Stowe, Harriet Beecher, twin daughter of H. B. S.
Stowe, Henry Ellis, first son of H. B. S.; goes to Europe; returns to enter Dartmouth; death of; his character; his portrait; mourning for.
Stowe, Samuel Charles, sixth child of H. B. S., birth of; death of; anguish at loss of; early death of.
Study, plans for a.
Sturge, Joseph, visit to.
Suffrage, universal, H. W. Beecher advocate of.
Sumner, Charles, on “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”; letter to H. B. S. from.
Sumter, Fort, H. W. Beecher raises flag on.
“Sunny Memories”; date of.
Sutherland, Duchess of; friend to America; at Stafford House presents gold bracelet; visit to; fine character; sympathy with on son’s death; warm welcome to H. B. S.; death of; letters from H. B. S. to, on “Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin”; on death of eldest son.
Sutherland, Lord, personal appearance of.
Swedenborg, weary messages from spirit-world of.
Swiss Alps, visit to; delight in.
Swiss interest in “Uncle Tom”.
Switzerland, H. B. S. in.
Sykes, Mrs. See May, Georgiana.
Talfourd, Mr. Justice.
Thackeray, W. M., Lowell on.
Thanksgiving Day in Washington, freed slaves celebrate.
“Times, London,” on “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”; on Mrs. Stowe’s new dress; on
“Dred”; Miss Martineau’s criticism on.
Titcomb, John, aids H. B. S. in moving.
Tourgée, Judge A. W., his speech at seventieth birthday.
Trevelyan, Lord and Lady; breakfast to Mrs. Stowe.
Triqueti, Baron de, models bust of H. B. S.
Trowbridge, J. T., writes on seventieth birthday.
“True Story of Lady Byron’s Life, The,” in “Atlantic Monthly”.
Tupper, M. F., calls on H. B. S.
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” description of Augustine St. Clair’s mother’s influence a simple reproduction of Mrs. Lyman Beecher’s influence; written under love’s impulse; fugitives’ escape, foundation of story; popular conception of author of; origin and inspiration of; Prof. Cairnes on; Uncle Tom’s death, conception of, letter to Douglas about facts, appears in the “Era,”, came from heart, a religious work, object of, its power, begins a serial in “National Era,” price paid by “Era,” publisher’s offer, first copy of books sold, wonderful success. praise from Longfellow, Whittier, Garrison, and Higginson, threatening letters, Eastman’s, Mrs., rejoinder to, reception in England, “Times,” on, political effect of, book tinder interdict in South, “Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Jenny Lind’s praise of, attack upon, Sampson Low upon its success abroad, first London publisher, number of editions sold in Great Britain and abroad, dramatized in U. S. and London, European edition, preface to, fact not fiction, translations of, German tribute to, George Sand’s review, remuneration for, written with heart’s blood, Swiss interest in, Mme. Belloe translates, “North American Review” on, in France, compared with “Dred,” J. R. Lowell on, Mrs. Stowe rereads after war, later books compared with, H. W. Beecher’s approval of, new edition with introduction sent to George Eliot, date of, Whittier’s mention of, in poem on seventieth birthday, Holmes’ tribute to, in poem on same occasion,
Upham, Mrs., kindness to H. B. S., visit to,
Venice,
Victoria, Queen, H. B. S.’s interview with, gives her picture to Geo.
Peabody,
Vizetelly, Henry, first London publisher of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,”
WAKEFIELD, reading at,
Walnut Hills, picture of, and old home revisited,
Waltham, audience inspires reader,
Washington, Mrs. Stowe visits soldier son at,
Washington on slavery,
Water cure, H. B. S. at,
“We and our Neighbors,” date of,
Webster, Daniel, famous speech of,
Weld, Theodore D. in the anti-slavery movement,
Western travel, discomforts of,
Whately, Archbishop, letter to H. B. S. from,
Whitney, A. D. T., writes poem on seventieth birthday,
Whitney, Eli, and the cotton gin,
Whittier’s “Ichabod,” a picture of Daniel Webster,
Whittier, J. G., letter to W. L. Garrison from, on “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin,” letter to H. B. S. from, on “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” on “Pearl of
Orr’s Island,” on “Minister’s Wooing,” poem on H. B. S’s. seventieth
birthday,
Windsor, visit to,
Womanhood, true, H. B. S. on intellect versus heart,
Woman’s rights, H. W. Beecher, advocate of,
Women of America, Appeal from H. B. S. to,
Women’s influence, power of,
ZANESVILLE, description of,
DAYS WITH MRS. STOWE by Annie Fields
In recalling Mrs. Stowe’s life, with the remembrance of what she has been to her friends, to her country, and to the world, I am overborne by the sense of a soul instinct from its early consciousness with power working in her beyond her own thought or knowledge or will. Her attitude seemed by nature to be that of contemplation. Her heart was like a burning coal laid upon the altar of humanity; and when she stole up, as it were, in the night and laid it down for the slave with tears and supplications, it awakened neither alarm nor wonder in her spirit that in the morning she saw a bright fire burning there and lighting the whole earth.
Mrs. Stowe had already passed through this great experience when I saw her for the first time in Italy. It was only a few weeks before the war against slavery was openly declared, and she was like one who having “done all” must now “stand.” This year indeed was one of the happiest of her life. She did not yet see the terrible feet of War already close upon us, yet she was convinced that the end of slavery was at hand. She was released at last from the toils which poverty had laid upon her overtasked body. Her children were with her, and she was enjoying, as few persons know how to enjoy, the loveliness of Italy. She delighted, too, in the congenial society of Mr. and Mrs. Browning and the agreeable friends who were that winter grouped around them. After her long trial and her years of suffering she was to have “her day” in the world of beauty and love which lay about her.
In one of her early letters to Georgiana May, in 1833, she says, speaking of some relaxation which had come to her friend: “How good it would be for me to be put into a place which so breaks up and precludes thought. Thought, intense emotional thought, has been my disease. How much good it might do me to be where I could not but be thoughtless.” This letter was written when she was twenty-two years old, and there had never been any respite in her life until those sweet Italian days of the winter of 1859 and ‘60.
It was only about a year later than the date of the above letter when the subject of slavery was first brought under her own observation during a brief visit in Kentucky. Her father had received a call in Boston, where he had been preaching for six years, to go to Cincinnati, which at that period was considered the far West and almost like banishment; but the call was one not to be refused; the need of such preaching as Dr. Beecher’s being greatly felt at that distant post. About a year after their arrival an invitation came to Harriet to cross the river and to see something of Kentucky in company with a young friend. She found herself on the estate which was later known as Colonel Shelby’s in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Her companion said later, in recalling their experience: “Harriet did not seem to notice anything in particular that happened, but sat most of the time as though abstracted in thought. When the negroes did funny things and cut up capers, she did not seem to pay the slightest attention to them. Afterwards, however, in reading Uncle Tom, I recognized scene after scene of that visit portrayed with the utmost fidelity, and knew at once where the material for that part of the story had been gathered.”
To show how completely her “style” was herself, there is a passage from one of h
er early letters describing her experience at Niagara which burns with her own fire. “Let me tell you,” she says, “if I can, what is unutterable…. I did not once think if it were high or low; whether it roared or didn’t roar…. My mind whirled off, it seemed to me, in a new strange world…. That rainbow, breaking out, trembling, fading, and again coming like a beautiful spirit walking the waters. Oh, it is lovelier than it is great; it is like the Mind that made it; great, but so veiled in beauty that we gaze without terror. I felt as if I could have gone over with the waters; it would be so beautiful a death; there would be no fear in it. I felt the rock tremble under me with a sort of joy. I was so maddened I could have gone, too, if that had gone.”
The first wife of Mr. Stowe was her most intimate friend, and his suffering at her death moved her to intense pity, which finally ripened into love. At the last moment of her maidenhood she wrote again to Georgiana May: “In about half an hour more your old friend, companion, schoolmate, sister, etc., will cease to be Hatty Beecher and change to nobody knows who. My dear, you are engaged and pledged in a year or two to encounter a similar fate, and do you wish to know how you shall feel? Well, my dear, I have been dreading and dreading the time, and lying awake all last week wondering how I should live through this overwhelming crisis, and lo! it has come and I feel nothing at all.”
Her marriage with Professor Stowe was a congenial one. He discovered very early what her career must be and wrote to her once during a brief absence: “God has written it in his book that you must be a literary woman, and who are we that we should contend against God?” His admiration for her was perfect, a feeling which she reciprocated in a somewhat different form. “I did not know,” she once wrote to him, “until I came away how much I was dependent upon you for information. There are a thousand favorite subjects on which I could talk with you better than with any one else. If you were not already my dearly loved husband, I should certainly fall in love with you.”
She can speak to him with an openness which she uses to no one else; she says, and in this sentence she gives the secret of much which has appeared inexplicable to the world: “One thing more in regard to myself. The absence and wandering of mind and forgetfulness that so often vexes you is a physical infirmity with me. It is the failing of a mind not calculated to endure a great pressure of care, and so much do I feel the pressure I am under, so much is my mind darkened and troubled by care that life seriously holds out few allurements, — only my children.” She used to say laughingly sometimes in later years, “My brother Henry and I are something like anacondas: we have our winter; when we are tired we curl up and disappear, within ourselves, as it were; nobody can get anything out of us; we move about and attend to our affairs and appear like other folks perhaps, but we are not there.”
The trouble was that no one could be prepared for these vanishings, not even herself. Perhaps a dinner company of invited guests were eagerly listening to her conversation, when at some suggestion of a new train of ideas, she would suddenly become silent and hardly speak again. Occasionally at a reception she would wander away, only to be found strolling about in the conservatory, if there were one, or quietly observant in some coign of vantage where she was not likely to be disturbed.
My first meeting with Mrs. Stowe found her in one of her absent moods. We were in Florence, and she was delighting herself in the fascinations of that lovely city. Not alone every day but every second as it passed was full of eager interest to her.
She could say with Thoreau, “I moments live who lived but years.” We had both been invited to a large reception, on a certain evening, in one of the old palaces on the Arno. There were music and dancing, and there were lively groups of ladies and gentlemen strolling from room to room, contrasting somewhat strangely in their gayety with the solemn pictures hanging on the walls, and a sense of shadowy presence which seems to haunt those dusky interiors. An odd discrepancy between the modern company and the surroundings, a weird mingling of the past and the present, made any apparition appear possible, and left room only for a faint thrill of surprise when a voice by my side said, “There is Mrs. Stowe.”
In a moment she approached and I was presented to her, and after a brief pause she passed on. All this was natural enough, but a wave of intense disappointment swept over me. Why had I found no words to express or even indicate the feeling that had choked me? Was the fault mine? Oh, yes, I said to myself, for I could not conceive it to be otherwise, and I looked upon my opportunity, the gift of the gods, as utterly and forever wasted. I was depressed and sorrowing over the vanishing of a presence I might perhaps never meet again, and no glamour of light, or music or pictures or friendly voices could recall any pleasure to my heart. Meanwhile, the unconscious object of all this disturbance was strolling quietly along, leaning on the arm of a friend, hardly ever speaking, followed by a group of traveling companions, and entirely absorbed in the gay scene around her. She was a small woman; and her pretty curling hair and far-away dreaming eyes, and her way of becoming occupied in what interested her until she forgot everything else for the time, all these I first began to see and understand as I gazed after her retreating figure.
Mrs. Stowe’s personal appearance has received scant justice and no mercy at the hand of the photographer. She says herself, during her triumphal visit to England after the publication of “Uncle Tom:” “The general topic of remark on meeting me seems to be that I am not so bad looking as they were afraid I was; and I do assure you, when I have seen the things that are put up in the shop windows here with my name under them, I have been lost in wondering imagination at the boundless loving-kindness of my English and Scottish friends in keeping up such a warm heart for such a Gorgon. I should think that the Sphinx in the London Museum might have sat for most of them. I am going to make a collection of these portraits to bring home to you. There is a great variety of them, and they will be useful, like the Irishman’s guideboard which showed ‘where the road did not go.’” I remember once accompanying her to a reception at a well-known house in Boston, where, before the evening was over, the hostess drew me aside, saying, “Why did you never tell me that Mrs. Stowe was beautiful?” And indeed, when I observed her in the full ardor of conversation, with her heightened color, her eyes shining and awake, but filled with great softness, her abundant curling hair rippling naturally about her head and falling a little at the sides (as in the portrait by Richmond), I quite agreed with the lady of the house. Nor was that the first time her beauty had been revealed to me, but she was seldom seen to be beautiful by the great world, and the pleasure of this recognition was very great to those who loved her.
She was never afflicted with a personal consciousness of her reputation, nor was she trammeled by it. The sense that a great work had been accomplished through her only made her more humble, and her shy, absent-minded ways were continually throwing her admirers into confusion. Late in life (when her failing powers made it impossible for her to speak as one living in a world which she seemed to have left far behind) she was accosted, I was told, in the garden of her country retreat, in the twilight one evening, by a good old retired sea captain who was her neighbor for the time. “When I was younger,” said he respectfully, holding his hat in his hand while he spoke, “I read with a great deal of satisfaction and instruction ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ The story impressed me very much, and I am happy to shake hands with you, Mrs. Stowe, who wrote it.” “I did not write it,” answered the white-haired old lady gently, as she shook the captain’s hand. “You didn’t?” he ejaculated in amazement. “Why, who did, then?” “God wrote it,” she replied simply. “I merely did his dictation.” “Amen,” said the captain reverently, as he walked thoughtfully away.
This was the expression in age of what lay at the foundation of her life. She always spoke and behaved as if she recognized herself to be an instrument breathed upon by the Divine Spirit. When we consider how this idea absorbed her to the prejudice of what appeared to others a wholesome exercise of human will and j
udgment, it is not wonderful that the world was offended when she once made conclusions contrary to the opinion of the public, and thought best to publish them.
Mrs. Stowe was a delightful talker. She loved to gather a small circle of friends around a fireside, when she easily took the lead in fun and story telling. This was her own ground, and upon it she was not to be outdone. “Let me put my feet upon the fender,” she would say, “and I can talk till all is blue.”
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 965
