volumes of the magazine, being then succeeded by Mr. Emerson, and she
wrote for it a paper entitled "Man vs. Men: Woman vs. Women,"
afterward expanded and published in a volume under the title, "Woman
in the Nineteenth Century," her second and most famous book. Her first
book, "Summer on the Lakes," is an account of a charming journey, with
the family of James Freeman Clarke and others, by steamboat and farm
wagon, as far as the Mississippi. It was a voyage of discovery, and
her account has permanent historic interest.
In 1844, Margaret accepted an advantageous offer to become literary
editor of the _New York Tribune_, a position which she was admirably
qualified to fill. A collection of papers from _The Tribune_, under
the title of "Literature and Art," made up her third book, published
in 1846, on the eve of her departure for Europe.
During her residence in New York, she became greatly interested in
philanthropies, especially in the care of prisoners of her own sex.
She visited the jails and prisons, interviewed the inmates, gave them
"conversations," and wrought upon them the same miracle which she had
so often performed in refined drawing-rooms. "If she had been born to
large fortune," said Mr. Greeley, "a house of refuge for all female
outcasts desiring to return to the ways of virtue would have been one
of her most cherished and first realized conceptions."
Early in her New York residence must also have occurred that rather
mysterious love affair with the young Hebrew, Mr. Nathan, who seems
first to have charmed her with his music and then with his heart.
After nearly sixty years, the letters which she wrote him, full of
consuming fire, have at last seen the light. From a passage in one of
them, it would seem that marriage was not contemplated by either
party, that in theory at least they took no thought of the morrow, the
bliss of the moment being held sufficient. Evidently there was no
engagement, but no one can doubt that on her part there was love. Of
course in this changing world, no such relations can be maintained for
ever, and in the end there will be an awakening, and then pain.
In 1846, Margaret realized her life-dream and went to Europe. Destined
to a life of adventure, she was accidently separated from her party,
and spent a perilous night on Ben Lomond, without a particle of
shelter, in a drenching rain, a thrilling account of which she has
written. She visited Carlyle and, for a wonder, he let her take a
share in the conversation. To Mr. Emerson he wrote, Margaret "is very
narrow sometimes, but she is truly high."
On her way to Italy, the goal of her ambition, she visited George Sand
and they had such a meeting as two women of genius might. She sailed
from Genoa for Naples in February, 1847, and arrived in Rome in May
following. There is much to interest a reader in her Italian life, but
the one thing which cannot be omitted is the story of her marriage to
the Marquis Ossoli. Soon after her arrival in Rome, on a visit to St.
Peter's, Margaret became separated from her friends, whom she did not
again discover at the place appointed for meeting. A gentleman seeing
her distress, offered to get her a carriage and, not finding one,
walked home with her. This was the young Marquis Ossoli, and thus
fortuitously the acquaintance began, which was continued by occasional
meetings. The summer Margaret spent in the north of Italy, and when
she returned to Rome, she took modest apartments in which she received
her friends every Monday evening, and the Marquis came very regularly.
It was not long however before he confessed his love for her and asked
her hand in marriage. He was gently rejected, being told that he ought
to marry a younger woman, and that she would be his friend but not
his wife. He however persisted, at length won her consent, and they
were privately married in December. I follow the account of Mrs.
William Story, wife of the artist, then residing in Rome. The old
Marquis Ossoli had recently died, leaving an unsettled estate, of
which his two older sons, both in the Papal service, were the
executors. "Every one knows," says Mrs. Story, "that law is subject to
ecclesiastical influence in Rome, and that marriage with a Protestant
would be destructive of all prospect of favorable administration."
The birth of a child a year later, at Rieti in the Appenines, whither
Margaret had retired, made secrecy seem more imperative; or, as
Margaret said, in order to defend the child "from the stings of
poverty, they were patient waiters for the restored law of the land."
The Italian Revolution of 1848 was then in progress. Ossoli her
husband, was a captain in the Civic Guard, on duty in Rome, and the
letters which she wrote him at this period of trial, were the only
fragments of her treasures recovered from the wreck in which she
perished.
Leaving her babe with his nurse, in April following, she visited Rome
and was shut up in the siege by the French army which had been sent
to overthrow the provisional government and restore the authority of
the pope. "Ossoli took station with his men on the walls of the
Vatican garden where he remained faithfully to the end of the attack.
Margaret had entire charge of one of the hospitals.... I have walked
through the wards with her," says Mrs. Story, "and seen how comforting
was her presence to the poor suffering men. 'How long will the Signora
stay?' 'When will the Signora come again?' they eagerly asked.... They
raised themselves up on their elbows to get the last glimpse of her as
she was going away."
In the midst of these dangers, Margaret confided to Mrs. Story the
secret of her marriage and placed in her hands the marriage
certificate and other documents relating to the affair. These papers
were afterward returned to Margaret and were lost in the wreck.
The failure of the Revolution was the financial ruin of all those who
had staked their fortunes in it. They had much reason to be thankful
if they escaped with their lives. By the intervention of friends, the
Ossolis were dealt with very leniently. Mr. Greenough, the artist,
interested himself in their behalf and procured for them permission to
retire, outside the papal territory, to Florence. Ossoli even
obtained a small part of his patrimony.
Except the disappointment and sorrow over the faded dream of Italian
Independence, the winter at Florence was one of the bright spots in
Margaret's life. She was proud of her husband's part in the
Revolution: "I rejoice," she says, "in all Ossoli did." She had her
babe with her and her happiness in husband and child was perfect: "My
love for Ossoli is most pure and tender, nor has any one, except my
mother or little children, loved me so genuinely as he does.... Ossoli
seems to me more lovely and good every day; our darling child is well
now, and every day more gay and playful."
She found pleasant and congenial society: "I see the Brownings often,"
she says, "and love them both more and more as I know them better. Mr.
Browning enriches every hour I spend with him, and is a most cordial,
true, and noble man. One of my most prized Italian friends,
Marchioness Arconati Visconti, of Milan, is passing the winter here,
and I see her almost every day." Moreover she was busy with a
congenial task. At the very opening of the struggle for liberty, she
planned to write a history of the eventful period, and with this
purpose, collected material for the undertaking, and already had a
large part of the work in manuscript. She finished the writing in
Florence, and much value was set upon it both by herself and by her
friends in Italy. Mrs. Story says, "in the estimation of most of those
who were in Italy at the time, the loss of Margaret's history and
notes is a great and irreparable one. No one could have possessed so
many avenues of direct information from both sides."
When the spring opened, it was decided to return to America, partly to
negotiate directly with the publisher, but chiefly because, having
exhausted her resources, Margaret's pen must henceforth be the main
reliance of the little family. It is pathetic to know that, after
their passage had been engaged, "letters came which, had they reached
her a week earlier, would probably have induced them to remain in
Italy."
They sailed, May 17, 1850, in a merchant vessel, the only other
passengers being the baby's nurse and Mr. Horace Sumner, a younger
brother of Senator Sumner. After a protracted and troubled voyage of
two months, the vessel arrived off the coast of New Jersey, on July
18. The "weather was thick.... By nine p. m. there was a gale, by
midnight a hurricane," and at four o'clock on the morning of July 19,
the vessel grounded on the shallow sands of Fire Island. The captain
had died of smallpox on the voyage; his widow, the mate in command of
the vessel, and four seamen reached the shore; Mr. Sumner and the
Ossolis perished. The cruel part of the tragedy is that it seems
probable every soul on board might have been saved. Life-boats, only
three miles away, did not arrive until noon; that is, after eight
precious hours had passed. Moreover, in a moment of penitence, one of
the life-boat crew said, "Oh, if we had known that any such persons of
importance were on board, we should have done our best."
Margaret, the name by which she will always be known, had passed her
fortieth birthday at sea on this voyage. It seems a short life in
which to have crowded so much and such varied experience. She had some
trials even in her youth, but for two-thirds of her existence, she
might have been considered a favorite of fortune. In later life, she
had some battles to fight, but her triumphs were great enough to
dazzle a person with more modesty than was her endowment. She suffered
in Italy, both for her child left to strangers in the mountains, and
for her adopted country, but they were both causes, in which for her,
suffering was a joy. She did not desire to survive her husband and
child, nor to leave them behind, and, we may say, happily they all
went together. "Her life seems to me," says Col. Higginson, "on the
whole, a triumphant rather than a sad one," and that is a reasonable
verdict, however difficult to render in the presence of such a tragedy
as her untimely death.
VI
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
[Illustration: HARRIET BEECHER STOWE]
"Is this the little woman who made this great war!" exclaimed
President Lincoln when, in 1862, Mrs. Stowe was introduced to him.
There was but one woman in America to whom this could have been said
without absurdity. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was so conspicuous a factor in
bringing on the war which abolished American slavery that to credit
these results to Mrs. Stowe was not fulsome flattery but graceful
compliment.
There are two excellent biographies of Mrs. Stowe, one published in
1889, by her son, Rev. Charles E. Stowe, and one, in 1897, by Mrs.
Annie Fields. That work will hardly need to be done again. The object
of this sketch is to study the influences that moulded Mrs. Stowe, to
present the salient features of her career, and, incidentally, to
discover her characteristic qualities. Her fame rests upon her
literary achievements, and these are comparatively well known. Her
literary career can hardly be said to have begun until the age of
forty and, if this were the only interest her life had for us, we
could pass hastily over her youth. It will be found however that her
religious development, begun prematurely with her fourth year and
continued without consideration or discretion until at seventeen she
became a chronic invalid, gives a kind of tragic interest to her
earlier years. Her religious education may not have been unique; it
may have been characteristic of much of the religious life of New
England, but girls set at work upon the problems of their souls at the
age of four have seldom attained the distinction of having their
biographies written, so that one can study their history.
Harriet, the second daughter and seventh child of Lyman Beecher and
Roxanna Foote, was born in Litchfield, Conn., June 14, 1811. There
were three Mrs. Lyman Beechers of whom Roxanna Foote was the first.
The Footes were Episcopalians, Harriet, sister of Roxanna, being as
Mrs. Stowe says, "the highest of High Churchwomen who in her private
heart did not consider my father an ordained minister." Roxanna,
perhaps not so high-church, held out for two years against Dr.
Beecher's assaults upon her heart and then consented to become his
wife.
Mrs. Beecher was a refined and cultivated lady who "read all the new
works that were published at that day," numbered painting among her
accomplishments, and whose house "was full of little works of
ingenuity and taste and skill, which had been wrought by her hand:
pictures of birds and flowers, done with minutest skill"; but her
greatest charm was a religious nature full of all gentleness and
sweetness. "In no exigency," says Dr. Beecher, "was she taken by
surprise. She was just there, quiet as an angel above." There seems to
have been but one thing which this saintly woman with an Episcopalian
education could not do to meet the expectations of a Congregational
parish, and that was that "in the weekly female prayer-meeting she
could never lead the devotions"; but from this duty she seems to have
been excused because of her known sensitiveness and timidity.
Mrs. Beecher died when Harriet was in her fourth year, but she left an
indelible impression upon her family. Her "memory met us everywhere,"
says Mrs. Stowe; "when father wished to make an appeal to our hearts
which he knew we could not resist, he spoke of mother." It had been
the mother's prayer that her sons, of whom there were six, should be
ministers, and ministers they all were. One incident Mrs. Stowe
remembered which may be supposed to have set Sunday apart as a day of
exceptional sanctity. It was that "of our all running and dancing out
before her from the nursery to the sitting-room one Sabbath morning
and her pleasant voice saying after us, 'Remember the Sabbath day to
keep it holy.'" Such early religious impressions made upon the mind of
a child of four would have faded in other surroundings, but it will be
seen that Harriet's environment gave no rest to her little soul.
After the death of her mother, the child was sent to her grandmother
Foote's for a long visit. There she fell to the charge of her aunt
Harriet, than whom, we are told, "a more energetic human being never
undertook the education of a child." According to her views, "little
girls were to be taught to move very gently, to speak softly and
prettily, to say 'Yes ma'am' and 'No ma'am,' never to tear their
clothes, to sew and knit at regular hours, to go to church on Sunday
and make all the responses, and to come home and be catechised. I
remember those catechisings when she used to place my little cousin
Mary and myself bolt upright at her knee while black Dinah and Harvey,
the bound boy, were ranged at a respectful distance behind us.... I
became a proficient in the Church catechism and gave my aunt great
satisfaction by the old-fashioned gravity and steadiness with which I
learned to repeat it." This early training in the catechism and the
responses bore fruit in giving Mrs. Stowe a life-long fondness for the
Episcopal service and ultimately in taking her into the Episcopal
Church, of which during her last thirty years she was a communicant.
Harriet signalized her fifth year by committing to memory twenty-seven
hymns and "two long chapters of the Bible," and even more perhaps, by
accidentally discovering in the attic a discarded volume of the
"Arabian Nights," with which, she says, her fortune was made. It was a
much more suitable child's book, one would think, than the Church
catechism or Watts's hymns.
At the age of six Harriet passed to the care of the second Mrs. Lyman
Beecher, formerly Harriet Porter, of Portland, Maine, apparently a
lady of great dignity and character. "We felt," says Mrs. Stowe, "a
little in awe of her, as if she were a strange princess rather than
our own mamma; but her voice was very sweet, her ways of speaking and
moving very graceful, and she took us up in her lap and let us play
with her beautiful hands which seemed wonderful things, made of pearl
and ornamented with strange rings." It appears she was a faithful
mother, though a little severe and repressive. Henry Ward Beecher said
of her: "She did the office-work of a mother if ever a mother did";
she "performed to the uttermost her duties, according to her ability";
she "was a woman of profound veneration rather than of a warm loving
nature. Therefore her prayer was invariably a prayer of deep yearning
reverence. I remember well the impression which it made on me. There
was a mystic influence about it. A sort of sympathetic hold it had on
me, but still I always felt when I went to prayer, as though I were
going into a crypt, where the sun was not allowed to come; and I
shrunk from it." To complete the portrait of this conscientious lady
who was to have the supervision of Harriet from her sixth year, the
following from a letter of one of the Beecher children is worth
quoting: "Mamma is well and don't laugh any more than she did."
Evidently a rather stern and sobering influence had come into the
Beecher family.
"In her religion," says Mrs. Stowe, "she was distinguished by a most
unfaltering Christ-worship.... Had it not been that Dr. Payson had
set up and kept before her a tender, human, loving Christ, she would
have been only a conscientious bigot. This image, however, gave
softness and warmth to her religious life, and I have since noticed
how her Christ-enthusiasm has sprung up in the hearts of all her
children." This passage is of peculiar interest as it shows the source
of what Mrs. Stowe loves to call the "Christ-worship" which
characterized the religion of the younger Beechers. Writing at the age
of seventeen, when her soul was tossing between Scylla and Charybdis,
Harriet says: "I feel that I love God,--that is, that I love Christ";
and in 1876, writing of her brother Henry, she says, "He and I are
Christ-worshippers, adoring him as the Image of the Invisible
God." Her son refers us to the twenty-fourth chapter of the
Minister's Wooing for a complete presentation of this subject "of
Christ-worship." Mrs. Stowe speaks of this belief as a plain departure
from ordinary Trinitarianism, as a kind of heresy which it has
required some courage to hold. The heresy seems to have consisted in
practically dropping the first and third persons in the Godhead and
accepting Christ as the only God we know or need to consider.
As Mrs. Stowe during her adult life was an invalid, it is interesting
to have Mrs. Beecher's testimony that, on her arrival, she was met by
a lovely family of children and "with heartfelt gratitude," she says,
"I observed how cheerful and healthy they were." When Harriet was ten
years of age, she began to attend the Litchfield Academy and was
recognized as one of its brightest pupils. She especially excelled in
writing compositions and, at the age of twelve, her essay was one of
two or three selected to be read at a school exhibition. After
Harriet's had been read, Dr. Beecher turned to the teacher and asked,
"Who wrote that composition?" "Your daughter, Sir," was the reply. "It
was," says Mrs. Stowe, "the proudest moment of my life."
"Can the immortality of the soul be proved by the light of Nature?"
was the subject of this juvenile composition, a strange choice for a
girl of twelve summers; but in this family the religious climate was
tropical, and forced development. As might have been expected, she
easily proved that nothing of immortality could be known by the light
of nature. She had been too well instructed to think otherwise. Dr.
Beecher himself had no good opinion of 'the light of nature.' "They
say," said he, "that everybody knows about God naturally. A lie. All
such ideas are by teaching." If Harriet had taken the other side of
her question and argued as every believer tries to to-day, she would
have deserved some credit for originality. Nevertheless the form of
her argument is remarkable for her years, and would not have
dishonored Dr. Beecher's next sermon. This amazing achievement of a
girl of twelve can be read in the Life of Mrs. Stowe by her son.
From the Litchfield Academy, Harriet was sent to the celebrated Female
Seminary established by her sister Catharine at Hartford, Conn. She
here began the study of Latin and, "at the end of the first year, made
a translation of Ovid in verse which was read at the final exhibition
of the school." It was her ambition to be a poet and she began a play
called 'Cleon,' filling "blank book after blank book with this drama."
Mrs. Fields prints six pages of this poem and the specimens have more
than enough merit to convince one that the author might have attained
distinction as a poet. Her energetic sister Catharine however put an
end to this innocent diversion, saying that she must not waste her
time writing poetry but discipline her mind upon Butler's Analogy. To
enforce compliance, Harriet was assigned to teach the Analogy to a
class of girls as old as herself, "being compelled to master each
chapter just ahead of the class." This occupation, with Latin, French
and Italian, sufficiently protected her from the dissipation of
writing poetry.
Harriet remained in the Hartford school, as pupil and teacher, from
her thirteenth to her twenty-third year. In her spiritual history,
this was an important period. It may seem that her soul had hitherto
not been neglected but as yet youth and a sunny nature had kept her
from any agonies of Christian experience. Now her time had come. No
one under the care of the stern Puritan, Catharine Beecher, would be
suffered to forget her eternal interests. Both of Mrs. Stowe's
biographers feel the necessity of making us acquainted with this
masterful lady, "whose strong, vigorous mind and tremendous
personality," says Mr. Stowe, "indelibly stamped themselves on the
sensitive, dreamy, poetic nature of her younger sister."
It was Catharine's distinction to have written, it is claimed, the
best refutation of Edwards on the Will ever published. She was
undoubtedly the most acute and vigorous intellect in the Beecher
family. Like all the members of her remarkable family, she was
intensely religious and, at the period when Harriet passed to her
care, gloomily religious. It could not have been otherwise. She had
been engaged to marry Prof. Alexander Fisher, of Yale College, a young
man of great promise. Unhappily, he was drowned at sea, and she
believed his soul was eternally lost. It is futile to ask why Yale
College should have entrusted a professorship to a man whom the Lord
would send to perdition, or why Miss Beecher should have loved such an
abandoned character; it is enough to say that she loved him and that
she believed his soul to be lost; and was it her fault that she could
not be a cheerful companion to a young girl of thirteen?
As we have seen, Harriet must not fritter away her time writing plays;
she must study Butler's Analogy. She must also read Baxter's Saints
Rest, than which, says Mrs. Stowe, "no book ever affected me more
powerfully. As I walked the pavements I wished that they might sink
beneath me if only I might find myself in heaven." In this mental
condition she went to her home in Litchfield to spend her vacation.
One dewy fresh Sunday morning of that period stood by itself in her
memory. "I knew," she says, "it was sacramental Sunday, and thought
with sadness that when all the good people should take the bread and
wine I should be left out. I tried hard to think of my sins and count
them up; but what with the birds, the daisies, and the brooks that
rippled by the way, it was impossible." The sermon of Dr. Beecher was
unusually sweet and tender and when he appealed to his hearers to
trust themselves to Jesus, their faithful friend, she says, "I longed
to cry out I will. Then the awful thought came over me that I had
never had any conviction of my sins and consequently could not come to
him." Happily the inspiration came to her that if she needed
conviction of sin and Jesus were such a friend, he would give it to
her; she would trust him for the whole, and she went home illumined
with joy.