Harriet Beecher Stowe: a biography for girls

by Martha Foote Crow

It was six years before the coming of the Beechers that the famous Mrs. Trollope visited Cincinnati and thereafter wrote her ill-natured comments on the ambitious western metropolis. Harriet Martineau, coming in 1834, was possessed of a more genial spirit. She found the city so full of ambition that they were meditating on the place where the capitol building should stand when the center of the national government should be removed from Washington to the city of Ohio which was so much nearer to the center of the country. She thought this a very good idea. It seemed to her absurd for senators from Missouri and Louisiana to go so far as Washington when they might, by the mere removal of the seat of government, stop at Cincinnati. But we are most interested in hearing what Charles Dickens had to say about Cincinnati, which he visited in 1840. To this stirring city he assigned a chapter in his “American Notes,” where he gave it perhaps a more fair, certainly a more favorable, treatment than he did to some other cities that he saw. He says: “Cincinnati is a beautiful city; cheerful, thriving, and animated. I have not often seen a place that commends itself so favorably and pleasantly to a stranger at the first glance as this does, with its clean houses of red and white, its well-paved roads, and footways of bright tile.” He goes on to speak of the amphitheater of hills, the comfortable houses, the elegant residences. Then he describes a great temperance convention held there on the day after his arrival. There was a procession with dramatic and symbolic floats; there was much speech-making and the school children sang in chorus. The main thing, however, was the conduct and appearance of the audience throughout the day, and that was admirable and full of promise.

I do not know that this particular city was specially given to processions or that the parade is a matter of western taste. Perhaps it is a national or even an Anglo-Saxon mode of expressing exuberant vitality. However that may be, we have another description of a Cincinnati pageant that may interest us, as it is one of the things that took place while Harriet Beecher was living in the city. It is reported for us by Harriet Martineau, who saw it while she was there in 1834. It was a wonderful parade of school children—two thousand in number! Miss Martineau thought it one of the most beautiful sights that she ever saw.

Can it be that our Harriet did not see that wonderful procession of two thousand Cincinnati school children? We do not believe it. And is it not strange to think that these two great Harriets of the Old and the New World should have stood together to watch this flaming sign of promise for the future of the English-speaking people, and should not have looked into each other’s eyes to know each other? At any rate, Harriet of America forgot all about the visit of her British sister; but a long time after, Harriet of England sent an invitation to her American contemporary to visit her in her English home. She remembered the older Beecher girl, Catherine, very well; she had a clear recollection of Dr. Lyman Beecher; but—“Did I see you,” she asked, “in a white frock and a black silk apron?... I believe and hope you were the young lady in the black silk apron.” Of such unseen links as this is history made; the lives of the actors and leaders of thought cross each other and interweave, making a continuous onflow of life.

Before we leave the more general things that were happening in Cincinnati during the years that Harriet Beecher lived there, we must recur once more to that Buckeye Dinner that took place the year after she came. I do not know whether any of the theologues from the Seminary were present or not; but if they were, they heard a wonderful speech from one of the great men of the nation’s history. That was General Harrison, son of a patriot of Revolutionary fame, and himself a conspicuous patriot. A French guest of the city relates that he saw in the hotel a noticeable man of about fifty years old, of medium height, and of muscular build, with an open and cheerful countenance and with a certain air of command; and when he asked who that was he was told that that was General Harrison, Clerk of the Cincinnati Court of Common Pleas. “What! General Harrison of the Tippecanoe and the Thames?” he cried. The answer was: “The same; the ex-Governor, the conqueror of Tecumseh and Proctor; the avenger of our disasters of the Raisin and at Detroit; the ex-Governor of the Territory of Indiana; the ex-Senator in Congress, and the ex-Minister to one of the South American Republics. He has grown old in the service of his country,” continued the informant; “he has passed twenty years of his life in those fierce wars with the Indians, in which there was less glory to be won but more danger to be encountered than at Rivoli and Austerlitz. He is now poor with a numerous family, and is neglected by the Federal Government, although yet vigorous, because he has the independence to think for himself. His friends got the place of clerk as a sort of retiring pension. So we have him as clerk of an inferior court.” This great man, then, was living at Cincinnati. In the Roman and the American fashion he was in retirement after a time of political activity and was living as a farmer; but he was to be recalled in a few years to the nation’s highest place of honor, a position that he was to hold, however, but one month before he was to pass away in the midst of his work. As time went on, General Harrison was intimately connected in various ways with the lines of life in the Beecher and Stowe households, and was venerated by them heartily.

There were many other distinguished people that passed a part of their lives in this city during the years that interest us, but we must not stay to name them. Suffice it to say that life was by no means dull in Cincinnati. Besides processions and banquets, there was an occasional flood on the river to enliven things, or a steamboat explosion. There were passages of wild excitement over various public questions, there were hangings and bank mobs and negro mobs. All these events of a public nature were to be part of the warp and woof of the life of this family that were living there and were working eagerly for the best interests of the city and country. Harriet tells us that while they lived at Walnut Hills the favorite subjects of conversation at the home table changed. While the former subjects of free will and regeneration, of Heaven and the destiny of man were still discussed, new subjects were now added. The United States Constitution came into the debate, and—the fugitive slave laws. Is it any wonder? They must have talked over Harrison’s speech and all the other patriotic speeches, whether given in connection with the peaceful gatherings of white-robed school children in churches, or more passionately uttered when mobs swept through the town and burned and slew. Of all this we shall hear later on.

The house that the Beechers were obliged to live in when they first came to Cincinnati was, Harriet said in a letter to Hartford, the most inconvenient, ill-arranged, good-for-nothing and altogether execrable affair that ever was put together. The kitchen was so arranged that their mother could not go into it without putting on a bonnet and cloak; the parlor had one window, and that opened upon a porch and had its lower half painted to keep out what little light there was. It was built, she averred, by a bachelor who of course acted up to whatever light he had, though that left little enough for his tenants. In this merry way Harriet made the best of everything and turned their difficulties and inconveniences into pleasantry. Nevertheless, it is to be feared that Harriet had some slight touch of homesickness. Not a day passed that she did not engineer the sending of somebody to the post office, and when the reply repeatedly came, “No letters,” her heart sank within her. Therefore, when the first letter did come to the circle at Cincinnati, Harriet was so overjoyed that she cut up all manner of capers expressive of thankfulness, went up three stairs at a time to get to the study to begin an answer, wishing devoutly that the path of duty led in the direction of writing a long letter instead of in the direction of darning the heels of George’s stockings! The possession of this letter was a secret from all but Catherine and herself, and they decided to keep it till supper time and then spring it as a surprise. This method had its disadvantages; it seemed too bad to keep it from mother and Aunt Esther for a whole afternoon, but the girls had the satisfaction of thinking that they were planning for their greatest happiness on the whole, which, Harriet considered, was true metaphysical benevolence.

Supper time came. There was a suppressed excitement in the air. At last Catherine held up her hand and said, “We have a dessert that we have been saving all the afternoon. See here! This is from Hartford!” she cried, and then Harriet held up the Hartford letter. How all the people stared! Mrs. Beecher’s pale face was all one smile, Aunt Esther’s eyes were very bright and the father’s were almost tearful as he looked at the familiar and beloved handwriting. Harriet read the letter to an enraptured audience and every allusion was appreciated to the full. “Mrs. Parsons stopped in the midst of her pumpkins pies to think of us!” cried Harriet. “Seems to me I can see her now—that bright, cheerful face! She is making the pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving.”

This turned the conversation to the subject of Thanksgiving. And amid smiles and sighs they talked over the plan of keeping that sacred New England festival here in the far west. “But how can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” quoted Harriet amid a hush all around the table.

In due time the family moved to the house prepared for them at Walnut Hills where the Theological Seminary was situated. This was about two miles from the center of the city as it was then, and the drive to and from the church and the markets passed up hill and down dale through the most lovely succession of undulations, where the velvety richness of the turf and the groupings of the grove and forest made the scene, as Catherine said, nothing short of Arcadian. The “straight, beautiful shafts of the trees as one looked up the cool, green recesses of the woods seemed,” she said, with a flight of eloquence rather unusual for her practical nature, “as though they might form very proper columns for a Dryad temple.” Over this road the Beechers’ little horse “Charley” went many times a day, carrying messages and bringing supplies.

There were fine trees about the Seminary also. The ample two-story house had a long ell that ran back into the primeval forest. To this a classic grove of superb foliage gave shade in summer and protection from wind in winter. On these wonderful trees the adventurous little sister Isabelle climbed and swung on the upper branches in the wind. A dangerous feat! We fancy that the care of the Beecher children did not grow less as the number increased, even though the older ones were all the time moving away and becoming dignified ministers of churches. Mrs. Beecher and Aunt Esther, with the family of thirteen, including servants, had their hands full; so did Harriet and Catherine, who were going to town every day to look after their school. Harriet’s memory of the years passed in Walnut Hills was of a time full to the brim of life and animation. There was an electric current passing every moment through the house. Things were being done; thoughts were passing like wildfire; not for an instant could there be stagnation in any part of the work. Everybody was carried along to the fullest use of his powers in such a home as that.