After the death of Mrs. Beecher in 1816 the care of the younger ones fell to a large extent upon the elder daughter, Harriet’s capable and energetic sister Catherine, who was some twelve years older than she. So the traditions of the mother Roxana were carried on in the household until a second mother, another highly cultivated lady, came to take the headship of the home.

It is natural that this strong and brilliant Catherine should have a great influence upon the sensitive younger sister, and that the various steps in Catherine’s career and in her soul-history should be followed by Harriet with interest and sympathy almost as great as if she had been a responsible part in the story. And if disturbing experiences came to Catherine, a reflected tumult would naturally pass through the life of Harriet. This is exactly what did happen. Harriet’s days were shaded by the sorrows of Catherine through all the early years of her young womanhood.

Catherine Beecher was destined to be a remarkable woman, author of many books, a trainer of teachers and a founder of educational institutions. The range of her thought seems to have been almost unlimited. She wrote on education, on slavery, on the evils suffered by American women and on the duties of American women to their country. She wrote on all subjects connected with the home. In one book only she treats of the following topics: The dignity and importance of woman’s work, the Christian family, scientific domestic ventilation, stoves, furnaces and chimneys, home decoration, health, exercise, food, cookery, early rising, domestic manners, system and order, charity and economy, care of infants, management of children, care of the aged, of servants, of the sick, accidents and antidotes, fires and lights, care of rooms, of yards and gardens, cultivation of plants, and care of domestic animals—and of all these things she writes with the object of dignifying domestic employment and increasing the wages paid for it. As if this were not enough to fill a single volume, she adds twenty-five more chapters on recipes of all kinds, meats and breads, preserving fruits, setting table, washing, ironing and cleaning; and finally she adds a chapter of “miscellaneous advice.”

In other books she takes still higher flights. Her “Elements of Mental and Moral Philosophy Founded on Experience, Reason, and the Bible,” published at Hartford in 1831, and her “Letters on Difficulties of Religion,” and her “Appeal to the People as the Authorized Interpreters of the Bible,” are examples of her excursions into philosophical and theological realms. In the large collection of Beecher writings that would be ours if we should gather all the writings of the family into one library, an ample shelf would have to be given to this talented favorite daughter of Dr. Lyman Beecher.

A curious story is told in connection with one of Catherine Beecher’s philosophical essays. In 1840 she wrote an article called “Free Agency,” which was published in the Biblical Repository. This is a theological term, meaning “free will,” and Catherine’s object was to answer the arguments on the subject of the human will that had been given out by Jonathan Edwards, one of the most profound scholars of New England. The story is that a New England preacher in talking with a professor of theology in Germany once mentioned this essay of Miss Beecher’s, calling it the ablest refutation of Edwards that had yet been written. “Do you mean to say that you have in your country a woman who can write the ablest refutation of Edwards on the will?” exclaimed the German professor. “Then may God forgive Christopher Columbus for discovering America!” This story had a good point in its day. But now that women have proved by their achievements in all branches of science and in literature and the arts that they needed only education and opportunity to attain distinction, it is only amusing that such a remark could ever have been made—even in Germany.

When Harriet was nine years old—about the time when she was writing essays on the “Difference Between the Natural and Moral Sublime”—her sister Catherine was away at Boston studying music and drawing, and preparing herself in general to be a teacher. Because of her remarkable powers of mind, she made such progress that in a short time she was able to take a position as teacher in a young ladies’ school in New London, Connecticut.

While in this place she met a young man of brilliant prospects and of great personal charm, a professor at Yale College. They became engaged and were most happy; but their joy was short-lived. Professor Fisher, commissioned to go to Europe to buy books for his department, set sail in the ship Albion, which encountered a severe storm and was dashed to pieces on the rocks of the Irish coast.

Catherine faced her grief bravely as her lover had faced death bravely. But added to her natural grief for the loss of her lover was a tormenting fear for the welfare of his soul, for she feared lest the spiritual conditions that she had been accustomed to regard as essential had not been met by her lover. Her disturbance was not quieted when she went to live for some years with the parents of her lost lover and while there listened to one of the strictest of the early theologians. Almost crushed in her grief, her strong original mind nevertheless grappled with the problems of death and the after-life. She used her great power in metaphysical analysis in endless discussion, exchanging many long letters with her father, whose loving sympathy was a tower of strength to her in this crisis. After a long period of darkness and struggle, Catherine took the wisest course that the profoundest philosophy could suggest: she determined to find happiness in living to do good. This thought she clung to and in it she found comfort.

She looked about her to see what use she could make of her life. Writing to her father, she said that she did not see any very extensive sphere of usefulness for a single woman except in teaching, and asked his advice about starting a school or seminary, something like the Litchfield Female Academy, perhaps in Hartford.

Her father answered with characteristic energy that if she were going to have a school it should be a good one. She should not engage in it listlessly, expecting to superintend, and do a little, and have the weight of the school come on others. He would be ashamed, he said, to have her keep only a commonplace, middling sort of a school. Unless she was willing to put her talents and strength into it, it would be better not to begin. He called the spent energies of the daughter into line and made them march. He himself went straight to Hartford to look over the ground and see whether there was a good opening for a school there.

Catherine felt that her own enthusiasms would rise to the occasion. She went to Hartford, canvassed the ground, gathered a company of pupils, and was eager to start. She resolutely prepared a text-book on chemistry, one on natural philosophy, and one on logic. Arithmetic and algebra and a part of geometry she also thoroughly reviewed. Under such a character as this Harriet was now to be trained.

When Harriet entered her sister’s school in the fall of 1824, there were but twenty-five pupils. Later there were hundreds. At the beginning the school was situated in an upstairs apartment on Main Street, nearly opposite to Christ Church. The lower floor was used for a harness shop and the shopkeeper had set up a dummy white horse on each side of the entrance. Harriet thought them beautiful and invested them with the glories of Castor and Pollux; and many a pupil of the hundreds that came to that school will remember through life the Sign of the White Horses that guided them to that quiet retreat. In another year the school was so prosperous that they put up a building for their own use; the stock was easily taken and a fine prospectus of the full-fledged Hartford Female Seminary was sent out.

On her arrival, Harriet was at once placed in the care of a delightful family named Bull, who, as a convenient exchange, were sending a daughter to the Litchfield Academy to make her home, while there, at the Beecher homestead. Mrs. Bull was so good a housekeeper that even Harriet’s orderly stepmother was satisfied. She was a motherly woman and took Harriet to her heart at once in the place of the absent daughter. Harriet was given a charming little hall chamber with a beautiful outlook from the window over the Connecticut River valley. We may believe that this was the first time in her life when she had a room all her own. The little single bed assigned to her was the object of her special delight, and she took daily care of it with a satisfaction mingled with awe; and though the room was small as a nun’s apartment, it was, like that of one of Harriet’s heroines, as dainty in its neatness as the waxen cell of a bee.

At the Bulls, as in the Litchfield home, Harriet was surrounded with music. The eldest daughter had a fine soprano voice and was a leading singer in one of the church choirs. Also the brothers in the family were endowed with rich voices. So there were quartettes and there was also flute playing.

The next year Harriet and her elder sisters, together with two of the brothers, were established as a family with their father’s sister, the energetic and well-informed Aunt Esther, at the head. This was the wonderful aunt who, Harriet’s brother Henry said, would spend ages in Heaven wondering how it happened that she ever got there, while the angels would always be wondering why she had not been there from all eternity!5 Besides being as good as gold, Aunt Esther had a memory that was well-nigh infallible, especially in the field of natural history. She could tell nineteen rat stories all in a string, and when asked how she happened to know so much about every sort of thing, answered: “Oh, you know the Bible says the works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein. Now I happened to have pleasure therein, and so I sought them out.” It must have been a happy home that was gathered about Aunt Esther at the Hartford School. Besides the immediate members of the family, several teachers of the school shared the home and helped to give a rare and fascinating atmosphere to the table talk.

The group of young ladies that came as the first students to this new school were of rather unusual caliber and mental power. Miss Beecher said some twenty years later if she were to make a list of the most gifted minds that she ever met, either male or female, among the highest on the list would stand five maidens, the earliest students grouped around her in that dawning experience of a teacher’s life.

All these influences furnished a new and wonderfully developing sort of discipline to Harriet Beecher. She possessed the combination of qualities that would to-day make her the best kind of college girl. She responded at once to these new inspirations, and was ready for the joyous and educating friendships that form one of the most valuable assets in school and college life.

Some of the leading girls had written welcoming letters to her before she started from Litchfield, and she had of course sent enthusiastic answers by the first post. Among these new friends were Catherine Ledyard Cogswell, daughter of a physician of Hartford, and Georgiana May, a girl from another fine family. These two became her lifelong friends and Harriet’s affection for them was boundless. Catherine Cogswell was one of the popular girls, and her time was greatly in demand, but she valued the fine qualities of Harriet and saw to it that her new friend should always come in for a share of her time. Georgiana was of a gentle nature, and between her and Harriet there continued through life a communion of a peculiarly close and comforting kind. They understood each other perfectly.

Harriet loved her friends absorbingly. There mingled with her friendly feelings nothing of the personal vanity that spoils so many friendships. But by reason of the very superiority of her mind, most of those she saw passed her by without moving her deeply. When they were present, she enjoyed them; when they were gone, she forgot them. But with those she really loved, it was different. From them a separation meant much. In time she learned to take refuge in the thought that there is a heaven, a world of love; as she once said, “Love is, after all, the life-blood of existence, the all in all of mind.” This thought, coming to her early in life, was a great comfort to her through many years.

As the school increased in size, more teachers were added to the faculty, and among these Harriet found valuable companionship. The enlarging effect of such association cannot be overestimated. To compel one’s self to stand the comparison with people of like capacity and like advantages is in the highest degree stimulating. Harriet found it so. One of her fellow teachers, a young woman of fine mind and of unconquerable energy of character, became specially inspiring to her. From early childhood this teacher had been determined to obtain a higher education than was usual among the young women of that time. We must remember that this was before the day of colleges for girls, and that to have such an ambition was rare and to pursue it with grim resoluteness was rarer. It was the more inspiring when this ambition was realized only after a mighty struggle against difficulties. Harriet, looking upon this example of resolute endeavor, coolly observed, “Where persons are determined to be anything, they will be!”

When Harriet arrived at her sister’s school her two friends, Catherine Cogswell and Georgiana May, were already reading Virgil. She therefore—now twelve years old—began the study of Latin alone, but before the first year was over she was translating Ovid into English verse. The result of her work was considered so creditable that it was read at the final exhibition of the school. Soon she herself was carrying classes of young ladies through Virgil’s Æneid and Bucolics, the best parts of Ovid, and Cicero’s Orations. She also began the study of both French and Italian with a good teacher.

Harriet was a hard worker. She began at nine in the morning and worked until after dark, with only a half hour’s intermission at noon to swallow a little dinner—a very bad plan, by the way. She blamed herself for being absent-minded and making mistakes. No wonder she did these things! She was in school all day, either as pupil or as teacher. After a hastily snatched supper she read and made out exercises for her class for half an hour, and the rest of the evening she spent in preparing French and Italian lessons of her own. Sister Catherine was certainly a disciplinarian. She was also entirely original in her methods. There were no normal schools to teach her, and she had to develop her own ways of working. No one who does not know the educational situation of that day can imagine how daring it was in her to attempt all this. Many of her thoughts are a prophecy of present day ideals. She emphasized physical exercise, and this was by many thought dangerous, if not impious. She gave prizes for composition in verse. The girls were so enthusiastic in this work that they wrote their poetical effusions at night and rehearsed them to each other in the morning. They were then written out and brought to the teacher to have the ruthless knife of criticism applied. This work fell to the hands of Harriet and was a labor of love to her.

Harriet had also a painting and drawing master and worked faithfully at these subjects. After a while she wrote to her grandmother in Guilford that she would send her a dish of fruit of her own painting, and begged her not to devour it in anticipation lest she should find it sadly tasteless in reality. But if she did find it so, she must excuse the defects for the sake of the poor young artist.

Her painting made her think of her dear mother, who would have been most interested in her daughter’s efforts in this direction. Whatever artistic powers Harriet had, she wished to cherish for that mother’s sake. She told her grandmother that she was thinking more about that dearest of all earthly friends now that she was older and could understand her character better and appreciate her more. She thought that, had her mother lived, she might herself have been better and happier than she now was.

By this we see that a shadow seemed to be coming over Harriet’s spirit. But in her mental powers the young student must have been advancing with great swiftness, for when she was only seventeen years old she thought of taking charge herself of a school in Groton where she went to visit her brother George. After consulting her father, and especially Catherine, however, she decided not to undertake the responsibility, and abandoned the project.

Again in the following year—1829—when the Hartford school was for a time deprived of the headship of Miss Catherine, Harriet took entire charge of things, turning the school for the nonce into a republican form of government by means of a system of “Circles,” called Circles of Order, of Neatness, of Punctuality, of Benevolence, etc. With profound cleverness she put the most fun-loving girls into the Circle of Benevolence. Then she gathered all together in a central body, called the “Senate of the Skies.” By this means she engaged the girls in a system of self-government, prophetic of methods used to-day. To Catherine, away at the Water-cure, Harriet wrote:

“Your absence,” she added, “is doing me good, for I never before felt so confident to go forward and act.” In another letter she said: “I shall become quite an orator if you do not come too soon. The school has never been more orderly than it is now, and I think all the young ladies, though some slowly, are realizing more than ever before that they must not live unto themselves.”

Again she said: “The girls are all anxious to have you stay as long as you can.”

Let us take this not only as an expression of loyalty to the Principal, but as an unconscious testimonial to the excellence and charm of the younger sister, then but eighteen years old.