Her little hands very early learned to contribute to the support of the family. When eleven years old she earned a dollar and twenty-five cents a week splicing rolls in a woolen factory. She says of this period: “My principal recollections are of noise and filth, bleeding hands and aching feet, and a very sad heart.” Little did the residents of Eaton then dream that this little factory-girl was afterward to become such an honor to their humble village. Subsequently, when she first applied for the position of teacher in the district school, a young farmer who was acting trustee replied, “Why, the scholars will be bigger than their teacher.” But the little schoolmistress made her teaching a success, and before she was twenty years of age had contributed to the village newspaper poems of great literary merit. About this time she attracted the attention of the Misses Sheldon, who were conducting a well-known ladies’ school at Utica. They offered her gratuitous instruction for a single term, and subsequently proposed to complete her education without present charge. This afforded her an excellent opportunity for self-improvement. Her health, however, had been shattered by the hardship and labors of her earlier years, and it was through great weakness and suffering that she pressed toward higher literary excellence. She was continually spurred on by her desire to secure a home for her aged parents. It was for this purpose that she wrote those charming stories in which grace and strength of style are combined with the purest moral tone. It was under such circumstances as these that she sent to the press the stories for children, entitled “The Great Secret,” “Effie Maurice,” “Charles Linn,” “Allen Lucas,” “John Frink,” and also the fascinating tales for older readers, which were afterward gathered together, under the name of “Alderbrook.” Her biographer[[65]] relates the following incident:
“As Miss Sheldon was at one time passing near midnight through the halls, a light streaming from Emily’s apartment attracted her attention, and, softly opening the door, she stole in upon her vigils. Emily sat in her night-dress, her papers lying outspread before her, grasping with both hands her throbbing temples, and pale as a marble statue. Miss S. went to her, whispered words of sympathy, and gently chided her for robbing her system of its needed repose. Emily’s heart was already full, and now the fountain of feeling overflowed in uncontrollable weeping. ‘Oh, Miss Sheldon,’ she exclaimed, ‘I must write, I must write; I must do what I can to aid my poor parents.’”
While making a visit in New York during the month of June, 1847, Miss Chubbuck wrote a letter to the Evening Mirror, which at that time was an exceedingly popular magazine, edited by George P. Morris and N. P. Willis. In a graceful and sportive vein she offered her literary services to this periodical:
“You know the shops in Broadway are very tempting this spring. Such beautiful things! Well, you know (no, you don’t know that, but you can guess) what a delightful thing it would be to appear in one of those charming, head-adorning, complexion-softening, hard-feature-subduing neapolitans; with a little gossamer veil dropping daintily on the shoulder of one of those exquisite balzarines, to be seen any day at Stewart’s and elsewhere. Well, you know (this you must know) that shop-keepers have the impertinence to demand a trifling exchange for these things even of a lady; and also that some people have a remarkably small purse, and a remarkably small portion of the yellow ‘root’ in that. And now, to bring the matter home, I am one of that class. I have the most beautiful little purse in the world, but it is only kept for show; I even find myself under the necessity of counterfeiting—that is, filling the void with tissue paper in lieu of bank-notes, preparatory to a shopping expedition.
“Well, now to the point. As Bel and I snuggled down on the sofa this morning to read the New Mirror (by the way, Cousin Bel is never obliged to put tissue paper in her purse), it struck us that you would be a friend in need, and give good counsel in this emergency. Bel, however, insisted on my not telling what I wanted the money for. She even thought that I had better intimate orphanage, extreme suffering from the bursting of some speculative bubble, illness, etc., etc.; but did not I know you better? Have I read the New Mirror so much (to say nothing of the graceful things coined ‘under a bridge,’ and a thousand other pages flung from the inner heart), and not learned who has an eye for everything pretty? Not so stupid, Cousin Bel; no, no!
“However, this is not quite the point, after all; but here it is. I have a pen—not a gold one, I don’t think I could write with one, but a nice, little, feather-tipped pen, that rests in the curve of my finger as contentedly as in its former pillow of down. (Shocking! how that line did run down hill! and this almost as crooked! dear me!) Then I have little messengers racing ‘like mad’ through the galleries of my head; spinning long yarns, and weaving fabrics rich and soft as the balzarine which I so much covet, until I shut my eyes and stop my ears and whisk away, with the ‘wonderful lamp’ safely hidden in my own brown braids. Then I have Dr. Johnson’s dictionary—capital London edition, etc., etc.; and after I use up all the words in that, I will supply myself with Webster’s wondrous quarto, appendix and all. Thus prepared, think you not I should be able to put something in the shops of the literary caterers? something that, for once in my life, would give me a real errand into Broadway? May be you of the New Mirror PAY for acceptable articles—may be not. Comprenez-vous?
“O, I do hope that beautiful balzarine like Bel’s will not be gone before another Saturday! You will not forget to answer me in the next Mirror; but pray, my dear Editor, let it be done very cautiously, for Bel would pout all day if she should know what I had written. Till Saturday,
“Your anxiously-waiting friend,
“Fanny Forester.”
This letter attracted the attention of Mr. Willis, and drew from him a characteristic reply: