“I wish to give due credit to my earliest educators,—those time-stained, thumb-worn books, that made me aware of living in a world of natural grandeur, of lofty visions, of heroic achievements, of human faithfulness, and sacrifice. I always feel like entering a protest when I hear people say that there was very little for children to read fifty years ago. There was very little of the cake and confectionery style of literature, which is so abundant now; but we had the genuine thing,—solid food, in small quantities, to suit our capacity,—and I think we were better off for not having too much of the lighter sort. What we had ‘stayed by.’”
The books that she read were “Pilgrim’s Progress,” “Paul and Virginia,” “Gulliver’s Travels,” Sir Walter Scott’s novels; and in poetry, Spenser, Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. She knew these volumes almost by heart.
Lucy’s first love for poetry was fostered by the hymns she used to read in church, during sermon time, when the minister from his lofty pulpit entered upon a series of “finallys,” which did not seem to be meant for her. Her fondness for hymns was so great that at one time she learned a hundred. The rhythm of the musical accompaniment and the flow of the words taught her the measured feet of verse before she ever heard of an iambus or a choriambus. Finding that her own thoughts naturally expressed themselves in rhyme, she used frequently to write little verses, and stuff them down the crack in the floor of the attic. The first poem that she read to the family was long remembered by them, as, wriggling with embarrassment, she sat on a stool. Referring to her poetry at this time, she says, “I wrote little verses, to be sure, but that was nothing; they just grew. They were the same as breathing or singing. I could not help writing them. They seemed to fly into my mind like birds going with a carol through the air.”
There is an incident worth repeating, that illustrates her sweetness and thoughtfulness of others. When her father died, she tried to comfort her mother: “I felt like preaching to her, but I was too small a child to do that; so I did the next best thing I could think of,—I sang hymns, as if singing to myself, while I meant them for her.”
These happy days in the country village came to an end in the year 1835, when necessity forced Mrs. Larcom, after the death of her husband, to seek a home in the manufacturing community of Lowell, where there were more opportunities for the various members of her family to assist in the general maintenance of the home.
In Lowell, there were corporation boarding-houses for the operatives, requiring respectable matrons as housekeepers, and positions in the mills offered a means of livelihood to young girls. Attracted by these inducements, many New England families left their homes, in the mountains of New Hampshire and along the seacoast, and went to Lowell. The class of the employees in the mills was consequently different from the ordinary factory hand of to-day. Girls of education and refinement, who had no idea of remaining in a mill all their lives, worked in them for some years with the object, often, of helping to send a brother to college or making money enough to continue their education, or to aid dear ones who had been left suddenly without support:—
“Not always to be here among the looms,—
Scarcely a girl she knew expected that;
Means to one end, their labor was,—to put
Gold nest-eggs in the bank, or to redeem