Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe
Page 828
* * * * *
LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
’BRIGHTON, April 8, 1855.
. . . . ‘The book which has interested me most, lately, is that on “Mosaism,” translated by Miss Goldsmid, and which I read, as you will believe, without any Christian (unchristian?) prejudice. The missionaries of the Unity were always, from my childhood, regarded by me as in that sense the people; and I believe they were true to that mission, though blind, intellectually, in demanding the crucifixion. The present aspect of Jewish opinions, as shown in that book, is all but Christian. The author is under the error of taking, as the representatives of Christianity, the Mystics, Ascetics, and Quietists; and therefore he does not know how near he is to the true spirit of the gospel. If you should happen to see Miss Goldsmid, pray tell her what a great service I think she has rendered to us soi-disant Christians in translating a book which must make us sensible of the little we have done, and the much we have to do, to justify our preference of the later to the earlier dispensation.’ . . .
* * * * *
LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
BRIGHTON, April 11, 1855.
‘You appear to have more definite information respecting “The Review” than I have obtained . . . It was also said that “The Review” would, in fact, be “The Prospective” amplified, — not satisfactory to me, because I have always thought that periodical too Unitarian, in the sense of separating itself from other Christian churches, if not by a high wall, at least by a wire-gauze fence. Now, separation is to me the αιρεσις. The revelation through Nature never separates: it is the revelation through the Book which separates. Whewell and Brewster would have been one, had they not, I think, equally dimmed their lamps of science when reading their Bibles. As long as we think a truth better for being shut up in a text, we are not of the wide-world religion, which is to include all in one fold: for that text will not be accepted by the followers of other books, or students of the same; and separation will ensue. The Christian Scripture should be dear to us, not as the charter of a few, but of mankind; and to fashion it into cages is to deny its ultimate objects. These thoughts hot, like the roll at breakfast, where your letter was so welcome an addition.’
THREE DOMESTIC POEMS BY LORD BYRON.
FARE THEE WELL.
Fare thee well! and if for ever,
Still for ever fare thee well!
Even though unforgiving, never
‘Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.
Would that breast were bared before thee
Where thy head so oft hath lain,
While that placid sleep came o’er thee
Which thou ne’er canst know again!
Would that breast, by thee glanced over,
Every inmost thought could show!
Then thou wouldst at last discover
’Twas not well to spurn it so.
Though the world for this commend thee,
Though it smile upon the blow,
Even its praises must offend thee,
Founded on another’s woe.
Though my many faults defaced me,
Could no other arm be found,
Than the one which once embraced me,
To inflict a cureless wound?
Yet, oh! yet, thyself deceive not:
Love may sink by slow decay;
But, by sudden wrench, believe not
Hearts can thus be torn away:
Still thine own its life retaineth;
Still must mine, though bleeding, beat
And the undying thought which paineth
Is — that we no more may meet.
These are words of deeper sorrow
Than the wail above the dead:
Both shall live, but every morrow
Wake us from a widowed bed.
And when thou wouldst solace gather,
When our child’s first accents flow,
Wilt thou teach her to say ‘Father,’
Though his care she must forego?
When her little hand shall press thee,
When her lip to thine is pressed,
Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee;
Think of him thy love had blessed.
Should her lineaments resemble
Those thou never more mayst see,
Then thy heart will softly tremble
With a pulse yet true to me.
All my faults, perchance, thou knowest;
All my madness none can know:
All my hopes, where’er thou goest,
Wither; yet with thee they go.
Every feeling hath been shaken:
Pride, which not a world could bow,
Bows to thee, by thee forsaken;
Even my soul forsakes me now.
But ’tis done: all words are idle;
Words from me are vainer still;
But the thoughts we cannot bridle
Force their way without the will.
Fare thee well! — thus disunited,
Torn from every nearer tie,
Seared in heart, and lone and blighted,
More than this I scarce can die.
A SKETCH.
Born in the garret, in the kitchen bred;
Promoted thence to deck her mistress’ head;
Next — for some gracious service unexpress’d,
And from its wages only to be guessed —
Raised from the toilette to the table, where
Her wondering betters wait behind her chair,
With eye unmoved, and forehead unabashed,
She dines from off the plate she lately washed.
Quick with the tale, and ready with the lie,
The genial confidante and general spy,
Who could, ye gods! her next employment guess? —
An only infant’s earliest governess!
She taught the child to read, and taught so well,
That she herself, by teaching, learned to spell.
An adept next in penmanship she grows,
As many a nameless slander deftly shows:
What she had made the pupil of her art,
None know; but that high soul secured the heart,
And panted for the truth it could not hear,
With longing breast and undeluded ear.
Foiled was perversion by that youthful mind,
Which flattery fooled not, baseness could not blind,
Deceit infect not, near contagion soil,
Indulgence weaken, nor example spoil,
Nor mastered science tempt her to look down
On humbler talents with a pitying frown,
Nor genius swell, nor beauty render vain,
Nor envy ruffle to retaliate pain,
Nor fortune change, pride raise, nor passion bow,
Nor virtue teach austerity, till now.
Serenely purest of her sex that live;
But wanting one sweet weakness, — to forgive;
Too shocked at faults her soul can never know,
She deems that all could be like her below:
Foe to all vice, yet hardly Virtue’s friend;
For Virtue pardons those she would amend.
But to the theme, now laid aside too long, —
The baleful burthen of this honest song.
Though all her former functions are no more,
She rules the circle which she served before.
If mothers — none know why — before her quake;
If daughters dread her for the mothers’ sake;
If early habits — those false links, which bind
At times the loftiest to the meanest mind —
Have given her power too deeply to instil
The angry essence of her deadly will;
If like a snake she steal within your walls
Till the black slime betray her as she crawls;
If like a viper to the heart she wind,
And leave the venom there she did not find,
What marvel that this hag of hatred
works
Eternal evil latent as she lurks,
To make a Pandemonium where she dwells,
And reign the Hecate of domestic hells?
Skilled by a touch to deepen scandal’s tints
With all the kind mendacity of hints,
While mingling truth with falsehood, sneers with smiles,
A thread of candour with a web of wiles;
A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken seeming,
To hide her bloodless heart’s soul-hardened scheming;
A lip of lies; a face formed to conceal,
And, without feeling, mock at all who feel;
With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown;
A cheek of parchment, and an eye of stone.
Mark how the channels of her yellow blood
Ooze to her skin, and stagnate there to mud!
Cased like the centipede in saffron mail,
Or darker greenness of the scorpion’s scale,
(For drawn from reptiles only may we trace
Congenial colours in that soul or face,) —
Look on her features! and behold her mind
As in a mirror of itself defined.
Look on the picture! deem it not o’ercharged;
There is no trait which might not be enlarged:
Yet true to ‘Nature’s journeymen,’ who made
This monster when their mistress left off trade,
This female dog-star of her little sky,
Where all beneath her influence droop or die.
O wretch without a tear, without a thought,
Save joy above the ruin thou hast wrought!
The time shall come, nor long remote, when thou
Shalt feel far more than thou inflictest now, —
Feel for thy vile self-loving self in vain,
And turn thee howling in unpitied pain.
May the strong curse of crushed affections light
Back on thy bosom with reflected blight,
And make thee, in thy leprosy of mind,
As loathsome to thyself as to mankind,
Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate
Black as thy will for others would create:
Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust,
And thy soul welter in its hideous crust!
Oh, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed,
The widowed couch of fire, that thou hast spread!
Then, when thou fain wouldst weary Heaven with prayer,
Look on thine earthly victims, and despair!
Down to the dust! and, as thou rott’st away,
Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay.
But for the love I bore, and still must bear,
To her thy malice from all ties would tear,
Thy name, thy human name, to every eye
The climax of all scorn, should hang on high,
Exalted o’er thy less abhorred compeers,
And festering in the infamy of years.
LINES ON HEARING THAT LADY BYRON WAS ILL.
And thou wert sad, yet I was not with thee!
And thou wert sick, and yet I was not near!
Methought that joy and health alone could be
Where I was not, and pain and sorrow here.
And is it thus? It is as I foretold,
And shall be more so; for the mind recoils
Upon itself, and the wrecked heart lies cold,
While heaviness collects the shattered spoils.
It is not in the storm nor in the strife
We feel benumbed, and wish to be no more,
But in the after-silence on the shore,
When all is lost except a little life.
I am too well avenged! But ’twas my right:
Whate’er my sins might be, thou wert not sent
To be the Nemesis who should requite;
Nor did Heaven choose so near an instrument.
Mercy is for the merciful! — if thou
Hast been of such, ‘twill be accorded now.
Thy nights are banished from the realms of sleep!
Yes! they may flatter thee; but thou shalt feel
A hollow agony which will not heal;
For thou art pillowed on a curse too deep:
Thou hast sown in my sorrow, and must reap
The bitter harvest in a woe as real!
I have had many foes, but none like thee;
For ‘gainst the rest myself I could defend,
And be avenged, or turn them into friend;
But thou in safe implacability
Hadst nought to dread, in thy own weakness shielded;
And in my love, which hath but too much yielded,
And spared, for thy sake, some I should not spare.
And thus upon the world, — trust in thy truth,
And the wild fame of my ungoverned youth,
On things that were not and on things that are, —
Even upon such a basis hast thou built
A monument, whose cement hath been guilt;
The moral Clytemnestra of thy lord,
And hewed down, with an unsuspected sword,
Fame, peace, and hope, and all the better life,
Which, but for this cold treason of thy heart,
Might still have risen from out the grave of strife,
And found a nobler duty than to part.
But of thy virtues didst thou make a vice,
Trafficking with them in a purpose cold,
For present anger and for future gold,
And buying others’ grief at any price.
And thus, once entered into crooked ways,
The early truth, which was thy proper praise,
Did not still walk beside thee, but at times,
And with a breast unknowing its own crimes,
Deceit, averments incompatible,
Equivocations, and the thoughts which dwell
In Janus-spirits; the significant eye
Which learns to lie with silence; the pretext
Of prudence, with advantages annexed;
The acquiescence in all things which tend,
No matter how, to the desired end, —
All found a place in thy philosophy.
The means were worthy, and the end is won:
I would not do by thee as thou hast done!
PALMETTO-LEAVES
Palmetto Leaves is a travel guide and memoir first published in 1873 by James R. Osgood. The book is about the winters Stowe spent in Florida, which she visited for nearly twenty years. Sections of the work detail the author’s efforts to build a school and church in Mandarin. Stowe’s deep religious beliefs resulted in her considering it her duty to try to help those she thought needed assistance to improve their lives. In Florida, Stowe believed this to be the emancipated slaves and some of her descriptions combined with her condescending attitude towards African Americans are incredibly offensive. The book also contains facts about Florida’s climate and correspondence with friends, strangers and relatives about whether moving to the state would be advisable. Stowe decided to purchase a plantation in 1866 for her son Fred to live on and then manage, while he was recuperating from a head injury sustained during the Civil War. However, within a year the plantation failed, due to poor management, in part, stemming from Fred’s struggle with alcoholism, but also his lack of knowledge about running the land. Stowe soon purchased a cottage and an attached orange grove and between 1868 and 1884 she spent her winters there, enjoying the culture, climate and quiet the house offered to her.
Palmetto Leaves contains twenty chapters, some of which address a general reader that may wish to move to Florida, whilst other chapters chronicle Stowe’s daily life in Mandarin and the final two letters detail the condition, state and lives of emancipated slaves. At the time the author was writing, there had been very little literature on the climate or environment in Florida and much of the state was still an unpopulated wilderness. While Stowe did not portray the state as a parad
ise or the most perfect location imaginable, her book did essentially function as an advertisement for the area. The work sold well upon release and went through several editions and two years after publication Stowe encountered hundreds of tourists who flocked to her house in Mandarin, while thousands more visited Florida after the release of her book.
The original title page
CONTENTS
NOBODY’S DOG.
A FLOWERY JANUARY IN FLORIDA.
THE WRONG SIDE OF THE TAPESTRY.
A LETTER TO THE GIRLS.
PICNICKING UP JULINGTON.
MAGNOLIA.
YELLOW JESSAMINES.
“FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS.”
SWAMPS AND ORANGE-TREES.
LETTER-WRITING.
MAGNOLIA WEEK.
BUYING LAND IN FLORIDA.
OUR EXPERIENCE IN CROPS.
MAY IN FLORIDA.
ST. AUGUSTINE.
OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY.
THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER.
OLD CUDJO AND THE ANGEL.
THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH.
Stowe’s Mandarin residence
MAP OF THE ST. JOHN RIVER, FLORIDA.
NOBODY’S DOG.
YES, here he comes again! Look at him! Whose dog is he? We are sitting around the little deck-house of the Savannah steamer, in that languid state of endurance which befalls voyagers, when, though the sky is clear, and the heavens blue, and the sea calm as a looking-glass, there is yet that gentle, treacherous, sliding rise and fall, denominated a ground-swell.
Reader, do you remember it? Of all deceitful demons of the deep, this same smooth, slippery, cheating ground-swell is the most diabolic. Because, you see, he is a mean imp, an underhanded, unfair, swindling scamp, who takes from you all the glory of endurance. Fair to the eye, plausible as possible, he says to you, “What’s the matter? What can you ask brighter than this sky, smoother than this sea, more glossy and calm than these rippling waves? How fortunate that you have such an exceptionally smooth voyage!”