“‘“You must take them away. It may be—perhaps it must be—that I shall soon follow, but the breaking heart of a wife still pleads, ‘a little longer, a little longer.’”’
“‘How much longer must the gingerbread stay in?’ inquired Mina.
“‘Five minutes,’ said Harriet.
“‘“A little longer, a little longer,”’ I repeated in a dolorous tone, and we burst into a laugh.
“Thus we went on, cooking, writing, nursing and laughing till I finally accomplished my object. The piece was finished, copied, and the next day sent to the editor.”
Some writer of to-day has complained that this tale of Mrs. Stowe’s habit of writing with the bread board in her lap had a great influence for harm on later writers in that it seems to furnish proof that a woman who is compelled to combine housekeeping and writing can do the writing any time and anywhere, right amid the business of the kitchen. This, of course, Mrs. Stowe would have been the first to deny. In fact, when it was found that she could write acceptably, and her husband said she was born for that work and must fulfill her destiny, she sent this appeal to him: “If I am to write I must have a room to myself which shall be my room. I have, in my own mind, pitched on Mrs. W.’s room. I can put the stove in it. I have bought a cheap carpet for it ... and I only beg in addition that you will let me change the glass door from the nursery into that room and keep my plants there, and then I shall be quite happy. All last winter I felt the need of some place where I could go and be quiet and satisfied.... We can eat by our cooking-stove and the children can be washed and dressed and keep their playthings in the room above.... You can study by the parlor fire, and I and my plants, etc., will take the other room. I shall take my work and all my things there, and feel settled and quiet.” That she should feel so was absolutely necessary if she was to do any real work in writing. Her husband was most responsive. He wrote in reply: “And now, my dear wife, I want you to come home as quick as you can. The fact is that I cannot live without you, and if we were not so prodigious poor I would come for you at once. There is no woman like you in this wide world. Who else has so much talent with so little self-conceit; so much reputation with so little affectation; so much literature with so little nonsense; so much enterprise with so little extravagance; so much tongue with so little scold; so much sweetness with so little softness; so much of so many things and so little of so many other things?”
In answer to this beautiful love-making Mrs. Stowe could say: “If you were not already my dearly-loved husband I should certainly fall in love with you.” And we do not wonder!
Thus far we have seen the heroine of this life story tried and disciplined by toil and narrowed means; but the light of love has been about her and her faith and her buoyancy of spirit have not failed. How will it be if a great sorrow comes, one that bereaves her of one of her greatest treasures? It seems that while she had the children about her she felt that all losses were turned into blessings. In January, 1849, she writes to her friend Georgiana May to tell her that for six months after she came home from the water-cure she had had neuralgia in the eyes so that she could not have any daylight in the room, and that she had been so burdened and loaded with cares as to drain her dry of all capacity of thought, feeling or memory; yet, in spite of all that she cried out with the greatest buoyancy, “Well, Georgy, I am thirty-six years old! I am glad of it. I like to grow old and have six children and cares endless. I wish you could see me with my flock all around me. They sum up my cares, and were they gone I should ask myself, What now remains to be done? They are my work, over which I fear and tremble.”
The words seemed almost like a premonition of what was to come to her in the desolate summer of 1849. A malignant epidemic of cholera broke out in the city and spread alarmingly. One hundred and twenty deaths occurred sometimes on one day. The Seminary was turned into a hospital for the care of the sick students. The gloom and sorrow of the time had to be borne by her alone, for Professor Stowe was himself at this time at Brattleboro on account of the failure of his own health. At last her own children were attacked and, after a period of acute suspense, little Samuel Charles succumbed to the disease. Broken-hearted over this crushing sorrow, Mrs. Stowe could yet give loving sympathy to those around her who were suffering as she. “I write as if there were no sorrow like my sorrow,” she said to her husband, “yet there has been in this city ... scarce a house without its dead. This heartbreak, this anguish, has been everywhere, and where it will end God only knows.” It was her only prayer to God that such anguish as hers might not be suffered in vain. She felt that she never could be consoled unless the crushing of her own heart might enable her to work out some great good to others. This deep prayer was to be fulfilled in a way of which she had not yet dreamed.