A PILGRIMAGE
In 1832, when Harriet Beecher was twenty-one years old, a great change
took place in her fortunes. She was transplanted from her New England
environment into the more dynamic life of the great, growing west.
But of course we must not expect to find the west of eighty years ago
very much like the west of to-day. In 1832 the middle of Ohio seemed
separated by vaster distances and was more difficult of access than
any part of our country this side of the Pacific Coast seems to-day.
This alteration in our point of view has come about because there never
has been a time or place in the history of the world when the growth
of a region has been so swift or so picturesque as in that part of our
country that we now call the “middle west.”
Of those wonderful things that were to take place in the advancement
of our country’s resources and welfare, the building of schools,
churches, libraries and institutions of all kinds, and the development
of national spirit, Harriet Beecher’s father seems to have had a
prevision. He saw the great possibilities in the growing western
country, and felt a burning desire to have a share in upbuilding
the best things there. His feeling in regard to this great work is
illustrated in one little page of his biography.
In order to impress the full meaning of prayer upon his mind and heart,
Dr. Beecher would sometimes write it out in his diary; and in one of
these prayers written at about this time he said: “If there be anything
which by living I can do, or by dying I can do, to mitigate on earth
the miseries of sin and to save my country and to save the world, then
speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.”
About this time also he wrote a letter to Catherine, in which he said:
“I have thought seriously of going over to Cincinnati, that London of
the west, to spend the remnant of my days in that great conflict, and
in consecrating all my children to God in that region who are willing
to go. If we gain the west, all is safe; if we lose it, all is lost....
This is not with me a transient flash of feeling, but a feeling as if
the great battle is to be fought in the valley of the Mississippi, and
as if it may be the will of God that I shall be employed to arouse and
help marshal the host for the conflict.... These are only my thoughts,
but they are deep, and yet withal, my ways are committed to God.”[6]
It was in this spirit that he received a call to become the head of
Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio. Catherine sympathized
with her father in his enthusiasm for the intellectual and spiritual
development of the west, and she decided to go with him into the new
work. In fact he had said to her, “If _I_ go, it is part of my plan
that _you_ go.”
Harriet had now to leave her many friends in Hartford and the relatives
in Litchfield and Nut Plains. Her two brothers, William and Edward,
were now established preachers, and Henry Ward and Charles were in
college. The sister next older than herself, Mary, was married and was
living in Hartford. To separate from all these loved ones and go out
into a far distant land was very hard.
The journey west occupied many days and had something of the
fascination of a wild adventure. They were going into a new land, into
a great missionary field; their hearts were high and their courage
was good. They chose the most expeditious way of going, which at that
time was by way of New York City, Philadelphia, over the mountains to
Wheeling, and then down the Ohio River to Cincinnati. This, we must
remember, was before the through railroad lines to the west had been
built.
There were many pauses by the way for the Beecher cavalcade, since the
fame of Dr. Lyman Beecher as the greatest of the pulpit speakers of New
England had been carried everywhere, and the people in the large towns
through which they passed wished him to stay long enough at least to
preach to them--a request that he was anxious to grant.
The first stopping place was New York. Here they paused long enough
for Dr. Beecher to preach several times and to see many of his friends
among the ministers and to make more. Harriet found life in that great
city of New York, as she said, “too scattering.” She believed it would
“kill her dead” to live long in the way they were living there. It
seemed to her like a sort of “agreeable delirium”! She began to be
thirsty for the waters of quietness. But her father, she said, was
in his element--dipping into books, consulting authorities for his
orations, going around here, there, and everywhere, begging, borrowing,
and spoiling the Egyptians, delighted with past success and confident
for the future.
Dr. Beecher had also another object in view, which was to do some
energetic begging for the foundation of the Biblical professorship in
the Theological Seminary of which he was about to take charge. Harriet,
in writing back to friends in Hartford about it, said casually: “The
incumbent of this foundation is to be C. Stowe.” This is the first time
that we hear the name of the one who is to bear so large a part in the
story of Harriet Beecher’s life.
From New York the Beecher company went by steamboat to Philadelphia.
Here they had the great misfortune to lose track of all their baggage.
They had to wait for a time in Philadelphia until it could be traced to
another wharf. It was finally recovered and brought on, but not till
after the ladies of the family, usually the very pink of perfection in
their starched and snowy collars and lace edgings, had suffered extreme
discomfort because of the limp and dusty condition of their frills.
The comfort of the family was at last restored and the mother and Aunt
Esther were supplied with fresh caps and ruffles. Great was the joy!
Dr. Beecher struck an attitude as the boxes were brought in, swung his
hat, and called for three cheers. “So should a man do,” cried Harriet,
“whose wife has not had a cap or a ruffle for a week!”
The delay in Philadelphia was not specially unwelcome. Here the party
was separated into two sections: the father and mother with Aunt Esther
and the baby, went to one friend’s house, and the older children to
another. Their hosts were rich, hospitable folks and their visits were
full of enjoyment. There was much to be seen by the young people, and
the father’s energies were taken up with conferences and preaching
and with prayer-meetings held specially for the success of the great
missionary object that was calling him into what seemed to them all a
very far-away country.
By all this business they were kept so long that Mrs. Beecher and Aunt
Esther demurred at the delay. Dr. Beecher told them that they were in
the hands of Providence, but they said that they would much prefer to
trust Providence by the way!
At last they were all ready to take the plunge into the actual west.
If their journey had but been a few years later, a railroad train would
have taken them as far as Columbia, Pennsylvania; then a canal would
have carried them along the east bank of the Susquehanna River as far
as the entrance to the Juniata. At this point the canal would have
crossed that great river by means of an aqueduct and they would have
followed the blue Juniata to Hollidaysburg. There the problem how to
get over the forbidding mountain ridge that faced them would have been
solved by the exciting method of a portage which by means of pulleys
drew the cars up to fourteen hundred feet above that town, using three
levels for separate short journeys from level to level. The descent to
Johnstown on the other side of the ridge would have been made by the
same method reversed, and the canal packet boat from that place would
have used the Kiskiminetos River along to Pittsburgh, where the great
Ohio River would have brought them to Cincinnati. All this could have
been done in 1836. But this was 1832; and none of these things were
under way at the time, though they were being more or less seriously
thought of. The only method of traveling in the year 1832 was by the
time-honored daily or tri-weekly stages.
Of these stage-coach lines an elaborate system was at their service;
for the largest part of the journey, the family availed themselves of
this method, sometimes, however, finding it more economical for so
large a party to charter a coach and have it all to themselves.
We may imagine them climbing into a big old-fashioned stage, drawn by
four great horses, and starting out for Wheeling, a city that lies
right in the line from New York to the southern part of Ohio, if you
make the line curve a little bit to the south in order to make the
easiest cut through the mountains.
The company included Dr. and Mrs. Beecher and Aunt Esther; and for
children, there were Catherine, Harriet, Isabella, George, Thomas
and James; some of these names have been added to the list since the
Litchfield days. As for this company of young folks, it may be safely
said that they enjoyed every inch of the way; no badness of the roads,
no threat of tempest, no weariness of unsupported backs, could subdue
their skipping spirits. There was plenty of room in the coach with
three on a seat. Besides that, George sat with the driver on the box,
and as the journey progressed, and new drivers took their places at the
points where horses were exchanged, he acquired every little while a
new set of stories which he faithfully shouted back to the occupants
behind. George was also a great singer, and led the choir of the whole
coachful in singing hymns and songs. Whenever they passed through a
town or along by a small wayside village, he let loose a packet of
tracts and snowed them all along the road for the inhabitants to pick
up after the cavalcade had gone by. And woe be to any wayfaring people
that came along the road if they did not love tracts, for these snowy
batteries were discharged regularly upon the head of each one they met!
Harriet called out to him, “George, you are peppering the country with
moral influence.”
The first day was full of enjoyment; they had an obliging driver, good
roads, good spirits, a good dinner, fine scenery. Harriet pronounced
it all good. That day they went about thirty miles and reached
Downingtown, Pennsylvania. Here, as Harriet said, they were dropped
down like Noah and his wife and his sons and his daughters, with the
cattle and creeping things. And here they had the first night’s rest of
their real pilgrimage.
Wherever they stopped was home for the time being. To bring about
this magical transformation of things that mean nothing, into things
that mean “home,” was a special gift of Harriet’s, acquired in her
own home circle. On this journey into the wilds there was always a
gathering of the children for singing and prayer in the little parlor
of whatever inn might be their stopping place for the time. On such
an evening we can see them sitting around the table in the candle
light, the father reading and studying. Catherine writing to Mary
at Hartford, and Harriet to her loved friend, Georgiana May, Thomas
working at his journal, and Isabella keeping her little record, too,
while George is only waiting for a chance to sit up to the table and
take his pen. In her letter Harriet is saying this: “As for me, among
the multitude of my present friends, my heart still makes occasional
visits to the absent ones, visits full of pleasure and full of cause
for gratitude to Him who gives us friends. I have thought of you often
to-day, my Georgiana.... This afternoon as we were traveling, we struck
up ‘Jubilee.’ It put me in mind of the time when we used to ride along
the rough North Guilford roads and make the air vocal as we went along.
Pleasant times, those! Those were blue skies, and that was a beautiful
lake, and noble pine-trees and rocks they were that hung over it. But
those we shall look upon ‘nae mair.’ Well, my dear, there is a land
where we shall not love and leave. Those skies shall never cease to
shine, the waters of life we shall never be called upon to leave. We
have here no continuing city, but we seek one to come. In such thoughts
as these I desire ever to rest, and with such words as these let us
‘comfort one another and edify one another.’”
The next stopping place was Harrisburg. Here they had another homelike
evening, gathering in Catherine’s room for a “sing” before going to
bed. Then followed a good restful sleep in preparation for the long,
slow journey up the Appalachian range that was to begin in the morning.
In this part of the pilgrimage they were not so fortunate as they had
hitherto been. The horses were poor and the roads very bad. It took
them eight days to do what the mail-stage was accustomed to accomplish
in two. But good company makes a long journey short. The children’s
spirits were equal to the need, though they may have been by this time
a little weary. They flung their songs upon the breeze and their tracts
upon the traveler whenever they met one, and left a trail of gladness
upon the mountain heights.
When they reached the city of Wheeling the family were again
distributed among the homes of the people who were desirous that they
should remain so that they might hear Dr. Beecher preach. At this
place the family had expected to take the canal boat down the Ohio.
But either because the water was too low or because of a rumor that
cholera was becoming prevalent down the river, they decided against the
great waterway as a means of travel. And if the canal boat experience
would have been like that described by Dickens in his “American Notes”
or even like the short sketch that Harriet Beecher made in her little
story, “The Canal-boy,” the Beecher party had little to regret in being
compelled to go a roundabout way, in a comfortably airy stage-coach,
even though the journey by this method did take longer.
After a busy week in Wheeling, they chartered a coach again and went
on westward. This time they verged a little northward and took in
Granville, Ohio, where they stayed a while to attend a protracted
meeting. Here there was more and more preaching. For the rest of the
way there was a corduroy road, made of logs laid crosswise. George
said, “They make the roads this way for the benefit of the dyspeptics
out here.” But never mind! That corduroy road led over the most
beautiful rolling prairie, and down along pleasant river courses, till
it came in view of a wide valley through which the great Ohio, La Belle
Rivière, swept with a great curve, leaving a charmed space for the
building of a city. Here the stage-coach swung along through streets
between rows of neat red brick houses surrounded by abundant gardens,
and paused at last for rest after the long pilgrimage. Here the Beecher
home was to be for eighteen years.