[i]

LIFE OF

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

[ii]

It seems but fitting, that I should
preface this story of my life with a
few notes of instruction.

The desire to leave behind me some
recollections of my life, has been cherished
by me, for many years past; but failing
strength or increasing infirmities have prevented
its accomplishment.

At my suggestion and with what
assistance I have been able to render,
my son, Ross Charles Edward Stowe, has
compiled from my letters and journals, this
biography. It is this true story of my
life, told for the most part, in my
own words and has therefore all the
force of an autobiography.

It is perhaps much more accurate
as to detail & impression than is
possible with any autobiography, written
later in life.

If these pages, shall help those who
read them to a firmer trust in God
& a deeper sense of His fatherly goodness
throughout the days of our earthly pilgrimage
I can say with Valiant for Truth
in the Pilgrim’s Progress!

I am going to my Father’s
& tho with great difficulty, I am
got thither, get now, I do not
repent me of all the troubles
I have been at, to arrive where
I am.

My sword I give to him that
shall succeed me in my pilgrimage
& my courage & skill to him
that can get it.

[iii]

INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT

I desire to express my thanks here to Harper &
Brothers, of New York, for permission to use letters
already published in the “Autobiography and Correspondence
of Lyman Beecher.” I have availed myself
freely of this permission in chapters i. and iii. In
chapter xx. I have given letters already published in
the “Life of George Eliot,” by Mr. Cross; but in
every instance I have copied from the original MSS.
and not from the published work. In conclusion, I
desire to express my indebtedness to Mr. Kirk Munroe,
who has been my co-laborer in the work of compilation.

Hartford, September 30, 1889.

[iv]
[v]

CONTENTS

[xi]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

[1]

CHAPTER I.
CHILDHOOD, 1811-1824.

Harriet Beecher (Stowe) was born June 14,
1811, in the characteristic New England town of Litchfield,
Conn. Her father was the Rev. Dr. Lyman
Beecher, a distinguished Calvinistic divine, her mother
Roxanna Foote, his first wife. The little new-comer
was ushered into a household of happy, healthy children,
and found five brothers and sisters awaiting her.
The eldest was Catherine, born September 6, 1800.
Following her were two sturdy boys, William and Edward;
then came Mary, then George, and at last Harriet.
Another little Harriet born three years before
had died when only one month old, and the fourth
daughter was named, in memory of this sister, Harriet
Elizabeth Beecher. Just two years after Harriet was
born, in the same month, another brother, Henry Ward,[2]
was welcomed to the family circle, and after him came
Charles, the last of Roxanna Beecher’s children.

The first memorable incident of Harriet’s life was the
death of her mother, which occurred when she was four
years old, and which ever afterwards remained with
her as the tenderest, saddest, and most sacred memory
of her childhood. Mrs. Stowe’s recollections of her
mother are found in a letter to her brother Charles, afterwards
published in the “Autobiography and Correspondence
of Lyman Beecher.” She says:—

“I was between three and four years of age when
our mother died, and my personal recollections of her
are therefore but few. But the deep interest and
veneration that she inspired in all who knew her were
such that during all my childhood I was constantly
hearing her spoken of, and from one friend or another
some incident or anecdote of her life was constantly
being impressed upon me.

“Mother was one of those strong, restful, yet widely
sympathetic natures in whom all around seemed to find
comfort and repose. The communion between her and
my father was a peculiar one. It was an intimacy
throughout the whole range of their being. There
was no human mind in whose decisions he had greater
confidence. Both intellectually and morally he regarded
her as the better and stronger portion of himself,
and I remember hearing him say that after her
death his first sensation was a sort of terror, like that
of a child suddenly shut out alone in the dark.

“In my own childhood only two incidents of my
mother twinkle like rays through the darkness. One
was of our all running and dancing out before her[3]
from the nursery to the sitting-room one Sabbath morning,
and her pleasant voice saying after us, ‘Remember
the Sabbath day to keep it holy, children.’

“Another remembrance is this: mother was an enthusiastic
horticulturist in all the small ways that limited
means allowed. Her brother John in New York
had just sent her a small parcel of fine tulip-bulbs.
I remember rummaging these out of an obscure corner
of the nursery one day when she was gone out, and
being strongly seized with the idea that they were good
to eat, using all the little English I then possessed to
persuade my brothers that these were onions such as
grown people ate and would be very nice for us. So
we fell to and devoured the whole, and I recollect being
somewhat disappointed in the odd sweetish taste, and
thinking that onions were not so nice as I had supposed.
Then mother’s serene face appeared at the nursery door
and we all ran towards her, telling with one voice of
our discovery and achievement. We had found a bag
of onions and had eaten them all up.

“Also I remember that there was not even a momentary
expression of impatience, but that she sat down
and said, ‘My dear children, what you have done
makes mamma very sorry. Those were not onions but
roots of beautiful flowers, and if you had let them
alone we should have next summer in the garden great
beautiful red and yellow flowers such as you never saw.’
I remember how drooping and dispirited we all grew
at this picture, and how sadly we regarded the empty
paper bag.

“Then I have a recollection of her reading aloud to
the children Miss Edgeworth’s ‘Frank,’ which had just[4]
come out, I believe, and was exciting a good deal of
attention among the educational circles of Litchfield.
After that came a time when every one said she was
sick, and I used to be permitted to go once a day into
her room, where she sat bolstered up in bed. I have a
vision of a very fair face with a bright red spot on each
cheek and her quiet smile. I remember dreaming one
night that mamma had got well, and of waking with
loud transports of joy that were hushed down by some
one who came into the room. My dream was indeed a
true one. She was forever well.

“Then came the funeral. Henry was too little to
go. I can see his golden curls and little black frock
as he frolicked in the sun like a kitten, full of ignorant
joy.

“I recollect the mourning dresses, the tears of the
older children, the walking to the burial-ground, and
somebody’s speaking at the grave. Then all was closed,
and we little ones, to whom it was so confused, asked
where she was gone and would she never come back.

“They told us at one time that she had been laid in
the ground, and at another that she had gone to heaven.
Thereupon Henry, putting the two things together, resolved
to dig through the ground and go to heaven to
find her; for being discovered under sister Catherine’s
window one morning digging with great zeal and earnestness,
she called to him to know what he was doing.
Lifting his curly head, he answered with great simplicity,
‘Why, I’m going to heaven to find mamma.’

“Although our mother’s bodily presence thus disappeared
from our circle, I think her memory and example
had more influence in moulding her family, in deterring[5]
from evil and exciting to good, than the living presence
of many mothers. It was a memory that met us everywhere,
for every person in the town, from the highest
to the lowest, seemed to have been so impressed by her
character and life that they constantly reflected some
portion of it back upon us.

“The passage in ‘Uncle Tom’ where Augustine St.
Clare describes his mother’s influence is a simple reproduction
of my own mother’s influence as it has always
been felt in her family.”

Of his deceased wife Dr. Beecher said: “Few women
have attained to more remarkable piety. Her faith was
strong and her prayer prevailing. It was her wish that
all her sons should devote themselves to the ministry,
and to it she consecrated them with fervent prayer.
Her prayers have been heard. All her sons have been
converted and are now, according to her wish, ministers
of Christ.”

Such was Roxanna Beecher, whose influence upon
her four-year-old daughter was strong enough to mould
the whole after-life of the author of “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin.” After the mother’s death the Litchfield home
was such a sad, lonely place for the child that her aunt,
Harriet Foote, took her away for a long visit at her
grandmother’s at Nut Plains, near Guilford, Conn., the
first journey from home the little one had ever made.
Of this visit Mrs. Stowe herself says:—

“Among my earliest recollections are those of a visit
to Nut Plains immediately after my mother’s death.
Aunt Harriet Foote, who was with mother during all
her last sickness, took me home to stay with her. At
the close of what seemed to me a long day’s ride we[6]
arrived after dark at a lonely little white farmhouse,
and were ushered into a large parlor where a cheerful
wood fire was crackling. I was placed in the arms of
an old lady, who held me close and wept silently, a
thing at which I marveled, for my great loss was already
faded from my childish mind.

“I remember being put to bed by my aunt in a large
room, on one side of which stood the bed appropriated
to her and me, and on the other that of my grandmother.
My aunt Harriet was no common character.
A more energetic human being never undertook the
education of a child. Her ideas of education were
those of a vigorous English woman of the old school.
She believed in the Church, and had she been born
under that régime would have believed in the king
stoutly, although being of the generation following the
Revolution she was a not less stanch supporter of the
Declaration of Independence.

“According to her views little girls were to be taught
to move very gently, to speak softly and prettily, to say
‘yes ma’am,’ and ‘no ma’am,’ never to tear their clothes,
to sew, to knit at regular hours, to go to church on
Sunday and make all the responses, and to come home
and be catechised.

“During these catechisings she used to place my
little cousin Mary and myself bolt upright at her knee,
while black Dinah and Harry, the bound boy, were
ranged at a respectful distance behind us; for Aunt
Harriet always impressed it upon her servants ‘to order
themselves lowly and reverently to all their betters,’ a
portion of the Church catechism that always pleased
me, particularly when applied to them, as it insured[7]
their calling me ‘Miss Harriet,’ and treating me with a
degree of consideration such as I never enjoyed in the
more democratic circle at home. I became proficient
in the Church catechism, and gave my aunt great satisfaction
by the old-fashioned gravity and steadiness with
which I learned to repeat it.

“As my father was a Congregational minister, I believe
Aunt Harriet, though the highest of High Church
women, felt some scruples as to whether it was desirable
that my religious education should be entirely out of
the sphere of my birth. Therefore when this catechetical
exercise was finished she would say, ‘Now,
niece, you have to learn another catechism, because
your father is a Presbyterian minister,’—and then she
would endeavor to make me commit to memory the Assembly
catechism.

“At this lengthening of exercise I secretly murmured.
I was rather pleased at the first question in
the Church catechism, which is certainly quite on the
level of any child’s understanding,—’What is your
name?’ It was such an easy good start, I could say
it so loud and clear, and I was accustomed to compare
it with the first question in the Primer, ‘What is the
chief end of man?’ as vastly more difficult for me to
answer. In fact, between my aunt’s secret unbelief
and my own childish impatience of too much catechism,
the matter was indefinitely postponed after a few ineffectual
attempts, and I was overjoyed to hear her announce
privately to grandmother that she thought it
would be time enough for Harriet to learn the Presbyterian
catechism when she went home.”

Mingled with this superabundance of catechism and[8]
plentiful needlework the child was treated to copious
extracts from Lowth’s Isaiah, Buchanan’s Researches
in Asia, Bishop Heber’s Life, and Dr. Johnson’s Works,
which, after her Bible and Prayer Book, were her
grandmother’s favorite reading. Harriet does not seem
to have fully appreciated these; but she did enjoy her
grandmother’s comments upon their biblical readings.
Among the Evangelists especially was the old lady perfectly
at home, and her idea of each of the apostles was
so distinct and dramatic that she spoke of them as of
familiar acquaintances. She would, for instance, always
smile indulgently at Peter’s remarks and say, “There
he is again, now; that’s just like Peter. He’s always
so ready to put in.”

It must have been during this winter spent at Nut
Plains, amid such surroundings, that Harriet began
committing to memory that wonderful assortment of
hymns, poems, and scriptural passages from which in
after years she quoted so readily and effectively, for
her sister Catherine, in writing of her the following
November, says:—

“Harriet is a very good girl. She has been to school
all this summer, and has learned to read very fluently.
She has committed to memory twenty-seven hymns and
two long chapters in the Bible. She has a remarkably
retentive memory and will make a very good scholar.”

At this time the child was five years old, and a regular
attendant at “Ma’am Kilbourne’s” school on West
Street, to which she walked every day hand in hand
with her chubby, rosy-faced, bare-footed, four-year-old
brother, Henry Ward. With the ability to read germinated
the intense literary longing that was to be hers[9]
through life. In those days but few books were specially
prepared for children, and at six years of age we
find the little girl hungrily searching for mental food
amid barrels of old sermons and pamphlets stored in a
corner of the garret. Here it seemed to her were some
thousands of the most unintelligible things. “An appeal
on the unlawfulness of a man marrying his wife’s
sister” turned up in every barrel she investigated, by
twos, or threes, or dozens, till her soul despaired of finding
an end. At last her patient search was rewarded,
for at the very bottom of a barrel of musty sermons she
discovered an ancient volume of “The Arabian Nights.”
With this her fortune was made, for in these most fascinating
of fairy tales the imaginative child discovered
a well-spring of joy that was all her own. When
things went astray with her, when her brothers started
off on long excursions, refusing to take her with them,
or in any other childish sorrow, she had only to curl
herself up in some snug corner and sail forth on her
bit of enchanted carpet into fairyland to forget all her
griefs.

In recalling her own child-life Mrs. Stowe, among
other things, describes her father’s library, and gives a
vivid bit of her own experiences within its walls. She
says: “High above all the noise of the house, this room
had to me the air of a refuge and a sanctuary. Its
walls were set round from floor to ceiling with the
friendly, quiet faces of books, and there stood my father’s
great writing-chair, on one arm of which lay
open always his Cruden’s Concordance and his Bible.
Here I loved to retreat and niche myself down in a
quiet corner with my favorite books around me. I had[10]
a kind of sheltered feeling as I thus sat and watched
my father writing, turning to his books, and speaking
from time to time to himself in a loud, earnest whisper.
I vaguely felt that he was about some holy and mysterious
work quite beyond my little comprehension, and I
was careful never to disturb him by question or remark.

BIRTHPLACE AT LITCHFIELD, CONNECTICUT.

“The books ranged around filled me too with a solemn
awe. On the lower shelves were enormous folios,
on whose backs I spelled in black letters, ‘Lightfoot
Opera,’ a title whereat I wondered, considering the
bulk of the volumes. Above these, grouped along in
friendly, social rows, were books of all sorts, sizes, and
bindings, the titles of which I had read so often that I
knew them by heart. There were Bell’s Sermons, Bonnett’s
Inquiries, Bogue’s Essays, Toplady on Predestination,
Boston’s Fourfold State, Law’s Serious Call,
and other works of that kind. These I looked over
wistfully, day after day, without even a hope of getting
something interesting out of them. The thought that
father could read and understand things like these
filled me with a vague awe, and I wondered if I would
ever be old enough to know what it was all about.

“But there was one of my father’s books that proved
a mine of wealth to me. It was a happy hour when he
brought home and set up in his bookcase Cotton Mather’s
‘Magnalia,’ in a new edition of two volumes.
What wonderful stories those! Stories too about my
own country. Stories that made me feel the very
ground I trod on to be consecrated by some special
dealing of God’s Providence.”

In continuing these reminiscences Mrs. Stowe describes
as follows her sensations upon first hearing the[11]
Declaration of Independence: “I had never heard it
before, and even now had but a vague idea of what
was meant by some parts of it. Still I gathered enough
from the recital of the abuses and injuries that had
driven my nation to this course to feel myself swelling
with indignation, and ready with all my little mind and
strength to applaud the concluding passage, which
Colonel Talmadge rendered with resounding majesty. I
was as ready as any of them to pledge my life, fortune,
and sacred honor for such a cause. The heroic element
was strong in me, having come down by ordinary generation
from a long line of Puritan ancestry, and just
now it made me long to do something, I knew not
what: to fight for my country, or to make some declaration
on my own account.”

When Harriet was nearly six years old her father
married as his second wife Miss Harriet Porter of Portland,
Maine, and Mrs. Stowe thus describes her new
mother: “I slept in the nursery with my two younger
brothers. We knew that father was gone away somewhere
on a journey and was expected home, therefore
the sound of a bustle in the house the more easily
awoke us. As father came into our room our new
mother followed him. She was very fair, with bright
blue eyes, and soft auburn hair bound round with a
black velvet bandeau, and to us she seemed very beautiful.

“Never did stepmother make a prettier or sweeter
impression. The morning following her arrival we
looked at her with awe. She seemed to us so fair, so
delicate, so elegant, that we were almost afraid to go
near her. We must have appeared to her as rough,[12]
red-faced, country children, honest, obedient, and bashful.
She was peculiarly dainty and neat in all her
ways and arrangements, and I used to feel breezy,
rough, and rude in her presence.

“In her religion she was distinguished for a most
unfaltering Christ-worship. She was of a type noble
but severe, naturally hard, correct, exact and exacting,
with intense natural and moral ideality. Had it not
been that Doctor Payson had set up and kept before
her a tender, human, loving Christ, she would have
been only a conscientious bigot. This image, however,
gave softness and warmth to her religious life, and I
have since noticed how her Christ-enthusiasm has
sprung up in the hearts of all her children.”

In writing to her old home of her first impressions
of her new one, Mrs. Beecher says: “It is a very lovely
family, and with heartfelt gratitude I observed how
cheerful and healthy they were. The sentiment is
greatly increased, since I perceive them to be of agreeable
habits and some of them of uncommon intellect.”

This new mother proved to be indeed all that the
name implies to her husband’s children, and never did
they have occasion to call her aught other than blessed.

Another year finds a new baby brother, Frederick
by name, added to the family. At this time too we
catch a characteristic glimpse of Harriet in one of her
sister Catherine’s letters. She says: “Last week we
interred Tom junior with funeral honors by the side of
old Tom of happy memory. Our Harriet is chief
mourner always at their funerals. She asked for what
she called an epithet for the gravestone of Tom junior,
which I gave as follows:—

[13]

In June, 1820, little Frederick died from scarlet fever,
and Harriet was seized with a violent attack of the
same dread disease; but, after a severe struggle, recovered.

Following her happy, hearty child-life, we find her
tramping through the woods or going on fishing excursions
with her brothers, sitting thoughtfully in her
father’s study, listening eagerly to the animated theological
discussions of the day, visiting her grandmother
at Nut Plains, and figuring as one of the brightest
scholars in the Litchfield Academy, taught by Mr.
John Brace and Miss Pierce. When she was eleven
years old her brother Edward wrote of her: “Harriet
reads everything she can lay hands on, and sews and
knits diligently.”

At this time she was no longer the youngest girl of
the family, for another sister (Isabella) had been born
in 1822. This event served greatly to mature her, as
she was intrusted with much of the care of the baby
out of school hours. It was not, however, allowed to
interfere in any way with her studies, and, under the
skillful direction of her beloved teachers, she seemed
to absorb knowledge with every sense. She herself
writes: “Much of the training and inspiration of my
early days consisted not in the things that I was supposed
to be studying, but in hearing, while seated unnoticed
at my desk, the conversation of Mr. Brace with[14]
the older classes. There, from hour to hour, I listened
with eager ears to historical criticisms and discussions,
or to recitations in such works as Paley’s Moral Philosophy,
Blair’s Rhetoric, Allison on Taste, all full of
most awakening suggestions to my thoughts.

“Mr. Brace exceeded all teachers I ever knew in the
faculty of teaching composition. The constant excitement
in which he kept the minds of his pupils, the wide
and varied regions of thought into which he led them,
formed a preparation for composition, the main requisite
for which is to have something which one feels interested
to say.”

In her tenth year Harriet began what to her was the
fascinating work of writing compositions, and so rapidly
did she progress that at the school exhibition held when
she was twelve years old, hers was one of the two or
three essays selected to be read aloud before the august
assembly of visitors attracted by the occasion.

Of this event Mrs. Stowe writes: “I remember well
the scene at that exhibition, to me so eventful. The
hall was crowded with all the literati of Litchfield.
Before them all our compositions were read aloud.
When mine was read I noticed that father, who was
sitting on high by Mr. Brace, brightened and looked
interested, and at the close I heard him ask, ‘Who
wrote that composition?’ ‘Your daughter, sir,’ was the
answer. It was the proudest moment of my life. There
was no mistaking father’s face when he was pleased,
and to have interested him was past all juvenile triumphs.”

That composition has been carefully preserved, and
on the old yellow sheets the cramped childish handwriting[15]
is still distinctly legible. As the first literary
production of one who afterwards attained such distinction
as a writer, it is deemed of sufficient value and
interest to be embodied in this biography exactly as it
was written and read sixty-five years ago. The subject
was certainly a grave one to be handled by a child of
twelve.

It has justly been concluded by the philosophers of
every age that “The proper study of mankind is man,”
and his nature and composition, both physical and mental,
have been subjects of the most critical examination.
In the course of these researches many have been at a
loss to account for the change which takes place in the
body at the time of death. By some it has been attributed
to the flight of its tenant, and by others to its
final annihilation.

The questions, “What becomes of the soul at the
time of death?” and, if it be not annihilated, “What
is its destiny after death?” are those which, from the
interest that we all feel in them, will probably engross
universal attention.

In pursuing these inquiries it will be necessary to
divest ourselves of all that knowledge which we have
obtained from the light which revelation has shed over
them, and place ourselves in the same position as the
philosophers of past ages when considering the same
subject.

The first argument which has been advanced to
prove the immortality of the soul is drawn from the[16]
nature of the mind itself. It has (say the supporters
of this theory) no composition of parts, and therefore,
as there are no particles, is not susceptible of divisibility
and cannot be acted upon by decay, and therefore
if it will not decay it will exist forever.

Now because the mind is not susceptible of decay
effected in the ordinary way by a gradual separation of
particles, affords no proof that that same omnipotent
power which created it cannot by another simple exertion
of power again reduce it to nothing. The only
reason for belief which this argument affords is that
the soul cannot be acted upon by decay. But it does
not prove that it cannot destroy its existence. Therefore,
for the validity of this argument, it must either
be proved that the “Creator” has not the power to
destroy it, or that he has not the will; but as neither
of these can be established, our immortality is left dependent
on the pleasure of the Creator. But it is said
that it is evident that the Creator designed the soul for
immortality, or he would never have created it so essentially
different from the body, for had they both been
designed for the same end they would both have been
created alike, as there would have been no object in
forming them otherwise. This only proves that the
soul and body had not the same destinations. Now of
what these destinations are we know nothing, and after
much useless reasoning we return where we began, our
argument depending upon the good pleasure of the
Creator.

And here it is said that a being of such infinite wisdom
and benevolence as that of which the Creator is
possessed would not have formed man with such vast[17]
capacities and boundless desires, and would have given
him no opportunity for exercising them.

In order to establish the validity of this argument
it is necessary to prove by the light of Nature that the
Creator is benevolent, which, being impracticable, is of
itself sufficient to render the argument invalid.

But the argument proceeds upon the supposition that
to destroy the soul would be unwise. Now this is arraigning
the “All-wise” before the tribunal of his subjects
to answer for the mistakes in his government.
Can we look into the council of the “Unsearchable”
and see what means are made to answer their ends?
We do not know but the destruction of the soul may,
in the government of God, be made to answer such a
purpose that its existence would be contrary to the dictates
of wisdom.

The great desire of the soul for immortality, its secret,
innate horror of annihilation, has been brought to prove
its immortality. But do we always find this horror or
this desire? Is it not much more evident that the
great majority of mankind have no such dread at all?
True that there is a strong feeling of horror excited
by the idea of perishing from the earth and being forgotten,
of losing all those honors and all that fame
awaited them. Many feel this secret horror when they
look down upon the vale of futurity and reflect that
though now the idols of the world, soon all which will
be left them will be the common portion of mankind—oblivion!
But this dread does not arise from any idea
of their destiny beyond the tomb, and even were this
true, it would afford no proof that the mind would
exist forever, merely from its strong desires. For it[18]
might with as much correctness be argued that the
body will exist forever because we have a great dread
of dying, and upon this principle nothing which we
strongly desire would ever be withheld from us, and no
evil that we greatly dread will ever come upon us, a
principle evidently false.

Again, it has been said that the constant progression
of the powers of the mind affords another proof
of its immortality. Concerning this, Addison remarks,
“Were a human soul ever thus at a stand in her acquirements,
were her faculties to be full blown and incapable
of further enlargement, I could imagine that
she might fall away insensibly and drop at once into a
state of annihilation. But can we believe a thinking
being that is in a perpetual progress of improvement,
and traveling on from perfection to perfection after
having just looked abroad into the works of her Creator
and made a few discoveries of his infinite wisdom
and goodness, must perish at her first setting out and
in the very beginning of her inquiries?”

In answer to this it may be said that the soul is not
always progressing in her powers. Is it not rather a
subject of general remark that those brilliant talents
which in youth expand, in manhood become stationary,
and in old age gradually sink to decay? Till when
the ancient man descends to the tomb scarce a wreck of
that once powerful mind remains.

Who, but upon reading the history of England, does
not look with awe upon the effects produced by the
talents of her Elizabeth? Who but admires that undaunted
firmness in time of peace and that profound
depth of policy which she displayed in the cabinet?[19]
Yet behold the tragical end of this learned, this politic
princess! Behold the triumphs of age and sickness
over her once powerful talents, and say not that the
faculties of man are always progressing in their powers.

From the activity of the mind at the hour of death
has also been deduced its immortality. But it is not
true that the mind is always active at the time of death.
We find recorded in history numberless instances of
those talents, which were once adequate to the government
of a nation, being so weakened and palsied by
the touch of sickness as scarcely to tell to beholders
what they once were. The talents of the statesman,
the wisdom of the sage, the courage and might of the
warrior, are instantly destroyed by it, and all that remains
of them is the waste of idiocy or the madness of
insanity.

Some minds there are who at the time of death retain
their faculties though much impaired, and if the argument
be valid these are the only cases where immortality
is conferred. Again, it is urged that the
inequality of rewards and punishments in this world
demand another in which virtue may be rewarded and
vice punished. This argument, in the first place, takes
for its foundation that by the light of nature the distinction
between virtue and vice can be discovered. By
some this is absolutely disbelieved, and by all considered
as extremely doubtful. And, secondly, it puts the Creator
under an obligation to reward and punish the actions
of his creatures. No such obligation exists, and
therefore the argument cannot be valid. And this supposes
the Creator to be a being of justice, which cannot
by the light of nature be proved, and as the whole[20]
argument rests upon this foundation it certainly cannot
be correct.

This argument also directly impeaches the wisdom of
the Creator, for the sense of it is this,—that, forasmuch
as he was not able to manage his government in
this world, he must have another in which to rectify
the mistakes and oversights of this, and what an idea
would this give us of our All-wise Creator?

It is also said that all nations have some conceptions
of a future state, that the ancient Greeks and Romans
believed in it, that no nation has been found but have
possessed some idea of a future state of existence. But
their belief arose more from the fact that they wished
it to be so than from any real ground of belief; for
arguments appear much more plausible when the mind
wishes to be convinced. But it is said that every nation,
however circumstanced, possess some idea of a
future state. For this we may account by the fact that
it was handed down by tradition from the time of the
flood. From all these arguments, which, however plausible
at first sight, are found to be futile, may be argued
the necessity of a revelation. Without it, the destiny
of the noblest of the works of God would have been
left in obscurity. Never till the blessed light of the
Gospel dawned on the borders of the pit, and the heralds
of the Cross proclaimed “Peace on earth and good
will to men,” was it that bewildered and misled man
was enabled to trace his celestial origin and glorious
destiny.

The sun of the Gospel has dispelled the darkness
that has rested on objects beyond the tomb. In the
Gospel man learned that when the dust returned to[21]
dust the spirit fled to the God who gave it. He there
found that though man has lost the image of his divine
Creator, he is still destined, after this earthly house of
his tabernacle is dissolved, to an inheritance incorruptible,
undefiled, and that fadeth not away, to a house not
made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

Soon after the writing of this remarkable composition,
Harriet’s child-life in Litchfield came to an end,
for that same year she went to Hartford to pursue her
studies in a school which had been recently established
by her sister Catherine in that city.

[22]

CHAPTER II.
SCHOOL DAYS IN HARTFORD, 1824-1832.

The school days in Hartford began a new era in
Harriet’s life. It was the formative period, and it is
therefore important to say a few words concerning her
sister Catherine, under whose immediate supervision she
was to continue her education. In fact, no one can
comprehend either Mrs. Stowe or her writings without
some knowledge of the life and character of this remarkable
woman, whose strong, vigorous mind and tremendous
personality indelibly stamped themselves on
the sensitive, yielding, dreamy, and poetic nature of
the younger sister. Mrs. Stowe herself has said that
the two persons who most strongly influenced her at
this period of her life were her brother Edward and her
sister Catherine.

Catherine was the oldest child of Lyman Beecher
and Roxanna Foote, his wife. In a little battered
journal found among her papers is a short sketch of
her life, written when she was seventy-six years of age.
In a tremulous hand she begins: “I was born at East[23]
Hampton, L. I., September 5, 1800, at 5 P. M., in the
large parlor opposite father’s study. Don’t remember
much about it myself.” The sparkle of wit in this
brief notice of the circumstances of her birth is very
characteristic. All through her life little ripples of fun
were continually playing on the surface of that current
of intense thought and feeling in which her deep, earnest
nature flowed.

When she was ten years of age her father removed
to Litchfield, Conn., and her happy girlhood was passed
in that place. Her bright and versatile mind and ready
wit enabled her to pass brilliantly through her school
days with but little mental exertion, and those who
knew her slightly might have imagined her to be only
a bright, thoughtless, light-hearted girl. In Boston, at
the age of twenty, she took lessons in music and drawing,
and became so proficient in these branches as to
secure a position as teacher in a young ladies’ school,
kept by a Rev. Mr. Judd, an Episcopal clergyman, at
New London, Conn. About this time she formed the
acquaintance of Professor Alexander Metcalf Fisher, of
Yale College, one of the most distinguished young men
in New England. In January of the year 1822 they became
engaged, and the following spring Professor Fisher
sailed for Europe to purchase books and scientific apparatus
for the use of his department in the college.

In his last letter to Miss Beecher, dated March 31,
1822, he writes:—

“I set out at 10 precisely to-morrow, in the Albion
for Liverpool; the ship has no superior in the whole
number of excellent vessels belonging to this port, and
Captain Williams is regarded as first on their list of[24]
commanders. The accommodations are admirable—fare
$140. Unless our ship should speak some one
bound to America on the passage, you will probably
not hear from me under two months.”

Before two months had passed came vague rumors of
a terrible shipwreck on the coast of Ireland. Then the
tidings that the Albion was lost. Then came a letter
from Mr. Pond, at Kinsale, Ireland, dated May 2,
1822:—

“You have doubtless heard of the shipwreck of the
Albion packet of New York, bound to Liverpool. It
was a melancholy shipwreck. It happened about four
o’clock on the morning of the 22d of April. Professor
Fisher, of Yale College, was one of the passengers.
Out of twenty-three cabin passengers, but one reached
the shore. He is a Mr. Everhart, of Chester County,
Pennsylvania. He informs me that Professor Fisher
was injured by things that fetched away in the cabin at
the time the ship was knocked down. This was between
8 and 9 o’clock in the evening of the twenty-first.
Mr. Fisher, though badly bruised, was calm and
resolute, and assisted Captain Williams by taking the
injured compass to his berth and repairing it. About
five minutes before the vessel struck Captain Williams
informed the passengers of their danger, and all went
on deck except Professor Fisher, who remained sitting
in his berth. Mr. Everhart was the last person who
left the cabin, and the last who ever saw Professor
Fisher alive.”

I should not have spoken of this incident of family
history with such minuteness, except for the fact that
it is so much a part of Mrs. Stowe’s life as to make it[25]
impossible to understand either her character or her
most important works without it. Without this incident
“The Minister’s Wooing” never would have been
written, for both Mrs. Marvyn’s terrible soul struggles
and old Candace’s direct and effective solution of all
religious difficulties find their origin in this stranded,
storm-beaten ship on the coast of Ireland, and the terrible
mental conflicts through which her sister afterward
passed, for she believed Professor Fisher eternally lost.
No mind more directly and powerfully influenced Harriet’s
than that of her sister Catherine, unless it was
her brother Edward’s, and that which acted with such
overwhelming power on the strong, unyielding mind
of the older sister must have, in time, a permanent and
abiding influence on the mind of the younger.

After Professor Fisher’s death his books came into
Miss Beecher’s possession, and among them was a complete
edition of Scott’s works. It was an epoch in the
family history when Doctor Beecher came down-stairs
one day with a copy of “Ivanhoe” in his hand, and
said: “I have always said that my children should not
read novels, but they must read these.”

The two years following the death of Professor
Fisher were passed by Miss Catherine Beecher at
Franklin, Mass., at the home of Professor Fisher’s parents,
where she taught his two sisters, studied mathematics
with his brother Willard, and listened to Doctor
Emmons’ fearless and pitiless preaching. Hers was a
mind too strong and buoyant to be crushed and prostrated
by that which would have driven a weaker and
less resolute nature into insanity. Of her it may well
be said:—

[26]

Gifted naturally with a capacity for close metaphysical
analysis and a robust fearlessness in following her
premises to a logical conclusion, she arrived at results
startling and original, if not always of permanent value.

In 1840 she published in the “Biblical Repository”
an article on Free Agency, which has been acknowledged
by competent critics as the ablest refutation of
Edwards on “The Will” which has appeared. An
amusing incident connected with this publication may
not be out of place here. A certain eminent theological
professor of New England, visiting a distinguished
German theologian and speaking of this production,
said: “The ablest refutation of Edwards on ‘The
Will’ which was ever written is the work of a woman,
the daughter of Dr. Lyman Beecher.” The worthy
Teuton raised both hands in undisguised astonishment.
“You have a woman that can write an able refutation
of Edwards on ‘The Will’? God forgive Christopher
Columbus for discovering America!”

Not finding herself able to love a God whom she
thought of in her own language as “a perfectly happy
being, unmoved by my sorrows or tears, and looking
upon me only with dislike and aversion,” she determined
“to find happiness in living to do good.” “It
was right to pray and read the Bible, so I prayed and
read. It was right to try to save others, so I labored
for their salvation. I never had any fear of punishment
or hope of reward all these years.” She was tormented
with doubts. “What has the Son of God[27]
done which the meanest and most selfish creature upon
earth would not have done? After making such a
wretched race and placing them in such disastrous circumstances,
somehow, without any sorrow or trouble,
Jesus Christ had a human nature that suffered and
died. If something else besides ourselves will do all
the suffering, who would not save millions of wretched
beings and receive all the honor and gratitude without
any of the trouble? Sometimes when such thoughts
passed through my mind, I felt that it was all pride,
rebellion, and sin.”

So she struggles on, sometimes floundering deep in
the mire of doubt, and then lifted for the moment
above it by her naturally buoyant spirits, and general
tendency to look on the bright side of things. In this
condition of mind, she came to Hartford in the winter
of 1824, and began a school with eight scholars, and it
was in the practical experience of teaching that she
found a final solution of all her difficulties. She continues:—

“After two or three years I commenced giving instruction
in mental philosophy, and at the same time
began a regular course of lectures and instructions
from the Bible, and was much occupied with plans for
governing my school, and in devising means to lead
my pupils to become obedient, amiable, and pious. By
degrees I finally arrived at the following principles in
the government of my school:—

“First. It is indispensable that my scholars should
feel that I am sincerely and deeply interested in their
best happiness, and the more I can convince them of
this, the more ready will be their obedience.

[28]

“Second. The preservation of authority and order
depends upon the certainty that unpleasant consequences
to themselves will inevitably be the result of
doing wrong.

“Third. It is equally necessary, to preserve my own
influence and their affection, that they should feel that
punishment is the natural result of wrong-doing in
such a way that they shall regard themselves, instead
of me, as the cause of their punishment.

“Fourth. It is indispensable that my scholars should
see that my requisitions are reasonable. In the majority
of cases this can be shown, and in this way such
confidence will be the result that they will trust to my
judgment and knowledge, in cases where no explanation
can be given.

“Fifth. The more I can make my scholars feel that
I am actuated by a spirit of self-denying benevolence,
the more confidence they will feel in me, and the more
they will be inclined to submit to self-denying duties
for the good of others.

“After a while I began to compare my experience
with the government of God. I finally got through
the whole subject, and drew out the results, and found
that all my difficulties were solved and all my darkness
dispelled.”

Her solution in brief is nothing more than that view
of the divine nature which was for so many years
preached by her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, and
set forth in the writings of her sister Harriet,—the
conception of a being of infinite love, patience, and
kindness who suffers with man. The sufferings of
Christ on the cross were not the sufferings of his human[29]
nature merely, but the sufferings of the divine
nature in Him. In Christ we see the only revelation
of God, and that is the revelation of one that suffers.
This is the fundamental idea in “The Minister’s Wooing,”
and it is the idea of God in which the storm-tossed
soul of the older sister at last found rest. All
this was directly opposed to that fundamental principle
of theologians that God, being the infinitely perfect
Being, cannot suffer, because suffering indicates imperfection.
To Miss Beecher’s mind the lack of ability to
suffer with his suffering creatures was a more serious
imperfection. Let the reader turn to the twenty-fourth
chapter of “The Minister’s Wooing” for a complete
presentation of this subject, especially the passage that
begins, “Sorrow is divine: sorrow is reigning on the
throne of the universe.”

In the fall of the year 1824, while her sister Catherine
was passing through the soul crisis which we have
been describing, Harriet came to the school that she
had recently established.

In a letter to her son written in 1886, speaking of
this period of her life, Mrs. Stowe says: “Somewhere
between my twelfth and thirteenth year I was placed
under the care of my elder sister Catherine, in the
school that she had just started in Hartford, Connecticut.
When I entered the school there were not more
than twenty-five scholars in it, but it afterwards numbered
its pupils by the hundreds. The school-room was
on Main Street, nearly opposite Christ Church, over
Sheldon & Colton’s harness store, at the sign of the
two white horses. I never shall forget the pleasure and
surprise which these two white horses produced in my[30]
mind when I first saw them. One of the young men
who worked in the rear of the harness store had a most
beautiful tenor voice, and it was my delight to hear
him singing in school hours:—

“As my father’s salary was inadequate to the wants
of his large family, the expense of my board in Hartford
was provided for by a species of exchange. Mr.
Isaac D. Bull sent a daughter to Miss Pierce’s seminary
in Litchfield, and she boarded in my father’s family in
exchange for my board in her father’s family. If my
good, refined, neat, particular stepmother could have
chosen, she could not have found a family more exactly
suited to her desires. The very soul of neatness and
order pervaded the whole establishment. Mr. I. D.
Bull was a fine, vigorous, white-haired man on the declining
slope of life, but full of energy and of kindness.
Mr. Samuel Collins, a neighbor who lived next
door, used to frequently come in and make most impressive
and solemn calls on Miss Mary Anne Bull, who
was a brunette and a celebrated beauty of the day. I
well remember her long raven curls falling from the
comb that held them up on the top of her head. She
had a rich soprano voice, and was the leading singer in
the Centre Church choir. The two brothers also had
fine, manly voices, and the family circle was often enlivened
by quartette singing and flute playing. Mr.
Bull kept a very large wholesale drug store on Front[31]
Street, in which his two sons, Albert and James, were
clerks. The oldest son, Watson Bull, had established
a retail drug store at the sign of the ‘Good Samaritan.’
A large picture of the Good Samaritan relieving the
wounded traveler formed a striking part of the sign,
and was contemplated by me with reverence.

“The mother of the family gave me at once a child’s
place in her heart. A neat little hall chamber was
allotted to me for my own, and a well made and kept
single bed was given me, of which I took daily care
with awful satisfaction. If I was sick nothing could
exceed the watchful care and tender nursing of Mrs.
Bull. In school my two most intimate friends were
the leading scholars. They had written to me before
I came and I had answered their letters, and on my
arrival they gave me the warmest welcome. One was
Catherine Ledyard Cogswell, daughter of the leading
and best-beloved of Hartford physicians. The other
was Georgiana May, daughter of a most lovely Christian
woman who was a widow. Georgiana was one of
many children, having two younger sisters, Mary and
Gertrude, and several brothers. Catherine Cogswell
was one of the most amiable, sprightly, sunny-tempered
individuals I have ever known. She was, in fact, so
much beloved that it was difficult for me to see much
of her. Her time was all bespoken by different girls.
One might walk with her to school, another had the
like promise on the way home. And at recess, of which
we had every day a short half hour, there was always
a suppliant at Katy’s shrine, whom she found it hard
to refuse. Yet, among all these claimants, she did keep
a little place here and there for me. Georgiana was[32]
older and graver, and less fascinating to the other girls,
but between her and me there grew up the warmest
friendship, which proved lifelong in its constancy.

“Catherine and Georgiana were reading ‘Virgil’
when I came to the school. I began the study of Latin
alone, and at the end of the first year made a translation
of ‘Ovid’ in verse, which was read at the final
exhibition of the school, and regarded, I believe, as a
very creditable performance. I was very much interested
in poetry, and it was my dream to be a poet. I
began a drama called ‘Cleon.’ The scene was laid in
the court and time of the emperor Nero, and Cleon was
a Greek lord residing at Nero’s court, who, after much
searching and doubting, at last comes to the knowledge
of Christianity. I filled blank book after blank book
with this drama. It filled my thoughts sleeping and
waking. One day sister Catherine pounced down upon
me, and said that I must not waste my time writing
poetry, but discipline my mind by the study of Butler’s
‘Analogy.’ So after this I wrote out abstracts from
the ‘Analogy,’ and instructed a class of girls as old as
myself, being compelled to master each chapter just
ahead of the class I was teaching. About this time I
read Baxter’s ‘Saint’s Rest.’ I do not think any book
affected me more powerfully. As I walked the pavements
I used to wish that they might sink beneath me
if only I might find myself in heaven. I was at the
same time very much interested in Butler’s ‘Analogy,’
for Mr. Brace used to lecture on such themes when I
was at Miss Pierce’s school at Litchfield. I also began
the study of French and Italian with a Miss Degan,
who was born in Italy.

[33]

“It was about this time that I first believed myself
to be a Christian. I was spending my summer vacation
at home, in Litchfield. I shall ever remember that
dewy, fresh summer morning. I knew that it was a
sacramental Sunday, and thought with sadness that
when all the good people should take the sacrificial
bread and wine I should be left out. I tried hard to
feel my sins and count them up; but what with the
birds, the daisies, and the brooks that rippled by the
way, it was impossible. I came into church quite dissatisfied
with myself, and as I looked upon the pure
white cloth, the snowy bread and shining cups, of the
communion table, thought with a sigh: ‘There won’t
be anything for me to-day; it is all for these grown-up
Christians.’ Nevertheless, when father began to speak,
I was drawn to listen by a certain pathetic earnestness
in his voice. Most of father’s sermons were as unintelligible
to me as if he had spoken in Choctaw. But
sometimes he preached what he was accustomed to call
a ‘frame sermon;’ that is, a sermon that sprung out
of the deep feeling of the occasion, and which consequently
could be neither premeditated nor repeated.
His text was taken from the Gospel of John, the declaration
of Jesus: ‘Behold, I call you no longer servants,
but friends.’ His theme was Jesus as a soul friend
offered to every human being.

“Forgetting all his hair-splitting distinctions and
dialectic subtleties, he spoke in direct, simple, and
tender language of the great love of Christ and his
care for the soul. He pictured Him as patient with
our errors, compassionate with our weaknesses, and
sympathetic for our sorrows. He went on to say how[34]
He was ever near us, enlightening our ignorance, guiding
our wanderings, comforting our sorrows with a love
unwearied by faults, unchilled by ingratitude, till at
last He should present us faultless before the throne of
his glory with exceeding joy.

“I sat intent and absorbed. Oh! how much I
needed just such a friend, I thought to myself. Then
the awful fact came over me that I had never had any
conviction of my sins, and consequently could not come
to Him. I longed to cry out ‘I will,’ when father
made his passionate appeal, ‘Come, then, and trust
your soul to this faithful friend.’ Like a flash it came
over me that if I needed conviction of sin, He was able
to give me even this also. I would trust Him for the
whole. My whole soul was illumined with joy, and
as I left the church to walk home, it seemed to me as
if Nature herself were hushing her breath to hear the
music of heaven.

“As soon as father came home and was seated in his
study, I went up to him and fell in his arms saying,
‘Father, I have given myself to Jesus, and He has taken
me.’ I never shall forget the expression of his face as
he looked down into my earnest, childish eyes; it was
so sweet, so gentle, and like sunlight breaking out upon
a landscape. ‘Is it so?’ he said, holding me silently
to his heart, as I felt the hot tears fall on my head.
‘Then has a new flower blossomed in the kingdom this
day.'”

If she could have been let alone, and taught “to look
up and not down, forward and not back, out and not
in,” this religious experience might have gone on as
sweetly and naturally as the opening of a flower in the[35]
gentle rays of the sun. But unfortunately this was
not possible at that time, when self-examination was
carried to an extreme that was calculated to drive a
nervous and sensitive mind well-nigh distracted. First,
even her sister Catherine was afraid that there might
be something wrong in the case of a lamb that had
come into the fold without being first chased all over
the lot by the shepherd; great stress being laid, in
those days, on what was called “being under conviction.”
Then also the pastor of the First Church in
Hartford, a bosom friend of Dr. Beecher, looked with
melancholy and suspicious eyes on this unusual and
doubtful path to heaven,—but more of this hereafter.
Harriet’s conversion took place in the summer of 1825,
when she was fourteen, and the following year, April,
1826, Dr. Beecher resigned his pastorate in Litchfield
to accept a call to the Hanover Street Church, Boston,
Mass. In a letter to her grandmother Foote at Guilford,
dated Hartford, March 4, 1826, Harriet writes:—

“You have probably heard that our home in Litchfield
is broken up. Papa has received a call to Boston,
and concluded to accept, because he could not support
his family in Litchfield. He was dismissed last week
Tuesday, and will be here (Hartford) next Tuesday
with mamma and Isabel. Aunt Esther will take
Charles and Thomas to her house for the present.
Papa’s salary is to be $2,000 and $500 settlement.

“I attend school constantly and am making some
progress in my studies. I devote most of my attention
to Latin and to arithmetic, and hope soon to prepare
myself to assist Catherine in the school.”

This breaking up of the Litchfield home led Harriet,[36]
under her father’s advice, to seek to connect herself
with the First Church of Hartford. Accordingly,
accompanied by two of her school friends, she went one
day to the pastor’s study to consult with him concerning
the contemplated step. The good man listened
attentively to the child’s simple and modest statement
of Christian experience, and then with an awful, though
kindly, solemnity of speech and manner said, “Harriet,
do you feel that if the universe should be destroyed
(awful pause) you could be happy with God alone?”
After struggling in vain, in her mental bewilderment,
to fix in her mind some definite conception of the
meaning of the sounds which fell on her ear like the
measured strokes of a bell, the child of fourteen stammered
out, “Yes, sir.”

“You realize, I trust,” continued the doctor, “in
some measure at least, the deceitfulness of your heart,
and that in punishment for your sins God might justly
leave you to make yourself as miserable as you have
made yourself sinful?”

“Yes, sir,” again stammered Harriet.

Having thus effectually, and to his own satisfaction,
fixed the child’s attention on the morbid and over-sensitive
workings of her own heart, the good and truly
kind-hearted man dismissed her with a fatherly benediction.
But where was the joyous ecstasy of that
beautiful Sabbath morning of a year ago? Where
was that heavenly friend? Yet was not this as it
should be, and might not God leave her “to make herself
as miserable as she had made herself sinful”?

In a letter addressed to her brother Edward, about
this time, she writes: “My whole life is one continued[37]
struggle: I do nothing right. I yield to temptation
almost as soon as it assails me. My deepest feelings
are very evanescent. I am beset behind and before,
and my sins take away all my happiness. But that
which most constantly besets me is pride—I can trace
almost all my sins back to it.”

In the mean time, the school is prospering. February
16, 1827, Catherine writes to Dr. Beecher: “My
affairs go on well. The stock is all taken up, and next
week I hope to have out the prospectus of the ‘Hartford
Female Seminary.’ I hope the building will be
done, and all things in order, by June. The English
lady is coming with twelve pupils from New York.”
Speaking of Harriet, who was at this time with her
father in Boston, she adds: “I have received some letters
from Harriet to-day which make me feel uneasy.
She says, ‘I don’t know as I am fit for anything, and I
have thought that I could wish to die young, and let
the remembrance of me and my faults perish in the
grave, rather than live, as I fear I do, a trouble to
every one. You don’t know how perfectly wretched I
often feel: so useless, so weak, so destitute of all
energy. Mamma often tells me that I am a strange,
inconsistent being. Sometimes I could not sleep, and
have groaned and cried till midnight, while in the daytime
I tried to appear cheerful and succeeded so well
that papa reproved me for laughing so much. I was
so absent sometimes that I made strange mistakes, and
then they all laughed at me, and I laughed, too,
though I felt as though I should go distracted. I
wrote rules; made out a regular system for dividing
my time; but my feelings vary so much that it is almost
impossible for me to be regular.'”

[38]

But let Harriet “take courage in her dark sorrows
and melancholies,” as Carlyle says: “Samuel Johnson
too had hypochondrias; all great souls are apt to have,
and to be in thick darkness generally till the eternal
ways and the celestial guiding stars disclose themselves,
and the vague abyss of life knits itself up into firmaments
for them.”

At the same time (the winter of 1827), Catherine
writes to Edward concerning Harriet: “If she could
come here (Hartford) it might be the best thing for her,
for she can talk freely to me. I can get her
books, and Catherine Cogswell, Georgiana May, and
her friends here could do more for her than any one
in Boston, for they love her and she loves them very
much. Georgiana’s difficulties are different from Harriet’s:
she is speculating about doctrines, etc. Harriet
will have young society here all the time, which she
cannot have at home, and I think cheerful and amusing
friends will do much for her. I can do better in
preparing her to teach drawing than any one else, for I
best know what is needed.”

It was evidently necessary that something should be
done to restore Harriet to a more tranquil and healthful
frame of mind; consequently in the spring of
1827, accompanied by her friend Georgiana May, she
went to visit her grandmother Foote at Nut Plains,
Guilford. Miss May refers to this visit in a letter to
Mrs. Foote, in January of the following winter.

Hartford, January 4, 1828.

Dear Mrs. Foote:— . . . I very often think of
you and the happy hours I passed at your house last[39]
spring. It seems as if it were but yesterday: now,
while I am writing, I can see your pleasant house and
the familiar objects around you as distinctly as the day
I left them. Harriet and I are very much the same
girls we were then. I do not believe we have altered
very much, though she is improved in some respects.

The August following this visit to Guilford Harriet
writes to her brother Edward in a vein which is still
streaked with sadness, but shows some indication of
returning health of mind.

“Many of my objections you did remove that afternoon
we spent together. After that I was not as unhappy
as I had been. I felt, nevertheless, that my
views were very indistinct and contradictory, and feared
that if you left me thus I might return to the same
dark, desolate state in which I had been all summer.
I felt that my immortal interest, my happiness for both
worlds, was depending on the turn my feelings might
take. In my disappointment and distress I called upon
God, and it seemed as if I was heard. I felt that He
could supply the loss of all earthly love. All misery
and darkness were over. I felt as if restored, nevermore
to fall. Such sober certainty of waking bliss had
long been a stranger to me. But even then I had
doubts as to whether these feelings were right, because
I felt love to God alone without that ardent love for
my fellow-creatures which Christians have often felt. . . .
I cannot say exactly what it is makes me reluctant
to speak of my feelings. It costs me an effort to
express feeling of any kind, but more particularly to
speak of my private religious feelings. If any one[40]
questions me, my first impulse is to conceal all I can.
As for expression of affection towards my brothers
and sisters, my companions or friends, the stronger
the affection the less inclination have I to express it.
Yet sometimes I think myself the most frank, open,
and communicative of beings, and at other times the
most reserved. If you can resolve all these caprices
into general principles, you will do more than I can.
Your speaking so much philosophically has a tendency
to repress confidence. We never wish to have our
feelings analyzed down; and very little, nothing, that
we say brought to the test of mathematical demonstration.

“It appears to me that if I only could adopt the
views of God you presented to my mind, they would
exert a strong and beneficial influence over my character.
But I am afraid to accept them for several reasons.
First, it seems to be taking from the majesty
and dignity of the divine character to suppose that his
happiness can be at all affected by the conduct of his
sinful, erring creatures. Secondly, it seems to me that
such views of God would have an effect on our own
minds in lessening that reverence and fear which is one
of the greatest motives to us for action. For, although
to a generous mind the thought of the love of God
would be a sufficient incentive to action, there are times
of coldness when that love is not felt, and then there
remains no sort of stimulus. I find as I adopt these
sentiments I feel less fear of God, and, in view of sin,
I feel only a sensation of grief which is more easily dispelled
and forgotten than that I formerly felt.”

A letter dated January 3, 1828, shows us that Harriet[41]
had returned to Hartford and was preparing herself
to teach drawing and painting, under the direction
of her sister Catherine.

My dear Grandmother,—I should have written
before to assure you of my remembrance of you, but I
have been constantly employed, from nine in the morning
till after dark at night, in taking lessons of a painting
and drawing master, with only an intermission long
enough to swallow a little dinner which was sent to me
in the school-room. You may easily believe that after
spending the day in this manner, I did not feel in a very
epistolary humor in the evening, and if I had been, I
could not have written, for when I did not go immediately
to bed I was obliged to get a long French lesson.

The seminary is finished, and the school going on
nicely. Miss Clarissa Brown is assisting Catherine in
the school. Besides her, Catherine, and myself, there
are two other teachers who both board in the family
with us: one is Miss Degan, an Italian lady who
teaches French and Italian; she rooms with me, and is
very interesting and agreeable. Miss Hawks is rooming
with Catherine. In some respects she reminds me
very much of my mother. She is gentle, affectionate,
modest, and retiring, and much beloved by all the
scholars. . . . I am still going on with my French,
and carrying two young ladies through Virgil, and if
I have time, shall commence Italian.

I am very comfortable and happy.

I propose, my dear grandmamma, to send you by
the first opportunity a dish of fruit of my own painting.
Pray do not now devour it in anticipation, for I[42]
cannot promise that you will not find it sadly tasteless
in reality. If so, please excuse it, for the sake of the
poor young artist. I admire to cultivate a taste for
painting, and I wish to improve it; it was what my
dear mother admired and loved, and I cherish it for her
sake. I have thought more of this dearest of all earthly
friends these late years, since I have been old enough
to know her character and appreciate her worth. I
sometimes think that, had she lived, I might have been
both better and happier than I now am, but God is
good and wise in all his ways.

A letter written to her brother Edward in Boston,
dated March 27, 1828, shows how slowly she adopted
the view of God that finally became one of the most
characteristic elements in her writings.

“I think that those views of God which you have
presented to me have had an influence in restoring my
mind to its natural tone. But still, after all, God is a
being afar off. He is so far above us that anything
but the most distant reverential affection seems almost
sacrilegious. It is that affection that can lead us to be
familiar that the heart needs. But easy and familiar
expressions of attachment and that sort of confidential
communication which I should address to papa or you
would be improper for a subject to address to a king,
much less for us to address to the King of kings. The
language of prayer is of necessity stately and formal,
and we cannot clothe all the little minutiæ of our wants
and troubles in it. I wish I could describe to you how
I feel when I pray. I feel that I love God,—that is,
that I love Christ,—that I find comfort and happiness[43]
in it, and yet it is not that kind of comfort which
would arise from free communication of my wants and
sorrows to a friend. I sometimes wish that the Saviour
were visibly present in this world, that I might go to
Him for a solution of some of my difficulties. . . . Do
you think, my dear brother, that there is such a thing
as so realizing the presence and character of God that
He can supply the place of earthly friends? I really
wish to know what you think of this. . . . Do you
suppose that God really loves sinners before they come
to Him? Some say that we ought to tell them that
God hates them, that He looks on them with utter abhorrence,
and that they must love Him before He will
look on them otherwise. Is it right to say to those
who are in deep distress, ‘God is interested in you; He
feels for and loves you’?”

Appended to this letter is a short note from Miss
Catherine Beecher, who evidently read the letter over
and answered Harriet’s questions herself. She writes:
“When the young man came to Jesus, is it not said
that Jesus loved him, though he was unrenewed?”

In April, 1828, Harriet again writes to her brother
Edward:—

“I have had more reason to be grateful to that
friend than ever before. He has not left me in all my
weakness. It seems to me that my love to Him is the
love of despair. All my communion with Him, though
sorrowful, is soothing. I am painfully sensible of ignorance
and deficiency, but still I feel that I am willing
that He should know all. He will look on all that
is wrong only to purify and reform. He will never be
irritated or impatient. He will never show me my[44]
faults in such a manner as to irritate without helping
me. A friend to whom I would acknowledge all my
faults must be perfect. Let any one once be provoked,
once speak harshly to me, once sweep all the chords of
my soul out of tune, I never could confide there again.
It is only to the most perfect Being in the universe
that imperfection can look and hope for patience. How
strange! . . . You do not know how harsh and forbidding
everything seems, compared with his character.
All through the day in my intercourse with others,
everything has a tendency to destroy the calmness of
mind gained by communion with Him. One flatters
me, another is angry with me, another is unjust to me.

“You speak of your predilections for literature having
been a snare to you. I have found it so myself.
I can scarcely think, without tears and indignation,
that all that is beautiful and lovely and poetical has
been laid on other altars. Oh! will there never be a
poet with a heart enlarged and purified by the Holy
Spirit, who shall throw all the graces of harmony,
all the enchantments of feeling, pathos, and poetry,
around sentiments worthy of them? . . . It matters
little what service He has for me. . . . I do not mean
to live in vain. He has given me talents, and I will
lay them at his feet, well satisfied, if He will accept
them. All my powers He can enlarge. He made my
mind, and He can teach me to cultivate and exert its
faculties.”

The following November she writes from Groton,
Conn., to Miss May:—

“I am in such an uncertain, unsettled state, traveling
back and forth, that I have very little time to write.[45]
In the first place, on my arrival in Boston I was
obliged to spend two days in talking and telling news.
Then after that came calling, visiting, etc., and then I
came off to Groton to see my poor brother George, who
was quite out of spirits and in very trying circumstances.
To-morrow I return to Boston and spend four
or five days, and then go to Franklin, where I spend
the rest of my vacation.

“I found the folks all well on my coming to Boston,
and as to my new brother, James, he has nothing to
distinguish him from forty other babies, except a very
large pair of blue eyes and an uncommonly fair complexion,
a thing which is of no sort of use or advantage
to a man or boy.

“I am thinking very seriously of remaining in Groton
and taking care of the female school, and at the
same time being of assistance and company for George.
On some accounts it would not be so pleasant as returning
to Hartford, for I should be among strangers.
Nothing upon this point can be definitely decided till
I have returned to Boston, and talked to papa and
Catherine.”

Evidently papa and Catherine did not approve of
the Groton plan, for in February of the following
winter Harriet writes from Hartford to Edward, who
is at this time with his father in Boston:—

“My situation this winter (1829) is in many respects
pleasant. I room with three other teachers, Miss
Fisher, Miss Mary Dutton, and Miss Brigham. Ann
Fisher you know. Miss Dutton is about twenty, has a
fine mathematical mind, and has gone as far into that
science perhaps as most students at college. She is[46]
also, as I am told, quite learned in the languages. . . .
Miss Brigham is somewhat older: is possessed of a fine
mind and most unconquerable energy and perseverance
of character. From early childhood she has been determined
to obtain an education, and to attain to a certain
standard. Where persons are determined to be
anything, they will be. I think, for this reason, she
will make a first-rate character. Such are my companions.
We spend our time in school during the day,
and in studying in the evening. My plan of study is
to read rhetoric and prepare exercises for my class the
first half hour in the evening; after that the rest of
the evening is divided between French and Italian.
Thus you see the plan of my employment and the character
of my immediate companions. Besides these,
there are others among the teachers and scholars who
must exert an influence over my character. Miss Degan,
whose constant occupation it is to make others
laugh; Mrs. Gamage, her room-mate, a steady, devoted,
sincere Christian. . . . Little things have great
power over me, and if I meet with the least thing that
crosses my feelings, I am often rendered unhappy for
days and weeks. . . . I wish I could bring myself to
feel perfectly indifferent to the opinions of others. I
believe that there never was a person more dependent
on the good and evil opinions of those around than I
am. This desire to be loved forms, I fear, the great
motive for all my actions. . . . I have been reading
carefully the book of Job, and I do not think that it
contains the views of God which you presented to me.
God seems to have stripped a dependent creature of all
that renders life desirable, and then to have answered[47]
his complaints from the whirlwind; and instead of
showing mercy and pity, to have overwhelmed him by
a display of his power and justice. . . . With the view
I received from you, I should have expected that a being
who sympathizes with his guilty, afflicted creatures
would not have spoken thus. Yet, after all, I do believe
that God is such a being as you represent Him to
be, and in the New Testament I find in the character
of Jesus Christ a revelation of God as merciful and
compassionate; in fact, just such a God as I need.

“Somehow or another you have such a reasonable
sort of way of saying things that when I come to reflect
I almost always go over to your side. . . . My
mind is often perplexed, and such thoughts arise in it
that I cannot pray, and I become bewildered. The
wonder to me is, how all ministers and all Christians
can feel themselves so inexcusably sinful, when it seems
to me we all come into the world in such a way that it
would be miraculous if we did not sin. Mr. Hawes
always says in prayer, ‘We have nothing to offer in
extenuation of any of our sins,’ and I always think
when he says it, that we have everything to offer in
extenuation. The case seems to me exactly as if I had
been brought into the world with such a thirst for
ardent spirits that there was just a possibility, though
no hope, that I should resist, and then my eternal happiness
made dependent on my being temperate. Sometimes
when I try to confess my sins, I feel that after
all I am more to be pitied than blamed, for I have
never known the time when I have not had a temptation
within me so strong that it was certain I should
not overcome it. This thought shocks me, but it[48]
comes with such force, and so appealingly, to all my
consciousness, that it stifles all sense of sin. . . .

“Sometimes when I read the Bible, it seems to be
wholly grounded on the idea that the sin of man is
astonishing, inexcusable, and without palliation or cause,
and the atonement is spoken of as such a wonderful
and undeserved mercy that I am filled with amazement.
Yet if I give up the Bible I gain nothing, for the
providence of God in nature is just as full of mystery,
and of the two I think that the Bible, with all its difficulties,
is preferable to being without it; for the Bible
holds out the hope that in a future world all shall be
made plain. . . . So you see I am, as Mr. Hawes says,
‘on the waves,’ and all I can do is to take the word of
God that He does do right and there I rest.”

The following summer, in July, she writes to Edward:
“I have never been so happy as this summer.
I began it in more suffering than I ever before have
felt, but there is One whom I daily thank for all that
suffering, since I hope that it has brought me at last
to rest entirely in Him. I do hope that my long, long
course of wandering and darkness and unhappiness is
over, and that I have found in Him who died for me
all, and more than all, I could desire. Oh, Edward, you
can feel as I do; you can speak of Him! There are
few, very few, who can. Christians in general do not
seem to look to Him as their best friend, or realize anything
of his unutterable love. They speak with a cold,
vague, reverential awe, but do not speak as if in the
habit of close and near communion; as if they confided
to Him every joy and sorrow and constantly looked to
Him for direction and guidance. I cannot express to[49]
you, my brother, I cannot tell you, how that Saviour
appears to me. To bear with one so imperfect, so
weak, so inconsistent, as myself, implied, long-suffering
and patience more than words can express. I love
most to look on Christ as my teacher, as one who,
knowing the utmost of my sinfulness, my waywardness,
my folly, can still have patience; can reform, purify,
and daily make me more like himself.”

So, after four years of struggling and suffering, she
returns to the place where she started from as a child
of thirteen. It has been like watching a ship with
straining masts and storm-beaten sails, buffeted by the
waves, making for the harbor, and coming at last to
quiet anchorage. There have been, of course, times of
darkness and depression, but never any permanent loss
of the religious trustfulness and peace of mind indicated
by this letter.

The next three years were passed partly in Boston,
and partly in Guilford and Hartford. Writing of this
period of her life to the Rev. Charles Beecher, she
says:—

My dear Brother,—The looking over of father’s
letters in the period of his Boston life brings forcibly
to my mind many recollections. At this time I was
more with him, and associated in companionship of
thought and feeling for a longer period than any other
of my experience.

In the summer of 1832 she writes to Miss May,
revealing her spiritual and intellectual life in a degree
unusual, even for her.

[50]

“After the disquisition on myself above cited, you
will be prepared to understand the changes through
which this wonderful ego et me ipse has passed.

“The amount of the matter has been, as this inner
world of mine has become worn out and untenable, I
have at last concluded to come out of it and live in the
external one, and, as F—— S—— once advised me, to
give up the pernicious habit of meditation to the first
Methodist minister that would take it, and try to mix
in society somewhat as another person would.

“‘Horas non numero nisi serenas.‘ Uncle Samuel,
who sits by me, has just been reading the above
motto, the inscription on a sun-dial in Venice. It
strikes me as having a distant relationship to what I
was going to say. I have come to a firm resolution to
count no hours but unclouded ones, and to let all
others slip out of my memory and reckoning as quickly
as possible. . . .

“I am trying to cultivate a general spirit of kindliness
towards everybody. Instead of shrinking into a
corner to notice how other people behave, I am holding
out my hand to the right and to the left, and forming
casual or incidental acquaintances with all who will be
acquainted with me. In this way I find society full of
interest and pleasure—a pleasure which pleaseth me
more because it is not old and worn out. From these
friendships I expect little; therefore generally receive
more than I expect. From past friendships I have
expected everything, and must of necessity have been
disappointed. The kind words and looks and smiles I
call forth by looking and smiling are not much by
themselves, but they form a very pretty flower border[51]
to the way of life. They embellish the day or the
hour as it passes, and when they fade they only do just
as you expected they would. This kind of pleasure in
acquaintanceship is new to me. I never tried it before.
When I used to meet persons, the first inquiry was,
‘Have they such and such a character, or have they
anything that might possibly be of use or harm to
me?'”

It is striking, the degree of interest a letter had for
her.

“Your long letter came this morning. It revived
much in my heart. Just think how glad I must have
been this morning to hear from you. I was glad. . . .
I thought of it through all the vexations of school this
morning. . . . I have a letter at home; and when I
came home from school, I went leisurely over it.

“This evening I have spent in a little social party,—a
dozen or so,—and I have been zealously talking
all the evening. When I came to my cold, lonely room,
there was your letter lying on the dressing-table. It
touched me with a sort of painful pleasure, for it seems
to me uncertain, improbable, that I shall ever return
and find you as I have found your letter. Oh, my
dear G——, it is scarcely well to love friends thus.
The greater part that I see cannot move me deeply.
They are present, and I enjoy them; they pass and I
forget them. But those that I love differently; those
that I love; and oh, how much that word means! I
feel sadly about them. They may change; they must
die; they are separated from me, and I ask myself
why should I wish to love with all the pains and penalties
of such conditions? I check myself when expressing[52]
feelings like this, so much has been said of it by
the sentimental, who talk what they could not have
felt. But it is so deeply, sincerely so in me, that sometimes
it will overflow. Well, there is a heaven,—a
heaven,—a world of love, and love after all is the life-blood,
the existence, the all in all of mind.”

This is the key to her whole life. She was impelled
by love, and did what she did, and wrote what she
did, under the impulse of love. Never could “Uncle
Tom’s Cabin” or “The Minister’s Wooing” have been
written, unless by one to whom love was the “life-blood
of existence, the all in all of mind.” Years afterwards
Mrs. Browning was to express this same thought in the
language of poetry.

[53]

CHAPTER III
CINCINNATI, 1832-1836.

In 1832, after having been settled for six years over
the Hanover Street Church in Boston, Dr. Beecher
received and finally accepted a most urgent call to
become President of Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati.
This institution had been chartered in 1829,
and in 1831 funds to the amount of nearly $70,000
had been promised to it provided that Dr. Beecher
accepted the presidency. It was hard for this New
England family to sever the ties of a lifetime and enter
on so long a journey to the far distant West of those
days; but being fully persuaded that their duty lay in
this direction, they undertook to perform it cheerfully
and willingly. With Dr. Beecher and his wife were
to go Miss Catherine Beecher, who had conceived the
scheme of founding in Cincinnati, then considered the
capital of the West, a female college, and Harriet, who
was to act as her principal assistant. In the party
were also George, who was to enter Lane as a student,
Isabella, James, the youngest son, and Miss Esther
Beecher, the “Aunt Esther” of the children.

[54]

Before making his final decision, Dr. Beecher, accompanied
by his daughter Catherine, visited Cincinnati
to take a general survey of their proposed battlefield,
and their impressions of the city are given in the
following letter written by the latter to Harriet in Boston:—

“Here we are at last at our journey’s end, alive and
well. We are staying with Uncle Samuel (Foote),
whose establishment I will try and sketch for you. It
is on a height in the upper part of the city, and commands
a fine view of the whole of the lower town.
The city does not impress me as being so very new. It
is true everything looks neat and clean, but it is compact,
and many of the houses are of brick and very
handsomely built. The streets run at right angles to
each other, and are wide and well paved. We reached
here in three days from Wheeling, and soon felt ourselves
at home. The next day father and I, with three
gentlemen, walked out to Walnut Hills. The country
around the city consists of a constant succession and
variety of hills of all shapes and sizes, forming an extensive
amphitheatre. The site of the seminary is very
beautiful and picturesque, though I was disappointed
to find that both river and city are hidden by intervening
hills. I never saw a place so capable of being rendered
a paradise by the improvements of taste as the
environs of this city. Walnut Hills are so elevated
and cool that people have to leave there to be sick, it
is said. The seminary is located on a farm of one hundred
and twenty-five acres of fine land, with groves of
superb trees around it, about two miles from the city.
We have finally decided on the spot where our house[55]
shall stand in case we decide to come, and you cannot
(where running water or the seashore is wanting) find
another more delightful spot for a residence. It is on
an eminence, with a grove running up from the back
to the very doors, another grove across the street in
front, and fine openings through which distant hills and
the richest landscapes appear.

“I have become somewhat acquainted with those
ladies we shall have the most to do with, and find them
intelligent, New England sort of folks. Indeed, this
is a New England city in all its habits, and its inhabitants
are more than half from New England. The
Second Church, which is the best in the city, will give
father a unanimous call to be their minister, with the
understanding that he will give them what time he can
spare from the seminary.

“I know of no place in the world where there is so
fair a prospect of finding everything that makes social
and domestic life pleasant. Uncle John and Uncle
Samuel are just the intelligent, sociable, free, and hospitable
sort of folk that everybody likes and everybody
feels at home with.

“The folks are very anxious to have a school on our
plan set on foot here. We can have fine rooms in the
city college building, which is now unoccupied, and
everybody is ready to lend a helping hand. As to
father, I never saw such a field of usefulness and influence
as is offered to him here.”

This, then, was the field of labor in which the next
eighteen years of the life of Mrs. Stowe were to be
passed. At this time her sister Mary was married and
living in Hartford, her brothers Henry Ward and[56]
Charles were in college, while William and Edward, already
licensed to preach, were preparing to follow their
father to the West.

THE HOME AT WALNUT HILLS, CINCINNATI.

Mr. Beecher’s preliminary journey to Cincinnati was
undertaken in the early spring of 1832, but he was not
ready to remove his family until October of that year.
An interesting account of this westward journey is
given by Mrs. Stowe in a letter sent back to Hartford
from Cincinnati, as follows:—

“Well, my dear, the great sheet is out and the letter
is begun. All our family are here (in New York), and
in good health.

“Father is to perform to-night in the Chatham
Theatre! ‘positively for the last time this season!’
I don’t know, I’m sure, as we shall ever get to Pittsburgh.
Father is staying here begging money for the
Biblical Literature professorship; the incumbent is to
be C. Stowe. Last night we had a call from Arthur
Tappan and Mr. Eastman. Father begged $2,000
yesterday, and now the good people are praying him
to abide certain days, as he succeeds so well. They are
talking of sending us off and keeping him here. I
really dare not go and see Aunt Esther and mother
now; they were in the depths of tribulation before at
staying so long, and now,

[57]

“Wednesday. Still in New York. I believe it
would kill me dead to live long in the way I have been
doing since I have been here. It is a sort of agreeable
delirium. There’s only one thing about it, it is too
scattering. I begin to be athirst for the waters of
quietness.”

Writing from Philadelphia, she adds:—

“Well, we did get away from New York at last, but
it was through much tribulation. The truckman carried
all the family baggage to the wrong wharf, and,
after waiting and waiting on board the boat, we were
obliged to start without it, George remaining to look it
up. Arrived here late Saturday evening,—dull, drizzling
weather; poor Aunt Esther in dismay,—not a
clean cap to put on,—mother in like state; all of us
destitute. We went, half to Dr. Skinner’s and half to
Mrs. Elmes’s: mother, Aunt Esther, father, and James
to the former; Kate, Bella, and myself to Mr. Elmes’s.
They are rich, hospitable folks, and act the part of
Gaius in apostolic times. . . . Our trunks came this
morning. Father stood and saw them all brought into
Dr. Skinner’s entry, and then he swung his hat and
gave a ‘hurrah,’ as any man would whose wife had not
had a clean cap or ruffle for a week. Father does not
succeed very well in opening purses here. Mr. Eastman
says, however, that this is not of much consequence.
I saw to-day a notice in the ‘Philadelphian’
about father, setting forth how ‘this distinguished
brother, with his large family, having torn themselves
from the endearing scenes of their home,’ etc., etc.,
‘were going, like Jacob,’ etc.,—a very scriptural and
appropriate flourish. It is too much after the manner[58]
of men, or, as Paul says, speaking ‘as a fool.’ A number
of the pious people of this city are coming here this
evening to hold a prayer-meeting with reference to the
journey and its object. For this I thank them.”

From Downington she writes:—

“Here we all are,—Noah and his wife and his sons
and his daughters, with the cattle and creeping things,
all dropped down in the front parlor of this tavern,
about thirty miles from Philadelphia. If to-day is a
fair specimen of our journey, it will be a very pleasant,
obliging driver, good roads, good spirits, good dinner,
fine scenery, and now and then some ‘psalms and
hymns and spiritual songs;’ for with George on board
you may be sure of music of some kind. Moreover,
George has provided himself with a quantity of tracts,
and he and the children have kept up a regular discharge
at all the wayfaring people we encountered. I
tell him he is peppering the land with moral influence.

“We are all well; all in good spirits. Just let me
give you a peep into our traveling household. Behold
us, then, in the front parlor of this country inn, all as
much at home as if we were in Boston. Father is sitting
opposite to me at this table, reading; Kate is writing
a billet-doux to Mary on a sheet like this; Thomas
is opposite, writing in a little journal that he keeps;
Sister Bell, too, has her little record; George is waiting
for a seat that he may produce his paper and write. As
for me, among the multitude of my present friends, my
heart still makes occasional visits to absent ones,—visits
full of pleasure, and full of cause of gratitude to
Him who gives us friends. I have thought of you[59]
often to-day, my G. We stopped this noon at a substantial
Pennsylvania tavern, and among the flowers in
the garden was a late monthly honeysuckle like the one
at North Guilford. I made a spring for it, but George
secured the finest bunch, which he wore in his button-hole
the rest of the noon.

“This afternoon, as we were traveling, we struck up
and sang ‘Jubilee.’ It put me in mind of the time
when we used to ride along the rough North Guilford
roads and make the air vocal as we went along. Pleasant
times those. Those were blue skies, and that was
a beautiful lake and noble pine-trees and rocks they
were that hung over it. But those we shall look upon
‘na mair.’

“Well, my dear, there is a land where we shall not
love and leave. Those skies shall never cease to shine,
the waters of life we shall never be called upon to
leave. We have here no continuing city, but we seek
one to come. In such thoughts as these I desire ever
to rest, and with such words as these let us ‘comfort
one another and edify one another.'”

“Harrisburg, Sunday evening. Mother, Aunt Esther,
George, and the little folks have just gathered into
Kate’s room, and we have just been singing. Father
has gone to preach for Mr. De Witt. To-morrow we
expect to travel sixty-two miles, and in two more days
shall reach Wheeling; there we shall take the steamboat
to Cincinnati.”

On the same journey George Beecher writes:—

“We had poor horses in crossing the mountains.
Our average rate for the last four days to Wheeling
was forty-four miles. The journey, which takes the[60]
mail-stage forty-eight hours, took us eight days. At
Wheeling we deliberated long whether to go on board
a boat for Cincinnati, but the prevalence of the cholera
there at last decided us to remain. While at Wheeling
father preached eleven times,—nearly every evening,—and
gave them the Taylorite heresy on sin and decrees
to the highest notch; and what amused me most
was to hear him establish it from the Confession of
Faith. It went high and dry, however, above all objections,
and they were delighted with it, even the old
school men, since it had not been christened ‘heresy’
in their hearing. After remaining in Wheeling eight
days, we chartered a stage for Cincinnati, and started
next morning.

“At Granville, Ohio, we were invited to stop and
attend a protracted meeting. Being in no great hurry
to enter Cincinnati till the cholera had left, we consented.
We spent the remainder of the week there,
and I preached five times and father four. The interest
was increasingly deep and solemn each day, and
when we left there were forty-five cases of conversion
in the town, besides those from the surrounding towns.
The people were astonished at the doctrine; said they
never saw the truth so plain in their lives.”

Although the new-comers were cordially welcomed
in Cincinnati, and everything possible was done for
their comfort and to make them feel at home, they felt
themselves to be strangers in a strange land. Their
homesickness and yearnings for New England are set
forth by the following extracts from Mrs. Stowe’s answer
to the first letter they received from Hartford
after leaving there:—

[61]

My dear Sister (Mary),—The Hartford letter
from all and sundry has just arrived, and after cutting
all manner of capers expressive of thankfulness, I have
skipped three stairs at a time up to the study to begin
an answer. My notions of answering letters are according
to the literal sense of the word; not waiting
six months and then scrawling a lazy reply, but sitting
down the moment you have read a letter, and telling,
as Dr. Woods says, “How the subject strikes you.” I
wish I could be clear that the path of duty lay in talking
to you this afternoon, but as I find a loud call to
consider the heels of George’s stockings, I must only
write a word or two, and then resume my darning-needle.
You don’t know how anxiously we all have
watched for some intelligence from Hartford. Not a
day has passed when I have not been the efficient agent
in getting somebody to the post-office, and every day
my heart has sunk at the sound of “no letters.” I felt
a tremor quite sufficient for a lover when I saw your
handwriting once more, so you see that in your old age
you can excite quite as much emotion as did the admirable
Miss Byron in her adoring Sir Charles. I hope
the consideration and digestion of this fact will have
its due weight in encouraging you to proceed.

The fact of our having received said letter is as yet
a state secret, not to be made known till all our family
circle “in full assembly meet” at the tea-table. Then
what an illumination! “How we shall be edified and
fructified,” as that old Methodist said. It seems too
bad to keep it from mother and Aunt Esther a whole
afternoon, but then I have the comfort of thinking
that we are consulting for their greatest happiness “on
the whole,” which is metaphysical benevolence.

[62]

So kind Mrs. Parsons stopped in the very midst
of her pumpkin pies to think of us? Seems to me I
can see her bright, cheerful face now! And then
those well known handwritings! We do love our
Hartford friends dearly; there can be, I think, no controverting
that fact. Kate says that the word love is
used in six senses, and I am sure in some one of them
they will all come in. Well, good-by for the present.

Evening. Having finished the last hole on George’s
black vest, I stick in my needle and sit down to be
sociable. You don’t know how coming away from
New England has sentimentalized us all! Never was
there such an abundance of meditation on our native
land, on the joys of friendship, the pains of separation.
Catherine had an alarming paroxysm in Philadelphia
which expended itself in “The Emigrant’s Farewell.”
After this was sent off she felt considerably relieved.
My symptoms have been of a less acute kind, but, I
fear, more enduring. There! the tea-bell rings. Too
bad! I was just going to say something bright. Now
to take your letter and run! How they will stare when
I produce it!

After tea. Well, we have had a fine time. When
supper was about half over, Catherine began: “We
have a dessert that we have been saving all the afternoon,”
and then I held up my letter. “See here, this
is from Hartford!” I wish you could have seen Aunt
Esther’s eyes brighten, and mother’s pale face all in a
smile, and father, as I unfolded the letter and began.
Mrs. Parsons’s notice of her Thanksgiving predicament
caused just a laugh, and then one or two sighs (I told
you we were growing sentimental!). We did talk[63]
some of keeping it (Thanksgiving), but perhaps we
should all have felt something of the text, “How shall
we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” Your
praises of Aunt Esther I read twice in an audible voice,
as the children made some noise the first time. I think
I detected a visible blush, though she found at that
time a great deal to do in spreading bread and butter
for James, and shuffling his plate; and, indeed, it was
rather a vehement attack on her humility, since it gave
her at least “angelic perfection,” if not “Adamic” (to
use Methodist technics). Jamie began his Sunday-school
career yesterday. The superintendent asked
him how old he was. “I’m four years old now, and
when it snows very hard I shall be five,” he answered.
I have just been trying to make him interpret his
meaning; but he says, “Oh, I said so because I could
not think of anything else to say.” By the by, Mary,
speaking of the temptations of cities, I have much
solicitude on Jamie’s account lest he should form improper
intimacies, for yesterday or day before we saw
him parading by the house with his arm over the neck
of a great hog, apparently on the most amicable terms
possible; and the other day he actually got upon the
back of one, and rode some distance. So much for
allowing these animals to promenade the streets, a particular
in which Mrs. Cincinnati has imitated the domestic
arrangements of some of her elder sisters, and a
very disgusting one it is.

Our family physician is one Dr. Drake, a man of a
good deal of science, theory, and reputed skill, but a
sort of general mark for the opposition of all the medical
cloth of the city. He is a tall, rectangular, perpendicular[64]
sort of a body, as stiff as a poker, and
enunciates his prescriptions very much as though he
were delivering a discourse on the doctrine of election.
The other evening he was detained from visiting Kate,
and he sent a very polite, ceremonious note containing
a prescription, with Dr. D.’s compliments to Miss
Beecher, requesting that she would take the inclosed
in a little molasses at nine o’clock precisely.

The house we are at present inhabiting is the most
inconvenient, ill-arranged, good-for-nothing, and altogether
to be execrated affair that ever was put together.
It was evidently built without a thought of a winter
season. The kitchen is so disposed that it cannot be
reached from any part of the house without going out
into the air. Mother is actually obliged to put on a
bonnet and cloak every time she goes into it. In the
house are two parlors with folding doors between them.
The back parlor has but one window, which opens on
a veranda and has its lower half painted to keep out
what little light there is. I need scarcely add that our
landlord is an old bachelor and of course acted up to
the light he had, though he left little enough of it for
his tenants.

During this early Cincinnati life Harriet suffered
much from ill-health accompanied by great mental depression;
but in spite of both she labored diligently
with her sister Catherine in establishing their school.
They called it the Western Female Institute, and proposed
to conduct it upon the college plan, with a faculty
of instructors. As all these things are treated at
length in letters written by Mrs. Stowe to her friend,[65]
Miss Georgiana May, we cannot do better than turn
to them. In May, 1833, she writes:—

“Bishop Purcell visited our school to-day and expressed
himself as greatly pleased that we had opened
such an one here. He spoke of my poor little geography,[1]
and thanked me for the unprejudiced manner in
which I had handled the Catholic question in it. I
was of course flattered that he should have known anything
of the book.

“How I wish you could see Walnut Hills. It is
about two miles from the city, and the road to it is as
picturesque as you can imagine a road to be without
‘springs that run among the hills.’ Every possible
variety of hill and vale of beautiful slope, and undulations
of land set off by velvet richness of turf and
broken up by groves and forests of every outline of
foliage, make the scene Arcadian. You might ride
over the same road a dozen times a day untired, for
the constant variation of view caused by ascending
and descending hills relieves you from all tedium.
Much of the wooding is beech of a noble growth. The
straight, beautiful shafts of these trees as one looks up
the cool green recesses of the woods seems as though
they might form very proper columns for a Dryad temple.
There! Catherine is growling at me for sitting
up so late; so ‘adieu to music, moonlight, and you.’ I
meant to tell you an abundance of classical things that
I have been thinking to-night, but ‘woe’s me.’

[66]

“Since writing the above my whole time has been
taken up in the labor of our new school, or wasted in
the fatigue and lassitude following such labor. To-day
is Sunday, and I am staying at home because I think
it is time to take some efficient means to dissipate the
illness and bad feelings of divers kinds that have for
some time been growing upon me. At present there
is and can be very little system or regularity about me.
About half of my time I am scarcely alive, and a great
part of the rest the slave and sport of morbid feeling
and unreasonable prejudice. I have everything but
good health.

“I still rejoice that this letter will find you in good
old Connecticut—thrice blessed—’oh, had I the
wings of a dove’ I would be there too. Give my love
to Mary H. I remember well how gently she used to
speak to and smile on that forlorn old daddy that
boarded at your house one summer. It was associating
with her that first put into my head the idea of saying
something to people who were not agreeable, and of
saying something when I had nothing to say, as is generally
the case on such occasions.”

Again she writes to the same friend: “Your letter,
my dear G., I have just received, and read through
three times. Now for my meditations upon it. What
a woman of the world you are grown. How good it
would be for me to be put into a place which so breaks
up and precludes thought. Thought, intense emotional
thought, has been my disease. How much good it
might do me to be where I could not but be thoughtless. . . .

“Now, Georgiana, let me copy for your delectation[67]
a list of matters that I have jotted down for consideration
at a teachers’ meeting to be held to-morrow night.
It runneth as follows. Just hear! ‘About quills and
paper on the floor; forming classes; drinking in the
entry (cold water, mind you); giving leave to speak;
recess-bell, etc., etc.’ ‘You are tired, I see,’ says Gilpin,
‘so am I,’ and I spare you.

“I have just been hearing a class of little girls recite,
and telling them a fairy story which I had to spin
out as it went along, beginning with ‘once upon a time
there was,’ etc., in the good old-fashioned way of stories.

“Recently I have been reading the life of Madame
de Staël and ‘Corinne.’ I have felt an intense sympathy
with many parts of that book, with many parts of her
character. But in America feelings vehement and
absorbing like hers become still more deep, morbid,
and impassioned by the constant habits of self-government
which the rigid forms of our society demand.
They are repressed, and they burn inward till they
burn the very soul, leaving only dust and ashes. It
seems to me the intensity with which my mind has
thought and felt on every subject presented to it has
had this effect. It has withered and exhausted it, and
though young I have no sympathy with the feelings of
youth. All that is enthusiastic, all that is impassioned
in admiration of nature, of writing, of character, in
devotional thought and emotion, or in the emotions of
affection, I have felt with vehement and absorbing
intensity,—felt till my mind is exhausted, and seems
to be sinking into deadness. Half of my time I am
glad to remain in a listless vacancy, to busy myself
with trifles, since thought is pain, and emotion is pain.”

[68]

During the winter of 1833-34 the young school-teacher
became so distressed at her own mental listlessness
that she made a vigorous effort to throw it off.
She forced herself to mingle in society, and, stimulated
by the offer of a prize of fifty dollars by Mr. James
Hall, editor of the “Western Monthly,” a newly established
magazine, for the best short story, she entered
into the competition. Her story, which was entitled
“Uncle Lot,” afterwards republished in the “Mayflower,”
was by far the best submitted, and was
awarded the prize without hesitation. This success
gave a new direction to her thoughts, gave her an insight
into her own ability, and so encouraged her that
from that time on she devoted most of her leisure
moments to writing.

Her literary efforts were further stimulated at this
time by the congenial society of the Semi-Colon Club,
a little social circle that met on alternate weeks at Mr.
Samuel Foote’s and Dr. Drake’s. The name of the
club originated with a roundabout and rather weak bit
of logic set forth by one of its promoters. He said:
“You know that in Spanish Columbus is called ‘Colon.’
Now he who discovers a new pleasure is certainly half
as great as he who discovers a new continent. Therefore
if Colon discovered a continent, we who have discovered
in this club a new pleasure should at least be
entitled to the name of ‘Semi-Colons.'” So Semi-Colons
they became and remained for some years.

At some meetings compositions were read, and at
others nothing was read, but the time was passed in a
general discussion of some interesting topic previously
announced. Among the members of the club were[69]
Professor Stowe, unsurpassed in Biblical learning;
Judge James Hall, editor of the “Western Monthly;”
General Edward King; Mrs. Peters, afterwards founder
of the Philadelphia School of Design; Miss Catherine
Beecher; Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz; E. P. Cranch;
Dr. Drake; S. P. Chase, and many others who afterwards
became prominent in their several walks of life.

In one of her letters to Miss May, Mrs. Stowe describes
one of her methods for entertaining the members
of the Semi-Colon as follows:—

“I am wondering as to what I shall do next. I
have been writing a piece to be read next Monday
evening at Uncle Sam’s soirée (the Semi-Colon). It is
a letter purporting to be from Dr. Johnson. I have
been stilting about in his style so long that it is a relief
to me to come down to the jog of common English.
Now I think of it I will just give you a history of my
campaign in this circle.

“My first piece was a letter from Bishop Butler,
written in his outrageous style of parentheses and foggification.
My second a satirical essay on the modern
uses of languages. This I shall send to you, as some
of the gentlemen, it seems, took a fancy to it and
requested leave to put it in the ‘Western Magazine,’
and so it is in print. It is ascribed to Catherine, or I
don’t know that I should have let it go. I have no
notion of appearing in propria personæ.

“The next piece was a satire on certain members
who were getting very much into the way of joking
on the worn-out subjects of matrimony and old maid
and old bachelorism. I therefore wrote a set of legislative
enactments purporting to be from the ladies of[70]
the society, forbidding all such allusions in future. It
made some sport at the time. I try not to be personal,
and to be courteous, even in satire.

“But I have written a piece this week that is making
me some disquiet. I did not like it that there was
so little that was serious and rational about the reading.
So I conceived the design of writing a set of letters,
and throwing them in, as being the letters of a friend.
I wrote a letter this week for the first of the set,—easy,
not very sprightly,—describing an imaginary
situation, a house in the country, a gentleman and
lady, Mr. and Mrs. Howard, as being pious, literary,
and agreeable. I threw into the letter a number of
little particulars and incidental allusions to give it the
air of having been really a letter. I meant thus to
give myself an opportunity for the introduction of different
subjects and the discussion of different characters
in future letters.

“I meant to write on a great number of subjects in
future. Cousin Elisabeth, only, was in the secret;
Uncle Samuel and Sarah Elliot were not to know.

“Yesterday morning I finished my letter, smoked it
to make it look yellow, tore it to make it look old,
directed it and scratched out the direction, postmarked
it with red ink, sealed it and broke the seal, all this to
give credibility to the fact of its being a real letter.
Then I inclosed it in an envelope, stating that it was
a part of a set which had incidentally fallen into my
hands. This envelope was written in a scrawny,
scrawly, gentleman’s hand.

“I put it into the office in the morning, directed to
‘Mrs. Samuel E. Foote,’ and then sent word to Sis that[71]
it was coming, so that she might be ready to enact the
part.

“Well, the deception took. Uncle Sam examined it
and pronounced, ex cathedra, that it must have been
a real letter. Mr. Greene (the gentleman who reads)
declared that it must have come from Mrs. Hall, and
elucidated the theory by spelling out the names and
dates which I had erased, which, of course, he accommodated
to his own tastes. But then, what makes me
feel uneasy is that Elisabeth, after reading it, did not
seem to be exactly satisfied. She thought it had too
much sentiment, too much particularity of incident,—she
did not exactly know what. She was afraid that it
would be criticised unmercifully. Now Elisabeth has
a tact and quickness of perception that I trust to, and
her remarks have made me uneasy enough. I am
unused to being criticised, and don’t know how I shall
bear it.”

In 1833 Mrs. Stowe first had the subject of slavery
brought to her personal notice by taking a trip across
the river from Cincinnati into Kentucky in company
with Miss Dutton, one of the associate teachers in the
Western Institute. They visited an estate that afterwards
figured as that of Colonel Shelby in “Uncle
Tom’s Cabin,” and here the young authoress first came
into personal contact with the negro slaves of the
South. In speaking, many years afterwards, of this
visit, Miss Dutton said: “Harriet did not seem to
notice anything in particular that happened, but sat
much of the time as though abstracted in thought.
When the negroes did funny things and cut up capers,
she did not seem to pay the slightest attention to them.[72]
Afterwards, however, in reading ‘Uncle Tom.’ I recognized
scene after scene of that visit portrayed with
the most minute fidelity, and knew at once where the
material for that portion of the story had been gathered.”

At this time, however, Mrs. Stowe was more deeply
interested in the subject of education than in that of
slavery, as is shown by the following extract from one
of her letters to Miss May, who was herself a teacher.
She says:—

“We mean to turn over the West by means of
model schools in this, its capital. We mean to have a
young lady’s school of about fifty or sixty, a primary
school of little girls to the same amount, and then a
primary school for boys. We have come to the conclusion
that the work of teaching will never be rightly
done till it passes into female hands. This is especially
true with regard to boys. To govern boys by
moral influences requires tact and talent and versatility
it requires also the same division of labor that
female education does. But men of tact, versatility,
talent, and piety will not devote their lives to teaching.
They must be ministers and missionaries, and all that,
and while there is such a thrilling call for action in this
way, every man who is merely teaching feels as if he
were a Hercules with a distaff, ready to spring to the
first trumpet that calls him away. As for division of
labor, men must have salaries that can support wife
and family, and, of course, a revenue would be required
to support a requisite number of teachers if they could
be found.

“Then, if men have more knowledge they have less[73]
talent at communicating it, nor have they the patience,
the long-suffering, and gentleness necessary to superintend
the formation of character. We intend to make
these principles understood, and ourselves to set the
example of what females can do in this way. You see
that first-rate talent is necessary for all that we mean
to do, especially for the last, because here we must face
down the prejudices of society and we must have exemplary
success to be believed. We want original,
planning minds, and you do not know how few there
are among females, and how few we can command of
those that exist.”

During the summer of 1834 the young teacher and
writer made her first visit East since leaving New England
two years before. Its object was mainly to be
present at the graduation of her favorite brother, Henry
Ward, from Amherst College. The earlier part of this
journey was performed by means of stage to Toledo,
and thence by steamer to Buffalo. A pleasant bit of
personal description, and also of impressions of Niagara,
seen for the first time on this journey, are given in a
letter sent back to Cincinnati during its progress. In
it she says of her fellow-travelers:—

“Then there was a portly, rosy, clever Mr. Smith, or
Jones, or something the like; and a New Orleans girl
looking like distraction, as far as dress is concerned, but
with the prettiest language and softest intonations in
the world, and one of those faces which, while you say
it isn’t handsome, keeps you looking all the time to see
what it can be that is so pretty about it. Then there
was Miss B., an independent, good-natured, do-as-I-please
sort of a body, who seemed of perpetual motion[74]
from morning till night. Poor Miss D. said, when we
stopped at night, ‘Oh, dear! I suppose Lydia will be
fiddling about our room till morning, and we shall not
one of us sleep.’ Then, by way of contrast, there was
a Mr. Mitchell, the most gentlemanly, obliging man
that ever changed his seat forty times a day to please
a lady. Oh, yes, he could ride outside,—or, oh, certainly,
he could ride inside,—he had no objection to
this, or that, or the other. Indeed, it was difficult to
say what could come amiss to him. He speaks in a
soft, quiet manner, with something of a drawl, using
very correct, well-chosen language, and pronouncing all
his words with carefulness; has everything in his dress
and traveling appointments comme il faut; and seems
to think there is abundant time for everything that
is to be done in this world, without, as he says, ‘any
unnecessary excitement.’ Before the party had fully
discovered his name he was usually designated as ‘the
obliging gentleman,’ or ‘that gentleman who is so accommodating.’
Yet our friend, withal, is of Irish extraction,
and I have seen him roused to talk with both
hands and a dozen words in a breath. He fell into a
little talk about abolition and slavery with our good
Mr. Jones, a man whose mode of reasoning consists in
repeating the same sentence at regular intervals as long
as you choose to answer it. This man, who was finally
convinced that negroes were black, used it as an irrefragible
argument to all that could be said, and at last
began to deduce from it that they might just as well be
slaves as anything else, and so he proceeded till all the
philanthropy of our friend was roused, and he sprung
up all lively and oratorical and gesticulatory and indignant[75]
to my heart’s content. I like to see a quiet man
that can be roused.”

In the same letter she gives her impressions of
Niagara, as follows:—

“I have seen it (Niagara) and yet live. Oh, where
is your soul? Never mind, though. Let me tell, if I
can, what is unutterable. Elisabeth, it is not like anything;
it did not look like anything I expected; it did
not look like a waterfall. I did not once think whether
it was high or low; whether it roared or didn’t roar;
whether it equaled my expectations or not. My mind
whirled off, it seemed to me, in a new, strange world.
It seemed unearthly, like the strange, dim images in
the Revelation. I thought of the great white throne;
the rainbow around it; the throne in sight like unto an
emerald; and oh! that beautiful water rising like moonlight,
falling as the soul sinks when it dies, to rise refined,
spiritualized, and pure. That rainbow, breaking
out, trembling, fading, and again coming like a beautiful
spirit walking the waters. Oh, it is lovelier than it
is great; it is like the Mind that made it: great, but so
veiled in beauty that we gaze without terror. I felt as
if I could have gone over with the waters; it would
be so beautiful a death; there would be no fear in it.
I felt the rock tremble under me with a sort of joy.
I was so maddened that I could have gone too, if it had
gone.”

While at the East she was greatly affected by hearing
of the death of her dear friend, Eliza Tyler, the wife
of Professor Stowe. This lady was the daughter of
Dr. Bennett Tyler, president of the Theological Institute
of Connecticut, at East Windsor; but twenty-five[76]
years of age at the time of her death, a very beautiful
woman gifted with a wonderful voice. She was also
possessed of a well-stored mind and a personal magnetism
that made her one of the most popular members
of the Semi-Colon Club, in the proceedings of which
she took an active interest.

Her death left Professor Stowe a childless widower,
and his forlorn condition greatly excited the sympathy
of her who had been his wife’s most intimate friend.
It was easy for sympathy to ripen into love, and after a
short engagement Harriet E. Beecher became the wife
of Professor Calvin E. Stowe.

Her last act before the wedding was to write the following
note to the friend of her girlhood, Miss Georgiana
May:—

January 6, 1836.

Well, my dear G., about half an hour more and your
old friend, companion, schoolmate, sister, etc., will cease
to be Hatty Beecher and change to nobody knows who.
My dear, you are engaged, and pledged in a year or two
to encounter a similar fate, and do you wish to know
how you shall feel? Well, my dear, I have been dreading
and dreading the time, and lying awake all last
week wondering how I should live through this overwhelming
crisis, and lo! it has come and I feel nothing
at all.

The wedding is to be altogether domestic; nobody
present but my own brothers and sisters, and my old
colleague, Mary Dutton; and as there is a sufficiency
of the ministry in our family we have not even to call
in the foreign aid of a minister. Sister Katy is not
here, so she will not witness my departure from her care[77]
and guidance to that of another. None of my numerous
friends and acquaintances who have taken such a
deep interest in making the connection for me even
know the day, and it will be all done and over before
they know anything about it.

Well, it is really a mercy to have this entire stupidity
come over one at such a time. I should be crazy to feel
as I did yesterday, or indeed to feel anything at all.
But I inwardly vowed that my last feelings and reflections
on this subject should be yours, and as I have not
got any, it is just as well to tell you that. Well, here
comes Mr. S., so farewell, and for the last time I subscribe

Your own
H. E. B.

[78]

CHAPTER IV.
EARLY MARRIED LIFE, 1836-1840.

The letter to her friend Georgiana May, begun half
an hour before her wedding, was not completed until
nearly two months after that event. Taking it from
her portfolio, she adds:—

“Three weeks have passed since writing the above,
and my husband and self are now quietly seated by our
own fireside, as domestic as any pair of tame fowl you
ever saw; he writing to his mother, and I to you. Two
days after our marriage we took a wedding excursion,
so called, though we would most gladly have been excused
this conformity to ordinary custom had not necessity
required Mr. Stowe to visit Columbus, and I had
too much adhesiveness not to go too. Ohio roads at
this season are no joke, I can tell you, though we were,
on the whole, wonderfully taken care of, and our expedition
included as many pleasures as an expedition at
this time of the year ever could.

“And now, my dear, perhaps the wonder to you, as
to me, is how this momentous crisis in the life of such
a wisp of nerve as myself has been transacted so quietly.[79]
My dear, it is a wonder to myself. I am tranquil,
quiet, and happy. I look only on the present,
and leave the future with Him who has hitherto been
so kind to me. ‘Take no thought for the morrow’ is
my motto, and my comfort is to rest on Him in whose
house there are many mansions provided when these
fleeting earthly ones pass away.

“Dear Georgy, naughty girl that I am, it is a month
that I have let the above lie by, because I got into a
strain of emotion in it that I dreaded to return to.
Well, so it shall be no longer. In about five weeks
Mr. Stowe and myself start for New England. He
sails the first of May. I am going with him to Boston,
New York, and other places, and shall stop finally at
Hartford, whence, as soon as he is gone, it is my intention
to return westward.”

This reference to her husband as about to leave her
relates to his sailing for Europe to purchase books for
Lane Seminary, and also as a commissioner appointed
by the State of Ohio to investigate the public school
systems of the old world. He had long been convinced
that higher education was impossible in the West without
a higher grade of public schools, and had in 1833
been one of the founders in Cincinnati of “The College
of Teachers,” an institution that existed for ten
years, and exerted a widespread influence. Its objects
were to popularize the common schools, raise the standard
of teachers, and create a demand for education
among the people. Professor Stowe was associated in
this movement with many of the leading intellects of
Ohio at that time, and among them were Albert Pickett,
Dr. Drake, Smith Grimke, Archbishop Purcell, President[80]
A. H. McGuffey, Dr. Beecher, Lydia Sigourney,
Caroline Lee Hentz, and others. Their influence finally
extended to the state legislature, and it was concluded
to authorize Professor Stowe, when abroad, to investigate
and report upon the common school systems of
Europe, especially Prussia.

He sailed from New York for London in the ship
Montreal, Captain Champlin, on June 8, 1836, and
carried with him, to be opened only after he was at
sea, a letter from his wife, from which the following
extract is made:—

“Now, my dear, that you are gone where you are
out of the reach of my care, advice, and good management,
it is fitting that you should have something
under my hand and seal for your comfort and furtherance
in the new world you are going to. Firstly, I
must caution you to set your face as a flint against the
‘cultivation of indigo,’ as Elisabeth calls it, in any way
or shape. Keep yourself from it most scrupulously,
and though you are unprovided with that precious and
savory treatise entitled ‘Kemper’s Consolations,’[2] yet
you can exercise yourself to recall and set in order such
parts thereof as would more particularly suit your case,
particularly those portions wherewith you so much consoled
Kate, Aunt Esther, and your unworthy handmaid,
while you yet tarried at Walnut Hills. But seriously,
dear one, you must give more way to hope than
to memory. You are going to a new scene now, and
one that I hope will be full of enjoyment to you. I
want you to take the good of it.

“Only think of all you expect to see: the great[81]
libraries and beautiful paintings, fine churches, and,
above all, think of seeing Tholuck, your great Apollo.
My dear, I wish I were a man in your place; if I
wouldn’t have a grand time!”

During her husband’s absence abroad Mrs. Stowe
lived quietly in Cincinnati with her father and brothers.
She wrote occasionally short stories, articles, and
essays for publication in the “Western Monthly Magazine”
or the “New York Evangelist,” and maintained
a constant correspondence with her husband by means
of a daily journal, which was forwarded to him once a
month. She also assisted her brother, Henry Ward,
who had accepted a temporary position as editor of the
“Journal,” a small daily paper published in the city.

At this time the question of slavery was an exciting
one in Cincinnati, and Lane Seminary had become a
hotbed of abolition. The anti-slavery movement among
the students was headed by Theodore D. Weld, one of
their number, who had procured funds to complete his
education by lecturing through the South. While
thus engaged he had been so impressed with the evils
and horrors of slavery that he had become a radical
abolitionist, and had succeeded in converting several
Southerners to his views of the subject. Among them
was Mr. J. G. Birney of Huntsville, Alabama, who not
only liberated his slaves, but in connection with Dr.
Gamaliel Bailey of Cincinnati founded in that city an
anti-slavery paper called “The Philanthropist.” This
paper was finally suppressed, and its office wrecked by
a mob instigated by Kentucky slaveholders, and it is of
this event that Mrs. Stowe writes to her husband as
follows:—

[82]

“Yesterday evening I spent scribbling for Henry’s
newspaper (the ‘Journal’) in this wise: ‘Birney’s printing-press
has been mobbed, and many of the respectable
citizens are disposed to wink at the outrage in consideration
of its moving in the line of their prejudices.’

“I wrote a conversational sketch, in which I rather
satirized this inconsistent spirit, and brought out the
effects of patronizing any violation of private rights.
It was in a light, sketchy style, designed to draw attention
to a long editorial of Henry’s in which he considers
the subject fully and seriously. His piece is, I
think, a powerful one; indeed, he does write very
strongly. I am quite proud of his editorials; they are
well studied, earnest, and dignified. I think he will
make a first-rate writer. Both our pieces have gone to
press to-day, with Charles’s article on music, and we
have had not a little diversion about our family newspaper.

“I thought, when I was writing last night, that I
was, like a good wife, defending one of your principles
in your absence, and wanted you to see how manfully I
talked about it. Henry has also taken up and examined
the question of the Seminole Indians, and done it
very nobly.”

Again:—

“The excitement about Birney continues to increase.
The keeper of the Franklin Hotel was assailed by a
document subscribed to by many of his boarders demanding
that Birney should be turned out of doors.
He chose to negative the demand, and twelve of his
boarders immediately left, Dr. F. among the number.
A meeting has been convoked by means of a handbill,[83]
in which some of the most respectable men of the city
are invited by name to come together and consider the
question whether they will allow Mr. Birney to continue
his paper in the city. Mr. Greene says that, to
his utter surprise, many of the most respectable and
influential citizens gave out that they should go.

“He was one of the number they invited, but he
told those who came to him that he would have nothing
to do with disorderly public meetings or mobs in
any shape, and that he was entirely opposed to the
whole thing.

“I presume they will have a hot meeting, if they
have any at all.

“I wish father were at home to preach a sermon to
his church, for many of its members do not frown on
these things as they ought.”

“Later: The meeting was held, and was headed by
Morgan, Neville, Judge Burke, and I know not who
else. Judge Burnet was present and consented to
their acts. The mob madness is certainly upon this
city when men of sense and standing will pass resolutions
approving in so many words of things done contrary
to law, as one of the resolutions of this meeting
did. It quoted the demolition of the tea in Boston
harbor as being authority and precedent.

“A large body, perhaps the majority of citizens, disapprove,
but I fear there will not be public disavowal.
Even N. Wright but faintly opposes, and Dr. Fore has
been exceedingly violent. Mr. Hammond (editor of
the ‘Gazette’) in a very dignified and judicious manner
has condemned the whole thing, and Henry has
opposed, but otherwise the papers have either been[84]
silent or in favor of mobs. We shall see what the
result will be in a few days.

“For my part, I can easily see how such proceedings
may make converts to abolitionism, for already my
sympathies are strongly enlisted for Mr. Birney, and I
hope that he will stand his ground and assert his rights.
The office is fire-proof, and inclosed by high walls. I
wish he would man it with armed men and see what can
be done. If I were a man I would go, for one, and
take good care of at least one window. Henry sits
opposite me writing a most valiant editorial, and tells
me to tell you he is waxing mighty in battle.”

In another letter she writes:—

“I told you in my last that the mob broke into Birney’s
press, where, however, the mischief done was but
slight. The object appeared to be principally to terrify.
Immediately there followed a general excitement
in which even good men in their panic and prejudice
about abolitionism forgot that mobs were worse evils
than these, talked against Birney, and winked at the
outrage; N. Wright and Judge Burnet, for example.
Meanwhile the turbulent spirits went beyond this and
talked of revolution and of righting things without law
that could not be righted by it. At the head of these
were Morgan, Neville, Longworth, Joseph Graham,
and Judge Burke. A meeting was convoked at Lower
Market Street to decide whether they would permit the
publishing of an abolition paper, and to this meeting
all the most respectable citizens were by name summoned.

“There were four classes in the city then: Those
who meant to go as revolutionists and support the[85]
mob; those who meant to put down Birney, but rather
hoped to do it without a mob; those who felt ashamed
to go, foreseeing the probable consequence, and yet did
not decidedly frown upon it; and those who sternly
and decidedly reprehended it.

“The first class was headed by Neville, Longworth,
Graham, etc.; the second class, though of some numbers,
was less conspicuous; of the third, Judge Burnet,
Dr. Fore, and N. Wright were specimens; and in the
last such men as Hammond, Mansfield, S. P. Chase,[3]
and Chester were prominent. The meeting in so many
words voted a mob, nevertheless a committee was appointed
to wait on Mr. Birney and ascertain what he
proposed to do; and, strange to tell, men as sensible as
Uncle John and Judge Burnet were so short-sighted as
to act on that committee.

“All the newspapers in the city, except Hammond’s
(‘Gazette’) and Henry’s (the ‘Journal’), were either
silent or openly ‘mobocratic.’ As might have been
expected, Birney refused to leave, and that night the
mob tore down his press, scattered the types, dragged
the whole to the river, threw it in, and then came back
to demolish the office.

“They then went to the houses of Dr. Bailey, Mr.
Donaldson, and Mr. Birney; but the persons they
sought were not at home, having been aware of what
was intended. The mayor was a silent spectator of
these proceedings, and was heard to say, ‘Well, lads,
you have done well, so far; go home now before you
disgrace yourselves;’ but the ‘lads’ spent the rest of
the night and a greater part of the next day (Sunday)[86]
in pulling down the houses of inoffensive and respectable
blacks. The ‘Gazette’ office was threatened, the
‘Journal’ office was to go next; Lane Seminary and
the water-works also were mentioned as probable points
to be attacked by the mob.

“By Tuesday morning the city was pretty well
alarmed. A regular corps of volunteers was organized,
who for three nights patrolled the streets with
firearms and with legal warrant from the mayor, who
by this time was glad to give it, to put down the mob
even by bloodshed.

“For a day or two we did not know but there would
actually be war to the knife, as was threatened by the
mob, and we really saw Henry depart with his pistols
with daily alarm, only we were all too full of patriotism
not to have sent every brother we had rather than not
have had the principles of freedom and order defended.

“But here the tide turned. The mob, unsupported
by a now frightened community, slunk into their dens
and were still; and then Hammond, who, during the
few days of its prevalence, had made no comments,
but published simply the Sermon on the Mount, the
Constitution of Ohio, and the Declaration of Independence,
without any comment, now came out and gave a
simple, concise history of the mob, tracing it to the
market-house meeting, telling the whole history of the
meeting, with the names of those who got it up, throwing
on them and on those who had acted on the committee
the whole responsibility of the following mob.
It makes a terrible sensation, but it ‘cuts its way,’ and
all who took other stand than that of steady opposition
from the first are beginning to feel the reaction of public[87]
sentiment, while newspapers from abroad are pouring
in their reprehensions of the disgraceful conduct
of Cincinnati. Another time, I suspect, such men as
Judge Burnet, Mr. Greene, and Uncle John will keep
their fingers out of such a trap, and people will all
learn better than to wink at a mob that happens to
please them at the outset, or in any way to give it their
countenance. Mr. Greene and Uncle John were full
of wrath against mobs, and would not go to the meeting,
and yet were cajoled into acting on that committee
in the vain hope of getting Birney to go away and thus
preventing the outrage.

“They are justly punished, I think, for what was
very irresolute and foolish conduct, to say the least.”

The general tone of her letters at this time would
seem to show that, while Mrs. Stowe was anti-slavery
in her sympathies, she was not a declared abolitionist.
This is still further borne out in a letter written in
1837 from Putnam, Ohio, whither she had gone for a
short visit to her brother William. In it she says:—

“The good people here, you know, are about half
abolitionists. A lady who takes a leading part in
the female society in this place yesterday called and
brought Catherine the proceedings of the Female Anti-Slavery
Convention.

“I should think them about as ultra as to measures
as anything that has been attempted, though I am
glad to see a better spirit than marks such proceedings
generally.

“To-day I read some in Mr. Birney’s ‘Philanthropist.’
Abolitionism being the fashion here, it is natural
to look at its papers.

[88]

“It does seem to me that there needs to be an intermediate
society. If not, as light increases, all the
excesses of the abolition party will not prevent humane
and conscientious men from joining it.

“Pray what is there in Cincinnati to satisfy one
whose mind is awakened on this subject? No one can
have the system of slavery brought before him without
an irrepressible desire to do something, and what is
there to be done?”

On September 29, 1836, while Professor Stowe was
still absent in Europe, his wife gave birth to twin
daughters, Eliza and Isabella, as she named them; but
Eliza Tyler and Harriet Beecher, as her husband insisted
they should be called, when, upon reaching New
York, he was greeted by the joyful news. His trip
from London in the ship Gladiator had been unusually
long, even for those days of sailing vessels, and extended
from November 19, 1836, to January 20, 1837.

During the summer of 1837 Mrs. Stowe suffered
much from ill health, on which account, and to relieve
her from domestic cares, she was sent to make a
long visit at Putnam with her brother, Rev. William
Beecher. While here she received a letter from her
husband, in which he says:—

“We all of course feel proper indignation at the
doings of last General Assembly, and shall treat them
with merited contempt. This alliance between the old
school (Presbyterians) and slaveholders will make more
abolitionists than anything that has been done yet.”

In December Professor Stowe went to Columbus
with the extended educational report that he had devoted
the summer to preparing; and in writing from
there to his wife he says:—

[89]

“To-day I have been visiting the governor and legislators.
They received me with the utmost kindness,
and are evidently anticipating much from my report.
The governor communicated it to the legislature to-day,
and it is concluded that I read it in Dr. Hodges’
church on two evenings, to-morrow and the day after,
before both houses of the legislature and the citizens.
The governor (Vance) will preside at both meetings.
I like him (the governor) much. He is just such a
plain, simple-hearted, sturdy body as old Fritz (Kaiser
Frederick), with more of natural talent than his
predecessor in the gubernatorial chair. For my year’s
work in this matter I am to receive $500.”

On January 14, 1838, Mrs. Stowe’s third child,
Henry Ellis, was born.

It was about this time that the famous reunion of
the Beecher family described in Lyman Beecher’s
“Autobiography” occurred. Edward made a visit to
the East, and when he returned he brought Mary
(Mrs. Thomas Perkins) from Hartford with him.
William came down from Putnam, Ohio, and George
from Batavia, New York, while Catherine, Harriet,
Henry, Charles, Isabella, Thomas, and James were already
at home. It was the first time they had ever
all met together. Mary had never seen James, and
had seen Thomas but once. The old doctor was almost
transported with joy as they all gathered about
him, and his cup of happiness was filled to overflowing
when, the next day, which was Sunday, his pulpit was
filled by Edward in the morning, William in the afternoon,
and George in the evening.

Side by side with this charming picture we have[90]
another of domestic life outlined by Mrs. Stowe’s own
hand. It is contained in the following letter, written
June 21, 1838, to Miss May, at New Haven, Conn.:—

My dear, dear Georgiana,—Only think how
long it is since I have written to you, and how changed
I am since then—the mother of three children!
Well, if I have not kept the reckoning of old times, let
this last circumstance prove my apology, for I have
been hand, heart, and head full since I saw you.

Now, to-day, for example, I’ll tell you what I had
on my mind from dawn to dewy eve. In the first
place I waked about half after four and thought,
“Bless me, how light it is! I must get out of bed and
rap to wake up Mina, for breakfast must be had at
six o’clock this morning.” So out of bed I jump and
seize the tongs and pound, pound, pound over poor
Mina’s sleepy head, charitably allowing her about half
an hour to get waked up in,—that being the quantum
of time that it takes me,—or used to. Well, then
baby wakes—quâ, quâ, quâ, so I give him his breakfast,
dozing meanwhile and soliloquizing as follows:
“Now I must not forget to tell Mr. Stowe about the
starch and dried apples”—doze—”ah, um, dear me!
why doesn’t Mina get up? I don’t hear her,”—doze—”a,
um,—I wonder if Mina has soap enough! I
think there were two bars left on Saturday”—doze
again—I wake again. “Dear me, broad daylight! I
must get up and go down and see if Mina is getting
breakfast.” Up I jump and up wakes baby. “Now,
little boy, be good and let mother dress, because she is
in a hurry.” I get my frock half on and baby by that[91]
time has kicked himself down off his pillow, and is crying
and fisting the bed-clothes in great order. I stop with
one sleeve off and one on to settle matters with him.
Having planted him bolt upright and gone all up and
down the chamber barefoot to get pillows and blankets
to prop him up, I finish putting my frock on and hurry
down to satisfy myself by actual observation that the
breakfast is in progress. Then back I come into the
nursery, where, remembering that it is washing day
and that there is a great deal of work to be done, I
apply myself vigorously to sweeping, dusting, and the
setting to rights so necessary where there are three little
mischiefs always pulling down as fast as one can
put up.

Then there are Miss H—— and Miss E——, concerning
whom Mary will furnish you with all suitable
particulars, who are chattering, hallooing, or singing at
the tops of their voices, as may suit their various states
of mind, while the nurse is getting their breakfast ready.
This meal being cleared away, Mr. Stowe dispatched to
market with various memoranda of provisions, etc., and
the baby being washed and dressed, I begin to think
what next must be done. I start to cut out some little
dresses, have just calculated the length and got one
breadth torn off when Master Henry makes a doleful
lip and falls to crying with might and main. I catch
him up and turning round see one of his sisters flourishing
the things out of my workbox in fine style.
Moving it away and looking the other side I see the
second little mischief seated by the hearth chewing
coals and scraping up ashes with great apparent relish.
Grandmother lays hold upon her and charitably offers[92]
to endeavor to quiet baby while I go on with my work.
I set at it again, pick up a dozen pieces, measure them
once more to see which is the right one, and proceed
to cut out some others, when I see the twins on the
point of quarreling with each other. Number one
pushes number two over. Number two screams: that
frightens the baby and he joins in. I call number one
a naughty girl, take the persecuted one in my arms,
and endeavor to comfort her by trotting to the old
lyric:—

“So ride the gentlefolk,
And so do we, so do we.”

Meanwhile number one makes her way to the slop jar
and forthwith proceeds to wash her apron in it. Grandmother
catches her by one shoulder, drags her away,
and sets the jar up out of her reach. By and by the
nurse comes up from her sweeping. I commit the children
to her, and finish cutting out the frocks.

But let this suffice, for of such details as these are
all my days made up. Indeed, my dear, I am but a
mere drudge with few ideas beyond babies and housekeeping.
As for thoughts, reflections, and sentiments,
good lack! good lack!

I suppose I am a dolefully uninteresting person at
present, but I hope I shall grow young again one of
these days, for it seems to me that matters cannot always
stand exactly as they do now.

Well, Georgy, this marriage is—yes, I will speak
well of it, after all; for when I can stop and think long
enough to discriminate my head from my heels, I must
say that I think myself a fortunate woman both in husband
and children. My children I would not change[93]
for all the ease, leisure, and pleasure that I could have
without them. They are money on interest whose
value will be constantly increasing.

In 1839 Mrs. Stowe received into her family as a
servant a colored girl from Kentucky. By the laws of
Ohio she was free, having been brought into the State
and left there by her mistress. In spite of this, Professor
Stowe received word, after she had lived with
them some months, that the girl’s master was in the city
looking for her, and that if she were not careful she
would be seized and conveyed back into slavery. Finding
that this could be accomplished by boldness, perjury,
and the connivance of some unscrupulous justice,
Professor Stowe determined to remove the girl to some
place of security where she might remain until the
search for her should be given up. Accordingly he
and his brother-in-law, Henry Ward Beecher, both
armed, drove the fugitive, in a covered wagon, at night,
by unfrequented roads, twelve miles back into the country,
and left her in safety with the family of old John
Van Zandt, the fugitive’s friend.

It is from this incident of real life and personal experience
that Mrs. Stowe conceived the thrilling episode
of the fugitives’ escape from Tom Loker and Marks in
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

An amusing and at the same time most interesting
account of her struggles to accomplish literary work
amid her distracting domestic duties at this time is
furnished by the letter of one of her intimate friends,
who writes:—

“It was my good fortune to number Mrs. Stowe[94]
among my friends, and during a visit to her I had an
opportunity one day of witnessing the combined exercise
of her literary and domestic genius in a style that
to me was quite amusing.

“‘Come Harriet,’ said I, as I found her tending one
baby and watching two others just able to walk, ‘where
is that piece for the “Souvenir” which I promised the
editor I would get from you and send on next week?
You have only this one day left to finish it, and have
it I must.’

“‘And how will you get it, friend of mine?’ said
Harriet. ‘You will at least have to wait till I get
house-cleaning over and baby’s teeth through.’

“‘As to house-cleaning, you can defer it one day
longer; and as to baby’s teeth, there is to be no end to
them, as I can see. No, no; to-day that story must be
ended. There Frederick has been sitting by Ellen and
saying all those pretty things for more than a month
now, and she has been turning and blushing till I am
sure it is time to go to her relief. Come, it would not
take you three hours at the rate you can write to finish
the courtship, marriage, catastrophe, éclaircissement,
and all; and this three hours’ labor of your brains will
earn enough to pay for all the sewing your fingers
could do for a year to come. Two dollars a page, my
dear, and you can write a page in fifteen minutes!
Come, then, my lady housekeeper, economy is a cardinal
virtue; consider the economy of the thing.’

“‘But, my dear, here is a baby in my arms and two
little pussies by my side, and there is a great baking
down in the kitchen, and there is a “new girl” for
“help,” besides preparations to be made for house-cleaning[95]
next week. It is really out of the question,
you see.’

“‘I see no such thing. I do not know what genius
is given for, if it is not to help a woman out of a scrape.
Come, set your wits to work, let me have my way, and
you shall have all the work done and finish the story
too.’

“‘Well, but kitchen affairs?’

“‘We can manage them too. You know you can
write anywhere and anyhow. Just take your seat at
the kitchen table with your writing weapons, and while
you superintend Mina fill up the odd snatches of time
with the labors of your pen.’

“I carried my point. In ten minutes she was seated;
a table with flour, rolling-pin, ginger, and lard on one
side, a dresser with eggs, pork, and beans and various
cooking utensils on the other, near her an oven heating,
and beside her a dark-skinned nymph, waiting
orders.

“‘Here, Harriet,’ said I, ‘you can write on this atlas
in your lap; no matter how the writing looks, I will
copy it.’

“‘Well, well,’ said she, with a resigned sort of
amused look. ‘Mina, you may do what I told you,
while I write a few minutes, till it is time to mould up
the bread. Where is the inkstand?’

“‘Here it is, close by, on the top of the tea-kettle,’
said I.

“At this Mina giggled, and we both laughed to see
her merriment at our literary proceedings.

“I began to overhaul the portfolio to find the right
sheet.

[96]

“‘Here it is,’ said I. ‘Here is Frederick sitting by
Ellen, glancing at her brilliant face, and saying something
about “guardian angel,” and all that—you remember?’

“‘Yes, yes,’ said she, falling into a muse, as she attempted
to recover the thread of her story.

“‘Ma’am, shall I put the pork on the top of the
beans?’ asked Mina.

“‘Come, come,’ said Harriet, laughing. ‘You see
how it is. Mina is a new hand and cannot do anything
without me to direct her. We must give up the writing
for to-day.’

“‘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, pour 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,’ said she, and she dictated as follows:

“‘”Her lover wept with her, nor dared he again to[97]
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. Meanwhile
dictate and I will write.’

“Never was there a more docile literary lady than
my friend. 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 the 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:—

[98]

“‘”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.”

The widely scattered members of the Beecher family
had a fashion of communicating with each other by
means of circular letters. These, begun on great sheets
of paper, at either end of the line, were passed along
from one to another, each one adding his or her budget
of news to the general stock. When the filled sheet
reached the last person for whom it was intended, it was
finally remailed to its point of departure. Except in
the cases of Mrs. Stowe and Mrs. Perkins, the simple
address “Rev. Mr. Beecher” was sufficient to insure its
safe delivery in any town to which it was sent.

[99]

One of these great, closely-written sheets, bearing in
faded ink the names of all the Beechers, lies outspread
before us as we write. It is postmarked Hartford,
Conn., Batavia, N. Y., Chillicothe, Ohio, Zanesville,
Ohio, Walnut Hills, Ohio, Indianapolis, Ind., Jacksonville,
Ill., and New Orleans, La. In it Mrs. Stowe occupies
her allotted space with—

Walnut Hills, April 27, 1839.

Dear Friends,—I am going to Hartford myself,
and therefore shall not write, but hurry along the
preparations for my forward journey. Belle, father
says you may go to the White Mountains with Mr.
Stowe and me this summer. George, we may look in
on you coming back. Good-by.

Affectionately to all, H. E. Stowe.

[100]

CHAPTER V.
POVERTY AND SICKNESS, 1840-1850.

On January 7, 1839, Professor Stowe wrote to his
mother in Natick, Mass.: “You left here, I believe,
in the right time, for as there has been no navigation
on the Ohio River for a year, we are almost in a state
of famine as to many of the necessities of life. For
example, salt (coarse) has sold in Cincinnati this winter
for three dollars a bushel; rice eighteen cents a pound;
coffee fifty cents a pound; white sugar the same; brown
sugar twenty cents; molasses a dollar a gallon; potatoes
a dollar a bushel. We do without such things mostly;
as there is yet plenty of bread and bacon (flour six and
seven dollars a barrel, and good pork from six to eight
cents a pound) we get along very comfortably.

“Our new house is pretty much as it was, but they
say it will be finished in July. I expect to visit you
next summer, as I shall deliver the Phi Beta Kappa
oration at Dartmouth College; but whether wife and
children come with me or not is not yet decided.”

Mrs. Stowe came on to the East with her husband[101]
and children during the following summer, and before
her return made a trip through the White Mountains.

In May, 1840, her second son was born and named
Frederick William, after the sturdy Prussian king, for
whom her husband cherished an unbounded admiration.

Mrs. Stowe has said somewhere: “So we go, dear
reader, so long as we have a body and a soul. For
worlds must mingle,—the great and the little, the
solemn and the trivial, wreathing in and out like the
grotesque carvings on a gothic shrine; only did we
know it rightly, nothing is trivial, since the human soul,
with its awful shadow, makes all things sacred.” So
in writing a biography it is impossible for us to tell
what did and what did not powerfully influence the
character. It is safer simply to tell the unvarnished
truth. The lily builds up its texture of delicate beauty
from mould and decay. So how do we know from
what humble material a soul grows in strength and
beauty!

In December, 1840, writing to Miss May, Mrs. Stowe
says:—

“For a year I have held the pen only to write an
occasional business letter such as could not be neglected.
This was primarily owing to a severe neuralgic
complaint that settled in my eyes, and for two months
not only made it impossible for me to use them in writing,
but to fix them with attention on anything. I
could not even bear the least light of day in my room.
Then my dear little Frederick was born, and for two
months more I was confined to my bed. Besides all
this, we have had an unusual amount of sickness in our
family. . . .

[102]

“For all that my history of the past year records so
many troubles, I cannot on the whole regard it as a
very troublous one. I have had so many counterbalancing
mercies that I must regard myself as a person
greatly blessed. It is true that about six months out of
the twelve I have been laid up with sickness, but then
I have had every comfort and the kindest of nurses
in my faithful Anna. My children have thriven, and
on the whole ‘come to more,’ as the Yankees say, than
the care of them. Thus you see my troubles have been
but enough to keep me from loving earth too well.”

In the spring of 1842 Mrs. Stowe again visited
Hartford, taking her six-year-old daughter Hatty with
her. In writing from there to her husband she confides
some of her literary plans and aspirations to him,
and he answers:—

“My dear, you must be a literary woman. It is so
written in the book of fate. Make all your calculations
accordingly. Get a good stock of health and brush up
your mind. Drop the E. out of your name. It only
incumbers it and interferes with the flow and euphony.
Write yourself fully and always Harriet Beecher Stowe,
which is a name euphonious, flowing, and full of meaning.
Then my word for it, your husband will lift up
his head in the gate, and your children will rise up and
call you blessed.

“Our humble dwelling has to-day received a distinguished
honor of which I must give you an account.
It was a visit from his excellency the Baron de Roenne,
ambassador of his majesty the King of Prussia to the
United States. He was pleased to assure me of the
great satisfaction my report on Prussian schools had[103]
afforded the king and members of his court, with much
more to the same effect. Of course having a real live
lord to exhibit, I was anxious for some one to exhibit
him to; but neither Aunt Esther nor Anna dared venture
near the study, though they both contrived to get
a peep at his lordship from the little chamber window
as he was leaving.

“And now, my dear wife, I want you to come home
as quick as you can. The fact is 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 letter Mrs. Stowe writes from Hartford:—

“I have seen Johnson of the ‘Evangelist.’ He is
very liberally disposed, and I may safely reckon on being
paid for all I do there. Who is that Hale, Jr., that
sent me the ‘Boston Miscellany,’ and will he keep his
word with me? His offers are very liberal,—twenty
dollars for three pages, not very close print. Is he to
be depended on? If so, it is the best offer I have received
yet. I shall get something from the Harpers
some time this winter or spring. Robertson, the publisher
here, says the book (‘The Mayflower’) will sell,
and though the terms they offer me are very low, that
I shall make something on it. For a second volume I[104]
shall be able to make better terms. On the whole, my
dear, if I choose to be a literary lady, I have, I think,
as good a chance of making profit by it as any one I
know of. But with all this, I have my doubts whether
I shall be able to do so.

“Our children are just coming to the age when
everything depends on my efforts. They are delicate
in health, and nervous and excitable, and need a mother’s
whole attention. Can I lawfully divide my attention
by literary efforts?

“There is one thing I must suggest. 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. Whipple’s
room. I can put the stove in it. I have bought
a cheap carpet for it, and I have furniture enough at
home to furnish it comfortably, 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. I could not
there, for there was all the setting of tables, and clearing
up of tables, and dressing and washing of children,
and everything else going on, and the constant falling
of soot and coal dust on everything in the room was a
constant annoyance to me, and I never felt comfortable
there though I tried hard. Then if I came into the
parlor where you were I felt as if I were interrupting
you, and you know you sometimes thought so too.

“Now this winter let the cooking-stove be put into
that room, and let the pipe run up through the floor
into the room above. We can eat by our cooking-stove,[105]
and the children can be washed and dressed and keep
their playthings in the room above, and play there when
we don’t want them below. You can study by the parlor
fire, and I and my plants, etc., will take the other
room. I shall keep my work and all my things there
and feel settled and quiet. I intend to have a regular
part of each day devoted to the children, and then I
shall take them in there.”

In his reply to this letter Professor Stowe says:—

“The little magazine (‘The Souvenir’) goes ahead
finely. Fisher sent down to Fulton the other day and
got sixty subscribers. He will make the June number
as handsome as possible, as a specimen number for the
students, several of whom will take agencies for it during
the coming vacation. You have it in your power
by means of this little magazine to form the mind of
the West for the coming generation. It is just as I
told you in my last letter. God has written it in his
book that you must be a literary woman, and who are
we that we should contend against God? You must
therefore make all your calculations to spend the rest
of your life with your pen.

“If you only could come home to-day how happy
should I be. I am daily finding out more and more
(what I knew very well before) that you are the most
intelligent and agreeable woman in the whole circle of
my acquaintance.”

That Professor Stowe’s devoted admiration for his
wife was reciprocated, and that a most perfect sympathy
of feeling existed between the husband and wife, is
shown by a line in one of Mrs. Stowe’s letters from
Hartford in which she says: “I was telling Belle yesterday[106]
that I did not know till I came away how much
I was dependent upon you for information. There are
a thousand favorite subjects on which I could talk with
you better than with any one else. If you were not
already my dearly loved husband I should certainly fall
in love with you.”

In this same letter she writes of herself:—

“One thing more in regard to myself. The absence
and wandering of mind and forgetfulness that so often
vexes you is a physical infirmity with me. It is the
failing of a mind not calculated to endure a great pressure
of care, and so much do I feel the pressure I am
under, so much is my mind often darkened and troubled
by care, that life seriously considered holds out few
allurements,—only my children.

“In returning to my family, from whom I have been
so long separated, I am impressed with a new and
solemn feeling of responsibility. It appears to me that
I am not probably destined for long life; at all events,
the feeling is strongly impressed upon my mind that a
work is put into my hands which I must be earnest to
finish shortly. It is nothing great or brilliant in the
world’s eye; it lies in one small family circle, of which
I am called to be the central point.”

On her way home from this Eastern visit Mrs. Stowe
traveled for the first time by rail, and of this novel
experience she writes to Miss Georgiana May:—

Batavia, August 29, 1842.

Here I am at Brother William’s, and our passage
along this railroad reminds me of the verse of the
psalm:—

“Tho’ lions roar and tempests blow,
And rocks and dangers fill the way.”

[107]

Such confusion of tongues, such shouting and swearing,
such want of all sort of system and decency in arrangements,
I never desire to see again. I was literally
almost trodden down and torn to pieces in the Rochester
depot when I went to help my poor, near-sighted spouse
in sorting out the baggage. You see there was an accident
which happened to the cars leaving Rochester
that morning, which kept us two hours and a half at
the passing place this side of Auburn, waiting for them
to come up and go by us. The consequence was that
we got into this Rochester depot aforesaid after dark,
and the steamboat, the canal-boat, and the Western
train of cars had all been kept waiting three hours beyond
their usual time, and they all broke loose upon us
the moment we put our heads out of the cars, and such
a jerking, and elbowing, and scuffling, and swearing,
and protesting, and scolding you never heard, while the
great locomotive sailed up and down in the midst thereof,
spitting fire and smoke like some great fiend monster
diverting himself with our commotions. I do think
these steam concerns border a little too much on the
supernatural to be agreeable, especially when you are
shut up in a great dark depot after sundown.

Well, after all, we had to ride till twelve o’clock at
night to get to Batavia, and I’ve been sick abed, so to
speak, ever since.

The winter of 1842 was one of peculiar trial to the
family at Walnut Hills; as Mrs. Stowe writes, “It was
a season of sickness and gloom.” Typhoid fever raged
among the students of the seminary, and the house of
the president was converted into a hospital, while the[108]
members of his family were obliged to devote themselves
to nursing the sick and dying.

July 6, 1843, a few weeks before the birth of her
third daughter, Georgiana May, a most terrible and
overwhelming sorrow came on Mrs. Stowe, in common
with all the family, in the sudden death of her brother,
the Rev. George Beecher.

He was a young man of unusual talent and ability,
and much loved by his church and congregation. The
circumstances of his death are related in a letter written
by Mrs. Stowe, and are as follows: “Noticing the birds
destroying his fruit and injuring his plants, he went for
a double-barreled gun, which he scarcely ever had used,
out of regard to the timidity and anxiety of his wife in
reference to it. Shortly after he left the house, one of
the elders of his church in passing saw him discharge
one barrel at the birds. Soon after he heard the fatal
report and saw the smoke, but the trees shut out the
rest from sight. . . . In about half an hour after, the
family assembled at breakfast, and the servant was sent
out to call him. . . . In a few minutes she returned,
exclaiming, ‘Oh, Mr. Beecher is dead! Mr. Beecher is
dead!’ . . . In a short time a visitor in the family,
assisted by a passing laborer, raised him up and bore
him to the house. His face was pale and but slightly
marred, his eyes were closed, and over his countenance
rested the sweet expression of peaceful slumber. . . .
Then followed the hurried preparations for the funeral
and journey, until three o’clock, when, all arrangements
being made, he was borne from his newly finished
house, through his blooming garden, to the new church,
planned and just completed under his directing eye. [109]. . .
The sermon and the prayers were finished, the
choir he himself had trained sung their parting hymn,
and at about five the funeral train started for a journey
of over seventy miles. That night will stand alone in
the memories of those who witnessed its scenes!

“At ten in the evening heavy clouds gathered lowering
behind, and finally rose so as nearly to cover the
hemisphere, sending forth mutterings of thunder and
constant flashes of lightning.

“The excessive heat of the weather, the darkness of
the night, the solitary road, the flaring of the lamps
and lanterns, the flashes of the lightning, the roll of
approaching thunder, the fear of being overtaken in an
unfrequented place and the lights extinguished by the
rain, the sad events of the day, the cries of the infant
boy sick with the heat and bewailing the father who
ever before had soothed his griefs, all combined to
awaken the deepest emotions of the sorrowful, the awful,
and the sublime. . . .

“And so it is at last; there must come a time when
all that the most heart-broken, idolizing love can give
us is a coffin and a grave! All that could be done for
our brother, with all his means and all the affection of
his people and friends, was just this, no more! After
all, the deepest and most powerful argument for the
religion of Christ is its power in times like this. Take
from us Christ and what He taught, and what have we
here? What confusion, what agony, what dismay,
what wreck and waste! But give Him to us, even the
most stricken heart can rise under the blow; yea, even
triumph!

“‘Thy brother shall rise again,’ said Jesus; and to[110]
us who weep He speaks: ‘Rejoice, inasmuch as ye are
made partakers of Christ’s sufferings, that when his
glory shall be revealed, ye also may be glad with exceeding
joy!'”

The advent of Mrs. Stowe’s third daughter was
followed by a protracted illness and a struggle with
great poverty, of which Mrs. Stowe writes in October,
1843:—

“Our straits for money this year are unparalleled
even in our annals. Even our bright and cheery neighbor
Allen begins to look blue, and says $600 is the
very most we can hope to collect of our salary, once
$1,200. We have a flock of entirely destitute young
men in the seminary, as poor in money as they are rich
in mental and spiritual resources. They promise to be
as fine a band as those we have just sent off. We have
two from Iowa and Wisconsin who were actually crowded
from secular pursuits into the ministry by the wants of
the people about them. Revivals began, and the people
came to them saying, ‘We have no minister, and you
must preach to us, for you know more than we do.'”

In the spring of 1844 Professor Stowe visited the
East to arouse an interest in the struggling seminary
and raise funds for its maintenance. While he was
there he received the following letter from Mrs.
Stowe:—

“I am already half sick with confinement to the
house and overwork. If I should sew every day for a
month to come I should not be able to accomplish a
half of what is to be done, and should be only more
unfit for my other duties.”

This struggle against ill-health and poverty was continued[111]
through that year and well into the next, when,
during her husband’s absence to attend a ministerial
convention at Detroit, Mrs. Stowe writes to him:—

June 16, 1845.

My Dear Husband,—It is a dark, sloppy, rainy,
muddy, disagreeable day, and I have been working hard
(for me) 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 too curiously into minutiæ in warm, damp
weather, especially 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 meat,
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.

Your letter, which was neither sour nor mouldy,
formed a very agreeable contrast to all these things;
the more so for being unexpected. I am much obliged
to you for it. As to my health, it gives me very little
solicitude, although I am bad enough and daily growing
worse. I feel no life, no energy, no appetite, or
rather a growing distaste for food; in fact, I am becoming
quite ethereal. Upon reflection I perceive that
it pleases my Father to keep me in the fire, for my whole
situation is excessively harassing and painful. I suffer
with sensible distress in the brain, as I have done more
or less since my sickness last winter, a distress which
some days takes from me all power of planning or executing
anything; and you know that, except this poor[112]
head, my unfortunate household has no mainspring, for
nobody feels any kind of responsibility to do a thing
in time, place, or manner, except as I oversee it.

Georgiana is so excessively weak, nervous, cross, and
fretful, night and day, that she takes all Anna’s strength
and time with her; and then the children are, like other
little sons and daughters of Adam, full of all kinds of
absurdity and folly.

When the brain gives out, as mine often does, and
one cannot think or remember anything, then what is
to be done? All common fatigue, sickness, and exhaustion
is nothing to this distress. Yet do I rejoice
in my God and know in whom I believe, and only pray
that the fire may consume the dross; as to the gold,
that is imperishable. No real evil can happen 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 He knows that though flesh and heart fail, I am
all the while desiring and trying for his will alone. As
to a journey, I need not ask a physician to see that it
is needful to me as far as health is concerned, that is to
say, all human appearances are that way, but I feel no
particular choice about it. If God wills I go. He can
easily find means. 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.

That the necessary funds were provided is evident
from the fact that the journey was undertaken and the
invalid spent the summer of 1845 in Hartford, in Natick,
and in Boston. She was not, however, permanently[113]
benefited by the change, and in the following
spring it was deemed necessary to take more radical
measures to arrest the progress of her increasing
debility. After many consultations and much correspondence
it was finally decided that she should go
to Dr. Wesselhoeft’s watercure establishment at Brattleboro’,
Vt.

At this time, under date of March, 1846, she writes:

“For all I have had trouble I can think of nothing
but the greatness and richness of God’s mercy to me
in giving me such friends, and in always caring for us
in every strait. There has been no day this winter
when I have not had abundant reason to see this.
Some friend has always stepped in to cheer and help,
so that I have wanted for nothing. My husband has
developed wonderfully as house-father and nurse. You
would laugh to see him in his spectacles gravely marching
the little troop in their nightgowns up to bed, tagging
after them, as he says, like an old hen after a flock
of ducks. The money for my journey has been sent
in from an unknown hand in a wonderful manner. All
this shows the care of our Father, and encourages me to
rejoice and to hope in Him.”

A few days after her departure Professor Stowe wrote
to his wife:—

“I was greatly comforted by your brief letter from
Pittsburgh. When I returned from the steamer the
morning you left I found in the post-office a letter from
Mrs. G. W. Bull of New York, inclosing $50 on account
of the sickness in my family. There was another
inclosing $50 more from a Mrs. Devereaux of Raleigh,
N. C., besides some smaller sums from others. My heart[114]
went out to God in aspiration and gratitude. None of
the donors, so far as I know, have I ever seen or heard
of before.

“Henry and I have been living in a Robinson Crusoe
and man Friday sort of style, greatly to our satisfaction,
ever since you went away.”

Mrs. Stowe was accompanied to Brattleboro’ by her
sisters, Catherine and Mary, who were also suffering
from troubles that they felt might be relieved by hydropathic
treatment.

From May, 1846, until March, 1847, she remained
at Brattleboro’ without seeing her husband or children.
During these weary months her happiest days were
those upon which she received letters from home.

The following extracts, taken from letters written by
her during this period, are of value, as revealing what
it is possible to know of her habits of thought and
mode of life at this time.

Brattleboro‘, September, 1846.

My dear Husband,—I have been thinking of all
your trials, and I really pity you in having such a wife.
I feel as if I had been only a hindrance to you instead
of a help, and most earnestly and daily do I pray to
God to restore my health that I may do something for
you and my family. I think if I were only at home I
could at least sweep and dust, and wash potatoes, and
cook a little, and talk some to my children, and should
be doing something for my family. But the hope of
getting better buoys me up. I go through these tedious
and wearisome baths and bear that terrible douche
thinking of my children. They never will know how
I love them. . . .

[115]

There is great truth and good sense in your analysis
of the cause of our past failures. We have now come
to a sort of crisis. If you and I do as we should for
five years to come the character of our three oldest
children will be established. This is why I am willing
to spend so much time and make such efforts to have
health. Oh, that God would give me these five years
in full possession of mind and body, that I may train
my children as they should be trained. I am fully
aware of the importance of system and order in a family.
I know that nothing can be done without it; it
is the keystone, the sine quâ non, and in regard to my
children I place it next to piety. At the same time it
is true that both Anna[4] and I labor under serious natural
disadvantages on this subject. It is not all that is
necessary to feel the importance of order and system,
but it requires a particular kind of talent to carry it
through a family. Very much the same kind of talent,
as Uncle Samuel said, which is necessary to make a
good prime minister. . . .

I think you might make an excellent sermon to Christians
on the care of health, in consideration of the various
infirmities and impediments to the developing the
results of religion, that result from bodily ill health, and
I wish you would make one that your own mind may
be more vividly impressed with it. The world is too
much in a hurry. Ministers think there is no way to
serve Christ but to overdraw on their physical capital
for four or five years for Christ and then have nothing
to give, but become a mere burden on his hands for the
next five. . . .

[116]

November 18. “The daily course I go through presupposes
a degree of vigor beyond anything I ever had
before. For this week, I have gone before breakfast
to the wave-bath and let all the waves and billows roll
over me till every limb ached with cold and my hands
would scarcely have feeling enough to dress me. After
that I have walked till I was warm, and come home to
breakfast with such an appetite! Brown bread and
milk are luxuries indeed, and the only fear is that I
may eat too much. At eleven comes my douche, to
which I have walked in a driving rain for the last two
days, and after it walked in the rain again till I was
warm. (The umbrella you gave me at Natick answers
finely, as well as if it were a silk one.) After dinner I
roll ninepins or walk till four, then sitz-bath, and another
walk till six.

“I am anxious for your health; do be persuaded to
try a long walk before breakfast. You don’t know how
much good it will do you. Don’t sit in your hot study
without any ventilation, a stove burning up all the
vitality of the air and weakening your nerves, and
above all, do amuse yourself. Go to Dr. Mussey’s and
spend an evening, and to father’s and Professor Allen’s.
When you feel worried go off somewhere and forget
and throw it off. I should really rejoice to hear that
you and father and mother, with Professor and Mrs.
Allen, Mrs. K., and a few others of the same calibre
would agree to meet together for dancing cotillons. It
would do you all good, and if you took Mr. K.’s wife
and poor Miss Much-Afraid, her daughter, into the alliance
it would do them good. Bless me! what a profane
set everybody would think you were, and yet you[117]
are the people of all the world most solemnly in need
of it. I wish you could be with me in Brattleboro’ and
coast down hill on a sled, go sliding and snowballing
by moonlight! I would snowball every bit of the
hypo out of you! Now, my dear, if you are going to
get sick, I am going to come home. There is no use
in my trying to get well if you, in the mean time, are
going to run yourself down.”

January, 1847.

My dear Soul,—I received your most melancholy
effusion, and I am sorry to find it’s just so. I entirely
agree and sympathize. Why didn’t you engage the
two tombstones—one for you and one for me?

Ding, dong! Dead and gone!

I shall have to copy for your edification a “poem on
tombstones” which Kate put at Christmas into the
stocking of one of our most hypochondriac gentlemen,
who had pished and pshawed at his wife and us for trying
to get up a little fun. This poem was fronted with
the above vignette and embellished with sundry similar
ones, and tied with a long black ribbon. There were[118]
only two cantos in very concise style, so I shall send
you them entire.

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 what’s so colickish When his friends are all frolickish As to turn up his noses And turn on his toses Shall have only verses On tombstones and hearses.

But, seriously, my dear husband, you must try and
be patient, for this cannot last forever. Be patient and
bear it like the toothache, or a driving rain, or anything
else that you cannot escape. To see things as through
a glass darkly is your infirmity, you know; but the
Lord will yet deliver you from this trial. I know how
to pity you, for the last three weeks I have suffered
from an overwhelming mental depression, a perfect
heartsickness. All I wanted was to get home and die.
Die I was very sure I should at any rate, but I suppose
I was never less prepared to do so.

The long exile was ended in the spring of 1847, and
in May Mrs. Stowe returned to her Cincinnati home,
where she was welcomed with sincere demonstrations of
joy by her husband and children.

Her sixth child, Samuel Charles, was born in January
of 1848, and about this time her husband’s health
became so seriously impaired that it was thought desirable[119]
for him in turn to spend a season at the Brattleboro’
water-cure. He went in June, 1848, and was
compelled by the very precarious state of his health to
remain until September, 1849. During this period of
more than a year Mrs. Stowe remained in Cincinnati
caring for her six children, eking out her slender income
by taking boarders and writing when she found
time, confronting a terrible epidemic of cholera that
carried off one of her little flock, and in every way
showing herself to be a brave woman, possessed of a
spirit that could rise superior to all adversity. Concerning
this time she writes in January, 1849, to her
dearest friend:—

My beloved Georgy,—For six months after my
return from Brattleboro’ my eyes were so affected that
I wrote scarce any, and my health was in so strange a
state that I felt no disposition to write. After the
birth of little Charley my health improved, but my husband
was sick and I have been so loaded and burdened
with cares as to drain me dry of all capacity of thought,
feeling, memory, or emotion.

Well, Georgy, I am thirty-seven 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.

In the early summer of 1849 cholera broke out in
Cincinnati, and soon became epidemic. Professor[120]
Stowe, absent in Brattleboro’, and filled with anxiety
for the safety of his family, was most anxious, in spite
of his feeble health, to return and share the danger
with them, but this his wife would not consent to, as
is shown by her letters to him, written at this time.
In one of them, dated June 29, 1849, she says:—

My dear Husband,—This week has been unusually
fatal. The disease in the city has been malignant
and virulent. Hearse drivers have scarce been
allowed to unharness their horses, while furniture carts
and common vehicles are often employed for the removal
of the dead. The sable trains which pass our
windows, the frequent indications of crowding haste,
and the absence of reverent decency have, in many
cases, been most painful. Of course all these things,
whether we will or no, bring very doleful images to the
mind.

On Tuesday one hundred and sixteen deaths from
cholera were reported, and that night the air was of
that peculiarly oppressive, deathly kind that seems to
lie like lead on the brain and soul.

As regards your coming home, I am decidedly opposed
to it. First, because the chance of your being
taken ill is just as great as the chance of your being
able to render us any help. To exchange the salubrious
air of Brattleboro’ for the pestilent atmosphere
of this place with your system rendered sensitive by
water-cure treatment would be extremely dangerous.
It is a source of constant gratitude to me that neither
you nor father are exposed to the dangers here.

Second, none of us are sick, and it is very uncertain
whether we shall be.

[121]

Third, if we were sick there are so many of us that
it is not at all likely we shall all be taken at once.

July 1. Yesterday Mr. Stagg went to the city and
found all gloomy and discouraged, while a universal
panic seemed to be drawing nearer than ever before.
Large piles of coal were burning on the cross walks
and in the public squares, while those who had talked
confidently of the cholera being confined to the lower
classes and those who were imprudent began to feel as
did the magicians of old, “This is the finger of God.”

Yesterday, upon the recommendation of all the clergymen
of the city, the mayor issued a proclamation for
a day of general fasting, humiliation, and prayer, to be
observed on Tuesday next.

July 3. We are all in good health and try to maintain
a calm and cheerful frame of mind. The doctors
are nearly used up. Dr. Bowen and Dr. Peck are sick
in bed. Dr. Potter and Dr. Pulte ought, I suppose, to
be there also. The younger physicians have no rest
night or day. Mr. Fisher is laid up from his incessant
visitations with the sick and dying. Our own Dr.
Brown is likewise prostrated, but we are all resolute to
stand by each other, and there are so many of us that
it is not likely we can all be taken sick together.

July 4. All well. The meeting yesterday was very
solemn and interesting. There is more or less sickness
about us, but no very dangerous cases. One hundred
and twenty burials from cholera alone yesterday, yet
to-day we see parties bent on pleasure or senseless carousing,
while to-morrow and next day will witness a
fresh harvest of death from them. How we can become
accustomed to anything! Awhile ago ten a day dying[122]
of cholera struck terror to all hearts; but now the tide
has surged up gradually until the deaths average over
a hundred daily, and everybody is getting accustomed
to it. Gentlemen make themselves agreeable to ladies
by reciting the number of deaths in this house or that.
This together with talk of funerals, cholera medicines,
cholera dietetics, and chloride of lime form the ordinary
staple of conversation. Serious persons of course throw
in moral reflections to their taste.

July 10. Yesterday little Charley was taken ill,
not seriously, and at any other season I should not be
alarmed. Now, however, a slight illness seems like a
death sentence, and I will not dissemble that I feel
from the outset very little hope. I still think it best
that you should not return. By so doing you might
lose all you have gained. You might expose yourself
to a fatal incursion of disease. It is decidedly not
your duty to do so.

July 12. Yesterday I carried Charley to Dr. Pulte,
who spoke in such a manner as discouraged and frightened
me. He mentioned dropsy on the brain as a possible
result. I came home with a heavy heart, sorrowing,
desolate, and wishing my husband and father were
here.

About one o’clock this morning Miss Stewart suddenly
opened my door crying, “Mrs. Stowe, Henry is
vomiting.” I was on my feet in an instant, and lifted
up my heart for help. He was, however, in a few minutes
relieved. Then I turned my attention to Charley,
who was also suffering, put him into a wet sheet, and
kept him there until he was in a profuse perspiration.
He is evidently getting better, and is auspiciously cross.[123]
Never was crossness in a baby more admired. Anna
and I have said to each other exultingly a score of
times, “How cross the little fellow is! How he does
scold!”

July 15. Since I last wrote our house has been a
perfect hospital. Charley apparently recovering, but
still weak and feeble, unable to walk or play, and so
miserably fretful and unhappy. Sunday Anna and I
were fairly stricken down, as many others are, with no
particular illness, but with such miserable prostration.
I lay on the bed all day reading my hymn-book and
thinking over passages of Scripture.

July 17. To-day we have been attending poor old
Aunt Frankie’s[5] funeral. She died yesterday morning,
taken sick the day before while washing. Good, honest,
trustful old soul! She was truly one who hungered
and thirsted for righteousness.

Yesterday morning our poor little dog, Daisy, who
had been ailing the day before, was suddenly seized
with frightful spasms and died in half an hour. Poor
little affectionate thing! If I were half as good for my
nature as she for hers I should be much better than I
am. While we were all mourning over her the news
came that Aunt Frankie was breathing her last. Hatty,
Eliza, Anna, and I made her shroud yesterday, and
this morning I made her cap. We have just come
from her grave.

July 23. At last, my dear, the hand of the Lord
hath touched us. We have been watching all day by
the dying bed of little Charley, who is gradually sinking.
After a partial recovery from the attack I described[124]
in my last letter he continued for some days
very feeble, but still we hoped for recovery. About
four days ago he was taken with decided cholera, and
now there is no hope of his surviving this night.

Every kindness is shown us by the neighbors. Do
not return. All will be over before you could possibly
get here, and the epidemic is now said by the physicians
to prove fatal to every new case. Bear up.
Let us not faint when we are rebuked of Him. I dare
not trust myself to say more but shall write again soon.

July 26.

My dear Husband,—At last it is over and our
dear little one is gone from us. He is now among
the blessed. My Charley—my beautiful, loving, gladsome
baby, so loving, so sweet, so full of life and hope
and strength—now lies shrouded, pale and cold, in the
room below. Never was he anything to me but a comfort.
He has been my pride and joy. Many a heartache
has he cured for me. Many an anxious night
have I held him to my bosom and felt the sorrow and
loneliness pass out of me with the touch of his little
warm hands. Yet I have just seen him in his death
agony, looked on his imploring face when I could not
help nor soothe nor do one thing, not one, to mitigate
his cruel suffering, do nothing but pray in my anguish
that he might die soon. I write as though there were
no sorrow like my sorrow, yet there has been in this
city, as in the land of Egypt, scarce a house without its
dead. This heart-break, this anguish, has been everywhere,
and when it will end God alone knows.

[125]

With this severest blow of all, the long years of
trial and suffering in the West practically end; for in
September, 1849, Professor Stowe returned from Brattleboro’,
and at the same time received a call to the
Collins Professorship at Bowdoin College, in Brunswick,
Maine, that he decided to accept.

[126]

CHAPTER VI.
REMOVAL TO BRUNSWICK, 1850-1852.

Early in the winter of 1849 Mrs. Stowe wrote in
a private journal in which she recorded thought and
feeling concerning religious themes: “It has been said
that it takes a man to write the life of a man; that is,
there must be similarity of mind in the person who
undertakes to present the character of another. This
is true, also, of reading and understanding biography.
A statesman and general would read the life of Napoleon
with the spirit and the understanding, while the
commonplace man plods through it as a task. The
difference is that the one, being of like mind and spirit
with the subject of the biography, is able to sympathize
with him in all his thoughts and experiences, and the
other is not. The life of Henry Martyn would be
tedious and unintelligible to a mind like that of a
Richelieu or a Mazarin. They never experienced or[127]
saw or heard anything like it, and would be quite at a
loss where to place such a man in their mental categories.
It is not strange, therefore, that of all biography
in the world that of Jesus Christ should be least
understood. It is an exception to all the world has
ever seen. ‘The world knew Him not.’ There is, to
be sure, a simple grandeur about the life of Jesus which
awes almost every mind. The most hardened scoffer,
after he has jested and jeered at everything in the
temple of Christianity, stands for a moment uncovered
and breathless when he comes to the object of its adoration
and feels how awful goodness is, and Virtue in her
shape how lovely. Yet, after all, the character of the
Christ has been looked at and not sympathized with.
Men have turned aside to see this great sight. Christians
have fallen in adoration, but very few have tried
to enter into his sympathies and to feel as He felt.”

How little she dreamed that these words were to become
profoundly appropriate as a description of her
own life in its relation to mankind! How little the
countless thousands who read, have read, and will read,
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” enter into or sympathize with
the feelings out of which it was written! A delicate,
sensitive woman struggling with poverty, with weary
step and aching head attending to the innumerable
demands of a large family of growing children; a devoted
Christian seeking with strong crying and tears a
kingdom not of this world,—is this the popular conception
of the author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”?
Nevertheless it is the reality. When, amid the burning
ruins of a besieged city, a mother’s voice is heard
uttering a cry of anguish over a child killed in her[128]
arms by a bursting shell, the attention is arrested, the
heart is touched. So “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was a cry
of anguish from a mother’s heart, and uttered in sad
sincerity. It was the bursting forth of deep feeling,
with all the intense anguish of wounded love. It will
be the purpose of this chapter to show this, and to
cause to pass before the reader’s mind the time, the
household, and the heart from which this cry was
heard.

After struggling for seventeen years with ill health
and every possible vexation and hindrance in his work,
Professor Stowe became convinced that it was his duty
to himself and his family to seek some other field of
labor.

February 6, 1850, he writes to his mother, in Natick,
Mass.: “My health has not been good this winter,
and I do not suppose that I should live long were
I to stay here. I have done a great deal of hard work
here, and practiced no little self-denial. I have seen
the seminary carried through a most vexatious series of
lawsuits, ecclesiastical and civil, and raised from the
depths of poverty to comparative affluence, and I feel
at liberty now to leave. During the three months of
June, July, and August last, more than nine thousand
persons died of cholera within three miles of my house,
and this winter, in the same territory, there have been
more than ten thousand cases of small-pox, many of
them of the very worst kind. Several have died on the
hill, and the Jesuits’ college near us has been quite
broken up by it. There have been, however, no cases
in our families or in the seminary.

“I have received many letters from friends in the[129]
East expressing great gratification at the offer from
Bowdoin College, and the hope that I would accept
it. I am quite inclined to do so, but the matter is not
yet finally settled, and there are difficulties in the way.
They can offer me only $1,000 a year, and I must,
out of it, hire my own house, at an expense of $75 to
$100 a year. Here the trustees offer me $1,500 a
year if I will stay, and a good house besides, which
would make the whole salary equivalent to $1,800;
and to-day I have had another offer from New York
city of $2,300. . . . On the whole, I have written to
Bowdoin College, proposing to them if they will give
me $500 free and clear in addition to the salary, I will
accept their proposition, and I suppose that there is no
doubt that they will do it. In that case I should come
on next spring, in May or June.”

This offer from Bowdoin College was additionally
attractive to Professor Stowe from the fact that it was
the college from which he graduated, and where some
of the happiest years of his life had been passed.

The professorship was one just established through
the gift of Mrs. Collins, a member of Bowdoin Street
Church in Boston, and named in her honor, the “Collins
Professorship of Natural and Revealed Religion.”

It was impossible for Professor Stowe to leave Lane
Seminary till some one could be found to take his
place; so it was determined that Mrs. Stowe, with three
of the children, should start for the East in April, and
having established the family in Brunswick, Professor
Stowe was to come on with the remaining children
when his engagements would permit.

The following extracts from a letter written by Mrs.[130]
Stowe at her brother Henry’s, at Brooklyn, April 29,
1850, show us that the journey was accomplished without
special incident.

“The boat got into Pittsburgh between four and
five on Wednesday. The agent for the Pennsylvania
Canal came on board and soon filled out our tickets,
calling my three chicks one and a half. We had a
quiet and agreeable passage, and crossed the slides at
five o’clock in the morning, amid exclamations of unbounded
delight from all the children, to whom the
mountain scenery was a new and amazing thing. We
reached Hollidaysburg about eleven o’clock, and at two
o’clock in the night were called up to get into the cars
at Jacktown. Arriving at Philadelphia about three
o’clock in the afternoon, we took the boat and railroad
line for New York.

“At Lancaster we telegraphed to Brooklyn, and
when we arrived in New York, between ten and eleven
at night, Cousin Augustus met us and took us over to
Brooklyn. We had ridden three hundred miles since
two o’clock that morning, and were very tired. . . . I
am glad we came that way, for the children have seen
some of the finest scenery in our country. . . . Henry’s
people are more than ever in love with him, and have
raised his salary to $3,300, and given him a beautiful
horse and carriage worth $600. . . . My health is
already improved by the journey, and I was able to
walk a good deal between the locks on the canal. As
to furniture, I think that we may safely afford an outlay
of $150, and that will purchase all that may be
necessary to set us up, and then we can get more as
we have means and opportunity. . . . If I got anything[131]
for those pieces I wrote before coming away, I
would like to be advised thereof by you. . . . My plan
is to spend this week in Brooklyn, the next in Hartford,
the next in Boston, and go on to Brunswick some
time in May or June.”

May 18, 1850, we find her writing from Boston,
where she is staying with her brother, Rev. Edward
Beecher:—

My dear Husband,—I came here from Hartford
on Monday, and have since then been busily engaged
in the business of buying and packing furniture.

I expect to go to Brunswick next Tuesday night by
the Bath steamer, which way I take as the cheaper.
My traveling expenses, when I get to Brunswick, including
everything, will have been seventy-six dollars. . . .
And now, lastly, my dear husband, you have
never been wanting . . . in kindness, consideration,
and justice, and I want you to reflect calmly how great
a work has been imposed upon me at a time when my
situation particularly calls for rest, repose, and quiet.

To come alone such a distance with the whole charge
of children, accounts, and baggage; to push my way
through hurrying crowds, looking out for trunks, and
bargaining with hackmen, has been a very severe trial
of my strength, to say nothing of the usual fatigues of
traveling.

It was at this time, and as a result of the experiences
of this trying period, that Mrs. Stowe wrote that little
tract dear to so many Christian hearts, “Earthly Care
a Heavenly Discipline.”

[132]

On the eve of sailing for Brunswick, Mrs. Stowe
writes to Mrs. Sykes (Miss May): “I am wearied and
worn out with seeing to bedsteads, tables, chairs, mattresses,
with thinking about shipping my goods and
making out accounts, and I have my trunk yet to pack,
as I go on board the Bath steamer this evening. I beg
you to look up Brunswick on the map; it is about half
a day’s ride in the cars from Boston. I expect to reach
there by the way of Bath by to-morrow forenoon.
There I have a house engaged and kind friends who
offer every hospitable assistance. Come, therefore, to
see me, and we will have a long talk in the pine woods,
and knit up the whole history from the place where we
left it.”

Before leaving Boston she had written to her husband
in Cincinnati: “You are not able just now to
bear anything, my dear husband, therefore trust all to
me; I never doubt or despair. I am already making
arrangements with editors to raise money.

“I have sent some overtures to Wright. If he
accepts my pieces and pays you for them, take the
money and use it as you see necessary; if not, be sure
and bring the pieces back to me. I am strong in
spirit, and God who has been with me in so many
straits will not forsake 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 who helped poor
timid Jacob through all his fears and apprehensions,
who helped Abraham even when he sinned, who was
with David in his wanderings, and who held up the too
confident Peter when he began to sink,—He will help[133]
us, and his arms are about us, so that we shall not sink,
my dear husband.”

May 29, 1850, she writes from Brunswick: “After
a week of most incessant northeast storm, most discouraging
and forlorn to the children, the sun has at
length come out. . . . There is a fair wind blowing,
and every prospect, therefore, that our goods will
arrive promptly from Boston, and that we shall be in
our own house by next week. Mrs. Upham[6] has done
everything for me, giving up time and strength and
taking charge of my affairs in a way without which we
could not have got along at all in a strange place and
in my present helpless condition. This family is delightful,
there is such a perfect sweetness and quietude in
all its movements. Not a harsh word or hasty expression
is ever heard. It is a beautiful pattern of a Christian
family, a beautiful exemplification of religion. . . .”

The events of the first summer in Brunswick are
graphically described by Mrs. Stowe in a letter written
to her sister-in-law, Mrs. George Beecher, December 17,
1850.

My dear Sister,—Is it really true that snow is on
the ground and Christmas coming, and I have not
written unto thee, most dear sister? No, I don’t
believe it! I haven’t been so naughty—it’s all a
mistake—yes, written I must have—and written I
have, too—in the night-watches as I lay on my bed—such
beautiful letters—I wish you had only gotten
them; but by day it has been hurry, hurry, hurry, and
drive, drive, drive! or else the calm of a sick-room,
ever since last spring.

[134]

I put off writing when your letter first came because
I meant to write you a long letter—a full and complete
one, and so days slid by,—and became weeks,—and
my little Charlie came . . . etc. and etc.!!!
Sarah, when I look back, I wonder at myself, not that
I forget any one thing that I should remember, but
that I have remembered anything. From the time that
I left Cincinnati with my children to come forth to a
country that I knew not of almost to the present time,
it has seemed as if I could scarcely breathe, I was so
pressed with care. My head dizzy with the whirl of
railroads and steamboats; then ten days’ sojourn in Boston,
and a constant toil and hurry in buying my furniture
and equipments; and then landing in Brunswick
in the midst of a drizzly, inexorable northeast storm,
and beginning the work of getting in order a deserted,
dreary, damp old house. All day long running from
one thing to another, as for example, thus:—

Mrs. Stowe, how shall I make this lounge, and what
shall I cover the back with first?

Mrs. Stowe. With the coarse cotton in the closet.

Woman. Mrs. Stowe, there isn’t any more soap to
clean the windows.

Mrs. Stowe. Where shall I get soap?

Here H., run up to the store and get two bars.

There is a man below wants to see Mrs. Stowe about
the cistern. Before you go down, Mrs. Stowe, just
show me how to cover this round end of the lounge.

There’s a man up from the depot, and he says that
a box has come for Mrs. Stowe, and it’s coming up to
the house; will you come down and see about it?

Mrs. Stowe, don’t go till you have shown the man[135]
how to nail that carpet in the corner. He’s nailed it
all crooked; what shall he do? The black thread is
all used up, and what shall I do about putting gimp on
the back of that sofa? Mrs. Stowe, there is a man
come with a lot of pails and tinware from Furbish; will
you settle the bill now?

Mrs. Stowe, here is a letter just come from Boston
inclosing that bill of lading; the man wants to know
what he shall do with the goods. If you will tell me
what to say I will answer the letter for you.

Mrs. Stowe, the meat-man is at the door. Hadn’t
we better get a little beefsteak, or something, for dinner?

Shall Hatty go to Boardman’s for some more black
thread?

Mrs. Stowe, this cushion is an inch too wide for the
frame. What shall we do now?

Mrs. Stowe, where are the screws of the black walnut
bedstead?

Here’s a man has brought in these bills for freight.
Will you settle them now?

Mrs. Stowe, I don’t understand using this great
needle. I can’t make it go through the cushion; it
sticks in the cotton.

Then comes a letter from my husband saying he is
sick abed, and all but dead; don’t ever expect to see
his family again; wants to know how I shall manage,
in case I am left a widow; knows we shall get in debt
and never get out; wonders at my courage; thinks I
am very sanguine; warns me to be prudent, as there
won’t be much to live on in case of his death, etc., etc.,
etc. I read the letter and poke it into the stove, and
proceed. . . .

[136]

Some of my adventures were quite funny; as for
example: I had in my kitchen elect no sink, cistern, or
any other water privileges, so I bought at the cotton
factory two of the great hogsheads they bring oil in,
which here in Brunswick are often used for cisterns,
and had them brought up in triumph to my yard, and
was congratulating myself on my energy, when lo and
behold! it was discovered that there was no cellar door
except one in the kitchen, which was truly a strait and
narrow way, down a long pair of stairs. Hereupon, as
saith John Bunyan, I fell into a muse,—how to get
my cisterns into my cellar. In days of chivalry I
might have got a knight to make me a breach through
the foundation walls, but that was not to be thought of
now, and my oil hogsheads standing disconsolately in
the yard seemed to reflect no great credit on my foresight.
In this strait I fell upon a real honest Yankee
cooper, whom I besought, for the reputation of his
craft and mine, to take my hogsheads to pieces, carry
them down in staves, and set them up again, which the
worthy man actually accomplished one fair summer
forenoon, to the great astonishment of “us Yankees.”
When my man came to put up the pump, he stared
very hard to see my hogsheads thus translated and
standing as innocent and quiet as could be in the cellar,
and then I told him, in a very mild, quiet way, that
I got ’em taken to pieces and put together—just as if
I had been always in the habit of doing such things.
Professor Smith came down and looked very hard at
them and then said, “Well, nothing can beat a willful
woman.” Then followed divers negotiations with a
very clever, but (with reverence) somewhat lazy gentleman[137]
of jobs, who occupieth a carpenter’s shop opposite
to mine. This same John Titcomb, my very good
friend, is a character peculiar to Yankeedom. He is
part owner and landlord of the house I rent, and connected
by birth with all the best families in town; a
man of real intelligence, and good education, a great
reader, and quite a thinker. Being of an ingenious
turn he does painting, gilding, staining, upholstery
jobs, varnishing, all in addition to his primary trade of
carpentry. But he is a man studious of ease, and fully
possessed with the idea that man wants but little here
below; so he boards himself in his workshop on crackers
and herring, washed down with cold water, and
spends his time working, musing, reading new publications,
and taking his comfort. In his shop you shall
see a joiner’s bench, hammers, planes, saws, gimlets,
varnish, paint, picture frames, fence posts, rare old
china, one or two fine portraits of his ancestry, a bookcase
full of books, the tooth of a whale, an old spinning-wheel
and spindle, a lady’s parasol frame, a church
lamp to be mended, in short, Henry says Mr. Titcomb’s
shop is like the ocean; there is no end to the curiosities
in it.

In all my moving and fussing Mr. Titcomb has been
my right-hand man. Whenever a screw was loose, a
nail to be driven, a lock mended, a pane of glass set,
and these cases were manifold, he was always on hand.
But my sink was no fancy job, and I believe nothing
but a very particular friendship would have moved him
to undertake it. So this same sink lingered in a precarious
state for some weeks, and when I had nothing
else to do, I used to call and do what I could in the[138]
way of enlisting the good man’s sympathies in its behalf.

How many times I have been in and seated myself
in one of the old rocking-chairs, and talked first of the
news of the day, the railroad, the last proceedings in
Congress, the probabilities about the millennium, and
thus brought the conversation by little and little round
to my sink! . . . because, till the sink was done, the
pump could not be put up, and we couldn’t have any
rain-water. Sometimes my courage would quite fail me
to introduce the subject, and I would talk of everything
else, turn and get out of the shop, and then turn
back as if a thought had just struck my mind, and
say:—

“Oh, Mr. Titcomb! about that sink?”

“Yes, ma’am, I was thinking about going down
street this afternoon to look out stuff for it.”

“Yes, sir, if you would be good enough to get it
done as soon as possible; we are in great need of it.”

“I think there’s no hurry. I believe we are going
to have a dry time now, so that you could not catch
any water, and you won’t need a pump at present.”

These negotiations extended from the first of June
to the first of July, and at last my sink was completed,
and so also was a new house spout, concerning which I
had had divers communings with Deacon Dunning of
the Baptist church. Also during this time good Mrs.
Mitchell and myself made two sofas, or lounges, a barrel
chair, divers bedspreads, pillow cases, pillows, bolsters,
mattresses; we painted rooms; we revarnished
furniture; we—what didn’t we do?

Then came on Mr. Stowe; and then came the eighth[139]
of July and my little Charley. I was really glad for
an excuse to lie in bed, for I was full tired, I can assure
you. Well, I was what folks call very comfortable for
two weeks, when my nurse had to leave me. . . .

During this time I have employed my leisure hours
in making up my engagements with newspaper editors.
I have written more than anybody, or I myself, would
have thought. I have taught an hour a day in our
school, and I have read two hours every evening to the
children. The children study English history in school,
and I am reading Scott’s historic novels in their order.
To-night I finish the “Abbot;” shall begin “Kenilworth”
next week; yet I am constantly pursued and
haunted by the idea that I don’t do anything. Since I
began this note I have been called off at least a dozen
times; once for the fish-man, to buy a codfish; once to
see a man who had brought me some barrels of apples;
once to see a book-man; then to Mrs. Upham, to see
about a drawing I promised to make for her; then to
nurse the baby; then into the kitchen to make a chowder
for dinner; and now I am at it again, for nothing
but deadly determination enables me ever to write; it
is rowing against wind and tide.

I suppose you think now I have begun, I am never
going to stop, and in truth it looks like it; but the
spirit moves now and I must obey.

Christmas is coming, and our little household is all
alive with preparations; every one collecting their little
gifts with wonderful mystery and secrecy. . . .

To tell the truth, dear, I am getting tired; my neck
and back ache, and I must come to a close.

Your ready kindness to me in the spring I felt very[140]
much; and why I did not have the sense to have sent
you one line just by way of acknowledgment, I’m
sure I don’t know; I felt just as if I had, till I awoke,
and behold! I had not. But, my dear, if my wits are
somewhat wool-gathering and unsettled, my heart is as
true as a star. I love you, and have thought of you
often.

This fall I have felt often sad, lonesome, both very
unusual feelings with me in these busy days; but the
breaking away from my old home, and leaving father
and mother, and coming to a strange place affected me
naturally. In those sad hours my thoughts have often
turned to George; I have thought with encouragement
of his blessed state, and hoped that I should soon
be there too. I have many warm and kind friends
here, and have been treated with great attention and
kindness. Brunswick is a delightful residence, and if
you come East next summer you must come to my new
home. George[7] would delight to go a-fishing with the
children, and see the ships, and sail in the sailboats,
and all that.

Give Aunt Harriet’s love to him, and tell him when
he gets to be a painter to send me a picture.

Affectionately yours,        H. Stowe.

The year 1850 is one memorable in the history of
our nation as well as in the quiet household that we
have followed in its pilgrimage from Cincinnati to
Brunswick.

The signers of the Declaration of Independence and
the statesmen and soldiers of the Revolution were no[141]
friends of negro slavery. In fact, the very principles
of the Declaration of Independence sounded the death-knell
of slavery forever. No stronger utterances
against this national sin are to be found anywhere
than in the letters and published writings of Jefferson,
Washington, Hamilton, and Patrick Henry. “Jefferson
encountered difficulties greater than he could overcome,
and after vain wrestlings the words that broke
from him, ‘I tremble for my country when I reflect
that God is just and that his justice cannot sleep forever,’
were the words of despair.

“It was the desire of Washington’s heart that Virginia
should remove slavery by a public act; and as
the prospects of a general emancipation grew more and
more dim . . . he did all that he could by bequeathing
freedom to his own slaves.”[8]

Hamilton was one of the founders of the Manumission
Society, the object of which was the abolition of
slaves in the State of New York. Patrick Henry,
speaking of slavery, said: “A serious view of this
subject gives a gloomy prospect to future times.” Slavery
was thought by the founders of our Republic to
be a dying institution, and all the provisions of the
Constitution touching slavery looked towards gradual
emancipation as an inevitable result of the growth of
the democracy.

From an economic standpoint slave labor had ceased
to be profitable. “The whole interior of the Southern
States was languishing, and its inhabitants emigrating,
for want of some object to engage their attention and
employ their industry.” The cultivation of cotton was[142]
not profitable for the reason that there was no machine
for separating the seed from the fibre.

This was the state of affairs in 1793, when Eli
Whitney, a New England mechanic, at this time residing
in Savannah, Georgia, invented his cotton-gin, or a
machine to separate seed and fibre. “The invention
of this machine at once set the whole country in active
motion.”[9] The effect of this invention may to some
extent be appreciated when we consider that whereas
in 1793 the Southern States produced only about five
or ten thousand bales, in 1859 they produced over five
millions. But with this increase of the cotton culture
the value of slave property was augmented. Slavery
grew and spread. In 1818 to 1821 it first became a
factor in politics during the Missouri compromise. By
this compromise slavery was not to extend north of
latitude 36° 30´. From the time of this compromise
till the year 1833 the slavery agitation slumbered.
This was the year that the British set the slaves free
in their West Indian dependencies. This act caused
great uneasiness among the slaveholders of the South.
The National Anti-Slavery Society met in Philadelphia
and pronounced slavery a national sin, which could be
atoned for only by immediate emancipation. Such men
as Garrison and Lundy began a work of agitation that
was soon to set the whole nation in a ferment. From
this time on slavery became the central problem of
American history, and the line of cleavage in American
politics. The invasion of Florida when it was yet the
territory of a nation at peace with the United States,
and its subsequent purchase from Spain, the annexation[143]
of Texas and the war with Mexico, were the direct
results of the policy of the pro-slavery party to increase
its influence and its territory. In 1849 the State of
California knocked at the door of the Union for admission
as a free State. This was bitterly opposed by the
slaveholders of the South, who saw in it a menace to
the slave-power from the fact that no slave State was
seeking admission at the same time. Both North and
South the feeling ran so high as to threaten the dismemberment
of the Union, and the scenes of violence
and bloodshed which were to come eleven years afterwards.
It was to preserve the Union and avert the
danger of the hour that Henry Clay brought forward
his celebrated compromise measures in the winter of
1850. To conciliate the North, California was to be
admitted as a free State. To pacify the slaveholders
of the South, more stringent laws were to be enacted
“concerning persons bound to service in one State and
escaping into another.”

The 7th of March, 1850, Daniel Webster made his
celebrated speech, in which he defended this compromise,
and the abolitionists of the North were filled with
indignation, which found its most fitting expression in
Whittier’s “Ichabod:” “So fallen, so lost, the glory
from his gray hairs gone.” . . . “When honor dies
the man is dead.”

It was in the midst of this excitement that Mrs.
Stowe, with her children and her modest hopes for the
future, arrived at the house of her brother, Dr. Edward
Beecher.

Dr. Beecher had been the intimate friend and supporter
of Lovejoy, who had been murdered by the[144]
slaveholders at Alton for publishing an anti-slavery
paper. His soul was stirred to its very depths by the
iniquitous law which was at this time being debated
in Congress,—a law which not only gave the slaveholder
of the South the right to seek out and bring
back into slavery any colored person whom he claimed
as a slave, but commanded the people of the free
States to assist in this revolting business. The most
frequent theme of conversation while Mrs. Stowe was
in Boston was this proposed law, and when she arrived
in Brunswick her soul was all on fire with indignation
at this new indignity and wrong about to be inflicted
by the slave-power on the innocent and defenseless.

After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, letter
after letter was received by Mrs. Stowe in Brunswick
from Mrs. Edward Beecher and other friends, describing
the heart-rending scenes which were the inevitable
results of the enforcement of this terrible law. Cities
were more available for the capturing of escaped slaves
than the country, and Boston, which claimed to have
the cradle of liberty, opened her doors to the slave-hunters.
The sorrow and anguish caused thereby no
pen could describe. Families were broken up. Some
hid in garrets and cellars. Some fled to the wharves
and embarked in ships and sailed for Europe. Others
went to Canada. One poor fellow who was doing good
business as a crockery merchant, and supporting his
family well, when he got notice that his master, whom
he had left many years before, was after him, set out
for Canada in midwinter on foot, as he did not dare to
take a public conveyance. He froze both of his feet
on the journey, and they had to be amputated. Mrs.[145]
Edward Beecher, in a letter to Mrs. Stowe’s son, writing
of this period, says:—

“I had been nourishing an anti-slavery spirit since
Lovejoy was murdered for publishing in his paper
articles against slavery and intemperance, when our
home was in Illinois. These terrible things which
were going on in Boston were well calculated to rouse
up this spirit. What can I do? I thought. Not
much myself, but I know one who can. So I wrote
several letters to your mother, telling her of various
heart-rending events caused by the enforcement of the
Fugitive Slave Law. I remember distinctly saying in
one of them, ‘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.’ . . .
When we lived in Boston your mother often
visited us. . . . Several numbers of ‘Uncle Tom’s
Cabin’ were written in your Uncle Edward’s study at
these times, and read to us from the manuscripts.”

A member of Mrs. Stowe’s family well remembers
the scene in the little parlor in Brunswick when the
letter alluded to was received. Mrs. Stowe herself read
it aloud to the assembled family, and when she came
to the passage, “I would write something that would
make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing
slavery is,” Mrs. Stowe rose up from her chair, crushing
the letter in her hand, and with an expression on
her face that stamped itself on the mind of her child,
said: “I will write something. I will if I live.”

This was the origin of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and
Professor Cairnes has well said in his admirable work,
“The Slave Power,” “The Fugitive Slave Law has[146]
been to the slave power a questionable gain. Among
its first-fruits was ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.'”

The purpose of writing a story that should make the
whole nation feel that slavery was an accursed
thing was not immediately carried out. In December,
1850, Mrs. Stowe writes: “Tell sister Katy I thank
her for her letter and will answer it. As long as the
baby sleeps with me nights I can’t do much at anything,
but I will do it at last. I will write that thing
if I live.

“What are folks in general saying about the slave
law, and the stand taken by Boston ministers universally,
except Edward?

“To me 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. . . . I wish
father would come on to Boston, and preach on the
Fugitive Slave Law, as he once preached on the slave-trade,
when I was a little girl in Litchfield. I sobbed
aloud in one pew and Mrs. Judge Reeves in another.
I wish some Martin Luther would arise to set this community
right.”

December 22, 1850, she writes to her husband in
Cincinnati: “Christmas has passed, not without many
thoughts of our absent one. If you want a description
of the scenes in our family preceding it, vide a
‘New Year’s Story,’ which I have sent to the ‘New
York Evangelist.’ I am sorry that in the hurry of
getting off this piece and one for the ‘Era’ you were
neglected.” The piece for the “Era” was a humorous
article called “A Scholar’s Adventures in the Country,”
being, in fact, a picture drawn from life and embodying[147]
Professor Stowe’s efforts in the department of agriculture
while in Cincinnati.

December 29, 1850. “We have had terrible weather
here. I remember such a storm when I was a child in
Litchfield. Father and mother went to Warren, and
were almost lost in the snowdrifts.

“Sunday night I rather watched than slept. The
wind howled, and the house rocked just as our old
Litchfield house used to. The cold has been so intense
that the children have kept begging to get up from
table at meal-times to warm feet and fingers. Our air-tight
stoves warm all but the floor,—heat your head
and keep your feet freezing. If I sit by the open fire
in the parlor my back freezes, if I sit in my bedroom
and try to write my head aches and my feet are cold.
I am projecting a sketch for the ‘Era’ on the capabilities
of liberated blacks to take care of themselves.
Can’t you find out for me how much Willie Watson
has paid for the redemption of his friends, and get any
items in figures of that kind that you can pick up in
Cincinnati? . . . When I have a headache and feel
sick, as I do to-day, there is actually not a place in the
house where I can lie down and take a nap without being
disturbed. Overhead is the school-room, next door
is the dining-room, and the girls practice there two
hours a day. If I lock my door and lie down some one
is sure to be rattling the latch before fifteen minutes
have passed. . . . There is no doubt in my mind that
our expenses this year will come two hundred dollars,
if not three, beyond our salary. We shall be able to
come through, notwithstanding; but I don’t want to
feel obliged to work as hard every year as I have this.[148]
I can earn four hundred dollars a year by writing, but
I don’t want to feel that I must, and when weary with
teaching the children, and tending the baby, and buying
provisions, and mending dresses, and darning stockings,
sit down and write a piece for some paper.”

January 12, 1851, Mrs. Stowe again writes to Professor
Stowe at Cincinnati: “Ever since we left Cincinnati
to come here the good hand of God has been
visibly guiding our way. Through what difficulties
have we been brought! Though we knew not where
means were to come from, yet means have been furnished
every step of the way, and in every time of
need. I was just in some discouragement with regard
to my writing; thinking that the editor of the ‘Era’
was overstocked with contributors, and would not want
my services another year, and lo! he sends me one
hundred dollars, and ever so many good words with it.
Our income this year will be seventeen hundred dollars
in all, and I hope to bring our expenses within
thirteen hundred.”

It was in the month of February after these words
were written that Mrs. Stowe was seated at communion
service in the college church at Brunswick. Suddenly,
like the unrolling of a picture, the scene of the death
of Uncle Tom passed before her mind. So strongly
was she affected that it was with difficulty she could
keep from weeping aloud. Immediately on returning
home she took pen and paper and wrote out the vision
which had been as it were blown into her mind as by
the rushing of a mighty wind. Gathering her family
about her she read what she had written. Her two
little ones of ten and twelve years of age broke into[149]
convulsions of weeping, one of them saying through
his sobs, “Oh, mamma! slavery is the most cruel thing
in the world.” Thus Uncle Tom was ushered into the
world, and it was, as we said at the beginning, a cry,
an immediate, an involuntary expression of deep, impassioned
feeling.

Twenty-five years afterwards Mrs. Stowe wrote in a
letter to one of her children, of this period of her life:
“I well remember the winter you were a baby and I
was writing ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ My heart was bursting
with the anguish excited by the cruelty and injustice
our nation was showing to the slave, and praying
God to let me do a little and to cause my cry for them
to be heard. I remember many a night weeping over
you as you lay sleeping beside me, and I thought of
the slave mothers whose babes were torn from them.”

It was not till the following April that the first
chapter of the story was finished and sent on to the
“National Era” at Washington.

In July Mrs. Stowe wrote to Frederick Douglass the
following letter, which is given entire as the best possible
introduction to the history of the career of that
memorable work, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

Brunswick, July 9, 1851.

Frederick Douglass, Esq.:

Sir,—You may perhaps have noticed in your editorial
readings a series of articles that I am furnishing
for the “Era” under the title of “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin, or Life among the Lowly.”

In the course of my story the scene will fall upon a
cotton plantation. I am very desirous, therefore, to[150]
gain information from one who has been an actual
laborer on one, and it occurred to me that in the circle
of your acquaintance there might be one who would
be able to communicate to me some such information
as I desire. I have before me an able paper written
by a Southern planter, in which the details and modus
operandi are given from his point of sight. I am
anxious to have something more from another standpoint.
I wish to be able to make a picture that shall
be graphic and true to nature in its details. Such a
person as Henry Bibb, if in the country, might give
me just the kind of information I desire. You may
possibly know of some other person. I will subjoin
to this letter a list of questions, which in that case you
will do me a favor by inclosing to the individual, with
the request that he will at earliest convenience answer
them.

For some few weeks past I have received your paper
through the mail, and have read it with great interest,
and desire to return my acknowledgments for it. It
will be a pleasure to me at some time when less occupied
to contribute something to its columns. I have
noticed with regret your sentiments on two subjects—the
church and African colonization, . . . with the
more regret because I think you have a considerable
share of reason for your feelings on both these subjects;
but I would willingly, if I could, modify your
views on both points.

In the first place you say the church is “pro-slavery.”
There is a sense in which this may be true.
The American church of all denominations, taken as
a body, comprises the best and most conscientious people[151]
in the country. I do not say it comprises none but
these, or that none such are found out of it, but
only if a census were taken of the purest and most high
principled men and women of the country, the majority
of them would be found to be professors of religion in
some of the various Christian denominations. This
fact has given to the church great weight in this country—the
general and predominant spirit of intelligence
and probity and piety of its majority has given
it that degree of weight that it has the power to decide
the great moral questions of the day. Whatever
it unitedly and decidedly sets itself against as moral
evil it can put down. In this sense the church is responsible
for the sin of slavery. Dr. Barnes has beautifully
and briefly expressed this on the last page of
his work on slavery, when he says: “Not all the force
out of the church could sustain slavery an hour if it
were not sustained in it.” It then appears that the
church has the power to put an end to this evil and
does not do it. In this sense she may be said to be
pro-slavery. But the church has the same power over
intemperance, and Sabbath-breaking, and sin of all
kinds. There is not a doubt that if the moral power
of the church were brought up to the New Testament
standpoint it is sufficient to put an end to all these as
well as to slavery. But I would ask you, Would you
consider it a fair representation of the Christian church
in this country to say that it is pro-intemperance, pro-Sabbath-breaking,
and pro everything that it might put
down if it were in a higher state of moral feeling? If
you should make a list of all the abolitionists of the
country, I think that you would find a majority of[152]
them in the church—certainly some of the most influential
and efficient ones are ministers.

I am a minister’s daughter, and a minister’s wife,
and I have had six brothers in the ministry (one is in
heaven); I certainly ought to know something of the
feelings of ministers on this subject. I was a child in
1820 when the Missouri question was agitated, and one
of the strongest and deepest impressions on my mind
was that made by my father’s sermons and prayers, and
the anguish of his soul for the poor slave at that time.
I remember his preaching drawing tears down the
hardest faces of the old farmers in his congregation.

I well remember his prayers morning and evening in
the family for “poor, oppressed, bleeding Africa,” that
the time of her deliverance might come; prayers offered
with strong crying and tears, and which indelibly impressed
my heart and made me what I am from my
very soul, the enemy of all slavery. Every brother I
have has been in his sphere a leading anti-slavery man.
One of them was to the last the bosom friend and
counselor of Lovejoy. As for myself and husband, we
have for the last seventeen years lived on the border of
a slave State, and we have never shrunk from the fugitives,
and we have helped them with all we had to give.
I have received the children of liberated slaves into a
family school, and taught them with my own children,
and it has been the influence that we found in the
church and by the altar that has made us do all this.
Gather up all the sermons that have been published on
this offensive and unchristian Fugitive Slave Law, and
you will find that those against it are numerically more
than those in its favor, and yet some of the strongest[153]
opponents have not published their sermons. Out of
thirteen ministers who meet with my husband weekly
for discussion of moral subjects, only three are found
who will acknowledge or obey this law in any shape.

After all, my brother, the strength and hope of your
oppressed race does lie in the church—in hearts united
to Him of whom it is said, “He shall spare the souls
of the needy, and precious shall their blood be in his
sight.” Everything is against you, but Jesus Christ is
for you, and He has not forgotten his church, misguided
and erring though it be. I have looked all the
field over with despairing eyes; I see no hope but in
Him. This movement must and will become a purely
religious one. The light will spread in churches, the
tone of feeling will rise, Christians North and South
will give up all connection with, and take up their testimony
against, slavery, and thus the work will be
done.

This letter gives us a conception of the state of
moral and religious exaltation of the heart and mind
out of which flowed chapter after chapter of that wonderful
story. It all goes to prove the correctness of
the position from which we started, that “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin” came from the heart rather than the head. It
was an outburst of deep feeling, a cry in the darkness.
The writer no more thought of style or literary excellence
than the mother who rushes into the street and
cries for help to save her children from a burning
house thinks of the teachings of the rhetorician or the
elocutionist.

A few years afterwards Mrs. Stowe, writing of this[154]
story, said, “This story is to show how Jesus Christ,
who liveth and was dead, and now is alive and forevermore,
has still a mother’s love for the poor and lowly,
and that no man can sink so low but that Jesus Christ
will stoop to take his hand. Who so low, who so poor,
who so despised as the American slave? The law
almost denies his existence as a person, and regards
him for the most part as less than a man—a mere
thing, the property of another. The law forbids him
to read or write, to hold property, to make a contract,
or even to form a legal marriage. It takes from him
all legal right to the wife of his bosom, the children of
his body. He can do nothing, possess nothing, acquire
nothing, but what must belong to his master. Yet
even to this slave Jesus Christ stoops, from where he
sits at the right hand of the Father, and says, ‘Fear
not, thou whom man despiseth, for I am thy brother.
Fear not, for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee
by thy name, thou art mine.'”

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is a work of religion; the
fundamental principles of the gospel applied to the
burning question of negro slavery. It sets forth those
principles of the Declaration of Independence that
made Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington, and Patrick
Henry anti-slavery men; not in the language of the
philosopher, but in a series of pictures. Mrs. Stowe
spoke to the understanding and moral sense through
the imagination.

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” made the enforcement of the
Fugitive Slave Law an impossibility. It aroused the
public sentiment of the world by presenting in the concrete
that which had been a mere series of abstract[155]
propositions. It was, as we have already said, an appeal
to the imagination through a series of pictures.
People are like children, and understand pictures better
than words. Some one rushes into your dining-room
while you are at breakfast and cries out, “Terrible
railroad accident, forty killed and wounded, six were
burned alive.”

“Oh, shocking! dreadful!” you exclaim, and yet
go quietly on with your rolls and coffee. But suppose
you stood at that instant by the wreck, and saw the
mangled dead, and heard the piercing shrieks of the
wounded, you would be faint and dizzy with the intolerable
spectacle.

So “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” made the crack of the
slavedriver’s whip, and the cries of the tortured blacks
ring in every household in the land, till human hearts
could endure it no longer.

[156]

CHAPTER VII.
UNCLE TOM’S CABIN, 1852.

The wonderful story that was begun in the “National
Era,” June 5, 1851, and was announced to run
for about three months, was not completed in that
paper until April 1, 1852. It had been contemplated
as a mere magazine tale of perhaps a dozen chapters,
but once begun it could no more be controlled than the
waters of the swollen Mississippi, bursting through a
crevasse in its levees. The intense interest excited by
the story, the demands made upon the author for more
facts, the unmeasured words of encouragement to keep
on in her good work that poured in from all sides, and
above all the ever-growing conviction that she had been
intrusted with a great and holy mission, compelled her
to keep on until the humble tale had assumed the proportions
of a volume prepared to stand among the most
notable books in the world. As Mrs. Stowe has since
repeatedly said, “I could not control the story; it
wrote itself;” or “I the author of ‘Uncle Tom’s
Cabin’? No, indeed. The Lord himself wrote it,
and I was but the humblest of instruments in his hand.
To Him alone should be given all the praise.”

[157]

Although the publication of the “National Era” has
been long since suspended, the journal was in those
days one of decided literary merit and importance. On
its title-page, with the name of Dr. Gamaliel Bailey as
editor, appeared that of John Greenleaf Whittier as
corresponding editor. In its columns Mrs. Southworth
made her first literary venture, while Alice and Phœbe
Cary, Grace Greenwood, and a host of other well-known
names were published with that of Mrs. Stowe, which
appeared last of all in its prospectus for 1851.

Before the conclusion of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” Mrs.
Stowe had so far outstripped her contemporaries that
her work was pronounced by competent judges to be
the most powerful production ever contributed to the
magazine literature of this country, and she stood in
the foremost rank of American writers.

After finishing her story Mrs. Stowe penned the following
appeal to its more youthful readers, and its serial
publication was concluded:—

“The author of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ must now take
leave of a wide circle of friends whose faces she has
never seen, but whose sympathies coming to her from
afar have stimulated and cheered her in her work.

“The thought of the pleasant family circles that she
has been meeting in spirit week after week has been a
constant refreshment to her, and she cannot leave them
without a farewell.

“In particular the dear children who have followed
her story have her warmest love. Dear children, you
will soon be men and women, and I hope that you will
learn from this story always to remember and pity the
poor and oppressed. When you grow up, show your[158]
pity by doing all you can for them. Never, if you can
help it, let a colored child be shut out from school or
treated with neglect and contempt on account of his
color. Remember the sweet example of little Eva, and
try to feel the same regard for all that she did. Then,
when you grow up, I hope the foolish and unchristian
prejudice against people merely on account of their
complexion will be done away with.

“Farewell, dear children, until we meet again.”

With the completion of the story the editor of the
“Era” wrote: “Mrs. Stowe has at last brought her
great work to a close. We do not recollect any production
of an American writer that has excited more
general and profound interest.”

For the story as a serial the author received $300.
In the mean time, however, it had attracted the attention
of Mr. John P. Jewett, a Boston publisher, who
promptly made overtures for its publication in book
form. He offered Mr. and Mrs. Stowe a half share in
the profits, provided they would share with him the expense
of publication. This was refused by Professor
Stowe, who said he was altogether too poor to assume
any such risk; and the agreement finally made was that
the author should receive a ten per cent. royalty upon
all sales.

Mrs. Stowe had no reason to hope for any large
pecuniary gain from this publication, for it was practically
her first book. To be sure, she had, in 1832, prepared
a small school geography for a Western publisher,
and ten years later the Harpers had brought out her
“Mayflower.” Still, neither of these had been sufficiently
remunerative to cause her to regard literary work[159]
as a money-making business, and in regard to this new
contract she writes: “I did not know until a week afterward
precisely what terms Mr. Stowe had made, and I
did not care. I had the most perfect indifference to
the bargain.”

The agreement was signed March 13, 1852, and, as
by arrangement with the “National Era” the book
publication of the story was authorized before its completion
as a serial, the first edition of five thousand
copies was issued on the twentieth of the same month.

In looking over the first semi-annual statement presented
by her publishers we find Mrs. Stowe charged,
a few days before the date of publication of her book,
with “one copy U. T. C. cloth $.56,” and this was the
first copy of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” ever sold in book
form. Five days earlier we find her charged with one
copy of Horace Mann’s speeches. In writing of this
critical period of her life Mrs. Stowe says:—

“After sending the last proof-sheet to the office I
sat alone reading Horace Mann’s eloquent plea for these
young men and women, then about to be consigned to
the slave warehouse of Bruin & Hill in Alexandria, Va.,—a
plea impassioned, eloquent, but vain, as all other
pleas on that side had ever proved in all courts hitherto.
It seemed that there was no hope, that nobody would
hear, nobody would read, nobody pity; that this frightful
system, that had already pursued its victims into
the free States, might at last even threaten them in
Canada.”[10]

Filled with this fear, she determined to do all that[160]
one woman might to enlist the sympathies of England
for the cause, and to avert, even as a remote contingency,
the closing of Canada as a haven of refuge for
the oppressed. To this end she at once wrote letters
to Prince Albert, to the Duke of Argyll, to the Earls
of Carlisle and Shaftesbury, to Macaulay, Dickens, and
others whom she knew to be interested in the cause of
anti-slavery. These she ordered to be sent to their
several addresses, accompanied by the very earliest
copies of her book that should be printed.

Then, having done what she could, and committed
the result to God, she calmly turned her attention to
other affairs.

In the mean time the fears of the author as to whether
or not her book would be read were quickly dispelled.
Three thousand copies were sold the very first day, a
second edition was issued the following week, a third on
the 1st of April, and within a year one hundred and
twenty editions, or over three hundred thousand copies
of the book, had been issued and sold in this country.
Almost in a day the poor professor’s wife had become
the most talked-of woman in the world, her influence for
good was spreading to its remotest corners, and henceforth
she was to be a public character, whose every
movement would be watched with interest, and whose
every word would be quoted. The long, weary struggle
with poverty was to be hers no longer; for, in seeking
to aid the oppressed, she had also so aided herself that
within four months from the time her book was published
it had yielded her $10,000 in royalties.

Now letters regarding the wonderful book, and expressing
all shades of opinion concerning it, began to[161]
pour in upon the author. Her lifelong friend, whose
words we have already so often quoted, wrote:—

“I sat up last night until long after one o’clock reading
and finishing ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ I could not
leave it any more than I could have left a dying child,
nor could I restrain an almost hysterical sobbing for an
hour after I laid my head upon my pillow. I thought
I was a thorough-going abolitionist before, but your
book has awakened so strong a feeling of indignation
and of compassion that I never seem to have had any
feeling on this subject until now.”

The poet Longfellow wrote:—

I congratulate you most cordially upon the immense
success and influence of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” It is
one of the greatest triumphs recorded in literary history,
to say nothing of the higher triumph of its moral
effect.

With great regard, and friendly remembrance to Mr.
Stowe, I remain,

Yours most truly,
Henry W. Longfellow.

Whittier wrote to Garrison:—

“What a glorious work Harriet Beecher Stowe has
wrought. Thanks for the Fugitive Slave Law! Better
would it be for slavery if that law had never been enacted;
for it gave occasion for ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.'”

Garrison wrote to Mrs. Stowe:—

“I estimate the value of anti-slavery writing by the
abuse it brings. Now all the defenders of slavery have
let me alone and are abusing you.”

[162]

To Mrs. Stowe, Whittier wrote:—

Ten thousand thanks for thy immortal book. My
young friend Mary Irving (of the “Era”) writes me
that she has been reading it to some twenty young
ladies, daughters of Louisiana slaveholders, near New
Orleans, and amid the scenes described in it, and that
they, with one accord, pronounce it true.

Truly thy friend,
John G. Whittier.

From Thomas Wentworth Higginson came the following:—

To have written at once the most powerful of contemporary
fictions and the most efficient of anti-slavery
tracts is a double triumph in literature and philanthropy,
to which this country has heretofore seen no
parallel.

Yours respectfully and gratefully,
T. W. Higginson.

A few days after the publication of the book, Mrs.
Stowe, writing from Boston to her husband in Brunswick,
says: “I have been in such a whirl ever since I
have been here. I found business prosperous. Jewett
animated. He has been to Washington and conversed
with all the leading senators, Northern and Southern.
Seward told him it was the greatest book of the times,
or something of that sort, and he and Sumner went
around with him to recommend it to Southern men and
get them to read it.”

[163]

It is true that with these congratulatory and commendatory
letters came hosts of others, threatening and
insulting, from the Haleys and Legrees of the country.

Of them Mrs. Stowe said: “They were so curiously
compounded of blasphemy, cruelty, and obscenity, that
their like could only be expressed by John Bunyan’s
account of the speech of Apollyon: ‘He spake as a
dragon.'”

A correspondent of the “National Era” wrote:
“‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ is denounced by time-serving
preachers as a meretricious work. Will you not come
out in defense of it and roll back the tide of vituperation?”

To this the editor answered: “We should as soon
think of coming out in defense of Shakespeare.”

Several attempts were made in the South to write
books controverting “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and showing
a much brighter side of the slavery question, but
they all fell flat and were left unread. Of one of
them, a clergyman of Charleston, S. C., wrote in a private
letter:—

“I have read two columns in the ‘Southern Press’
of Mrs. Eastman’s ‘Aunt Phillis’ Cabin, or Southern
Life as it is,’ with the remarks of the editor. I have
no comment to make on it, as that is done by itself.
The editor might have saved himself being writ down
an ass by the public if he had withheld his nonsense.
If the two columns are a fair specimen of Mrs. Eastman’s
book, I pity her attempt and her name as an
author.”

In due time Mrs. Stowe began to receive answers to
the letters she had forwarded with copies of her book[164]
to prominent men in England, and these were without
exception flattering and encouraging. Through his
private secretary Prince Albert acknowledged with
thanks the receipt of his copy, and promised to read it.
Succeeding mails brought scores of letters from English
men of letters and statesmen. Lord Carlisle wrote:—

“I return my deep and solemn thanks to Almighty
God who has led and enabled you to write such a book.
I do feel indeed the most thorough assurance that in
his good Providence such a book cannot have been
written in vain. I have long felt that slavery is by
far the topping question of the world and age we live
in, including all that is most thrilling in heroism and
most touching in distress; in short, the real epic of the
universe. The self-interest of the parties most nearly
concerned on the one hand, the apathy and ignorance
of unconcerned observers on the other, have left these
august pretensions to drop very much out of sight.
Hence my rejoicing that a writer has appeared who
will be read and must be felt, and that happen what
may to the transactions of slavery they will no longer
be suppressed.”

To this letter, of which but an extract has been
given, Mrs. Stowe sent the following reply:—

My Lord,—It is not with the common pleasure of
gratified authorship that I say how much I am gratified
by the receipt of your very kind communication with
regard to my humble efforts in the cause of humanity.
The subject is one so grave, so awful—the success of
what I have written has been so singular and so unexpected—that
I can scarce retain a self-consciousness[165]
and am constrained to look upon it all as the work of a
Higher Power, who, when He pleases, can accomplish
his results by the feeblest instruments. I am glad of
anything which gives notoriety to the book, because it
is a plea for the dumb and the helpless! I am glad
particularly of notoriety in England because I see with
what daily increasing power England’s opinion is to act
on this country. No one can tell but a native born
here by what an infinite complexity of ties, nerves, and
ligaments this terrible evil is bound in one body politic;
how the slightest touch upon it causes even the free
States to thrill and shiver, what a terribly corrupting
and tempting power it has upon the conscience and
moral sentiment even of a free community. Nobody
can tell the thousand ways in which by trade, by family
affinity, or by political expediency, the free part of
our country is constantly tempted to complicity with
the slaveholding part. It is a terrible thing to become
used to hearing the enormities of slavery, to hear of
things day after day that one would think the sun
should hide his face from, and yet, to get used to them,
to discuss them coolly, to dismiss them coolly. For
example, the sale of intelligent, handsome colored
females for vile purposes, facts of the most public
nature, have made this a perfectly understood matter
in our Northern States. I have now, myself, under
charge and educating, two girls of whose character any
mother might be proud, who have actually been rescued
from this sale in the New Orleans market.

I desire to inclose a tract[11] in which I sketched down
a few incidents in the history of the family to which[166]
these girls belong; it will show more than words can
the kind of incident to which I allude. The tract is
not a published document, only printed to assist me in
raising money, and it would not, at present, be for the
good of the parties to have it published even in England.

But though these things are known in the free
States, and other things, if possible, worse, yet there is
a terrible deadness of moral sense. They are known
by clergymen who yet would not on any account so far
commit themselves as to preach on the evils of slavery,
or pray for the slaves in their pulpits. They are
known by politicians who yet give their votes for slavery
extension and perpetuation.

This year both our great leading parties voted to
suppress all agitation of the subject, and in both those
parties were men who knew personally facts of slavery
and the internal slave-trade that one would think no
man could ever forget. Men united in pledging themselves
to the Fugitive Slave Law, who yet would tell
you in private conversation that it was an abomination,
and who do not hesitate to say, that as a matter of
practice they always help the fugitive because they
can’t do otherwise.

The moral effect of this constant insincerity, the
moral effect of witnessing and becoming accustomed to
the most appalling forms of crime and oppression, is to
me the most awful and distressing part of the subject.
Nothing makes me feel it so painfully as to see with
how much more keenness the English feel the disclosures
of my book than the Americans. I myself am
blunted by use—by seeing, touching, handling the[167]
details. In dealing even for the ransom of slaves, in
learning market prices of men, women, and children, I
feel that I acquire a horrible familiarity with evil.

Here, then, the great, wise, and powerful mind of
England, if she will but fully master the subject, may
greatly help us. Hers is the same kind of mind as
our own, but disembarrassed from our temptations and
unnerved by the thousands of influences that blind and
deaden us. There is a healthful vivacity of moral feeling
on this subject that must electrify our paralyzed
vitality. For this reason, therefore, I rejoice when I
see minds like your lordship’s turning to this subject;
and I feel an intensity of emotion, as if I could say, Do
not for Christ’s sake let go; you know not what you
may do.

Your lordship will permit me to send you two of the
most characteristic documents of the present struggle,
written by two men who are, in their way, as eloquent
for the slave as Chatham was for us in our hour of
need.

I am now preparing some additional notes to my
book, in which I shall further confirm what I have
said by facts and statistics, and in particular by extracts
from the codes of slaveholding States, and the
records of their courts. These are documents that
cannot be disputed, and I pray your lordship to give
them your attention. No disconnected facts can be so
terrible as these legal decisions. They will soon appear
in England.

It is so far from being irrelevant for England to
notice slavery that I already see indications that this
subject, on both sides, is yet to be presented there, and[168]
the battle fought on English ground. I see that my
friend the South Carolinian gentleman has sent to
“Fraser’s Magazine” an article; before published in
this country, on “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” The article in
the London “Times” was eagerly reprinted in this
country, was issued as a tract and sold by the hundred,
headed, “What they think of ‘Uncle Tom’ in England.”
If I mistake not, a strong effort will be made
to pervert the public mind of England, and to do away
the impression which the book has left.

For a time after it was issued it seemed to go by
acclamation. From quarters the most unexpected, from
all political parties, came an almost unbroken chorus of
approbation. I was very much surprised, knowing the
explosive nature of the subject. It was not till the
sale had run to over a hundred thousand copies that
reaction began, and the reaction was led off by the
London “Times.” Instantly, as by a preconcerted signal,
all papers of a certain class began to abuse; and
some who had at first issued articles entirely commendatory,
now issued others equally depreciatory. Religious
papers, notably the “New York Observer,” came
out and denounced the book as anti-Christian, anti-evangelical,
resorting even to personal slander on the
author as a means of diverting attention from the work.

All this has a meaning, but I think it comes too
late. I can think of no reason why it was not tried
sooner, excepting that God had intended that the cause
should have a hearing. It is strange that they should
have waited so long for the political effect of a book
which they might have foreseen at first; but not
strange that they should, now they do see what it is
doing, attempt to root it up.

[169]

The effects of the book so far have been, I think,
these: 1st. To soften and moderate the bitterness of
feeling in extreme abolitionists. 2d. To convert to
abolitionist views many whom this same bitterness had
repelled. 3d. To inspire the free colored people with
self-respect, hope, and confidence. 4th. To inspire
universally through the country a kindlier feeling toward
the negro race.

It was unfortunate for the cause of freedom that the
first agitators of this subject were of that class which
your lordship describes in your note as “well-meaning
men.” I speak sadly of their faults, for they were
men of noble hearts. “But oppression maketh a wise
man mad,” and they spoke and did many things in the
frenzy of outraged humanity that repelled sympathy
and threw multitudes off to a hopeless distance. It is
mournful to think of all the absurdities that have been
said and done in the name and for the sake of this
holy cause, that have so long and so fatally retarded it.

I confess that I expected for myself nothing but
abuse from extreme abolitionists, especially as I dared
to name a forbidden shibboleth, “Liberia,” and the
fact that the wildest and extremest abolitionists united
with the coldest conservatives, at first, to welcome and
advance the book is a thing that I have never ceased
to wonder at.

I have written this long letter because I am extremely
desirous that some leading minds in England
should know how we stand. The subject is now on
trial at the bar of a civilized world—a Christian
world! and I feel sure that God has not ordered this
without a design. Yours for the cause,

Harriet Beecher Stowe.

[170]

In December the Earl of Shaftesbury wrote to Mrs.
Stowe:—

Madam,—It is very possible that the writer of this
letter may be wholly unknown to you. But whether
my name be familiar to your ears, or whether you now
read it for the first time, I cannot refrain from expressing
to you the deep gratitude that I feel to Almighty
God who has inspired both your heart and your head
in the composition of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” None
but a Christian believer could have produced such a
book as yours, which has absolutely startled the whole
world, and impressed many thousands by revelations of
cruelty and sin that give us an idea of what would be
the uncontrolled dominion of Satan on this fallen earth.

To this letter Mrs. Stowe replied as follows:—

Andover, January 6, 1853.

To the Earl of Shaftesbury:

My Lord,—The few lines I have received from you
are a comfort and an encouragement to me, feeble as
I now am in health, and pressed oftentimes with sorrowful
thoughts.

It is a comfort to know that in other lands there
are those who feel as we feel, and who are looking with
simplicity to the gospel of Jesus, and prayerfully hoping
his final coming.

My lord, before you wrote me I read with deep
emotion your letter to the ladies of England, and subsequently
the noble address of the Duchess of Sutherland,
and I could not but feel that such movements,[171]
originating in such a quarter, prompted by a spirit so
devout and benevolent, were truly of God, and must
result in a blessing to the world.

I grieve to see that both in England and this country
there are those who are entirely incapable of appreciating
the Christian and truly friendly feeling that
prompted this movement, and that there are even those
who meet it with coarse personalities such as I had not
thought possible in an English or American paper.

When I wrote my work it was in simplicity and in
the love of Christ, and if I felt anything that seemed
to me like a call to undertake it, it was this, that I had
a true heart of love for the Southern people, a feeling
appreciation of their trials, and a sincere admiration of
their many excellent traits, and that I thus felt, I
think, must appear to every impartial reader of the
work.

It was my hope that a book so kindly intended, so
favorable in many respects, might be permitted free
circulation among them, and that the gentle voice of
Eva and the manly generosity of St. Clare might be
allowed to say those things of the system which would
be invidious in any other form.

At first the book seemed to go by acclamation; the
South did not condemn, and the North was loud and
unanimous in praise; not a dissenting voice was raised;
to my astonishment everybody praised. But when the
book circulated so widely and began to penetrate the
Southern States, when it began to be perceived how
powerfully it affected every mind that read it, there
came on a reaction.

Answers, pamphlets, newspaper attacks came thick[172]
and fast, and certain Northern papers, religious,—so
called,—turned and began to denounce the work as unchristian,
heretical, etc. The reason of all this is that
it has been seen that the book has a direct tendency
to do what it was written for,—to awaken conscience
in the slaveholding States and lead to emancipation.

Now there is nothing that Southern political leaders
and capitalists so dread as anti-slavery feeling among
themselves. All the force of lynch law is employed to
smother discussion and blind conscience on this question.
The question is not allowed to be discussed, and
he who sells a book or publishes a tract makes himself
liable to fine and imprisonment.

My book is, therefore, as much under an interdict
in some parts of the South as the Bible is in Italy. It
is not allowed in the bookstores, and the greater part
of the people hear of it and me only through grossly
caricatured representations in the papers, with garbled
extracts from the book.

A cousin residing in Georgia this winter says that
the prejudice against my name is so strong that she
dares not have it appear on the outside of her letters,
and that very amiable and excellent people have asked
her if such as I could be received into reputable society
at the North.

Under these circumstances, it is a matter of particular
regret that the “New York Observer,” an old and
long-established religious paper in the United States,
extensively read at the South, should have come out
in such a bitter and unscrupulous style of attack as
even to induce some Southern papers, with a generosity
one often finds at the South, to protest against it.

[173]

That they should use their Christian character and
the sacred name of Christ still further to blind the
minds and strengthen the prejudices of their Southern
brethren is to me a matter of deepest sorrow. All
those things, of course, cannot touch me in my private
capacity, sheltered as I am by a happy home and very
warm friends. I only grieve for it as a dishonor to
Christ and a real injustice to many noble-minded people
at the South, who, if they were allowed quietly and
dispassionately to hear and judge, might be led to the
best results.

But, my lord, all this only shows us how strong is
the interest we touch. All the wealth of America
may be said to be interested in it. And, if I may judge
from the furious and bitter tone of some English papers,
they also have some sensitive connection with the evil.

I trust that those noble and gentle ladies of England
who have in so good a spirit expressed their views
of the question will not be discouraged by the strong
abuse that will follow. England is doing us good. We
need the vitality of a disinterested country to warm our
torpid and benumbed public sentiment.

Nay, the storm of feeling which the book raises in
Italy, Germany, and France is all good, though truly
’tis painful for us Americans to bear. The fact is, we
have become used to this frightful evil, and we need
the public sentiment of the world to help us.

I am now writing a work to be called “Key to Uncle
Tom’s Cabin.” It contains, in an undeniable form, the
facts which corroborate all that I have said. One third
of it is taken up with judicial records of trials and
decisions, and with statute law. It is a most fearful[174]
story, my lord,—I can truly say that I write with life-blood,
but as called of God. I give in my evidence,
and I hope that England may so fix the attention of the
world on the facts of which I am the unwilling publisher,
that the Southern States may be compelled to
notice what hitherto they have denied and ignored. If
they call the fiction dreadful, what will they say of the
fact, where I cannot deny, suppress, or color? But it
is God’s will that it must be told, and I am the unwilling
agent.

This coming month of April, my husband and myself
expect to sail for England on the invitation of the
Anti-Slavery Society of the Ladies and Gentlemen of
Glasgow, to confer with friends there.

There are points where English people can do much
good; there are also points where what they seek to do
may be made more efficient by a little communion with
those who know the feelings and habits of our countrymen:
but I am persuaded that England can do much
for us.

My lord, they greatly mistake who see, in this movement
of English Christians for the abolition of slavery,
signs of disunion between the nations. It is the purest
and best proof of friendship England has ever shown
us, and will, I am confident, be so received. I earnestly
trust that all who have begun to take in hand the cause
will be in nothing daunted, but persevere to the end;
for though everything else be against us, Christ is certainly
on our side and He must at last prevail, and it
will be done, “not by might, nor by power, but by His
Spirit.”

Yours in Christian sincerity,
H. B. Stowe.

[175]

Mrs. Stowe also received a letter from Arthur Helps[12]
accompanying a review of her work written by himself
and published in “Fraser’s Magazine.” In his letter
Mr. Helps took exception to the comparison instituted
in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” between the working-classes
of England and the slaves of America. In her answer
to this criticism and complaint Mrs. Stowe says:—

Mr. Arthur Helps:

My dear Sir,—I cannot but say I am greatly
obliged to you for the kind opinions expressed in your
letter. On one point, however, it appears that my book
has not faithfully represented to you the feelings of my
heart. I mean in relation to the English nation as a
nation. You will notice that the remarks on that subject
occur in the dramatic part of the book, in the
mouth of an intelligent Southerner. As a fair-minded
person, bound to state for both sides all that could be
said in the person of St. Clare, the best that could be
said on that point, and what I know is in fact constantly
reiterated, namely, that the laboring class of
the South are in many respects, as to physical comfort,
in a better condition than the poor of England.

This is the slaveholder’s stereotyped apology,—a
defense it cannot be, unless two wrongs make one right.

It is generally supposed among us that this estimate
of the relative condition of the slaves and the poor of
England is correct, and we base our ideas on reports
made in Parliament and various documentary evidence;
also such sketches as “London Labor and London Poor,”
which have been widely circulated among us. The inference,[176]
however, which we of the freedom party draw
from it, is not that the slave is, on the whole, in the
best condition because of this striking difference; that
in America the slave has not a recognized human character
in law, has not even an existence, whereas in England
the law recognizes and protects the meanest subject,
in theory always, and in fact to a certain extent.
A prince of the blood could not strike the meanest
laborer without a liability to prosecution, in theory at
least, and that is something. In America any man
may strike any slave he meets, and if the master does
not choose to notice it, he has no redress.

I do not suppose human nature to be widely different
in England and America. In both countries, when any
class holds power and wealth by institutions which in
the long run bring misery on lower classes, they are
very unwilling still to part with that wealth and power.
They are unwilling to be convinced that it is their duty,
and unwilling to do it if they are. It is always so
everywhere; it is not English nature or American nature,
but human nature. We have seen in England the battle
for popular rights fought step by step with as determined
a resistance from parties in possession as the
slaveholder offers in America.

There was the same kind of resistance in certain quarters
there to the laws restricting the employing of young
children eighteen hours a day in factories, as there is
here to the anti-slavery effort.

Again, in England as in America, there are, in those
very classes whose interests are most invaded by what
are called popular rights, some of the most determined
supporters of them, and here I think that the balance[177]
preponderates in favor of England. I think there are
more of the high nobility of England who are friends
of the common people and willing to help the cause of
human progress, irrespective of its influence on their own
interests, than there are those of a similar class among
slaveholding aristocracy, though even that class is not
without such men. But I am far from having any of
that senseless prejudice against the English nation as a
nation which, greatly to my regret, I observe sometimes
in America. It is a relic of barbarism for two such
nations as England and America to cherish any such
unworthy prejudice.

For my own part, I am proud to be of English blood;
and though I do not think England’s national course
faultless, and though I think many of her institutions
and arrangements capable of much revision and improvement,
yet my heart warms to her as, on the whole,
the strongest, greatest, and best nation on earth. Have
not England and America one blood, one language,
one literature, and a glorious literature it is! Are not
Milton and Shakespeare, and all the wise and brave
and good of old, common to us both, and should there
be anything but cordiality between countries that have
so glorious an inheritance in common? If there is, it
will be elsewhere than in hearts like mine.

Sincerely yours,
H. B. Stowe.

[178]

CHAPTER VIII.
FIRST TRIP TO EUROPE, 1853.

Very soon after the publication of “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin” Mrs. Stowe visited her brother Henry in Brooklyn,
and while there became intensely interested in the
case of the Edmondsons, a slave family of Washington,
D. C. Emily and Mary two of the daughters of Paul
(a free colored man) and Milly (a slave) Edmondson,
had, for trying to escape from bondage, been sold to a
trader for the New Orleans market. While they were
lying in jail in Alexandria awaiting the making up of
a gang for the South, their heartbroken father determined
to visit the North and try to beg from a freedom-loving
people the money with which to purchase
his daughters’ liberty. The sum asked by the trader
was $2,250, but its magnitude did not appall the brave
old man, and he set forth upon his quest full of faith
that in some way he would secure it.

Reaching New York, he went to the anti-slavery
bureau and related his pitiful story. The sum demanded
was such a large one and seemed so exorbitant[179]
that even those who took the greatest interest in
the case were disheartened over the prospect of raising
it. The old man was finally advised to go to Henry
Ward Beecher and ask his aid. He made his way to
the door of the great Brooklyn preacher’s house, but,
overcome by many disappointments and fearing to meet
with another rebuff, hesitated to ring the bell, and sat
down on the steps with tears streaming from his eyes.

There Mr. Beecher found him, learned his story, and
promised to do what he could. There was a great
meeting in Plymouth Church that evening, and, taking
the old colored man with him to it, Mrs. Stowe’s
brother made such an eloquent and touching appeal on
behalf of the slave girls as to rouse his audience to
profound indignation and pity. The entire sum of
$2,250 was raised then and there, and the old man,
hardly able to realize his great joy, was sent back to his
despairing children with their freedom money in his
hand.

All this had happened in the latter part of 1848, and
Mrs. Stowe had first known of the liberated girls in
1851, when she had been appealed to for aid in educating
them. From that time forward she became personally
responsible for all their expenses while they
remained in school, and until the death of one of them
in 1853.

Now during her visit to New York in the spring of
1852 she met their old mother, Milly Edmondson, who
had come North in the hope of saving her two remaining
slave children, a girl and a young man, from falling
into the trader’s clutches. Twelve hundred dollars was
the sum to be raised, and by hard work the father had[180]
laid by one hundred of it when a severe illness put an
end to his efforts. After many prayers and much consideration
of the matter, his feeble old wife said to him
one day, “Paul, I’m a gwine up to New York myself
to see if I can’t get that money.”

Her husband objected that she was too feeble, that
she would be unable to find her way, and that Northern
people had got tired of buying slaves to set them
free, but the resolute old woman clung to her purpose
and finally set forth. Reaching New York she made
her way to Mr. Beecher’s house, where she was so fortunate
as to find Mrs. Stowe. Now her troubles were at
an end, for this champion of the oppressed at once
made the slave woman’s cause her own and promised
that her children should be redeemed. She at once set
herself to the task of raising the purchase-money, not
only for Milly’s children, but for giving freedom to the
old slave woman herself. On May 29, she writes to her
husband in Brunswick:—

“The mother of the Edmondson girls, now aged and
feeble, is in the city. I did not actually know when I
wrote ‘Uncle Tom’ of a living example in which Christianity
had reached its fullest development under the
crushing wrongs of slavery, but in this woman I see it.
I never knew before what I could feel till, with her sorrowful,
patient eyes upon me, she told me her history
and begged my aid. The expression of her face as she
spoke, and the depth of patient sorrow in her eyes, was
beyond anything I ever saw.

“‘Well,’ said I, when she had finished, ‘set your
heart at rest; you and your children shall be redeemed.
If I can’t raise the money otherwise, I will pay it myself.’[181]
You should have seen the wonderfully sweet,
solemn look she gave me as she said, ‘The Lord bless
you, my child!’

“Well, I have received a sweet note from Jenny
Lind, with her name and her husband’s with which to
head my subscription list. They give a hundred dollars.
Another hundred is subscribed by Mr. Bowen in
his wife’s name, and I have put my own name down for
an equal amount. A lady has given me twenty-five
dollars, and Mr. Storrs has pledged me fifty dollars.
Milly and I are to meet the ladies of Henry’s and Dr.
Cox’s churches to-morrow, and she is to tell them her
story. I have written to Drs. Bacon and Dutton in
New Haven to secure a similar meeting of ladies there.
I mean to have one in Boston, and another in Portland.
It will do good to the givers as well as to the
receivers.

“But all this time I have been so longing to get
your letter from New Haven, for I heard it was there.
It is not fame nor praise that contents me. I seem
never to have needed love so much as now. I long to
hear you say how much you love me. Dear one, if this
effort impedes my journey home, and wastes some of
my strength, you will not murmur. When I see this
Christlike soul standing so patiently bleeding, yet forgiving,
I feel a sacred call to be the helper of the helpless,
and it is better that my own family do without me
for a while longer than that this mother lose all. I
must redeem her.

“New Haven, June 2. My old woman’s case progresses
gloriously. I am to see the ladies of this place
to-morrow. Four hundred dollars were contributed by[182]
individuals in Brooklyn, and the ladies who took subscription
papers at the meeting will undoubtedly raise
two hundred dollars more.”

Before leaving New York, Mrs. Stowe gave Milly
Edmondson her check for the entire sum necessary to
purchase her own freedom and that of her children,
and sent her home rejoicing. That this sum was made
up to her by the generous contributions of those to
whom she appealed is shown by a note written to her
husband and dated July, 1852, in which she says:—

“Had a very kind note from A. Lawrence inclosing
a twenty-dollar gold-piece for the Edmondsons. Isabella’s
ladies gave me twenty-five dollars, so you see
our check is more than paid already.”

Although during her visit in New York Mrs. Stowe
made many new friends, and was overwhelmed with
congratulations and praise of her book, the most pleasing
incident of this time seems to have been an epistolatory
interview with Jenny Lind (Goldschmidt). In
writing of it to her husband she says:—

“Well, we have heard Jenny Lind, and the affair
was a bewildering dream of sweetness and beauty.
Her face and movements are full of poetry and feeling.
She has the artless grace of a little child, the poetic
effect of a wood-nymph, is airy, light, and graceful.

“We had first-rate seats, and how do you think we
got them? When Mr. Howard went early in the
morning for tickets, Mr. Goldschmidt told him it was
impossible to get any good ones, as they were all sold.
Mr. Howard said he regretted that, on Mrs. Stowe’s account,
as she was very desirous of hearing Jenny Lind.
‘Mrs. Stowe!’ exclaimed Mr. Goldschmidt, ‘the author[183]
of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”? Indeed, she shall have a
seat whatever happens!’

“Thereupon he took his hat and went out, returning
shortly with tickets for two of the best seats in the
house, inclosed in an envelope directed to me in his
wife’s handwriting. Mr. Howard said he could have
sold those tickets at any time during the day for ten
dollars each.

“To-day I sent a note of acknowledgment with a
copy of my book. I am most happy to have seen her,
for she is a noble creature.”

To this note the great singer wrote in answer:—

My dear Madam,—Allow me to express my sincere
thanks for your very kind letter, which I was very
happy to receive.

You must feel and know what a deep impression
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” has made upon every heart that
can feel for the dignity of human existence: so I with
my miserable English would not even try to say a word
about the great excellency of that most beautiful book,
but I must thank you for the great joy I have felt over
that book.

Forgive me, my dear madam: it is a great liberty I
take in thus addressing you, I know, but I have so
wished to find an opportunity to pour out my thankfulness
in a few words to you that I cannot help this
intruding. I have the feeling about “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin” that great changes will take place by and by,
from the impression people receive out of it, and that
the writer of that book can fall asleep to-day or to-morrow
with the bright, sweet conscience of having[184]
been a strong means in the Creator’s hand of operating
essential good in one of the most important questions
for the welfare of our black brethren. God bless and
protect you and yours, dear madam, and certainly God’s
hand will remain with a blessing over your head.

Once more forgive my bad English and the liberty
I have taken, and believe me to be, dear madam,

Yours most truly,
Jenny Goldschmidt, née Lind.

In answer to Mrs. Stowe’s appeal on behalf of the
Edmonsons, Jenny Lind wrote:—

My dear Mrs. Stowe,—I have with great interest
read your statement of the black family at Washington.
It is with pleasure also that I and my husband
are placing our humble names on the list you sent.

The time is short. I am very, very sorry that I shall
not be able to see you. I must say farewell to you in
this way. Hoping that in the length of time you may
live to witness the progression of the good sake for
which you so nobly have fought, my best wishes go
with you.

Yours in friendship,
Jenny Goldschmidt.

While Mrs. Stowe was thus absent from home, her
husband received and accepted a most urgent call to
the Professorship of Sacred Literature in the Theological
Seminary at Andover, Mass.

In regard to leaving Brunswick and her many
friends there, Mrs. Stowe wrote: “For my part, if I
must leave Brunswick, I would rather leave at once. I[185]
can tear away with a sudden pull more easily than to
linger there knowing that I am to leave at last. I
shall never find people whom I shall like better than
those of Brunswick.”

As Professor Stowe’s engagements necessitated his
spending much of the summer in Brunswick, and also
making a journey to Cincinnati, it devolved upon his
wife to remain in Andover, and superintend the preparation
of the house they were to occupy. This was
known as the old stone workshop, on the west side of
the Common, and it had a year or two before been
fitted up by Charles Munroe and Jonathan Edwards[13]
as the Seminary gymnasium. Beneath Mrs. Stowe’s
watchful care and by the judicious expenditure of
money, it was transformed by the first of November
into the charming abode which under the name of
“The Cabin” became noted as one of the pleasantest
literary centres of the country. Here for many years
were received, and entertained in a modest way, many
of the most distinguished people of this and other
lands, and here were planned innumerable philanthropic
undertakings in which Mrs. Stowe and her scholarly
husband were the prime movers.

The summer spent in preparing this home was one
of great pleasure as well as literary activity. In July
Mrs. Stowe writes to her husband: “I had no idea this
place was so beautiful. Our family circle is charming.
All the young men are so gentlemanly and so agreeable,
as well as Christian in spirit. Mr. Dexter, his
wife, and sister are delightful. Last evening a party
of us went to ride on horseback down to Pomp’s Pond.[186]
What a beautiful place it is! There is everything here
that there is at Brunswick except the sea,—a great exception.
Yesterday I was out all the forenoon sketching
elms. There is no end to the beauty of these trees.
I shall fill my book with them before I get through.
We had a levee at Professor Park’s last week,—quite a
brilliant affair. To-day there is to be a fishing party
to go to Salem beach and have a chowder.

THE ANDOVER HOME

“It seems almost too good to be true that we are
going to have such a house in such a beautiful place,
and to live here among all these agreeable people,
where everybody seems to love you so much and to
think so much of you. I am almost afraid to accept it,
and should not, did I not see the Hand that gives it all
and know that it is both firm and true. He knows if
it is best for us, and His blessing addeth no sorrow
therewith. I cannot describe to you the constant undercurrent
of love and joy and peace ever flowing
through my soul. I am so happy—so blessed!”

The literary work of this summer was directed toward
preparing articles on many subjects for the “New
York Independent” and the “National Era,” as well
as collecting material for future books. That the
“Pearl of Orr’s Island,” which afterward appeared as a
serial in the “Independent,” was already contemplated,
is shown by a letter written July 29th, in which Mrs.
Stowe says: “What a lovely place Andover is! So
many beautiful walks! Last evening a number of us
climbed Prospect Hill, and had a most charming walk.
Since I came here we have taken up hymn-singing to
quite an extent, and while we were all up on the hill
we sang ‘When I can read my title clear.’ It went
finely.

[187]

“I seem to have so much to fill my time, and yet
there is my Maine story waiting. However, I am composing
it every day, only I greatly need living studies
for the filling in of my sketches. There is ‘old Jonas,’
my ‘fish father,’ a sturdy, independent fisherman
farmer, who in his youth sailed all over the world and
made up his mind about everything. In his old age
he attends prayer-meetings and reads the ‘Missionary
Herald.’ He also has plenty of money in an old brown
sea-chest. He is a great heart with an inflexible will
and iron muscles. I must go to Orr’s Island and see
him again. I am now writing an article for the ‘Era’
on Maine and its scenery, which I think is even better
than the ‘Independent’ letter. In it I took up Longfellow.
Next I shall write one on Hawthorne and his
surroundings.

“To-day Mrs. Jewett sent out a most solemnly savage
attack upon me from the ‘Alabama Planter.’
Among other things it says: ‘The plan for assaulting
the best institutions in the world may be made just as
rational as it is by the wicked (perhaps unconsciously
so) authoress of this book. The woman who wrote it
must be either a very bad or a very fanatical person.
For her own domestic peace we trust no enemy will
ever penetrate into her household to pervert the scenes
he may find there with as little logic or kindness as she
has used in her “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”‘ There’s for
you! Can you wonder now that such a wicked woman
should be gone from you a full month instead of the
week I intended? Ah, welladay!”

At last the house was finished, the removal from
Brunswick effected, and the reunited family was comfortably[188]
settled in its Andover home. The plans for
the winter’s literary work were, however, altered by
force of circumstances. Instead of proceeding quietly
and happily with her charming Maine story, Mrs. Stowe
found it necessary to take notice in some manner of
the cruel and incessant attacks made upon her as the
author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and to fortify herself
against them by a published statement of incontrovertible
facts. It was claimed on all sides that she had in
her famous book made such ignorant or malicious misrepresentations
that it was nothing short of a tissue of
falsehoods, and to refute this she was compelled to
write a “Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” in which should
appear the sources from which she had obtained her
knowledge. Late in the winter Mrs. Stowe wrote:—

“I am now very much driven. I am preparing a
Key to unlock ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ It will contain
all the original facts, anecdotes, and documents on
which the story is founded, with some very interesting
and affecting stories parallel to those told of Uncle
Tom. Now I want you to write for me just what you
heard that slave-buyer say, exactly as he said it, that
people may compare it with what I have written. My
Key will be stronger than the Cabin.”

In regard to this “Key” Mrs. Stowe also wrote to
the Duchess of Sutherland upon hearing that she had
headed an address from the women of England to those
of America:—

It is made up of the facts, the documents, the
things which my own eyes have looked upon and my
hands have handled, that attest this awful indictment[189]
upon my country. I write it in the anguish of my
soul, with tears and prayer, with sleepless nights and
weary days. I bear my testimony with a heavy heart,
as one who in court is forced by an awful oath to disclose
the sins of those dearest.

So I am called to draw up this fearful witness
against my country and send it into all countries, that
the general voice of humanity may quicken our paralyzed
vitality, that all Christians may pray for us, and
that shame, honor, love of country, and love of Christ
may be roused to give us strength to cast out this
mighty evil.

Yours for the oppressed,
H. B. Stowe.

This harassing, brain-wearying, and heart-sickening
labor was continued until the first of April, 1853, when,
upon invitation of the Anti-Slavery Society of Glasgow,
Scotland, Mrs. Stowe, accompanied by her husband and
her brother, Charles Beecher, sailed for Europe.

In the mean time the success of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”
abroad was already phenomenal and unprecedented.
From the pen of Mr. Sampson Low, the well-known
London publisher, we have the following interesting
statement regarding it:—

“The first edition printed in London was in April,
1852, by Henry Vizetelly, in a neat volume at ten and
sixpence, of which he issued 7,000 copies. He received
the first copy imported, through a friend who had
bought it in Boston the day the steamer sailed, for his
own reading. He gave it to Mr. V., who took it to
the late Mr. David Bogue, well known for his general
shrewdness and enterprise. He had the book to read[190]
and consider over night, and in the morning returned
it, declining to take it at the very moderate price of
five pounds.

“Vizetelly at once put the volume into the hands of a
friendly printer and brought it out on his own account,
through the nominal agency of Clarke & Co. The
7,000 copies sold, other editions followed, and Mr.
Vizetelly disposed of his interest in the book to the
printer and agent, who joined with Mr. Beeton and at
once began to issue monster editions. The demand
called for fresh supplies, and these created an increased
demand. The discovery was soon made that any one
was at liberty to reprint the book, and the initiative
was thus given to a new era in cheap literature, founded
on American reprints. A shilling edition followed the
one-and-sixpence, and this in turn became the precursor
of one ‘complete for sixpence.’ From April to December,
1852, twelve different editions (not reissues)
were published, and within the twelve months of its
first appearance eighteen different London publishing
houses were engaged in supplying the great demand
that had set in, the total number of editions being
forty, varying from fine art-illustrated editions at 15s.,
10s., and 7s. 6d., to the cheap popular editions of 1s.,
9d., and 6d.

“After carefully analyzing these editions and weighing
probabilities with ascertained facts, I am able pretty
confidently to say that the aggregate number of copies
circulated in Great Britain and the colonies exceeds
one and a half millions.”

A similar statement made by Clarke & Co. in October,
1852, reveals the following facts. It says: “An early[191]
copy was sent from America the latter end of April to
Mr. Bogue, the publisher, and was offered by him to
Mr. Gilpin, late of Bishopsgate Street. Being declined
by Mr. Gilpin, Mr. Bogue offered it to Mr. Henry
Vizetelly, and by the latter gentleman it was eventually
purchased for us. Before printing it, however, as
there was one night allowed for decision, one volume
was taken home to be read by Mr. Vizetelly, and the
other by Mr. Salisbury, the printer, of Bouverie Street.
The report of the latter gentleman the following morning,
to quote his own words, was: ‘I sat up till four
in the morning reading the book, and the interest I felt
was expressed one moment by laughter, another by tears.
Thinking it might be weakness and not the power of
the author that affected me, I resolved to try the effect
upon my wife (a rather strong-minded woman). I
accordingly woke her and read a few chapters to her.
Finding that the interest in the story kept her awake,
and that she, too, laughed and cried, I settled in my
mind that it was a book that ought to, and might with
safety, be printed.’

“Mr. Vizetelly’s opinion coincided with that of Mr.
Salisbury, and to the latter gentleman it was confided
to be brought out immediately. The week following
the book was produced and one edition of 7,000 copies
worked off. It made no stir until the middle of June,
although we advertised it very extensively. From
June it began to make its way, and it sold at the rate of
1,000 per week during July. In August the demand
became very great, and went on increasing to the 20th,
by which time it was perfectly overwhelming. We
have now about 400 people employed in getting out[192]
the book, and seventeen printing machines besides hand
presses. Already about 150,000 copies of the book
are in the hands of the people, and still the returns of
sales show no decline.”

The story was dramatized in the United States in
August, 1852, without the consent or knowledge of
the author, who had neglected to reserve her rights for
this purpose. In September of the same year we find
it announced as the attraction at two London theatres,
namely, the Royal Victoria and the Great National
Standard. In 1853 Professor Stowe writes: “The
drama of ‘Uncle Tom’ has been going on in the National
Theatre of New York all summer with most unparalleled
success. Everybody goes night after night,
and nothing can stop it. The enthusiasm beats that
of the run in the Boston Museum out and out. The
‘Tribune’ is full of it. The ‘Observer,’ the ‘Journal
of Commerce,’ and all that sort of fellows, are astonished
and nonplussed. They do not know what to say
or do about it.”

While the English editions of the story were rapidly
multiplying, and being issued with illustrations by
Cruikshank, introductions by Elihu Burritt, Lord Carlisle,
etc., it was also making its way over the Continent.
For the authorized French edition, translated by Madame
Belloc, and published by Charpentier of Paris,
Mrs. Stowe wrote the following:—

In authorizing the circulation of this work on the
Continent of Europe, the author has only this apology,
that the love of man is higher than the love of country.

[193]

The great mystery which all Christian nations hold
in common, the union of God with man through the
humanity of Jesus Christ, invests human existence with
an awful sacredness; and in the eye of the true believer
in Jesus, he who tramples on the rights of his meanest
fellow-man is not only inhuman but sacrilegious, and
the worst form of this sacrilege is the institution of
slavery.

It has been said that the representations of this book
are exaggerations! and oh, would that this were true!
Would that this book were indeed a fiction, and not a
close mosaic of facts! But that it is not a fiction the
proofs lie bleeding in thousands of hearts; they have
been attested by surrounding voices from almost every
slave State, and from slave-owners themselves. Since so
it must be, thanks be to God that this mighty cry, this
wail of an unutterable anguish, has at last been heard!

It has been said, and not in utter despair but in solemn
hope and assurance may we regard the struggle
that now convulses America,—the outcry of the demon
of slavery, which has heard the voice of Jesus of Nazareth,
and is rending and convulsing the noble nation
from which at last it must depart.

It cannot be that so monstrous a solecism can long
exist in the bosom of a nation which in all respects is
the best exponent of the great principle of universal
brotherhood. In America the Frenchman, the German,
the Italian, the Swede, and the Irish all mingle on
terms of equal right; all nations there display their
characteristic excellences and are admitted by her liberal
laws to equal privileges: everything is tending to
liberalize, humanize, and elevate, and for that very reason[194]
it is that the contest with slavery there grows every
year more terrible.

The stream of human progress, widening, deepening,
strengthening from the confluent forces of all nations,
meets this barrier, behind which is concentrated all the
ignorance, cruelty, and oppression of the dark ages, and
it roars and foams and shakes the barrier, and anon it
must bear it down.

In its commencement slavery overspread every State
in the Union: the progress of society has now emancipated
the North from its yoke. In Kentucky, Tennessee,
Virginia, and Maryland, at different times, strong
movements have been made for emancipation,—movements
enforced by a comparison of the progressive
march of the adjoining free States with the poverty
and sterility and ignorance produced by a system which
in a few years wastes and exhausts all the resources of
the soil without the power of renewal.

The time cannot be distant when these States will
emancipate for self-preservation; and if no new slave
territory be added, the increase of slave population in
the remainder will enforce measures of emancipation.

Here, then, is the point of the battle. Unless more
slave territory is gained, slavery dies; if it is gained, it
lives. Around this point political parties fight and
manœuvre, and every year the battle wages hotter.

The internal struggles of no other nation in the
world are so interesting to Europeans as those of
America; for America is fast filling up from Europe,
and every European has almost immediately his vote in
her councils.

If, therefore, the oppressed of other nations desire to[195]
find in America an asylum of permanent freedom, let
them come prepared, heart and hand, and vote against
the institution of slavery; for they who enslave man
cannot themselves remain free.

True are the great words of Kossuth: “No nation
can remain free with whom freedom is a privilege and
not a principle.”

This preface was more or less widely copied in the
twenty translations of the book that quickly followed
its first appearance. These, arranged in the alphabetical
order of their languages, are as follows: Armenian, Bohemian,
Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Flemish, French, German,
Hungarian, Illyrian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese,
Romaic or modern Greek, Russian, Servian, Spanish,
Wallachian, and Welsh.

In Germany it received the following flattering notice
from one of the leading literary journals: “The abolitionists
in the United States should vote the author of
‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ a civic crown, for a more powerful
ally than Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe and her
romance they could not have. We confess that in the
whole modern romance literature of Germany, England,
and France, we know of no novel to be called equal to
this. In comparison with its glowing eloquence that
never fails of its purpose, its wonderful truth to nature,
the largeness of its ideas, and the artistic faultlessness
of the machinery in this book, George Sand, with her
Spiridion and Claudie, appears to us untrue and artificial;
Dickens, with his but too faithful pictures from the
popular life of London, petty; Bulwer, hectic and self-conscious.
It is like a sign of warning from the New
World to the Old.”

[196]

Madame George Sand reviewed the book, and spoke
of Mrs. Stowe herself in words at once appreciative and
discriminating: “Mrs. Stowe is all instinct; it is the
very reason she appears to some not to have talent.
Has she not talent? What is talent? Nothing, doubtless,
compared to genius; but has she genius? She
has genius as humanity feels the need of genius,—the
genius of goodness, not that of the man of letters,
but that of the saint.”

Charles Sumner wrote from the senate chamber at
Washington to Professor Stowe: “All that I hear and
read bears testimony to the good Mrs. Stowe has done.
The article of George Sand is a most remarkable tribute,
such as was hardly ever offered by such a genius to
any living mortal. Should Mrs. Stowe conclude to visit
Europe she will have a triumph.”

From Eversley parsonage Charles Kingsley wrote to
Mrs. Stowe:—

A thousand thanks for your delightful letter. As
for your progress and ovation here in England, I have
no fear for you. You will be flattered and worshiped.
You deserve it and you must bear it. I am sure that
you have seen and suffered too much and too long to
be injured by the foolish yet honest and heartfelt lionizing
which you must go through.

I have many a story to tell you when we meet about
the effects of the great book upon the most unexpected
people.

Yours ever faithfully,
C. Kingsley.

[197]

March 28, 1853, Professor Stowe sent the following
communication to the Committee of Examination of the
Theological Seminary at Andover: “As I shall not be
present at the examinations this term, I think it proper
to make to you a statement of the reasons of my absence.
During the last winter I have not enjoyed my
usual health. Mrs. Stowe also became sick and very
much exhausted. At this time we had the offer of a
voyage to Great Britain and back free of expense.”

This offer, coming as it did from the friends of the
cause of emancipation in the United Kingdom, was
gladly accepted by Mr. and Mrs. Stowe, and they sailed
immediately.

The preceding month Mrs. Stowe had received a letter
from Mrs. Follen in London, asking for information
with regard to herself, her family, and the circumstances
of her writing “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

In reply Mrs. Stowe sent the following very characteristic
letter, which may be safely given at the risk of
some repetition:—

Andover, February 16, 1853.

My dear Madam,—I hasten to reply to your letter,
to me the more interesting that I have long been acquainted
with you, and during all the nursery part of
my life made daily use of your poems for children.

I used to think sometimes in those days that I would
write to you, and tell you how much I was obliged to
you for the pleasure which they gave us all.

So you want to know something about what sort of
a woman I am! Well, if this is any object, you shall
have statistics free of charge. To begin, then, I am a
little bit of a woman,—somewhat more than forty,[198]
about as thin and dry as a pinch of snuff; never very
much to look at in my best days, and looking like a
used-up article now.

I was married when I was twenty-five years old to a
man rich in Greek and Hebrew, Latin and Arabic, and,
alas! rich in nothing else. When I went to housekeeping,
my entire stock of china for parlor and kitchen
was bought for eleven dollars. That lasted very well
for two years, till my brother was married and brought
his bride to visit me. I then found, on review, that I
had neither plates nor teacups to set a table for my
father’s family; wherefore I thought it best to reinforce
the establishment by getting me a tea-set that cost ten
dollars more, and this, I believe, formed my whole stock
in trade for some years.

But then I was abundantly enriched with wealth of
another sort.

I had two little, curly-headed twin daughters to begin
with, and my stock in this line has gradually increased,
till I have been the mother of seven children, the most
beautiful and the most loved of whom lies buried near
my Cincinnati residence. It was at his dying bed and
at his grave that I learned what a poor slave mother
may feel when her child is torn away from her. In
those depths of sorrow which seemed to me immeasurable,
it was my only prayer to God that such anguish
might not be suffered in vain. There were circumstances
about his death of such peculiar bitterness, of
what seemed almost cruel suffering, that I felt that I
could never be consoled for it, unless this crushing of
my own heart might enable me to work out some great
good to others. . . .

[199]

I allude to this here because I have often felt that
much that is in that book (“Uncle Tom”) had its root
in the awful scenes and bitter sorrows of that summer.
It has left now, I trust, no trace on my mind, except a
deep compassion for the sorrowful, especially for mothers
who are separated from their children.

During long years of struggling with poverty and
sickness, and a hot, debilitating climate, my children
grew up around me. The nursery and the kitchen were
my principal fields of labor. Some of my friends, pitying
my trials, copied and sent a number of little sketches
from my pen to certain liberally paying “Annuals”
with my name. With the first money that I earned in
this way I bought a feather-bed! for as I had married
into poverty and without a dowry, and as my husband
had only a large library of books and a great deal of
learning, the bed and pillows were thought the most
profitable investment. After this I thought that I 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 my family
accounts, like poor Dora’s, “wouldn’t add up,” then I
used to say to my faithful friend and factotum Anna,
who shared all my joys and sorrows, “Now, if you will
keep the babies and attend to the things in the house
for one day, I’ll write a piece, and then we shall be out
of the scrape.” So I became an author,—very modest
at first, I do assure you, and remonstrating very seriously
with the friends who had thought it best to put
my name to the pieces by way of getting up a reputation;
and if you ever see a woodcut of me, with an
immoderately long nose, on the cover of all the U. S.[200]
Almanacs, I wish you to take notice, that I have been
forced into it contrary to my natural modesty by the
imperative solicitations of my dear five thousand friends
and the public generally. One thing I must say with
regard to my life at the West, which you will understand
better than many English women could.

I lived two miles from the city of Cincinnati, in the
country, and domestic service, not always you know to
be found in the city, is next to an impossibility to obtain
in the country, even by those who are willing to
give the highest wages; so what was to be expected for
poor me, who had very little of this world’s goods to
offer?

Had it not been for my inseparable friend Anna, a
noble-hearted English girl, who landed on our shores
in destitution and sorrow, and clave to me as Ruth to
Naomi, I had never lived through all the trials which
this uncertainty and want of domestic service imposed
on both: you may imagine, therefore, how glad I was
when, our seminary property being divided out into
small lots which were rented at a low price, a number
of poor families settled in our vicinity, from whom we
could occasionally obtain domestic service. About a
dozen families of liberated slaves were among the number,
and they became my favorite resort in cases of
emergency. If anybody wishes to have a black face
look handsome, let them be left, as I have been, in feeble
health in oppressive hot weather, with a sick baby in
arms, and two or three other little ones in the nursery,
and not a servant in the whole house to do a single turn.
Then, if they could see my good old Aunt Frankie coming
with her honest, bluff, black face, her long, strong[201]
arms, her chest as big and stout as a barrel, and her
hilarious, hearty laugh, perfectly delighted to take one’s
washing and do it at a fair price, they would appreciate
the beauty of black people.

My cook, poor Eliza Buck,—how she would stare to
think of her name going to England!—was a regular
epitome of slave life in herself; fat, gentle, easy, loving
and lovable, always calling my very modest house
and door-yard “The Place,” as if it had been a plantation
with seven hundred hands on it. She had lived
through the whole sad story of a Virginia-raised slave’s
life. In her youth she must have been a very handsome
mulatto girl. Her voice was sweet, and her manners
refined and agreeable. She was raised in a good
family as a nurse and seamstress. When the family
became embarrassed, she was suddenly sold on to a
plantation in Louisiana. She has often told me how,
without any warning, she was suddenly forced into a
carriage, and saw her little mistress screaming and
stretching her arms from the window towards her as
she was driven away. She has told me of scenes on
the Louisiana plantation, and she has often been out at
night by stealth ministering to poor slaves who had
been mangled and lacerated by the lash. Hence she
was sold into Kentucky, and her last master was the
father of all her children. On this point she ever
maintained a delicacy and reserve that always appeared
to me remarkable. She always called him her husband;
and it was not till after she had lived with me some
years that I discovered the real nature of the connection.
I shall never forget how sorry I felt for her, nor
my feelings at her humble apology, “You know, Mrs.[202]
Stowe, slave women cannot help themselves.” She had
two very pretty quadroon daughters, with her beautiful
hair and eyes, interesting children, whom I had instructed
in the family school with my children. Time
would fail to tell you all that I learned incidentally of
the slave system in the history of various slaves who
came into my family, and of the underground railroad
which, I may say, ran through our house. But the
letter is already too long.

You ask with regard to the remuneration which I
have received for my work here in America. Having
been poor all my life and expecting to be poor the rest
of it, the idea of making money by a book which I
wrote just because I could not help it, never occurred
to me. It was therefore an agreeable surprise to receive
ten thousand dollars as the first-fruits of three
months’ sale. I presume as much more is now due.
Mr. Bosworth in England, the firm of Clarke & Co.,
and Mr. Bentley, have all offered me an interest in the
sales of their editions in London. I am very glad of
it, both on account of the value of what they offer,
and the value of the example they set in this matter,
wherein I think that justice has been too little regarded.

I have been invited to visit Scotland, and shall probably
spend the summer there and in England.

I have very much at heart a design to erect in some
of the Northern States a normal school, for the education
of colored teachers in the United States and in
Canada. I have very much wished that some permanent
memorial of good to the colored race might be
created out of the proceeds of a work which promises
to have so unprecedented a sale. My own share of the[203]
profits will be less than that of the publishers’, either
English or American; but I am willing to give largely
for this purpose, and I have no doubt that the publishers,
both American and English, will unite with me;
for nothing tends more immediately to the emancipation
of the slave than the education and elevation of
the free.

I am now writing a work which will contain, perhaps,
an equal amount of matter with “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
It will contain all the facts and documents on which
that story was founded, and an immense body of facts,
reports of trials, legal documents, and testimony of
people now living South, which will more than confirm
every statement in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

I must confess that till I began the examination of
facts in order to write this book, much as I thought I
knew before, I had not begun to measure the depth of
the abyss. The law records of courts and judicial proceedings
are so incredible as to fill me with amazement
whenever I think of them. It seems to me that the
book cannot but be felt, and, coming upon the sensibility
awaked by the other, do something.

I suffer exquisitely in writing these things. It may
be truly said that I write with my heart’s blood. Many
times in writing “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” I thought my
health would fail utterly; but I prayed earnestly that
God would help me till I got through, and still I am
pressed beyond measure and above strength.

This horror, this nightmare abomination! can it be
in my country! It lies like lead on my heart, it
shadows my life with sorrow; the more so that I feel,
as for my own brothers, for the South, and am pained[204]
by every horror I am obliged to write, as one who is
forced by some awful oath to disclose in court some
family disgrace. Many times I have thought that I
must die, and yet I pray God that I may live to see
something done. I shall in all probability be in London
in May: shall I see you?

It seems to me so odd and dream-like 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.”

If I live till spring I shall hope to see Shakespeare’s
grave, and Milton’s mulberry-tree, and the good land of
my fathers,—old, old England! May that day come!

Yours affectionately,
H. B. Stowe.

[205]

CHAPTER IX.
SUNNY MEMORIES, 1853.

The journey undertaken by Mrs. Stowe with her
husband and brother through England and Scotland,
and afterwards with her brother alone over much of
the Continent, was one of unusual interest. No one
was more surprised than Mrs. Stowe herself by the
demonstrations of respect and affection that everywhere
greeted her.

Fortunately an unbroken record of this memorable
journey, in Mrs. Stowe’s own words, has been preserved,
and we are thus able to receive her own impressions of
what she saw, heard, and did, under circumstances that
were at once pleasant, novel, and embarrassing. Beginning
with her voyage, she writes as follows:—

Liverpool, April 11, 1853.

My dear Children,—You wish, first of all, to
hear of the voyage. Let me assure you, my dears, in
the very commencement of the matter, that going to
sea is not at all the thing that we have taken it to be.

Let me warn you, if you ever go to sea, to omit all[206]
preparations for amusement on shipboard. Don’t leave
so much as the unlocking of a trunk to be done after
sailing. In the few precious minutes when the ship
stands still, before she weighs her anchor, set your
house, that is to say your stateroom, as much in order
as if you were going to be hanged; place everything
in the most convenient position to be seized without
trouble at a moment’s notice; for be sure that in half
an hour after sailing, an infinite desperation will seize
you, in which the grasshopper will be a burden. If
anything is in your trunk, it might almost as well be
in the sea, for any practical probability of your getting
to it.

Our voyage out was called “a good run.” It was
voted unanimously to be “an extraordinary good passage,”
“a pleasant voyage;” yet the ship rocked the
whole time from side to side with a steady, dizzy, continuous
motion, like a great cradle. I had a new sympathy
for babies, poor little things, who are rocked
hours at a time without so much as a “by your leave”
in the case. No wonder there are so many stupid people
in the world!

We arrived on Sunday morning: the custom-house
officers, very gentlemanly men, came on board; our
luggage was all set out, and passed through a rapid
examination, which in many cases amounted only to
opening the trunk and shutting it, and all was over.
The whole ceremony did not occupy two hours.

We were inquiring of some friends for the most convenient
hotel, when we found the son of Mr. Cropper,
of Dingle Bank, waiting in the cabin to take us with
him to their hospitable abode. In a few moments after[207]
the baggage had been examined, we all bade adieu to
the old ship, and went on board the little steam tender
which carries passengers up to the city.

This Mersey River would be a very beautiful one, if
it were not so dingy and muddy. As we are sailing
up in the tender towards Liverpool, I deplore the circumstance
feelingly.

“What does make this river so muddy?”

“Oh,” says a by-stander, “don’t you know that

“‘The quality of mercy is not strained’?”

I had an early opportunity of making acquaintance
with my English brethren; for, much to my astonishment,
I found quite a crowd on the wharf, and we
walked up to our carriage through a long lane of people,
bowing, and looking very glad to see us.

When I came to get into the hack it was surrounded
by more faces than I could count. They stood very
quietly, and looked very kindly, though evidently very
much determined to look. Something prevented the
hack from moving on; so the interview was prolonged
for some time.

Our carriage at last drove on, taking us through
Liverpool and a mile or two out, and at length wound
its way along the gravel paths of a beautiful little retreat,
on the banks of the Mersey, called the “Dingle.”
It opened to my eyes like a paradise, all wearied as I
was with the tossing of the sea. I have since become
familiar with these beautiful little spots, which are so
common in England; but now all was entirely new to me.

After a short season allotted to changing our ship
garments and for rest, we found ourselves seated at the[208]
dinner table. While dining, the sister-in-law of our
friends came in from the next door, to exchange a word
or two of welcome, and invite us to breakfast with
them the following morning.

The next morning we slept late and hurried to dress,
remembering our engagement to breakfast with the
brother of our host, whose cottage stands on the same
ground, within a few steps of our own. I had not the
slightest idea of what the English mean by a breakfast,
and therefore went in all innocence, supposing I should
see nobody but the family circle of my acquaintances.
Quite to my astonishment, I found a party of between
thirty and forty people; ladies sitting with their
bonnets on, as in a morning call. It was impossible,
however, to feel more than a momentary embarrassment
in the friendly warmth and cordiality of the circle
by whom we were surrounded.

In the evening I went into Liverpool to attend a
party of friends of the anti-slavery cause. When I
was going away, the lady of the house said that the
servants were anxious to see me; so I came into the
dressing-room to give them an opportunity.

The next day was appointed to leave Liverpool. A
great number of friends accompanied us to the cars,
and a beautiful bouquet of flowers was sent with a very
affecting message from a sick gentleman, who, from the
retirement of his chamber, felt a desire to testify his
sympathy. We left Liverpool with hearts a little tremulous
and excited by the vibration of an atmosphere of
universal sympathy and kindness, and found ourselves,
at length, shut from the warm adieu of our friends, in
a snug compartment of the railroad car.

[209]

“Dear me!” said Mr. S.; “six Yankees shut up in
a car together! Not one Englishman to tell us anything
about the country! Just like the six old ladies
that made their living by taking tea at each other’s
houses!”

What a bright lookout we kept for ruins and old
houses! Mr. S., whose eyes are always in every place,
allowed none of us to slumber, but looking out, first on
his own side and then on ours, called our attention to
every visible thing. If he had been appointed on a
mission of inquiry, he could not have been more zealous
and faithful, and I began to think that our desire for
an English cicerone was quite superfluous.

Well, we are in Scotland at last, and now our pulse
rises as the sun declines in the west. We catch glimpses
of Solway Firth and talk about Redgauntlet. The sun
went down and night drew on; still we were in Scotland.
Scotch ballads, Scotch tunes, and Scotch literature
were in the ascendant. We sang “Auld Lang
Syne,” “Scots wha hae,” and “Bonnie Doon,” and
then, changing the key, sang “Dundee,” “Elgin,” and
“Martyr.”

“Take care,” said Mr. S.; “don’t get too much excited.”

“Ah,” said I, “this is a thing that comes only once
in a lifetime; do let us have the comfort of it. We
shall never come into Scotland for the first time again.”

While we were thus at the fusion point of enthusiasm,
the cars stopped at Lockerbie. All was dim and
dark outside, but we soon became conscious that there
was quite a number of people collected, peering into
the window; and with a strange kind of thrill, I heard[210]
my name inquired for in the Scottish accent. I went
to the window; there were men, women, and children
gathered, and hand after hand was presented, with the
words, “Ye’re welcome to Scotland!”

Then they inquired for and shook hands with all
the party, having in some mysterious manner got the
knowledge of who they were, even down to little G.,
whom they took to be my son. Was it not pleasant,
when I had a heart so warm for this old country? I
shall never forget the thrill of those words, “Ye’re
welcome to Scotland,” nor the “Gude night.”

After that we found similar welcomes in many succeeding
stopping-places; and though I did wave a
towel out of the window, instead of a pocket handkerchief,
and commit other awkwardnesses, from not knowing
how to play my part, yet I fancied, after all, that
Scotland and we were coming on well together. Who
the good souls were that were thus watching for us
through the night, I am sure I do not know; but that
they were of the “one blood” which unites all the
families of the earth, I felt.

At Glasgow, friends were waiting in the station-house.
Earnest, eager, friendly faces, ever so many.
Warm greetings, kindly words. A crowd parting in
the middle, through which we were conducted into a
carriage, and loud cheers of welcome, sent a throb, as
the voice of living Scotland.

I looked out of the carriage, as we drove on, and
saw, by the light of a lantern, Argyll Street. It was
past twelve o’clock when I found myself in a warm,
cosy parlor, with friends whom I have ever since been
glad to remember. In a little time we were all safely[211]
housed in our hospitable apartments, and sleep fell on
me for the first time in Scotland.

The next morning I awoke worn and weary, and
scarce could the charms of the social Scotch breakfast
restore me.

Our friend and host was Mr. Bailie Paton. I believe
that it is to his suggestion in a public meeting that we
owe the invitation which brought us to Scotland.

After breakfast the visiting began. First, a friend
of the family, with three beautiful children, the youngest
of whom was the bearer of a handsomely bound album,
containing a pressed collection of the sea-mosses
of the Scottish coast, very vivid and beautiful.

All this day is a confused dream to me of a dizzy
and overwhelming kind. So many letters that it took
brother Charles from nine in the morning till two in
the afternoon to read and answer them in the shortest
manner; letters from all classes of people, high and
low, rich and poor, in all shades and styles of composition,
poetry and prose; some mere outbursts of feeling;
some invitations; some advice and suggestions;
some requests and inquiries; some presenting books, or
flowers, or fruit.

Then came, in their turn, deputations from Paisley,
Greenock, Dundee, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Belfast
in Ireland; calls of friendship, invitations of all descriptions
to go everywhere, and to see everything, and
to stay in so many places. One kind, venerable minister,
with his lovely daughter, offered me a retreat in
his quiet manse on the beautiful shores of the Clyde.

For all these kindnesses, what could I give in return?
There was scarce time for even a grateful thought on[212]
each. People have often said to me that it must have
been an exceeding bore. For my part, I could not
think of regarding it so. It only oppressed me with an
unutterable sadness.

In the afternoon I rode out with the lord provost to
see the cathedral. The lord provost answers to the
lord mayor in England. His title and office in both
countries continue only a year, except in case of re-election.

As I saw the way to the cathedral blocked up by a
throng of people who had come out to see me, I could
not help saying, “What went ye out for to see? a
reed shaken with the wind?” In fact I was so worn
out that I could hardly walk through the building.
The next morning I was so ill as to need a physician,
unable to see any one that called, or to hear any of the
letters. I passed most of the day in bed, but in the
evening I had to get up, as I had engaged to drink tea
with two thousand people. Our kind friends, Dr. and
Mrs. Wardlaw, came after us, and Mr. S. and I went in
the carriage with them. Our carriage stopped at last
at the place. I have a dim remembrance of a way being
made for us through a great crowd all round the
house, and of going with Mrs. Wardlaw up into a
dressing-room where I met and shook hands with many
friendly people. Then we passed into a gallery, where
a seat was reserved for our party, directly in front of
the audience. Our friend Bailie Paton presided. Mrs.
Wardlaw and I sat together, and around us many
friends, chiefly ministers of the different churches, the
ladies and gentlemen of the Glasgow Anti-Slavery Society
and others. I told you it was a tea-party; but[213]
the arrangements were altogether different from any I
had ever seen. There were narrow tables stretched up
and down the whole extent of the great hall, and every
person had an appointed seat. These tables were set
out with cups and saucers, cakes, biscuit, etc., and when
the proper time came, attendants passed along serving
tea. The arrangements were so accurate and methodical
that the whole multitude actually took tea together,
without the least apparent inconvenience or disturbance.

There was a gentle, subdued murmur of conversation
all over the house, the sociable clinking of teacups and
teaspoons, while the entertainment was going on. It
seemed to me such an odd idea, I could not help wondering
what sort of a teapot that must be in which all
this tea for two thousand people was made. Truly, as
Hadji Baba says, I think they must have had the
“father of all the tea-kettles” to boil it in. I could
not help wondering if old mother Scotland had put two
thousand teaspoonfuls of tea for the company, and one
for the teapot, as is our good Yankee custom.

We had quite a sociable time up in our gallery. Our
tea-table stretched quite across, and we drank tea in
sight of all the people. By we, I mean a great number
of ministers and their wives, and ladies of the Anti-Slavery
Society, besides our party, and the friends
whom I have mentioned before. All seemed to be enjoying
themselves.

After tea they sang a few verses of the seventy-second
psalm in the old Scotch version.

April 17. To-day a large party of us started on a
small steamer to go down the Clyde. It was a trip full
of pleasure and incident. Now we were shown the remains[214]
of old Cardross Castle, where it was said Robert
Bruce breathed his last. And now we came near the
beautiful grounds of Roseneath, a green, velvet-like peninsula,
stretching out into the widening waters.

Somewhere about here I was presented, by his own
request, to a broad-shouldered Scotch farmer, who stood
some six feet two, and who paid me the compliment to
say that he had read my book, and that he would walk
six miles to see me any day. Such a flattering evidence
of discriminating taste, of course, disposed my heart
towards him; but when I went up and put my hand
into his great prairie of a palm, I was as a grasshopper
in my own eyes. I inquired who he was and was told
he was one of the Duke of Argyll’s farmers. I thought
to myself if all the duke’s farmers were of this pattern,
that he might be able to speak to the enemy in the
gates to some purpose.

It was concluded after we left Roseneath that, instead
of returning by the boat, we should take carriage and
ride home along the banks of the river. In our carriage
were Mr. S. and myself, Dr. Robson, and Lady
Anderson. About this time I commenced my first essay
towards giving titles, and made, as you may suppose,
rather an odd piece of work of it, generally saying
“Mrs.” first, and “Lady” afterwards, and then
begging pardon. Lady Anderson laughed and said
she would give me a general absolution. She is a truly
genial, hearty Scotchwoman, and seemed to enter happily
into the spirit of the hour.

As we rode on, we found that the news of our coming
had spread through the village. People came and
stood in their doors, beckoning, bowing, smiling, and[215]
waving their handkerchiefs, and the carriage was several
times stopped by persons who came to offer flowers.
I remember, in particular, a group of young girls bringing
to the carriage two of the most beautiful children
I ever saw, whose little hands literally deluged us with
flowers.

At the village of Helensburgh we stopped a little
while to call upon Mrs. Bell, the wife of Mr. Bell, the
inventor of the steamboat. His invention in this country
was at about the same time as that of Fulton in
America. Mrs. Bell came to the carriage to speak to
us. She is a venerable woman, far advanced in years.
They had prepared a lunch for us, and quite a number
of people had come together to meet us, but our friends
said there was not time for us to stop.

We rode through several villages after this, and met
everywhere a warm welcome. What pleased me was,
that it was not mainly from the literary, nor the rich,
nor the great, but the plain, common people. 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.

Once, while we stopped to change horses, I, for the
sake of seeing something more of the country, walked
on. It seems the honest landlord and his wife were
greatly disappointed at this; however, they got into
the carriage and rode on to see me, and I shook hands
with them with a right good will.

We saw several of the clergymen, who came out to
meet us; and I remember stopping just to be introduced,[216]
one by one, to a most delightful family, a gray-headed
father and mother, with comely brothers and
fair sisters, all looking so kindly and homelike, that I
should have been glad to accept the invitation they
gave me to their dwelling.

This day has been a strange phenomenon to me. In
the first place, I have seen in all these villages how
universally the people read. I have seen how capable
they are of a generous excitement and enthusiasm, and
how much may be done by a work of fiction so written
as to enlist those sympathies which are common to
all classes. Certainly a great deal may be effected in
this way, if God gives to any one the power, as I hope
he will to many. The power of fictitious writing, for
good as well as evil, is a thing which ought most seriously
to be reflected on. No one can fail to see that
in our day it is becoming a very great agency.

We came home quite tired, as you may well suppose.
You will not be surprised that the next day I found
myself more disposed to keep my bed than go out.

Two days later: We bade farewell to Glasgow, overwhelmed
with kindness to the last, and only oppressed
by the thought of how little that was satisfactory we
were able to give in return. Again we were in the railroad
car on our way to Edinburgh. A pleasant two
hours’ trip is this from Glasgow to Edinburgh. When
the cars stopped at Linlithgow station, the name started
us as out of a dream.

In Edinburgh the cars stopped amid a crowd of people
who had assembled to meet us. The lord provost
met us at the door of the car, and presented us to the
magistracy of the city and the committees of the Edinburgh[217]
Anti-Slavery Societies. The drab dresses and
pure white bonnets of many Friends were conspicuous
among the dense moving crowd, as white doves seen
against a dark cloud. Mr. S. and myself, and our
future hostess, Mrs. Wigham, entered the carriage with
the lord provost, and away we drove, the crowd following
with their shouts and cheers. I was inexpressibly
touched and affected by this. While we were passing
the monument of Scott, I felt an oppressive melancholy.
What a moment life seems in the presence of
the noble dead! What a momentary thing is art, in
all its beauty! Where are all those great souls that
have created such an atmosphere of light about Edinburgh?
and how little a space was given them to live
and enjoy!

We drove all over Edinburgh, up to the castle, to the
university, to Holyrood, to the hospitals, and through
many of the principal streets, amid shouts, and smiles,
and greetings. Some boys amused me very much by
their pertinacious attempts to keep up with the carriage.

“Heck,” says one of them, “that’s her; see the
courls!”

The various engravers who have amused themselves
by diversifying my face for the public having all, with
great unanimity, agreed in giving prominence to this
point, I suppose the urchins thought they were on safe
ground there. I certainly think I answered one good
purpose that day, and that is of giving the much-oppressed
and calumniated class called boys an opportunity
to develop all the noise that was in them,—a thing
for which I think they must bless me in their remembrances.

[218]

At last the carriage drove into a deep-graveled yard,
and we alighted at a porch covered with green ivy, and
found ourselves once more at home.

You may spare your anxieties about me, for I do assure
you that if I were an old Sèvres china jar I could
not have more careful handling than I do. Everybody
is considerate; a great deal to say when there appears
to be so much excitement. Everybody seems to understand
how good-for-nothing I am; and yet, with all
this consideration, I have been obliged to keep my room
and bed for a good part of the time. Of the multitudes
who have called, I have seen scarcely any.

To-morrow evening is to be the great tea-party here.
How in the world I am ever to live through it I don’t
know.

The amount of letters we found waiting for us here
in Edinburgh was, if possible, more appalling than in
Glasgow. Among those from persons whom you would
be interested in hearing of, I may mention a very kind
and beautiful one from the Duchess of Sutherland, and
one also from the Earl of Carlisle, both desiring to
make appointments for meeting us as soon as we come
to London. Also a very kind and interesting note from
the Rev. Mr. Kingsley and lady. I look forward with
a great deal of interest to passing a little time with
them in their rectory.

As to all engagements, I am in a state of happy acquiescence,
having resigned myself, as a very tame lion,
into the hands of my keepers. Whenever the time
comes for me to do anything, I try to behave as well as
I can, which, as Dr. Young says, is all that an angel
could do under the same circumstances.

[219]

April 26. Last night came off the soirée. The
hall was handsomely decorated with flags in front.
We went with the lord provost in his carriage. We
went up as before into a dressing-room, where I was
presented to many gentlemen and ladies. When we go
in, the cheering, clapping, and stamping at first strikes
one with a strange sensation; but then everybody looks
so heartily pleased and delighted, and there is such an
all-pervading atmosphere of geniality and sympathy, as
makes me in a few moments feel quite at home. After
all, I consider that these cheers and applauses are Scotland’s
voice to America, a recognition of the brotherhood
of the countries.

The national penny offering, consisting of a thousand
golden sovereigns on a magnificent silver salver,
stood conspicuously in view of the audience. It has
been an unsolicited offering, given in the smallest sums,
often from the extreme poverty of the giver. The
committee who collected it in Edinburgh and Glasgow
bore witness to the willingness with which the very
poorest contributed the offering of their sympathy. In
one cottage they found a blind woman, and said,
“Here, at least, is one who will feel no interest, as she
cannot have read the book.”

“Indeed,” said the old lady, “if I cannot read, my
son has read it to me, and I’ve got my penny saved to
give.”

It is to my mind extremely touching to see how the
poor, in their poverty, can be moved to a generosity
surpassing that of the rich. Nor do I mourn that they
took it from their slender store, because I know that a
penny given from a kindly impulse is a greater comfort[220]
and blessing to the poorest giver than even a penny received.

As in the case of the other meeting, we came out
long before the speeches were ended. Well, of course
I did not sleep all night, and the next day I felt quite
miserable.

From Edinburgh we took cars for Aberdeen. I enjoyed
this ride more than anything we had seen yet, the
country was so wild and singular. In the afternoon we
came in sight of the German Ocean. The free, bracing
air from the sea, and the thought that it actually
was the German Ocean, and that over the other side
was Norway, within a day’s sail of us, gave it a strange,
romantic charm. It was towards the close of the afternoon
that we found ourselves crossing the Dee, in view
of Aberdeen. My spirits were wonderfully elated: the
grand scenery and fine, bracing air; the noble, distant
view of the city, rising with its harbor and shipping,—all
filled me with delight. In this propitious state, disposed
to be pleased with everything, our hearts responded
warmly to the greetings of the many friends
who were waiting for us at the station-house.

The lord provost received us into his carriage, and
as we drove along pointed out to us the various objects
of interest in the beautiful town. Among other things,
a fine old bridge across the Dee attracted our particular
attention. We were conducted to the house of Mr.
Cruikshank, a Friend, and found waiting for us there
the thoughtful hospitality which we had ever experienced
in all our stopping-places. A snug little quiet
supper was laid out upon the table, of which we partook
in haste, as we were informed that the assembly at
the hall were waiting to receive us.

[221]

There arrived, we found the hall crowded, and with
difficulty made our way to the platform. Whether
owing to the stimulating effect of the air from the
ocean, or to the comparatively social aspect of the scene,
or perhaps to both, certain it is that we enjoyed the
meeting with great zest. I was surrounded on the stage
with blooming young ladies, one of whom put into my
hands a beautiful bouquet, some flowers of which I
have now, dried, in my album. The refreshment tables
were adorned with some exquisite wax flowers, the work,
as I was afterwards told, of a young lady in the place.
One of these designs especially interested me. It was
a group of water-lilies resting on a mirror, which gave
them the appearance of growing in the water.

We had some very animated speaking, in which the
speakers contrived to blend enthusiastic admiration and
love for America with detestation of slavery.

They presented an offering in a beautiful embroidered
purse, and after much shaking of hands we went
home, and sat down to the supper-table for a little more
chat before going to bed. The next morning—as we
had only till noon to stay in Aberdeen—our friends,
the lord provost and Mr. Leslie, the architect, came immediately
after breakfast to show us the place.

About two o’clock we started from Aberdeen, among
crowds of friends, to whom we bade farewell with real
regret.

At Stonehaven station, where we stopped a few minutes,
there was quite a gathering of the inhabitants to
exchange greetings, and afterwards, at successive stations
along the road, many a kindly face and voice made
our journey a pleasant one.

[222]

When we got into Dundee it seemed all alive with
welcome. We went in the carriage with the lord provost,
Mr. Thoms, to his residence, where a party had
been waiting dinner for us for some time.

The meeting in the evening was in a large church,
densely crowded, and conducted much as the others
had been. When they came to sing the closing hymn,
I hoped they would sing Dundee; but they did not,
and I fear in Scotland, as elsewhere, the characteristic
national melodies are giving way before more modern
ones.

We left Dundee at two o’clock, by cars, for Edinburgh
again, and in the evening attended another soirée
of the workingmen of Edinburgh. We have received
letters from the workingmen, both in Dundee and
Glasgow, desiring our return to attend soirées in those
cities. Nothing could give us greater pleasure, had we
time or strength. The next day we had a few calls to
make, and an invitation from Lady Drummond to visit
classic Hawthornden, which, however, we had not time
to accept. In the forenoon, Mr. S. and I called on
Lord and Lady Gainsborough. Though she is one of
the queen’s household, she is staying here at Edinburgh
while the queen is at Osborne. I infer, therefore, that
the appointment includes no very onerous duties. The
Earl of Gainsborough is the eldest brother of the Rev.
Baptist W. Noel.

It was a rainy, misty morning when I left my kind
retreat and friends in Edinburgh. Considerate as everybody
had been about imposing on my time or strength,
still you may well believe that I was much exhausted.
We left Edinburgh, therefore, with the determination[223]
to plunge at once into some hidden and unknown spot,
where we might spend two or three days quietly by ourselves;
and remembering your Sunday at Stratford-on-Avon,
I proposed that we should go there. As Stratford,
however, is off the railroad line, we determined to
accept the invitation, which was lying by us, from our
friend, Joseph Sturge, of Birmingham, and take sanctuary
with him. So we wrote on, intrusting him with the
secret, and charging him on no account to let any one
know of our arrival.

About night our cars whizzed into the depot at Birmingham;
but just before we came in a difficulty was
started in the company. “Mr. Sturge is to be there
waiting for us, but he does not know us and we don’t
know him; what is to be done?” C. insisted that
he should know him by instinct; and so, after we
reached the depot, we told him to sally out and try.
Sure enough, in a few moments he pitched upon a
cheerful, middle-aged gentleman, with a moderate but
not decisive broad brim to his hat, and challenged him
as Mr. Sturge. The result verified the truth that “instinct
is a great matter.” In a few moments our new
friend and ourselves were snugly encased in a fly, trotting
off as briskly as ever we could to his place at
Edgbaston, nobody a whit the wiser. You do not
know how pleased we felt to think we had done it so
nicely.

As we were drinking tea that evening, Elihu Burritt
came in. It was the first time I had ever seen him,
though I had heard a great deal of him from our
friends in Edinburgh. He is a man in middle life, tall
and slender, with fair complexion, blue eyes, an air of[224]
delicacy and refinement, and manners of great gentleness.
My ideas of the “learned blacksmith” had been
of something altogether more ponderous and peremptory.
Elihu has been for some years operating, in England
and on the Continent, in a movement which many
in our half-Christianized times regard with as much
incredulity as the grim, old warlike barons did the suspicious
imbecilities of reading and writing. The sword
now, as then, seems so much more direct a way to terminate
controversies, that many Christian men, even, cannot
conceive how the world is to get along without it.

We spent the evening in talking over various topics
relating to the anti-slavery movement. Mr. Sturge was
very confident that something more was to be done than
had ever been done yet, by combinations for the encouragement
of free in the place of slave grown
produce; a question which has, ever since the days of
Clarkson, more or less deeply occupied the minds of
abolitionists in England. I should say that Mr. Sturge
in his family has for many years conscientiously forborne
the use of any article produced by slave labor. I
could scarcely believe it possible that there could be
such an abundance and variety of all that is comfortable
and desirable in the various departments of household
living within these limits. Mr. Sturge presents the
subject with very great force, the more so from the
consistency of his example.

The next morning, as we were sitting down to breakfast,
our friends sent in to me a plate of the largest,
finest strawberries I have ever seen, which, considering
that it was only the latter part of April, seemed to me
quite an astonishing luxury.

[225]

Before we left, we had agreed to meet a circle of
friends from Birmingham, consisting of the Abolition
Society there, which is of long standing, extending back
in its memories to the very commencement of the agitation
under Clarkson and Wilberforce. The windows
of the parlor were opened to the ground; and the company
invited filled not only the room, but stood in a
crowd on the grass around the window. Among the
peaceable company present was an admiral in the navy,
a fine, cheerful old gentleman, who entered with hearty
interest into the scene.

A throng of friends accompanied us to the depot,
while from Birmingham we had the pleasure of the
company of Elihu Burritt, and enjoyed a delightful run
to London, where we arrived towards evening.

At the station-house in London we found the Rev.
Messrs. Binney and Sherman waiting for us with carriages.
C. went with Mr. Sherman, and Mr. S. and
I soon found ourselves in a charming retreat called
Rose Cottage, in Walworth, about which I will tell
you more anon. Mrs. B. received us with every attention
which the most thoughtful hospitality could suggest.
One of the first things she said to me after we
got into our room was, “Oh, we are so glad you have
come! for we are all going to the lord mayor’s dinner
to-night, and you are invited.” So, though I was tired,
I hurried to dress in all the glee of meeting an adventure.
As soon as Mr. and Mrs. B. and the rest of the
party were ready, crack went the whip, round went the
wheels, and away we drove.

We found a considerable throng, and I was glad to
accept a seat which was offered me in the agreeable[226]
vicinity of the lady mayoress, so that I might see what
would be interesting to me of the ceremonial.

A very dignified gentleman, dressed in black velvet,
with a fine head, made his way through the throng,
and sat down by me, introducing himself as Lord Chief
Baron Pollock. He told me he had just been reading
the legal part of the “Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin,”
and remarked especially on the opinion of Judge
Ruffin, in the case of State v. Mann, as having made
a deep impression on his mind.

Dinner was announced between nine and ten o’clock,
and we were conducted into a splendid hall, where the
tables were laid.

Directly opposite me was Mr. Dickens, whom I now
beheld for the first time, and was surprised to see looking
so young. Mr. Justice Talfourd, known as the
author of “Ion,” was also there with his lady. She
had a beautiful, antique cast of head. The lord mayor
was simply dressed in black, without any other adornment
than a massive gold chain. We rose from table
between eleven and twelve o’clock—that is, we ladies—and
went into the drawing-room, where I was presented
to Mrs. Dickens and several other ladies. Mrs.
Dickens is a good specimen of a truly English woman;
tall, large, and well developed, with fine, healthy color,
and an air of frankness, cheerfulness, and reliability.
A friend whispered to me that she was as observing
and fond of humor as her husband.

After a while the gentlemen came back to the drawing-room,
and I had a few moments of very pleasant,
friendly conversation with Mr. Dickens. They are both
people that one could not know a little of without desiring
to know more.

[227]

After a little we began to talk of separating; the
lord mayor to take his seat in the House of Commons,
and the rest of the party to any other engagement that
might be upon their list.

“Come, let us go to the House of Commons,” said
one of my friends, “and make a night of it.” “With
all my heart,” replied I, “if I only had another body
to go into to-morrow.”

What a convenience in sight-seeing it would be if
one could have a relay of bodies as of clothes, and slip
from one into the other! But we, not used to the London
style of turning night into day, are full weary
already. So good-night to you all.