CHAPTER XIII

MRS. STOWE THE HOME-MAKER

In January, 1836, Harriet Beecher and Calvin Edward Stowe were quietly

married. A few days later they took a brief wedding journey, going

by stage as far as Columbus; but the roads in an Ohio midwinter were

not much to boast of, and, as a pleasant journey, the trip was not a

success. They were happier when they returned to their own fireside and

sat down there peacefully together. Mrs. Stowe was rather astonished

to find that such a “wisp of nerve” as herself could pass through the

wedding experience with a happiness that was tranquil and serene rather

than overwhelming.

If she had been able to look into the future, however, she must have

been appalled by the view. The darkest period of her life was before

her, a time to try the stoutest soul, a stretch of fourteen years of

struggle with narrowing means and increasing cares. The Seminary that

her father had come into the west to found, and in which Professor

Stowe was the chief pillar of scholarship, did not for various reasons

unconnected with either of these noble self-sacrificing men, increase

in size and financial support as they had hoped it would. Students

became fewer and salaries more and more meager. At last Professor

Stowe, convinced that he could no longer carry the forlorn hope of that

western work with any justice to his family, accepted one of several

offers that came to him to enter upon more advantageous professional

work in the east and removed to Bowdoin College, his own alma mater, in

Brunswick, Maine.

In this period, then, between her marriage in 1836 and the removal

to Maine in January, 1850, we see our brave little woman putting up

the stiffest kind of fight against the most disheartening odds. Under

household conditions that grew less and less encouraging for the

housekeeper, she toiled on. Sickness visited various members of the

family and the burdens grew heavier than the little mother was able to

bear. Her knowledge was deepening, and her heart was enlarging, but

her strength was too sorely tired. Her struggle was tragic; it is sad

to reflect upon, but it is also inspiring! Many who read the pathetic

record of these years of privation and suffering will lose sight of the

great author in their sympathetic interest in the woman, the wife, and

the mother; through her heroism and sweetness and nobility of character

during this crucial time she is endeared to us as no fame and glory

could ever endear her. Her entry into the profession of literature

came through the welcome prospect of a “_douceur_ that might eke out a

domestic accommodation.” Her literary training was gained when she was

“a young mother and housekeeper in the first years of her novitiate,

amid alternate demands from an ever dissolving ‘kitchen cabinet’ and

from the two, three and four occupants of her nursery.” And if she

had not been what Sam Lawson would call “one of these ’ere facultized

persons,” she never could have accomplished the prodigies of work that

came from her hands.

During these years of poverty in Cincinnati six children came to add

their cares and their loves to Mrs. Stowe’s life. First twin daughters

arrived and were named Eliza Taylor and Harriet Beecher. Two years

later Henry Ellis was born. Then came Frederick William, named for the

Prussian King for whom his father had a great admiration. Georgiana

May followed and Samuel Charles was the next. This, omitting the last

little one whose life was sacrificed in the cholera epidemic, made the

circle of five who went with the little mother when she preceded her

husband to the new home in Maine. Soon after her arrival there her

seventh child was born and was named Charles Edward. This son survived

to write in two noble transcriptions the chronicles of her happy and

her tragic experiences.

Her children were the very heart of her life. “When I can stop and

think long enough to discriminate my head from my heels, I must say,”

she said, “that I think myself fortunate in both husband and children.

My children I would not change for all the ease, leisure and pleasure

I could have without them.” To Mrs. Stowe motherhood was literally a

religion. She knew in her heart what the love of a mother could be,

and she said, “God invented mothers’ hearts, and He certainly has the

pattern in His own.” So she found within herself a proof of the love

of God, a beautiful path to spiritual attainment that is open to every

woman that learns in any way to understand the meaning of a mother’s

love.

Mrs. Stowe was a hard working woman, constantly beset by trials of

housekeeping and home-making. Her husband was rich in Greek and Hebrew

and Latin and Arabic, and, alas! rich in nothing else. But then, she

said, she was abundantly enriched with wealth of another sort--meaning

the children from the curly-headed twin daughters down. She considered

that her first and best mission lay in this circle; and she maintained

that to feel the importance of order and system and to carry it out

through the family requires very much the same kind of talent which a

good prime minister needs. She was the kind of housekeeper that she

has shown us in the _Aunt Betsey_ of “The Mayflower,” who was “the

neatest and most efficient piece of human machinery that ever operated

in forty places at once. She was always everywhere, supervising

everything.”

Mrs. Stowe’s dowry consisted of eleven dollars’ worth of china. That

served her for two years. But when her brother, Edward, with his bride,

came to visit her, she found that she could not set the table with the

plates and tea cups she possessed. So she bought an additional set for

ten dollars, and this supply lasted her for many years. Mrs. Stowe

seems to have inherited all the cleverness of her mother, Roxana, in

making and making over, in fitting and polishing up all sorts of things

for the household. While she was getting settled in Maine she wrote

to a sister, “Mrs. Mitchell and myself made two sofas and lounges, a

barrel chair, divers bedspreads, pillow-cases, pillows, bolsters and

mattresses; we painted rooms; we revarnished furniture; we--what didn’t

we do?”[10] She could nail a carpet in the corner and tack gimp on to

mended furniture; she could make a loose screw firm, and, I am certain,

drive in a nail without hitting her fingers. While she was as feminine

as any woman that ever lived, she had the simple practical efficiency

that is--or was--supposed to be characteristically masculine. She could

lay the cloth on the floor and cut out a dress for herself without any

pattern; “I guess I know my own shape,” she said to one who caught her

doing this. She made her husband’s coats and her own shoes. In the

days when the congress gaiters were in fashion, she made very pretty

ones for herself, fitting them nicely; she was an excellent cobbler

and could cut the leather soles and nail on the heel with perfect

art, and when she found the elastic on the sides difficult to set in

she invented a way of lacing the shoe up behind, thus overcoming the

trouble and giving a dainty and trim effect to the foot-gear.

In the winter of 1839 the Belle Rivière was choked up with ice;

provisions could not be brought in and a famine was threatened;

consequently there was a stiff rise in prices. Coarse salt was three

dollars a bushel, rice was eighteen cents a pound, coffee was fifty

cents a pound, white sugar the same; brown sugar was twenty cents a

pound, molasses was one dollar a gallon and potatoes were one dollar a

bushel. What was to be done? They simply did without these things. For

months the diet consisted of bread and bacon, and happy they were to

get that!

In spite of her blithe resistance, Mrs. Stowe’s health for a time gave

way entirely, and she was obliged to go to a water-cure in Vermont.

Her sister Catherine was there at the same time and for much the

same reason; so the two sisters had many hours of communion, and, no

doubt, some fun. While she was there Harriet’s husband, who was rather

inclined to look on the dark side, wrote her a most melancholy letter.

She answered that she wished he could be with her at Brattleboro to

coast down hill on a sled, or go sliding and snowballing by moonlight.

“I would snowball every bit of the hypo out of you,” she said. Then

to amuse him she copied a poem that Kate had just been writing on the

cheerful subject of tombstones. It was accompanied by two pictures of

tombstones they had drawn. On one was inscribed “_Eheu me miserum =

Hic jacket_,” and over the stone on the branch of a tree was hung--a

jacket! The poem, in two cantos, was written, she said, for the

edification of certain dolorous individuals in the Semi-colon.

CANTO I

In the Kingdom of Mortin

I had the good fortin

To find these verses

On tombs and on hearses,

Which I, being jinglish,

Have done into English.

CANTO II

The man that’s so colickish

When his friends are all frolickish

As to turn up their noses

And to turn on their toeses

Shall have only verses

On tombstones and hearses.

The letter closes with an exhortation to him to be patient and bear

trouble as if it were the toothache or a driving rain or anything else

that one cannot escape--which is good sound advice.

Her own power to put this advice into practice and to control her moods

of depression is shown in a letter she once wrote to him when he was

away in search of health.

“It is a dark, sloppy, rainy, muddy, disagreeable day, and I have been

working hard all day in the kitchen, washing dishes, looking into

closets, and seeing a great deal of that dark side of domestic life

which a housekeeper may who will investigate after a girl who keeps all

clean on the outside of cup and platter, and is very apt to make good

the rest of the text in the inside of things.... I am sick of the smell

of sour milk, and sour meats, and sour everything; and then the clothes

will not dry, and no wet thing does, and everything smells mouldy; and

altogether I feel as if I never wanted to eat again.” After enlarging

upon her troubles further in the same whimsical vein, she added

gravely, “Yet do I rejoice in my God, and know in whom I have believed,

and only pray that the fire may consume the dross; as to the gold, that

is imperishable. No real evil can come to me, so I fear nothing for

the future, and only suffer in the present tense. God, the mighty God,

is mine, of that I am sure, and I know that He knows that though heart

and flesh fail, I am all the while desiring and trying for His will

alone.” As to money, for which there was imminent necessity, she said:

“Money, I suppose, is as plenty with Him now as it always has been,

and if He sees it is really best, He will doubtless help me.” At one

time her husband wrote that he was sick a-bed and all but dead; he did

not ever expect to see his family again; wanted to know how she would

manage in case she was left a widow; he knew she would get into debt

and never get out; he wondered at her courage, thought she was very

sanguine, warned her to be prudent, as there would not be much to live

on in case of death, etc., etc. This letter Mrs. Stowe read and poked

into the fire. Then she proceeded with her writing. “You are not able

just now to bear anything, my dear husband,” she replied; “therefore,

trust all to me; I never doubt or despair. I am already making

arrangements to raise money.”

Now, how was the little woman to “raise money”? Of course by writing.

Certain of her friends, pitying her trials, copied and sent a number of

her sketches to some liberally paying _Annuals_ with her name. With the

money earned in this way she bought a feather-bed! This was considered

a profitable investment, and if the Shakespearean fashion of mentioning

a treasured bed in the codicil of a will were to be followed, it might

be suggested that here would be found the article most deserving of

mention as an heirloom in successive testaments!

After this Mrs. Stowe thought that she had discovered the

philosopher’s stone! So when a new carpet or mattress was going to be

needed or when at the close of the year it began to be evident that

her accounts, like _Dora’s_, “wouldn’t add up,” she used to say to her

faithful friend and factotum, the governess, who shared all her joys

and sorrows, “Now, Anna, if you will keep the babies and attend to the

house for one day, I will write a piece and then we shall be out of the

scrape.” She began to make overtures to various editors. She wrote her

husband: “I have sent some pieces to W. If he accepts them and pays you

for them, take the money and use it as you see necessary; if not, be

sure to send the pieces back to me. I am strong in spirit; and God, who

has been with me in so many straits, will not desert me now. I know Him

well; He is my Father, and though I may be a blind and erring child, He

will help me for all that. My trust through all errors and sins is in

Him. He will help us, and His arms are about us, so we shall not sink,

my dear husband.”

Her early successes filled the heart of Professor Stowe with pride and

with the desire that she should adopt a literary career. It was so

written, he declared, in the book of fate, and she should make all her

calculations accordingly. She must get a good stock of health and brush

up her mind. She should drop the “E” out of her name because it only

encumbered the name and interfered with its flow and harmony. “Harriet

Beecher Stowe” it should be, a name euphonious and flowing and full of

meaning. “Then my word for it,” he said enthusiastically, “your husband

will lift up his head in the gate, and your children will rise up and

call you blessed.”

Of the tremendous odds under which Mrs. Stowe for a time pursued

her literary labors, her sister Catherine gives an amusing account.

Harriet had promised that she would get at a certain story when the

house-cleaning was done and when baby’s teeth were through! Catherine

said that the house-cleaning could be deferred one day longer and as to

baby’s teeth, she did not see that there would ever be any end to them;

she must have the manuscript that day, she said, for she had promised

it to the editor. “Come, my dear,” she said, “in three hours you can

finish the courtship, marriage, catastrophe, and all, and this three

hours of your brains will earn enough to pay for all the sewing your

fingers can do for a year to come. Two dollars a page, my dear, and you

can write a page in fifteen minutes!” But Harriet called her sister’s

attention to the fact that there was a baby in her arms and two pussies

by her side, a great baking in the kitchen to be done, and a green girl

to help--it was clearly out of the question for that day at least.

Catherine would not take “no” for an answer.

“‘No, no; let us have another trial. You can dictate as easily as you

can write. Come, I can set the baby in this clothes-basket and give him

some mischief or other to keep him quiet; you shall dictate and I will

write. Now this is the place where you left off; you were describing

the scene between _Ellen_ and her lover; the last sentence was, “Borne

down by the tide of agony, she leaned her head on her hands, the tears

streamed through her fingers, and her whole frame shook with convulsive

sobs.” What shall I write next?’

“‘Mina, put a little milk into this pearlash,’ said Harriet.

“‘Come,’ said I. ‘“The tears streamed through her fingers and her whole

frame shook with convulsive sobs.” What next?’

“Harriet paused and looked musingly out of the window as she turned her

mind to her story. ‘You may write now,’ she said, and she dictated as

follows:

“‘“Her lover wept with her, nor dared he again to touch the point so

sacredly guarded.” Mina, roll that crust a little thinner! “He spoke in

soothing tones.” Mina, poke the coals in the oven.’

“‘Here,’ said I; ‘let me direct Mina about these matters, and write a

while yourself.’

“Harriet took the pen and patiently set herself to the work. For

a while my culinary knowledge and skill were proof to all Mina’s

investigating inquiries, and they did not fail till I saw two pages

completed.

“‘You have done bravely,’ said I as I read over the manuscript; ‘now

you must direct Mina a while. Meantime dictate and I will write.’

“Never was there a more docile literary lady than Harriet. Without a

word of objection she followed my request.

“‘I am ready to write,’ said I. ‘The last sentence was: “What is this

life to one who has suffered as I have?” What next?’

“‘Shall I put in the brown or white bread first?’ said Mina.

“‘The brown first,’ said Harriet.

“‘“What is this life to one who has suffered as I have?”’ said I.

“Harriet brushed the flour off her apron and sat down for a moment in a

muse. Then she dictated as follows:

“‘“Under the breaking of my heart I have borne up. I have borne up

under all that tries a woman--but this thought--oh, Henry!”’

“‘Ma’am, shall I put ginger into this pumpkin?’ queried Mina.

“‘No, you may let that alone just now,’ replied Harriet. She then

proceeded:

“‘“I know my duty to my children. I see the hour must come. You must

take them, Henry; they are my last earthly comfort.”’

“‘Ma’am, what shall I do with these egg shells and all this truck

here?’ interrupted Mina.

“‘Put them in the pail by you,’ answered Harriet.

“‘“They are my last earthly comfort,”’ said I. ‘What next?’

“She continued to dictate:

“‘“You must take them away. It may be--perhaps it must be--that I shall

soon follow, but the breaking heart of a wife still pleads, ‘a little

longer, a little longer.’”’

“‘How much longer must the gingerbread stay in?’ inquired Mina.

“‘Five minutes,’ said Harriet.

“‘“A little longer, a little longer,”’ I repeated in a dolorous tone,

and we burst into a laugh.

“Thus we went on, cooking, writing, nursing and laughing till I finally

accomplished my object. The piece was finished, copied, and the next

day sent to the editor.”

Some writer of to-day has complained that this tale of Mrs. Stowe’s

habit of writing with the bread board in her lap had a great influence

for harm on later writers in that it seems to furnish proof that a

woman who is compelled to combine housekeeping and writing can do the

writing any time and anywhere, right amid the business of the kitchen.

This, of course, Mrs. Stowe would have been the first to deny. In fact,

when it was found that she could write acceptably, and her husband said

she was born for that work and must fulfill her destiny, she sent this

appeal to him: “If I am to write I must have a room to myself which

shall be my room. I have, in my own mind, pitched on Mrs. W.’s room.

I can put the stove in it. I have bought a cheap carpet for it ... and

I only beg in addition that you will let me change the glass door from

the nursery into that room and keep my plants there, and then I shall

be quite happy. All last winter I felt the need of some place where I

could go and be quiet and satisfied.... We can eat by our cooking-stove

and the children can be washed and dressed and keep their playthings

in the room above.... You can study by the parlor fire, and I and my

plants, etc., will take the other room. I shall take my work and all

my things there, and feel settled and quiet.” That she should feel so

was absolutely necessary if she was to do any real work in writing. Her

husband was most responsive. He wrote in reply: “And now, my dear wife,

I want you to come home as quick as you can. The fact is that I cannot

live without you, and if we were not so prodigious poor I would come

for you at once. There is no woman like you in this wide world. Who

else has so much talent with so little self-conceit; so much reputation

with so little affectation; so much literature with so little nonsense;

so much enterprise with so little extravagance; so much tongue with so

little scold; so much sweetness with so little softness; so much of so

many things and so little of so many other things?”

In answer to this beautiful love-making Mrs. Stowe could say: “If you

were not already my dearly-loved husband I should certainly fall in

love with you.” And we do not wonder!

Thus far we have seen the heroine of this life story tried and

disciplined by toil and narrowed means; but the light of love has been

about her and her faith and her buoyancy of spirit have not failed. How

will it be if a great sorrow comes, one that bereaves her of one of her

greatest treasures? It seems that while she had the children about her

she felt that all losses were turned into blessings. In January, 1849,

she writes to her friend Georgiana May to tell her that for six months

after she came home from the water-cure she had had neuralgia in the

eyes so that she could not have any daylight in the room, and that she

had been so burdened and loaded with cares as to drain her dry of all

capacity of thought, feeling or memory; yet, in spite of all that she

cried out with the greatest buoyancy, “Well, Georgy, I am thirty-six

years old! I am glad of it. I like to grow old and have six children

and cares endless. I wish you could see me with my flock all around me.

They sum up my cares, and were they gone I should ask myself, What now

remains to be done? They are my work, over which I fear and tremble.”

The words seemed almost like a premonition of what was to come to her

in the desolate summer of 1849. A malignant epidemic of cholera broke

out in the city and spread alarmingly. One hundred and twenty deaths

occurred sometimes on one day. The Seminary was turned into a hospital

for the care of the sick students. The gloom and sorrow of the time had

to be borne by her alone, for Professor Stowe was himself at this time

at Brattleboro on account of the failure of his own health. At last

her own children were attacked and, after a period of acute suspense,

little Samuel Charles succumbed to the disease. Broken-hearted over

this crushing sorrow, Mrs. Stowe could yet give loving sympathy to

those around her who were suffering as she. “I write as if there were

no sorrow like my sorrow,” she said to her husband, “yet there has been

in this city ... scarce a house without its dead. This heartbreak, this

anguish, has been everywhere, and where it will end God only knows.”

It was her only prayer to God that such anguish as hers might not be

suffered in vain. She felt that she never could be consoled unless the

crushing of her own heart might enable her to work out some great good

to others. This deep prayer was to be fulfilled in a way of which she

had not yet dreamed.

CHAPTER XIV

UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR A WORK

When Mrs. Stowe was teaching in the Hartford School she was not without

pupils that were full of mischief. One of these, being very fond of

animals and bugs of all kinds, used to bring her favorites and install

them in the desk, shutting down the wide cover as a door to their

prison until she should get a chance to show them to her best-loved

teacher, Miss Harriet Beecher, who could look unappalled into the desk

with its nests of spiders or its families of toads, for there was not a

creature that God could create that Harriet did not love. Nearly every

novel that she ever wrote includes in its characters some favorite

dog or cat; they were characters, too, for they were as different

and as individual as people. Then there is her book called “Queer

Little People,” where she tells tales about the Nutcracker family of

Nutcracker Lodge, about _Tip-top_, _Toddy_, and _Speckle_ of the Robin

family, about that fascinating _Hum_, son of _Buz_, the humming-bird

that was blown in at the window on a chilly day at the seashore, about

the _Squirrels_ that lived in a house, about the _Mrs. Magpie_ that put

on such airs and could not be cut, and about all the congregation of

_Carlos_ and _Rovers_ and _Princes_, including the wonderful high-bred

_Giglio_ who was destined to an early demise, and the aristocratic

Italian dog _Florence_ who as they were one day riding along through

the streets of Rome barked a familiar greeting to the Pope. Aunt

Esther’s wonderful power in telling stories about animals, nineteen in

a row on rats only, seems to have been handed down to her clever niece.

Well, this mischievous pupil at Hartford had one morning only one

small katydid in her desk. It was very interesting in its fine dress

of green and silver, with wings of point lace from Mother Nature’s

finest web. It perked itself and stood up airily as if it knew that it

was about to be immortalized in a human story. Harriet’s fancy saw the

possibilities. She said to the student, “You write a story about it.”

“I? Write a story? I couldn’t do it for my life.”

“Yes, you can. Come; you write one and I will write one, too; then we

will read them to each other.”

Harriet wrote that story and the copy of it in her own hand is to-day

one of the treasures of that same pupil. The tale was also published

later in “Queer Little People.” Strangely enough this story may serve

to prove what Harriet Beecher Stowe’s feeling was even in her early

life on the great matter that she made the theme of her greatest book.

The story is this: _Miss Katydid_ consulted her cousin, the gallant

_Colonel Katydid_, about the invitations to a grand party that

she wanted to give. She was to ask only the higher circles, the

_Fireflies_, of course, and the _Butterflies_; also the _Moths_, even

though they were rather dull people, indelicately ate up ermine capes

and got indigestion thereby. Then they must have that worthy family,

the _Bees_, of course; the _Bumblebees_, too, who were so dashing and

brilliant; the spiteful _Hornets_, just because they were so spiteful

and must not be offended, and the plebeian _Mosquitoes_ since they were

becoming literary and had very sharp pens, and--the _Crickets_--should

they be asked? The _Locusts_, of course, a very old and distinguished

family, and the _Grasshoppers_, though they were not of much account,

but the _Crickets_--no! One must draw the line somewhere.

“I thought they were nice, respectable people,” said _Colonel Katydid_.

“O yes--very good people. But you must see the difficulty.”

“My dear cousin, I am afraid you must explain.”

“Why, their color, to be sure. Don’t you see?”

“Oh, that’s it, is it? Excuse me, but I have been living in France

where these distinctions are wholly unknown, and I have not yet got

myself in the train of fashionable ideas here.”

“Well, then, let me teach you. You know we republicans go for no

distinctions except those created by Nature herself, and we found our

rank upon color, because it is clearly a thing that none has any hand

in but our Maker. You see?”

“Yes, but who decides what shall be the reigning color?”

“I’m surprised to hear the question. The only true color--the only

proper one--is _our_ color, to be sure. A lovely pea-green is the

precise shade on which to found aristocratic distinction.... Society

would become dreadfully mixed if it were not fortunately ordered

that the _Crickets_ are as black as jet. The fact is that a class to

be looked down upon is necessary to all elegant society, and if the

_Crickets_ were not black, we could not keep them down, because, as

everybody knows, they are often cleverer than we.... Their being black

is a convenience, because, as long as we are green and they black, we

have a superiority that never can be taken from us. Don’t you see now?”

The _Colonel_ saw. The party was held; the _Crickets_, being very

musical, were asked to play for the dancing and came in concourses to

do so. The ball went on until daybreak, so that it seemed that every

leaf in the forest was alive. In fact those dissipated _Katydids_ kept

up this sort of thing till _Parson To-whit_ preached against it and

even till the celebrated _Jack Frost_ epidemic occurred in the month of

September.

Plainly Harriet had made up her mind that color was never a fit basis

for social distinctions. One could, perhaps, even further back in

her life, find sources for the conviction that to hold any person in

a subject state because of the color of his skin was the greatest

injustice. She had in Litchfield heard her father preach sermons on the

subject of slavery and offer prayers for the slaves that had made her

heart throb and ache. And when her Aunt Mary, spoken of in an earlier

chapter, came from San Domingo and told of the sufferings of slaves as

she had witnessed them there, her feeling was deepened and intensified.

As early as 1837 Catherine Beecher published a small book called

“An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism with Reference to the Duty of

American Females.” It was written in answer to a movement to induce

women to join the Abolition Society. She opposed this movement

strongly. She agreed with the members of the society in thinking

slavery an evil, but she was most disinclined to any radical measures

against it. Indeed she spent most of her time in criticizing the unwise

and hasty measures of the abolitionists, their undue urgency and

sledgehammer methods.

Sister Catherine, however, showed some foresight when she said, “It

is my full conviction that if insurrection does burst forth, and there

be the least prospect to the cause of the slave, there will be men

from the North and West,[11] standing breast to breast, with murderous

weapons, in opposing ranks.” She counseled calm, rational Christian

discussion as the only proper method of securing the ends of safety and

peace. It seems that Catherine, with all her acumen, did not in the

least realize that this was to be a case where benignity, urbanity,

meekness and benevolence would not serve; and while she touches the

idea of a possible “standing breast to breast with murderous weapons in

opposing ranks,” the very fact that she can speak of it so calmly shows

that it is now a matter of rhetoric with her rather than of shuddering

prophecy. In her serene unconsciousness that the forces of war were

even then forming, Catherine Beecher was not by any means alone. Almost

to the last minute many, or perhaps most, of our great statesmen

did not in the least imagine that sections of a people speaking one

language, consecrated in their close relationship by like struggles

in the past and united by like ideals and hopes for the future, could

be separated by the sword over a mere difference of opinion as to the

matter of holding slaves. We must try to remember that no one was

really aware of this beforehand or we shall fail to understand why the

formation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s thought on this subject was so

gradual. No doubt she was influenced by such a statement of views as

her sister made in her book; as a result of this, and perhaps of other

influences of like kind, she was for years trying to keep the subject

of slavery as much as possible out of her mind. To her it was a horror

in a distant part of the world that she could do nothing to mitigate,

and if she should let her mind dwell upon it, she would be unable to

do the duties that lay at hand. It seemed a subject “too painful to

inquire into, and one that advancing light and civilization would live

down.”[12]

Meantime she was being quietly prepared in one corner of the world

for a fit and not inconspicuous part in the thrilling drama of

emancipation. She seems to have had a real human interest in the

negroes as the expression of a certain individual and racial character.

Nearly every novel she wrote had first or last a negro character. These

dusky people of her imaginary world if placed by themselves would form

a collection of highly individualized portraits, all taken from her

picture gallery of actual memories. At Easthampton, Dr. Beecher had

preached to an adjacent colony of colored people and when the family

moved to Litchfield “one Dinah” and “one Zillah” came with the caravan

and formed a very necessary part of the household at the parsonage.

There were always colored servants to help about the work in the big

Beecher home. One of these, whose name was Candace, a portly old black

washerwoman, would sometimes take the little Harriet aside and tell

her with tears about the saintly virtues of her departed mother. When

Harriet visited her aristocratic relatives in Guilford and was taught

the catechism by her Aunt Harriet, black Dinah, along with Harry, the

bound boy, ranged at a respectful distance behind her, was taught also.

“Dine” was a great friend of Harriet’s; they had many frolics together

and the black playmate told the little girl many stories and made

herself very interesting.

When the Beechers came to live in Litchfield they found colored people

still living there who had been born slaves. “Old Grimes,” famous

in song and story, was a Litchfieldian slave; his character was

sufficiently notorious for his death to be chronicled in the affecting

lines:

Old Grimes is dead, that good old soul,

We ne’er shall see him more;

He used to wear an old blue coat

All buttoned down before.

This happened in the early days, but we would fain believe that the

song was a favorite by the Parsonage fireplace.

The Beechers considered their dark-skinned household helpers as members

of the family, and absent children invariably included them when they

sent messages of affection back to the home. When the Beecher party

were pausing in New York on their way to Ohio, the faithful Zillah came

to call upon them; Harriet said that she was quite unchanged, her voice

soft as ever, as she told them that she was now in very comfortable

circumstances. Harriet said that she would be glad if she were quite

sure to fill up her chink in this mortal life as well as Zillah did!

All of these negroes were the descendants of the slaves of an earlier

period, long since freed, who had lived for many generations on terms

of equality and industrial exchange among gentle, high-born people.

Harriet had known and met them on terms of mutual respect. It would

have been inconceivable to her to enter into relations as owner and

slave with that companionable “Dine” or that soft-voiced, ladylike

Zillah.

As a result of her experience, she approached the slave question not as

a mere theorist. It is evident that it cannot with truth be said that

her study of it dated from the time of her settlement in Cincinnati;

but it is certain that when she did come to live in Ohio, further

opportunities were given her to know the conditions in her own country

in regard to this matter. In New England she had been in a land of

theories of human freedom; now she was to come into contact with facts;

she was to have her heart bleed for the human misery and oppression

which she saw.

The Belle Rivière was the dividing line between slave country and free

country, Kentucky on the south being a slave state and Ohio on the

north being ardently anti-slavery. And after the movement for freeing

the slaves began, there was formed an “underground railroad”--that is,

a series of farmhouses and homes that served as stations, at convenient

distances from each other, where friendly people lived with whom the

escaping slaves could find shelter, from Cincinnati all across the

state to Canada. By this means any fugitive could be taken by night

on horseback or in a covered wagon from station to station, until he

passed beyond the Canadian boundaries where he was under the protection

of the British power.

It is evident that there was at that time scarcely a spot in the United

States where the excitement and irritation of the slavery agitation ran

so high. People in Cincinnati had “property” (consisting of slaves)

over the line in Kentucky and people in Kentucky were seeking their

“property” that was running off to Ohio.

Negroes were negotiable currency; they were collateral security on half

the contracts that were at that time being made between the thriving

men of Cincinnati and the planters of the adjoining slave states. It

was natural that when the structure of business included this kind of

property and no one was willing to open the case of the rightfulness

of keeping possession in that form at all, the excitement of the

discussion should rise to a great pitch. It did reach such a height at

last that there were mobs in the streets and danger to the lives of all

about the city and the region.

Meantime Mrs. Stowe’s family were pursuing the even tenor of their

way in the Walnut Hills suburb. Her husband was busied with Biblical

exegeses, and she was giving her attention chiefly to pinafores and

dishwashing; but each of them took the liveliest interest in what was

going on. Mrs. Stowe’s brother Henry was one of the editors of the

_Cincinnati Journal_ and he took a great part in the activities of the

hour; Mrs. Stowe also did some writing for his paper. Yet all this is

in the very midst of the period in her life when, as she afterward

said, she was trying her best not to think of the workings of slavery

at all, because she did not see what could be done about it and could

not bear to think about a wrong that she could do nothing to prevent!

Meantime the circle of friends about Mrs. Stowe must have thrashed out

the whole subject, trying, as were many people elsewhere, to decide

what was the right course to pursue. Good people felt that something

ought to be done but were divided as to what was the wisest step

to take first. There were extremists on both sides and many angry

differences of opinion. Mrs. Stowe thought that no one could have the

system of slavery brought home to him without an irrepressible desire

to do something; but what was there to be done?

For a time she, with many others, believed that the solution must lie

in some intermediate position, in some scheme like the proposal of the

Colonization Society to send the negroes back to Africa, or perhaps in

some segregation plan. That a civil war could be the outcome of the

disagreement was not imagined.

Among the students in the Theological Seminary was a young enthusiast

named Theodore Weld who, in a lecturing tour through the southern

states, had seen much of slavery and slave owners, and who, as a

result, held the strongest views against the system, which he did not

hesitate to declare. He had converted to his views Mr. J. G. Birney,

of Huntsville, Alabama, who then proceeded to free his slaves and

become an ardent supporter of the doctrine. Together with Dr. Bailey of

Cincinnati he founded a paper called _The Philanthropist_. His strong

anti-slavery utterances in this paper aroused much question in that

city in the summer and fall of 1836.

As matters grew more serious the excitement increased. The printing

establishment was mobbed and when Mrs. Stowe saw her brother Henry

putting pistols in order, declaring, with set face, that he stood ready

to fight if need be, she could see how critical was the time. The mobs

even threatened the houses of all that professed abolition sentiments

and there was danger that the Theological Seminary might be attacked.

From her home at Walnut Hills, Mrs. Stowe could see the light of the

burning houses upon the sky for many nights. What was right to think or

do, she could not see, but whatever the outcome was she thought that

the rule of mob was wrong. While she believed the cause was a just

one, she deplored the excesses of the excited people. As for herself,

she was not afraid. They were protected, she said afterward in her

funny way, by the distance of the Seminary from the city and by the

providential depth and adhesiveness of the Cincinnati mud. She was,

however, excited, indignant, and thoroughly aroused. She hoped that Mr.

Birney would stand his ground in his fireproof building and assert his

rights. If she were a man, she cried, she would go and she believed she

could take good care of at least one window.

By this time Mrs. Stowe had gained some practical knowledge of what

the slavery system really meant. When she had been but one year in

Cincinnati she had gone with friends to visit a plantation across the

river. Here she had seen a happy prosperous slave life, under owners

that seemed to be the sincere well-wishers of the negroes who served

them. There was little to shock or distress her in what she saw. Most

of the day she moved about as one in a dream. She sat apart, heeding

not the antics and gambols of the little darkies. But we know that the

scenes she saw that day were unconsciously laid up in her memory to be

recalled when the building of the book had come into her mind and she

needed the material for her great purpose. Years afterward, when the

friend who accompanied her on that Kentucky visit read the account of

the doings on the Shelby Farm as Mrs. Stowe depicted them in the “Uncle

Tom’s Cabin,” she saw in the description an exact correspondence to the

events of that day as she remembered them.

Here was, then, a picture of the slave system at its best. Perhaps

her gravity and absorption during the picnic merriment of the day was

caused by the thought that the owners of the happy plantation had it in

their power to separate any husband and father there from his family

or any little girl from her mother, and, if he needed the money, sell

them to slave traders who would carry them “down the river” to be lost

to their own forever. Of what such a fate might mean Mrs. Stowe learned

from her brother Charles, who acted for some months as collecting agent

for a New Orleans commission house. On one of the trips up the Red

River he had come upon a plantation where the slaves were treated with

a brutality almost indescribable. Of this he tried to draw a faithful

picture in his next letter to his sister, and she had thus placed in

her storehouse another chapter for the book she was unconsciously

preparing to write. Almost incredible as it may seem, the Legree

plantation was, therefore, a scene taken directly from life. In another

letter Charles Beecher told how from the deck of a steamer on which he

was traveling he had seen a slave mother seek death by springing into

the river with her child clasped to her bosom. She preferred death for

herself and her child rather than to allow her little girl to enter the

life into which she knew she would be sold.

Still other ways of seeing the under side of the movement that was

going on were being afforded the quiet little woman in the Cincinnati

suburb. Every month there was something happening. A press that

printed abolition matter was destroyed, a house was mobbed, a free

negro was kidnapped, the shop of an abolitionist was riddled, or

a negro schoolhouse razed to the ground. And in the mobs of 1840

there was a general attack upon the negro population in the midst of

which rescued slaves were caught and hurried back across the line to

their plantations. Houses were battered down by cannon, violence and

crime naturally followed in the wake of mob law. The smoke of the

conflagration could be seen from the house where Mrs. Stowe lived and

the sorrowful processions of colored people with what remained of

their possessions starting out for Canada, passed by her door; mothers

passed with children in their arms or toddling along by their side, and

discouraged men, bearing heavy burdens. Sometimes at night she heard

the rattle of a big covered wagon in which she would be sure was an

escaping woman being helped to the border.

In such ways as these Mrs. Stowe was unconsciously trained for a

special work. So far the preparation had been mostly by hearsay.

The practical demonstrations that followed it were to be even more

effective.

CHAPTER XV

THE GREAT INSPIRATION

That charming writer and whole-souled man, Colonel T. W. Higginson,

somewhere tells us that all the things he ever heard or read about

slavery did not fix in his soul such a hostility to it as a single

scene in a Missouri slave market that he once saw. He says that as

he sat here, a purchaser came in to buy a little girl to wait on his

wife. Colonel Higginson saw three little sisters brought in who were

from eight to twelve years old; they were mulattoes, with sweet, gentle

manners; they had evidently been taken good care of, and their pink

calico frocks were clean and whole. He saw the gentleman choose one of

them and heard him ask her, good-naturedly enough, if she did not wish

to go with him. She burst into tears and said, “I would rather stay

with my mother.”[13] But her tears were as powerless, of course, as so

many salt drops from the ocean.

That was the story. All the horrors of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” he said,

all the stories told him by fugitive slaves, the scarred backs he

afterward saw by dozens among colored recruits, did not impress him

as did that hour in the gaol. The whole probable career of that poor,

wronged, motherless, shrinking child passed before his mind. It seemed

to him that a man must be utterly lost to all manly instincts who would

not give his life to overthrow such a system; and he thought that a

woman who could tolerate, much less defend it, could not herself be

true, could not be pure, or must be fearfully and grossly ignorant.

Of such ignorance as this no one can accuse Mrs. Stowe. The personal

touch that should fire knowledge into passion and make her keenly feel

what had been hitherto but a part of her theory she also was to receive.

From her earliest housekeeping she had had “help” from the colony of

Cincinnati colored people. In the year 1839 a certain colored girl came

to work for her who had been a slave, but who had been brought by her

mistress into Ohio and left there, and thus by the laws of Ohio made

free. But by this time a new national requirement was under discussion

called the Fugitive Slave Law; by this law the people of such a state

as Ohio were to be commanded to give back to their masters all colored

persons found in their territory, unless they had been set free by

special papers stating the fact and showing that payment had been made

to the former owners. By this law the master of the girl that worked

for Mrs. Stowe could come over the line and if he could find his former

slave could reclaim her. And all people were to be required to aid the

owners to gain possession of their runaway slaves. People who did not

believe in the justice of such a law as this thought it right to evade

it; and among these was the Beecher family. So when it was known that

the former master of the girl was in the city looking for his property,

Professor Stowe and Henry planned to conceal the girl from him. They

put the fugitive in a carriage and together drove out into the country

in the darkest hours of a dismal, stormy night. Following along Mill

Creek to the first “station” in the underground railway, they put

her in the care of the sturdy Quaker farmer, Mr. John Vanzandt, who

protected her until she could be taken further on her way to Canada.

This is the law that is referred to in Chapter IX of “Uncle Tom’s

Cabin” by _Mrs. Bird_, that timid, blushing little woman who was about

four feet in height, had mild blue eyes and a peach-blow complexion,

and the gentlest, sweetest voice in the world; as for her courage, a

moderate-sized cock turkey had been known to put her to rout at the

very first gobble, and a stout house dog of moderate capacity would

bring her into subjection merely by a show of his teeth. And yet when

she heard of this new law she stood up before her husband (who was

a Senator and had voted for it!) and cried out, “Now, John, I want

to know if you think such a law as that is right and Christian?” Her

husband, the Senator, tried to argue her out of her prejudice, but did

not succeed; and then, as every one remembers, this same sound-hearted

Senator was the first to let his heart have sway when one of the poor

runaways came distressed and hunted to the door asking for rescue.

It was _Eliza_, who had made her way across the river, springing from

ice-block to ice-block, in the way so often pictured, and, strange to

say, so true also to the fact. Kind _Mrs. Bird_ made her comfortable

on a settle by the fire. After this _Eliza_ told the pathetic story

of her escape and gave the real deep reason why she desired to leave

her home in Kentucky. It was not merely a passion for freedom, though

that intensely American trait was no doubt the fundamental cause why

many colored people were willing to leave owners that gave them good

homes and had not been specially unkind to them to launch out upon a

hazardous attempt to win support in commercial lines for which they had

no training. Let us read this passage, and find in it the aspect that

most appealed to the soul of Harriet Beecher Stowe.

“‘Were you a slave?’ said Mr. Bird.

“‘Yes, sir; I belonged to a man in Kentucky.’

“‘Was he unkind to you?’

“‘No, sir; he was a good master.’

“‘And was your mistress unkind to you?’

“‘No, sir--no! My mistress was always good to me.’

“‘What could induce you to leave a good home, then, and run away, and

go through such dangers?’

“The woman looked up at Mrs. Bird with a keen, scrutinizing glance, and

it did not escape her that she was dressed in deep mourning.

“‘Ma’am,’ she said suddenly, ‘have you ever lost a child?’

“The question was unexpected, and it was a thrust on a new wound; for

it was only a month since a darling child of the family had been laid

in the grave.

“Mr. Bird turned around and walked to the window, and Mrs. Bird burst

into tears; but, recovering her voice, she said:

“‘Why do you ask that? I have lost a little one.’

“‘Then you will feel for me. I have lost two, one after another, ...

and I had only this one left.... And, ma’am, they were going to take

him away from me--to _sell_ him--sell him down south, ma’am, to go all

alone--a baby that had never been away from his mother in his life! I

couldn’t stand it, ma’am.... And when I knew the papers were signed,

and he was sold, I took him and came off in the night; and they chased

me--the man that bought him and some of Mas’r’s folks--and they were

coming down right behind me, and I heard ’em. I jumped right on to the

ice; and how I got across I don’t know--but, first thing I knew, a man

was helping me up the bank.’”

This picture, then, shows us what it was that seemed most terrible to

the mother heart of Mrs. Stowe. When _Mrs. Bird_ came to hunt for some

clothing that she could give to _Eliza_ and her child, she sought the

drawer where the precious treasures of her own lost baby were sacredly

stored. She “opened the little bedroom door adjoining her room, and,

taking the candle, set it down on the top of the bureau there; then

from a small recess she took a key, and put it thoughtfully in the lock

of a drawer, and made a sudden pause, while two boys, who, boylike, had

followed close on her heels, stood looking with silent, significant

glances at their mother....

“Mrs. Bird slowly opened the drawer. There were little coats of many

a form and pattern, piles of aprons, and rows of small stockings; and

even a pair of little shoes, worn and rubbed at the toes, were peeping

from the folds of a paper. There was a toy horse and wagon, a top, a

ball--memorials gathered with many a tear and many a heartbreak. She

sat down by the drawer, and, leaning her head on her hands over it wept

till the tears fell through her fingers into the drawer; then suddenly

raising her head she began with nervous haste selecting the plainest

and most substantial articles and gathering them into a bundle.

“‘Mamma,’ said one of the boys, ‘are you going to give away _those_

things?’

“‘My dear boys,’ she said softly and earnestly, ‘if our dear, loving

little Henry looks down from Heaven he would be glad to have us do

this. I could not find it in my heart to give them away to any common

person--to anybody that was happy; but I give them to a mother more

heart-broken and sorrowful than I am; and I hope God will send his

blessings with them!’”

Mrs. Stowe herself had learned what it means to the mother to have her

child taken from her. In the depths of her own sorrow, when her most

beautiful and beloved boy was lying on his dying bed, she had prayed

that her anguish might not be suffered in vain. Her prayer was being

answered in the great comprehension coming to her that the separation

of the family tie was the most poignant wrong in the system of slavery.

This feeling she embodied supremely in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” the very

epic of human compassion. At the time of writing this great book her

mind was full, her hand was trained, her soul was aflame. When the

great inspiration came she was not disobedient to the heavenly vision,

but asking no question how or why, she wrote as she was moved to write.

How this happened is now to be told.

In the year 1850 the Stowe family were having their first taste of a

drizzling, inexorable, northeast storm in the State of Maine. It was

while they were getting settled in this new home that the news came

to them of the final passing of the Fugitive Slave Act--an event that

sent sweeping across the north a furore of indignation. On her way to

the new home in Brunswick, Maine, Mrs. Stowe stayed for ten days in

Boston at the home of her brother Edward. Here she was in the very

hotbed of the abolitionists; and as she heard of the sufferings of the

slaves that were risking all to reach the Canada line beyond which they

were safe, and of the cruelties inflicted upon those so hapless as to

be taken back to their former owners, she cried, “It is incredible,

amazing, mournful! I feel as if I should be willing to sink with it,

were all this sin and misery to sink in the sea!” The cry of this

great sorrow followed her after she was settled in her new home; she

remembered all these things and pondered them in her heart; and when

she bent over her own new child as he lay sleeping beside her at night,

and thought of the slave mothers whose babies had been taken away from

them, her tears fell thick upon his sleeping face.

Time went on and things did not get any better. Mrs. Stowe was writing

to people everywhere north and south to gather unimpeachable testimony

on all phases of the slave system, but nothing she heard in any way

modified her opinion or her feeling. One day her sister-in-law, Mrs.

Edward Beecher, in Boston, wrote her: “Now, Hattie, if I could use

a pen as you can I would write something that would make this whole

nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is.” This touched Mrs.

Stowe to the quick. She determined that she would heed the call. “I

will write something--I will if I live,” she said as she rose with

a determined gesture. She wrote to thank her sister-in-law for the

letter. She said: “As long as the baby sleeps with me nights I cannot

do anything, but I will do it at last. I will do that thing if I live.”

About this time her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, came to visit her.

They sat up all night talking over the thrilling question of the hour.

She confided to him that she intended to write something. He told

her to do this, and he would scatter the book as thick as leaves of

Vallombrosa!

Soon after this, as she was sitting among the worshipers at the Sabbath

morning communion service, a vision passed before her mind, showing

in minutest detail one whole scene of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Even as

Colonel Higginson, in the passage quoted a few pages back, saw in

his imagination the inevitable life of that little girl in the slave

market, so she realized with the vividness of a dream, the central

climax of her book. It was the death scene of the wonderful old negro,

_Uncle Tom_, who in the midst of his lowly state is always made to

preserve a certain dignity and even charm. She has pictured him as a

man for whose character only the highest reverence can be felt. His

spirit was of a meekness so Christ-like that no outrage, no suffering,

could ruffle its calm, nor could the steadfastness of his faith be

shaken. Yet the effect is not of softness, but rather of a stern and

commanding strength. After a life that illustrated nearly all of the

ups and downs of slavery, a final misfortune came to him in the fact

that he chanced to know about the plans for escape that some of his

fellow-slaves had made. To compel him to yield up these secrets he was

at the command of his master brutally whipped all one night long, and

he died the next day as the result of this punishment. Yet toward this

merciless master he cherished no ill feeling. Like his Lord and Master,

he returned blessing for cursing; he was anxious only for the salvation

of his enemies. “‘He ain’t done me no real harm--only opened the gate

of the kingdom for me; that’s all!’ he said.” His last words were,

“‘Who--who--who shall separate us from the love of Christ?’” And with a

smile he fell asleep.

The description of this scene Mrs. Stowe wrote down at white heat,

and when the first draft was made she called her children and had

them stand about her while she read it to them. As she read the tears

streamed down their faces, and one of them, a boy ten years old,

clinched his fists and cried, “Oh, mamma, slavery is the most cruel

thing in the world!” After a while their father came in and he read and

cried, too. He said to her, “You must do something with this,” and she

answered quietly, “I mean to.” From then on, as she had opportunity,

amid extraordinary household duties, the care of six children and a

new baby, with various guests, with unskilled help, and with myriad

distractions, she wrote on until the great book was finished. Her mind

was so full of the subject and her vision of the incidents for the

story was so clear that the words came rushing to her brain faster than

she could write them down. She had the feeling that the story was in

possession of her and not she in possession of the story; or rather as

if some divine power were urging her on and giving her the words to set

down. This strange experience was remembered by her as a time when the

Lord Himself used her as an instrument of His purpose.

CHAPTER XVI

“UNCLE TOM’S CABIN” AND ITS INFLUENCE

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was dispatched chapter by chapter, almost before

the ink was dry, to the editor of _The National Era_, an anti-slavery

paper published in Washington, in which the story ran from June, 1851,

to April, 1852. The modest author who was accustomed to think of

herself as a mere household drudge with very few ideas beyond babies

and housekeeping, did not dream what was in store for her. In fact,

she had at first a profound feeling of discouragement; she feared the

book would fall to the ground unnoticed and do no good for the cause.

That this might not happen, she sent copies to significant persons in

England and in her own country to call their attention to the work and

to win their interest if possible. Charles Dickens, Prince Albert,

Macaulay, Charles Kingsley, Lord Carlisle and the Earl of Shaftsbury

received copies and acknowledged them in courteous and feeling letters.

But Mrs. Stowe found that far from needing help from the great to make

it find its way, her book of love and pity had struck a chord in the

universal heart. It can almost be said of her as it was of Byron that

she awoke one morning and found herself famous. No book in American

literature ever achieved so immediate and so wide a popularity. There

was an unprecedented call for it. Three thousand copies went off the

first day, and soon eight power presses were kept busy night and day

to supply the demand. It swept over the country, and people everywhere

were reading it into the small hours of the night, weeping and sobbing

over the death of little _Eva_ and over the heroism of _Uncle Tom_.

Before the year was over, more than three hundred thousand copies

had been sold. As Emerson said, it “found readers in the parlor, the

nursery and the kitchen of every household.”

The daughter of William Lloyd Garrison, Mrs. Henry Villard, in a

passage recently written, said: “I read it as a little child with tears

and sobs, as did many an older person, thrilled by its recital of the

horrors of slavery, and touched by the kindness of those who were

slaveholders, contrary to their wishes and the dictates of conscience.

A moral whirlwind followed in its path, the anti-slavery agitation

which preceded it having prepared the way for its wonderful reception

in the north.”

Mrs. Stowe was now called the greatest of American women; her book was

declared “a work of undoubted genius”; it was “epoch-making”; Julia

Ward Howe called it an “offering on the altar of a heavenly intuition,

destined to go down to posterity as of supreme desert and of undying

memory.” The poet Whittier wrote: “What a glorious work Harriet

Beecher Stowe has wrought! Thanks for the Fugitive Slave Law! Better

for slavery that law had never been enacted, for it gave occasion for

‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’”

Yet not all the breezes that blew were balmy. There were many

astonished outcries, some execrations. But these things influenced the

mind of the author very little. She knew that they would not change the

heart of her friends toward her, and they could not change the truth.

So what had she to fear?

Very soon editions began to appear in England, and within a year a

million and a half copies had been sold in that country. Through France

and Germany, Italy and Sweden, too, the book went like wildfire. That

good, friendly soul, Frederika Bremer, wrote to Mrs. Stowe that “Uncle

Tom’s Cabin” had been translated and read and praised in Sweden as no

book ever was before, adding that she had an unwavering faith in the

“strong humanity of the American mind.” She said: “It will ever throw

out whatever is at war with that humanity; and to make it fully alive,

nothing is needed but a truly strong appeal of heart to heart, and that

has been done in ‘Uncle Tom.’” In France George Sand wrote a notable

review of the book in which she said that it was no longer permissible

to those that could read not to have read it. The people devour it, she

said; they cover it with tears. In a short time there were few places

in Italy also where “Il Zio Tom” could not be found.

Soon the pebble that had been thrown into the water began to make wider

circles. Florence Nightingale wrote to Mrs. Stowe that the British

soldiers amid the hardships of far eastern campaigns read the story of

heroism. The book was printed at Venice by a fraternity of Catholic

Armenian monks so that in the Armenian language it now was carried

in all the wanderings of that intelligent people, in the towns and

villages along the banks of the Euphrates, through southern Russia, and

in the farthest confines of Persia. At last it reached Bengal, and,

in their own language, became a household book among the Bengalese.

Flying across the straits into Siam, it reached the royal group, where

a member of the family liberated her own slaves to the number of one

hundred and thirty as a result of its influence, and always signed her

own name “Harriet Beecher Stowe,” because of her admiration for the

author of the book. Professors Lin Shu and Wei-I of Peking together

made a translation into Chinese, and Professor Takenobu of the Waseda

University, Tokio, translated it into Japanese.

A poem by Dr. Holmes sums up, in his characteristic merry vein, the

tale of the nations that learned to recognize the author of “Uncle

Tom.” If we should call the roll,

Briton and Frenchman, Swede and Dane,

Turk, Spaniard, Tartar of Ukraine,

Hidalgo, Cossack, Cadi,

High Dutchman and low Dutchman, too,

The Russian serf, the Polish Jew,

Arab, Armenian, and Mantchoo,

Would shout, “We know the lady!”

Of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” Germany has nine separate translations and

France thirteen, besides dramas and abridgments, and chansons, and

Russia has five. In Welsh and in Italian there are three; Finnish and

Flemish must now be included and Hungarian and Illyrian, Portuguese,

Modern Greek and Servian; Wallachian and Wendish and Yiddish are not

in Dr. Holmes’ list, but should be. By 1913 there were sixty-six

translations of this almost universal book, not counting abridgments or

dramas. Of English editions there are forty-three, and in this country,

how many? We have lost count. It would be also quite impossible to add

up the dramatic versions of Eliza’s fateful adventure.

All of this goes to show that Whittier was hardly stretching the truth

when he wrote his poem

To her who world-wide entrance gave

To the log-cabin of the slave,

Made all his wrongs and sorrows known,

And all earth’s languages his own!

It was a long time before people could look at the book fairly and

judge of its literary rank; and even to this day there are writers

who call “Uncle Tom” merely a colossal piece of journalism. It was

indeed written at white heat and with the swiftness of a bird’s flight.

“Hurry! help! hurry! help!” must have been ringing in her ears as she

wrote.

During the winter that she wrote the book she had been running through

with her children the novels of Scott, and Scott is the writer to whom

she is the nearest of kin in the art of writing. There was a time when

the tireless hand of that great story-teller was seen by an observer in

a window across the way, to go back and forth, back and forth, through

the evening and the night and into the wee sma’ hours. This makes us

think of Mrs. Stowe’s smooth fluent script and the lightning swiftness

of her little hand. She wrote like the wind, listening not for the

cackle of literary critics, but to the inner voice that kept saying,

“Write!”

So it happens that its lapses of style, its carelessness of technical

laws have been a stumbling block to some good souls that have fed on

other traditions and theories. The truth is that words grow from age to

age; laws of style perish and new laws blossom out of their graves; but

a torch of human sympathy once truly set alight will burn on forever.

Mr. Howells in “My Literary Passions” says that he felt the greatness

of the book when he first read it; and as often as he has read it since

he has seen more and more clearly that it is a very great novel. He

says that the art in it is very simple and perhaps primitive, yet it is

still a work of art. Its power, however, is to him inexplicable.

This is one of the greatest things that could be said about the book.

It does possess that consummate quality which supreme works of art

always have, namely, that their power over us is great, but that we do

not see why it should be so great. Their charm is inexplicable. Mrs.

Stowe’s fellow genius, George Sand, said that in art there is but one

rule--to paint and to move. By this law, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is a great

work of art. It painted; it made a great people see; and it moves the

whole world. The same generous critic said that Mrs. Stowe may not have

“talent, but she has genius as humanity feels genius. And we ought

to feel,” she said, “that genius is heart, that power is faith, that

talent is sincerity, and success is sympathy, since this book overcomes

us, since it penetrates the breast, pervades the spirit, and fills us

with a strange sentiment of mingled tenderness and admiration for a

poor negro ... gasping on a miserable pallet, his last sigh exhaled

toward God.”

Time alone can pass final judgment on “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Let a

few centuries move by and if as an Epic of Compassion, dissevered

from variable historical associations, it continues to console and to

strengthen, then its place among masterpieces will be secure.

For “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is not a story of slavery; the system of

slavery only happened to be the material out of which the story was

made. It has a far wider meaning as a story of human love and pity. As

such its mission is to carry comfort to any souls that are in doubt

and sorrow. It makes us feel that to have faith is possible and it

reinforces our belief that God will help in time of need. A reading

of “Uncle Tom” has led myriads of distraught souls to a rereading of

the Bible, that book so beloved by the black hero because it gave

him strength to bear his sore trials. In his “Life” of his mother,

published by her son in 1889, Mr. Charles E. Stowe says that “Uncle

Tom’s Cabin” shows that “under circumstances of utter desolation

and despair, the religion of Christ can enable the poorest and most

ignorant human being, not merely to submit, but to triumph--that the

soul of the lowest and weakest, by its aid, can become strong in

superhuman virtue, and rise above every threat and terror and danger in

a sublime assurance of an ever-present love and an immortal life.”

CHAPTER XVII

WANDERING IN FOREIGN LANDS

When “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” had been some four months in the hands of

the people, the publishers sent Mrs. Stowe a check for ten thousand

dollars! Professor Stowe held this magical piece of paper in his hands

and looking helplessly at his wife, said, “Why, Harriet, I never saw so

much money in my life!” He had hoped that the book would be successful

enough in the financial way to buy for her what she very much needed,

a new silk dress. The returns from the sale, however, besides

accomplishing that modest result, also brought within reach many

comforts hitherto unknown in the house of the professor’s family. More

than this, they assured the opportunity for foreign travel and for the

beneficial meeting with people in England and elsewhere who sympathized

with the cause to which Mrs. Stowe had dedicated her heart.

In the spring of 1853, then, we find her starting out for her first

sea voyage. This new experience with that “restless, babbling giant,”

the ocean, was described in her first letter home in her accustomed

merry vein. If you are going to sea, she wrote to her children, you

must have everything ready; you must set your house--that is, your

stateroom--in order as if you were going to be hanged, for you may be

sure that in half an hour after sailing an infinite desperation will

seize you in which the grasshopper will be a burden. Her voyage she

declared gave her a new sympathy for babies who are rocked at home

without so much as a “by your leave”; she thought it no wonder there

are so many stupid people in the world! There were moments, however,

when she could conquer the nervous horror she always had of that “rude,

noisy old servant” of the Lord, and could feel that the ocean was

always obedient to His will, and could not carry her beyond His power

and love, wherever and to whatever it might bear her. At one time on a

later journey she had this faith put to the test when her ship was run

into by another, and she found that it did not fail her, but kept her

calm and serene throughout the ordeal.

When Mrs. Stowe, together with her husband and brother, reached England

a great surprise awaited them. She had had no realization of the real

significance of having written a book of universal pity and love that

would awaken a response in every heart among rich and poor. She was

dazed that so many people came to the boat to meet her, that she

walked up the wharf through a long lane of kindly, welcoming faces,

and that wherever she went in England, and especially in Scotland, her

carriage was run after by wild flocks of sympathetic people anxious to

catch one glimpse of the author of “Uncle Tom.”

She felt, she said, like a child who had set fire to a packet of

gunpowder. And if on the approach to some cathedral door her way was

blocked by the crowd waiting to see her as she passed in, she could

only, in her amazement, quote the words, “What went ye out for to see?

A reed shaken with the wind?” “It seems to me so odd,” she wrote home

from England, “so odd and dreamlike that so many persons desire to see

me; and now I cannot help thinking that they will think when they do,

that God hath chosen the weak things of this world!”

Evidently Mrs. Stowe had very little conceit about herself. She was

always a quiet, unostentatious little body, “a little bit of a woman,”

as she described herself, “just as thin and dry as a pinch of snuff.”

She must have been utterly wanting in vanity, for when she began to be

famous and everybody was desiring to see her, she thought it all simply

wonderful and declared that she was “never very much to look at” in her

best days.

There have been so many things to say about Harriet Beecher that too

little attention has perhaps been given in this book to her personal

appearance. Let us make up for that at one stroke. When the Beecher

children’s stepmother came to live with them she said that the four

youngest children--George, Harriet, Henry and Charles--were all very

pretty, and that Harriet and Henry were as lovely children as she

ever saw. Harriet combined the aquiline Foote brow with the stronger

lines of the Beecher family. She was small in figure and quick in her

movements. Her hands were plastic and mobile, the most controlled and

manageable hands in the world; their motion made a language in itself.

Her dark-brown hair that never lost a warmness of tone until the snow

began to fall upon it, curled about her face, and, in the fashion that

prevailed during her young ladyhood, was allowed to fall in ringlets

on each side. Her eyes were of the blue-gray that takes on all colors

as emotion moves the soul; they had often a far-away dreamy expression

that came from her complete absorption in thought. For instance, at

a luncheon in her honor she did not join in the flow of conversation

at all, but sat absorbed in her own thoughts, explaining afterward

that she had been making the scheme of a new book and thinking out

the characters for it, and had forgotten where she was. In this

respect she was like Tennyson who, under similar conditions, is said

to have remarked only that he had eaten “too much, much too much!” At

other times, however, Mrs. Stowe delighted her fellow guests at some

dinner table by her interest in the subject discussed; her heightened

color, and her shining eyes, together with the ardor and good sense

of her talk, the vivacity of her expression, and the nobility that

characterized her points of view, charmed all that came within her

circle. After such a time the hostess might go away and complain, as

one did, that she had not been told beforehand how beautiful Mrs. Stowe

was! The printed pictures that appeared in the English papers never did

her justice. But she had too little vanity to mind that. When she saw

them she was amazed at the loving kindness of her English and Scottish

friends who could keep up such a warm affection for such a Gorgon.

She thought that the Sphinx at the British Museum must have sat for

most of them. She planned to make a collection of them to carry home

to her children--they would be useful, like the Irishman’s signboard,

to show where the road did not go! These monstrous pictures, however,

did her this service, that everybody was surprised and relieved when

they came to her and found that she was not such a perfect Gorgon after

all! There was one picture made of her about this time, however, that

is worthy of preservation, a beautiful drawing by Richmond. Although

Mrs. Stowe said when she saw it, “I shall look like that when I am in

heaven!”--still many that knew her in earlier years thought it a good

likeness.

Mrs. Stowe found not only curiosity but also friendly welcome among

the English people. One typically pleasant English home was opened to

them at once. The morning after her arrival she was asked to breakfast

at the sister-in-law’s of her host, and on running over in the most

informal way found forty people sitting with bonnets on waiting for

a chance to meet the lion; all of which would have been embarrassing

had not the friendly warmth and cordiality of the circle been made

evident by their smiling faces. As she traveled along, friends arose

everywhere. Now she rested in some delightful, homelike room by a

cheerful fire that flickered on pictures, statuettes, bookcases and all

comfortable things, with an armchair drawn up before it and a pot of

moss on the table set in the center of a round pin-cushion; or if in

the vicissitudes of travel she found herself in the middle of the night

in the street with baggage thrown about her and a vociferous circle of

cabmen declaring they could do no more to discover a lost address, she

would be sure to find shelter in a quiet house which would turn out to

be the very place friends had prepared for her and her party. But it

was not only in the quiet homes that she found welcome; she saw the

routine in a ducal castle from morning prayers on through the joyous

drives and visiting of the day to the putting out of the last candle

at night. With the Queen herself she had what Professor Stowe called

the “pleasantest little interview that ever was.” He described her as a

“real nice little body, with exceedingly pleasant, agreeable manners!”

And four royal children stared their eyes almost out looking at the

author of “Uncle Tom” while the interview was going on.

Mrs. Stowe’s first visit to England was made on the invitation of the

Anti-Slavery Society of Glasgow, and the occasion became therefore

semi-official in its character. Not only was there a great deal of

interest in her personality, but there was also so much enthusiasm

for the cause she was held everywhere to represent that associations

as well as individuals were anxious to meet her and to do honor to

her. Deputations came to greet her from the cities through which she

passed and others that were in the vicinity. Every community seemed

bent upon putting itself on record. At Glasgow there were deputations

from Paisley, Greenock, Dundee, Edinburgh; and not to be outdone by

the mother island, Belfast sent one over from Ireland. At the entrance

to Edinburgh the magistracy of the city met her and made approaches

to her. She was carried through long passages made in the masses of

the people and conducted to a gallery where she took her tea with a

thousand people and thought the teapot of Hadji Baba, the father of

all teakettles, must have been there to go around so large a company.

Enthusiastic meetings were held and speeches were made. For the

quiet little figure on the platform the answer was always given by

her husband whose handsome face and fine presence won everybody to

admiration and regard; and when he said that he could not imagine how

any sort of a written book could have brought forward such expressions

of friendliness as they were showing, that he thought the book had

not been written at all, that he “’spected it grew,” the vociferous

applause of the audience testified not only to their delight in his

sally of wit, but to the fact that they knew by heart their “Uncle

Tom,” and especially their excellent _Topsy_.

They made a practical expression of their sympathy with the cause

Mrs. Stowe represented in wonderful gifts. At Edinburgh a national

penny offering, summed up in a thousand gold sovereigns, was presented

to her on a silver salver; Belfast sent a bogwood casket lined with

gold, carved with national symbols and containing an offering for the

cause; at Surrey Chapel in London she received an inkstand, which

was a beautiful piece of silver work, carved into a group of figures

representing _Religion_ with a Bible in her hand giving liberty to the

slave. A band of children gave her a gold pen, and she made her only

public speech in talking a little to them. Above all other gifts in

interest was that presented by the Duchess of Sutherland at Stafford

House in London, a bracelet made in the form of a slave’s shackle of

ten links and a clasp. On one of the links was inscribed the date of

the abolition of the slave trade March 25, 1807, and of slavery in the

English colonies August 1, 1834. On the clasp was written the number

of signatures to an Address that was presented to Mrs. Stowe on the

occasion of that meeting at Stafford House. The number was 562,448. Of

this Address we shall hear more after a while. On the other links of

the bracelet it was suggested that Mrs. Stowe should have placed the

date of the freeing of slaves in our own country; but Mrs. Stowe did

not at that time believe that she should live to see the day when that

happy event should come about. She was, however, as we know, to have

that good fortune within a dozen years, and to record it upon the other

links of the historic bracelet.

Many of these meetings were marked by tremendous excitement, such

meetings as England has been famous for throughout modern days and

such as have brought about many reforms. Attending such a meeting and

realizing the strength of the feeling that flowed under the outward

expression, Mrs. Stowe said: “I do not believe that there is in all

America more vehemence of democracy, more volcanic force of power, than

comes out in one of these great gatherings in our old fatherland. I saw

plainly enough where Concord, Lexington, and Bunker Hill came from; and

it seems to me there is enough of this element of indignation at wrong,

and resistance of tyranny, to found half a dozen republics as strong as

we are.”

In such ways as these Mrs. Stowe was becoming acquainted with the very

heart of the English and Scottish people. But it was not only the

great and titled that came forward to represent the leading thought

in greeting this woman who stood to them for so much. In the villages

through which they drove and along the roadsides, the so-called common

people were ready with their greetings also. In the doorways everywhere

people stood bowing and smiling, and sometimes running out to offer

flowers; and little boys ran after her carriage crying out that they

knew her by the curls! She wrote: “The butcher came out of his stall

and the baker from his shop, the miller dusty with flour, the blooming,

comely young mother with her baby in her arms, all smiling and bowing

with that hearty intelligent friendly look as if they knew we should

be glad to see them.” Then there were in various cities meetings

especially for the working men; and as her train went along, even at

night, friendly faces were waiting at the stations, good souls watching

through the dark to catch one glimpse of the writer or perhaps to grasp

her hand; then as the train moved away, saying, “Good night!” with

the unmistakable Scotch accent, making her think that she had felt

a throb of the living Scotch heart. Mrs. Stowe felt the spirit that

prompted this reverential tribute, a spirit that makes one blood of

all the families of earth. She, in fact, considered herself altogether

inadequate and disproportionate as an object to call forth such

outbursts of applause; she was most modest in her reception of them,

and believed them to be, as she afterward said to a friend, but the

expression of a great spirit of universal brotherhood, surging forward

in a huge sympathetic wave. Beneath the weight of these honors the New

England simplicity of her character remained unimpaired.

Everything that happened to her she enjoyed to the utmost, and she only

wished that she had a relay of bodies and could slip from a tired one

into a rested one now and then! She began to be so talked out and worn

out that there was hardly a chip of her left. To breakfast with forty

people, lunch with three hundred, take tea with a thousand, and go to

an evening mass meeting and perhaps to more receptions the same night,

would be rather trying to a delicate woman who had come abroad chiefly

to seek rest after the strain of writing a great book. Mrs. Stowe began

to feel a weariness that made seeing people a burden. For besides

answering innumerable letters of invitation and congratulation, besides

all the receptions and dinners and the babble of innumerable voices,

she found that she could not lay her pen entirely aside, but must write

full accounts of everything she saw and enjoyed and heard to send to

her children at home. It is said that the most valuable document of

his time is the “Diary of John Wesley,” because, I suppose, it is so

full of unprejudiced and minutely truthful accounts of things that the

dignified historians have no time to busy themselves with. In the same

way, the series of letters that Mrs. Stowe wrote, afterward published

in two volumes, called “Sunny Memories,” contain observations of men

and things that scarcely another person of her time would have had the

opportunity to gain or to give; these volumes, besides being amusing

and enlightening, will have for the future a distinct historic value.

There were many good times to be enjoyed as they went along on their

journeys. They kept a bright lookout for ruins and all things that

would touch into life their memories of English romance and poetry.

They saw that “city of colleges,” Oxford, which seemed to them a

veritable mountain of museums, colleges, halls, courts, parks, chapels,

and lecture rooms. They took dinner at the White Hart Inn, where the

scene of Shakespeare’s “Merry Wives” was laid; they wandered through

chambers hung with tapestries woven to tell the tale of _Medea_ and

_Jason_; they had a pleasant drive in Hyde Park as Harriet had read

of the heroines of romance doing in old novels; they felt sincere

“dispositions to melancholies” beside the churchyard where the “Elegy”

was composed, and found out only later that their tears had been shed

at the wrong churchyard! They rode on the coach top and listened to the

stories told by the driver just as they would have done in their own

country; they visited the fishing ground of old Isaak Walton; they went

through the great palace at Windsor, and there, above all the splendors

they were chiefly interested in one little wicker baby-carriage they

happened to see standing waiting for its occupant! All the great

works of art Mrs. Stowe saw moved her tremendously; they satisfied a

lifelong hunger. How the lofty arches of the cathedrals touched her

heart! She realized at once that these triumphs of architectural art

give aspiration its noblest symbol, and she found a preparation of mind

for religious emotions in the dusky choirs and the flame-like arches

gorgeous with evening light. Then when she crossed to the continent

and entered the galleries and saw the paintings there and on the walls

of the churches, she was again astonished, delighted, and satisfied as

never before. She was especially overcome when she saw the “Descent

from the Cross” by Rubens. She said: “Art has satisfied me at last. I

have been conquered and that is enough.” This was said before she went

to Italy, where further enjoyments awaited her in later journeys. A

young student of life wishing to make a visit to the great storehouses

of delight in art and history in the European world and not able to

cross the ocean for the purpose, could not do better than read these

perfectly sincere and vital comments upon art, history and things in

general found in Mrs. Stowe’s “Sunny Memories.”

In these “Sunny Memories” we see how much it meant to her to come into

friendly relations with many people whose names had been well known to

her through their books. To a writer the companionship of other writers

means much. Mrs. Stowe had here her great opportunity. It would not

be possible to go over the large circle of great names she came to

know by more than the printed letters. John Ruskin, George Eliot,

Charles Kingsley were among them, besides the long lists of people

whose titles were not their only claim to interest. In Paris there

was another circle of great people, and when she came to Italy, there

were the Brownings with whom a warm friendship arose, and many other

very congenial people. Then on one of her return journeys she had the

pleasure of having for companions Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne and

Mr. and Mrs. James T. Fields.

Among the happiest times that Mrs. Stowe had were the social gatherings

in England with some of these literary friends. Seated at dinner where

there were perhaps thirty or more at the table, with Macaulay at her

right and Milman at her left, she was sometimes embarrassed with

riches; she wanted to hear what they were both saying; but by the use

of the faculty by which we play the piano with both hands, she got on,

she said, very comfortably.

We can quite imagine that in these conversations it must have been

sometimes a little startling to have this fresh vivid intelligence

turned upon the customs that have in England had the benefit of long

settled tradition. At one dinner she said that it had always seemed

to her a curious thing that in the height of English civilization one

vestige of savagery should remain, namely, sending a whole concourse of

strong men out to hunt a single poor little fox or hare, creatures so

feeble and insignificant who can do nothing to defend themselves; to

her it hardly seemed consistent with manliness. Now, she said, if you

had some of our American buffaloes, or a Bengal tiger, the affair would

be something more dignified and generous. The gentlemen who heard this

only laughed and went on to tell more stories about fox hunting!

Mrs. Stowe was of course confronted with the traditional question as to

how the English ladies compared with those of America in beauty. When

her turn came she said within herself, “Now for it, patriotism!” Then

she assured the questioner that she had never seen more beautiful women

anywhere than she had in her own country. But she had to admit that the

English ladies held their beauty longer than did those of this country.

Why was it? Was it the sea coal and fog that made the women of England

preserve their glowing, radiant, blooming freshness till long past

fifty? Tell us, Muses and Graces! she cried. Then she suggested various

reasons: our close-heated rooms, our hot biscuits and hot corn cakes

made with saleratus, our worry over maid service, our climate, and so

on. The American woman is possessed, she thought, with the ambition to

do the impossible, which is the cause of the death of a third of the

women of this country, and by the impossible she means that they try to

play not only the head of the family but the head, hand, and foot, all

at once! Certainly the undaunted bravery of the American woman in her

difficult home arrangements can never be enough admired. Speaking of

stoves, she said that she never saw one in England. (This was in 1853.)

Bright coal fires in grates of polished steel were still the lares and

penates of old England. If there was one thing in her own country that

she was inclined to mourn, it was the closing up of the cheerful open

fire, with its bright lights and dancing shadows, and the planting on

our domestic hearth of that sullen, stifling gnome, the air-tight. She

agreed with Hawthorne in thinking the movement fatal to patriotism; for

who would fight for an air-tight?

One of the things that Mrs. Stowe noticed in England was that the

distinguished people live so remarkably public a life. English

newspapers told a great deal more about the concerns of the notable

people than American papers tell: where the nobility were staying now,

where they would go next, what they had for dinner, what they wore--all

these things the English newspapers deemed important. And Mrs. Stowe

was surprised also to have them take somewhat the same interest in her,

even recording it when she had a dress made, and complaining that she

sent it to a dress-maker of whom they did not approve!

When Mrs. Stowe came to France she noticed the ready enthusiasm of

the French for all things beautiful, and she compared this with the

Puritan distrust of beauty for its own sake which she had seen and

felt in New England. She was, of course, not the only one who has felt

this about our serious forefathers and their view of life. Now she had

found a people that could be equally enthusiastic about a barrel of

potatoes and the adorning of a room. She observes: “But did not He that

made the appetite for food make also that for beauty? and while the

former will perish with the body, is not the latter immortal?” By this

we see how far the soul of Harriet Beecher has progressed since the

days when she found her love of literature a snare in the way of her

spiritual progress.

Mrs. Stowe was delighted with Paris. She was released from care; she

was unknown and unknowing. She employed herself in wandering about

the shops, the streets and boulevards, seeing and hearing the life of

Paris. She wished the children at home could see these Tuileries with

their statues and fountains, these family groups under the trees, the

men and women chatting, reading aloud or working muslin, the children

driving hoops, playing ball, all chattering volubly. Afterwards she

was able to give the children the opportunity to see all this when she

brought the whole company to spend a winter in Paris to study French.

But the relief from the necessity of seeing people, which would have

been so great a pleasure to her if she had not been too tired for it,

did not stay with her very long in France, nor in Switzerland whither

they next went. Here also the fame of the author had gone before her.

All knew the book; they stood in rows to see the author and to ask her

to write another that should while away their long winter evenings as

“Uncle Tom” had done. “Remember,” they said, “our winter nights here

are very long!”

At last they came to Italy. Here every day opened to her a new world

of wonders. And when she reached Rome she cried out, “Rome is a world!

Rome is an astonishment! Rome is an enchantress! Think of strolling

leisurely through the Forum, of seeing the very stones that were laid

in the time of the Republic, of rambling over the ruined Palace of

the Cæsars, of walking under the Arch of Titus, of seeing the Dying

Gladiator, and whole ranges of rooms filled with the wonders of art,

all in one morning!... In the Palace of the Cæsars, where the very

dust is a _mélange_ of exquisite marbles, I saw for the first time an

acanthus growing, and picked my first leaf!”

It was during her second visit to Europe that Mrs. Stowe met the

Brownings. That was in April, 1857. Mrs. Browning said of this visit

that she and her husband had been charmed by Mrs. Stowe’s simplicity

and earnestness, her gentle voice and refinement of manner. Never, said

Mrs. Browning, did lioness roar so softly![14] After that and till the

end of the life of Mrs. Browning, correspondence was carried on between

the two great women, in which the chief subject discussed was the

possibility of spiritual communications between us and those that have

passed into the other life. Both these great thinkers believed that

such communications were within the range of possibility if we were

able to realize them spiritually, but not through any material means

then known. The same warm and permanent kind of friendship existed

between Mrs. Stowe and George Eliot.

Mrs. Stowe was in Europe first in 1853, again in 1856-7, and the third

time in 1859-60. In the intervals she was very hard at work in her

home in Brunswick, Maine, and afterwards in a new home in Andover,

Massachusetts, whither her husband had been called to the Theological

Seminary. First she was writing the “Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” a

compendium of the facts and materials she had used in writing the

novel. Following this was the second anti-slavery work, a novel

entitled “Dred.” This was an even more passionate treatment of the

subject of slavery than was “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” though it did not

have the concentration and the pathos of the latter. Just as a novel,

however, it marked an advance in method and handling, and if one

should look behind the preaching one would find a distinct promise for

finer workmanship to come in later books. This promise was fulfilled

in “The Minister’s Wooing,” “The Pearl of Orr’s Island,” and “Agnes

of Sorrento,” three novels that belong to this time of quickening by

contact with the old world.

But these years between the time of her first novel and the beginning

of the sixties were the days of the drawing tighter and tighter of the

cords, the bursting of which was to produce our Civil War. To every

varying of the needle she was sensitive. To every pang in her country’s

agony she was sharply responsive. She wrote to a friend in England:

“Sudden, sharp remedies are mercy.” Hating war, she yet said, if by

war, then war it must be.

CHAPTER XVIII

A UNIQUE JUBILEE

One day twenty farmers came to the Stone Cabin in Andover where the

Stowes lived and sat down with Professor Stowe to ask the question,

Will it be a long war? And he had answered buoyantly, Oh, no, short and

decisive it will certainly be!

A year passed and it was not yet over; 1862 came in and the fierce

battles of Shiloh, Cedar Mountain, Manassas and Antietam formed the

bitter record of that one summer alone. In the very heart of the

country soldiers by the thousand from the north and from the south

stood glaring at each other, pressing forward, warding off, moving

warily even upon the critical spaces about the city of Washington,

while occasionally the Confederate raiders slipped through and ran

almost up to the city itself. The resistance of the Confederate army

was proving much more stubborn than had been dreamed possible, and by

November of 1862 long streets of tents full of soldiers waiting for

orders were making white cities for miles and miles throughout the

surroundings of Washington. The people began to fear the horror of a

long, devastating war.

Almost worse than this was the feeling of criticism into which

discouragement was concentrating. Grief at the defeats of the army

of the Potomac was reacting in troubles among President Lincoln’s

advisers. The northern abolitionists could not understand why he was

so slow--why he did not stop the war at once. And he, poor man, in

the midst of the most harassing executive difficulties, with personal

sorrow for the recent death of his little son eating at his heart

and national sorrow for the loss in deadly battle of many hundreds

of soldiers overshadowing him, did not know which way to turn for

strength, wisdom and good generalship. “I cannot create generals,” he

said.

As the month for Thanksgiving Day, 1862, approached it would seem that

no one could have the heart to celebrate. On the farms of New England

and Ohio and Nebraska the women were beginning to have to carry the

whole burden of home and town. In a New Hampshire countryside, not far

from where the Stowes were living, fourteen strong daughters of the

mountains went one night after their own farm work was done to the barn

of an aged neighbor whose three sons had gone to the war, and before

morning had husked for him one hundred bushels of corn. This sort of

thing was being done everywhere.

As for the homesick soldiers in their distant camps, certainly the

approach of the time for the giving of thanks was not specially

welcomed, for they did not know what a day might bring forth of new

horror and disaster. They, too, together with statesmen and citizens

everywhere, were beginning to realize distinctly that the war was no

little quarrel to be lightly settled, but a fierce interlocking of

stubborn wills. That it was the wills of brothers thus conflicting

added to the poignancy of their grief.

Under circumstances so depressing as these, what could the governors

of states think of to say in their Thanksgiving Day proclamations? Yet

in the midst of the national dismay they had the courage and faith

to send out their appeals. They called upon the people to come away

and praise God even in the midst of the gloom. They found heart to be

glad for something. The war, for instance, had not been followed by

pestilence--that they could say; they begged the people to reflect that

these national chastisements might possibly be blessings in disguise;

they besought them not to think of the vacant chairs and the silent

voices by the home firesides, but instead to remember that strength was

being given to endure; they pointed out that if the people would give

thanks in the right spirit, it would be for the exalted patriotism,

the heroic courage, the fortitude and humanity, of the soldiers. “Let

the high praises of God be in our mouth,” they quoted, “and--the

two-edged sword in our hand!”

In the Stone Cabin at Andover there was one in whose heart the whole

terrible drama was being enacted as if it were an oppressive and

unbearable nightmare. “It is our agony,” she said. “We tread the wine

press alone. We are in the throes and ravings of the exorcism.” The

heart of Mrs. Stowe had been broken by the loss of her eldest son by

the accident of drowning. Now she was called upon to make another

supreme sacrifice in giving up a son to the service of her country.

Could she rejoice and give thanks?

With a sad patience she accepted an invitation to come to Washington

and join in helping people even more stricken than herself to a little

Thanksgiving cheer. The response in the capital city to the appeal

for Thanksgiving testimonials had been as generous as the limited

and disastrous circumstances would allow. For the city itself was at

this time one great hospital of wounded soldiers; the churches and

public buildings were all filled with the maimed, the sick and the

suffering, who had been brought there after the battles of the summer

and fall. Not every one, however, was in hospital and those that were

well made the sufferers have a happy day. There were banquets for the

convalescents, and banquets for the men in temporary hospitals in the

Patent Office, the Church of the Ascension, the Armory, the Marine

Barracks and elsewhere.

The regiments of Union soldiers were not the only special guests of

the season that were gathered in large numbers in and near the city.

Many hundreds of negroes who had heard the call of freedom on the

plantations of the south and had managed to escape from their masters

and to make their way through the military cordons had come to the

city as to a harbor of refuge. When the last Thursday in November drew

near good friends planned to give to those desolate people a homelike

Thanksgiving dinner that would gladden their hearts and give them a

foretaste of what freedom was to mean to them. Encouraging speeches

were to be made and distinguished people from various parts of the

country were invited to come. It was to this sorrowful-happy banquet

that Mrs. Stowe had been asked, and she was the more willing to make

the journey, since she hoped to have an opportunity to see her son,

Frederick, who was staying near the city with his regiment, the First

Massachusetts Infantry. She had also another great purpose in coming,

as will soon appear.