Harriet Beecher Stowe: a biography for girls

by Martha Foote Crow

At the Bulls, as in the Litchfield home, Harriet was surrounded with music. The eldest daughter had a fine soprano voice and was a leading singer in one of the church choirs. Also the brothers in the family were endowed with rich voices. So there were quartettes and there was also flute playing.

The next year Harriet and her elder sisters, together with two of the brothers, were established as a family with their father’s sister, the energetic and well-informed Aunt Esther, at the head. This was the wonderful aunt who, Harriet’s brother Henry said, would spend ages in Heaven wondering how it happened that she ever got there, while the angels would always be wondering why she had not been there from all eternity![5] Besides being as good as gold, Aunt Esther had a memory that was well-nigh infallible, especially in the field of natural history. She could tell nineteen rat stories all in a string, and when asked how she happened to know so much about every sort of thing, answered: “Oh, you know the Bible says the works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein. Now I happened to have pleasure therein, and so I sought them out.” It must have been a happy home that was gathered about Aunt Esther at the Hartford School. Besides the immediate members of the family, several teachers of the school shared the home and helped to give a rare and fascinating atmosphere to the table talk.

The group of young ladies that came as the first students to this new school were of rather unusual caliber and mental power. Miss Beecher said some twenty years later if she were to make a list of the most gifted minds that she ever met, either male or female, among the highest on the list would stand five maidens, the earliest students grouped around her in that dawning experience of a teacher’s life.

All these influences furnished a new and wonderfully developing sort of discipline to Harriet Beecher. She possessed the combination of qualities that would to-day make her the best kind of college girl. She responded at once to these new inspirations, and was ready for the joyous and educating friendships that form one of the most valuable assets in school and college life.

Some of the leading girls had written welcoming letters to her before she started from Litchfield, and she had of course sent enthusiastic answers by the first post. Among these new friends were Catherine Ledyard Cogswell, daughter of a physician of Hartford, and Georgiana May, a girl from another fine family. These two became her lifelong friends and Harriet’s affection for them was boundless. Catherine Cogswell was one of the popular girls, and her time was greatly in demand, but she valued the fine qualities of Harriet and saw to it that her new friend should always come in for a share of her time. Georgiana was of a gentle nature, and between her and Harriet there continued through life a communion of a peculiarly close and comforting kind. They understood each other perfectly.

Harriet loved her friends absorbingly. There mingled with her friendly feelings nothing of the personal vanity that spoils so many friendships. But by reason of the very superiority of her mind, most of those she saw passed her by without moving her deeply. When they were present, she enjoyed them; when they were gone, she forgot them. But with those she really loved, it was different. From them a separation meant much. In time she learned to take refuge in the thought that there is a heaven, a world of love; as she once said, “Love is, after all, the life-blood of existence, the all in all of mind.” This thought, coming to her early in life, was a great comfort to her through many years.

As the school increased in size, more teachers were added to the faculty, and among these Harriet found valuable companionship. The enlarging effect of such association cannot be overestimated. To compel one’s self to stand the comparison with people of like capacity and like advantages is in the highest degree stimulating. Harriet found it so. One of her fellow teachers, a young woman of fine mind and of unconquerable energy of character, became specially inspiring to her. From early childhood this teacher had been determined to obtain a higher education than was usual among the young women of that time. We must remember that this was before the day of colleges for girls, and that to have such an ambition was rare and to pursue it with grim resoluteness was rarer. It was the more inspiring when this ambition was realized only after a mighty struggle against difficulties. Harriet, looking upon this example of resolute endeavor, coolly observed, “Where persons are determined to be anything, they will be!”

When Harriet arrived at her sister’s school her two friends, Catherine Cogswell and Georgiana May, were already reading Virgil. She therefore—now twelve years old—began the study of Latin alone, but before the first year was over she was translating Ovid into English verse. The result of her work was considered so creditable that it was read at the final exhibition of the school. Soon she herself was carrying classes of young ladies through Virgil’s Æneid and Bucolics, the best parts of Ovid, and Cicero’s Orations. She also began the study of both French and Italian with a good teacher.

Harriet was a hard worker. She began at nine in the morning and worked until after dark, with only a half hour’s intermission at noon to swallow a little dinner—a very bad plan, by the way. She blamed herself for being absent-minded and making mistakes. No wonder she did these things! She was in school all day, either as pupil or as teacher. After a hastily snatched supper she read and made out exercises for her class for half an hour, and the rest of the evening she spent in preparing French and Italian lessons of her own. Sister Catherine was certainly a disciplinarian. She was also entirely original in her methods. There were no normal schools to teach her, and she had to develop her own ways of working. No one who does not know the educational situation of that day can imagine how daring it was in her to attempt all this. Many of her thoughts are a prophecy of present day ideals. She emphasized physical exercise, and this was by many thought dangerous, if not impious. She gave prizes for composition in verse. The girls were so enthusiastic in this work that they wrote their poetical effusions at night and rehearsed them to each other in the morning. They were then written out and brought to the teacher to have the ruthless knife of criticism applied. This work fell to the hands of Harriet and was a labor of love to her.

Harriet had also a painting and drawing master and worked faithfully at these subjects. After a while she wrote to her grandmother in Guilford that she would send her a dish of fruit of her own painting, and begged her not to devour it in anticipation lest she should find it sadly tasteless in reality. But if she did find it so, she must excuse the defects for the sake of the poor young artist.