Daughters of the Puritans: A Group of Brief Biographies

by Seth Curtis Beach

She found pleasant and congenial society: "I see the Brownings often," she says, "and love them both more and more as I know them better. Mr. Browning enriches every hour I spend with him, and is a most cordial, true, and noble man. One of my most prized Italian friends, Marchioness Arconati Visconti, of Milan, is passing the winter here, and I see her almost every day." Moreover she was busy with a congenial task. At the very opening of the struggle for liberty, she planned to write a history of the eventful period, and with this purpose, collected material for the undertaking, and already had a large part of the work in manuscript. She finished the writing in Florence, and much value was set upon it both by herself and by her friends in Italy. Mrs. Story says, "in the estimation of most of those who were in Italy at the time, the loss of Margaret's history and notes is a great and irreparable one. No one could have possessed so many avenues of direct information from both sides."

When the spring opened, it was decided to return to America, partly to negotiate directly with the publisher, but chiefly because, having exhausted her resources, Margaret's pen must henceforth be the main reliance of the little family. It is pathetic to know that, after their passage had been engaged, "letters came which, had they reached her a week earlier, would probably have induced them to remain in Italy."

They sailed, May 17, 1850, in a merchant vessel, the only other passengers being the baby's nurse and Mr. Horace Sumner, a younger brother of Senator Sumner. After a protracted and troubled voyage of two months, the vessel arrived off the coast of New Jersey, on July 18. The "weather was thick.... By nine p. m. there was a gale, by midnight a hurricane," and at four o'clock on the morning of July 19, the vessel grounded on the shallow sands of Fire Island. The captain had died of smallpox on the voyage; his widow, the mate in command of the vessel, and four seamen reached the shore; Mr. Sumner and the Ossolis perished. The cruel part of the tragedy is that it seems probable every soul on board might have been saved. Life-boats, only three miles away, did not arrive until noon; that is, after eight precious hours had passed. Moreover, in a moment of penitence, one of the life-boat crew said, "Oh, if we had known that any such persons of importance were on board, we should have done our best."

Margaret, the name by which she will always be known, had passed her fortieth birthday at sea on this voyage. It seems a short life in which to have crowded so much and such varied experience. She had some trials even in her youth, but for two-thirds of her existence, she might have been considered a favorite of fortune. In later life, she had some battles to fight, but her triumphs were great enough to dazzle a person with more modesty than was her endowment. She suffered in Italy, both for her child left to strangers in the mountains, and for her adopted country, but they were both causes, in which for her, suffering was a joy. She did not desire to survive her husband and child, nor to leave them behind, and, we may say, happily they all went together. "Her life seems to me," says Col. Higginson, "on the whole, a triumphant rather than a sad one," and that is a reasonable verdict, however difficult to render in the presence of such a tragedy as her untimely death.

VI
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

"Is this the little woman who made this great war!" exclaimed President Lincoln when, in 1862, Mrs. Stowe was introduced to him. There was but one woman in America to whom this could have been said without absurdity. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was so conspicuous a factor in bringing on the war which abolished American slavery that to credit these results to Mrs. Stowe was not fulsome flattery but graceful compliment.

There are two excellent biographies of Mrs. Stowe, one published in 1889, by her son, Rev. Charles E. Stowe, and one, in 1897, by Mrs. Annie Fields. That work will hardly need to be done again. The object of this sketch is to study the influences that moulded Mrs. Stowe, to present the salient features of her career, and, incidentally, to discover her characteristic qualities. Her fame rests upon her literary achievements, and these are comparatively well known. Her literary career can hardly be said to have begun until the age of forty and, if this were the only interest her life had for us, we could pass hastily over her youth. It will be found however that her religious development, begun prematurely with her fourth year and continued without consideration or discretion until at seventeen she became a chronic invalid, gives a kind of tragic interest to her earlier years. Her religious education may not have been unique; it may have been characteristic of much of the religious life of New England, but girls set at work upon the problems of their souls at the age of four have seldom attained the distinction of having their biographies written, so that one can study their history.