In 1863 Mrs. Stowe removed from Andover to Hartford, Connecticut, where, in a lovely wooded suburb on the bank of a river, she built a house that was her home until the end of her life. Up to the death of her husband in 1886 she spent the winters at Mandarin, Florida, called thither by the condition of her son Frederick, who, at the close of the war, came back to her in a state of broken health resulting from a wound in the head received at Gettysburg. In the end that dear son was a sacrifice, one of thousands that mothers were called upon to make for their country all over the land from farthest north to farthest south.
The earlier years of this later period, while burdened with family cares and sorrows, were a time of great literary activity to Mrs. Stowe. In that time she lengthened the list of her books from ten to thirty. Among these works there were three novels of importance, “Pink and White Tyranny,” “My Wife and I,” and “We and Our Neighbors,” all studies in the conditions of her own time, especially in New York City. Of “My Wife and I” Mrs. Stowe said that she wrote it for the many dear, bright young girls whom she numbered among her choicest friends; if they liked the book, it was no matter what the critics said of it! Then there were many stories for children, “Little Pussy Willow,” “Betty’s Bright Idea,” “The Dog’s Mission,” and many more, all as good to-day as they were thirty years ago. In conjunction with her sister Catherine she published several books of household papers, wise thoughts on house economy, on the beautiful in the house, on home religion, etc. Several books were purely religious in their character; of these “Bible Heroines” is, strangely enough, not reprinted in her complete works.15 A volume of poems among the number reminds us of Harriet’s passion for poetry in her childhood and of her young ambition to join the band of immortal poets, so carefully extinguished by her eldest sister. In spite of Catherine, however, Mrs. Stowe indulged her desire for poetic expression every now and then all through her life, as she did also her love for drawing and sketching, and one of her poems, “The Other World,” has been a favorite with many.
Beloved in her private life and honored as one of the great in our literature, Mrs. Stowe lived on in her quiet home at Hartford until her death in July, 1896. On her seventy-first birthday, June 14, 1882, she was tendered by her publishers, Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, a tribute in the form of a garden party to which many of the literary people of the country were invited. It was held at the country residence of the Honorable and Mrs. William Claflin, at Newtonville, near Boston, Massachusetts. This beautiful place, “The Old Elms,” was never more lovely than on this perfect day. The majestic elms stood proudly, as if they, too, felt the responsibility. The friends that came bore the most honored names among the living writers of the land. There were Whittier and Holmes, Louise Chandler Moulton and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Lucy Larcom and Thomas Bailey Aldrich and A. Bronson Alcott and Julia C. R. Dorr. Of Mrs. Beecher’s family there were a goodly number: her three brothers, Charles, Edward and Henry Ward, and her sister Isabella (Mrs. Hooker), her daughter Mrs. Allen and her son Charles, being among the number.
After a time spent in delightful converse, the company gathered in a tent on the lawn and listened to an address by Mr. H. O. Houghton.
After a tender word for the memory of Longfellow and of Emerson; Mr. Houghton said that the garden party was being held in honor of a birthday—but what the number of the birthday was we would not inquire. If we estimated it by the amount of work accomplished by the beloved guest of the day we must rank her with the antediluvians; but if we judged by the vigor and freshness of her writings, by her universal sympathy with young and old, we should have to say that she had discovered the fountain of perpetual youth! Then he spoke of “Uncle Tom,” calling it the “great epic of our age”; his trials, and the victories he wrought for this epoch were to be our Iliad and our Æneid for centuries to come. He then ran over the events of Mrs. Stowe’s life, showing how it had all been a preparation for the work she did; the New England youth, the western years on the borders of a slave state, the trials and the disciplines. With such a training, he said, “who can wonder that, while sitting at the communion table and meditating on the infinite sorrows and ignominy of Him who gave Himself for the redemption of humanity, she should have been inspired with the vision of another life of suffering and sacrifice, by which a race should be redeemed; and that while she mused the fire burned, and from the white heat came forth the vivid picture of the death of that other man of sorrows, so like its great prototype, as like as a human copy can be to a divine original?” Mr. Houghton then spoke of the widespread interest and the many translations of the book, telling how “crowned heads, statesmen, scholars, and the people alike, have read, wept over, and applauded the simple story.” He also referred to Mrs. Stowe’s service to American literature in writing the tales of New England life. Although these alone, he said, were sufficient to make the reputation of any author, they were, in his opinion, eclipsed by the glory of “Uncle Tom.”
He thought that her friends through all the world ranked her with the Deborahs and Miriams and Judiths of old, and when she sang the refrain, “Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously,” they would respond, “The Almighty Lord hath disappointed them by the hand of a woman!” With a heartfelt blessing and benediction, the address closed.
After this an address was made by that beloved and devoted brother of Mrs. Stowe’s, to whom she had been so loyal a sister and friend ever since the days when she took him by the hand and led him to Ma’am Kilbourne’s school. Henry Ward Beecher was introduced and made a speech full of witticisms and good feeling. He said that people accused him at first of being the real author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”; that he then wrote his novel “Norwood,” and that killed this rumor dead! He told how he first read the book and with what tears. Then he gave a most wonderful tribute to his father and his mother, saying of him that, while his father thought he was great by his theology, everybody else knew that he was great by his religion; and of his mother, that the daughter Harriet was most like her in graces and excellences, though perhaps not in bodily presence.
Following this came some beautiful poems written for the occasion. Mr. Whittier’s was the most beautiful of these: there was one also by Dr. Holmes which was full of his exquisite humor, and there were others by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Mr. J. T. Trowbridge, Mrs. Fields, and one by Mrs. Stowe’s daughter, Mrs. Allen. This one at least must be copied here.
Among other speeches was one by her brother Edward, on the subject of the favorable influence of the works of his sister on woman suffrage.
Then it was announced that Mrs. Stowe would say a few words. She arose and with one movement the whole audience arose, too, in reverence to the “little wisp of a woman” who stood there, slightly bowed and with the snowy touch upon the waves of her hair. The audience listened with eager interest, and this is what 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 the great sorrow of slavery has gone, gone forever.” Then she told how happy the negroes were that she was seeing all the time about her in her home in Mandarin in Florida. They were working, building for themselves little houses; and they were happy—they knew how to be happy even better than white folks, she said. To be sure, they had faults—we must have patience with them. But they were doing as well as possible, and were justifying the confidence placed in them. Then she added those significant words: “Let us never doubt; everything that ought to happen is going to happen.” And as the audience dispersed they carried the echo of these brave words with them, as the summing up of the whole life’s thought of the good and great woman they had come there to honor.
An old age more serenely beautiful than that of Harriet Beecher Stowe could scarcely be imagined. Honored throughout the world, happy in the beautiful companionship of children in the Hartford home, she passed on through the years, living in a dream world full of happy, loving thoughts. At one time she said: “I thank God that there is one thing running through my life from the time I was thirteen years old. It is the intense unwavering sense of God’s educative guiding presence and care.” She refers, of course, to that Sabbath when at the age of thirteen, she went to her father in his study and told him about her new sacred hope. It is not given to every one to find that “one unceasing purpose” has run all through his life. To her was given the insight to realize this. She thought so much about the life of the spirit that at last it seemed as if she lived even more in the spirit world than she did in this. Wonderful dreams visited her soul in which she “knew of a certainty” something of a “vivid spiritual life where the enthusiasm of love is the calm habit of the soul, where without demonstrations of affection heart beats to heart, soul answers to soul, we respond to the Infinite Love and we feel His answer in us and there is no need of words.” This was, she said, “but a glimpse” yet it had “left a strange sweetness in her mind.”
When Mrs. Stowe was about seventy years old she made a visit to Wellesley College. The first time that I ever saw her she was sitting in the seat of honor in the gallery of the old chapel. To me she seemed like a little fairy godmother needing but the wings of gauze to be made into a real vision. But there was a look in her eyes that no soulless fairy ever had. As she leaned upon the railing and looked out over the audience of young college girls, gathered there from all parts of the world and throbbing with vivid life, a look of wistful longing came over her face. It was almost as though she said, “Ah, if this had but happened to me!” As she viewed that college life so wisely and broadly organized, apparently so rich in opportunity, she may have felt with some yearning that these young women were realizing powers and opportunities furnished with an ease that had been denied to her. But it is more likely that without any sadness or any reflection upon the difficulties of her own youthful experience, she enthusiastically rejoiced in the vigor, the happiness and the promise of power she saw in that college group, and that, with her characteristic wistful maternal tenderness, she yearned only for the fruition of that promise. And we may question whether she would have had a larger life or a greater influence if she had lived at a later time and had had the training that is given to young women now. As it was she used what she had to the full. Her industry was incessant. Her growth was constantly forced by the fire of her own passion for attainment. Then came the country’s crisis, and the crisis made the woman. But it would never have made the woman if she had not stood ready to be made. That preparation we have seen develop step by step in this story of her life.
It is, therefore, for the spirit of the woman behind the worker that we are most sharply indebted; for, after all, it is an even greater thing to live a great life than to write a great book. Harriet had courage; she had initiative. She was overwhelmingly magnanimous, she was utterly true. She was true to that part in us that grows, as well as to the part that inherits the teaching of the past. She was wise enough to know that the human mind and soul must be always impressionable, always open to the truth as well as staunch in defending it. She had faith in herself and she had faith in God. Moreover, it was because of her faith in God that she had that faith in herself. After all, then, it was her perfect confidence in God that was the key-note of her character. “Let us never doubt,” she said; “everything that ought to happen is going to happen.” This was the supreme note in the harmony of her life.