Sunny Hill, Dracut, Jan. 7, 1849.
Dear, dear Friends,—Your kind letter reached me on Friday; and if you could imagine the “heaps” of good it did me, you would favor me often with such medicine. Nobody writes to me nowadays, and I am left to my despair and desolation.... Oh dear! what a world this is for poor old maids! but I trust you find it quite comfortable and Paradise-like for brides and bridegrooms, God bless them all! and more especially you young ones.... I wish you would show me how I could “earn” anything by writing. I cannot find my way only to write a book, be months about it, and then get a whole $100 for it. That don’t pay enough for wear and tear of temper.
Later, in 1860, she writes from the family home in St. Albans, Vt.
“Under present circumstances I do not think I could write a leader. I do not know of anything until it is a week or ten days’ old, and my only connection with the living world is the Tribune. I thank you with all my heart for your kind offer about going to New York, but it would be useless. Greeley’s introduction to Bonner would not do any good. If I could attract notice, kick up a small tempest, I should feel sure of an invitation from Mr. Bonner. But without some notoriety that has created comment, the angel Gabriel could not get into the Ledger. Without intellectual contact, out of the world, I have grown rusty. A great care, an increasing anxiety, and most painful sympathy for the suffering, have narrowed my thoughts.... If I could get a little good luck—something to feel pleased about—I think I could wake up to anything.... I could not earn a dollar here to save my life. Greeley would say, “Yes, you could: there is the needle; that is useful and wanted, though not half paid.” Mr. Greeley does not know that even the resource of the “poor shirtmaker” is denied me. I have lost the use of my thimble finger from one of those awful things, a felon; and it is misshapen, bent, and stiffened. I assure you, I have had a womanly experience.... You see, I am ‘off the track.’”
After 1860 she ceased trying to secure either fame or money by her literary talents; and thereafter, for almost thirty years, she continued to be the nurse and companion of the remaining invalids of the family, thinking, as she always had done, more of their comfort than she did of the loss of fortune and fame.
If she had devoted all her energies to the development of her talent as a novelist, she might have earned a livelihood, and been a continued success,—enough so, at least, to find a place in some of the many volumes of American biography. But she had the conviction that one has no moral right to live for one’s self alone; and so she gave her all, and spent her life, in the service of those who needed her help. And though often despondent, and almost despairing, she never lost faith in God, nor in his fatherly care over the most afflicted of his children.
I first knew Miss Curtis in about 1844, when she and Miss Farley lived in what was then Dracut, in a little house embowered in roses, which they had named “Shady Nook.” The house was a sort of literary centre to those who had become interested in The Lowell Offering and its writers; and there were many who came from places both near and far to call on the editors, and meet the “girls” who by their pens had made themselves quite noted.
But I did not see much of her until 1848, when we became the firm friends and correspondents that we remained until the end of her life. As I remember her at that time, she was of medium height, rather inclined to stoutness, with small, white, well-shaped hands, brown hair, large blue eyes, a small nose, full red lips, white teeth well divided, and a head—well, more than a match for most of the women, if not the men, of her set.
Miss Curtis had many offers of marriage; but she thought it wrong for a woman to marry for a “home,” or unless she loved the man with a “love more enduring than life and stronger than death;” and as she did not meet such a man, she could not enter into her ideal marriage. But the friendships she made were warm and lasting, and the friends with whom she was associated have in these pages given their loving tribute to her characteristics and her capabilities.
Miss Curtis’s literary efforts may be summed up as follows: first, “Kate in Search of a Husband, a novel by a Lady Chrysalis,” published by J. Winchester, New York, and twice in after years by unknown publishers. The authorship of this novel was claimed by one male writer, and another wrote a counterpart, called “Philip in Search of a Wife.”