Authors and Friends Part 12

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 I could have gone, too, if that had gone."

The first wife of Mr. Stowe was her most intimate friend, and his suffering at her death moved her to intense pity, which finally ripened into love. At the last moment of her maidenhood she wrote again to Georgiana May: "In about half an hour more your old friend, companion, schoolmate, sister, etc., will cease to be Hatty Beecher and change to n.o.body 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_."

Her marriage with Professor Stowe was a congenial one. He discovered very early what her career must be and wrote to her once during a brief absence: "G.o.d has written it in his book that you must be a literary woman, and who are we that we should contend against G.o.d?"

His admiration for her was perfect, a feeling which she reciprocated in a somewhat different form. "I did not know," she once wrote to him, "until 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."

She can speak to him with an openness which she uses to no one else; she says, and in this sentence she gives the secret of much which has appeared inexplicable to the world: "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 darkened and troubled by care that life seriously holds out few allurements,--only my children." She used to say laughingly sometimes in later years, "My brother Henry and I are something like anacondas: we have our winter; when we are tired we curl up and disappear, within ourselves, as it were; n.o.body can get anything out of us; we move about and attend to our affairs and appear like other folks perhaps, but we are not there."

The trouble was that no one could be prepared for these vanishings, not even herself. Perhaps a dinner company of invited guests were eagerly listening to her conversation, when at some suggestion of a new train of ideas, she would suddenly become silent and hardly speak again. Occasionally at a reception she would wander away, only to be found strolling about in the conservatory, if there were one, or quietly observant in some coign of vantage where she was not likely to be disturbed.

My first meeting with Mrs. Stowe found her in one of her absent moods.

We were in Florence, and she was delighting herself in the fascinations of that lovely city. Not alone every day but every second as it pa.s.sed was full of eager interest to her.

She could say with Th.o.r.eau, "I moments live who lived but years." We had both been invited to a large reception, on a certain evening, in one of the old palaces on the Arno. There were music and dancing, and there were lively groups of ladies and gentlemen strolling from room to room, contrasting somewhat strangely in their gayety with the solemn pictures hanging on the walls, and a sense of shadowy presence which seems to haunt those dusky interiors. An odd discrepancy between the modern company and the surroundings, a weird mingling of the past and the present, made any apparition appear possible, and left room only for a faint thrill of surprise when a voice by my side said, "There is Mrs. Stowe."

In a moment she approached and I was presented to her, and after a brief pause she pa.s.sed on. All this was natural enough, but a wave of intense disappointment swept over me. Why had I found no words to express or even indicate the feeling that had choked me? Was the fault mine? Oh, yes, I said to myself, for I could not conceive it to be otherwise, and I looked upon my opportunity, the gift of the G.o.ds, as utterly and forever wasted. I was depressed and sorrowing over the vanishing of a presence I might perhaps never meet again, and no glamour of light, or music or pictures or friendly voices could recall any pleasure to my heart. Meanwhile, the unconscious object of all this disturbance was strolling quietly along, leaning on the arm of a friend, hardly ever speaking, followed by a group of traveling companions, and entirely absorbed in the gay scene around her. She was a small woman; and her pretty curling hair and far-away dreaming eyes, and her way of becoming occupied in what interested her until she forgot everything else for the time, all these I first began to see and understand as I gazed after her retreating figure.

Mrs. Stowe's personal appearance has received scant justice and no mercy at the hand of the photographer. She says herself, during her triumphal visit to England after the publication of "Uncle Tom:" "The general topic of remark on meeting me seems to be that I am not so bad looking as they were afraid I was; and I do a.s.sure you, when I have seen the things that are put up in the shop windows here with my name under them, I have been lost in wondering imagination at the boundless loving-kindness of my English and Scottish friends in keeping up such a warm heart for such a Gorgon. I should think that the Sphinx in the London Museum might have sat for most of them. I am going to make a collection of these portraits to bring home to you. There is a great variety of them, and they will be useful, like the Irishman's guideboard which showed 'where the road did not go.'" I remember once accompanying her to a reception at a well-known house in Boston, where, before the evening was over, the hostess drew me aside, saying, "Why did you never tell me that Mrs. Stowe was beautiful?" And indeed, when I observed her in the full ardor of conversation, with her heightened color, her eyes shining and awake, but filled with great softness, her abundant curling hair rippling naturally about her head and falling a little at the sides (as in the portrait by Richmond), I quite agreed with the lady of the house. Nor was that the first time her beauty had been revealed to me, but she was seldom seen to be beautiful by the great world, and the pleasure of this recognition was very great to those who loved her.

She was never afflicted with a personal consciousness of her reputation, nor was she trammeled by it. The sense that a great work had been accomplished through her only made her more humble, and her shy, absent-minded ways were continually throwing her admirers into confusion. Late in life (when her failing powers made it impossible for her to speak as one living in a world which she seemed to have left far behind) she was accosted, I was told, in the garden of her country retreat, in the twilight one evening, by a good old retired sea captain who was her neighbor for the time. "When I was younger,"

said he respectfully, holding his hat in his hand while he spoke, "I read with a great deal of satisfaction and instruction 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' The story impressed me very much, and I am happy to shake hands with you, Mrs. Stowe, who wrote it." "I did not write it,"

answered the white-haired old lady gently, as she shook the captain's hand. "You didn't?" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed in amazement. "Why, who did, then?"

"G.o.d wrote it," she replied simply. "I merely did his dictation."

"Amen," said the captain reverently, as he walked thoughtfully away.

This was the expression in age of what lay at the foundation of her life. She always spoke and behaved as if she recognized herself to be an instrument breathed upon by the Divine Spirit. When we consider how this idea absorbed her to the prejudice of what appeared to others a wholesome exercise of human will and judgment, it is not wonderful that the world was offended when she once made conclusions contrary to the opinion of the public, and thought best to publish them.

Mrs. Stowe was a delightful talker. She loved to gather a small circle of friends around a fireside, when she easily took the lead in fun and story telling. This was her own ground, and upon it she was not to be outdone. "Let me put my feet upon the fender," she would say, "and I can talk till all is blue."

It appeared to those who listened most frequently to her conversation that a large part of the charm of her tales was often lost in the writing down; yet with all her unusual powers she was an excellent listener herself. Her natural modesty was such that she took keen pleasure in gathering fresh thought and inspiration from the conversation of others. Nor did the universal homage she received from high and low leave any unworthy impression upon her self-esteem. She was grateful and pleased and humble, and the only visible effect produced upon her was the heightened pleasure she received from the opportunities of knowing men and women who excited her love and admiration. Her name was a kind of sacred talisman, especially in New and Old England. It was a banner which had led men to battle against slavery. Therefore it was often a cause of surprise and social embarra.s.sment when the bearer of this name proved to be sometimes too modest, and sometimes too absent-minded, to remember that anything was expected of her or anything arranged for her special entertainment.

She was utterly taken by surprise once in a foreign city by being invited out to breakfast, as she supposed privately, and finding herself suddenly in a large hall, upon a raised platform crowded with local dignitaries, and greeted before she could get her breath by a chorus of children's voices singing an anthem in her honor, especially composed for the occasion. Her love of fun was greatly excited by this unexpected situation, and she used to relate the anecdote, with details about her unprepared condition which were irresistibly amusing. In a letter home she refers incidentally to the large breakfast party and says: "I could not help wondering if old mother Scotland had put into 'the father of all the tea-kettles' two thousand teaspoonfuls of tea for the company and one for the teapot, as is our good Yankee custom."

The tributes paid to her were ceaseless, and her house in Hartford testifies to many of them. "There," as her friend and neighbor the Reverend Joseph Twich.e.l.l wrote once in a brief sketch of her--a sketch full of deep feeling--"there, an observant stranger would soon discover whose house he was in, and be reminded of the world-wide distinction her genius has won and of that great service of humanity with which her name is forever identified. He would, for instance, remark on its pedestal in the bow-window a beautiful bronze statuette by c.u.mberworth called 'The African Woman of the Fountain,' and on an easel in the back parlor a lovely engraving of the late d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland and her daughter--a gift from her son, the present Duke of that name, subscribed 'Mrs. Stowe, with the Duke of Sutherland's kind regards, 1869.' Should he look into a low oaken case standing in the hall, he would find there the twenty-six folio volumes of the 'Affectionate and Christian Address of Many Thousands of Women in Great Britain and Ireland to their Sisters in the United States of America' pleading the cause of the slave, and signed with over half a million names, which was delivered to Mrs. Stowe in person at a notable gathering at Stafford House, in England, in 1853; and with it similar addresses from the citizens of Leeds, of Glasgow, and Edinburgh, presented at about the same time. The house, indeed, is a treasury of such relics, testimonials of reverence and regard, trophies of renown from many lands, enough to furnish a museum, all of the highest historic interest and value.... There are relics, too, of more private sort; for example, a smooth stone of two or three pounds weight, and a sketch or study of it by Ruskin made at a hotel on Lake Neuchatel, where he and Mrs. Stowe chanced to meet.... One of her most prized possessions is a gold chain of ten links, which, on occasion of the gathering at Stafford House that has been referred to, the d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland took from her own arm and clasped upon Mrs. Stowe's, saying, 'This is the memorial of a chain which we trust will soon be broken.' On several of the ten links were engraved the great dates in the annals of emanc.i.p.ation in England; and the hope was expressed that she would live to add to them other dates of like import in the progress of liberty this side the Atlantic. That was in 1853. Twelve years later every link had its inscription, and the record was complete."

It was my good fortune to be in Mrs. Stowe's company once in Rome when she came unexpectedly face to face with an exhibition of the general feeling of reverence and grat.i.tude towards herself. We had gone together to the rooms of the brothers Castellani, the world-famous workers in gold. The collection of antique gems and the beautiful reproductions of them were new to us. Mrs. Stowe was full of enthusiasm, and we lingered long over the wonderful things which the brothers brought forward to show. Among them was the head of an Egyptian slave carved in black onyx. It was an admirable work of art, and while we were enjoying it one of them said to Mrs. Stowe, "Madam, we know what you have been to the poor slave. We ourselves are but poor slaves still in Italy: you feel for us; will you keep this gem as a slight recognition of what you have done?" She took the jewel in silence; but when we looked for some response, her eyes were filled with tears, and it was impossible for her to speak.

This feeling often found less refined manifestation. One day when she was shopping in Boston, after making her purchase she gave her name in a low but distinct voice to the clerk who was to send the goods. "Dear me," said a lively woman, audibly by my side, "I should be ashamed to give that name; I should as soon think of giving Angel Gabriel!" Of course we were all greatly amused by this sally, but Mrs. Stowe smiled quietly according to her wont and pa.s.sed on.

Great human tenderness was one of her chief characteristics. Although she was a reformer by nature there was no sternness in her composition. Forgetfulness of others there was certainly sometimes, arising from her hopeless absent-mindedness and the preoccupation consequent upon her work; but her whole life was swayed and ruled by her affections.

Her love was a sheet anchor which held in the stormiest seas. Of her household devotion it is impossible to speak fitly; but there are few natures that can be said to have been more dependent upon human love.

Her tender ways were inexpressibly touching.

Early in life she had written to her brother while hardly more than a girl: "I wish I could bring myself to feel perfectly indifferent to the opinions of others. I believe 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."

Such a nature was quite unlikely to play the part of a famous woman of the world with any success, and she did not attempt it. She was always reaching out to the friends of her adoption and drawing them closer to her side.

In those days of our early acquaintance in Italy we had ample opportunity to discover the affectionate qualities of her character.

If my first interview was a disappointment, her second greeting a few days later had the warmth of old acquaintance. From that moment we (my husband and I) were continually meeting her, in galleries and out of them; at Bellosguardo, which Hawthorne had just quitted, but where Isa Blagden and Frances Power Cobbe still lingered, or in Florence itself with Francesca Alexander and her family; at the Trollopes', or elsewhere, while our evenings were commonly spent in each other's apartments. As the hours of our European play-days drew near the end, she began to lay plans for returning home in the steamer with those who had grown dear to her, and in one of her notes of that period she wrote to me:--

"On the strength of having heard that you were going home in the Europa June 16th, we also have engaged pa.s.sage therein for that time, and hope that we shall not be disappointed.... It must be true, we can't have it otherwise.... Our Southern Italy trip was a glory--it was a rose--a nightingale--all, in short, that one ever dreams; but alas! it is over."

It was a delightful voyage homeward in every sense. At that period a voyage was no little matter of six days, but a good fourteen days of sitting together on deck in pleasant summer weather, and having time enough and to spare. Hawthorne and his family also concluded to join the party. Mrs. Hawthorne, who was always the romancer in conversation, filled the evening hours by weaving magic webs of her fancies, until we looked upon her as a second Scheherazade, and the day the head was to be cut off was the day we should come to sh.o.r.e.

"Oh," said Hawthorne, "I wish we might never get there." But the good ship moved steadily as fate. Meanwhile, Mrs. Stowe often took her turn at entertaining the little group. She was seldom tired of relating stories of New England life and her early experiences.

When the ship came to sh.o.r.e, Mrs. Stowe and her daughters went at once to Andover, where Professor Stowe had remained at his post during their long absence in Europe. She went also with equal directness to her writing-desk; and though there are seldom any dates upon her letters, the following note must have been written shortly after her return:--

MY DEAR MR. FIELDS,--"Agnes of Sorrento" was conceived on the spot,--a spontaneous tribute to the exceeding loveliness and beauty of all things there.

One bright evening, as I was entering the old gateway, I saw a beautiful young girl sitting in its shadow selling oranges. She was my Agnes. Walking that same evening through the sombre depths of the gorge, I met "Old Elsie," walking erect and tall, with her piercing black eyes, Roman nose, and silver hair,--walking with determination in every step, and spinning like one of the Fates glittering silver flax from a distaff she carried in her hands.

A few days after, our party, being weatherbound at Salerno, had resort to all our talents to pa.s.s the time, and songs and stories were the fashion of the day. The first chapter was my contribution to that entertainment. The story was voted into existence by the voices of all that party, and by none more enthusiastically than by one young voice which will never be heard on earth more. It was kept in mind and expanded and narrated as we went on to Rome over a track that the pilgrim Agnes is to travel. To me, therefore, it is fragrant with love of Italy and memory of some of the brightest hours of life.

I wanted to write something of this kind as an author's introduction to the public. Could you contrive to print it on a fly-leaf, if I get it ready, and put a little sort of dedicatory poem at the end of it? I shall do this at least in the book, if not now.

A network of difficulties seems to have closed about her at this time, because in spite of her interest in the new story and the hopeful view which she took of its speedy completion, several months pa.s.sed by before anything definite came respecting her literary plans.

Meanwhile she had been tempted into beginning a story for "The Independent," which proved to be "The Pearl of Orr's Island," a story good enough, if she had been left to herself and not overridden by greedy editors and publishers, to have added a l.u.s.tre even to her name. It is to this she refers in the following letter when she speaks of her "Maine story." Unhappily this first number drew off power which belonged to "Agnes of Sorrento," and Agnes served to prevent her from ending "The Pearl of Orr's Island" in a manner worthy of its first promise.

She says, writing in January, 1861, "Authors are apt, I suppose, like parents, to have their unreasonable partialities. Everybody has,--and I have a pleasure in writing 'Agnes of Sorrento' that gilds this icy winter weather. I write my Maine story with a shiver, and come back to this as to a flowery home where I love to rest.

"My ma.n.u.scripts are always left to the printers for punctuation,--as you will observe,--I have no time for copying."

Mrs. Stowe's health was not vigorous at this period. Incessant drafts upon her energy had enfeebled her; but her spirit was indomitable, and when she was weary a brief visit to Boston was, she considered, sufficient to restore her nervous force. During these visits she sometimes rehea.r.s.ed the story of the early days of her married life, when she fought her way through difficulties and under the burden of sorrows which would have crushed many another woman.

The tale of the arrival of the family on a wintry day in Brunswick, Me., where her husband had been appointed to a professorship in Bowdoin College, of the dreary season, the bitter cold, the unopened door of an empty house, their future home, left a vivid impression upon the minds of her listeners; not because of its forlornness, but because of the splendid energy and patience which she brought to the occasion and the light she was able to cast over the grimness of circ.u.mstance. Of course, at the date in which this is written, it is difficult to conceive anything like grimness as a.s.sociated with the comfortable and social town of Brunswick, but we must not fail to remember how rapid the growth of winter comfort has been throughout New England. This house in the village of Brunswick was the birthplace of "Uncle Tom's Cabin;" but long before her pen could be allowed to touch the paper the door of the house must be unlocked, the fire made, and her little children warmed and fed. The walls too must be freshly papered and painted with her own una.s.sisted hands, and a long table spread which could serve as a family dining-table and her own and only place for writing. Here, as Mr. Fields once said in one of his lectures, "A New England woman once wrote a great novel while beset with difficulties, pinched by poverty, and surrounded by hard work from sunrise to midnight, year in and year out. She was a pallid, earnest, tired little body, who sat in her white cottage down in Brunswick in the state of Maine. She had been busy all day, perhaps painting a room, for her means would not allow her to hire it done.

Besides that labor she cooked for the family, and had done all her other household duties, without a.s.sistance, and without flinching or groaning. The children were hushed to sleep; all was still about the house, and she trimmed the solitary lamp for a long session at her writing-table.

"Thus she sat many a night and wrote, and wept, and wrote again, until she had poured out her soul before the Lord for humanity's sake. And then came, a little slowly at first, but rolling surely with an awful sound, that great universal response; the voice of the people of the whole earth speaking as one."

The labor, the shock, were past, but the fatigue and the strain of the long struggle for freedom which she carried always on her own heart could never be over-lived. She was already, as Mrs. Hawthorne used to say, "tired far into the future." The woman who had written "Uncle Tom" was not to continue a series of equally exciting stories, but she was to bear the burden and heat of much everyday labor with the patience and the rejoicing of all faithful souls.

We are reminded, as we study Mrs. Stowe's life, of Swinburne's n.o.ble tribute to Sir Walter Scott after reading his Journals which appeared in full only five or six years ago. He says: "Now that we have before us in full--in all reasonable or desired completeness--the great man's own record of his troubles, his emotions, and his toils, we find it, from the opening to the close, a record, not only of dauntless endurance, but of elastic and joyous heroism.... It is no longer pity that any one may presume to feel for him at the lowest ebb of his fortunes or his life; it is rapture of sympathy, admiration, and applause. 'This was a man.'"

The war, the enlistment of her second son, the eldest having already died, filled her heart and mind afresh with new problems and anxieties. She wrote the following hurried note from Hartford in 1862, which gives some idea of her occupations and frame of mind: "I am going to Washington to see the heads of departments myself, and to satisfy myself that I may refer to the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation as a reality and a substance, not a fizzle out at the little end of the horn, as I should be sorry to call the attention of my sisters in Europe to any such impotent conclusion.... I mean to have a talk with 'Father Abraham' himself, among others."

Mrs. Stowe lost no time, but proceeded to carry out her plan as soon as practicable. Of this visit to Washington she says little in her letters beyond the following meagre words: "It seems to be the opinion here, not only that the President will stand up to his proclamation, but that the Border States will accede to his proposition for emanc.i.p.ation. I have noted the thing as a glorious expectancy!... To- day to the home of the contrabands, seeing about five hundred poor fugitives eating a comfortable Thanksgiving dinner, and singing, 'Oh, let my people go!' It was a strange and moving sight."

It was left for others to speak of her interview with President Lincoln. Her daughter was told that when the President heard her name he seized her hand, saying, "Is this the little woman who made this great war?" He then led her apart to a seat in the window, where they were withdrawn from other guests, and undisturbed. No one but those two souls will ever know what waves of thought and feeling swept over them in that brief hour.

Afterwards she heard these words p.r.o.nounced in the Senate Chamber in the Message of President Lincoln; it was in the darkest hour of the war, Mrs. Stowe wrote, when defeat and discouragement had followed the Union armies and all hearts were trembling with fear: "If this struggle is to be prolonged till there be not a home in the land where there is not one dead, till all the treasure ama.s.sed by the unpaid labor of the slave shall be wasted, till every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be atoned by blood drawn by the sword, we can only bow and say, 'Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints'!"

During her Boston visits Mrs. Stowe was always interested to observe the benevolent work going on about her and to lend a hand if it were possible. One incident flavored with a strong touch of the ludicrous still lingers in my memory. We had fallen in somewhere with a poor little waif of a boy, one easily to be recognized by the practiced eye of to-day as a good specimen of the street Arab. This little being was taken up by us and brought home. His arrival was looked upon with horror by the servants, who recognized existing facts and foresaw future miseries veiled from our less educated vision. A visit to the bathroom was at once suggested; but as none of the house maidens offered to take charge of the business, Mrs. Stowe announced herself as more than equal to the occasion, and proceeded to administer the first bath probably ever known to that specimen of the human family.

Hawthorne's clasping the leprous child was but a shadow compared to that hour, but happily Mrs. Stowe was not Hawthorne and she combed and scrubbed faithfully.

I cannot recall the precise ending of the tale. I can only remember the whole house being aroused at some unearthly hour of that night by the child's outcries, from his unusual indulgence in a good supper, and Mrs. Stowe's amus.e.m.e.nt at the situation. She declared the household was far better const.i.tuted to look after young cherubim than young male humans. Something of the canary-bird order would be much more in its line, she said. I believe he ran away the next day, probably understanding the fitness of things better than ourselves. At any rate I find a comforting note on the subject from Andover saying: "If we can do no more we must let him go. He certainly stands a better chance in his life's journey for the little good we have been able to put into him. When we try a little to resist the evil current and to pull here and there one out, we learn how dreadful is the downward gravitation, the sweep and whirl of the maelstrom. Let us hope all these have a Father, who charges himself with them somewhere further on in their eternal pilgrimage when our weak hold fails."