Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe Part 30

What a dreadful thing it is that people should have to go to America again, after coming to Europe! It seems to me an inversion of the order of nature. I think America is a sort of "United" States of Probation, out of which all wise people, being once delivered, and having obtained entrance into this better world, should never be expected to return (sentence irremediably ungrammatical), particularly when they have been making themselves cruelly pleasant to friends here. My friend Norton, whom I met first on this very blue lake water, had no business to go back to Boston again, any more than you.

I was waiting for S. at the railroad station on Thursday, and thinking of you, naturally enough,--it seemed so short a while since we were there together. I managed to get hold of Georgie as she was crossing the rails, and packed her in opposite my mother and beside me, and was thinking myself so clever, when you sent that rascally courier for her! I never forgave him any of his behavior after his imperativeness on that occasion.

And so she is getting nice and strong? Ask her, please, when you write, with my love, whether, when she stands now behind the great stick, one can see much of her on each side?

So you have been seeing the Pope and all his Easter performances? I congratulate you, for I suppose it is something like "Positively the last appearance on any stage." What was the use of thinking about _him?_ You should have had your own thoughts about what was to come after him. I don't mean that Roman Catholicism will die out so quickly. It will last pretty nearly as long as Protestantism, which keeps it up; but I wonder what is to come next. That is the main question just now for everybody.

So you are coming round to Venice, after all? We shall all have to come to it, depend upon it, some way or another. There never has been anything in any other part of the world like Venetian strength well developed.

I've no heart to write about anything in Europe to you now. When are you coming back again? Please send me a line as soon as you get safe over, to say you are all--wrong, but not lost in the Atlantic.

I don't know if you will ever get this letter, but I hope you will think it worth while to glance again at the Denmark Hill pictures; so I send this to my father, who, I hope, will be able to give it you.

I really am very sorry you are going,--you and yours; and that is absolute fact, and I shall not enjoy my Swiss journey at all so much as I might. It was a shame of you not to give me warning before. I could have stopped at Paris so easily for you! All good be with you!

Remember me devotedly to the young ladies, and believe me ever affectionately yours,

J. RUSKIN.

In Rome Mrs. Stowe had formed a warm friends.h.i.+p with the Brownings, with whom she afterwards maintained a correspondence. The following letter from Mrs. Browning was written a year after their first meeting.

ROME, 126 VIA FELICE, 14 _March_, 1861.

MY DEAR, MRS. STOWE,--Let me say one word first. Your letter, which would have given me pleasure if I had been in the midst of pleasures, came to me when little beside could have pleased. Dear friend, let me say it, I had had a great blow and loss in England, and you wrote things in that letter which seemed meant for me, meant to do me good, and which did me good,--the first good any letter or any talk did me; and it struck me as strange, as more than a coincidence, that your first word since we parted in Rome last spring should come to me in Rome, and bear so directly on an experience which you did not know of.

I thank you very much.

The earnest stanzas I sent to England for one who wanted them even more than I. I don't know how people can keep up their prejudices against spiritualism with tears in their eyes,--how they are not, at least, thrown on the "wish that it might be true," and the investigation of the phenomena, by that abrupt shutting in their faces of the door of death, which shuts them out from the sight of their beloved. My tendency is to beat up against it like a crying child. Not that this emotional impulse is the best for turning the key and obtaining safe conclusions,--no. I did not write before because I always do shrink from touching my own griefs, one feels at first so sore that nothing but stillness is borne. It is only after, when one is better, that one can express one's self at all. This is so with me, at least, though perhaps it ought not to be so with a poet.

If you saw my "De Profundis" you must understand that it was written nearly twenty years ago, and referred to what went before. Mr.

Howard's affliction made me think of the MS. (in reference to a sermon of Dr. Beecher's in the "Independent"), and I pulled it out of a secret place and sent it to America, not thinking that the publication would fall in so nearly with a new grief of mine as to lead to misconceptions. In fact the poem would have been an exaggeration in that case, and unsuitable in other respects.

It refers to the greatest affliction of my life,--the only time when I felt _despair_,--written a year after or more. Forgive all these reticences. My husband calls me "peculiar" in some things,--peculiarly lache, perhaps. I can't articulate some names, or speak of certain afflictions;--no, not to _him_,--not after all these years! It's a sort of _dumbness_ of the soul. Blessed are those who can speak, I say. But don't you see from this how I must want "spiritualism" above most persons?

Now let me be ashamed of this egotism, together with the rest of the weakness obtruded on you here, when I should rather have congratulated you, my dear friend, on the great crisis you are pa.s.sing through in America. If the North is found n.o.ble enough to stand fast on the moral question, whatever the loss or diminution of territory, G.o.d and just men will see you greater and more glorious as a nation.

I had much anxiety for you after the Seward and Adams speeches, but the danger seems averted by that fine madness of the South which seems judicial. The tariff movement we should regret deeply (and do, some of us), only I am told it was wanted in order to persuade those who were less accessible to moral argument. It's eking out the holy water with ditch water. If the Devil flees before it, even so, let us be content.

How you must feel, _you_ who have done so much to set this accursed slavery in the glare of the world, convicting it of hideousness! They should raise a statue to you in America and elsewhere.

Meanwhile I am reading you in the "Independent," sent to me by Mr.

Tilton, with the greatest interest. Your new novel opens beautifully.

[Footnote: _The Pearl of Orr's Island_.]

Do write to me and tell me of yourself and the subjects which interest us both. It seems to me that our Roman affairs may linger a little (while the Papacy bleeds slowly to death in its finances) on account of this violent clerical opposition in France. Otherwise we were prepared for the fall of the house any morning. Prince Napoleon's speech represents, with whatever slight discrepancy, the inner mind of the emperor. It occupied seventeen columns of the "Moniteur" and was magnificent. Victor Emmanuel wrote to thank him for it in the name of Italy, and even the English papers praised it as "a masterly exposition of the policy of France." It is settled that we shall wait for Venice. It will not be for long. Hungary is _only_ waiting, and even in the ashes of Poland there are flickering sparks. Is it the beginning of the rest.i.tution of all things?

Here in Rome there are fewer English than usual, and more empty houses. There is a new story every morning, and n.o.body to cut off the head of the Scheherazade. Yesterday the Pope was going to Venice directly, and, the day before, fixed the hour for Victor Emmanuel's coming, and the day before _that_ brought a letter from Cavour to Antonelli about sweeping the streets clean for the feet of the king.

The poor Romans live on these stories, while the Holy Father and king of Naples meet holding one another's hands, and cannot speak for sobs.

The little queen, however, is a heroine in her way and from her point of view, and when she drives about in a common fiacre, looking very pretty under her only crown left of golden hair, one must feel sorry that she was not born and married nearer to holy ground. My husband prays you to remember him, and I ask your daughters to remember both of us. Our boy rides his pony and studies under his abbe, and keeps a pair of red cheeks, thank G.o.d.

I ought to send you more about the society in Rome, but I have lived much alone this winter, and have little to tell you. Dr. Manning and Mr. DeVere stay away, not bearing, perhaps, to see the Pope in his agony.

Your ever affectionate friend,

ELIZABETH B. BROWNING.

Soon after her return to America Mrs. Stowe began a correspondence with Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, which opened the way for the warm friends.h.i.+p that has stood the test of years. Of this correspondence the two following letters, written about this time, are worthy of attention.

ANDOVER, _September_ 9, 1860.

DEAR DR. HOLMES,--I have had an impulse upon me for a long time to write you a line of recognition and sympathy, in response to those that reached me monthly in your late story in the "Atlantic" ("Elsie Venner").

I know not what others may think of it, since I have seen n.o.body since my return; but to me it is of deeper and broader interest than anything you have done yet, and I feel an intense curiosity concerning that underworld of thought from which Like bubbles your incidents and remarks often seem to burst up. The foundations of moral responsibility, the interlacing laws of nature and spirit, and their relations to us here and hereafter, are topics which I ponder more and more, and on which only one medically educated can write _well_.

I think a course of medical study ought to be required of all ministers. How I should like to talk with you upon the strange list of topics suggested in the schoolmaster's letter! They are bound to agitate the public mind more and more, and it is of the chiefest importance to learn, if we can, to think soundly and wisely of them.

n.o.body can be a sound theologian who has not had his mind drawn to think with reverential fear on these topics.

Allow me to hint that the monthly numbers are not long enough. Get us along a little faster. You must work this well out. Elaborate and give us all the particulars. Old Sophie is a jewel; give us more of her. I have seen her. Could you ever come out and spend a day with us? The professor and I would so like to have a talk on some of these matters with you!

Very truly yours, H. B. STOWE.

ANDOVER, _February_ 18, 1861.

DEAR DOCTOR,--I was quite indignant to hear yesterday of the very unjust and stupid attack upon you in the----. Mr. Stowe has written to them a remonstrance which I hope they will allow to appear as he wrote it, and over his name. He was well acquainted with your father and feels the impropriety of the thing.

But, my dear friend, in being shocked, surprised, or displeased personally with such things, we must consider other people's natures.

A man or woman may wound us to the quick without knowing it, or meaning to do so, simply through difference of fibre. As Cowper hath somewhere happily said:--

"Oh, why are farmers made so coa.r.s.e, Or clergy made so fine?

A kick that scarce might move a horse Might kill a sound divine."

When once people get ticketed, and it is known that one is a hammer, another a saw, and so on, if we happen to get a taste of their quality we cannot help being hurt, to be sure, but we shall not take it ill of them. There be pious, well-intending beetles, wedges, hammers, saws, and all other kinds of implements, good--except where they come in the way of our fingers--and from a beetle you can have only a beetle's gospel.

I have suffered in my day from this sort of handling, which is worse for us women, who must never answer, and once when I wrote to Lady Byron, feeling just as you do about some very stupid and unkind things that had invaded my personality, she answered me, "Words do not kill, my dear, or I should have been dead long ago."

There is much true religion and kindness in the world, after all, and as a general thing he who has struck a nerve would be very sorry for it if he only knew what he had done. I would say nothing, if I were you. There is eternal virtue in silence.

I must express my pleasure with the closing chapters of "Elsie." They are n.o.bly and beautifully done, and quite come up to what I wanted to complete my idea of her character. I am quite satisfied with it now.

It is an artistic creation, original and beautiful.

Believe me to be your true friend,

H. B. STOWE.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE CIVIL WAR, 1860-1865.

THE OUTBREAK OF CIVIL WAR.--MRS. STOWE'S SON ENLISTS.--THANKSGIVING DAY IN WAs.h.i.+NGTON.--THE PROCLAMATION OF EMANc.i.p.aTION.--REJOICINGS IN BOSTON.--FRED STOWE AT GETTYSBURG.--LEAVING ANDOVER AND SETTLING IN HARTFORD.--A REPLY TO THE WOMEN OF ENGLAND.--LETTERS FROM JOHN BRIGHT, ARCHBISHOP WHATELY, AND NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.