CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE OF MRS. STOWE’S LIFE

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I.The Early Home of Harriet Beecher Stowe [1]
II.Work and Play in the Beecher Parsonage [16]
III.Harriet Beecher’s Schooling [32]
IV.Education in the Home [51]
V.The Books She Read [70]
VI.Dramatic Ventures [83]
VII.Studies and Teachers [96]
VIII.Some Steps Forward [110]
IX.A Pilgrimage [122]
X.The Western Home [133]
XI.The Founders of a School [146]
XII.The Semi-Colons [158]
XIII.Mrs. Stowe the Home-Maker [171]
XIV.Unconscious Preparation for a Work [188]
XV.The Great Inspiration [204]
XVI.“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and Its Influence [215]
XVII.Wandering in Foreign Lands [223]
XVIII.A Unique Jubilee [243]
XIX.A Visit to Abraham Lincoln [258]
XX.Writing Stories of Old New England Life [274]
XXI.A Serene Old Age [294]

Harriet Beecher Stowe

CHAPTER I
THE EARLY HOME OF HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

In a little saucer-like valley of the lower Berkshires, where the hills stand about in a wide circle, lies that most beautiful of Connecticut villages, Litchfield. Here Harriet Beecher Stowe was born. There was not a day when she and her brothers and sisters did not run to the window to see that blue rim of hills, and even when they were grown into women and men they did not forget the charm of their early home in the mountains. From the door of the house where they lived there was an extended view. Here Harriet often stood and looked over to the distant horizon, where Mt. Tom reared its round, blue head against the sky, and the Great and Little Ponds gleamed out amid a steel-blue expanse of distant pine groves. Turning to the west, she saw a rounded height called Prospect Hill, and many a pensive, wondering hour she sat on the stone threshold of that doorway, watching the splendor of the sunsets that burned themselves out beyond that hill. Harriet often said that her home was at the precise point of the country where the hills were most inspiring and vivacious, reminding one of the Psalm, “The little hills rejoice on every side.” Mountains are grand, she thought, and sometimes even dreary; but these half-grown hills uplift one like the waves of the sea.

Once when Harriet returned by stage-coach from a visit to her relatives down in Guilford, she could not restrain her raptures on beholding her mountains again. As the quaint old coach went lumbering along the winding road, the keen-eyed little girl leaned out of the window, peering in every direction, determined to let no bluebird’s flight escape her and no columbine flower pass unadmired. She took in all the sweeping bends of the beautiful brown river and watched the curves of water as they flowed over the shining rocks. After a while the coach wound up amid hemlock forests whose solemn shadows were all aglow with pink clouds of blossoming laurel. Presently they entered into great vistas of mountains whose cloudy, purple heads stretched and veered around the path like moving forms in a dream. There were the hills which meant home. Writing about this years afterward, she cried out, “Can there be anything on earth as beautiful as these mountain rides in New England?” So she gave to her childhood’s home the name of Cloudland, and its inheritance of clear air and height and spaciousness became a part of her nature.

Any one would have loved the quiet village in 1811, the year when Harriet Beecher was born, with the large Green in the center on which stood the meeting-house where her honored father, Dr. Lyman Beecher, preached. From here extended to the four points of the compass the four spacious avenues, North, South, East, and West Streets, all of them thickly planted with double rows of fine elm trees, through which one could see the stately colonial mansions that had been there since before the days of the Revolution.

These mansions had looked upon many a thrilling scene, for in those Revolutionary days the town of Litchfield had been a place of great activity. The direct state road from Boston across to West Point and thence down the river to the city of New York passed at that time through the town, making connection with the station for military stores that were kept there. So on training days there would be dramatic episodes on the ample Green, while on many a dark night that great message-bearer, Paul Revere, would ride swiftly and mysteriously through the town.