Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Revealed the warm heart of the man

  Beneath the creed-bound Puritan,

  And taught the kinship of the love

  Of man below and God above;

  To her whose vigorous pencil-strokes

  Sketched into life her Oldtown Folks,

  Whose fireside stories, grave or gay,

  In quaint Sam Lawson’s vagrant way,

  With Old New England’s flavor rife,

  Waifs from her rude idyllic life,

  Are racy as the legends old

  By Chaucer or Boccaccio told;

  To her who keeps, through change of place

  And time, her native strength and grace,

  Alike where warm Sorrento smiles,

  Or where, by birchen-shaded isles

  Whose summer winds have shivered o’er

  The icy drift of Labrador,

  She lifts to light the priceless Pearl

  Of Harpswell’s angel-beckoned girl.

  To her at threescore years and ten

  Be tributes of the tongue and pen,

  Be honor, praise, and heart thanks given,

  The loves of earth, the hopes of heaven!

  ”Ah, dearer than the praise that stirs

  The air to-day, our love is hers!

  She needs no guaranty of fame

  Whose own is linked with Freedom’s name.

  Long ages after ours shall keep

  Her memory living while we sleep;

  The waves that wash our gray coast lines,

  The winds that rock the Southern pines

  Shall sing of her; the unending years

  Shall tell her tale in unborn ears.

  And when, with sins and follies past,

  Are numbered color-hate and caste,

  White, black, and red shall own as one.

  The noblest work by woman done.”

  It was followed by a few words from Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who also read the subjoined as his contribution to the chorus of congratulation: —

  ”If every tongue that speaks her praise

  For whom I shape my tinkling phrase

  Were summoned to the table,

  The vocal chorus that would meet

  Of mingling accents harsh or sweet,

  From every land and tribe, would beat

  The polyglots of Babel.”

  ”Briton and Frenchman, Swede and Dane,

  Turk, Spaniard, Tartar of Ukraine,

  Hidalgo, Cossack, Cadi,

  High Dutchman and Low Dutchman, too,

  The Russian serf, the Polish Jew,

  Arab, Armenian, and Mantchoo

  Would shout, ‘We know the lady.’”

  ”Know her! Who knows not Uncle Tom

  And her he learned his gospel from,

  Has never heard of Moses;

  Full well the brave black hand we know

  That gave to freedom’s grasp the hoe

  That killed the weed that used to grow

  Among the Southern roses.”

  ”When Archimedes, long ago,

  Spoke out so grandly, ‘Dos pou sto, —

  Give me a place to stand on,

  I’ll move your planet for you, now,’ —

  He little dreamed or fancied how

  The sto at last should find its pou

  For woman’s faith to land on.”

  ”Her lever was the wand of art,

  Her fulcrum was the human heart,

  Whence all unfailing aid is;

  She moved the earth! Its thunders pealed.

  Its mountains shook, its temples reeled,

  The blood-red fountains were unsealed,

  And Moloch sunk to Hades.”

  ”All through the conflict, up and down

  Marched Uncle Tom and Old John Brown,

  One ghost, one form ideal;

  And which was false and which was true,

  And which was mightier of the two,

  The wisest sibyl never knew,

  For both alike were real.”

  ”Sister, the holy maid does well

  Who counts her beads in convent cell,

  Where pale devotion lingers;

  But she who serves the sufferer’s needs,

  Whose prayers are spelt in loving deeds,

  May trust the Lord will count her beads

  As well as human fingers.

  ”When Truth herself was Slavery’s slave

  Thy hand the prisoned suppliant gave

  The rainbow wings of fiction.

  And Truth who soared descends to-day

  Bearing an angel’s wreath away,

  Its lilies at thy feet to lay

  With heaven’s own benediction.”

  Poems written for the occasion by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney, Miss Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Mr. J. T. Trowbridge, Mrs. Allen (Mrs. Stowe’s daughter), Mrs. Annie Fields, and Miss Charlotte F. Bates, were also read, and speeches were made by Judge Albion W. Tourgee and others prominent in the literary world.

  Letters from many noted people, who were prevented from being present by distance or by other engagements, had been received. Only four of them were read, but they were all placed in Mrs. Stowe’s hands. The exercises were closed by a few words from Mrs. Stowe herself. As she came to the front of the platform the whole company rose, and remained standing until she had finished. In her quiet, modest, way, and yet so clearly as to be plainly heard by all, she said: —

  “I wish to say that I thank all my friends from my heart, — that is all. And one thing more, — and that is, if any of you have doubt, or sorrow, or pain, if you doubt about this world, just remember what God has done; just remember that this great sorrow of slavery has gone, gone by forever. I see it every day at the South. I walk about there and see the lowly cabins. I see these people growing richer and richer. I see men very happy in their lowly lot; but, to be sure, you must have patience with them. They are not perfect, but have their faults, and they are serious faults in the view of white people. But they are very happy, that is evident, and they do know how to enjoy themselves, — a great deal more than you do. An old negro friend in our neighborhood has got a new, nice two-story house, and an orange grove, and a sugar-mill. He has got a lot of money, besides. Mr. Stowe met him one day, and he said, ‘I have got twenty head of cattle, four head of “hoss,” forty head of hen, and I have got ten children, all mine, every one mine.’ Well, now, that is a thing that a black man could not say once, and this man was sixty years old before he could say it. With all the faults of the colored people, take a man and put him down with nothing but his hands, and how many could say as much as that? I think they have done well.

  “A little while ago they had at his house an evening festival for their church, and raised fifty dollars. We white folks took our carriages, and when we reached the house we found it fixed nicely. Every one of his daughters knew how to cook. They had a good place for the festival. Their suppers were spread on little white tables with nice clean cloths on them. People paid fifty cents for supper. They got between fifty and sixty dollars, and had one of the best frolics you could imagine. They had also for supper ice-cream, which they made themselves.

  “That is the sort of thing I see going on around me. Let us never doubt. Everything that ought to happen is going to happen.”

  Mrs. Stowe’s public life ends with the garden party, and little more remains to be told. She had already, in 1880, begun the task of selection from the great accumulation of letters and papers relating to her life, and writes thus to her son in Saco, Maine, regarding the work: —

  September 30, 1880.

  MY DEAR CHARLEY, — My mind has been with you a great deal lately. I have been looking over and arranging my papers with a view to sifting out those that are not worth keeping, and so filing and arranging those that are to be kept, that my heirs and assigns may with the less trouble know where and what they are. I cannot describe (to you) the peculiar feelings which this review occasions. Reading old letters — when so many of the writers are g
one from earth, seems to me like going into the world of spirits — letters full of the warm, eager, anxious, busy life, that is forever past. My own letters, too, full of by-gone scenes in my early life and the childish days of my children. It is affecting to me to recall things that strongly moved me years ago, that filled my thoughts and made me anxious when the occasion and emotion have wholly vanished from my mind. But I thank God there is one thing running through all of them from the time I was thirteen years old, and that is the intense unwavering sense of Christ’s educating, guiding presence and care. It is all that remains now. The romance of my youth is faded, it looks to me now, from my years, so very young — those days when my mind only lived in emotion, and when my letters never were dated, because they were only histories of the internal, but now that I am no more and never can be young in this world, now that the friends of those days are almost all in eternity, what remains?

  Through life and through death, through sorrowing, through sinning,

  Christ shall suffice me as he hath sufficed.

  Christ is the end and Christ the beginning,

  The beginning and end of all is Christ.

  I was passionate in my attachments in those far back years, and as I have looked over files of old letters, they are all gone (except one, C. Van Rensselaer), Georgiana May, Delia Bacon, Clarissa Treat, Elisabeth Lyman, Sarah Colt, Elisabeth Phenix, Frances Strong, Elisabeth Foster. I have letters from them all, but they have been long in spirit land and know more about how it is there than I do. It gives me a sort of dizzy feeling of the shortness of life and nearness of eternity when I see how many that I have traveled with are gone within the veil. Then there are all my own letters, written in the first two years of marriage, when Mr. Stowe was in Europe and I was looking forward to motherhood and preparing for it — my letters when my whole life was within the four walls of my nursery, my thoughts absorbed by the developing character of children who have now lived their earthly life and gone to the eternal one, — my two little boys, each in their way good and lovely, whom Christ has taken in youth, and my little one, my first Charley, whom He took away before he knew sin or sorrow, — then my brother George and sister Catherine, the one a companion of my youth, the other the mother who assumed the care of me after I left home in my twelfth year — and they are gone. Then my blessed father, for many years so true an image of the Heavenly Father, — in all my afflictions he was afflicted, in all my perplexities he was a sure and safe counselor, and he too is gone upward to join the angelic mother whom I scarcely knew in this world, who has been to me only a spiritual presence through life.

  In 1882 Mrs. Stowe writes to her son certain impressions derived from reading the “Life and Letters of John Quincy Adams,” which are given as containing a retrospect of the stormy period of her own life- experience.

  “Your father enjoys his proximity to the Boston library. He is now reading the twelve or fourteen volumes of the life and diary of John Q. Adams. It is a history of our country through all the period of slavery usurpation that led to the war. The industry of the man in writing is wonderful. Every day’s doings in the house are faithfully daguerreotyped, — all the mean tricks, contrivances of the slave-power, and the pusillanimity of the Northern members from day to day recorded. Calhoun was then secretary of state. Under his connivance even the United States census was falsified, to prove that freedom was bad for negroes. Records of deaf, dumb, and blind, and insane colored people were distributed in Northern States, and in places where John Q. Adams had means of proving there were no negroes. When he found that these falsified figures had been used with the English embassador as reasons for admitting Texas as a slave State, the old man called on Calhoun, and showed him the industriously collected proofs of the falsity of this census. He says: ‘He writhed like a trodden rattlesnake, but said the census was full of mistakes; but one part balanced another, — it was not worth while to correct them.’ His whole life was an incessant warfare with the rapidly advancing spirit of slavery, that was coiling like a serpent around everything.

  “At a time when the Southerners were like so many excited tigers and rattlesnakes, — when they bullied, and scoffed, and sneered, and threatened, this old man rose every day in his place, and, knowing every parliamentary rule and tactic of debate, found means to make himself heard. Then he presented a petition from negroes, which raised a storm of fury. The old man claimed that the right of petition was the right of every human being. They moved to expel him. By the rules of the house a man, before he can be expelled, may have the floor to make his defense. This was just what he wanted. He held the floor for fourteen days, and used his wonderful powers of memory and arrangement to give a systematic, scathing history of the usurpations of slavery; he would have spoken fourteen days more, but his enemies, finding the thing getting hotter and hotter, withdrew their motion, and the right of petition was gained.

  “What is remarkable in this journal is the minute record of going to church every Sunday, and an analysis of the text and sermon. There is something about these so simple, so humble, so earnest. Often differing from the speaker — but with gravity and humility — he seems always to be so self-distrustful; to have such a sense of sinfulness and weakness, but such trust in God’s fatherly mercy, as is most beautiful to see. Just the record of his Sunday sermons, and his remarks upon them, would be most instructive to a, preacher. He was a regular communicant, and, beside, attended church on Christmas and Easter, — I cannot but love the old man. He died without seeing even the dawn of liberty which God has brought; but oh! I am sure he sees it from above. He died in the Capitol, in the midst of his labors, and the last words he said were, ‘This is the last of earth; I am content.’ And now, I trust, he is with God.

  “All, all are gone. All that raged; all that threatened; all the cowards that yielded; truckled, sold their country for a mess of pottage; all the men that stood and bore infamy and scorn for the truth; all are silent in dust; the fight is over, but eternity will never efface from their souls whether they did well or ill — whether they fought bravely or failed like cowards. In a sense, our lives are irreparable. If we shrink, if we fail, if we choose the fleeting instead of the eternal, God may forgive us; but there must be an eternal regret! This man lived for humanity when hardest bestead; for truth when truth was unpopular; for Christ when Christ stood chained and scourged in the person of the slave.”

  In the fall of 1887 she writes to her brother Rev. Dr. Edward Beecher of Brooklyn, N. Y.: —

  49 FOREST STREET, HARTFORD, CONN., October 11, 1887.

  Dear Brother, — I was delighted to receive your kind letter. You were my earliest religious teacher; your letters to me while a school- girl in Hartford gave me a high Christian aim and standard which I hope I have never lost. Not only did they do me good, but also my intimate friends, Georgiana May and Catherine Cogswell, to whom I read them. The simplicity, warmth, and childlike earnestness of those school days I love to recall. I am the only one living of that circle of early friends. Not one of my early schoolmates is living, — and now Henry, younger by a year or two than I, has gone — my husband also. [Footnote: Professor Stowe died August, 1886.] I often think, Why am I spared? Is there yet anything for me to do? I am thinking with my son Charles’s help of writing a review of my life, under the title, “Pebbles from the Shores of a Past Life.”

  Charlie told me that he has got all written up to my twelfth or thirteenth year, when I came to be under sister Catherine’s care in Hartford. I am writing daily my remembrances from that time. You were then, I think, teacher of the Grammar School in Hartford. . . .

  So, my dear brother, let us keep good heart; no evil can befall us. Sin alone is evil, and from that Christ will keep us. Our journey is so short!

  I feel about all things now as I do about the things that happen in a hotel, after my trunk is packed to go home. I may be vexed and annoyed . . . but what of it! I am going home soon.

  Your affectionate sister,

  Hattie.


  To a friend she writes a little later: —

  “I have thought much lately of the possibility of my leaving you all and going home. I am come to that stage of my pilgrimage that is within sight of the River of Death, and I feel that now I must have all in readiness day and night for the messenger of the King. I have sometimes had in my sleep strange perceptions of a vivid spiritual life near to and with Christ, and multitudes of holy ones, and the joy of it is like no other joy, — it cannot be told in the language of the world. What I have then I know with absolute certainty, yet it is so unlike and above anything we conceive of in this world that it is difficult to put it into words. The inconceivable loveliness of Christ! It seems that about Him there is a sphere where the enthusiasm of love is the calm habit of the soul, that without words, without the necessity of demonstrations of affection, heart beats to heart, soul answers soul, we respond to the Infinite Love, and we feel his answer in us, and there is no need of words. All seemed to be busy coming and going on ministries of good, and passing each gave a thrill of joy to each as Jesus, the directing soul, the centre of all, ‘over all, in all, and through all,” was working his beautiful and merciful will to redeem and save. I was saying as I awoke: —

  “‘‘T is joy enough, my all in all,

  At thy dear feet to lie.

  Thou wilt not let me lower fall,

  And none can higher fly.’

  “This was but a glimpse; but it has left a strange sweetness in my mind.”

  INDEX

  ABBOTT, Mr. and Mrs. Jacob

  Aberdeen, reception in,

  Abolition, English meetings in favor of,

  Abolition sentiment, growth of,

  Abolitionism made fashionable

  Adams, John Quincy, crusade of, against slavery, holds floor of Congress fourteen days, his religious life and trust, died without seeing dawn of liberty, life and letters of,

  “Agnes of Sorrento,” first draft of, date of, Whittier’s praise of,

  “Alabama Planter,” savage attack of, on H. B. S.

  Albert, Prince, Mrs. Stowe’s letter to, his reply, meeting with, death,

  America, liberty in, Ruskin on,

  American novelist, Lowell on the

  Andover, Mass., beauty of, Stowe family settled in,