and Mme. Roland" in 1847, and sketches of "Good Wives" in 1871.
Whittier says, she always believed in woman's right to the ballot, as
certainly he did, calling it "the greatest social reform of the age."
In one letter to Senator Sumner, she directly argues the question: "I
reduce the argument," she says, "to very simple elements. I pay taxes
for property of my own earning, and I do not believe in 'taxation
without representation.'" Again: "I am a human being and every human
being has a right to a voice in the laws which claim authority to tax
him, to imprison him, or to _hang_ him."
A light humor illuminates this argument. Humor was one of her saving
qualities which, as Whittier says, "kept her philanthropy free from
any taint of fanaticism." It contributed greatly to her cheerfulness.
Of her fame, she says playfully: "In a literary point of view I know I
have only a local reputation, done in water colors."
Could anything have been better said than this of the New England
April or even May: "What a misnomer in our climate to call this
season Spring, very much like calling Calvinism religion." Nothing
could have been keener than certain points scored in her reply to Mrs.
Senator Mason. Mrs. Mason, remembering with approving conscience her
own ministries in the slave cabins caring for poor mothers with young
babies, asks Mrs. Child, in triumph, if she goes among the poor to
render such services. Mrs. Child replies that she has never known
mothers under such circumstances to be neglected, "and here at the
North," said she, "after we have helped the mothers, we do not sell
the babies." After Gen. Grant's election to the Presidency, a
procession with a band from Boston, marched to her house and gave her
a serenade. She says that she joined in the hurrahs "like the
strong-minded woman that I am. The fact is, I forgot half the time
whether I belonged to the stronger or weaker sex." Whether she
belonged to the stronger or weaker sex, is still something of a
problem. Sensible men would be willing to receive her, should women
ever refuse to acknowledge her.
Wendell Phillips paid her an appreciative tribute, at her funeral.
"There were," he said, "all the charms and graceful elements which we
call feminine, united with a masculine grasp and vigor; sound
judgment and great breadth; large common sense and capacity for
everyday usefulness, endurance, foresight, strength, and skill." The
address is given in full in the volume of "Letters." There is also a
fine poem by Whittier for the same occasion:
"Than thine was never turned a fonder heart
To nature and to art;
Yet loving beauty, thou couldst pass it by,
And for the poor deny
Thyself...."
The volume contains a poetical tribute of an earlier date, by Eliza
Scudder, of which Mrs. Child said, "I never was so touched and pleased
by any tribute in my life. I cried over the verses and I smiled over
them." I will close this paper with Miss Scudder's last stanza:
"So apt to know, so wise to guide,
So tender to redress,--
O, friend with whom such charms abide,
How can I love thee less?"
IV
DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX
[Illustration: DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX]
The career of Dorothy Dix is a romance of philanthropy which the world
can ill afford to forget. It has been said of her, and it is still
said, that she was "the most useful and distinguished woman America
has yet produced." It is the opinion of Mr. Tiffany, her biographer,
that as the founder of institutions of mercy, she "has simply no peer
in the annals of Protestantism." To find her parallel one must go to
the calendar of the Catholic saints,--St. Theresa, of Spain, or Santa
Chiara, of Assisi. "Why then," he asks, do the "majority of the
present generation know little or nothing of so remarkable a story!"
Till his biography appeared, it might have been answered that the
story had never been told; now, we should have to say that, with a
thousand demands upon our time, it has not been read.
Dorothea Lynde Dix--born February 11, 1802--was the daughter of Joseph
Dix and granddaughter of the more eminent Dr. Elijah Dix, of
Worcester, later of Boston, Mass. Dr. Dix was born in Watertown,
Mass., in 1747. At the age of seventeen, he became the office boy of
Dr. John Green, an eminent physician in Worcester, Mass., and later, a
student of medicine. After five years, in 1770, he began to practice
as physician and surgeon in Worcester where he formed a partnership
with Dr. Sylvester Gardner. It must have been a favorable time for
young doctors since in 1771, a year after he began to practice, he
married Dorothy Lynde, of Charlestown, Mass., for whom her little
granddaughter was named. Mrs. Dix seems to have been a woman of great
decision of character, and no less precision of thought and action,
two traits which reappeared conspicuously in our great philanthropist.
Certain qualities of Dr. Dix are also said to have reappeared in his
granddaughter. He was self-reliant, aggressive, uncompromising,
public-spirited, and sturdily honest. To his enterprise, Worcester
owed its first shade trees, planted by him, when shade trees were
considered great folly, and also the Boston and Worcester turnpike,
when mud roads were thought to be divinely appointed thoroughfares.
His integrity is shown by an incident which also throws light upon
the conditions of a troubled period. His partner, Dr. Gardner, made
the grave mistake of taking the royal side in the controversies that
preceded the Revolution, and Worcester became as hot for him as
Richmond or Charleston was for a Union man in 1861. Dr. Gardner
disappeared, leaving his effects behind him. After the war, Dr. Dix
made a voyage to England and honorably settled accounts with his
former partner.
It was like the enterprising Dr. Dix that he turned this creditable
act to his financial advantage. On his return to America he brought
with him a stock of medical books, surgical instruments, and chemical
apparatus, and became a dealer in physician's supplies, while
continuing the practice of his profession. His business prospering, in
1795 he removed to Boston for a larger field, where he opened a drug
store near Faneuil Hall and established chemical works in South
Boston. Successful as physician, druggist and manufacturer, he soon
had money to invest. Maine, with its timber lands, was the Eldorado of
that era, and Dr. Dix bought thousands of acres in its wilderness,
where Dixfield in the west, and Dixmont in the east, townships once
owned by him, preserve his name and memory.
The house of Dr. Dix in Boston, called the "Dix Mansion," was on
Washington St., corner of Dix Place, then Orange Court. It had a large
garden behind it, where originated the Dix pear, once a favorite. Dr.
Dix died in 1809, when Dorothea was seven years old. Young as she was,
he was among the most vivid of her childhood memories and by far the
pleasantest. She seems to have been a favorite with him and it was his
delight to take her in his chaise on his rounds, talking playfully
with her and listening to her childish prattle.
Joseph Dix, the father of Dorothea, is a vague and shadowy memory. He
seems to have had little of his father's energy or good sense.
Unstable in many of his ways, he lived a migratory life, "at various
spots in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, as well as in Worcester
and Boston, Mass." When Dorothea was born, he was living at Hampden,
Maine, adjoining his father's Dixmont properties, presumably as his
father's land agent. He probably tired of this occupation because it
interfered with his business. His business seems to have been
religion. He was a prolific author of religious literature. He was a
philanthropist after his kind, giving his time without stint to the
writing of religious tracts, and spending his money in publishing
them, with little benefit to the world and much detriment to his
family. In the stitching and pasting of these tracts, the whole
household were required to assist and it was against this irksome
taskwork that Dorothea, at the age of twelve, rebelled, running away
from Worcester, where the family then lived, and finding a refuge with
her grandmother in Boston. Dorothea afterwards educated her two
brothers, one of whom became a sea captain and the other a Boston
merchant.
Dorothea Dix was created by her Maker, but she was given in a plastic
state, first into the hands of inexorable Madam Dix, and next into
those of the all-pitying Dr. Channing. Madam Dix is described as a
fine specimen of the dignified, precise, conscientious New England
gentlewoman of her generation. Industry, economy, and above all
thoroughness were the chief articles of her religion, and she
instilled these virtues into the mind of her granddaughter by the most
vigorous discipline. A week of solitary confinement was among the
penalties inflicted upon the hapless child who had failed to reach
the standard of duty prescribed for her. The standard, with Madam Dix,
did not differ from perfection discernibly. Mr. Tiffany quotes a lady
who in her girlhood, as a special reward of merit, was allowed to make
an entire shirt under the supervision of Madam Dix. It was an
experience never forgotten. No stitch in the entire garment could be
allowed to differ perceptibly from every other, but the lady spoke of
the ordeal with enthusiastic gratitude, declaring that it had been a
life-long benefit to her to have been compelled to do one piece of
work thoroughly well.
"I never knew childhood," Miss Dix said pitifully in after life.
Certainly with this exacting grandmother, there can be no childhood as
it is understood to-day; but if Dorothea submits to the rigorous
discipline enforced upon her, she will make a woman of iron fibre who
will flinch from no hardship and will leave no task undone. Happily
she did submit to it. The alternative would have been to return to her
half-vagabond father. Too much discipline or too little was her
destiny. She preferred to take the medicine in excess, and in the end
was grateful for it.
Dorothea was so apt a pupil and so ambitious that, at the age of
fourteen, she returned to Worcester and opened a school for small
children, prudently lengthening the skirts and sleeves of her dress to
give dignity and impressiveness to her appearance. Half a century
later one of these pupils vividly recalled the child-teacher, tall of
her age, easily blushing, at once beautiful and imposing in manner,
but inexorably strict in discipline.
Dorothea spent the next four years in Boston in preparation for a more
ambitious undertaking and, in 1821 at the age of nineteen, she opened
a day school in Boston in a small house belonging to Madam Dix. The
school prospered and gradually expanded into a day and boarding
school, for which the Dix mansion, whither the school was removed,
furnished convenient space. Madam Dix, enfeebled by age and
infirmities, laid down the scepter she had wielded, and the premises
passed virtually into the hands of Dorothea. Thither came pupils from
"the most prominent families in Boston" and other Massachusetts towns,
and even from beyond the limits of the State. There also she brought
her brothers to be educated under her care and started upon a business
career.
Hardly had she started her school for the rich and fortunate before,
anticipating her vocation as a philanthropist, she opened another for
the poor and destitute. A letter is preserved in which she pleadingly
asks the conscientious but perhaps stony Madam Dix for the loft over
the stable for this purpose. "My dear grandmother," she begins, "Had I
the saint-like eloquence of our minister, I would employ it in
explaining all the motives, and dwelling on the good, the good to the
poor, the miserable, the idle, the ignorant, which would follow your
giving me permission to use the barn chamber for a school-room for
charitable and religious purposes."
The minister with saint-like eloquence was Dr. Channing. The letter is
valuable as showing the source of the flame that had fired her
philanthropic soul. For the finer culture of the heart she had passed
from the hands of Madam Dix to those of Dr. Channing. The request for
the room was granted and Mr. Tiffany tells us that "The little
barn-school proved the nucleus out of which years later was developed
the beneficent work of the Warren Street Chapel, from which as a
centre spread far and wide a new ideal of dealing with childhood.
There first was interest excited in the mind of Rev. Charles Barnard,
a man of positive spiritual genius in charming and uplifting the
children of the poor and debased."
Letters from Miss Dix at this period show that she had a sensitive
nature, easily wrought upon, now inflamed to action and now melted to
tears. "You say that I weep easily. I was early taught to sorrow, to
shed tears, and now, when sudden joy lights up or unexpected sorrow
strikes my heart, I find it difficult to repress the full and swelling
tide of feeling." She is reading a book of poems and weeping over
it,--"paying my watery tribute to the genius" of the poet. She longs
for similar talents that she "might revel in the luxury of those
mental visions that must hourly entrance a spirit that partakes less
of earth than heaven." It will be remembered that her father was
religious even to folly. Here was his child, only by judicious
training, the stream was turned into channels of wise beneficence.
With the management of two schools, the supervision of the household,
the care of two younger brothers, and ministries to her grandmother
already advanced in years, Miss Dix was sufficiently occupied, but she
found time to prepare a text-book upon "Common Things," gathering the
material as she wrote. This, her first attempt at book-making, issued
in 1824, was kept in print forty-five years, and went to its sixtieth
edition in 1869. It was followed the next year by "Hymns for Children"
selected and altered, and by a book of devotions entitled, "Evening
Hours." Lengthening the day at both ends, "rising before the sun and
going to bed after midnight," working while others slept, gave time
for these extra tasks. Nature exacted her usual penalties. In the
third year of this arduous labor, threatenings of lung troubles
appeared which, however, she defied even when "in conducting her
classes she had to stand with one hand on a desk for support, and the
other pressed hard to her side as though to repress a hard pain."
Meanwhile she wrote a bosom friend: "There is in our nature a
disposition to indulgence, a secret desire to escape from labor, which
unless hourly combated will overcome the best faculties of our minds
and paralyse our most useful powers.... I have often entertained a
dread lest I should fall a victim to my besieger, and that fear has
saved me thus far."
Besides the terror of lapsing into self-indulgence, she was
stimulated to activity by the care of her brothers, for one of whom
she seems to have felt special anxiety: "Oh, Annie," she writes, "if
that child is good, I care not how humble his pathway in life. It is
for him my soul is filled with bitterness when sickness wastes me; it
is because of him I dread to die." Was there no one to advise her that
the best care of her brother would be to care for herself, and that if
she would do more, she must first do less! Where was Dr. Channing who,
more than any other, was responsible for her intemperate zeal! It
appears that Dr. Channing, "not without solicitude," as he writes her,
was watching over his eager disciple. "Your infirm health," he says,
"seems to darken your prospect of usefulness. But I believe your
constitution will yet be built up, if you will give it a fair chance.
You must learn to give up your plans of usefulness as much as those of
gratification, to the will of God."