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[Illustration: HARRIET BEECHER STOWE IN 1862]
HARRIET
BEECHER STOWE
A BIOGRAPHY FOR GIRLS
BY
MARTHA FOOTE CROW
[Illustration]
NEW YORK AND LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1913
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
TO
E. L. F.
PREFACE
Thanks are very heartily due to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin and Company,
the publishers of the works of Mrs. Stowe, for their kind permission
to quote freely from her books, and from the biographies of Mrs.
Stowe written by her son, Rev. Charles E. Stowe, and by her grandson,
Mr. Lyman Beecher Stowe. The same publishers have given permission
to make an abstract of “Cleon,” the play by Harriet Beecher, which
is found in the “Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe” by Annie
Fields, of which they are the publishers. Messrs. Harper and Brothers
have also been good enough to allow quotation from the “Autobiography
and Correspondence of Lyman Beecher.” To Miss E. N. Vanderpoel, the
compiler of “Chronicles of a Pioneer School,” the author wishes to
acknowledge her indebtedness for some interesting passages.
The author has also greatly appreciated the permission given by Mr.
John R. Howard to quote a short passage about childhood experiences in
the Beecher home found in his valuable sketch of the Rev. Henry Ward
Beecher.
To Mr. Charles E. Stowe, the author hereby makes grateful
acknowledgment for much helpful advice, and for material not hitherto
published. From many friends in Litchfield, Guilford, Hartford and
elsewhere, the writer of this book has received invaluable help and
would be glad to acknowledge each one’s contribution if there were
space to do so. The frontispiece is made from an old _carte de visite_
kindly lent by Mrs. Hannah C. Partridge, of Hartford, Connecticut.
Without these bountiful sources of information and these privileges
so graciously allowed, a book of this kind could, of course, not have
been written. Where-ever possible the language of Mrs. Stowe herself
has been quoted or adapted from the rich treasury of her correspondence
and autobiographical writings, or from stories of her own. Among these
the “Lyman Beecher Autobiography” fixes forever a composite portrait
of the Beecher family and is an almost inexhaustible storehouse of
material. Among Mrs. Stowe’s books, the childhood experiences of _Tina_
in “Oldtown Folks” and of _Dolly_ in “Poganuc People” have been a
veritable panorama of the young life of Harriet herself. Indeed, so
largely do her books reflect not only her ideas and emotions but even
the objective incidents of her life, that many of them are almost
autobiographic in their character.
CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE OF MRS. STOWE’S LIFE
1811, June 14. Harriet Elizabeth Beecher was born in
Litchfield, Connecticut, daughter of Rev. Dr. Lyman Beecher.
1816. Death of her mother, Roxana Foote Beecher.
1816-1818. Harriet attends Dame School.
1817. Arrival of Harriet’s stepmother, Harriet Porter Beecher.
1823. Harriet’s essay on Immortality read at school exhibition.
1816, 1822, 1825, 1826, 1827. Visits to Foote homestead at Nut
Plains, near Guilford, Connecticut.
1824-1832. Harriet as pupil and afterwards as teacher at her
sister Catherine’s school in Hartford.
1825. Harriet writes a drama in blank verse called “Cleon.”
1825. Harriet becomes a member of the First Church in Hartford.
1826-1832. Pastorate of Dr. Beecher at Hanover Street Church in
Boston. Harriet’s vacations at Boston and Guilford.
1832-1852. Dr. Beecher head of Lane Theological Seminary at
Cincinnati, Ohio. Residence of family at Walnut Hills, suburb
of Cincinnati.
1832-1834. Catherine and Harriet found a school at Cincinnati.
1833. Harriet a member of the Semi-colon Club.
1834. Harriet receives a prize for her first short story.
1833. Harriet visits a plantation in Kentucky and sees slave
life.
1836, January. Marriage of Professor C. E. Stowe and Harriet
Beecher.
1836, September. Birth of Mrs. Stowe’s twin daughters, Harriet
Beecher and Eliza Tyler.
1838, January. Birth of her third child, Henry Ellis.
1840, May. Birth of her fourth child, Frederick William.
1843. Death of her brother, George, by accidental shooting.
1836-1850. Years of sickness, poverty and struggle.
1843, July. Birth of her fifth child, Georgiana May.
1843. Publication of her first book of stories.
1846-1847. Resort to a sanatorium in Vermont for her health.
1848, January. Birth of her sixth child, Samuel Charles.
1849. Cholera epidemic in Cincinnati; death of her youngest
child.
1850-1852. Residence of the Stowe family in Brunswick, Maine.
Professor Stowe at Bowdoin College.
1850, July. Birth of her seventh child, Charles Edward.
1850. The Fugitive Slave Law and slavery agitation.
1850, Mrs. Stowe’s vision of _Uncle Tom’s_ death; writes first
chapter.
1851, June-1852, April. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” appears as a serial
in “National Era.”
1852, March 10. Publication of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in book form.
1852-1853. 300,000 copies sold in United States.
1852, August. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” selling in England at rate of
1,000 a week.
1852. Mrs. Stowe in New York aiding escaped slaves.
1852-1863. Residence of Stowe family in Andover, Mass.
Professor Stowe in Andover Theological Seminary.
1853, April-August. Professor and Mrs. Stowe traveling in
England and Scotland.
1853, May. Meeting at Stafford House, London. “Address” of
500,000 English women, and the “shackle-bracelet” presented to
Harriet Beecher Stowe.
1855-1856. Harriet Beecher Stowe aiding in the anti-slavery
campaign in United States.
1856, July-1857, June. Traveling in England, France and Italy.
1856, August. Professor and Mrs. Stowe meet Queen Victoria.
1857, June. Death by drowning of their son, Henry Ellis.
1859, August-1860, July. Traveling in Switzerland and Italy.
1861, June. Visits her son’s regiment at Jersey City.
1862, November. Visit to Washington. The Contraband Dinner.
Visit to Abraham Lincoln.
1863, July 11. Battle of Gettysburg. Her son, Fred, struck by a
fragment of a shell.
1863-1870. Residence of the Stowe family in Hartford,
Connecticut.
1864. Mrs. Stowe becomes an attendant of the Episcopal Church.
1869-1870. The Lady Byron Defence.
1867-1886. Spends the winters in Mandarin, Florida.
1872-1874. Giving public readings from her own works in New
England and the west.
1882, June 14. Garden party given by her publishers at the
residence of ex-Governor and Mrs. Claflin at Newtonville,
Mass., in honor of her birthday.
1886. Death of Professor Stowe, of her brother, Henry Ward
Beecher, and of her daughter, Georgiana May.
1896, July 1. Death of Harriet Beecher Stowe, aged eighty-five,
at Hartford, Connecticut.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE EARLY HOME OF HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 1
II. WORK AND PLAY IN THE BEECHER PARSONAGE 16
III. HARRIET BEECHER’S SCHOOLING 32
IV. EDUCATION IN THE HOME 51
V. THE BOOKS SHE READ 70
VI. DRAMATIC VENTURES 83
VII. STUDIES AND TEACHERS 96
VIII. SOME STEPS FORWARD 110
IX. A PILGRIMAGE 122
X. THE WESTERN HOME 133
XI. THE FOUNDERS OF A SCHOOL 146
XII. THE SEMI-COLONS 158
XIII. MRS. STOWE THE HOME-MAKER 171
XIV. UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR A WORK 188
XV. THE GREAT INSPIRATION 204
XVI. “UNCLE TOM’S CABIN” AND ITS INFLUENCE 215
XVII. WANDERING IN FOREIGN LANDS 223
XVIII. A UNIQUE JUBILEE 243
XIX. A VISIT TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN 258
XX. WRITING STORIES OF OLD NEW ENGLAND LIFE 274
XXI. A SERENE OLD AGE 294
Harriet Beecher Stowe
CHAPTER I
THE EARLY HOME OF HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
In a little saucer-like valley of the lower Berkshires, where the hills
stand about in a wide circle, lies that most beautiful of Connecticut
villages, Litchfield. Here Harriet Beecher Stowe was born. There was
not a day when she and her brothers and sisters did not run to the
window to see that blue rim of hills, and even when they were grown
into women and men they did not forget the charm of their early home in
the mountains. From the door of the house where they lived there was an
extended view. Here Harriet often stood and looked over to the distant
horizon, where Mt. Tom reared its round, blue head against the sky,
and the Great and Little Ponds gleamed out amid a steel-blue expanse
of distant pine groves. Turning to the west, she saw a rounded height
called Prospect Hill, and many a pensive, wondering hour she sat on
the stone threshold of that doorway, watching the splendor of the
sunsets that burned themselves out beyond that hill. Harriet often said
that her home was at the precise point of the country where the hills
were most inspiring and vivacious, reminding one of the Psalm, “The
little hills rejoice on every side.” Mountains are grand, she thought,
and sometimes even dreary; but these half-grown hills uplift one like
the waves of the sea.
Once when Harriet returned by stage-coach from a visit to her relatives
down in Guilford, she could not restrain her raptures on beholding
her mountains again. As the quaint old coach went lumbering along the
winding road, the keen-eyed little girl leaned out of the window,
peering in every direction, determined to let no bluebird’s flight
escape her and no columbine flower pass unadmired. She took in all the
sweeping bends of the beautiful brown river and watched the curves of
water as they flowed over the shining rocks. After a while the coach
wound up amid hemlock forests whose solemn shadows were all aglow with
pink clouds of blossoming laurel. Presently they entered into great
vistas of mountains whose cloudy, purple heads stretched and veered
around the path like moving forms in a dream. There were the hills
which meant home. Writing about this years afterward, she cried out,
“Can there be anything on earth as beautiful as these mountain rides
in New England?” So she gave to her childhood’s home the name of
Cloudland, and its inheritance of clear air and height and spaciousness
became a part of her nature.
Any one would have loved the quiet village in 1811, the year when
Harriet Beecher was born, with the large Green in the center on which
stood the meeting-house where her honored father, Dr. Lyman Beecher,
preached. From here extended to the four points of the compass the
four spacious avenues, North, South, East, and West Streets, all of
them thickly planted with double rows of fine elm trees, through which
one could see the stately colonial mansions that had been there since
before the days of the Revolution.
These mansions had looked upon many a thrilling scene, for in those
Revolutionary days the town of Litchfield had been a place of great
activity. The direct state road from Boston across to West Point and
thence down the river to the city of New York passed at that time
through the town, making connection with the station for military
stores that were kept there. So on training days there would be
dramatic episodes on the ample Green, while on many a dark night that
great message-bearer, Paul Revere, would ride swiftly and mysteriously
through the town.
In fact, the town of Litchfield, in the days of the Beecher family,
fairly bristled with traditions of that ancient, eventful era. It is
certain that the little Harriet would be told about the time when the
service of war had claimed all the men in the patriotic township of
Litchfield except eight, who were too old or too young to go out and
fight. It must also have been impressed upon her that the women of her
native town shared in an especial degree this lofty patriotism, for
it is related that when the leaden statue of King George was knocked
off its pedestal in Bowling Green, in New York City, the shattered
pieces were conveyed to the military storehouse at Litchfield and there
hidden away. Then when the great need arose, the aristocratic ladies
of Litchfield melted the broken fragments of that rejected statue and
with their own hands molded the lead into bullets. Harriet’s heart
swelled with pride as she heard this story or as she passed the very
house where the lead was molded over or perhaps was shown the precious
memorandum that indicated how many thousand bullets each helper had
made. Litchfield, indeed, a very storehouse of patriotic tradition, was
a fitting home for Harriet Beecher Stowe whose soul was to be a perfect
flame of patriotic feeling by virtue of which she was to perform a
great and permanent work.
In Harriet’s own childhood, too, Litchfield was a very busy place.
There were some forty mills along the streams, not one of which remains
to-day, and there was a famous law school, the first one in America,
and a celebrated school for young ladies. The society in the village
was singularly good; it was a place where piety, intelligence, and
refinement were united. Mrs. Stowe, remembering the history that lay
back of it in Colonial and Revolutionary days, spoke of it as “burning
like live coals with all the fervid activity of an intense, newly
kindled, peculiar and individual life.”
Perhaps one would realize this somewhat better on a Sunday than on a
week day. Then from the fine old residences that adorned the principal
street the families of comfortable means and impressive traditions
proceeded in a dignified manner and solemnly entered the little church.
From the outlying population for miles around came also processions
of wagons, bearing the well-dressed wives, stalwart sons and blooming
daughters of the well-to-do farmers, all punctual as a clock to the
ringing of the second-bell. They were alert-minded, independent people;
it was a highly intelligent audience that gathered to hear Dr. Beecher
expound problems of theology, which his hearers were quite ready to
debate with him if they thought he bent a little too far to the one
side or to the other in some hair-splitting argument.
The parsonage where Dr. Beecher lived, and where seven of his thirteen
children were born, was a roomy edifice that seemed to have been
built by a succession of afterthoughts. It was first a model New
England house, built around a great brick chimney which ran up like
a lighthouse in the center of the square roof; but various bedroom
additions had been gradually made and a new kitchen had been built
on, and out of the kitchen a sinkroom, and out of the sinkroom a
woodhouse, and out of the woodhouse a carriage house, and so on through
a gradually lessening succession of out-buildings, until it might seem
as if the house has been constructed on the model of a telescope. And
besides all this, there were four great attics! What a wonderful house
in which to play tag or blind-man’s bluff!
The house stood at the highest point on North Street in the midst of
a colony of noble elms that gathered about the plain, old-fashioned
parsonage like classic pillars, giving it a grand air of scholarly
retirement. The surroundings of this rambling old house were
delightful. There was the tall well-sweep, and a gate that swung with
a chain and a great stone. From the pantry window could be seen a
whole neighborhood of purple-leaved beets and feathery parsnips; the
gooseberry bushes were rolled up by the fence in billows, and here and
there stood an aristocratic quince tree. Far off in one corner a little
patch penuriously devoted to ornament flamed with marigolds, poppies,
snappers and four-o’clocks. Then there was a little box by itself with
one rose geranium in it, which looked around the garden in a frightened
way, as much a stranger as a French dancing master would be in a Yankee
meeting-house. The little foreigner, however, received delicate
attention at the hands of Harriet’s beauty-loving mother.
But, although the house was a big one, there was not too much room for
the Beecher family. Besides the father and mother, there were, when the
last arrival completed the magic number, thirteen children in all. Then
there was sometimes an aunt, or a grandmother, or a cousin; there were
generally a number of students as boarders, and these, together with
one Rachel and one Zillah, both black, completed the household circle.
Rich in children was this New England family, but not in other wealth.
Economy in the Beecher family was a necessity, but economy was also a
law of New England life. Dr. Beecher in one of his reminiscences tells
of an old parishioner of his who was so steeped in the prevailing
spirit of economy that he boasted of having kept all of his accounts
for thirty years with one quill pen; that he knew exactly how to lean
his arm on the table so as not to take the nap off the sleeve; and how
to set down his foot with the least possible wear to the sole of his
shoe. It stands to reason that when the minister has to deal with such
deacons as this the minister’s wife will turn a dress several times,
and must be forgiven if she requires even the smallest children of
her family to overcast the long seams of the linen sheets and to hem
interminable towels. This is what the little Harriet had to do, and
perhaps it did not cause her any harm.
In spite of this rather narrowed way of living, the children in this
family did not feel poor. Once there was sent from Boston to the
Litchfield parsonage a barrel of dishes embellished with figures which
you could worship without worshiping the image of anything either in
the heaven or upon earth--so Henry said; but the children thought them
the very embodiment of beauty. When the barrel was unpacked, one of
the boys said, “Oh, mother, what rich people we must be to have such
wonderful dishes!” Wealth, it seems, consists more in the way one feels
than in what one really possesses.
An establishment such as this, as any one may see, afforded occupation
for a number of hands. Little Harriet was a great worker. Her brother
wrote that before he was ten years old he had learned to sew, knit,
scour knives, wash dishes, set and clear the table, cut and split
and bring in wood, break tumblers and--earn whippings! There can
be no doubt that his sister next older shared these exercises with
him--except the last! We are not going to believe that Harriet ever
deserved that.
Harriet Beecher said once that work, thrift and industry are the
incessant steam-power of Yankee life; certainly none of her family
seems to have been in any degree scared by the prospect of hard work.
Harriet’s brother Edward makes light of the labor in a very jolly
letter which he sent in 1821 to his stepmother. “And what shall I
say more? Shall I speak of our orchard, from which the gale blew
off apples enough for twenty barrels of cider, and whereon are yet
cider and winter apples without number? Or of our cellar wherein are
barrels small and great, moreover bins, boxes, cupboards, which I have
arranged, having cleansed the cellar with bezom, rake, and wheelbarrow?
Or of our garden, in which were weeds of various kinds, particularly
pig; yea, also beets, carrots, parsnips and potatoes, the like of which
was never seen?”[1] And Dr. Beecher himself, writing to one of the boys
in July, 1819, tells how he has weeded the parsnips and beets, has
planted potatoes in the orchard, plowed the yard and carried out the
stones. With some help he has got out in two days a pile of stones as
big as the salt mountain in Louisiana! After that they set to and tore
down a useless eighty-year-old barn. The garden, he went on to say, was
waving with corn, canteloupes, cabbages and pumpkins. The peas were
some of them big enough to eat but had politely waited for the younger
brethren around them to come to maturity so that they might all have
the pleasure of being eaten together! The raspberries were so thick
that one could not see between them, nor even stick between them a
sharp-pointed knife. “Can you not find out by algebra,” he asks, “how
many there will be?” So he goes on through the list--lettuce, radishes,
pepper-grass, carrots, etc. “The garden gates shut,” he continues, “as
regularly as they open, and no creature can get in except the hens,
which are now about tired of coming, as they are sure to be saluted
quite unexpectedly with a charge of powder, ‘speaking terror from the
gun muzzle.’ Do you know,” he asks his son, “from whom the quotation is
made? Some poet, you perceive.” So the wise father mixed instruction
with gossip and made a game of work.
He was an interesting man, gifted with tremendous enthusiasm and
untiring energy. And he had an individual way of doing things and
a salty wit which can only be described as Beecher-ish. He knew
instinctively just when to praise and when to blame. When he and the
boys were splitting wood and carrying it into the shed, he sometimes
said, “I wish, Harriet, that you were a boy, for, if you had been, you
would have done more than any of them.” Then would Harriet run and
put on a little black coat she had, and work like all possessed to
outdo the others in her enthusiasm. The clever suggestion to Harriet
also glanced sidewise and hit the lagging boys, who then bestirred
themselves until the wood was all split and piled in the woodshed and
the chips swept up. To make the work go faster and more cheerfully,
Dr. Beecher sometimes made the children vie with each other to see who
could tell the most Bible stories, or name the most Bible characters;
or he started a discussion on some theological question, often taking
the weaker or wrong side himself and telling the children what point
to bring forward, saying, the argument is thus and so! Now, if you will
take this position, you will be able to trip me up! So he strengthened
their reasoning powers.
The task done, the reward was a fishing excursion or a nutting party.
Here again the father challenged the children in feats of climbing
the trees and of gathering the nuts. Although not a man of special
physical strength himself, he came from a line celebrated for vigor.
His grandfather had been six feet tall and could easily lift a barrel
of cider and drink from the bung. His father, not quite so tremendous,
had been only strong enough to lift a barrel of cider and toss it
easily into the cart! The descendant of these giant-like men was more
celebrated for his intellectual feats than for his merely physical
exploits. But no Highlanders ever gloried more proudly in the prowess
of their chief than did the Beecher children in that of their father!
The most difficult trees were climbed by the Doctor himself; sometimes
to reach a branch that hung out over the cliff, he endangered his life
to get the fruit. They were certain that no tree grew in so exalted a
place that he could not climb it. Oh, those were great days! At noon a
fire was made and the abundant luncheon was spread on a broad flat rock
around which a white foam of moss made a soft seat. And here again the
father was the hero, for around the fire no companion could be more
jolly than he. It is not strange that the children remembered their
father rather as a playmate than as a stern disciplinarian.
Yet discipline in this home circle there must have been to keep order
in so large and intensely active a family. Aunt Esther sometimes found
a want of subordination among the troops. The very cleverness of the
children made the problem great. For instance, if she told the boys
that they should not be so boisterous, they would be likely to answer
by complaining that she did not also try to keep the girls from being
so girlsterous. And under cover of this witticism the boys would escape
punishment. At one time she wrote to one of the children in a merry
mood, “Your father and mother have been gone a fortnight and the crew
at home are beginning to grow somewhat mutinous, and I am not sure but
I shall be obliged to condemn and hang a half score of them before the
return of your father.” In February, 1822, while Harriet was visiting
her aunt at Guilford, her older sister, Catherine, wrote to her: “We
all want you home very much, but hope you are now where you will learn
to stand and sit straight and hear what people say to you, and sit
still in your chair, and learn to sew and knit well, and be a good girl
in every particular; and if you don’t learn this while you are with
your Aunt Harriet, I am afraid you never will.” Then, to offset this
rather strenuous piece of advice, Catherine, in relenting mood, added,
very much as her father might have done: “Old Puss is very well and
sends his respects to you; and Mr. Black Trip has come out of the barn
to live, and says that if you ever come into the kitchen he will jump
up and lick your hand and pull your frock, just as he serves the rest
of us.” This elder sister of Harriet’s was so full of fun that she was
the life and joy of the house. Writing to their brother Edward in 1819,
she said: “Apropos--last week we interred Tom, Junior, with funeral
honors, by the side of old Tom of happy memory. What a fatal mortality
there is among the cats of the parsonage! Our Harriet is chief mourner
always at their funerals. She has asked for what she calls an ‘epithet’
for the gravestone of Tom, Junior, which I gave as follows:
“Here died our kit
Who had a fit,
And acted queer.
Shot with a gun,
Her race is run,
And she lies here.”
Catherine’s father must have been looking over his daughter’s shoulder
as she wrote this, for he added a postscript saying that, as every man
must eat his pound of dirt, so he supposed every one must write his
quire of nonsense, but that he hoped that soon none but letters so
solid and weighty as to earn their postage would be passing to and fro.
After this Catherine put on still another postscript and said: “Never
mind this, Ned, for Papa loves to laugh as well as any of us, and is
quite as much tickled at nonsense as we are.”
There was, then, a merry side in the life at Litchfield Parsonage.
Catherine wrote at one time, quite seriously, that her little sister
was a very good girl, had been to school all summer and had learned to
read very fluently, and that she had committed to memory twenty-seven
hymns and two long chapters in the Bible; that she had a remarkably
retentive memory and would make a very good scholar. Still, considering
the spirit of fun that races through every book Harriet wrote, we
cannot believe she was always sitting still in a chair, learning to
sew and knit well, and being a good girl in every particular. We think
of her also as having something in her of the fascinating little
_Tina_ in “Oldtown Folks,” one of Mrs. Stowe’s most powerful stories
of New England life. We can even believe it to have been as difficult
in Harriet’s case as it was in _Tina’s_ to get her to go to bed at
the proper hour. As night drew on, the little one’s tongue no doubt
ran on with increasing fluency, and her powers of entertainment waxed
more dazzling. On a drizzling, freezing night when the wind howled
lonesomely around the corners of the house, who could have the heart
to extinguish the candle at exactly eight or even at nine? Then little
Harriet was ballet and opera to the household group, mimicking the dog,
the cat, the hens, and the tom-turkey, or talking and flying about
the room in lively imitation of some member of the family. She stirred
up butter and exclaimed, “Pshaw!” just like one of the grown-ups; she
invented imaginary scenes and conversations and improvised unheard-of
costumes out of strange old things she rummaged out of the garret,
until nine o’clock sounded inexorably from the old family timepiece and
put a stop to the fun for that night.