Loom and spindle

by Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson

I read and studied also at my work; and as this was done by the job, or beam, if I chose to have a book in my lap, and glance at it at intervals, or even write a bit, nothing was lost to the “corporation.”

Lucy Larcom, in her “New England Girlhood,” speaks of the windows in the mill on whose sides were pasted newspaper clippings, which she calls “window gems.” It was very common for the spinners and weavers to do this, as they were not allowed to read books openly in the mill; but they brought their favorite “pieces” of poetry, hymns, and extracts, and pasted them up over their looms or frames, so that they could glance at them, and commit them to memory. We little girls were fond of reading these clippings, and no doubt they were an incentive to our thoughts as well as to those of the older girls, who went to “The Improvement Circle,” and wrote compositions.

A year or two after this I attempted poetry, and my verses began to appear in the newspapers, in one or two Annuals, and later in The Lowell Offering.

In 1846 I wrote some verses which were published in the Lowell Journal, and these caused me to make the acquaintance of the sub-editor of that paper, who afterwards became my life companion. I speak of this here because, in my early married life, I found the exact help that I needed for continued education,—the leisure to read good books, sent to my husband for review, in the quiet of my secluded home. For I had neither the gowns to wear nor the disposition to go into society, and as my companion was not willing to go without me, in the long evenings, when the children were in bed and I was busy making “auld claes look amaist as good as new,” he read aloud to me countless books on abstruse political and general subjects, which I never should have thought of reading for myself.

These are the “books that have helped me.” In fact, of all the books I have read, I remember but very few that have not helped me. Thus I had the companionship of a mind more mature, wiser, and less prone to unrealities than my own; and if it seems to the reader that my story is that of one of the more fortunate ones among the working-girls of my time, it is because of this needed help, which I received almost at the beginning of my womanhood. And for this, as well as for those early days of poverty and toil, I am devoutly and reverently thankful.

The religious experience of a young person oftentimes forms a large part of the early education or development; and mine is peculiar, since I am one of the very few persons, in this country at least, who have been excommunicated from a Protestant church. And I cannot speak of this event without showing the strong sectarian tendencies of the time.

As late as 1843-1845 Puritan orthodoxy still held sway over nearly the whole of New England; and the gloomy doctrines of Jonathan Edwards, now called his “philosophy,” held a mighty grasp on the minds of the people, all other denominations being frowned upon. The Episcopal church was considered “little better than the Catholic,” and the Universalists and the Unitarians were treated with even less tolerance by the “Evangelicals” than any sect outside these denominations is treated to-day. The charge against the Unitarians was that they did not believe all of the Bible, and that they preached “mere morality rather than religion.”

My mother, who had sat under the preaching of the Rev. Paul Dean, in Boston, had early drifted away from her hereditary church and its beliefs; but she had always sent her children to the Congregational church and Sunday-school, not wishing, perhaps, to run the same risk for their souls that she was willing to take for her own, thus keeping us on the “safe side,” as it was called, with regard to our eternal salvation. Consequently, we were well taught in the belief of a literal devil, in a lake of brimstone and fire, and in the “wrath of a just God.”

The terrors of an imaginative child’s mind, into which these monstrous doctrines were poured, can hardly be described, and their lasting effect need not be dwelt upon. It was natural that young people who had minds of their own should be attracted to the new doctrine of a Father’s love, as well as to the ministers who preached it; and thus in a short time the mill girls and boys made a large part of the congregation of those “unbelieving” sects which had come to disturb the “ancient solitary reign” of primitive New England orthodoxy.

I used often to wish that I could go to the Episcopal Sunday-school, because their little girls were not afraid of the devil, were allowed to dance, and had so much nicer books in their Sunday-school library. “Little Henry and his Bearer,” and “The Lady of the Manor,” in which was the story of “The Beautiful Estelle,” were lent to me; and the last-named was a delight and an inspiration. But the little “orthodox” girls were not allowed to read even religious novels; and one of my work-mates, whose name would surprise the reader, and who afterwards outgrew such prejudices, took me to task for buying a paper copy of Scott’s “Redgauntlet,” saying, “Why, Hattie, do you not know that it is a novel?”