And so she is getting nice and strong? Ask her, please, when you write, with my love, whether, when she stands now behind the great stick, one can see much of her on each side?
So you have been seeing the Pope and all his Easter performances? I congratulate you, for I suppose it is something like “Positively the last appearance on any stage.” What was the use of thinking about him? You should have had your own thoughts about what was to come after him. I don’t mean that Roman Catholicism will die out so quickly. It will last pretty nearly as long as Protestantism, which keeps it up; but I wonder what is to come next. That is the main question just now for everybody.
So you are coming round to Venice, after all? We shall all have to come to it, depend upon it, some way or another. There never has been anything in any other part of the world like Venetian strength well developed.
I’ve no heart to write about anything in Europe to you now. When are you coming back again? Please send me a line as soon as you get safe over, to say you are all — wrong, but not lost in the Atlantic.
I don’t know if you will ever get this letter, but I hope you will think it worth while to glance again at the Denmark Hill pictures; so I send this to my father, who, I hope, will be able to give it you.
I really am very sorry you are going, — you and yours; and that is absolute fact, and I shall not enjoy my Swiss journey at all so much as I might. It was a shame of you not to give me warning before. I could have stopped at Paris so easily for you! All good be with you! Remember me devotedly to the young ladies, and believe me ever affectionately yours,
J. RUSKIN.
In Rome Mrs. Stowe had formed a warm friendship with the Brownings, with whom she afterwards maintained a correspondence. The following letter from Mrs. Browning was written a year after their first meeting.
ROME, 126 VIA FELICE, 14 March, 1861.
MY DEAR, MRS. STOWE, — Let me say one word first. Your letter, which would have given me pleasure if I had been in the midst of pleasures, came to me when little beside could have pleased. Dear friend, let me say it, I had had a great blow and loss in England, and you wrote things in that letter which seemed meant for me, meant to do me good, and which did me good, — the first good any letter or any talk did me; and it struck me as strange, as more than a coincidence, that your first word since we parted in Rome last spring should come to me in Rome, and bear so directly on an experience which you did not know of. I thank you very much.
The earnest stanzas I sent to England for one who wanted them even more than I. I don’t know how people can keep up their prejudices against spiritualism with tears in their eyes, — how they are not, at least, thrown on the “wish that it might be true,” and the investigation of the phenomena, by that abrupt shutting in their faces of the door of death, which shuts them out from the sight of their beloved. My tendency is to beat up against it like a crying child. Not that this emotional impulse is the best for turning the key and obtaining safe conclusions, — no. I did not write before because I always do shrink from touching my own griefs, one feels at first so sore that nothing but stillness is borne. It is only after, when one is better, that one can express one’s self at all. This is so with me, at least, though perhaps it ought not to be so with a poet.
If you saw my “De Profundis” you must understand that it was written nearly twenty years ago, and referred to what went before. Mr. Howard’s affliction made me think of the MS. (in reference to a sermon of Dr. Beecher’s in the “Independent”), and I pulled it out of a secret place and sent it to America, not thinking that the publication would fall in so nearly with a new grief of mine as to lead to misconceptions. In fact the poem would have been an exaggeration in that case, and unsuitable in other respects.
It refers to the greatest affliction of my life, — the only time when I felt despair, — written a year after or more. Forgive all these reticences. My husband calls me “peculiar” in some things, — peculiarly lâche, perhaps. I can’t articulate some names, or speak of certain afflictions; — no, not to him, — not after all these years! It’s a sort of dumbness of the soul. Blessed are those who can speak, I say. But don’t you see from this how I must want “spiritualism” above most persons?
Now let me be ashamed of this egotism, together with the rest of the weakness obtruded on you here, when I should rather have congratulated you, my dear friend, on the great crisis you are passing through in America. If the North is found noble enough to stand fast on the moral question, whatever the loss or diminution of territory, God and just men will see you greater and more glorious as a nation.
I had much anxiety for you after the Seward and Adams speeches, but the danger seems averted by that fine madness of the South which seems judicial. The tariff movement we should regret deeply (and do, some of us), only I am told it was wanted in order to persuade those who were less accessible to moral argument. It’s eking out the holy water with ditch water. If the Devil flees before it, even so, let us be content. How you must feel, you who have done so much to set this accursed slavery in the glare of the world, convicting it of hideousness! They should raise a statue to you in America and elsewhere.
Meanwhile I am reading you in the “Independent,” sent to me by Mr.
Tilton, with the greatest interest. Your new novel opens beautifully.
[Footnote: The Pearl of Orr’s Island.]
Do write to me and tell me of yourself and the subjects which interest us both. It seems to me that our Roman affairs may linger a little (while the Papacy bleeds slowly to death in its finances) on account of this violent clerical opposition in France. Otherwise we were prepared for the fall of the house any morning. Prince Napoleon’s speech represents, with whatever slight discrepancy, the inner mind of the emperor. It occupied seventeen columns of the “Moniteur” and was magnificent. Victor Emmanuel wrote to thank him for it in the name of Italy, and even the English papers praised it as “a masterly exposition of the policy of France.” It is settled that we shall wait for Venice. It will not be for long. Hungary is only waiting, and even in the ashes of Poland there are flickering sparks. Is it the beginning of the restitution of all things?
Here in Rome there are fewer English than usual, and more empty houses. There is a new story every morning, and nobody to cut off the head of the Scheherazade. Yesterday the Pope was going to Venice directly, and, the day before, fixed the hour for Victor Emmanuel’s coming, and the day before that brought a letter from Cavour to Antonelli about sweeping the streets clean for the feet of the king. The poor Romans live on these stories, while the Holy Father and king of Naples meet holding one another’s hands, and cannot speak for sobs. The little queen, however, is a heroine in her way and from her point of view, and when she drives about in a common fiacre, looking very pretty under her only crown left of golden hair, one must feel sorry that she was not born and married nearer to holy ground. My husband prays you to remember him, and I ask your daughters to remember both of us. Our boy rides his pony and studies under his abbé, and keeps a pair of red cheeks, thank God.
I ought to send you more about the society in Rome, but I have lived much alone this winter, and have little to tell you. Dr. Manning and Mr. DeVere stay away, not bearing, perhaps, to see the Pope in his agony.
Your ever affectionate friend,
ELIZABETH B. BROWNING.
Soon after her return to America Mrs. Stowe began a correspondence with Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, which opened the way for the warm friendship that has stood the test of years. Of this correspondence the two following letters, written about this time, are worthy of attention.
ANDOVER, September 9, 1860.
DEAR DR. HOLMES, — I have had an impulse upon me for a long time to write you a line of recognition and sympathy, in response to those that reached me monthly in your late story in the “Atlantic” (“Elsie Venner”).
I know not what others may think of it, since I have seen nobody since my return; but to me it is of deeper and broader interest than
anything you have done yet, and I feel an intense curiosity concerning that underworld of thought from which Like bubbles your incidents and remarks often seem to burst up. The foundations of moral responsibility, the interlacing laws of nature and spirit, and their relations to us here and hereafter, are topics which I ponder more and more, and on which only one medically educated can write well. I think a course of medical study ought to be required of all ministers. How I should like to talk with you upon the strange list of topics suggested in the schoolmaster’s letter! They are bound to agitate the public mind more and more, and it is of the chiefest importance to learn, if we can, to think soundly and wisely of them. Nobody can be a sound theologian who has not had his mind drawn to think with reverential fear on these topics.
Allow me to hint that the monthly numbers are not long enough. Get us along a little faster. You must work this well out. Elaborate and give us all the particulars. Old Sophie is a jewel; give us more of her. I have seen her. Could you ever come out and spend a day with us? The professor and I would so like to have a talk on some of these matters with you!
Very truly yours, H. B. STOWE.
ANDOVER, February 18, 1861.
DEAR DOCTOR, — I was quite indignant to hear yesterday of the very unjust and stupid attack upon you in the —— . Mr. Stowe has written to them a remonstrance which I hope they will allow to appear as he wrote it, and over his name. He was well acquainted with your father and feels the impropriety of the thing.
But, my dear friend, in being shocked, surprised, or displeased personally with such things, we must consider other people’s natures. A man or woman may wound us to the quick without knowing it, or meaning to do so, simply through difference of fibre. As Cowper hath somewhere happily said: —
”Oh, why are farmers made so coarse,
Or clergy made so fine?
A kick that scarce might move a horse
Might kill a sound divine.”
When once people get ticketed, and it is known that one is a hammer, another a saw, and so on, if we happen to get a taste of their quality we cannot help being hurt, to be sure, but we shall not take it ill of them. There be pious, well-intending beetles, wedges, hammers, saws, and all other kinds of implements, good — except where they come in the way of our fingers — and from a beetle you can have only a beetle’s gospel.
I have suffered in my day from this sort of handling, which is worse for us women, who must never answer, and once when I wrote to Lady Byron, feeling just as you do about some very stupid and unkind things that had invaded my personality, she answered me, “Words do not kill, my dear, or I should have been dead long ago.”
There is much true religion and kindness in the world, after all, and as a general thing he who has struck a nerve would be very sorry for it if he only knew what he had done. I would say nothing, if I were you. There is eternal virtue in silence.
I must express my pleasure with the closing chapters of “Elsie.” They are nobly and beautifully done, and quite come up to what I wanted to complete my idea of her character. I am quite satisfied with it now. It is an artistic creation, original and beautiful.
Believe me to be your true friend,
H. B. STOWE.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE CIVIL WAR, 1860-1865.
THE OUTBREAK OF CIVIL WAR. — MRS. STOWE’S SON ENLISTS. — THANKSGIVING DAY IN WASHINGTON. — THE PROCLAMATION OF EMANCIPATION. — REJOICINGS IN BOSTON. — FRED STOWE AT GETTYSBURG. — LEAVING ANDOVER AND SETTLING IN HARTFORD. — A REPLY TO THE WOMEN OF ENGLAND. — LETTERS FROM JOHN BRIGHT, ARCHBISHOP WHATELY, AND NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
Immediately after Mrs. Stowe’s return from Europe, it became only too evident that the nation was rapidly and inevitably drifting into all the horrors of civil war. To use her own words: “It was God’s will that this nation — the North as well as the South — should deeply and terribly suffer for the sin of consenting to and encouraging the great oppressions of the South; that the ill-gotten wealth, which had arisen from striking hands with oppression and robbery, should be paid back in the taxes of war; that the blood of the poor slave, that had cried so many years from the ground in vain, should be answered by the blood of the sons from the best hearthstones through all the free States; that the slave mothers, whose tears nobody regarded, should have with them a great company of weepers, North and South, — Rachels weeping for their children and refusing to be comforted; that the free States, who refused to listen when they were told of lingering starvation, cold, privation, and barbarous cruelty, as perpetrated on the slave, should have lingering starvation, cold, hunger, and cruelty doing its work among their own sons, at the hands of these slave-masters, with whose sins our nation had connived.”
Mrs. Stowe spoke from personal experience, having seen her own son go forth in the ranks of those who first responded to the President’s call for volunteers. He was one of the first to place his name on the muster-roll of Company A of the First Massachusetts Volunteers. While his regiment was still at the camp in Cambridge, Mrs. Stowe was called to Brooklyn on important business, from which place she writes to her husband under the date June 11, 1861: —
“Yesterday noon Henry (Ward Beecher) came in, saying that the Commonwealth, with the First (Massachusetts) Regiment on board, had just sailed by. Immediately I was of course eager to get to Jersey City to see Fred. Sister Eunice said she would go with me, and in a few minutes she, Hatty, Sam Scoville, and I were in a carriage, driving towards the Fulton Ferry. Upon reaching Jersey City we found that the boys were dining in the depot, an immense building with many tracks and platforms. It has a great cast-iron gallery just under the roof, apparently placed there with prophetic instinct of these times. There was a crowd of people pressing against the grated doors, which were locked, but through which we could see the soldiers. It was with great difficulty that we were at last permitted to go inside, and that object seemed to be greatly aided by a bit of printed satin that some man gave Mr. Scoville.
“When we were in, a vast area of gray caps and blue overcoats was presented. The boys were eating, drinking, smoking, talking, singing, and laughing. Company A was reported to be here, there, and everywhere. At last S. spied Fred in the distance, and went leaping across the tracks towards him. Immediately afterwards a blue- overcoated figure bristling with knapsack and haversack, and looking like an assortment of packages, came rushing towards us.
“Fred was overjoyed, you may be sure, and my first impulse was to wipe his face with my handkerchief before I kissed him. He was in high spirits, in spite of the weight of blue overcoat, knapsack, etc., etc., that he would formerly have declared intolerable for half an hour. I gave him my handkerchief and Eunice gave him hers, with a sheer motherly instinct that is so strong within her, and then we filled his haversack with oranges.
“We stayed with Fred about two hours, during which time the gallery was filled with people, cheering and waving their handkerchiefs. Every now and then the band played inspiriting airs, in which the soldiers joined with hearty voices. While some of the companies sang, others were drilled, and all seemed to be having a general jollification. The meal that had been provided was plentiful, and consisted of coffee, lemonade, sandwiches, etc.
“On our way out we were introduced to the Rev. Mr. Cudworth, chaplain of the regiment. He is a fine-looking man, with black eyes and hair, set off by a white havelock. He wore a sword, and Fred, touching it, asked, ‘Is this for use or ornament, sir?’
“‘Let me see you in danger,’ answered the chaplain, ‘and you’ll find out.’
“I said to him I supposed he had had many an one confided to his kind offices, but I could not forbear adding one more to the number. He answered, ‘You may rest assured, Mrs. Stowe, I will do all in my power.’
“We parted from Fred at the door. He said he felt lonesome enough Saturday evening on the Common in Boston, where everybody was taking leave of somebody, and he seemed to be the only one without a friend, but that this interview made up for i
t all.
“I also saw young Henry. Like Fred he is mysteriously changed, and wears an expression of gravity and care. So our boys come to manhood in a day. Now I am watching anxiously for the evening paper to tell me that the regiment has reached Washington in safety.”
In November, 1862, Mrs. Stowe was invited to visit Washington, to be present at a great thanksgiving dinner provided for the thousands of fugitive slaves who had flocked to the city. She accepted the invitation the more gladly because her son’s regiment was encamped near the city, and she should once more see him. He was now Lieutenant Stowe, having honestly won his promotion by bravery on more than one hard-fought field. She writes of this visit:
Imagine a quiet little parlor with a bright coal fire, and the gaslight burning above a centre-table, about which Hatty, Fred, and I are seated. Fred is as happy as happy can be to be with mother and sister once more. All day yesterday we spent in getting him. First we had to procure a permit to go to camp, then we went to the fort where the colonel is, and then to another where the brigadier-general is stationed. I was so afraid they would not let him come with us, and was never happier than when at last he sprang into the carriage free to go with us for forty-eight hours. “Oh!” he exclaimed in a sort of rapture, “this pays for a year and a half of fighting and hard work!”
We tried hard to get the five o’clock train out to Laurel, where J.’s regiment is stationed, as we wanted to spend Sunday all together; but could not catch it, and so had to content ourselves with what we could have. I have managed to secure a room for Fred next ours, and feel as though I had my boy at home once more. He is looking very well, has grown in thickness, and is as loving and affectionate as a boy can be.
I have just been writing a pathetic appeal to the brigadier-general to let him stay with us a week. I have also written to General Buckingham in regard to changing him from the infantry, in which there seems to be no prospect of anything but garrison duty, to the cavalry, which is full of constant activity.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 950