HARRIET BEECHER STOWEHARRIET BEECHER STOWEIN HARTFORD
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
Until Mrs. Stowe’s health began to fail, twice a day regularly she walked abroad for an hour or more, and between times she was apt to be more or less out of doors. The weather had to be unmistakably prohibitory to keep her housed from morning till night. Not infrequently her forenoon stroll took her to the house of her son, theRev.Charles E. Stowe, two miles away, in the north part of the city. So long as the season admitted of it, she inclined to get off the pavement into the fields; and she was not afraid to climb over or under a fence. As one would infer from her writings, she was extremely fond of wild flowers, and from early spring to late autumn invariably came in with her hands full of them. To a friend who met her once on one of her outings, she exhibited a spray of leaves, and passed on with the single disconsolate remark, “Not one flower can I find,” as if she had failed of her object. As a general thing she preferred to be unaccompanied on her walks. She moved along at a good pace, but, so to speak, quietly, with her head bent somewhat forward, and at times so wrapped in thought as to pass without recognition people whom she knew,even when saluted by them. Yet she would often pause to talk with children whom she saw at their sports, and amuse both herself and them with kindly inquiries about their affairs—the game they were playing or what not. One day she stopped a little girl of the writer’s acquaintance, who was performing the then rather unfeminine feat of riding a bicycle, and had her show how she managed the mount and the dismount, etc., while she looked on laughing and applauding. It was very much her way, in making her pedestrian rounds, to linger and watch workingmen employed in their various crafts, and to enter into conversation with them—always in a manner to give them pleasure. She said once: “I keep track of all the new houses going up in town, and I have talked with the men who are building most of them.” A number of years ago her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, sent her a letter which he had received from a friend in Germany, condoling with him on the supposed event of her decease, a rumor of which had somehow got started in Europe; and this letter afforded her no little entertainment, especially its closing with the expression “Peace to her ashes.” “I guess,” she observed with a humorous smile, and using her native dialect, “the gentleman would think my ashes pretty lively, if he was here.” To what multitudes was her continued presence in the world she blessed a grateful circumstance!
Mrs. Stowe resided in Hartford after 1864, the family having removed thither from Andover, Massachusetts, upon the termination of Prof. Stowe’s active professional career. Her attachment to the city dated back to her youth, when she passed some years there. It was also the home of several of her kindred and near friends. She first lived in a house built for her after her own design—a delightful house, therefore. But its location proved, by and by, for various reasons, so unsatisfactory that it was given up; and after an interval, spent chiefly at her summer place in Florida, the house where she lived until her death in 1896, was purchased. It is an entirely modest dwelling, of the cottage style, and stands about a mile west of the Capitol in Forest Street, facing the east. The plot which it occupies—only a few square rods in extent—is well planted with shrubbery (there is scarcely space for trees) and is, of course, bright with flowers in their season. At the rear it joins the grounds of Mark Twain, and is but two minutes’ walk distant from the former home of Charles Dudley Warner. The interior of the house is plain, and of an ordinary plan. On the right, as you enter, the hall opens into a good-sized parlor, which in turn opens into another back of it. On the left is the dining-room. In furnishing it is altogether simple, as suits with its character, andwith the moderate circumstances of its occupants. Yet it is a thoroughly attractive and charming home; for it bears throughout, in every detail of arrangement, the signature of that refined taste which has the art and secret of giving an air of grace to whatever it touches. The pictures, which are obviously heart selections, are skilfully placed, and seem to extend to the caller a friendly greeting. Among them are a number of flower-pieces (chiefly wild) by Mrs. Stowe’s own hand.
While there are abundant indications of literary culture visible, there is little to denote the abode of one of the most famous authors of the age. Still, by one and another token, an observant stranger would soon discover whose house he was in, and be reminded of the world-wide distinction her genius 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 Cumberworth, called “The African Woman of the Fountain”; and on an easel in the back parlor a lovely engraving of the late Duchess 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 thetwenty-six folio volumes of the “Affectionate and Christian Address of Many Thousands of Women in Great Britain and Ireland to their Sisters of 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, Glasgow and Edinburgh, presented at about the same time. The house, indeed, is a treasury of such relics, testimonials of reverence and gratitude, trophies of renown from many lands—enough to furnish a museum—all of the highest historic interest and value; but for the most part they are out of sight. Hid away in closets and seldom-opened book-cases is a priceless library of “Uncle Tom” literature, including copies of most of its thirty-seven translations. Somewhere is Mrs. Stowe’s copy of the first American edition, with the first sheet of the original manuscript (which, however, was not written first) pasted on the fly-leaf, showing that three several beginnings were made before the setting of the introductory scene was fixed upon.
There are relics, also, of a more private sort. For example, a smooth stone of two or three pounds weight, and a sketch or study on it by Ruskin, made at a hotel on Lake Neufchâtel,where he and Mrs. Stowe chanced to meet; he having fetched it in from the lake-shore one evening and painted it in her presence to illustrate his meaning in something he had said. One of her most prized possessions was a golden chain of ten links, which, on occasion of the gathering at Stafford House that has been referred to, the Duchess 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 emancipation 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 difficult to realize, as one was shown memorials of this kind, that the fragile, gentle-voiced little lady, who stood by explaining them, was herself the heroine in chief of the sublime conflict they recall. For a more unpretending person every way than she was, or one seeming to be more unconscious of gifts and works of genius, or of a great part acted in life, it is not possible to imagine. In her quiet home, attended by her daughters, surrounded by respect and affection, filled with the divine calm of the Christian faith,in perfect charity with all mankind, the most celebrated of American women passed the tranquil evening of her days. She would often be found seated at the piano, her hand straying over its keys—that hand that was clothed with such mighty power,—singing softly to herself those hymns of Gospel hope which were dear to her heart through all her earthly pilgrimage, alike in cloud and in sunshine. During her last years she almost wholly laid her pen aside, her last work having been the preparation, with her son’s assistance, of a brief memoir of her honored husband, who passed away in 1886.
There continued to come to her in retirement, often from distant and exalted sources, messages of honor and remembrance, which she welcomed with equal pleasure and humility. Among them was a letter fromMr.Gladstone, inspired by his reading “The Minister’s Wooing” for the first time, and written in the midst of his public cares. What satisfaction it gave her may be judged by an extract from it. After telling her that, though he had long meant to read the book, he had not found an opportunity to do so till a month or two before, he says: “It was only then that I acquired a personal acquaintance with the beautiful and noble picture of Puritan life which in that work you have exhibited, upon a pattern felicitous beyond example, so far as myknowledge goes. I really know not among four or five of the characters (though I suppose Mary ought to be preferred as nearest to the image of our Saviour), to which to give the crown. But under all circumstances and apart from the greatest claims, I must reserve a little corner of admiration for Cerinthy Ann.”
Joseph H. Twichell.