"I was not fourteen when she died—I am almost fifty now. It may seem strange when I tell you that I do not believe that there has been an hour of any day since her death in which I have not thought of her and mourned for her."
In 1835 Mrs. Cary died, and two years later the father married again. The stepmother, a hard-headed, practical woman, could see nothing but laziness in the desire of Alice and Phoebe to read and write. During the day she insisted that they must keep busy about the house; in the evening she refused to allow them to burn candles, and thus the girls often worked with no light except what was afforded by a saucer of lard with a twist of rag stuck into it for a wick. For books they had but the Bible, a Hymn Book, a History of the Jews, Lewis and Clark's Travels, Pope's Essays, Charlotte Temple, a romance, and a mutilated novel, The Black Penitents. The last pages of this novel were missing, and Alice often declared that it was a lifelong regret to her that she never learned how the story "turned out."
With these meager helps and with no incentives to work except their own desires, Alice and Phoebe constantly wrote poems and stories. At the age of fourteen, Phoebe, without telling her father or even her sister, sent a poem to a Boston publisher. She heard nothing from it, but some time later came upon it, copied in a Cincinnati paper from the Boston journal. She laughed and cried in her excitement, but still she told no one.
About this time the father and stepmother removed to another house which had been built on the farm, and left the children in possession of the old one, so that their life was decidedly happier and their chances for work were multiplied.
Alice from this time on published numerous poems, chiefly in church papers, and her writings began to attract attention throughout the country. There was a freshness and charm about her little poems which won for them the favorable opinion of some of the best judges of poetry in the country. Of her "Pictures of Memory," Poe said that it was one of the most rhythmically perfect lyrics in the English language. Whittier wrote to the sisters, and Horace Greeley visited them in 1849, and thus slowly they gained the recognition and the encouragement which led them in 1850 to a rather daring step.
This was no less than a removal to New York. Alice went first, but she soon sent for Phoebe and their younger sister Elmina. In thus setting out for the great city and settling down to earn her living, Alice Cary was no doubt influenced by a rather painful circumstance which had taken place in her life. There had come to their neighborhood, some little time before, a man, her superior in age and education, who had recognized her unusual gifts and attractiveness, and had spent much time with her. She came to love him deeply and sincerely, and it would seem that he was but little less attracted by her. However, his family managed to persuade him that his best interests demanded that he should not marry this country-bred girl, and he returned to his home, leaving Alice to watch and hope for his coming. The gradual relinquishment of her dream and the final conviction that the sort of home life for which she felt herself most fitted was not after all to be hers, led Alice Cary to feel that she must take up some definite work to support herself and to help her sisters. She herself said later, in speaking about the removal to New York, "Ignorance stood me in the stead of courage and of books"—she knew so little about the great city to which she was going that she feared it little.
The sisters made up their minds from the first that they would have a home; they had a horror of the boarding-house atmosphere. Their first home was but two, or three rooms, high up in a big building in an unfashionable part of the town. Alice papered rooms, Phoebe painted doors and framed pictures; but the impress of their individuality was on the rooms, and every one who entered them felt their coziness and "hominess." Papers and magazines paid but little for contributions in those days, and it was only by living in the most economical and humble way that they managed to avoid their great horror—debt. But their life was by no means barren, for they became acquainted with many pleasant people, who were always glad and proud to be invited to the little tea parties in the three rooms under the roof.
The publication in 1852 of Alice's Clovernook Papers brought to her increasing recognition and new friends. These simple, original little sketches of rural scenery and rural life were just the things which Alice Cary knew best how to write, and they became very popular all over the country. Before 1856 the sisters had removed to the pretty house in Twentieth Street which was their home for the rest of their lives. Alice bought the house and the furnishings; indeed it was she who did most of the planning for the household, and who paid most of the bills. She worked early and late, driven always by the obligations to be met. A biographer says of her: "I have never known any other woman so systematically and persistently industrious as Alice Cary." Phoebe worked indeed, but spasmodically—she waited on her moods.
The home life of the sisters was most pleasant and simple. They had no "society manners;" the witty Phoebe was as willing to flash out her brightest puns for Alice's enjoyment as she was for a drawing-room full of appreciative listeners; while Alice's gentleness and sweetness were shown constantly to her sister and were not reserved for company only. Their great occasions were their Sunday evening receptions, and the people who gathered then under their roof were far from an ordinary company. Horace Greeley, Bayard Taylor, Richard and Elizabeth Stoddard, Justin McCarthy, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Ole Bull, P. T. Barnum, Elizabeth Cady Stanton—these were but a part of the brilliant company which delighted to gather on Sunday evening and enjoy the sweetness and womanliness of Alice, and the wit of Phoebe.
Interrupted by the death of the beloved younger sister Elmina, this life in the Twentieth Street house went on for over twelve years, until in 1868 Alice Cary became a confirmed invalid. After she was confined to her room, however, she wanted life and brightness about her, and had the door of her room always left open, that she might hear the cheerful sounds of the household.