Authors and Friends Part 13

In the autumn of 1862 a plan for leaving Andover altogether was finally matured. She wrote, "You have heard that we are going to Hartford to live, and I am now in all the bustle of house planning, to say nothing of grading, under-draining, and setting out trees around our future home. It is four acres and a half of lovely woodland on the banks of a river and yet within an easy walk of Hartford; in fact, in the city limits; and when our house is done you and yours must come and see us. I would rather have made the change in less troublous times, but the duties here draw so hardly on Mr. Stowe's strength that I thought it better to live on less and be in a place of our own, and with no responsibilities except those of common gentlefolk."

Mrs. Stowe's love of home, of the fireside, and her faith in family ties were marked characteristics of her nature. For the first time in her life she was now to make the material house at least after her own idea, and for many months she was entirely absorbed in the enjoyment of forming plans for her Hartford home.

In November, 1862, she was in Hartford superintending the growing establishment. She wrote: "My house with _eight_ gables is growing wonderfully. I go over every day to see it. I am busy with drains, sewers, sinks, digging, trenching, and above all with manure!

You should see the joy with which I gaze on manure heaps in which the eye of faith sees Delaware grapes and D'Angouleme pears, and all sorts of roses and posies, all which at some future day I hope you will be able to enjoy.

"Do tell me if our friend Hawthorne praises that arch-traitor Pierce in his preface and your loyal firm publishes it. I never read the preface, and have not yet seen the book, but they say so here, and I can scarcely believe it of you, if I can of him. I regret that I went to see him last summer. What! patronize such a traitor to our faces! I can scarce believe it."

In the month of May, 1863, came her first letter from the new place.

Already we find that the ever-present need has driven her on to print her thoughts about "House and Home."

HARTFORD, OAKWOLD, May 1st.

My dear friend,--I came here a month ago to hurry on the preparations for our house, in which I am now writing, in the high bow window of Mr. Stowe's study, overlooking the wood and river. We are not moved in yet, only our things, and the house presents a scene of the wildest chaos, the furniture having been tumbled in and lying boxed and promiscuous.

I sent the sixth number of "House and Home" papers a week ago, and, not having heard from it, am a little anxious. I always want faith that a bulky ma.n.u.script will go safe,--for all I never lost one.... I should like to show you the result here when we are fairly in, and the spring leaves are out. It is the brightest, cheerfullest, homeliest home that you could see,--not even excepting yours.

The pursuit of literature under such circ.u.mstances is neither natural nor profitable. In Mrs. Stowe's case it proved that she was pursuing, not literature, but the necessities of life. Everything in the household economy now depended upon her; and however strong her tendencies were naturally, she no longer possessed the reserved strength to forge the work from her brain. In the writing of "Uncle Tom," great as were the odds against her, she had been preparing to that end from the moment of her birth. Her father's fiery powers of expression; her mother's nature absorbed in one still dream of love and duty; her own solitary childhood in spite of the enormous household in which she was brought up; above all her brooding nature quietly absorbing and a.s.similating the knowledge and thought which were finding expression around her; the first years of married life in Cincinnati, where the slaves were continually harbored and a.s.sisted, notwithstanding the risks to life and property;--everything, in short, within and around her was nourishing the child of her genius which was to leap into being and gather the armies of America.

On the whole we may rather wonder at the high average value of the literary work by which she lived, especially when we follow the hints given in her letters of her interrupted and crowded existence.

In June, 1863, she says: "I wrote my piece in a sea of troubles. I had, as you see, to write by amanuensis, and yet my little senate of girls say they like it better than anything I have written yet." It was a touching characteristic to see how the "senate of girls," or of such household friends as she could muster wherever she might be, were always called in to keep up her courage and to give her a sympathetic stimulus. During the days when she was writing, it was never safe to be far away, for she was rapid as light itself, and before a brief hour was ended we were pretty sure to hear her voice calling "Do come, come and hear, and tell me how you like it."

Her June letter continues: "Can I begin to tell you what it is to begin to keep house in an unfinished home and place, dependent on a carpenter, a plumber, a mason, a bell-hanger, who come and go at their own sweet will, breaking in, making all sorts of chips, dust, dirt, going off in the midst leaving all standing,--reappearing at uncertain intervals and making more dust, chips, and dirt. One parlor and my library have thus risen piecemeal by disturbance and convulsions. They are now almost done, and the last box of books is almost unpacked, but my head aches so with the past confusion that I cannot get up any feeling of rest. I can't enjoy--can't feel a minute to sit down and say 'it is done.'

"The fountain plays, the plants flourish, and our front hall minus the stair railing looks beautifully; my pictures are all hung in parlor and library, and yet I feel so unsettled. Well, in a month more perhaps I shall get my brains right side up."

The following year was made memorable in Mrs. Stowe's life by the marriage of her youngest daughter. Again I find that no description can begin to give as clearly as the glimpses in her own letters the multifarious responsibilities which beset her. She says: "I am in trouble,--have been in trouble ever since my turtledoves announced their intention of pairing in June instead of August, because it entailed on me an immediate necessity of bringing everything out of doors and in to a state of completeness for the wedding exhibition in June. The garden must be planted, the lawn graded, harrowed, rolled, seeded, and the gra.s.s up and growing, stumps got out and trees got in, conservatory made over, belts planted, holes filled,--and all by three very slippery sort of Irishmen who had rather any time be minding their own business than mine. I have back doorsteps to be made, and troughs, screens, and what not; papering, painting, and varnishing, hitherto neglected, to be completed; also spring house-cleaning; also dressmaking for one bride and three ordinary females; also ---- and ---- and ----'s wardrobes to be overlooked; also carpets to be made and put down; also a revolution in the kitchen cabinet, threatening for a time to blow up the whole establishment altogether." And so the letter proceeds with two more sheets, adding near the end: "I send you to-day a 'Chimney-Corner' on 'Our Martyrs,' which I have written out of the fullness of my heart.... It is an account of the martyrdom of a Christian boy of our own town of Andover, who died of starvation and want in a Southern prison on last Christmas Day."

Just one month before the marriage she writes again: "The wedding is indeed an absorbing whirlpool, but amid it all I have the next 'Chimney-Corner' in good train and shall send it on to-morrow or next day."

How small a portion of the world outside can understand the lives of writers, actors, and those whose professions compel them to depend directly upon the public! No private joy, no private sorrow, no rest, no change, is recognized by this taskmaster. It is well: on the whole we would not have it otherwise; because those who can minister to the great Public embrace their profession in a spirit of conscious or unconscious self-denial. In either case the result is the same: development, advancement, and sometimes attainment.

The wedding is not two days over when another letter arrives full of her literary work, yet adding that she longs for rest and if we will only tell her where Campton is, whither we had gone, she would gladly join us. "I was a weary idiot," she continues, "by the time the wedding was over, and said 'yes ma'am' to the men and 'no sir' to the women in sheer imbecility."

Nevertheless she did not get to Campton, but kept on, with the exception of a few brief visits at Peekskill and elsewhere until the autumn. In one of her notes she says: "I have returned to my treadmill. A---- is to leave as soon as she can get ready, and I am trying to see her off--helping her to get her things together, and trying to induce her to take a new stand in a new place and make herself a respectable woman. When she is gone a load will be off my back. If it were not for the good that is still left in our fellows our task would be easier than it is; we could cut them adrift and let them swim; but while we see much that may be turned to good account in them we hang on, or let them hang on, and our boat moves slow. So behold me fighting my good fight of womanhood against dust and disorganization and the universal downward tendency of everybody, hoping for easier times by and by."

With her heroic nature she was always ready to lead the forlorn hope.

The child no one else was willing to provide for, the woman the world despised, were brought into her home and cared for as her own.

Unhappily, her delicate health at this time (though she was naturally strong), her constant literary labors, her uncertain income, her private griefs, all united, caused her to fall short in ability to accomplish what she undertook; hence there were often crises from sudden illness and non-fulfillment of engagements which were very serious in their effects, but the elasticity of her spirits was something marvelous and carried her over many a hard place.

In the autumn of 1864 she wrote: "I feel I need to write in these days, to keep from thinking of things that make me dizzy and blind, and fill my eyes with tears so that I cannot see the paper. I mean such things as are being done where our heroes are dying as Shaw died.

It is not wise that all our literature should run in a rut cut through our hearts and red with our blood. I feel the need of a little gentle household merriment and talk of common things, to indulge which I have devised the following."

Notwithstanding her view of the need and her skillfully devised plans to meet it, she soon sent another epistle, showing how impossible it was to stem the current of her thought.

November 29, 1864.

My dear friend,--I have sent my New Year's article, the result of one of those peculiar experiences which sometimes occur to us writers. I had planned an article, gay, sprightly, wholly domestic; but as I began and sketched the pleasant home and quiet fireside, an irresistible impulse _wrote for me_ what followed,--an offering of sympathy to the suffering and agonized whose homes have forever been darkened. Many causes united at once to force on me this vision, from which generally I shrink, but which sometimes will not be denied,--will make itself felt.

Just before I went to New York two of my earliest and most intimate friends lost their oldest sons, captains and majors,--splendid fellows physically and morally, beautiful, brave, religious, uniting the courage of soldiers to the faith of martyrs,--and when I went to Brooklyn it seemed as if I were hearing some such thing almost every day; and Henry, in his profession as minister, has so many letters full of imploring anguish, the cry of hearts breaking that ask help of him....

It was during one of Mrs. Stowe's visits to Boston in the ensuing year that she chanced to talk with greater fullness and openness than she had done with us before on the subject of Spiritualism. In the simplest way she affirmed her entire belief in manifestations of the nearness and individual life of the unseen, and gave vivid ill.u.s.trations of the reasons why her faith was thus a.s.sured. She never sought after such testimony, so far as I am aware, unless it may have been to sit with others who were interested, but her conclusions were definite and unvarying. At that period such a declaration of faith required a good deal of bravery; now the subject has a.s.sumed a different phase, and there are few thinking people who do not recognize a certain truth hidden within the shadows. She spoke with tender seriousness of "spiritual manifestations" as recorded in the New Testament and in the prophets. From his early youth her husband had possessed the peculiar power of seeing persons about him who could not be perceived by others; visions so distinct that it was impossible for him to distinguish at times between the real and the unreal. I recall one ill.u.s.tration which had occurred only a few years previous to their departure from Andover. She had been called to Boston one day on business. Making her preparations hurriedly, she bade the household farewell, and rushed to the station, only to see the train go out as she arrived. There was nothing to do but to return home and wait patiently for the next train; but wishing not to be disturbed, she quietly opened a side door and crept noiselessly up the staircase leading to her own room, sitting down by her writing-table in the window. She had been seated about half an hour when Professor Stowe came in, looked about him with a preoccupied air, but did not speak to her. She thought his behavior strange, and amused herself by watching him; at last the situation became so extraordinary that she began to laugh. "Why," he exclaimed, with a most astonished air, "is that you?

I thought it was one of my visions!"

It may seem a singular ant.i.thesis to say of the writer of one of the greatest stories the world has yet produced that she was not a student of literature. Books as a medium of the ideas of the age, and as the promulgators of morals and religion, were of course like the breath of her life; but a study of the literature of the past as the only true foundation for a literature of the present was outside the pale of her occupations, and for the larger portion of her life outside of her interest. During the riper season of her activity with the pen, the necessity of studying style and the thoughts of others gained a larger hold upon her mind; but she always said, with a twinkle of amus.e.m.e.nt and pride, that she never could have done anything without Mr. Stowe.

He knew everything, and all she had to do was to go to him. Of her great work she has written, in that n.o.ble introduction to the ill.u.s.trated edition of "Uncle Tom" speaking of herself in the third person: "The story can less be said to have been composed by her than imposed upon her.... The book insisted upon getting itself into being, and would take no denial."

It is easily seen that it was neither a spirit of depreciation of knowledge nor lack of power to become a student which made her fail to obtain adjuncts indispensable to great writers, but her feet were led in other paths and her strength was needed for other ends. Madame George Sand said, writing of "Uncle Tom" soon after its publication: "If its judges, possessed with the love of what they call 'artistic work,' find unskillful treatment in the book, look well at them to see if their eyes are dry when they are reading this or that chapter.... I cannot say that Mrs. Stowe has talent, as one understands it in the world of letters, but she has genius, as humanity feels the need of genius,--the genius of goodness, not that of the rules of letters, but of the saint."

All her life she stimulated the activity of her pen rather by her sympathy with humanity than by studies of literature. In one of her letters she says: "You see whoever can write on home and family matters, on what people think of and are anxious about and want to hear from, has an immense advantage. The success of the 'House and Home Papers' shows me how much people want this sort of thing, and now I am bringing the series to a close I find I have ever so much more to say; in fact, the idea has come in this shape.... A set of papers for the next year to be called 'Christopher's Evenings,' which will allow great freedom and lat.i.tude; a capacity of striking anywhere when a topic seems to be in the public mind and that will comprise a little series of sketches or rather little groups of sketches out of which books may be made. You understand Christopher writes these for the winter-evening amus.e.m.e.nt of his family. One set will be ent.i.tled 'An Account of the Seven Little Foxes that spoil the Vines.' This will cover seven sketches of certain domestic troubles. Another set is the 'Cathedral; or, the Shrines of Home Saints,' under which I shall give certain sketches of home characters contrasting with that of the legends of the saints: the shirt-making, knitting, whooping-cough- tending saints, the Aunt Esthers and Aunt Marias.... Hum (her humming bird) is well--notwithstanding the dull weather; we keep him in a sunny upper chamber and feed him daily on sugar and water, and he catches his own mutton."

Thus in swift succession we find, not only charming little idylls here and there like her story of "Hum the Son of Buzz" in the "Young Folks Magazine," being the tale of her captured and tamed humming-bird, but also "Little Foxes," "The Chimney-Corner," a volume of collected Poems, "Oldtown Folks," "Sam Lawson's Fireside Tales" and others, following with tireless rapidity, bearing the same stamp of living sympathy with difficulties of the time and breathing a spirit of helpfulness and faith.

At this period, as she had an accessible home in the pleasant city of Hartford, strangers and travelers often sought and found her. In one of her familiar notes of 1867 she wrote: "The Amberleys have written that they are coming to us to-morrow, and of all times, accordingly, our furnace must spring a leak. We are hoping to make all right before they get here, but I am really ashamed to show such weather at this time of year. Poor America! It's like having your mother expose herself by a fit of ill temper before strangers.... Do, I beg, write to a poor sinner laboring under a book." And again, a little later: "_The book_ is almost done--hang it! but done _well_, and will be a good thing for young men to read, and young women too, and so I'll send you one. You'll find some things in it, I fancy, that I know and you don't, about the times before you were born, when I was 'Hush, hush, my dear-ing' in Cincinnati.... I smell spring afar off --sniff--do you? Any smell of violets in the distance? I think it comes over the water from the Pamfili Doria."

Among other responsibilities a.s.sumed by her at this time was that of getting Professor Stowe to consent to publish a book. This was no laughing matter; at first the book was planned merely as an article on the "Talmud" for the "Atlantic Magazine." Afterwards Professor Stowe enlarged the design. Later in speaking of his ma.n.u.script she says: "You must not scare him off by grimly declaring that you must have the _whole ma.n.u.script complete_ before you set the printer to work; you must take the three quarters he brings you and at least make believe begin printing, and he will immediately go to work and finish up the whole; otherwise what with lectures and the original sin of laziness, it will all be indefinitely postponed. I want to make a crisis that he shall feel that _now_ is the accepted time, and that this must be finished first and foremost."

And again she says: "My poor _Rab_ has been sick with a heavy cold this week, and if it hadn't been for me you wouldn't have had this article which I send in triumph. I plunged into the sea of Rabbis and copied Mr. Stowe's insufferable chaldonic characters so that you might not have your life taken by wrathful printers.... Thus I have ushered into the world a doc.u.ment which I venture to say condenses more information on an obscure and curious subject than _any_ in the known world--Hosanna!"

In these busy years she went away upon her Boston trips more and more rarely, but she writes after her return from one of them in 1868: "I don't think I _ever_ enjoyed Boston so much as in this visit. Why was it! Every cloud seemed to turn out its silver lining, everybody was delightful, and the music has really done me good. I feel it all over me now. I think of it with a sober certainty of waking bliss! our little 'hub' is a grand 'hub.' Three cheers for it!... I have had sent me through the War Department a French poem which I think is full of real nerve and strength of feeling. I undertook the reading only as a duty, but found myself quite waked up. The indignation and the feeling with which he denounces modern skepticism, that worst of all unbelief, the denial of all good, all beauty, all generosity, all heroism, is splendid. He is a live man this, and I wish you would read his poem and send it to Longfellow, for it does one's heart good to see the French made the vehicle of so much real heroic sentiment. The description of a slave hunt is splendidly and bitterly satirical and indignant and full of fine turns of language. Thank G.o.d _that_ is over. No matter what happens to you and me, _that_ great burden of sin and misery has tumbled off from our backs and rolled into the sepulchre, where it shall never arise more.... I have been the most industrious of beings since my return, and am steaming away on the obstacle that stands between me and my story, which I long to be at.... I want to get one or two special bits of information out of Garrison, and so instead of sending my letter at random to Boston I will trouble you (who have little or nothing to do!) to get this letter to him. _My own book_, instead of cooling, boils and bubbles daily and nightly, and I am pushing and spurring like fury to get to it. I work like a drag-horse, and I'll _never_ get in such a sc.r.a.pe again. It isn't my business to make up books, but to make them. I have lots to say."...

The story which had so taken possession of her mind and heart was "Oldtown Folks," the one which she at the time fancied the best calculated of all her works to sustain the reputation of the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." The many proofs of her own interest in it seem to show that she had been moved to a livelier and deeper satisfaction in this creation than in any of her later productions. She writes respecting it: "It is more to me than a story; it is my resume of the whole spirit and body of New England, a country that is now exerting such an influence on the civilized world that to know it truly becomes an object." But there were weary lengths of roads to be traveled by a woman already overladen with responsibilities and in delicate health before such a book could reach its consummation.

"I must cry you mercy," she begins one of the notes to her publisher, "and explain my condition to you as well as possible." The "condition"

was frequently to be explained! Proofs were not ready when they were promised, the press was stopped, and both author and publisher required all the tender regard they really had for each other and all the patience they possessed to keep in tune. She says, "I am sorry to trouble you or derange your affairs, but one can't always tell in driving such horses as we drive where they are going to bring up."

She started off in this long journey very hopefully, writing that she would like to begin printing at once, because "to have the first part of my book in type will greatly a.s.sist me in the last." A month later she writes: "Here goes the first of my nameless story, of which I can only say it is as unlike everything else as it is like the strange world of folks I took it from. There is no fear that there will not be as much matter as 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,'--there will. There could be an endless quant.i.ty if I only said all I can see and think that is strange and curious. I partake in ----'s disappointment that it is not done, but it is of that cla.s.s of things that cannot be commanded; as my friend Sam Lawson (_vide_ MSS.) says, 'There's things that can be druv and then agin there's things that can't,' and this is that kind--as had to be humored. Instead of rushing on, I have often turned back and written over with care, that nothing that I wanted to say might be omitted; it has cost me a good deal of labor to elaborate this first part, namely, to build my theatre and to introduce my actors. My labor has all, however, been given to the literary part. My printers always inform me that I know nothing of punctuation, and I give thanks that I have no responsibility for any of its absurdities!

Further than beginning my sentence with a capital, I go not,--so I hope my friend Mr. Bigelow, who is a direct and lineal descendant of 'my Grandmother,' will put those things all right."

Who so well as authors can fully understand and sympathize with the burden of a long story in the head, long bills on the table, tempting offers to write for this and that in order to bring in two hundred dollars from a variety of pleasant editors who desire the name on their list, house and grounds to be looked after, cooks to be pacified, visits to be made;--it is no wonder that Mrs. Stowe wrote: "The thing has been an awful tax and labor, for I have tried to do it well. I say also to you confidentially, that it has seemed as if every private care that could hinder me as woman and mother has been crowded into just this year that I have had this to do."

Happily more peaceful days were in store for her. Her daughters, now grown to womanhood, were beginning to take the reins of home work and government into their own hands; and as the darkest hour foreruns the dawn, so almost imperceptibly to herself her cares began to fade away from her.

A new era opened in Mrs. Stowe's life when she made her first visit to Florida, in the winter of 1867. She was tired and benumbed with care and cold. Suddenly the thought came to her that she would go to the South, herself, and see what the stories were worth which she was constantly hearing about its condition. In the mean time, if she could, she would enjoy the soft air, and find retirement in which she might continue her book. She says in one of her letters:--

"Winter weather and cold seem always a kind of nightmare to me. I am going to take my writing-desk and go down to Florida to F----'s plantation, where we have now a home, and abide there until the heroic agony of betweenity, the freeze and thaw of winter, is over, and then I doubt not I can write my three hours a day. Meanwhile, I have a pretty good pile of ma.n.u.script.... The letters I have got about blossoming roses and loungers in linen coats, while we have been frozen and snowed up, have made my very soul long to be away. Cold weather really seems to torpify my brain. I write with a heavy numbness. I have not yet had a _good_ spell of writing, though I have had all through the story abundant clairvoyance, and see just how it must be written; but for writing some parts I want _warm_ weather, and not to be in the state of a 'froze and thawed apple.'...

The cold affects me precisely as extreme hot weather used to in Cincinnati,--gives me a sort of bilious neuralgia. I hope to get a clear, bright month in Florida, when I can say something to purpose.

"I did want to read some of my story to you before I went. I have read it to my husband; and though one may think a husband a partial judge, yet mine is so nervous and so afraid of being bored that I feel as if it were something to hold him; and he likes it--is quite wakeful, so to speak, about it. All I want now, to go on, is a good _frame_, as father used to say about his preaching. I want calm, soft, even dreamy, enjoyable weather, sunshine and flowers. Love to dear A----, whom I so much want to see once more."

Unhappily, she could not get away so soon as she desired. There were contracts to be signed and other business to arrange. These delays made her visit southward much shorter than she intended, but it proved to be only the introduction, the first brief chapter, as it were, of her future winter life in Florida. Before leaving she wrote as follows to her publisher:--

"I am so const.i.tuted that it is absolutely fatal to me to agree to have _any_ literary work done at certain dates. I _mean_ to have this story done by the 1st of September. It would be greatly for my pecuniary interest to get it done before that, because I have the offer of eight thousand dollars for the newspaper use of the story I am planning to write after it. But I am bound by the laws of art.

Sermons, essays, lives of distinguished people, I can write to order at times and seasons. A story comes, grows like a flower, sometimes will and sometimes won't, like a pretty woman. When the spirits will help, I can write. When they jeer, flout, make faces, and otherwise maltreat me, I can only wait humbly at their gates, watch at the posts of their doors.

"This story grows even when I do not write. I spent a month in the mountains in Stockbridge _composing_ before I wrote a word.