The Girlhood of Harriet Beecher Stowe Read online

  "He was a man of great practical common sense, united with large ideality, a cultivated taste, and very extensive reading. With this was combined a humorous combativeness that led him to attack the special theories and prejudices of his friends, sometimes jocosely and sometimes in earnest.

  "Of course, he and father were in continual good-natured skirmishes in which all the New England peculiarities of theology and of character were held up, both in caricature and in sober verity.

  "I remember long discussions in which he maintained that Turks were more honest than Christians, bringing very startling facts in evidence. Then I heard his serious tales of Roman Catholic bishops and archbishops whom he had carried to and from Spain and America, and he affirmed them to be as learned and as truly pious and devoted to the good of men as any Protestant to be found in America."

  Lyman Beecher's Second Marriage

  When Harriet was between six and seven years old, her father married Miss Harriet Porter, of Portland, Maine. She has herself thus described the advent of the new mother:

  "I was about six years old, and slept in the nursery with my two younger brothers. We knew father was gone away somewhere on a journey, and was expected home, and thus the sound of a bustle or disturbance in the house more easily awoke us. We heard father's voice in the entry, and started up, crying out as he entered our room, 'Why, here's pa!' A cheerful voice called out from behind him, 'And here's ma!'

  "A beautiful lady, very fair, with bright blue eyes, and soft auburn hair bound round with a black velvet bandeau, came into the room, smiling, eager, and happy-looking, and, coming up to our beds, kissed us, and told us that she loved little children and would be our mother. We wanted forthwith to get up and be dressed; but she pacified us with the promise that we should find her in the morning.

  "Never did mother-in-law make prettier or sweeter impression. The next morning, I remember, we looked at her with awe. She seemed to us so fair, so elegant, so delicate, that we were afraid to go near her. We must have been rough, red-cheeked, hearty country children, honest, obedient, and bashful. She was peculiarly dainty and neat in all her ways and arrangements; I remember I used to feel breezy, rough, and rude in her presence. We felt a little in awe of her, as if she were a strange princess rather than our own mama; but her voice was very sweet, her ways of moving and speaking very graceful, and she took us up in her lap and let us play with her beautiful hands, which seemed like wonderful things made of pearl and ornamented with rings."

  Mr. Beecher and Jonathan Edwards

  One Sunday evening, shortly after the arrival of the new mother, Dr. Beecher, who was at that time given to an undiscriminating admiration for the works of the great Jonathan Edwards, was reading to her from a volume of sermons by that divine. It happened to be the sermon with the pungent title, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." Harriet was curled up on the sofa, apparently absorbed in a book of her own. Drawn to observe closely her new mother, she saw that she seemed to be listening with abhorrence and suppressed emotion. A bright red spot suffused each cheek, every moment growing brighter and redder. Finally, rising to her stately height, she swept out of the room, saying as she went: "Mr. Beecher, I will not listen to another word! Why, it is horrible! It is a slander on the character of my heavenly Father!" Harriet was impressed with the stupefaction pictured on her father's face. If a bucket of ice-water had been thrown over him, the effect could not have been more startling. He probably never again read Edwards' lurid pages with the same ease of mind as formerly. Doubtless this incident placed his foot on the first rung of a ladder which the ultra-orthodox of the period thought led anywhere but to heaven. Harriet Porter, although orthodox, was human, and she belonged to a different age from Edwards.

  Harriet's School Days

  Harriet attended a school for young women kept by a Miss Sarah Pierce, who is described as a woman of "more than ordinary talent, sprightly in conversation, social, and full of benevolent activity." In process of time the school was enlarged, and her nephew, Mr. John Brace, became her assistant. Of him Mrs. Stowe writes:

  "Mr. Brace exceeded all the instructors that I ever knew in the faculty of teaching the art of English composition. The constant excitement in which he kept the minds of his pupils--the wide and varied regions of thought into which he led them--formed a preparation for teaching composition, the main requisite for which, whatever people may think, is to have something that one feels interested to say.

  "His manner was to divide his school of about one hundred pupils into divisions of about three or four, one of which was to write every week. At the same time, he inspired an ambition to write by calling every week for volunteers, and every week there were those who volunteered to write.

  "I remember I could have been but nine years old, and my handwriting hardly formed, when the enthusiasm he inspired led me--greatly to his amusement, I believe--to volunteer to write every week. The first week the subject of the composition chosen by the class was 'The Difference Between the Natural and the Moral Sublime.'

  "One may smile at this for a child of nine years of age; but it is the best account I can give of his manner of teaching to say that the discussion that he had held in the class not only made me understand the subject as thoroughly as I do now, but so excited me that I felt sure that I had something to say about it.

  First Literary Honors

  "By two years of constant practice, under his training and suggestion, I had gained so far as to be appointed one of the writers for the annual exhibition, a proud distinction, as I then viewed it. The subject assigned me was one that had been very fully discussed in the school in a manner to show to the best advantage Mr. Brace's peculiarity in awakening the minds of his pupils to the higher regions of thought. The question was, 'Can the Immortality of the Soul be Proved by the Light of Nature?'

  "Several of the young ladies had written strongly in the affirmative. Mr. Brace himself had written in the negative. To all these compositions and consequent discussions I had listened, and, in view of them, chose to adopt the negative.

  "I remember the scene at the exhibition, to me so eventful. The hall was crowded with all the literati of Litchfield. Before them all our compositions were read aloud. When mine was read, I noticed that father, who was sitting on high by Mr. Brace, brightened and looked interested, and at the close I heard him ask, 'Who wrote that composition?' 'Your daughter, sir!' was the answer. It was the proudest moment of my life. There was no mistaking father's face when he was pleased, and to have interested him was past all juvenile triumphs."

  Wonders of the "Meeting-house"

  "Never shall I forget the dignity and sense of importance which swelled my mind when I was first pronounced old enough to go to meeting," writes Mrs. Stowe, in another account of those early Litchfield days. "To my childish eyes our old meeting-house was an awe-inspiring place. To me it seemed fashioned very nearly on the model of Noah's Ark and Solomon's Temple, as set forth in the pictures of my Scripture catechism, pictures which I did not doubt were authentic copies."

  Rigors of the Sabbath

  Harriet had hallowed associations connected with the thought of the old church. Early one summer morning she had been reminded that it was Sunday, the Holy Sabbath day, by the following incident. Her two younger brothers, Henry and Charles, slept together in a little trundle-bed in a corner of the nursery where she also slept. She was waked by the two little fellows chattering to each other as they lay in their bed making little sheep out of cotton pulled from the holes in the old quilt that covered them, and pasturing them on the undulating hillsides and meadows which their imagination conjured up amid the bedclothes. Suddenly Charles' eyes grew wide with fright, and he cried out, "Henry, this is wicked! It's Sunday!" There was a moment of consternation, followed by silence, as both little curly heads disappeared under the old coverlet.

  Harriet's Conversion

  Yes, it was Sunday, and Harriet was trying her best to feel herself a dreadful sinner, but with very poor su
ccess. She was so healthy, and the blood raced and tingled so in her young veins. She tried to feel her sins and count them up; but the birds and the daisies and the buttercups were a constant interruption, and she went into the old meeting-house quite dissatisfied with herself. When she saw the white cloth, the shining cups, and the snowy bread of the communion-table, she hopelessly felt that the service could have nothing for a little girl--it would all be for the grown-up people, the initiated Christians. Nevertheless, when her father began to speak, she was drawn to listen by a sort of pathetic earnestness in his voice.

  The Doctor was feeling very deeply, and he had chosen for his text the declaration of Jesus: "I call you not servants; but friends." His subject was Jesus as the soul-friend offered to every human being. Forgetting his doctrinal subtleties, he spoke with the simplicity and tenderness of a rich nature concerning the faithful, generous love of Christ. Deep feeling inclines to simplicity of language, and Dr. Beecher spoke in words that even a child could understand. Harriet sat absorbed; her large blue eyes gathered tears as she listened, and when the Doctor said, "Come, then, and trust your soul to this faithful friend," her little heart throbbed, "I will!" She sat through the sacramental service that followed with swelling heart and tearful eyes, and walked home filled with a new joy. She went up into her father's study, and threw herself into his arms, saying, 'Father, I have given myself to Jesus, and he has taken me." He held her silently to his heart for a moment, and she felt his tears dropping on her head. "Is it so?" he said. "Then has a new flower blossomed in the kingdom this day."

  "Spiritual Experience" and the Old New England Divines

  Shortly after going to Hartford to attend school, Harriet made a call upon the Rev. Dr. Hawes, her father's friend, and her spiritual adviser, which left an enduring impression upon her mind. It was her father's advice that she join the church at Hartford, as he had received a call to Boston, and the breaking up of the Litchfield home was imminent. Accordingly, accompanied by two school friends, she went, one day, to the pastor's study to consult him concerning the contemplated step. In those days much stress was placed on religious experience, and more especially on what was termed a conviction of sin; and self-examination was carried to an extreme calculated to drive to desperation a sensitive, high-strung nature.

  The good man listened to the child's simple and modest statement of her Christian experience, and then, with an awful, though kindly, solemnity of speech and manner, said:

  "Harriet! do you feel that if the universe should be destroyed"--alarming pause--"you could be happy with God alone?"

  After struggling in vain to fix in her mind the meaning of the sounds that fell on her ears like the measured tolling of a funeral bell, the child of fourteen stammered out, "Yes, sir!"

  "You realize, I trust, in some measure at least, the deceitfulness of your own heart, and that, in punishment for your sins, God might justly leave you to make yourself as miserable as you have made yourself sinful."

  Having thus effectually, and to his own satisfaction, fixed the child's attention on the morbid and oversensitive workings of her own heart, the good and truly kind-hearted man dismissed her with a fatherly benediction. He had been alarmed at her simple and natural way of entering the kingdom. It was not theologically sound to make short cuts to salvation. The child went in to the conference full of peace and joy, and came out full of distress and misgivings; but the good Doctor had done his duty, as he saw it.

  Theological Struggles in the Beecher Family

  It was a theological age, and in the Beecher family theology was the supreme interest. It fills their letters, as it filled their lives. Not only was the age theological, but it was transitional, and characterized by intense intellectual activity, accompanied by emotional excitement. The winds of doctrine were let loose, blowing first from this quarter and then from that. Dr. Beecher spent his days in weathering theological cyclones; but the worst of all arose in his own family, among his own children. Great as were his intellectual powers, he was no match for his daughter Catherine and his son Edward--the metaphysical Titans who sprang from his own loins. It was almost in a tone of despair that this theological Samuel, who had hewn so many heretical Agags in pieces before the lord, wrote concerning his own daughter:

  "Catherine's letter will disclose the awfully interesting state of her mind. . . . You perceive she is now handling edged tools with powerful grasp. . . . I have at times been at my wits' ends to know what to do. . . . I conclude that nothing safe can be done, but to assert ability, and obligation, and guilt upon divine authority, throwing in at the same time as much collateral light from reason as the case admits of."

  Catherine was at this time breaking out of the prison-house of the traditional orthodoxy, and her brother Edward was in many ways in sympathy with her, though not so radical as she. Dr. Beecher was contending with might and main for the traditional Calvinism; and yet, in his zeal for its defense, he often took positions that surprised and alarmed his brother ministers, seriously disturbed their dogmatic slumbers, and caused them grave doubts as to his orthodoxy.

  Tragic Death of Catherine's Betrothed

  When Harriet was in her eleventh year her sister Catherine had become engaged to Professor Alexander Fisher, of Yale College. He was a young man of brilliant talents, and specially noted for his mathematical genius. As an undergraduate at Yale he distinguished himself by original and valuable contributions to mathematical astronomy. Immediately on graduation he was appointed a professor of mathematics, and was sent abroad by his alma mater to devote some time to study and the purchase of books and mathematical instruments. The ship Albion, on which he sailed, was wrecked on a reef off the coast of Ireland. Of the twenty-three cabin passengers, only one reached the shore. This was a man of great physical strength, and all night long he clung to the jagged rocks at the foot of the cliff, against which the sea broke, till ropes were lowered from above, and he was drawn up, limp and exhausted. He often told of the calm bravery with which Professor Fisher met his end.

  Up to this time in her life, Catherine had been noted for the gaiety of her spirits and the brilliancy of her mind. An imitable story-teller and a great mimic, it seemed to be her aim to keep every one laughing. Her versatile mind and ready wit enabled her to pass brilliantly through her school days with comparatively little mental exertion, and before she was twenty-one she had become a teacher in a school for girls in New London, Connecticut. it was about this time that she met Professor Fisher, and they soon became engaged.

  Catherine's Religion Taught that His Soul was Lost with His Body

  When the news of his death reached her, to the crushing of earthly hopes and plans was added an agony of apprehension for his soul. He had never been formally converted; and hence, by the teachings of the times, his soul as well as his body was lost.

  She wrote to her brother Edward: "It is not so much ruined hopes of this life--it is dismay and apprehension for his immortal spirit. Oh, Edward, where is he now? Are the noble faculties of such a mind doomed to everlasting woe?" Anxiously, but in vain, she searched his letters and journals for something on which she might build a hope of his eternal welfare. "Mournful contemplations awakened when I learned more of the mental exercises of him I mourned, whose destiny was forever fixed, alas, I know not where! I learned from his letters, and in other ways, as much as I could have learned from his diary. I found that, even from early childhood, he had ever been uncommonly correct and conscientious, so that his parents and family could scarcely remember of his doing anything wrong, so far as relates to outward conduct; and year after year, with persevering and unexampled effort, he sought to yield that homage of the heart to his Maker which was required, but he could not; like the friend who followed his steps, he had no strength. . . . It seemed to me that my lost friend had done all that unassisted human strength could do; and often the dreadful thought came to me that all was in vain, and that he was wailing that he ever had been born, in that dark world where hope never comes, a
nd that I was following his steps to that dreadful scene."

  Bereaved Girl's Struggle with Pitiless Calvinism

  Miss Beecher passed the two years following the death of Professor Fisher at Franklin, Massachusetts, at the home of his parents, where she listened to the fearless and pitiless Calvinism of Dr. Nathaniel Emmons. Her mind was too strong and buoyant to be overwhelmed and crushed by an experience that would have driven a weaker and less resolute nature to insanity.

  The conventional New England Calvinism gave her no satisfactory solution of her difficulties. She was tormented with doubts. "What has the Son of God done which the meanest and most selfish creature upon earth would not have done?" she asked herself. "After making such a wretched race and placing them in such disastrous circumstances, somehow, without any sorrow or trouble, Jesus Christ had a human nature that suffered and died. If something else besides ourselves will do all the suffering, who would not save millions of wretched beings, and receive all the honor and gratitude without any of the trouble?" Yet, when such thoughts passed through her mind, she felt that it was "all pride, rebellion, and sin." So she struggled on, sometimes floundering deep in the mire of doubt, and then lifted out of it by her constitutionally buoyant spirits.

  It was in this condition of mind that Catherine Beecher came to Hartford, in the winter of 1824, and opened her school. In the practical experience of teaching she found, at last, the solution of her troubles. Turning aside from doctrinal difficulties and theological quagmires, she determined "to find happiness in living to do good." She says: "It was right to pray and read the Bible, and so I prayed and read the Bible. It was right to try to save others, and so I tried to save them. In all these years I never had any fear of punishment or hope of reward."