Daughters of the Puritans: A Group of Brief Biographies

by Seth Curtis Beach

Harriet, the second daughter and seventh child of Lyman Beecher and Roxanna Foote, was born in Litchfield, Conn., June 14, 1811. There were three Mrs. Lyman Beechers of whom Roxanna Foote was the first. The Footes were Episcopalians, Harriet, sister of Roxanna, being as Mrs. Stowe says, "the highest of High Churchwomen who in her private heart did not consider my father an ordained minister." Roxanna, perhaps not so high-church, held out for two years against Dr. Beecher's assaults upon her heart and then consented to become his wife.

Mrs. Beecher was a refined and cultivated lady who "read all the new works that were published at that day," numbered painting among her accomplishments, and whose house "was full of little works of ingenuity and taste and skill, which had been wrought by her hand: pictures of birds and flowers, done with minutest skill"; but her greatest charm was a religious nature full of all gentleness and sweetness. "In no exigency," says Dr. Beecher, "was she taken by surprise. She was just there, quiet as an angel above." There seems to have been but one thing which this saintly woman with an Episcopalian education could not do to meet the expectations of a Congregational parish, and that was that "in the weekly female prayer-meeting she could never lead the devotions"; but from this duty she seems to have been excused because of her known sensitiveness and timidity.

Mrs. Beecher died when Harriet was in her fourth year, but she left an indelible impression upon her family. Her "memory met us everywhere," says Mrs. Stowe; "when father wished to make an appeal to our hearts which he knew we could not resist, he spoke of mother." It had been the mother's prayer that her sons, of whom there were six, should be ministers, and ministers they all were. One incident Mrs. Stowe remembered which may be supposed to have set Sunday apart as a day of exceptional sanctity. It was that "of our all running and dancing out before her from the nursery to the sitting-room one Sabbath morning and her pleasant voice saying after us, 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.'" Such early religious impressions made upon the mind of a child of four would have faded in other surroundings, but it will be seen that Harriet's environment gave no rest to her little soul.

After the death of her mother, the child was sent to her grandmother Foote's for a long visit. There she fell to the charge of her aunt Harriet, than whom, we are told, "a more energetic human being never undertook the education of a child." According to her views, "little girls were to be taught to move very gently, to speak softly and prettily, to say 'Yes ma'am' and 'No ma'am,' never to tear their clothes, to sew and knit at regular hours, to go to church on Sunday and make all the responses, and to come home and be catechised. I remember those catechisings when she used to place my little cousin Mary and myself bolt upright at her knee while black Dinah and Harvey, the bound boy, were ranged at a respectful distance behind us.... I became a proficient in the Church catechism and gave my aunt great satisfaction by the old-fashioned gravity and steadiness with which I learned to repeat it." This early training in the catechism and the responses bore fruit in giving Mrs. Stowe a life-long fondness for the Episcopal service and ultimately in taking her into the Episcopal Church, of which during her last thirty years she was a communicant. Harriet signalized her fifth year by committing to memory twenty-seven hymns and "two long chapters of the Bible," and even more perhaps, by accidentally discovering in the attic a discarded volume of the "Arabian Nights," with which, she says, her fortune was made. It was a much more suitable child's book, one would think, than the Church catechism or Watts's hymns.

At the age of six Harriet passed to the care of the second Mrs. Lyman Beecher, formerly Harriet Porter, of Portland, Maine, apparently a lady of great dignity and character. "We felt," says Mrs. Stowe, "a little in awe of her, as if she were a strange princess rather than our own mamma; but her voice was very sweet, her ways of speaking and moving very graceful, and she took us up in her lap and let us play with her beautiful hands which seemed wonderful things, made of pearl and ornamented with strange rings." It appears she was a faithful mother, though a little severe and repressive. Henry Ward Beecher said of her: "She did the office-work of a mother if ever a mother did"; she "performed to the uttermost her duties, according to her ability"; she "was a woman of profound veneration rather than of a warm loving nature. Therefore her prayer was invariably a prayer of deep yearning reverence. I remember well the impression which it made on me. There was a mystic influence about it. A sort of sympathetic hold it had on me, but still I always felt when I went to prayer, as though I were going into a crypt, where the sun was not allowed to come; and I shrunk from it." To complete the portrait of this conscientious lady who was to have the supervision of Harriet from her sixth year, the following from a letter of one of the Beecher children is worth quoting: "Mamma is well and don't laugh any more than she did." Evidently a rather stern and sobering influence had come into the Beecher family.

"In her religion," says Mrs. Stowe, "she was distinguished by a most unfaltering Christ-worship.... Had it not been that Dr. Payson had set up and kept before her a tender, human, loving Christ, she would have been only a conscientious bigot. This image, however, gave softness and warmth to her religious life, and I have since noticed how her Christ-enthusiasm has sprung up in the hearts of all her children." This passage is of peculiar interest as it shows the source of what Mrs. Stowe loves to call the "Christ-worship" which characterized the religion of the younger Beechers. Writing at the age of seventeen, when her soul was tossing between Scylla and Charybdis, Harriet says: "I feel that I love God,—that is, that I love Christ"; and in 1876, writing of her brother Henry, she says, "He and I are Christ-worshippers, adoring him as the Image of the Invisible God." Her son refers us to the twenty-fourth chapter of the Minister's Wooing for a complete presentation of this subject "of Christ-worship." Mrs. Stowe speaks of this belief as a plain departure from ordinary Trinitarianism, as a kind of heresy which it has required some courage to hold. The heresy seems to have consisted in practically dropping the first and third persons in the Godhead and accepting Christ as the only God we know or need to consider.

As Mrs. Stowe during her adult life was an invalid, it is interesting to have Mrs. Beecher's testimony that, on her arrival, she was met by a lovely family of children and "with heartfelt gratitude," she says, "I observed how cheerful and healthy they were." When Harriet was ten years of age, she began to attend the Litchfield Academy and was recognized as one of its brightest pupils. She especially excelled in writing compositions and, at the age of twelve, her essay was one of two or three selected to be read at a school exhibition. After Harriet's had been read, Dr. Beecher turned to the teacher and asked, "Who wrote that composition?" "Your daughter, Sir," was the reply. "It was," says Mrs. Stowe, "the proudest moment of my life."

"Can the immortality of the soul be proved by the light of Nature?" was the subject of this juvenile composition, a strange choice for a girl of twelve summers; but in this family the religious climate was tropical, and forced development. As might have been expected, she easily proved that nothing of immortality could be known by the light of nature. She had been too well instructed to think otherwise. Dr. Beecher himself had no good opinion of 'the light of nature.' "They say," said he, "that everybody knows about God naturally. A lie. All such ideas are by teaching." If Harriet had taken the other side of her question and argued as every believer tries to to-day, she would have deserved some credit for originality. Nevertheless the form of her argument is remarkable for her years, and would not have dishonored Dr. Beecher's next sermon. This amazing achievement of a girl of twelve can be read in the Life of Mrs. Stowe by her son.

From the Litchfield Academy, Harriet was sent to the celebrated Female Seminary established by her sister Catharine at Hartford, Conn. She here began the study of Latin and, "at the end of the first year, made a translation of Ovid in verse which was read at the final exhibition of the school." It was her ambition to be a poet and she began a play called 'Cleon,' filling "blank book after blank book with this drama." Mrs. Fields prints six pages of this poem and the specimens have more than enough merit to convince one that the author might have attained distinction as a poet. Her energetic sister Catharine however put an end to this innocent diversion, saying that she must not waste her time writing poetry but discipline her mind upon Butler's Analogy. To enforce compliance, Harriet was assigned to teach the Analogy to a class of girls as old as herself, "being compelled to master each chapter just ahead of the class." This occupation, with Latin, French and Italian, sufficiently protected her from the dissipation of writing poetry.

Harriet remained in the Hartford school, as pupil and teacher, from her thirteenth to her twenty-third year. In her spiritual history, this was an important period. It may seem that her soul had hitherto not been neglected but as yet youth and a sunny nature had kept her from any agonies of Christian experience. Now her time had come. No one under the care of the stern Puritan, Catharine Beecher, would be suffered to forget her eternal interests. Both of Mrs. Stowe's biographers feel the necessity of making us acquainted with this masterful lady, "whose strong, vigorous mind and tremendous personality," says Mr. Stowe, "indelibly stamped themselves on the sensitive, dreamy, poetic nature of her younger sister."