HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
AUTHOR OF “UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.”
EW names are more indelibly written upon our country’s history than that of Harriet Beecher Stowe. “No book,” says George William Curtis, “was ever more a historical event than ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ ... It was the great happiness of Mrs. Stowe not only to have written many delightful books, but to have written one book which will always be famous not only as the most vivid picture of an extinct evil system, but as one of the most powerful influences in overthrowing it.... If all whom she has charmed and quickened should unite to sing her praises, the birds of summer would be outdone.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe was the sixth child of Reverend Lyman Beecher,—the great head of that great family which has left so deep an impress upon the heart and mind of the American people. She was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, in June, 1811,—just two years before her next younger brother, Henry Ward Beecher. Her father was pastor of the Congregational Church in Litchfield, and her girlhood was passed there and at Hartford, where she attended the excellent seminary kept by her elder sister, Catharine E. Beecher. In 1832 her father accepted a call to the presidency of Lane Theological Seminary, at Cincinnati, and moved thither with his family. Catharine Beecher went also, and established there a new school, under the name of the Western Female Institute, in which Harriet assisted.
In 1833 Mrs. Stowe first had the subject of slavery brought to her personal notice by taking a trip across the river from Cincinnati into Kentucky in company with Miss Dutton, one of the associate teachers in the Western Institute. They visited the estate that afterward figured as that of Mr. Shelby, in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and here the young authoress first came into personal contact with the slaves of the South.
Among the professors in Lane Seminary was Calvin E. Stowe, whose wife, a dear friend of Miss Beecher, died soon after Dr. Beecher’s removal to Cincinnati. In 1836 Professor Stowe and Harriet Beecher were married. They were admirably suited to each other. Professor Stowe was a typical man of letters,—a learned, amiable, unpractical philosopher, whose philosophy was like that described by Shakespeare as “an excellent horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey.” Her practical ability and cheerful, inspiring courage were the unfailing support of her husband.
The years from 1845 to 1850 were a time of severe trial to Mrs. Stowe. She and her husband both suffered from ill health, and the family was separated. Professor Stowe was struggling with poverty, and endeavoring at the same time to lift the Theological Seminary out of financial difficulties. In 1849, while Professor Stowe was ill at a water-cure establishment in Vermont, their youngest child died of cholera, which was then raging in Cincinnati. In 1850 it was decided to remove to Brunswick, Maine, the seat of Bowdoin College, where Professor Stowe was offered a position.
UNCLE TOM AND HIS BABY.
“’Ain’t she a peart young ’un?’”
The year 1850 is memorable in the history of the conflict with slavery. It was the year of Clay’s compromise measures, as they were called, which sought to satisfy the North by the admission of California as a free State, and to propitiate the South by the notorious “Fugitive Slave Law.” The slave power was at its height, and seemed to hold all things under its feet; yet in truth it had entered upon the last stage of its existence, and the forces were fast gathering for its final overthrow. Professor Cairnes and others said truly, “The Fugitive Slave Law has been to the slave power a questionable gain. Among its first fruits was ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’”
The story was begun as a serial in the National Era, June 5, 1851, and was announced to run for about three months, but it was not completed in that paper until April 1, 1852. It had been contemplated as a mere magazine tale of perhaps a dozen chapters, but once begun it could no more be controlled than the waters of the swollen Mississippi, bursting through a crevasse in its levees. The intense interest excited by the story, the demands made upon the author for more facts, the unmeasured words of encouragement to keep on in her good work that poured in from all sides, and, above all, the ever-growing conviction that she had been intrusted with a great and holy mission, compelled her to keep on until the humble tale had assumed the proportions of a large volume. Mrs. Stowe repeatedly said, “I could not control the story, it wrote itself;” and, “I the author of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’? No, indeed. The Lord himself wrote it, and I was but the humblest of instruments in his hand. To him alone should be given all the praise.”
For the story as a serial the author received $300. In the meantime, however, it had attracted the attention of Mr. John P. Jewett, a Boston publisher, who promptly made overtures for its publication in book form. He offered Mr. and Mrs. Stowe a half share in the profits, provided they would share with him the expense of publication. This was refused by the Professor, who said he was altogether too poor to assume any such risk; and the agreement finally made was that the author should receive a ten per cent. royalty upon all sales.
In the meantime the fears of the author as to whether or not her book would be read were quickly dispelled. Three thousand copies were sold the very first day, a second edition was issued the following week, a third a few days later; and within a year one hundred and twenty editions, or over three hundred thousand copies, of the book had been issued and sold in this country. Almost in a day the poor professor’s wife had become the most talked-of woman in the world; her influence for good was spreading to its remotest corners, and henceforth she was to be a public character, whose every movement would be watched with interest, and whose every word would be quoted. The long, weary struggle with poverty was to be hers no longer; for, in seeking to aid the oppressed, she had also so aided herself that within four months from the time her book was published it had yielded her $10,000 in royalties.
In 1852 Professor Stowe received a call to the professorship of Sacred Literature in Andover Theological Seminary, and the family soon removed to their Massachusetts home. They were now relieved from financial pressure; but Mrs. Stowe’s health was still delicate; and in 1853 she went with her husband and brother to England, where she received, much to her surprise, a universal welcome. She made many friends among the most distinguished people in Great Britain, and on the continent as well. On her return she wrote the “Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and began “Dred, a Tale of the Dismal Swamp.” In fact, her literary career was just beginning. With “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” her powers seemed only to be fairly awakened. One work after another came in quick succession. For nearly thirty years after the publication of “Uncle Tom,” her pen was never idle. In 1854 she published “Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands,” and then, in rapid succession, “The Minister’s Wooing,” “The Pearl of Orr’s Island,” “Agnes of Sorrento,” “House and Home Papers,” “Little Foxes,” and “Oldtown Folks.” These, however, are but a small part of her works. Besides more than thirty books, she has written magazine articles, short stories, and sketches almost without number. She has entertained, instructed, and inspired a generation born long after the last slave was made free, and to whom the great question which once convulsed our country is only a name. But her first great work has never been surpassed, and it will never be forgotten.
A SCENE IN UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.
Little Eva.—“‘Oh, Uncle Tom! what funny things you are making there.’”
After the war which accomplished the abolition of slavery, Mrs. Stowe lived in Hartford, Connecticut, in summer, and spent the winters in Florida, where she bought a luxurious home. Her pen was hardly ever idle; and the popularity of her works seemed to steadily increase. She passed away on the 1st of July, 1896, amid the surroundings of her quiet, pretty home at Hartford, Connecticut. The whole reading world was moved at the news of her death, and many a chord vibrated at the remembrance of her powerful, and we may even say successful, advocacy of the cause of the slave. The good which “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” achieved can never be estimated, and the noble efforts of its author have been interwoven in the work of the world.
THE LITTLE EVANGELIST.
FROM “UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.”
T was Sunday afternoon. St. Clare was stretched on a bamboo lounge in the verandah, solacing himself with a cigar. Marie lay reclined on a sofa, opposite the window opening on the verandah, closely secluded under an awning of transparent gauze from the outrages of the mosquitoes, and languidly holding in her hand an elegantly-bound prayer-book. She was holding it because it was Sunday, and she imagined she had been reading it—though, in fact, she had been only taking a succession of short naps with it open in her hand.
Miss Ophelia, who, after some rumaging, had hunted up a small Methodist meeting within riding distance, had gone out, with Tom as driver, to attend it, and Eva accompanied them.
“I say, Augustine,” said Marie, after dozing awhile, “I must send to the city after my old doctor, Posey; I’m sure I’ve got the complaint of the heart.”
“Well; why need you send for him? This doctor that attends Eva seems skillful.”
“I would not trust him in a critical case,” said Marie; “and I think I may say mine is becoming so! I’ve been thinking of it these two or three nights past; I have such distressing pains and such strange feelings.”
“Oh, Marie, you are blue! I don’t believe it’s heart-complaint.”
“I daresay you don’t,” said Marie; “I was prepared to expect that. You can be alarmed enough if Eva coughs, or has the least thing the matter with her; but you never think of me.”
“If it’s particularly agreeable to you to have heart-disease, why, I’ll try and maintain you have it,” said St. Clare; “I didn’t know it was.”
“Well, I only hope you won’t be sorry for this when it’s too late!” said Marie. “But, believe it or not, my distress about Eva, and the exertions I have made with that dear child, have developed what I have long suspected.”
What the exertions were which Marie referred to it would have been difficult to state. St. Clare quietly made this commentary to himself, and went on smoking, like a hard-hearted wretch of a man as he was, till a carriage drove up before the verandah, and Eva and Miss Ophelia alighted.
Miss Ophelia marched straight to her own chamber, to put away her bonnet and shawl, as was always her manner, before she spoke a word on any subject; while Eva came at St. Clare’s call, and was sitting on his knee, giving him an account of the services they had heard.
They soon heard loud exclamations from Miss Ophelia’s room (which, like the one in which they were sitting, opened to the verandah), and violent reproof addressed to somebody.
“What new witchcraft has Tops been brewing?” asked St. Clare. “That commotion is of her raising, I’ll be bound!”
And in a moment after, Miss Ophelia, in high indignation, came dragging the culprit along.
“Come out here, now!” she said. “I will tell your master!”
“What’s the case now?” asked Augustine.
“The case is, that I cannot be plagued with this child any longer! It’s past all bearing; flesh and blood cannot endure it! Here, I locked her up, and gave her a hymn to study and what does she do but spy out where I put my key, and has gone to my bureau and got a bonnet-trimming and cut it all to pieces to make dolls’ jackets! I never saw anything like it in my life.”
MISS OPHELIA AND TOPSY.
“I cannot be plagued with this child any longer!”
“I told you, cousin,” said Marie, “that you’d find out that these creatures can’t be brought up without severity. If I had my way, now,” she said, looking reproachfully at St. Clare, “I’d send that child out and have her thoroughly whipped; I’d have her whipped till she couldn’t stand!”
“I don’t doubt it,” said St. Clare. “Tell me of the lovely rule of woman! I never saw above a dozen women that wouldn’t half kill a horse, or a servant either, if they had their own way with them—let alone a man.”
“There is no use in this shilly-shally way of yours, St. Clare!” said Marie. “Cousin is a woman of sense, and she sees it now as plain as I do.”
Miss Ophelia had just the capability of indignation that belongs to the thorough-paced housekeeper, and this had been pretty actively roused by the artifice and wastefulness of the child; in fact, many of my lady readers must own that they would have felt just so in her circumstances; but Marie’s words went beyond her, and she felt less heat.
“I wouldn’t have the child treated so for the world,” she said; “but I am sure, Augustine, I don’t know what to do. I’ve taught and taught, I’ve talked till I’m tired, I’ve whipped her, I’ve punished her in every way I can think of; and still she’s just what she was at first.”
“Come here, Tops, you monkey!” said St. Clare, calling the child up to him.
Topsy came up; her round, hard eyes glittering and blinking with a mixture of apprehensiveness and their usual odd drollery.
“What makes you behave so?” said St. Clare who could not help being amused with the child’s expression.
“’Spects it’s my wicked heart,” said Topsy, demurely; “Miss Feely says so.”
“Don’t you see how much Miss Ophelia has done for you? She says, she has done everything she can think of.”
“Lor, yes, mas’r! old missis used to say so, too. She whipped me a heap harder, and used to pull my ha’r, and knock my head agin the door; but it didn’t do me no good! I ’spects if they’s to pull every spear o’ ha’r out o’ my head it wouldn’t do no good neither—I’s so wicked! Laws! I’s nothin’ but a nigger, no ways!”
“Well, I shall have to give her up,” said Miss Ophelia; “I can’t have that trouble any longer.”
“Well, I’d just like to ask one question,” said St. Clare.
“What is it?”
“Why, if your Gospel is not strong enough to save one heathen child, that you can have at home here, all to yourself, what’s the use of sending one or two poor missionaries off with it among thousands of just such? I suppose this child is about a fair sample of what thousands of your heathen are.”
Miss Ophelia did not make an immediate answer; and Eva, who had stood a silent spectator of the scene thus far, made a silent sign to Topsy to follow her. There was a little glass-room at the corner of the verandah, which St. Clare used as a sort of reading-room; and Eva and Topsy disappeared into this place.
“What’s Eva going about now?” said St. Clare; “I mean to see.”
And, advancing on tiptoe, he lifted up a curtain that covered the glass-door, and looked in. In a moment, laying his finger on his lips, he made a silent gesture to Miss Ophelia to come and look. There sat the two children on the floor, with their side faces towards them—Topsy with her usual air of careless drollery and unconcern; but, opposite to her, Eva, her whole face fervent with feeling, and tears in her large eyes.
“What does make you so bad, Topsy? Why won’t you try and be good? Don’t you love anybody, Topsy?”
“Dun no nothin’ ’bout love; I loves candy and sich, that’s all,” said Topsy.
“But you love your father and mother?”
“Never had none, ye know. I telled ye that, Miss Eva.”
“Oh, I know,” said Eva, sadly; “but hadn’t you any brother, or sister, or aunt, or——”
“No, none on ’em—never had nothing nor nobody.”
“But, Topsy, if you’d only try to be good, you might——”
“Couldn’t never be nothin’ but a nigger, if I was ever so good,” said Topsy. “If I could be skinned, and come white, I’d try then.”
“But people can love you, if you are black, Topsy. Miss Ophelia would love you if you were good.”
Topsy gave the short, blunt laugh that was her common mode of expressing incredulity.
“Don’t you think so?” said Eva.
“No; she can’t b’ar me, ’cause I’m a nigger!—she’d’s soon have a toad touch her. There can’t nobody love niggers, and niggers can’t do nothin’. I don’t care,” said Topsy, beginning to whistle.
“Oh, Topsy, poor child, I love you!” said Eva, with a sudden burst of feeling, and laying her little thin, white hand on Topsy’s shoulder. “I love you because you haven’t had any father, or mother, or friends—because you’ve been a poor, abused child! I love you, and I want you to be good. I am very unwell, Topsy, and I think I sha’n’t live a great while; and it really grieves me to have you be so naughty. I wish you would try to be good for my sake; it’s only a little while I shall be with you.”
The round, keen eyes of the black child were overcast with tears; large, bright drops rolled heavily down, one by one, and fell on the little white hand. Yes, in that moment a ray of real belief, a ray of heavenly love, had penetrated the darkness of her heathen soul! She laid her head down between her knees, and wept and sobbed; while the beautiful child, bending over her, looked like the picture of some bright angel stooping to reclaim a sinner.
“Poor Topsy!” said Eva, “don’t you know that Jesus loves all alike? He is just as willing to love you as me. He loves you just as I do, only more, because He is better. He will help you to be good, and you can go to heaven at last, and be an angel for ever, just as much as if you were white. Only think of it, Topsy, you can be one of those ’spirits bright’ Uncle Tom sings about.”
“Oh, dear Miss Eva! dear Miss Eva!” said the child, “I will try! I will try! I never did care nothin’ about it before.”
St. Clare at this moment dropped the curtain. “It puts me in mind of mother,” he said to Miss Ophelia. “It is true what she told me: if we want to give sight to the blind, we must be willing to do as Christ did—call them to us and put our hands on them.”
“I’ve always had a prejudice against negroes,” said Miss Ophelia; “and it’s a fact, I never could bear to have that child touch me; but I didn’t think she knew it.”
“Trust any child to find that out,” said St. Clare: “there’s no keeping it from them. But I believe that all the trying in the world to benefit a child, and all the substantial favors you can do them, will never excite one emotion of gratitude while that feeling of repugnance remains in the heart; it’s a queer kind of fact, but so it is.”
“I don’t know how I can help it,” said Miss Ophelia; “they are disagreeable to me—this child in particular. How can I help feeling so?”
“Eva does, it seems.”
“Well, she’s so loving! After all, though, she’s no more than Christ-like,” said Miss Ophelia: “I wish I were like her. She might teach me a lesson.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time a little child had been used to instruct an old disciple, if it were so,” said St. Clare.
THE OTHER WORLD.
T lies around us like a cloud,
The world we do not see;
Yet the sweet closing of an eye
May bring us there to be.
Its gentle breezes fan our cheek,
Amid our worldly cares;
Its gentle voices whisper love,
And mingle with our prayers.
Sweet hearts around us throb and beat,
Sweet helping hands are stirred;
And palpitates the veil between,
With breathings almost heard.
The silence, awful, sweet, and calm,
They have no power to break;
For mortal words are not for them
To utter or partake.
So thin, so soft, so sweet they glide,
So near to press they seem,
They lull us gently to our rest,
They melt into our dream.
And, in the hush of rest they bring,
’Tis easy now to see,
How lovely and how sweet to pass
The hour of death may be;—
To close the eye and close the ear,
Wrapped in a trance of bliss,
And, gently drawn in loving arms,
To swoon from that to this:—
Scarce knowing if we wake or sleep,
Scarce asking where we are,
To feel all evil sink away,
All sorrow and all care!
