Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  In April, 1869, Mrs. Stowe was obliged to hurry North in order to visit Canada in time to protect her English rights in “Oldtown Folks,” which she had just finished.

  About this time she secured a plot of land, and made arrangements for the erection on it of a building that should be used as a schoolhouse through the week, and as a church on Sunday. For several years Professor Stowe preached during the winter in this little schoolhouse, and Mrs. Stowe conducted Sunday-school, sewing classes, singing classes, and various other gatherings for instruction and amusement, all of which were well attended and highly appreciated by both the white and colored residents of the neighborhood.

  Upon one occasion, having just arrived at her Mandarin home, Mrs.

  Stowe writes: —

  “At last, after waiting a day and a half in Charleston, we arrived here about ten o’clock Saturday morning, just a week from the day we sailed. The house looked so pretty, and quiet, and restful, the day was so calm and lovely, it seemed as though I had passed away from all trouble, and was looking back upon you all from a secure resting- place. Mr. Stowe is very happy here, and is constantly saying how pleasant it is, and how glad he is that he is here. He is so much improved in health that already he is able to take a considerable walk every day.

  “We are all well, contented, and happy, and we have six birds, two dogs, and a pony. Do write more and oftener. Tell me all the little nothings and nowheres. You can’t imagine how they are magnified by the time they have reached into this remote corner.”

  In 1872 she wrote a series of Florida sketches, which were published in book form, the following year, by J. E. Osgood & Co., under the title of “Palmetto Leaves.” May 19, 1873, she writes to her brother Charles at Newport, Fla.: —

  “Although you have not answered my last letter, I cannot leave Florida without saying good-by. I send you the ‘Palmetto Leaves’ and my parting love. If I could either have brought or left my husband, I should have come to see you this winter. The account of your roses fills me with envy.

  “We leave on the San Jacinto next Saturday, and I am making the most of the few charming hours yet left; for never did we have so delicious a spring. I never knew such altogether perfect weather. It is enough to make a saint out of the toughest old Calvinist that ever set his face as a flint. How do you think New England theology would have fared if our fathers had been landed here instead of on Plymouth Rock?

  “The next you hear of me will be at the North, where our address is Forest Street, Hartford. We have bought a pretty cottage there, near to Belle, and shall spend the summer there.”

  In a letter written in May of the following year to her son Charles, at Harvard, Mrs. Stowe says: “I can hardly realize that this long, flowery summer, with its procession of blooms and fruit, has been running on at the same time with the snowbanks and sleet storms of the North. But so it is. It is now the first of May. Strawberries and blackberries are over with us; oranges are in a waning condition, few and far between. Now we are going North to begin another summer, and have roses, strawberries, blackberries, and green peas come again.

  “I am glad to hear of your reading. The effect produced on you by Jonathan Edwards is very similar to that produced on me when I took the same mental bath. His was a mind whose grasp and intensity you cannot help feeling. He was a poet in the intensity of his conceptions, and some of his sermons are more terrible than Dante’s ‘Inferno.’”

  In November, 1874, upon their return to Mandarin, she writes: “We have had heavenly weather, and we needed it: for our house was a cave of spider-webs, cockroaches, dirt, and all abominations, but less than a week has brought it into beautiful order. It now begins to put on that quaint, lively, pretty air that so fascinates me. Our weather is, as I said, heavenly, neither hot nor cold; cool, calm, bright, serene, and so tranquillizing. There is something indescribable about the best weather we have down here. It does not debilitate me like the soft October air in Hartford.”

  During the following February, she writes in reply to an invitation to visit a Northern watering place later in the season: “I shall be most happy to come, and know of nothing to prevent. I have, thank goodness, no serial story on hand for this summer, to hang like an Old Man of the Sea about my neck, and hope to enjoy a little season of being like other folks. It is a most lovely day to-day, most unfallen Eden-like.”

  In a letter written later in the same season, March 28, 1875, Mrs. Stowe gives us a pleasant glimpse at their preparations for the proper observance of Easter Sunday in the little Mandarin schoolhouse. She says: —

  “It was the week before Easter, and we had on our minds the dressing of the church. There my two Gothic fireboards were to be turned into a pulpit for the occasion. I went to Jacksonville and got a fiveinch moulding for a base, and then had one fireboard sawed in two, so that there was an arched panel for each end. Then came a rummage for something for a top, and to make a desk of, until it suddenly occurred to me that our old black walnut extension table had a set of leaves. They were exactly the thing. The whole was trimmed with a beading of yellow pine, and rubbed, and pumice-stoned, and oiled, and I got out my tubes of paint and painted the nail-holes with Vandyke brown. By Saturday morning it was a lovely little Gothic pulpit, and Anthony carried it over to the schoolhouse and took away the old desk which I gave him for his meeting-house. That afternoon we drove out into the woods and gathered a quantity of superb Easter lilies, papaw, sparkleberry, great fern-leaves, and cedar. In the evening the girls went over to the Meads to practice Easter hymns; but I sat at home and made a cross, eighteen inches long, of cedar and white lilies. This Southern cedar is the most exquisite thing; it is so feathery and delicate.

  “Sunday morning was cool and bright, a most perfect Easter. Our little church was full, and everybody seemed delighted with the decorations. Mr. Stowe preached a sermon to show that Christ is going to put everything right at last, which is comforting. So the day was one of real pleasure, and also I trust of real benefit, to the poor souls who learned from it that Christ is indeed risen for them”

  During this winter the following characteristic letters passed between Mrs. Stowe and her valued friend, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, called forth by the sending to the latter of a volume of Mrs. Stowe’s latest stories: —

  Boston, January 8, 1876.

  My dear Mrs. Stowe, — I would not write to thank you for your most welcome “Christmas Box,”

  “A box whose sweets compacted lie,”

  before I had read it, and every word of it. I have been very much taken up with antics of one kind and another, and have only finished it this afternoon. The last of the papers was of less comparative value to me than to a great fraction of your immense parish of readers, because I am so familiar with every movement of the Pilgrims in their own chronicles.

  “Deacon Pitkin’s Farm” is full of those thoroughly truthful touches of

  New England in which, if you are not unrivaled, I do not know who your

  rival may be. I wiped the tears from one eye in reading “Deacon

  Pitkin’s Farm.”

  I wiped the tears, and plenty of them, from both eyes, in reading “Betty’s Bright Idea.” It is a most charming and touching story, and nobody can read who has not a heart like a pebble, without being melted into tenderness.

  How much you have done and are doing to make our New England life wholesome and happy! If there is any one who can look back over a literary life which has pictured our old and helped our new civilization, it is yourself. Of course your later books have harder work cut out for them than those of any other writer. They have had “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” for a rival. The brightest torch casts a shadow in the blaze of a light, and any transcendent success affords the easiest handle for that class of critics whose method is the one that Dogberry held to be “odious.”

  I think it grows pleasanter to us to be remembered by the friends we still have, as with each year they grow fewer. We have lost Agassiz and Sumner from our circle,
and I found Motley stricken with threatening illness (which I hope is gradually yielding to treatment), in the profoundest grief at the loss of his wife, another old and dear friend of mine. So you may be assured that I feel most sensibly your kind attention, and send you my heartfelt thanks for remembering me.

  Always, dear Mrs. Stowe, faithfully yours,

  O. W. HOLMES.

  To this letter Mrs. Stowe replied as follows: —

  MANDARIN, February 23, 1876.

  DEAR DOCTOR, — How kind it was of you to write me that very beautiful note! and how I wish you were just where I am, to see the trees laden at the same time with golden oranges and white blossoms! I should so like to cut off a golden cluster, leaves and all, for you. Well, Boston seems very far away and dreamy, like some previous state of existence, as I sit on the veranda and gaze on the receding shores of the St. John’s, which at this point is five miles wide.

  Dear doctor, how time slips by! I remember when Sumner seemed to me a young man, and now he has gone. And Wilson has gone, and Chase, whom I knew as a young man in society in Cincinnati, has gone, and Stanton has gone, and Seward has gone, and yet how lively the world races on! A few air-bubbles of praise or lamentation, and away sails the great ship of life, no matter over whose grave!

  Well, one cannot but feel it! To me, also, a whole generation of friends has gone from the other side of the water since I was there and broke kindly bread with them. The Duchess of Sutherland, the good old duke, Lansdowne, Ellesmere, Lady Byron, Lord and Lady Amberly, Charles Kingsley, the good Quaker, Joseph Sturge, all are with the shadowy train that has moved on. Among them were as dear and true friends as I ever had, and as pure and noble specimens of human beings as God ever made. They are living somewhere in intense vitality, I must believe, and you, dear doctor, must not doubt.

  I think about your writings a great deal, and one element in them always attracts me. It is their pitiful and sympathetic vein, the pity for poor, struggling human nature. In this I feel that you must be very near and dear to Him whose name is Love.

  You wrote some verses once that have got into the hymn-books, and have often occurred to me in my most sacred hours as descriptive of the feelings with which I bear the sorrows and carry the cares of life. They begin, —

  “Love Divine, that stooped to share.”

  I have not all your books down here, and am haunted by gaps in the verses that memory cannot make good; but it is that “Love Divine” which is my stay and comfort and hope, as one friend after another passes beyond sight and hearing. Please let me have it in your handwriting.

  I remember a remark you once made on spiritualism. I cannot recall the words, but you spoke of it as modifying the sharp angles of Calvinistic belief, as a fog does those of a landscape. I would like to talk with you some time on spiritualism, and show you a collection of very curious facts that I have acquired through mediums not professional. Mr. Stowe has just been wading through eight volumes of “La Mystique,” by Goerres, professor for forty years past in the University of Munich, first of physiology and latterly of philosophy. He examines the whole cycle of abnormal psychic, spiritual facts, trances, ecstasy, clairvoyance, witchcraft, spiritualism, etc., etc., as shown in the Romish miracles and the history of Europe.

  I have long since come to the conclusion that the marvels of spiritualism are natural, and not supernatural, phenomena, — an uncommon working of natural laws. I believe that the door between those in the body and those out has never in any age been entirely closed, and that occasional perceptions within the veil are a part of the course of nature, and therefore not miraculous. Of course such a phase of human experience is very substantial ground for every kind of imposture and superstition, and I have no faith whatever in mediums who practice for money. In their case I think the law of Moses, that forbade consulting those who dealt with “familiar spirits,” a very wise one.

  Do write some more, dear doctor. You are too well off in your palace down there on the new land. Your Centennial Ballad was a charming little peep; now give us a full-fledged story. Mr. Stowe sends his best regards, and wishes you would read “Goerres.” [Footnote: Die Christliche Mystik, by Johann Joseph Gorres, Regensburg, 1836-42.] It is in French also, and he thinks the French translation better than the German.

  Yours ever truly,

  H. B. STOWE.

  Writing in the autumn of 1876 to her son Charles, who was at that time abroad, studying at Bonn, Mrs. Stowe describes a most tempestuous passage between New York and Charleston, during which she and her husband and daughters suffered so much that they were ready to forswear the sea forever. The great waves as they rushed, boiling and seething, past would peer in at the little bull’s-eye window of the state-room, as if eager to swallow up ship and passengers. From Charleston, however, they had a most delightful run to their journey’s end. She writes:—”We had a triumphal entrance into the St. John’s, and a glorious sail up the river. Arriving at Mandarin, at four o’clock, we found all the neighbors, black as well as white, on the wharf to receive us. There was a great waving of handkerchiefs and flags, clapping of hands and cheering, as we drew near. The house was open and all ready for us, and we are delighted to be once more in our beautiful Florida home.”

  In the following December she writes to her son: “I am again entangled in writing a serial, a thing I never mean to do again, but the story, begun for a mere Christmas brochure, grew so under my hands that I thought I might as well fill it out and make a book of it. It is the last thing of the kind I ever expect to do. In it I condense my recollections of a bygone era, that in which I was brought up, the ways and manners of which are now as nearly obsolete as the Old England of Dickens’s stories is.

  “I am so hampered by the necessity of writing this story, that I am obliged to give up company and visiting of all kinds and keep my strength for it. I hope I may be able to finish it, as I greatly desire to do so, but I begin to feel that I am not so strong as I used to be. Your mother is an old woman, Charley mine, and it is best she should give up writing before people are tired of reading her.

  “I would much rather have written another such a book as ‘Footsteps of the Master,’ but all, even the religious papers, are gone mad on serials. Serials they demand and will have, and I thought, since this generation will listen to nothing but stories, why not tell them?”

  The book thus referred to was “Poganuc People,” that series of delightful reminiscences of the New England life of nearly a century ago, that has proved so fascinating to many thousands of readers. It was published in 1878, and, as Mrs. Stowe foresaw, was her last literary undertaking of any length, though for several years afterwards she wrote occasional short stories and articles.

  In January, 1879, she wrote from Mandarin to Dr. Holmes: —

  DEAR DOCTOR, — I wish I could give to you and Mrs. Holmes the exquisite charm of this morning. My window is wide open; it is a lovely, fresh, sunny day, and a great orange tree hung with golden balls closes the prospect from my window. The tree is about thirty feet high, and its leaves fairly glisten in the sunshine.

  I sent “Poganuc People” to you and Mrs. Holmes as being among the few who know those old days. It is an extremely quiet story for these sensational days, when heaven and earth seem to be racked for a thrill; but as I get old I do love to think of those quiet, simple times when there was not a poor person in the parish, and the changing glories of the year were the only spectacle. We, that is the professor and myself, have been reading with much interest Motley’s Memoir. That was a man to be proud of, a beauty, too (by your engraving), I never had the pleasure of a personal acquaintance.

  I feel with you that we have come into the land of leave-taking. Hardly a paper but records the death of some of Mr. Stowe’s associates. But the river is not so black as it seems, and there are clear days when the opposite shore is plainly visible, and now and then we catch a strain of music, perhaps even a gesture of recognition. They are thinking of us, without doubt, on the other side. My dau
ghters and I have been reading “Elsie Venner” again. Elsie is one of my especial friends, — poor, dear child! — and all your theology in that book I subscribe to with both hands.

  Does not the Bible plainly tell us of a time when there shall be no more pain? That is to be the end and crown of the Messiah’s mission, when God shall wipe all tears away. My face is set that way, and yours, too, I trust and believe.

  Mr. Stowe sends hearty and affectionate remembrance both to you and

  Mrs. Holmes, and I am, as ever, truly yours,

  H, B, STOWE.

  About this time Mrs. Stowe paid a visit to her brother Charles, at Newport, Fla., and, continuing her journey to New Orleans, was made to feel how little of bitterness towards her was felt by the best class of Southerners, In both New Orleans and Tallahassee she was warmly welcomed, and tendered public receptions that gave equal pleasure to her and to the throngs of cultivated people who attended them. She was also greeted everywhere with intense enthusiasm by the colored people, who, whenever they knew of her coming, thronged the railway stations in order to obtain a glimpse of her whom they venerated above all women.