Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “The power of loving may be undeveloped in her, John; but it will come, perhaps, later in life. At all events take this comfort to yourself, — that, when you are doing your duty by your wife, when you are holding her in her place in the family, and teaching her child to respect and honor her, you are putting her in God’s school of love. If we contend with and fly from our duties, simply because they gall us and burden us, we go against every thing; but if we take them up bravely, then every thing goes with us. God and good angels and good men and all good influences are working with us when we are working for the right. And in this way, John, you may come to happiness; or, if you do not come to personal happiness, you may come to something higher and better. You know that you think it nobler to be an honest man than a rich man; and I am sure that you will think it better to be a good man than to be a happy one. Now, dear John, it is not I that say these things, I think; but it seems to me it is what our mother would say, if she should speak to you from where she is. And then, dear brother, it will all be over soon, this life-battle; and the only thing is, to come out victorious.”

  “Gracie, you are right,” said John, rising up: “I see it myself. I will brace up to my duty. Couldn’t you try and pacify Lillie a little, poor girl? I suppose I have been rough with her.”

  “Oh, yes, John, I will go up and talk with Lillie, and condole with her; and perhaps we shall bring her round. And then when my husband comes home next week, we’ll have a family palaver, and he will find some ways and means of setting this business straight, that it won’t be so bad as it looks now. There may be arrangements made when the creditors come together. My impression is that, whenever people find a man really determined to arrange a matter of this kind honorably, they are all disposed to help him; so don’t be cast down about the business. As for Lillie’s discontent, treat it as you would the crying of your little daughter for its sugar-plums, and do not expect any thing more of her just now than there is.”

  * * * * *

  We have brought our story up to this point. We informed our readers in the beginning that it was not a novel, but a story with a moral; and, as people pick all sorts of strange morals out of stories, we intend to put conspicuously into our story exactly what the moral of it is.

  Well, then, it has been very surprising to us to see in these our times that some people, who really at heart have the interest of women upon their minds, have been so short-sighted and reckless as to clamor for an easy dissolution of the marriage-contract, as a means of righting their wrongs. Is it possible that they do not see that this is a liberty which, once granted, would always tell against the weaker sex? If the woman who finds that she has made a mistake, and married a man unkind or uncongenial, may, on the discovery of it, leave him and seek her fortune with another, so also may a man. And what will become of women like Lillie, when the first gilding begins to wear off, if the man who has taken one of them shall be at liberty to cast her off and seek another? Have we not enough now of miserable, broken-winged butterflies, that sink down, down, down into the mud of the street? But are women-reformers going to clamor for having every woman turned out helpless, when the man who has married her, and made her a mother, discovers that she has not the power to interest him, and to help his higher spiritual development? It was because woman is helpless and weak, and because Christ was her great Protector, that he made the law of marriage irrevocable. “Whosoever putteth away his wife causeth her to commit adultery.” If the sacredness of the marriage-contract did not hold, if the Church and all good men and all good women did not uphold it with their might and main, it is easy to see where the career of many women like Lillie would end. Men have the power to reflect before the choice is made; and that is the only proper time for reflection. But, when once marriage is made and consummated, it should be as fixed a fact as the laws of nature. And they who suffer under its stringency should suffer as those who endure for the public good. “He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not, he shall enter into the tabernacle of the Lord.”

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  AFTER THE STORM.

  The painful and unfortunate crises of life often arise and darken like a thunder-storm, and seem for the moment perfectly terrific and overwhelming; but wait a little, and the cloud sweeps by, and the earth, which seemed about to be torn to pieces and destroyed, comes out as good as new. Not a bird is dead; not a flower killed: and the sun shines just as he did before. So it was with John’s financial trouble. When it came to be investigated and looked into, it proved much less terrible than had been feared. It was not utter ruin. The high character which John bore for honor and probity, the general respect which was felt for him by all to whom he stood indebted, led to an arrangement by which the whole business was put into his hands, and time given him to work it through. His brother-in-law came to his aid, advancing money, and entering into the business with him. Our friend Harry Endicott was only too happy to prove his devotion to Rose by offers of financial assistance.

  In short, there seemed every reason to hope that, after a period of somewhat close sailing, the property might be brought into clear water again, and go on even better than before.

  To say the truth, too, John was really relieved by that terrible burst of confidence in his sister. It is a curious fact, that giving full expression to bitterness of feeling or indignation against one we love seems to be such a relief, that it always brings a revulsion of kindliness. John never loved his sister so much as when he heard her plead his wife’s cause with him; for, though in some bitter, impatient hour a man may feel, which John did, as if he would be glad to sunder all ties, and tear himself away from an uncongenial wife, yet a good man never can forget the woman that once he loved, and who is the mother of his children. Those sweet, sacred visions and illusions of first love will return again and again, even after disenchantment; and the better and the purer the man is, the more sacred is the appeal to him of woman’s weakness. Because he is strong, and she is weak, he feels that it would be unmanly to desert her; and, if there ever was any thing for which John thanked his sister, it was when she went over and spent hours with his wife, patiently listening to her complainings, and soothing her as if she had been a petted child. All the circle of friends, in a like manner, bore with her for his sake.

  Thanks to the intervention of Grace’s husband and of Harry, John was not put to the trial and humiliation of being obliged to sell the family place, although constrained to live in it under a system of more rigid economy. Lillie’s mother, although quite a commonplace woman as a companion, had been an economist in her day; she had known how to make the most of straitened circumstances, and, being put to it, could do it again.

  To be sure, there was an end of Newport gayeties; for Lillie vowed and declared that she would not go to Newport and take cheap board, and live without a carriage. She didn’t want the Follingsbees and the Tompkinses and the Simpkinses talking about her, and saying that they had failed. Her mother worked like a servant for her in smartening her up, and tidying her old dresses, of which one would think that she had a stock to last for many years. And thus, with everybody sympathizing with her, and everybody helping her, Lillie subsided into enacting the part of a patient, persecuted saint. She was touchingly resigned, and wore an air of pleasing melancholy. John had asked her pardon for all the hasty words he said to her in the terrible interview; and she had forgiven him with edifying meekness. “Of course,” she remarked to her mother, “she knew he would be sorry for the way he had spoken to her; and she was very glad that he had the grace to confess it.”

  So life went on and on with John. He never forgot his sister’s words, but received them into his heart as a message from his mother in heaven. From that time, no one could have judged by any word, look, or action of his that his wife was not what she had always been to him.

  Meanwhile Rose was happily married, and settled down in the Ferguson place; where her husband and she formed one family with her parents. It was a pleasant, cosey, social, friend
ly neighborhood. After all, John found that his cross was not so very heavy to carry, when once he had made up his mind that it must be borne. By never expecting much, he was never disappointed. Having made up his mind that he was to serve and to give without receiving, he did it, and began to find pleasure in it. By and by, the little Lillie, growing up by her mother’s side, began to be a compensation for all he had suffered. The little creature inherited her mother’s beauty, the dazzling delicacy of her complexion, the abundance of her golden hair; but there had been given to her also her father’s magnanimous and generous nature. Lillie was a selfish, exacting mother; and such women often succeed in teaching to their children patience and self-denial. As soon as the little creature could walk, she was her father’s constant play-fellow and companion. He took her with him everywhere. He was never weary of talking with her and playing with her; and gradually he relieved the mother of all care of her early training. When, in time, two others were added to the nursery troop, Lillie became a perfect model of a gracious, motherly, little older sister.

  Did all this patience and devotion of the husband at last awaken any thing like love in the wife? Lillie was not naturally rich in emotion. Under the best education and development, she would have been rather wanting in the loving power; and the whole course of her education had been directed to suppress what little she had, and to concentrate all her feelings upon herself.

  The factitious and unnatural life she had lived so many years had seriously undermined the stamina of her constitution; and, after the birth of her third child, her health failed altogether. Lillie thus became in time a chronic invalid, exacting, querulous, full of troubles and wants which tasked the patience of all around her. During all these trying years, her husband’s faithfulness never faltered. As he gradually retrieved his circumstances, she was first in every calculation. Because he knew that here lay his greatest temptation, here he most rigidly performed his duty. Nothing that money could give to soften the weariness of sickness was withheld; and John was for hours and hours, whenever he could spare the time, himself a personal, assiduous, unwearied attendant in the sick-room.

  CHAPTER XXIX.

  THE NEW LILLIE.

  We have but one scene more before our story closes. It is night now in Lillie’s sick-room; and her mother is anxiously arranging the drapery, to keep the fire-light from her eyes, stepping noiselessly about the room. She lies there behind the curtains, on her pillow, — the wreck and remnant only of what was once so beautiful. During all these years, when the interests and pleasures of life have been slowly dropping, leaf by leaf, and passing away like fading flowers, Lillie has learned to do much thinking. It sometimes seems to take a stab, a thrust, a wound, to open in some hearts the capacity of deep feeling and deep thought. There are things taught by suffering that can be taught in no other way. By suffering sometimes is wrought out in a person the power of loving, and of appreciating love. During the first year, Lillie had often seemed to herself in a sort of wild, chaotic state. The coming in of a strange new spiritual life was something so inexplicable to her that it agitated and distressed her; and sometimes, when she appeared more petulant and fretful than usual, it was only the stir and vibration on her weak nerves of new feelings, which she wanted the power to express. These emotions at first were painful to her. She felt weak, miserable, and good for nothing. It seemed to her that her whole life had been a wretched cheat, and that she had ill repaid the devotion of her husband. At first these thoughts only made her bitter and angry; and she contended against them. But, as she sank from day to day, and grew weaker and weaker, she grew more gentle; and a better spirit seemed to enter into her.

  On this evening that we speak of, she had made up her mind that she would try and tell her husband some of the things that were passing in her mind.

  “Tell John I want to see him,” she said to her mother. “I wish he would come and sit with me.”

  This was a summons for which John invariably left every thing. He laid down his book as the word was brought to him, and soon was treading noiselessly at her bedside.

  “Well, Lillie dear,” he said, “how are you?”

  She put out her little wasted hand; “John dear,” she said, “sit down;

  I have something that I want to say to you. I have been thinking,

  John, that this can’t last much longer.”

  “What can’t last, Lillie?” said John, trying to speak cheerfully.

  “I mean, John, that I am going to leave you soon, for good and all; and I should not think you would be sorry either.”

  “Oh, come, come, my girl, it won’t do to talk so!” said John, patting her hand. “You must not be blue.”

  “And so, John,” said Lillie, going on without noticing this interruption, “I wanted just to tell you, before I got any weaker, that I know and feel just how patient and noble and good you have always been to me.”

  “O Lillie darling!” said John, “why shouldn’t I be? Poor little girl, how much you have suffered!”

  “Well, now, John, I know perfectly well that I have never been the wife that I ought to be to you. You know it too; so don’t try to say anything about it. I was never the woman to have made you happy; and it was not fair in me to marry you. I have lived a dreadfully worldly, selfish life. And now, John, I am come to the end. You dear good man, your trials with me are almost over; but I want you to know that you really have succeeded. John, I do love you now with all my heart, though I did not love you when I married you. And, John, I do feel that God will take pity on me, poor and good for nothing as I am, just because I see how patient and kind you have always been to me when I have been so very provoking. You see it has made me think how good God must be, — because, dear, we know that he is better than the best of us.”

  “O Lillie, Lillie!” said John, leaning over her, and taking her in his arms, “do live, I want you to live. Don’t leave me now, now that you really love me!”

  “Oh, no, John! it is best as it is, — I think I should not have strength to be very good, if I were to get well; and you would still have your little cross to carry. No, dear, it is all right. And, John, you will have the best of me in our Lillie. She looks like me: but, John, she has your good heart; and she will be more to you than I could be. She is just as sweet and unselfish as I was selfish. I don’t think I am quite so bad now; and I think, if I lived, I should try to be a great deal better.”

  “O Lillie! I cannot bear to part with you! I never have ceased to love you; and I never have loved any other woman.”

  “I know that, John. Oh! how much truer and better you are than I have been! But I like to think that you love me, — I like to think that you will be sorry when I am gone, bad as I am, or was; for I insist on it that I am a little better than I was. You remember that story of Undine you read me one day? It seems as if most of my life I have been like Undine before her soul came into her. But this last year I have felt the coming in of a soul. It has troubled me; it has come with a strange kind of pain. I have never suffered so much. But it has done me good — it has made me feel that I have an immortal soul, and that you and I, John, shall meet in some better place hereafter. — And there you will be rewarded for all your goodness to me.”

  As John sat there, and held the little frail hand, his thoughts went back to the time when the wild impulse of his heart had been to break away from this woman, and never see her face again; and he gave thanks to God, who had led him in a better way.

  * * * * *

  And so, at last, passed away the little story of Lillie’s life. But in the home which she has left now grows another Lillie, fairer and sweeter than she, — the tender confidant, the trusted friend of her father. And often, when he lays his hand on her golden head, he says, “Dear child, how like your mother you look!”

  Of all that was painful in that experience, nothing now remains. John thinks of her only as he thought of her in the fair illusion of first love, — the dearest and most sacred of all illusions.


  The Lillie who guides his household, and is so motherly to the younger children; who shares every thought of his heart; who enters into every feeling and sympathy, — she is the pure reward of his faithfulness and constancy. She is a sacred and saintly Lillie, springing out of the sod where he laid her mother, forgetting all her faults for ever.

  WE AND OUR NEIGHBORS

  OR, THE RECORDS OF AN UNFASHIONABLE STREET

  We and Our Neighbors; Or, The Records Of An Unfashionable Street was first published in 1873 and was a sequel to My Wife and I. Stowe included a postscript in the first novel promising to write the sequel as she was aware there was scope for continuing to detail the mundane lives of these protagonists. A significant difference in We and Our Neighbors from its processor is the removal of Harry Henderson as narrator with an omniscient third person narrator, which is infinitely less restrictive than attempting to channel everything through the male voice. Stowe is less interested in the plot or formulating a particularly involving story than she is with housekeeping and a wide range of issues which relate to women. Many of the topics are typical of the mid to late nineteenth century preoccupations, such as prostitution and consumerism and the author also delves into the issue of female suffrage that began to gain traction in the United States with the formation of New England Woman Suffrage Association and the National Woman Suffrage Association in the late 1860’s.

  Stowe very distinctly outlines and delineates the different spheres in which Eva and Harry operate; one belongs in the public realm while the other is best suited to the domestic. The author underlines the link between Eva and Harry’s mother and a sense of a bond between the other female members of the family. While her mother-in-law serves as a tutor to Eva in her attempts to compile a book, the protagonist then becomes a mentor to her younger sisters, as Stowe highlights the importance of passing information between the generations to ensure knowledge of good housekeeping is not lost. In some respects, the novel is an ambitious attempt to present housekeeping as an artistic and moral endeavour by which women can find expression and purpose.