THE SEMI-COLONS
Soon after the Beechers were settled at Cincinnati the circle of old
New England friends exiled together in this western land formed a
literary club that met alternately at Uncle Samuel Foote’s and Dr.
Drake’s. They called this society the “Semi-colon Club,” and gave the
following explanation of the name: The Spanish name of Columbus was
Colon; if the discoverer of a continent may be called a “Colon,” the
discoverers of a new pleasure should at least be allowed the honor of
being called “Semi-colons.” This new pleasure consisted in the delight
they got out of the interchange of thought at weekly meetings.
The society of Semi-colons grew out of what Harriet called “Uncle Sam’s
soirée,” the social assemblies that that genial host gathered about
him in his house on the heights. The house where most of the meetings
were held and which should be called “the home of the Semi-colon Club”
was on the corner of Vine and Third Streets. It was a mansion with
a stately colonnade of pillars across the portico. In the company
that assembled beneath that friendly roof were several that were
destined to become known to the world besides Catherine, Harriet and
other members of their family. There were judges, generals, poets,
professors, editors, and, as Harriet might have said, some human
beings! Salmon P. Chase was there, a young man about twenty-five years
old, afterwards the great statesman who met Mrs. Stowe at Washington
and led her into the room where Abraham Lincoln greeted and talked with
her. Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz was one of the company; she had been the
author of a poem, a play, and a novel before she was twelve years old,
and had lately received from the Arch Street Theater in Philadelphia
the five-hundred-dollar prize for her play, “De Lara, or the Moorish
Bride.” Then there was Christopher Pearse Cranch, the poet, and
Worthington Whitridge, the artist. There was Judge James Hall, editor
of the _Western Monthly Magazine_, author of many letters, souvenirs,
addresses, sketches and romances, who was then in the midst of a long
and valuable literary career. Dr. Daniel Drake, a man some forty-five
years old, had a national reputation in the field of medical research.
The circle also included others in various fields of artistic activity.
It is plain that the meetings of a company such as this must have been
a great incitement to the genius of Harriet Beecher. We must not
forget to mention that the young and handsome professor of Biblical
history, Professor C. E. Stowe, was also a member of the Club.
In natural reaction from the strenuousness of her daily tasks Harriet
could not resist the impulse to loosen the reins of her whimsical
fancy at the meetings and to be the very soul of merriment in this
intimate circle. The first thing she wrote as a Semi-colon was a letter
purporting to have come from Bishop Butler, composed, as Harriet
said to Georgiana May, in his “outrageous style of parenthesis and
foggification.” Her next essay was a satirical piece on the modern uses
of languages. We can hardly imagine how this subject could be made
interesting, yet we feel that we could trust Harriet Beecher to turn
any prosy matter into mirth. This essay was so well received by the
audience that the editor of the _Western Magazine_ requested permission
to publish it in his magazine. Elated by this success, she undertook a
larger task, planning a series of letters that were to take up a number
of different subjects. She liked to write in a slightly satirical
manner. There had been some random talk in the social hours of the
Club meetings on the antiquated jokes about old maids and bachelors.
Harriet thought she would touch upon this and call for some fresh
pleasantries to take the place of those worn-out ones. She wrote a list
of legislative enactments solemnly forbidding the merest mention of the
word “old maid” or “bachelor” in the future and forever more. This was
indeed a playing with fire, but the letters made no hard feelings, as
there was a courteous spirit beneath the satire.
She followed this with an attempt at more serious writing, though here
again her passion for fun made her resort to the device of a practical
joke. Putting what she had to say this time into the form of letters,
she carried out her idea with a wealth of incident and of particulars
that made the letters give the feeling of a group of real people. The
letters appeared to be written from a house in the country, where the
hosts and their guests were pious, literary, and agreeable. By having
the letters come apparently from different people who showed their
various characteristics, the author had the opportunity to bring in
different points of view and a lively interchange of ideas.
We can see how her story-making sense was developing. In these letters
she was taking a hint from a certain plan which the Beecher family had
been making use of since the members had been so widely scattered.
They sent a circular letter around from one member of the family to
another, each adding a letter to the collection that came to him, until
all had read it. In this circular letter the different characteristics
of the family were brought into a pleasant contrast, just as Harriet
planned to bring them out in the imaginary family that she created.
The first one of this series she surrounded with particulars intended
to carry out the deception. Her one idea at this time seems to have
been to conceal her budding tendency toward authorship, and yet she
could not resist the fertility of invention and the pleasure it gave
her. When she had finished the letter she smoked it to turn it yellow
and tore the edges to give it the look of age; she wrote and re-wrote
the direction, imitated a postmark by means of smears of ink, sealed
the letter with wax and then broke the seal open again, all in order
to give the letter the appearance of a really old letter. Then she put
it into another envelope on which she placed the address in different
handwriting and directed it to “Mrs. Samuel E. Foote.” At the same
time she sent another letter to her cousin directing her to be on the
lookout for the coming of a letter and to aid her in the deception. The
family, including even that wary and clever Uncle Samuel, were taken in
by the joke. The erased names and dates were deciphered and the whole
epistle was subjected to criticism, but it was believed in as a real
letter. So much for Harriet’s practical joke.
It is a little difficult to understand why this young author should
have surrounded with so much mystery her earliest attempts in the
work that was to become the business of her life. She seems to have
had a strange sense of shrinking from publicity as though there were
perhaps a lack of dignity about the appearance of one’s name in
print. How little idea she had even by this time of her own powers
is shown by the fact that her first published piece was, quite to
Harriet’s satisfaction, attributed to Catherine. In fact she said
that she did not know that she would have let it go if it had been
assigned to its own author. She had no idea, she said, of appearing
_in propria persona_. However, when the potent charm that lies in
literary expression had once taken a firm hold of her genius those
false scruples faded away; and we cannot believe that it was not a
source of intense pleasure to her when she won the prize offered by the
editor of the _Western Monthly Magazine_ for the best story. This story
appeared in the number for April, 1834, under the heading “The Prize
Tale,” with the modest sub-title “A New England Sketch.” Her story was
as different from the other articles in the magazine as black is from
white. The contents of this heavy periodical consisted as a general
thing of essays on the antiquities of America, the Indians and their
customs, didactic tales related in trotting tetrameters, or perhaps a
long-winded story of impossible adventure and sentiment in the Charles
Brockton Brown manner. Harriet Beecher’s racy description of New
England characteristics, the realness of the scenes, the actuality of
the people, the easy simple flow of the discourse, the conversational
quality of the language that the speakers used, the clever management
of the incidents were all totally unknown to the readers of the
magazine. It must have been like a sudden invitation to a feast of
good nourishing food to those who had been living for a long time upon
chaff. The story was welcomed with intense delight.
It is not remarkable that the heart of this young writer, who was still
homesick enough to find it impossible to sing any kind of a song in the
strange land, should turn for its inspiration to the old New England
home. This is the way she began:
“And so I am to write a story,” she said, “but of what and where?
Shall it be radiant with the sky of Italy or eloquent with the _beau
idéal_ of Greece? Shall it breathe odor and languor from the Orient, or
chivalry of the Occident; gaiety from France, or vigor from England?
No, no; these are all too old, too romance-like, too obviously
picturesque for me. No, let me turn to my own land--to my own New
England; the land of bright fires and strong hearts; the land of deeds
and not of words; the land of fruits and not of flowers; the land often
spoken against yet always respected; ‘the latchet of whose shoes the
nations of the earth are not worthy to unloose.’”
Having relieved her mind by this outburst of emotion, she apologizes
for the bit of rodomontade, as she calls it, and proceeds to describe
the Connecticut town that she was to picture under so many different
names from the beginning to the end of her career--the beloved
Litchfield-in-the-Hills, called in this story Newbury in New England.
It rested in a green little hollow wedged in like a bird’s nest
among the high hills that kept off the wind in winter and kept out
foreigners. Here life was so perfect that the people never died, but
only kept growing old till they could not grow any older and then they
stood still and lasted from generation to generation. The houses in
this village were red, brown, or yellow, and the people that lived
there all had Biblical names. They did all the things they ought to
do, lived in neighborly charity with one another, read their Bibles,
feared God, and were content with such things as they had which the
author said is the best philosophy after all. We are told that the hero
is _Master James Benton_; the chief person in the story, however, is
James’s old uncle, who afterwards gave a title to the story, “Uncle
Tim.” _Timothy Benton_ was a character photographed directly from life;
he was suggested by Harriet’s own Uncle Lot Benton of New Haven, who
was celebrated for that very contrariousness that is the queerness and
the chief charm of the uncle in the story, who was just like a chestnut
burr, briars without but substantial goodness within. The following
incident from the story will illustrate this:
“‘Uncle Tim, father wants to know if you will lend him your hoe
to-day?’” says a little boy, making his way across the corn-field.
“‘Why don’t your father use his own hoe?’
“‘Ours is broke.’
“‘Broke! How came it broke?’
“‘I broke it yesterday trying to hit a squirrel.’
“‘What business had you to be hittin’ squirrels with a hoe?’
“‘But father wants to borrow yours.’
“‘Why don’t he have that mended? It’s a great pester to have everybody
usin’ a body’s things.’
“‘Well, I can borrow one somewheres else, I suppose,’” says the
suppliant. After the boy has stumbled across the ploughed ground and is
fairly over the fence _Uncle Tim_ calls:
“‘Halloo there, you little rascal! What are you goin’ off without the
hoe for?’
“‘I didn’t know as you meant to lend it.’
“‘I didn’t say I wouldn’t, did I? Here, come and take it--stay,
I’ll bring it; and do tell your father not to be a-letting you hunt
squirrels with his hoes next time.’”
Another time _Uncle Tim’s_ daughter, _Grace_, wants two candlesticks
for her party. After long dallying and much coaxing and palavering he
stumps off to the village store and brings back a package. He hands
_Grace_ one candlestick. _Grace_ says:
“‘But father, I wanted two.’
“‘Why, can’t you make one do?’
“‘No, I can’t; I must have two.’
“‘Well, then, there’s t’other’--taking the second candlestick out of
his pocket, and adding, ‘and here’s a fol-de-rol for you to tie round
your neck.’”
It is not difficult to see that when the young _James_ wishes to
get into the good graces of this prickly old gentleman he will have
a hard time. _Uncle Tim_ did not “‘see why the boys need to be all
the time a-coming to see Grace, for she was nothing extraordinary
after all.’” In this opinion _Master James_ did not at all concur; he
thought _Grace_ the most wonderful girl in the world, and he had an
idea in regard to her that he was determined to carry out. Moreover, he
was of the joyous, buoyant variety of youth who cannot see why their
plans should fail. We understand perfectly who stood as model for this
earnest, clean, optimistic, merry-hearted young man. Harriet could not
have had any one in her mind but the brother that she had so loved and
worshiped ever since the days when she led him by the hand down to the
Dame School.
“‘Why, James,’ said his companion and chief counselor, ‘do you think
Grace likes you?’
“‘I don’t know,’ said our hero with a comfortable appearance of
certainty.
“‘But you can’t get her, James, if Uncle Tim is cross about it.’
“‘Fudge! I can make Uncle Tim like me if I have a mind to try.’
“‘Well, then, Jim, you’ll have to give up that flute of yours, I tell
you, now.’
“‘Fa, sol, la--I can make him like me, and my flute, too.’
“‘Why, how will you work it?’
“‘Oh, I’ll work it,’ said our hero.
“‘Well, Jim, I tell you now, you don’t know Uncle Tim if you say so,
for he’s just the settest critter in his way that you ever saw.’
“‘I _do_ know Uncle Tim though, better than most folks; he is no more
cross than I am; and as to his being _set_, you have nothing to do but
make him think he is in his own way when he is in yours--that is all.’
“‘Well,’ said the other, ‘but you see I don’t believe it.’
“‘And I’ll bet you a gray squirrel that I’ll go there this very
evening, and get him to like me and my flute both,’ said James.”
It is needless to say that the clever _Jim_ carried this out to the
letter. He went there that evening; he drove _Uncle Tim’s_ sheep out of
the garden, praised the old man’s bell-flower apples, told stories at
the table, proved that it was not irreverent to use the flute even in
church, and made _Uncle Tim_ admit it; in short he made himself here,
as everywhere, the great favorite. The story turns out as it should,
and the Uncle is filled with joy at the outcome.
This was the substance of the first real story that Harriet Beecher
wrote. It was a simple little story, but it gave promise of the
abilities that she later showed not only in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” but
in the long series of even more artistic, if not more influential,
works in which she has enshrined for us the fading memories of old New
England traditions and customs.
Perhaps when we see the lively quality of this story, and of other
sketches of this period of Harriet Beecher’s life, we may wonder
what has happened to her, and may exclaim how she has changed from
the profound theological discussions of the Litchfield days! Is this
romantic and blithesome spirit the same one that shivered and was so
stoical in the chillness of the Litchfield Hills! How shall we account
for it?
Well, she has come out into the great boundless west whose free spirit
has set her free--that is one way to account for the change. Then,
those earlier studies and tastes may be considered as her attempts to
find her way in the philosophies of the human mind, a struggle from
which she gradually desisted after she had hit upon a practical and
satisfying view of her own, which by showing her how to discharge
each day’s duty, fulfilled her needs. We must recall, too, who were
her favorites among the few great romantic writers that she was able
to find in her father’s sermon-barrels. “The Arabian Nights,” “Don
Quixote,” and above all, Sir Walter Scott were her great discoveries
in Dr. Beecher’s garret. We must remember how well she loved Byron and
how many times she read “Ivanhoe” through in one summer! Thinking of
all this, we realize how she was being prepared to use the novel as the
best expression for her thought when the time should come when she
felt she must speak out something God had given to her to say.
Meantime she wrote many little sketches and stories and sent them to
various magazines: the _Western Monthly_, the _New York Independent_,
the _Godey’s Ladies’ Book_, printed them and paid for them. In this way
her training in the art of composing a story was going on steadily.