Her sister Anna, at her urgent request, accompanied her on the voyage. This sister, the widow of an Episcopal clergyman, though a defender of slavery as an institution, recognized its evil influences on the society where it existed, and gladly accepted the opportunity offered to take her young daughter away from them. It was necessary, too, that she should do something to increase her slender income, and Sarah advised opening a small school in Philadelphia,—a thing which she could not have done in Charleston without a sacrifice of her own social position and of the family pride.
There is nothing said of the parting, even from Angelina, though we know it must have been a hard trial for Sarah to leave this young sister, just budding into womanhood, and surrounded by all the snares whose alluring influences she understood so well. That she could consent to leave her thus is perhaps the strongest proof of her faith in the imperative nature of the summons to which she felt she was yielding obedience.
The exiles reached Philadelphia without accident in the latter part of May, 1821. Lodgings were found for Mrs. Frost and her child, and Sarah went at once to the residence of her friend, Israel Morris.
[ CHAPTER III. ]
It is very much to be regretted that all of Sarah Grimké's letters to Angelina, and to other members of her family at this time, were, at her own request, destroyed as received. They would not only have afforded most interesting reading, but would have thrown light on much which, without them, is necessarily obscure. Nor were there more than twenty-five or thirty of Angelina's letters preserved, and they were written between the years 1826 and 1828. We therefore have but little data by which to follow Sarah's life during the five years succeeding her return to Philadelphia, and before she again went, to Charleston; or Angelina's life at home, during the same period. Sarah's diary, frequently interrupted, continues to record her religious sorrows, for these followed her even into the peaceful home at "Greenhill Farm," the name of Israel Morris's place, where she was received and treated like a near and dear relative; and it was but natural and proper that she should be so accepted by the members of Mr. Morris's family. He was literally her only friend at the North. Through his influence she had been brought into the Quaker religion, and encouraged to leave her mother and native land. She was entirely unpractised in the ways of the world, and was besides in very narrow circumstances, her only available income being the interest on $10,000, the sum left by Judge Grimké to each of his children. The estate had not yet been settled up. Add to all this the virtue of hospitality, inculcated by the Quaker doctrine, and it seems perfectly natural that Sarah should accept the offer of her friend in the spirit in which it was made, and feel grateful to her Heavenly Father that such a refuge was provided for her.
The notes in her journal for that summer are rather meagre. She attended meeting regularly, but made no formal application to be received into the Society of Friends. It would hardly have been considered so soon; she must first go through a season of probation. How hard this was is told in the lamentations and prayers which she confided to her diary. The "fearful act of disobedience" of which she was guilty in Charleston lay as a heavy load on her spirit, troubling her thoughts by day and her dreams by night, until she says: "At times I am almost led to believe I shall never know good any more."
Notwithstanding these trying spiritual exercises, the summer seems to have passed in more peace than she had dared to hope for. Israel Morris was a truly good man, with a strong, genial nature, which must have had a soothing effect upon Sarah's troubled spirit. But before many months her thoughts began to turn back to home. Her mother's want of spirituality, from her standpoint, grieved her greatly. The accounts she received of the disorder in the family added to her anxieties, and she felt that her influence was needed to bring about harmony, and to guide her mother on the road to Zion. She laid the case before the Lord, and, receiving no intimation that she would be doing a wrong thing, she decided to return to Charleston.
Before leaving Philadelphia, however, she felt that it was her duty to assume the full Quaker dress. She had worn plain colors from the time she began to attend meeting in her native city, but the clothes were not fashioned after the Quaker style, and she still indulged herself in occasionally wearing a becoming black dress; though when she did so, she not only felt uncomfortable herself, but knew that she made many of her friends so. "Persisting in so doing," she says, "I have since been made sensible, manifested a want of condescension entirely unbecoming a Christian, and one day conviction was so strong on this subject, that, as I was dressing, I felt as if I could not proceed, but sat down with my dress half on, and these words passed through my mind: Can it be of any consequence in the sight of God whether I wear a black dress or not? The evidence was clear that it was not, but that self-will was the cause of my continuing to do it. For this I suffered much, but was at length strengthened to cast away this idol."
Remembering the fashionable life she had once led, and her natural taste for the beautiful in all things, it must have been something of a sacrifice, even though sustained by her religious exaltation, to lay aside everything pretty and becoming, and, denying herself even so much as a flower from nature's own fields, to array herself in the scant and sober dress of drab, the untrimmed kerchief, and the poke bonnet.