Soon after the Beechers were settled at Cincinnati the circle of old New England friends exiled together in this western land formed a literary club that met alternately at Uncle Samuel Foote’s and Dr. Drake’s. They called this society the “Semi-colon Club,” and gave the following explanation of the name: The Spanish name of Columbus was Colon; if the discoverer of a continent may be called a “Colon,” the discoverers of a new pleasure should at least be allowed the honor of being called “Semi-colons.” This new pleasure consisted in the delight they got out of the interchange of thought at weekly meetings.

The society of Semi-colons grew out of what Harriet called “Uncle Sam’s soirée,” the social assemblies that that genial host gathered about him in his house on the heights. The house where most of the meetings were held and which should be called “the home of the Semi-colon Club” was on the corner of Vine and Third Streets. It was a mansion with a stately colonnade of pillars across the portico. In the company that assembled beneath that friendly roof were several that were destined to become known to the world besides Catherine, Harriet and other members of their family. There were judges, generals, poets, professors, editors, and, as Harriet might have said, some human beings! Salmon P. Chase was there, a young man about twenty-five years old, afterwards the great statesman who met Mrs. Stowe at Washington and led her into the room where Abraham Lincoln greeted and talked with her. Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz was one of the company; she had been the author of a poem, a play, and a novel before she was twelve years old, and had lately received from the Arch Street Theater in Philadelphia the five-hundred-dollar prize for her play, “De Lara, or the Moorish Bride.” Then there was Christopher Pearse Cranch, the poet, and Worthington Whitridge, the artist. There was Judge James Hall, editor of the Western Monthly Magazine, author of many letters, souvenirs, addresses, sketches and romances, who was then in the midst of a long and valuable literary career. Dr. Daniel Drake, a man some forty-five years old, had a national reputation in the field of medical research. The circle also included others in various fields of artistic activity. It is plain that the meetings of a company such as this must have been a great incitement to the genius of Harriet Beecher. We must not forget to mention that the young and handsome professor of Biblical history, Professor C. E. Stowe, was also a member of the Club.

In natural reaction from the strenuousness of her daily tasks Harriet could not resist the impulse to loosen the reins of her whimsical fancy at the meetings and to be the very soul of merriment in this intimate circle. The first thing she wrote as a Semi-colon was a letter purporting to have come from Bishop Butler, composed, as Harriet said to Georgiana May, in his “outrageous style of parenthesis and foggification.” Her next essay was a satirical piece on the modern uses of languages. We can hardly imagine how this subject could be made interesting, yet we feel that we could trust Harriet Beecher to turn any prosy matter into mirth. This essay was so well received by the audience that the editor of the Western Magazine requested permission to publish it in his magazine. Elated by this success, she undertook a larger task, planning a series of letters that were to take up a number of different subjects. She liked to write in a slightly satirical manner. There had been some random talk in the social hours of the Club meetings on the antiquated jokes about old maids and bachelors. Harriet thought she would touch upon this and call for some fresh pleasantries to take the place of those worn-out ones. She wrote a list of legislative enactments solemnly forbidding the merest mention of the word “old maid” or “bachelor” in the future and forever more. This was indeed a playing with fire, but the letters made no hard feelings, as there was a courteous spirit beneath the satire.

She followed this with an attempt at more serious writing, though here again her passion for fun made her resort to the device of a practical joke. Putting what she had to say this time into the form of letters, she carried out her idea with a wealth of incident and of particulars that made the letters give the feeling of a group of real people. The letters appeared to be written from a house in the country, where the hosts and their guests were pious, literary, and agreeable. By having the letters come apparently from different people who showed their various characteristics, the author had the opportunity to bring in different points of view and a lively interchange of ideas.

We can see how her story-making sense was developing. In these letters she was taking a hint from a certain plan which the Beecher family had been making use of since the members had been so widely scattered. They sent a circular letter around from one member of the family to another, each adding a letter to the collection that came to him, until all had read it. In this circular letter the different characteristics of the family were brought into a pleasant contrast, just as Harriet planned to bring them out in the imaginary family that she created. The first one of this series she surrounded with particulars intended to carry out the deception. Her one idea at this time seems to have been to conceal her budding tendency toward authorship, and yet she could not resist the fertility of invention and the pleasure it gave her. When she had finished the letter she smoked it to turn it yellow and tore the edges to give it the look of age; she wrote and re-wrote the direction, imitated a postmark by means of smears of ink, sealed the letter with wax and then broke the seal open again, all in order to give the letter the appearance of a really old letter. Then she put it into another envelope on which she placed the address in different handwriting and directed it to “Mrs. Samuel E. Foote.” At the same time she sent another letter to her cousin directing her to be on the lookout for the coming of a letter and to aid her in the deception. The family, including even that wary and clever Uncle Samuel, were taken in by the joke. The erased names and dates were deciphered and the whole epistle was subjected to criticism, but it was believed in as a real letter. So much for Harriet’s practical joke.

It is a little difficult to understand why this young author should have surrounded with so much mystery her earliest attempts in the work that was to become the business of her life. She seems to have had a strange sense of shrinking from publicity as though there were perhaps a lack of dignity about the appearance of one’s name in print. How little idea she had even by this time of her own powers is shown by the fact that her first published piece was, quite to Harriet’s satisfaction, attributed to Catherine. In fact she said that she did not know that she would have let it go if it had been assigned to its own author. She had no idea, she said, of appearing in propria persona. However, when the potent charm that lies in literary expression had once taken a firm hold of her genius those false scruples faded away; and we cannot believe that it was not a source of intense pleasure to her when she won the prize offered by the editor of the Western Monthly Magazine for the best story. This story appeared in the number for April, 1834, under the heading “The Prize Tale,” with the modest sub-title “A New England Sketch.” Her story was as different from the other articles in the magazine as black is from white. The contents of this heavy periodical consisted as a general thing of essays on the antiquities of America, the Indians and their customs, didactic tales related in trotting tetrameters, or perhaps a long-winded story of impossible adventure and sentiment in the Charles Brockton Brown manner. Harriet Beecher’s racy description of New England characteristics, the realness of the scenes, the actuality of the people, the easy simple flow of the discourse, the conversational quality of the language that the speakers used, the clever management of the incidents were all totally unknown to the readers of the magazine. It must have been like a sudden invitation to a feast of good nourishing food to those who had been living for a long time upon chaff. The story was welcomed with intense delight.

It is not remarkable that the heart of this young writer, who was still homesick enough to find it impossible to sing any kind of a song in the strange land, should turn for its inspiration to the old New England home. This is the way she began:

“And so I am to write a story,” she said, “but of what and where? Shall it be radiant with the sky of Italy or eloquent with the beau idéal of Greece? Shall it breathe odor and languor from the Orient, or chivalry of the Occident; gaiety from France, or vigor from England? No, no; these are all too old, too romance-like, too obviously picturesque for me. No, let me turn to my own land—to my own New England; the land of bright fires and strong hearts; the land of deeds and not of words; the land of fruits and not of flowers; the land often spoken against yet always respected; ‘the latchet of whose shoes the nations of the earth are not worthy to unloose.’”

Having relieved her mind by this outburst of emotion, she apologizes for the bit of rodomontade, as she calls it, and proceeds to describe the Connecticut town that she was to picture under so many different names from the beginning to the end of her career—the beloved Litchfield-in-the-Hills, called in this story Newbury in New England. It rested in a green little hollow wedged in like a bird’s nest among the high hills that kept off the wind in winter and kept out foreigners. Here life was so perfect that the people never died, but only kept growing old till they could not grow any older and then they stood still and lasted from generation to generation. The houses in this village were red, brown, or yellow, and the people that lived there all had Biblical names. They did all the things they ought to do, lived in neighborly charity with one another, read their Bibles, feared God, and were content with such things as they had which the author said is the best philosophy after all. We are told that the hero is Master James Benton; the chief person in the story, however, is James’s old uncle, who afterwards gave a title to the story, “Uncle Tim.” Timothy Benton was a character photographed directly from life; he was suggested by Harriet’s own Uncle Lot Benton of New Haven, who was celebrated for that very contrariousness that is the queerness and the chief charm of the uncle in the story, who was just like a chestnut burr, briars without but substantial goodness within. The following incident from the story will illustrate this:

“‘Uncle Tim, father wants to know if you will lend him your hoe to-day?’” says a little boy, making his way across the corn-field.

“‘Why don’t your father use his own hoe?’

“‘Ours is broke.’

“‘Broke! How came it broke?’

“‘I broke it yesterday trying to hit a squirrel.’

“‘What business had you to be hittin’ squirrels with a hoe?’

“‘But father wants to borrow yours.’

“‘Why don’t he have that mended? It’s a great pester to have everybody usin’ a body’s things.’

“‘Well, I can borrow one somewheres else, I suppose,’” says the suppliant. After the boy has stumbled across the ploughed ground and is fairly over the fence Uncle Tim calls:

“‘Halloo there, you little rascal! What are you goin’ off without the hoe for?’

“‘I didn’t know as you meant to lend it.’

“‘I didn’t say I wouldn’t, did I? Here, come and take it—stay, I’ll bring it; and do tell your father not to be a-letting you hunt squirrels with his hoes next time.’”

Another time Uncle Tim’s daughter, Grace, wants two candlesticks for her party. After long dallying and much coaxing and palavering he stumps off to the village store and brings back a package. He hands Grace one candlestick. Grace says:

“‘But father, I wanted two.’

“‘Why, can’t you make one do?’

“‘No, I can’t; I must have two.’

“‘Well, then, there’s t’other’—taking the second candlestick out of his pocket, and adding, ‘and here’s a fol-de-rol for you to tie round your neck.’”

It is not difficult to see that when the young James wishes to get into the good graces of this prickly old gentleman he will have a hard time. Uncle Tim did not “‘see why the boys need to be all the time a-coming to see Grace, for she was nothing extraordinary after all.’” In this opinion Master James did not at all concur; he thought Grace the most wonderful girl in the world, and he had an idea in regard to her that he was determined to carry out. Moreover, he was of the joyous, buoyant variety of youth who cannot see why their plans should fail. We understand perfectly who stood as model for this earnest, clean, optimistic, merry-hearted young man. Harriet could not have had any one in her mind but the brother that she had so loved and worshiped ever since the days when she led him by the hand down to the Dame School.

“‘Why, James,’ said his companion and chief counselor, ‘do you think Grace likes you?’

“‘I don’t know,’ said our hero with a comfortable appearance of certainty.

“‘But you can’t get her, James, if Uncle Tim is cross about it.’

“‘Fudge! I can make Uncle Tim like me if I have a mind to try.’

“‘Well, then, Jim, you’ll have to give up that flute of yours, I tell you, now.’

“‘Fa, sol, la—I can make him like me, and my flute, too.’

“‘Why, how will you work it?’

“‘Oh, I’ll work it,’ said our hero.

“‘Well, Jim, I tell you now, you don’t know Uncle Tim if you say so, for he’s just the settest critter in his way that you ever saw.’

“‘I do know Uncle Tim though, better than most folks; he is no more cross than I am; and as to his being set, you have nothing to do but make him think he is in his own way when he is in yours—that is all.’

“‘Well,’ said the other, ‘but you see I don’t believe it.’

“‘And I’ll bet you a gray squirrel that I’ll go there this very evening, and get him to like me and my flute both,’ said James.”

It is needless to say that the clever Jim carried this out to the letter. He went there that evening; he drove Uncle Tim’s sheep out of the garden, praised the old man’s bell-flower apples, told stories at the table, proved that it was not irreverent to use the flute even in church, and made Uncle Tim admit it; in short he made himself here, as everywhere, the great favorite. The story turns out as it should, and the Uncle is filled with joy at the outcome.

This was the substance of the first real story that Harriet Beecher wrote. It was a simple little story, but it gave promise of the abilities that she later showed not only in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” but in the long series of even more artistic, if not more influential, works in which she has enshrined for us the fading memories of old New England traditions and customs.

Perhaps when we see the lively quality of this story, and of other sketches of this period of Harriet Beecher’s life, we may wonder what has happened to her, and may exclaim how she has changed from the profound theological discussions of the Litchfield days! Is this romantic and blithesome spirit the same one that shivered and was so stoical in the chillness of the Litchfield Hills! How shall we account for it?

Well, she has come out into the great boundless west whose free spirit has set her free—that is one way to account for the change. Then, those earlier studies and tastes may be considered as her attempts to find her way in the philosophies of the human mind, a struggle from which she gradually desisted after she had hit upon a practical and satisfying view of her own, which by showing her how to discharge each day’s duty, fulfilled her needs. We must recall, too, who were her favorites among the few great romantic writers that she was able to find in her father’s sermon-barrels. “The Arabian Nights,” “Don Quixote,” and above all, Sir Walter Scott were her great discoveries in Dr. Beecher’s garret. We must remember how well she loved Byron and how many times she read “Ivanhoe” through in one summer! Thinking of all this, we realize how she was being prepared to use the novel as the best expression for her thought when the time should come when she felt she must speak out something God had given to her to say.

Meantime she wrote many little sketches and stories and sent them to various magazines: the Western Monthly, the New York Independent, the Godey’s Ladies’ Book, printed them and paid for them. In this way her training in the art of composing a story was going on steadily.