Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  By the time all these romances get to going, the system of teaching by parables, and opening one’s mouth in dark sayings, will be fully elaborated. Pilgrim’s Progress will be nowhere. The way to the celestial city will be as plain in everybody’s mind as the way up Broadway — and so much more interesting! Finally all science and all art will be explained, conducted, and directed by serial stories, till the present life and the life to come shall form only one grand romance. This will be about the time of the Millennium.

  Meanwhile, I have been furnishing a story for the Christian Union, and I chose the subject which is in everybody’s mind and mouth, discussed on every platform, ringing from everybody’s tongue, and coming home to every man’s business and bosom, to wit:

  MY WIFE AND I.

  I trust that Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, and all the prophetesses of our day, will remark the humility and propriety of my title. It is not I and My Wife — oh no! It is My Wife and I. What am I, and what is my father’s house, that I should go before my wife in anything?

  “But why specially for the Christian Union?” says Mr. Chadband. Let us in a spirit of Love inquire.

  Is it not evident why, O beloved? Is not that firm in human nature which stands under the title of MY WIFE and I, the oldest and most venerable form of Christian union on record? Where, I ask, will you find a better one? — a wiser, a stronger, a sweeter, a more universally popular and agreeable one?

  To be sure, there have been times and seasons when this ancient and respectable firm has been attacked as a piece of old fogyism, and various substitutes for it proposed. It has been said that “MY WIFE and I” denoted a selfish, close corporation inconsistent with a general, all-sided diffusive, universal benevolence; that MY WIFE and I, in a millennial community, had no particular rights in each other more than any of the thousands of the brethren and sisters of the human race. They have said, too, that MY WIFE AND I, instead of an indissoluble unity, were only temporary partners, engaged on time, with the liberty of giving three months’ notice, and starting off to a new firm.

  It is not thus that we understand the matter.

  MY WIFE AND I, as we understand it, is the sign and symbol of more than any earthly partnership or union — of something sacred as religion, indissoluble as the soul, endless as eternity — the symbol chosen by Almighty Love to represent his redeeming, eternal union with the soul of man. A fountain of eternal youth gushes near the hearth of every household. All men and women that have loved truly have had their romance in life — their poetry in existence.

  So I, in giving my history, disclaim all other sources of interest. Look not for trap-doors, or haunted houses, or deadly conspiracies, or murders, or concealed crimes, in this history, for you will not find one. You shall have simply and only the old story — old as the first chapter of Genesis —— of Adam stupid, desolate, and lonely without Eve, and how he sought and how he found her.

  Thus much, on mature consideration, I hold to be about the sum and substance of all the romances that have ever been written, and so long as there are new Adams and new Eves in each coming generation, it will not want for sympathetic listeners. —

  So I, Harry Henderson — a plain Yankee boy from the mountains of New Hampshire, and at present citizen of New York — commence my story.

  My experiences have three stages:

  First, My child-wife, or the experiences of childhood.

  Second, My shadow-wife, or the dreamland of the future.

  Third, my real wife, where I saw her, how I sought and found her.

  In pursuing a story simply and mainly of love and marriage, I am reminded of the saying of a respectable serving-man of European experiences, who, speaking of his position in a noble family, said it was not so much the wages that made it an object as “the things it enabled a gentleman to ‘pick up” So in our modern days, as we have been observing, it is not so much the story, as the things it gives the author a chance to say. The history of a young American man’s progress toward matrimony of course brings him among the most stirring and exciting topics of the day, where all that relates to the joint interests of man and woman has been thrown into the arena as an open question, and in relating our own experiences, we shall take occasion to keep up with the spirit of this discussing age in all these matters.

  PREFACE

  DURING the passage of this story through The Christian Union, it has been repeatedly taken for granted by the public press that certain of the characters are designed as portraits of really existing individuals.

  They are not. The supposition has its rise in an imperfect consideration of the principles of dramatic composition. The novel-writer does not profess to paint portraits of any individual men and women in his personal acquaintance. Certain characters are required for the purposes of his story. He conceives and creates them, and they become to him real living beings, acting and speaking in ways of their own. But on the other hand, he is guided in this creation by his knowledge and experience of men and women, and studies individual instances and incidents only to assure himself of the possibility and probability of the character he creates. If he succeeds in making the character real and natural, people often are led to identify it with some individual of their acquaintance. A slight incident, an anecdote, a paragraph in a paper, often furnishes the foundation of such a character; and the work of drawing it is like the process by which Professor Agassiz from one bone reconstructs the whole form of an unknown fish. But to apply to any single living person such delineation is a mistake, and might be a great wrong both to the author and to the person designated.

  For instance, it being the author’s purpose to show the embarrassment of the young champion of progressive principles, in meeting the excesses of modern reformers, it came in her way to paint the picture of the modern emancipated young woman of advanced ideas and free behavior. And this character has been mistaken for the portrait of an individual, drawn from actual observation. On the contrary, it was not the author’s intention to draw an individual, but simply to show the type of a class. Facts as to conduct and behavior similar to those she has described are unhappily too familiar to residents of New York. But in this as in other cases the author has simply used isolated facts in the construction of a dramatic character suited to the design of the story. If the readers of to-day will turn back to Miss Edgeworth’s Belinda, they will find that this style of manners, these assumptions and mode of asserting them, are no new things. In the character of Harriet Freke, Miss Edgeworth vividly portrays the manners and sentiments of the modern emancipated women of our times, who think themselves

  “Ne’er so sure our passion to create,

  As when they touch the brink of all we hate.”

  Certainly the author knows no original fully answering to the character of Mrs. Cerulean, though she has heard such an one described; and doubtless there are traits in her equally attributable to all fair enthusiasts who mistake the influence of their own personal charms and fascinations over the other sex for real superiority of intellect.

  There are happily several young women whose vigorous self-sustaining careers, in opening paths of usefulness alike for themselves and others, are like that of Ida Van Arsdel; and the true experiences of a lovely New York girl first suggested the character of Eva; yet both of them are, in execution, strictly imaginary paintings, adapted to the story. In short, some real character, or, in many cases, some two or three, furnish the germs, but the germs only, out of which new characters are developed.

  In close: The author wishes to dedicate this Story to the many dear, bright young girls whom she is so happy as to number among her choicest friends. No matter what the critics say of it, if they like it; and she hopes from them, at least, a favorable judgment.

  H. B. S.

  Twin-Mountain House, N. H October, 1871.

  CHAPTER I. MY CHILD-WIFE

  THE Bible says it is not good for man to be alone. This is a truth that has been borne in on my mind, with peculiar force, from the ear
liest of my recollection. In fact, when I was only seven years old I had selected my wife, and asked the paternal consent.

  You see, I was an unusually lonesome little fellow, because I belonged to the number of those unlucky waifs who come into this mortal life under circumstances when nobody wants or expects them. My father was a poor country minister in the mountains of New Hampshire with a salary of six hundred dollars, with nine children. I was the tenth. I was not expected; my immediate predecessor was five years of age, and the gossips of the neighborhood had already presented congratulations to my mother on having “done up her work in the forenoon,” and being ready to sit down to afternoon leisure. Her well-worn baby clothes were all given away, the cradle was peaceably consigned to the garret, and my mother was now regarded as without excuse if she did not preside at the weekly prayer-meeting, the monthly Maternal Association, and the Missionary meeting, and perform besides regular pastoral visitations among the good wives of her parish.

  No one, of course, ever thought of voting her any little extra salary on account of these public duties which absorbed so much time and attention from her perplexing domestic cares — rendered still more severe and onerous by my father’s limited salary. My father’s six hundred dollars, however, was considered by the farmers of the vicinity as being a princely income, which accounted satisfactorily for everything, and had he not been considered by them as “about the smartest man in the State,” they could not have gone up to such a figure. My mother was one of those gentle, soft-spoken, quiet little women who, like oil, permeate every crack and joint of life with smoothness. With a noiseless step, an almost shadowy movement, her hand and eye were everywhere. Her house was a miracle of neatness and order, her children of all ages and sizes under her perfect control, and the accumulations of labor of all descriptions which beset a great family where there are no servants all melted away under her hands as if by enchantment.

  She had a divine magic too, that mother of mine; if it be magic to commune daily with the supernatural. She had a little room all her own, where on a stand always lay open the great family Bible, and when work pressed hard and children were untoward, when sickness threatened, when the skeins of life were all crossways and tangled, she went quietly to that room, and kneeling over that Bible, took hold of a warm, healing, invisible hand, that made the crooked straight, and the rough places plain.

  “Poor Mrs. Henderson — another boy!” said the gossips on the day that I was born. “What a shame! poor woman. Well, I wish her joy!”

  But she took me to a warm bosom and bade God bless me! All that God, sent to her was treasure. “Who knows,” she said cheerily to my father, “this may be our brightest.”

  “God bless him!” said my father, kissing me and my mother, and then he returned to an important treatise which was to reconcile the decrees of God with the free agency of man, and which the event of my entrance into this world had interrupted for some hours. The sermon was a perfect success I am told, and nobody that heard it ever had a moment’s further trouble on that subject.

  As to me, my outfit for this world was of the scantest —— a few yellow flannel petticoats and a few slips run up from some of my older sisters’ cast-off white gowns were deemed sufficient.

  The first child in a family is its poem — it is a sort of nativity play, and we bend, before the young stranger, with gifts, “gold, frankincense, and myrrh.” But the tenth child in a poor family is prose, and gets simply what is due to comfort. There are no superfluities, no fripperies, no idealities about the tenth cradle.

  As I grew up I found myself rather a solitary little fellow in a great house, full of the bustle and noise and conflicting claims of older brothers and sisters, who had got the floor in the stage of life before me, and who were too busy with their own wants, schemes, and plans, to regard me. I was all very well so long as I kept within the limits of babyhood. They said I was the handsomest baby ever pertaining to the family establishment, and as long as that quality and condition lasted I was made a pet of. My sisters curled my golden locks and made me wonderful little frocks, and took me about to show me. But when I grew bigger, and the golden locks were sheared off and replaced by straight light hair, and I was inducted into jacket and pantaloons, cut down by Miss Abia Ferkin from my next brother’s last year’s suit, outgrown — then I was turned upon the world to shift for myself. Babyhood was over, and manhood not begun — I was to run the gauntlet of boyhood.

  My brothers and sisters were affectionate enough in their way, but had not the least sentiment, and, as I said before, they had each one their own concerns to look after. My eldest brother was in college, my next brother was fitting for college in a neighboring academy, and used to walk ten miles daily to his lessons and take his dinner with him. One of my older sisters was married, the two next were handsome lively girls, with a retinue of beaux, who of course took up a deal of their time and thoughts. The sister next before me was five years above me on the lists of life, and of course looked down on me as a little boy unworthy of her society. When her two or three chattering girl friends came to see her and they had their dolls and their baby-houses to manage, I was always in the way. They laughed at my awkwardness, criticised my nose, my hair, and my ears to my face, with that feminine freedom by which the gentler sex joy to put down the stronger one when they have it at advantage. I used often to retire from their society swelling with impotent wrath, at their free comments. “I won’t play with you,” I would exclaim. “Nobody wants you,” would be the rejoinder. “We’ve been wanting to be rid of you this good while.”

  But as I was a stout little fellow, my elders thought it advisable to devolve on me any such tasks and errands as interfered with their comfort. I was sent to the store when the wind howled and the frost bit, and my brothers and sisters preferred a warm corner. “He ‘s only a boy, he can go, or he can do, or he can wait,” was always the award of my sisters.

  My individual pursuits, and my own little stock of interests, were of course of no account. I was required to be in a perfectly free, disengaged state of mind, and ready to drop everything at a moment’s warning from any of my half-dozen seniors. “Here, Hal, run down cellar and get me a dozen apples,” my brother would say, just as I had half built a block house. “Harry, run upstairs and get the book I left on the bed — Harry, run out to the barn and get the rake I left there — Here, Harry, carry this up garret — Harry, run out to the tool shop and get that” — were sounds constantly occurring — breaking up my private cherished little enterprises of building cob houses, making milldams and bridges, or loading carriages, or driving horses. Where is the mature Christian who could bear with patience the interruptions and crosses in his daily schemes that beset a boy?

  Then there were for me dire mortifications and bitter disappointments. If any company came and the family board was filled and the cake and preserves brought out, and gay conversation made my heart bound with special longings to be in at the fun, I heard them say, “No need to set a plate for Harry — he can just as well wait till after.” I can recollect many a serious deprivation of mature life that did not bring such bitterness of soul as that sentence of exclusion. Then when my sister’s admirer, Sam Richards, was expected, and the best parlor fire lighted, and the hearth swept, how I longed to sit up and hear his funny stories, how I hid in dark corners, and lay off in shadowy places, hoping to escape notice and so avoid the activity of the domestic police. But no, “Mamma, mustn’t Harry go to bed?” was the busy outcry of my sisters, desirous to have the deck cleared for action, and superfluous members finally disposed of.

  Take it for all in all — I felt myself, though not wanting in the supply of any physical necessity, to be somehow, as I said, a very lonesome little fellow in the world. In all that busy, lively, gay, bustling household I had no mate.

  “I think we must send Harry to school,” said my mother, gently, to my father, when I had vented this complaint in her maternal bosom. “Poor little fellow, he is an odd one! — the
re isn’t exactly any one in the house for him to mate with!”

  So to school I was sent, with a clean checked apron, drawn up tight in my neck, and a dinner basket, and a brown towel on which I was to be instructed in the wholesome practice of sewing. I went, trembling and blushing, with many an apprehension of the big boys who had promised to thrash me when I came; but the very first day I was made blessed in the vision of my little child-wife, Susie Morril.

  Such a pretty, neat little figure as she was! I saw her first standing in the school-room door. Her cheeks and neck were like wax; her eyes clear blue; and when she smiled, two little dimples flitted in and out on her cheeks, like those in a sunny brook. She was dressed in a pink gingham frock, with a clean white apron fitted trimly about her little round neck. She was her mother’s only child, and always daintily dressed.

  “O Susie dear,” said my mother, who had me by the hand, “I’ve brought a little boy here to school, who will be a mate for you.”