Chapter VIII
Brief Biographies of Some
of the Writers for the Lowell Offering

It remains for me to give, so far as I have been able to glean them, the life-stories of a few of the most important of these mill-girl writers, some of them brief indeed, others perhaps of wider significance, but all telling a tale of hon est toil and earnest aspiration. I begin with Miss Curtis, as senior editor of the magazine.

HARRIOT F. CURTIS,
Editor of the Lowell Offering.

Among all the writers, Miss Curtis stands out as the pioneer and reformatory spirit. She was fearless in her convictions; she wrote in advocacy of the anti-slavery cause when the real agitation had hardly begun, and in behalf of woman’s right to “equal pay for equal labor,” five years before the first woman suffrage convention was held in this country.

She organized the first known woman’s club, and was one of the four women editors of her time. She was the novelist par excellence of The Offering, and had a bold and dashing pen that would have made her fortune in these days of women reporters and interviewers. But she was so startlingly original in her speech and in her writings, that it “made talk,” as Samantha Allen says, so different was she from the established idea of what a “female” should be.

But she was self-centred, and bore with Christian philosophy as well as with pagan silence and stoicism, “the slings and arrows” of those who could not understand her brave and courageous nature.

Her mind was intensely masculine; but her life had all the limitations by which the women of her time were bound, and these prevented her from doing the work for which she was best fitted, and from leading that life of freedom from care which is so necessary to the best literary work.

Through her grandmother, Abigail Stratton (Curtis), Harriot could claim direct descent from Miles Standish.

She was born Sept. 16, 1813, in Kellyvale (now. Lowell), Vt., a little post hamlet on the Missisquoi River, completely surrounded by mountain peaks. The lonely and isolated life she was obliged to lead was very distasteful to her, and she early made up her mind to leave her home and seek more congenial surroundings elsewhere. Her father’s means were limited ; and after exhausting what education could be obtained in the narrow circle in which she lived, she determined to go to Lowell to work in the factory, and thus earn the money necessary for a year’s study at some private school or academy.

Previous to her connection with The Offering, Miss Curtis wrote many tales and sketches, and also “Kate in Search of a Husband,” one of the first of the “popular novels” in this country. Her novel, “The Smugglers,” was begun in The Offering of November, 1843.

Her connection with The Offering lasted three years; and during the last two, besides contributing and editing, she also assumed that part of the business management which necessitated her travelling and canvassing for subscribers; in fact, as she said, she was “the travelling-agent for the firm, and went roaming about the country in search of patrons.”

By this means, she not only helped to place the magazine on a paying basis, but made the acquaintance of many distinguished persons. It was chiefly by the efforts of Miss Curtis at this time that The Lowell Offering achieved an almost world-wide fame. When at home she resumed her employment in the mill, as harness-knitter on the Lawrence corporation.

Mr. Thomas, in response to a letter from her asking advice with regard to the business affairs of the magazine, replies : —

“Make your terms cash. You will do well to keep constantly in remembrance that your prosperity almost entirely depends on your individual exertions. Puffing, advertising, scolding, will do little or nothing. Male agents will do little or nothing; but if you go as females, with suitable brief papers signed by eminent men, to show that you are not impostors, you will do well…. Be careful to guard against the possibility of suspicion, This you can readily accomplish by certificates from Saml. Lawrence, John Clark, and a few other Lowellites, countersigned (if convenient) by the governor, Daniel Webster, etc.”

In her valedictory at the close of Volume V., Miss Curtis announces that she severs her connection with The Offering for reasons “entirely of a personal nature,” and as a parting benison adds: “Friends, Patrons, and Foes (if we have any), may God bless you all with every perfect gift!”

Although her connection with The Offering was severed at this date, Miss Curtis remained in Lowell until called away by the illness of her mother. She continued her literary labors for a time, and was a correspondent of several newspapers. Harriot was the friend and correspondent of such men as John Neal, Horace Greeley, Nathaniel P. Willis, and others well known in literary and public life.

She had a taste for polities and wrote intelligently on questions that women were not supposed to understand. She contributed to the New York Tribune articles so clear and so caustic, that readers who did not share the common delusion that “H. G.” wrote everything in Horace Greeley’s paper, thought they must have been written by a man!

She was the friend and correspondent of “Warrington” (William 8. Robinson), and when he was editor of the Boston Daily Republican, she made a prediction worthy of a male political prophet. In a letter dated May 4, 1848, she writes : —

Friend R., — Probably no doubt exists but some self sacrificing patriot may be found to accept the office of Chief Magistrate.… But who shall be the Whig candidate for this self-sacrifice, seems the most prominent question. A few days since I met Horace Greeley, and, as in duty bound, pronounced to him my prophecy of who could not be a successful candidate, although, out of the numerous aspirants for the Whig nomination, I could not prophecy who would be successful…. Will you give the public my assurance that Henry Clay cannot be President of the United States. I don’t care who the Democratic nominee may be ; I don’t care how divided that party may be in action, nor how great may be the unanimity and enthusiasm of the Whigs; but I repeat, Henry Clay cannot be President. . . .

I now enter upon the most painful part of her story, and I do it with a heavy heart; but I feel obliged to tell it, because it illustrates so well the lives which so many “solitary” women were then forced to lead, — lives of poverty, of self-abnegation, and of unselfishness. And in reading, in her letters to me, the sad record of her struggles, I can truly say, that never in all my life of over seventy years have I known of one so cruelly compelled by circumstances to hide the talent which “God had given her,” that she might become the angel of mercy to her suffering and needy relatives.

In tho heyday of her literary career, she left the work for which she was the best fitted, to take the sole charge of her blind and aged mother, who lived until 1858, “having suffered all that mortal could suffer.” Harriot was her constant attendant day and night, vainly trying, in the mean while, to get some literary work to do at her home to help eke out the narrow income of the family.

Extracts from her letters written to my husband and myself will give some idea of her struggles to obtain remunerative employment.

Sunny Hill, Dracut, Jan. 7, 1849

Dear, dear Friends, — Your kind letter reached me on Friday; and if you could imagine the “heaps” of good it did me, you would favor me often with such medicine. Nobody writes to me nowadays, and I am left to my despair and desolation. … Oh dear! what a world this is for poor old maids! but I trust you find it quite comfortable and Paradise-like for brides and bridegrooms, God bless them all! and more especially you young ones. … I wish you would show me how I could “earn” anything by writing. I cannot find my way only to write a book, be months about it, and then get a whole $100 for it. That don’t pay enough for wear and tear of temper.

“Under present circumstances I do not think I could write a leader. I do not know of anything until it is a week or ten days’ old, and my only connection with the living world is the Tribune. I thank you with all my heart for your kind offer about going to New York, but it would be useless. Greeley’s introduction to Bonner would not do any good. If I could attract notice, kick up a small tempest, I should feel sure of an invitation from Mr. Bonner. But without some notoriety that has created comment, the angel Gabriel could not get into the Ledger. Without intellectual contact, out of the world, I have grown rusty. A great care, an increasing anxiety, and most painful sympathy for the suffering, have narrowed my thoughts. … If I could get a little good luck — something to feel pleased about — I think I could wake up to anything.… I could not earn a dollar here to save my life. Greeley would say, “Yes, you could: there is the needle ; that is useful and wanted, though not half paid.” Mr, Greeley does not know that even the resource of the “poor shirtmaker” is denied me. I have lost the use of my thimble finger from one of those awful things, a felon; and it is misshapen, bent, and stiffened. I assure you, I have had a womanly experience.… You see, I am `off the track.’”

After 1860 she ceased trying to secure either fame or money by her literary talents ; and there after, for almost thirty years, she continued to be the nurse and companion of the remaining invalids of the family, thinking, as she always had done, more of their comfort than she did of the loss of fortune and fame.

If she had devoted all her energies to the development of her talent as a novelist, she might have earned a livelihood, and been a continued success, — enough so, at least, to find a place in some of the many volumes of American biography. But she had the conviction that one has no moral right to live for one’s self alone ; and so she gave her all, and spent her life, in the service of those who needed her help. And though often despondent, and almost despairing, she never lost faith in God, nor in his fatherly care over the most afflicted of his children.

I first knew Miss Curtis in about 1844, when she and Miss Farley lived in what was then Dracut, in a little house embowered in roses, which they had named “Shady Nook.” The house was a sort of literary centre to those who had become interested in The Lowell Offering and its writers; and there were many who came from places both near and far to call on the editors, and meet the “girls” who by their pens had made themselves quite noted.

But I did not see much of her until 1848, when we became the firm friends and correspondents that we remained until the end of her life. As I remember her at that time, she was of medium height, rather inclined to stoutness, with small, white, well-shaped hands, brown hair, large blue eyes, a small nose, full red lips, white teeth well divided, and a head — well, more than a match for most of the women, if not the men, of her set. Miss Curtis had many offers of marriage; but she thought it wrong for a woman to marry for a “home,” or unless she loved the man with a “love more enduring than life and stronger than death;” and as she did not meet such a man, she could not enter into her ideal marriage. But the friendships she made were warm and lasting, and the friends with whom she was associated have in these pages given their loving tribute to her characteristics and her capabilities.

Miss Curtis’s literary efforts may be summed up as follows: first, “Kate in Search of a Husband, a novel by a Lady Chrysalis,” published by J. Winchester, New York, and twice in after years by unknown publishers. The authorship of this novel was claimed by one male writer, and another wrote a counterpart, called “Philip in Search of a Wife.”

“Kate” was followed by ” The Smugglers,” the scene of which was laid in her native town, and “Truth’s Pilgrimage, His Wanderings in America and in Other Lands,” an allegory. Both of these books were published in continued numbers in The Offering, and the first named was copyrighted by a Boston firm in 1844, but was not published.

Her last novel, “Jessie’s Flirtations,”’ was published first by George Munro in 1846 and afterwards by the Harpers; and it still holds its place in their “Library of Select Novels.” “S. S. Philosophy,” her last published book, is full of pithy paragraphs, containing (as her friend “Warrington” said in the Lowell Journal) ‘much that is sensible, sound, and salutary, as well as some considerable that is saucy and sarcastic.’ She was for three years co-editor of The Lowell Offering; in 1854-1855 she was associate editor of the Vox Populi, a Lowell newspaper; and she also wrote for many lead ing journals, notably The New York Tribune, The Lowell Journal, The Lowell American, and N. P. Willis’s Home Journal (N.Y.).

Her nom de plume, “Mina Myrtle,” first used by her in the newspapers in 1847, became well known; it was afterwards appropriated by another author as ” Minnie” Myrtle. (See Wheeler’s “Dictionary of the Noted Names of Fiction.)

During her last years Miss Curtis lived on a small farm in Needham, Mass., with her invalid niece, and was cared for and supported by her nephew, George H. Caldwell, brevetted lieutenant-colonel for gallant and meritorious service at Gettysburg, the Battle of the Wilderness,

and before Petersburg. Miss Curtis died in October, 1889, at the age of seventy-six, leaving the invalid niece, who had been her charge for so many years ; but her affection for her “Aunt Harriot” was so strong that she died of “no seeming disease” a few weeks after her distinguished relative.

THE CURRIER SISTERS.

These were four sisters, named Louisa, Maria, Lura, and Marcia, and at least three of them wrote for The Offering.

They were the daughters of Mr. John Currier of Wentworth, N.H., and members of Mr. Thomas’s congregation and of his Improvement Circle. Maria has put on record an authentic account of the first Improvement Circle (quoted elsewhere); but Lura deserves the most extended mention, from the fact that she, as Mrs. Whitney, was the prime mover in establishing a free library in the town of Haverhill, N.H. Mrs. Whitney died before I had thought to write to her for information; but I am able to quote extracts from the following letter, written by her to Mrs. E. E. T. Sawyer, her early work-mate and lifelong friend, on Jan. 19, 1885.

“I think I have told you about the library that I had the honor of starting here about four and a half years ago. Now we are talking about a new library building; and I think we have made a great start, as one man has given us fifteen hundred dollars towards it…. As far as our library is concerned, I have accomplished what no one else in this place has done before, and I feel amply repaid in the perusal of some of the interesting volumes contained therein.”

Mrs. Whitney died April 4, 1889.

ELIZA JANE CATE.

Miss Cate was the eldest daughter of Captain Jonathan Cate, who commanded a company in the war of 1812. She was born in Sanbornton, N.H., in 1812, and soon achieved good rank as a pure, unaffected, and attractive writer. She was most prolific with her pen, and wrote on a large variety of subjects. Her admirers called her “the Edgeworth of New England.”

Her contributions to The Offering, notably “Susy L—— ’s Diary,” ” Lights and Shadows of Factory Life,” and “Chapters on the Natural Sciences,” were widely read and commended. Her signature was usually “D.” She was a contributor to Peterson’s, over the signature of “By the Author of Susy L —— ’s Diary,” and wrote for Sartain’s and other magazines.

Her obituary notice, copied from the news papers, said : —

“Miss Cate was the author of at least eight books, three of which were issued by the Baptist Publication Society of Philadelphia, and two by J. Winchester of New York. She was a corresponding member of the New Hampshire Historical Society. She died in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., in 1884. Miss Cate was retiring in her manner, but was of a genial and confiding nature; and in her character, as well as in her writings, were blended moral purity with the Christian graces.”

MRS. BETSEY CHAMBERLAIN.

Mrs. Chamberlain was the most original, the most prolific, and the most noted of all the early story-writers. Her writings were characterized, as Mr. Thomas says, “by humorous incidents and sound common sense,” as is shown by her setting forth of certain utopian schemes of right living.

Mrs. Chamberlain was a widow, and came to Lowell with three children from some “community” (probably the Shakers), where she had not been contented. She had inherited Indian blood, and was proud of it. She had long, straight black hair, and walked very erect, with great freedom of movement. One of her sons was afterwards connected with the New York Tribune.

HARRIET FARLEY,
Editor of The Lowell Offering and
afterwards of the New England Offering.

From her autobiography, published in Mrs. S. J. Hale’s book, “The Woman’s Record,” about 1848, I am so fortunate as to be able to quote Miss Farley’s own words with regard to some of the events of her early life before and during the time of her connection with both the Lowell and the New England Offering. Miss Farley says : —

“My father is a Congregational minister, and at the time of my birth was settled in the beautiful town of Claremont, N.H…. My mother was descended from the Moodys, somewhat famous in New England history. One of them was the eccentric Father Moody. Another [his son] was Handkerchief Moody, who wore so many years `the Minister’s Veil.’ … My father was of the genuine New Hampshire stock, from a pious, industrious, agricultural people; his brothers being deacons, and some of his sisters married to deacons. … His grandmother was eminent for her medical knowledge and skill, and had as much practice as is usually given to a country doctor . His mother was a woman of fine character, who exerted herself and sacrificed much to secure his liberal education.… I was the sixth of ten children, and until fourteen had not that health which promises continued life… . At fourteen years of age I commenced exertions to assist in my own maintenance, and have at times followed the various avocations of New England girls. I have plaited palm leaf straw, bound shoes, taught school, and worked at tailoring, besides my labors as a weaver in the factory, which suited me better than any other. After my father’s removal to the little town of Atkinson, N.H., he combined the labors of preceptor of one of the two oldest academies of the State with his parochial duties ; and here, among a simple but intelligent people, I spent those years which give tone to the female character. … I learned something of French, drawing, ornamental needlework, and the usual accomplishments; for it was the design of my friends to make me a teacher, — a profession for which I had an instinctive dislike. But my own feelings were not consulted. … This was undoubtedly wholesome discipline ; but it was carried to a degree that was painful, and drove me from my home. I came to Lowell, determined that, if I had my own living to obtain, I would get it in my own way; that I would read, think, and write when I could, without restraint ; that if I did well I would have the credit of it, if ill, my friends should be relieved from the stigma. I endeavored to reconcile them to my lot by a devotion of all my spare earnings to them and their interests. I made good wages; I dressed economically ; I assisted in the liberal education of one brother, and endeavored to be the guardian angel to a lovely sister…. It was something so new to me to be praised and encouraged to write that I was at first overwhelmed by it, . . . and it was with great reluctance that I consented to edit [The Lowell Offering], and was quite as unwilling at first to assist in publishing. But circumstances seem to have compelled me forward as a business woman, and I have endeavored to do my duty. I am now the proprietor of The New England Offering. I do all the publishing, editing, canvassing; and as it is bound at my office, I can, in a hurry, help fold, cut covers, stitch, etc. I have a little girl to assist me in the folding, stitching, etc. ; the rest, after it comes from the printer’s hand, is all my own work. I employ no agents, and depend upon no one for assistance. My edition is four thousand. These details, I trust, are not tedious. I have given them because I thought there was nothing remarkable about The Offering but its source and the mode in which it was conducted.”

Of her connection with Mr. Thomas’s Improvement Circle and The Lowell Offering, Miss Farley has said to a friend: “The Circle met in the Sunday-school rooms, and they were not only filled, but crowded. There was a box placed at the entrance, so that, if preferred, the writers could be anonymous; and sometimes topics were suggested. It seemed almost like an insult when Mr. Thomas first offered payment for these little mental efforts of our leisure hours.

‘I can understand this feeling,’ he said. ‘I was brought up a Quaker, and my grandfather never took pay for preaching. The first money that was ever placed in my hands for this service seemed to burn into my palms.’ There was a little pile, all in gold, left for our share of the profits of the first series.

“When I first took the editorial position, I left my regular place to be what is called a ‘spare hand.’ This gave leisure for what I had to do, and there never was any difficulty about contributions. A large bundle of manuscripts left by Mr. Thomas was never resorted to but when some short paper was wanted to fill out a vacant space.

“In the printing-office were Messrs. Hale, Stearns, Taylor, Brown, and others, always respectful, kind, and obliging. In the outer office was Mr. W. S. Robinson, afterwards known as ‘Warrington.’ These men would soon have discovered if there had been false pretences about the writers for the magazine.”

In 1847 Miss Farley published a selection from her writings in The Offering, with other material, entitled “Shells from the Strand of the Sea of Genius ;” she is most fully represented in “Mind Among the Spindles.” In 1880 she published a volume of Christmas stories.

Miss Farley married Mr. Dunlevy, an inventor, and they had one child, Inez, who married Mr. George Kyle, a humorous writer and comedian, and died in 1890, Mrs. Dunlevy was living in New York in 1898.

MARGARET F. FOLEY.

That broad-browed delicate girl will carve at Rome
Faces in marble, classic as her own.

From Miss Foley’s letters to Lucy Larcom, and the tender recollections of some of her early and lifelong friends, I am able to piece out a short sketch of this pioneer sculptre:

An Idyl of Work.

Margaret Foley was born in Canada, but while she was quite young the family moved to the States. When her father died he left some property, and she was educated fully up to the standard of the young women of her day. She taught school, and at one time was preceptress of West port Academy. While there she boarded in Lowell, and on Saturday afternoons she taught classes in drawing and painting, and among her pupils was Lucy Larcom. She always had a piece of clay or a cameo in some stage of advancement, upon which she worked in spare moments.

While at Westport Academy she modelled a bust of Dr. Gilman Kimball, a distinguished surgeon of Lowell. She began her artistic life without any teaching, by carving small figures in wood, or modelling busts in chalk; and she often gave these as prizes to her pupils. She went into the factory to work, that she might share the advantages of the society of other girls who were fond of reading and study, and also that she could enable herself to begin her career as a sculptor.

She did not herself consider that her life in the Lowell factory had any great part in her career, although there is not much doubt that she first conceived the idea of chiselling her thought on the surface of the “smooth-lipped shell” amid the hum of the machinery in the cotton-mill.

She worked a year on the Merrimack corporation; her poems for The Offering are written from there, and signed M. F. F. She then went to Boston, where she opened a studio. While in Boston she suffered great privations, and earned but a scanty support in carving portraits and ideal heads in cameo; but she worked on hopefully, doing some excellent likenesses, cameos, medallions, and a few busts ; among these, one of cabinet size, of Theodore Parker.

Her cameo-cutting was said to be unsurpassed. After seven years of this life, by the aid of kind friends, the wish of her heart was gratified, and she sailed for Rome, where she began to work in larger material, and to make life-size medallion portraits with much success and profit. She found warm friends there, — Harriet Hosmer, Mrs. Jameson, Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, W. W. Story, and, best of all, William and Mary Howitt.

From “Mary Howitt, an Autobiography,” by her daughter, London, 1889, I am able to give a slight glimpse of the last years of Margaret Foley’s life. Mrs. Howitt first speaks of her in 1871, as “the gifted, generous-hearted New England sculptress.” In June of that year she went with the Howitts to the Tyrol, where, on setting up housekeeping together, Mrs. Howitt says, —

“Margaret Foley, a born carpenter and inventor, set to work and made us all sorts of capital contrivances.” She spent several summers at Meran, a residence for invalids, celebrated for its grape-cure. In 1877 she was taken with a stroke of paralysis, the root of the malady being an affection of the spinal cord, was carried from Rome to Meran, and after several months of great suffering she died there, Dec. 7, 1877.

During her illness, says Mrs. Howitt, her physician “ordered us to write to any near friends or relatives she might have, and that, if she had any affairs to settle, it might be done; but dear Peggy had made her will, and we were among her nearest friends.” The friendship of the Howitts for Margaret Foley was very warm and tender; and she found in their true hearts and in their home that rest and refreshment her loving spirit craved, and that true sympathy for her work which is so necessary for the struggling artist.

I first saw Miss Foley in Rome while I was there with my husband in 1874. We had sent her a letter of introduction from Lucy Larcom with a note, and were invited to take tea with her at 58 Via Margutta, her home. She received us in a most cordial New England manner ; we were to have visited her studio the next day, but the sudden illness prevented, and we never saw her again. She was then at work on her “Fountain,” and spoke of the figures around it as “my children.”

In personal appearance she was very attractive. Of a medium-sized, lithe figure, with small, unusually strong hands, a high, broad forehead, which, in connection with her refined features, gave her the stamp of intellectual power, a luxuriant quantity of soft brown hair, the longest and thickest I ever saw, merry blue eyes, and a head as classic and a skin as white as her own beautiful marbles.

Miss Foley’s principal sculptures may be classified in the following order: Among her medallions are Theodore Parker, Charles Sumner, Longfellow, Bryant, William and Mary Howitt, Mrs. S. C. Hall, and perhaps others, said to be “full of purity and grace.”

Her ideal productions are Jeremiah, a colossal bust; Pasquiccia; The Fountain; The Young Trumpeter; The Timid Bather; Excelsior; The Head of Joshua; Little Orpheus ; Cleopatra ; Viola; The Flower Girl; Boy and Cid, a life sized group; The Baby Piper (Little Pan); and doubtless many others which have not come to my notice.

No adequate biography has yet been written of Miss Foley, although it is said that the daughter of Mary Howitt has contemplated such a work. This would certainly be of value, not only as showing how exceptional talent, (if not actual genius), can assert itself in spite of all limitations, but also as a tribute to a rare and aerial personality

.

LYDIA S. HALL.

This writer was the poet, par excellence, of the early volumes of The Offering; as Lucy Larcom said, “She was regarded as one of the best writers of verse while I was in Lowell.”

“The Tomb of Washington,” first printed in No. 1 of the first series of The Offering, was thought to be a wonderful production, and was widely copied. She also wrote for that publication “Old Ironsides,” a poem widely read and quoted. She left Lowell before 1848, and went as a missionary to the Choctaw Indians, travelling on horseback a greater part of the way, across the unsettled region.

From letters received from Mrs. Harvey Jones, of Compton, Cal., I am able to gather up a few scattered threads in the eventful life of this pioneer Indian missionary.

Mrs. Jones says : —

“My dear Mrs. Robinson, — I was associated in missionary work among the Choctaw Indians with Miss Lydia S. Hall. We were together five years, and I learned to regard her as a dear friend; but in some way I have lost all trace of her. Our relations in the missionary work were very pleasant. She was some years my senior, and her riper experience and judgment were in valuable to me. Her work in the Indian Seminary was thorough, and she was regarded as the Choctaw’s friend. Of her literary work I know but little. She wrote occasionally for different periodicals. Her contributions to Woodworth’s ‘Youth’s Cabinet’ I have specially in mind.… Since I lost trace of her, I came across a poem in the Christian Union, entitled “Our Elder Brother.” It was very rich and tender. It was signed `L. S. H. G.’ I did not then know of her marriage; but I said to myself, ‘That sounds like Miss Hall.’ . . . Her nature was intense and positive, she had high ideals, and she could not always be patient towards what she considered wrong. Hers was a checkered life, from infancy to age. She was born in 1818.”

In “border-ruffian” days Miss Hall lived in Kansas, and was an owner of considerable real estate. She lived on the line of emigration, was hostess of a sort of ” Wayside Inn,” and was sometimes obliged to keep the peace among the lawless men who infested that part of the country. She would have no quarrelling, drinking, nor gambling on her premises. She was well able to enforce these regulations, being a woman of great courage and most commanding presence.

From a newspaper article some years ago, of which I did not preserve the date, I quote the following : —

“A LOWELL FACTORY-GIRL UNITED STATES TREASURER.

“Miss Lydia S. Hall, who is now acting U. S. Treasurer in the absence of the male chief, was once a Lowell factory-girl, and was a contributor to The Lowell Offering. … Meeting with some misfortune with regard to titles of property, she went to Washington, and has a clerkship in the Treasury Department since, being also engaged in studying law in order to enable her to secure her property rights in Kansas… . She is a lady of great versatility of talent, and would fill a higher position than the one she now occupies with credit.”

Miss Hall’s letters to Lucy Larcom would have thrown much light on her stirring and eventful life, but these were destroyed before I had thought to ask for them. Her married name was Graffam, but whether she is alive or dead, I do not know.

HARRIET JANE HANSON.
WRITTEN BY LUCY LARCOM.¹

In these days, when woman’s place in the community, as well as in the family, is coming to be acknowledged; when her abilities in every direction find use and scope; when the labor of her hands, head, and heart is everywhere abundantly honored, — it is well for our younger toilers to see what has been accomplished by those who grew up under circumstances more difficult than those by which they are surrounded. Labor has always been honorable for everybody in our steady-going New England life, but it was not as easy for a young woman to put her mental machinery into working order forty years ago as it is now. Her ambition for the education of her higher faculties was, how ever, all the greater for the check that was put upon it by the necessities of a longer day’s toil and the smaller compensation of the older time. It is one of the wholesome laws of our nature that we value most that which we most persistently strive after through obstacles and hindrances.

The author of “The New Pandora” is an illustration of what has been done by one such woman, the development of whose mind began as a child in the Lowell cotton-mills. The book is commended by reviewers as an admirably written composition, a beautiful and successful dramatic poem of woman, the result of ripe years of thought.

Mrs. Robinson’s maiden name was Harriet Jane Hanson, and she is by “long descent ” of good New England parentage. Her father, William Hanson, was descended from the ancestor who first settled in Dover, N.H. — one of a long line of English Quakers. He was a carpenter, and learned his trade of Peter Cudworth, on Merrimac Street in Boston. Her mother, Harriet Browne, was of Scotch and English descent, her paternal ancestor, in this country, being Nicholas Browne, — always spelled with an e, — who was a member of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts from Lynn in 1641, and afterwards from Reading, in 1655-1656, and 1661.

Her great-grandfather, William Browne, of Cambridge, in 1705 sold sixty acres of upland and swamp to Thomas Brattle, Esq., of Boston, Treasurer of the society known as ” The President and Fellows of Harvard University ;” and on this land many of the Harvard College buildings now stand. He was a soldier in the French and Indian war in Canada.

Miss Hanson’s grandfather, Seth Ingersoll Browne, was a non-commissioned captain at the battle of Bunker Hill; and the old “King’s arm” he carried on that decisive day is still in the possession of one of his grandsons. He was one of the “Mohawks ” who helped to throw the tea into Boston Harbor; and his name is written in marble, among his companions of “The Boston Tea Party,” in Hope Cemetery, Worcester, Mass. He is buried in the Granary Burying-ground, in Boston.

Harriet Hanson was born in Boston, Mass., Feb. 8, 1825, and in 1832 removed with her widowed mother and her three brothers to Lowell, where they lived for some years on one of the manufacturing “corporations.” Her first attempt at writing for the press was made while she was yet an operative in the Lowell mills, in the “annuals” and newspapers of the time. She was also a contributor to The Lowell Offering, and was on intimate terms with its editors and contributors.

In 1848 she was married to William S. Robinson, journalist and parliamentarian, who, as “Warrington,” became well known as the war correspondent in the Springfield Republican, the New York Tribune, the New York Evening Post, and in other newspapers. He was also the author of “Warrington’s Manual of Parliamentary Law.” Mr. Robinson died March 11, 1876. Their children are Harriette Lucy (married Sidney D. Shattuck of Malden, Mass.), Eliza beth Osborne (married George S. Abbott of Waterbury, Conn.), William Elbridge (died young), and Edward Warrington (married Mary E. Robinson of Denver, Col.).

Mrs. Robinson is deeply interested in all the movements which tend to the advancement of women, and uses her pen and her voice freely in their behalf. She was the first woman to speak before the Select Committee on Woman Suffrage in Congress, and has spoken for the cause before the legislature of her own State, where she is not only a citizen, but a voter as far as the law allows.

The woman’s club movement has always had her firm support; she assisted at the formation of The General Federation of Women’s Clubs in 1890, and was a member of its first advisory board; she is a Daughter of the American Revolution, and a member of the N. E. Historic Genealogical Society.

Mrs. Robinson’s first published book was “Warrington Pen Portraits,” a memoir of her husband, with selections from his writings. She has also written “Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement,” and “Captain Mary Miller,” a drama.

But her best literary achievement in book form is her latest, “The New Pandora,” a poem of which any writer might well be proud. There are passages of exquisitely clear-cut poetry in the drama, and gleams of true poetic aspiration lighting up the homely toil of the woman who knows herself not of earthly line age.

The “Chorus of Ills” beginning their flight is a strong chant, as classical in its strain as some of Shelley’s in his imaginative dramas. Indeed, the whole poem is so classically thought out and shaped as to be lifted quite above what is popular in style, and is for that reason less likely to attract the attention it deserves.

Pandora naturally has at first no love for the rude mate to whom she has been assigned, and it is the death of their little child that brings their hearts together in a real human affection. The loss of this little first-born woman child makes a moan of tenderest pathos through the whole poem, and is a most motherly touch, rarely found in poetry; and the feeling colors the whole book. The poem is pervaded with the sacredness of the domestic affections. The style is strong and clear, and one feels, in reading it, a subtle spiritual fragrance, the beauty, the holiness, the immortality, of human love.

Perhaps her “Pandora” breathes the very truest aspiration of many a heart among that far-away throng of industrious, onward-looking maidens : —

"But this I ask, that I may be allowed by thee 
To do one single thing to make my kind more good, 
More happy, for that I have lived."

All working-women have reason for strengthening themselves by study and thought, seeing that such a poem as “The New Pandora” is the heart-and-brain product of one who grew up as a working-girl.

To the writer of this brief notice it is pleas ant to recall the time when the author of this beautiful poem and herself were children together, school companions and workmates ; when an atmosphere of poetry hung over the busy city by the Merrimack, and when its green borders burst into bloom with girlish dreams and aspirations.

Mrs. Robinson celebrated her seventieth anniversary Feb. 8, 1895, at her home in Malden, Massachusetts.

EMMELINE LARCOM.

In Lucy Larcom’s touching poem, ” My Childhood’s Enchantress,” will be found a loving tribute to this mother-sister, to whom she owed so much in her youth and all through her life. It was she who first taught Lucy the use of the pen, and encouraged and helped her in all her literary efforts. She was the oldest own sister of Lucy, is the ” Emelie” in the “New England Girlhood,” and to her Lucy wrote almost her first, certainly her first printed, letter, in 1834, just after their mother had moved to Lowell. This is from her autobiography, printed in The Lowell Offering. She says: —

“Dear Sister, — We have got a sink in our front entry. We live in a three-story brick block, with fourteen doors in it. There is a canal close by. But no more of this. We arrived safe after our fatiguing journey. We are in good health, and hope you enjoy the same blessing.”

In writing of her to me, Lucy says: —

«I was transplanted quite early in my childhood, and grew through girlhood and womanhood under her care. The ten or twelve years of my residence there were certainly very important years to me. My natural bent towards literature was more encouraged and developed at Lowell than it would probably have been elsewhere; and I have always called the place a home in remembrance.… We were often writing to each other, and there never was any break to our affection since my childhood. I think she was almost a perfect woman.”

I remember Emmeline as a motherly young woman whom the rest of us looked up to, as one much superior to ourselves ; and, in recalling her influence over her younger companions, I think she must have done a great deal towards inciting them to learn to think on earnest subjects, and to express their thoughts in writing. She was tall and stately, with curling hair, and was much prettier than Lucy; she had a face full of sunshine, and, like Lucy, the bluest of blue eyes. She was conspicuous among the group of the original writers for The Lowell Offering, as well as The Operatives’ Magazine.

She was an enthusiastic student, reading abstruse books in the intervals of mill-work, and so becoming familiar with mental and moral science; or she would study mathematical problems, of which she usually had one or two pinned up before her, to occupy her thoughts at her daily toil. The Rev. Amos Blanchard, a very scholarly man, said of her that she was the most intellectual woman in his church, of which she was also one of the most faithful and self sacrificing members, giving herself unreservedly to all good works.

She married the Rev. George Spaulding, and with her husband and her sister Lucy went, in 1846, to Illinois, and spent the greater part of her life there, as a clergyman’s wife, useful, happy, and beloved.

She did not write much after her marriage, and, as she said, would not consider herself an “authoress” at all. She died in Newcastle, Cal., July 17, 1892, leaving her husband, one son, and three daughters. The manner of her death was most enviable. As Lucy wrote me, “she made herself ready for church, but it was heaven for her instead.” At my request Lucy wrote to Emmeline, not long before her death, asking for her recollections of The Lowell Offering times; and she replied as follows: —

Newcastle, Cal., May 27, 1892.

Dear Sister Lucy, — I have been stirring up my treacherous old memory, hoping to respond to the request of Mrs. Robinson for accurate items in regard to the “Improvement Circle of our girlhood.” … I am very sure indeed that I was an interested and original promoter of it. It seems to me that Harriot Curtis might have suggested it. She was the most intellectual person in my circle of acquaintance at that time. We worked in the same room, and near each other, long before the Improvement Circle had an existence. . . . She was a mental stimulus to me, and we freely discussed all subjects that came to hand. I think… that Louisa and Maria Currier, who were Universalists, and Laura and Mary Ann Spaulding, who were Baptists, were among the first members. If I recollect rightly, also Abby Goddard and Lydia Hall.… We had essays and discussions, I was not present at the meeting at Mr. Currier’s. I think Mr. Thomas was invited there, and the “Circle” was probably invited to meet at the Universalist vestry. The first Offering made its appearance soon after.

I had “A Sister’s Tomb” and an article commencing, “Oh, you have no soul,” and one other, in the first series.

I did not attend any of the meetings at the Universalist vestry, so am unable to say who suggested The Offering. I should think it very likely that Mr. Thomas might have been the one to do so. But the writers had been developed before he knew them. I am quite sure he was much interested in it. I remember that he complimented my verses as the gem of the number.… It was very soon after this that some of us began another Circle-meeting in the vestry of the Congregational church; and out of that grew The Operatives’ Magazine…. I think, as you do, that very much has been made of what was to us a mere recreation, and the most natural thing in the world for a circle of wide-awake, earnest girls to do…. Nearly sixty years have passed since those days; but they are pleasant to remember, and I suspect they held the prophecies of many a pleasant future, of which it might be interesting to know the fulfilment. I did think I should be able to do better, and perhaps write a page for Mrs. Robinson; but you see how I have not succeeded. … Here endeth, with love,

Big old sister Emmeline EMMELINE.

LUCY LARCOM.

A part of this sketch of Miss Larcom was written by me not long before her death, and submitted to her for her approval. The additions made are extracts from her letters, with my own personal reminiscences.

In response to my letter asking her approval of what I had prepared, Miss Larcom wrote: —

“I approve the sketch, and appreciate your way of writing it, though I don’t often encourage living obituary notices of myself. What they call fame’ amounts to so little. But some things about us in it may help others to know.… I am not ambitious to appear in any book; but if I am to be written up,’ would much rather it would be done by a friend…. I told in `A New England Girlhood’ all I care to tell about my early life. You know something more of me, and you are at liberty to say what you choose. I have tried to make my life count for good to others, and to make my verses an expression of what I am trying to live. You once wrote something about me in The Independent that was fresh and natural. Why not utilize that? I have done nothing worth speaking of in a literary sense, but I love to write, and I suppose I shall go on trying to express myself in this way always. The material fact that I have never earned more than enough with my pen than to meet, with difficulty, the necessary expenses of living, does not in the least discourage me, or make me willing to write the trash that `pays.’ That is where I am now on the literary question, and that is where I am content to remain.”

It was in that early poetic atmosphere when our American bards first began to teach the young people of the time to love poetry for poetry’s sake, that Lucy Larcom received the first incentive to her life-work.

Lucy Larcom was born in one of the earliest settled coast towns in the state, Beverly, Mass., March 5, 1824. Her father, Benjamin Larcom, was a sea-captain; he died when she was a child, and her widowed mother, taking with her Lucy and two or three others of her younger children, then removed to Lowell. The year 1835 found her in one of the Lowell grammar schools, where her education went on until it became necessary for her to earn her living, which she began to do very early as an operative in a cotton-factory.

In her “Idyl of Work” the mill-life is truth fully portrayed, with the scenery, characteristics, style of life, thought, and aspirations peculiar to New England womanhood of that period.

In writing to me of this book, in 1875, she says, “What do you think of that name for a reminiscence of Lowell life? Of course you won’t like it as poetry; and there is not so very much truth in it, except in general outlines of the way of living. I had to write my remembered impressions, and everybody had different ones. The story, such as it is, is manufactured, of course; for I didn’t want any personalities, so I haven’t even got myself in, that I know of.”…

But it is very easy to detect, in her loving descriptions, many of her young companions, who shared with her the simplicity of those days of toil; and in following with her the career of some of those bright spirits, and watching their success in their varied pathways through life, it is very pleasant for me to be able to corroborate what she has said.

Riches have fallen to the lot of some of those young girls, and to others a degree of distinction in various situations and occupations; but have they not, from their better surroundings, ever looked back, as she does, to those dear old simple days, so full of health and endeavor, so free from care, as among the happiest of their lives? Then, ignorance of the world was bliss, and hope and aspiration reigned supreme.

My first recollection of Lucy Larcom is as a precocious writer of verses in The Lowell Casket, where the editor, Mr. George Brown, in his notice of them, said, “They were written by a young lady of thirteen, who was beyond a doubt inspired by the Nurses,’ — a misprint, of course, for “Muses; ” although the author was so young, that the mistake was not so far wrong.

This, however, was not her first attempt at verse-making, since she began to write while a child of seven or eight years, in the attic of her early home in Beverly. The title of these first verses was “A Thunder Storm,” and they were read with wonder by her admiring brothers and sisters.

Two pictures of her in that early factory-life remain in my memory. By the Merrimack River, whose romantic banks she loved to describe, on a bridge which crossed a narrow part of the stream, I once passed her, a tall and bonnie young girl, with her head in the clouds. After a little nod of recognition, as I looked up at her, — for, although she was only a year older than I, she was much larger and more mature, — she went on. But to me she seemed so grand, so full of thought, that, with girlish admiration for one who had written verses, I forgot my errand, turned, stood still, and thoughtfully watched her out of sight.

Miss Larcom’s first work as a Lowell operative was in a spinning-room on the Lawrence corporation where her mother lived. At first she was a “doffer,” with the other little girls; after that she tended a spinning-frame, and then worked in the dressing-room beside “pleasant windows looking towards the river.” After this she “graduated” into the cloth-room, and it was here that I saw my second picture of her. The cloth-room was considered by some of the mill girls a rather aristocratic working-place because of its fewer hours of confinement, its cleanliness, and the absence of machinery. In this room the cloth, after it had been finished and cut into thirty or forty yard pieces in the weaving-room, was measured on hooks, one yard apart, until the length of each piece was told off. I used often to run in and see her at her work; and to my imaginative eyes she was like a Sibyl I had read of, as with waving arms she told off the yards of cloth in measured rhythm, and it seemed to be verses, and not cloth, that lay heaped up behind her.

The last two years of her Lowell life (which covered in all a period of about ten years), were spent in the same room; the latter part of the time she was the book-keeper, and recorded the number of pieces and bales. Here she pursued her studies, and in intervals of leisure some text-book usually lay open on her desk, awaiting a spare moment.

Lucy Larcom’s first contribution to The Lowell Offering, “My Burial Place” (written at sixteen), was published in No. 4 of the first series, and was sent to the editor by her sister Emmeline, while Lucy was on a visit to Beverly. With this exception, she was not a contributor to the magazine while it was under Mr. Thomas’s editorship. During that time she wrote for The Operatives’ Magazine, which was published under the supervision of her pastor, the Rev. Amos Blanchard, and which contained only articles written by the young ladies who were members of an Improvement Circle connected with his parish.

It may be said here that, whatever sectarian feeling there may have been between these rival publications, it was not shared by the girls themselves, at least not by Lucy Larcom. She simply and naturally followed the lead of her pastor. After the “orthodox” magazine stopped, and Miss Curtis and Miss Farley took charge of The Offering, Lucy became one of the corps of writers ; and many of her verses and essays, both grave and gay, can be found in its bound volumes. Her first contribution to Volume Third, “The River,”’ a poem, appeared in October, 1843. She wrote letters from ” Looking Glass Prairie,” Illinois ; and many of her prose poems,” published afterwards as “Similitudes,” with several early poems, including a different version of “The Lady Arabella,” first appeared in The Lowell Offering.

Our friendship began when we were little girls in “pantalets,” when we were “doffers” together in the cotton-mill, and was continued to the end of her life. She also became my husband’s friend; and during his lifetime she was our frequent guest, and was always “Aunt Lucy” to our children. Mr. Robinson had great faith in her possibilities as a writer, and he published her verses in his newspaper long before they found admittance into the magazines.

It was through him, while he was the reader (or “stopper’’) for The Atlantic Monthly, during Mr. Lowell’s editorship, that “The Rose Enthroned.” was brought to the notice of the poet, and afterwards admitted into the pages of the magazine. In a letter to Mr. Robinson, Miss Larcom says of this poem: “‘The Rose Enthroned” was written in 1860, and published in June, 1861, through your mediation, you know.”

I should be glad to quote freely from her letters, they are so full of friendship and of loving kindness, but must refrain, and give extracts from those only which relate to her personal history.

In a letter written to me at Concord, Mass., in 1857, she says : —

“I was very glad to hear from you, and was particularly interested in your account of the sewing-society [anti-slavery] at R. W. E—— ’s. Didn’t it seem funny to go a-gossiping to the house of the Seer? I don’t wonder at your expecting the parrot to talk `transcendentally.’ Did the tea and toast smack of Hymettus? and was there any apple-sass from those veritable sops-o’ wine? Attic salt came in as a matter of course. Well, it’s a fine thing to be on visiting terms at Olympus. I should like to see the philosopher again. I don’t think I should be afraid of him now. Sometimes I like philosophers, and sometimes I don’t. The thing is to live. Beautiful theories don’t make any of us do that, but the real breath of life from the Infinite Good, which every soul must have for itself, or, fool or philosopher, he is dead as a heap of sand.… I should like to see the hills where huckleberries grow, and the Pond. There never were hills so still and balmy as those.” . . .

During the war her letters breathe the spirit of “A Loyal Woman’s No!” and show, to one that can read between the lines, that she had a personal interest in saying No to a lover who seemed to her to be disloyal to his country.

Although a strong abolitionist, and a believer in the political rights of man, regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” she did not see the justice of woman’s claim to equal rights with man. In answer to a letter asking for her help in the suffrage cause, written in 1870, she says : —

“You know I am way behind the times, am not even a `suffrage woman’ yet, though I haven’t the least objection to the rest of the women’s having it. Don’t you see, I’m constitutionally on the fence.… I hope your enthusiastic believers will succeed; and if the suffrage comes, as it will, I hope it will be a blessing to everybody. All the people I know and respect seem to be in the movement, and still `I don’t see it.’…

Later, in 1888, she writes : —

“I am for human rights for woman. I never did believe in man’s claim to dictate to her. But I want to work for her elevation in my own way, so that when she does vote, it will not be a failure. I cannot `Club,’ myself. I am an obstinate old Independent. . . . Men are chivalrous, you know. Do you suppose we women shall be so towards them, by and by, in the women’s millenium? Dear me! I like the old slavish bonds, and am perfectly willing men should rule the world yet, heathenish old maid that l am. Now, here I am perplexed with two calls to the meeting to consider the matter of women’s voting, about which I have never made up my mind, and can’t! If I were a property woman, I might.” …

In writing of her volume of poetical works, published in 1868, Miss Larcom says, —

«I shall send a volume to your other self and you, (how are we to use adjectives in the Women’s Rights speech ?), not by way of throwing a sop to Cerberus, but because of old friendship, and because I value your candid opinion and Warrington’s very highly. I am a little more afraid of you than of him, — I remember Gail Hamilton and the wringing-machine. Don’t pillory me in a paragraph, will you? nor inspire the pen masculine with a bon mot at my expense.”

At Miss Larcom’s particular request I have refrained from saying more than is necessary of her as a writer for The Offering. On her last visit to me, in 1892, while speaking of the material to be used in this book, she asked me not to say too much about her, because, as she said, she was “tired of being always cited as the representative of The Offering writers, when there were others who wrote and did quite as much, or more, for the magazine than I did.”

Miss Larcom is correct here. Her fame was achieved long after she ceased to be a mill-girl; and there were several others, as the sketches will show, who were as good writers, and much better known than herself, when she left the factory. And it is very thoughtful of her to speak a good word for those hitherto forgotten authors, by declining to be made a sort of composite portrait, as representing the best and brightest among them.

In one of her letters she says, —

“Don’t you think it is getting a little tiresome, this posing as factory-girls of the olden time? It is very much like politicians boasting of carrying their dinners in a tin pail in their youth. What if they did?… I am proud to be a working-woman, as I always have been; but that special occupation was temporary, and not the business of our lives, we all knew, girls as we were.” …

“I sent you a copy of my `New England Girlhood,’ for old time’s sake. Did you receive it? You could write a more entertaining one. Why don’t you write a novel? I wish you would write up The Offering time, and sketch Harriot Curtis in it. She was unique.”

Miss Larcom’s writings, all told, never yielded her inéome enough to live on, even in her mod est way. In speaking of this matter in a letter written in February 1891, she says, —

“`A New England Girlhood’ has as yet brought me only about two hundred dollars. How can writers live by writing?”

She was therefore obliged to supplement her literary labors by teaching. She was very prudent in her manner of living, and never, from childhood, really had a home of her own. Towards the last of her life she found herself much cramped for means to secure that rest her tired brain so much needed; and this made the gifts received from her publisher and from her dearly loved Wheaton Seminary pupils, most welcome, and enabled her, during her last illness, to feel a relief from pecuniary anxiety.

If Miss Larcom had not been exceptionally fortunate, not only in her temperament but in her surroundings, — hampered as she was all through her life by want of pecuniary means, — she could not have developed her writing talent so well. She had the rare gift of finding and keeping the right kind of friends, in her own family as well as outside, and these supplied to her life that practical (though not pecuniary) help she so much needed. So her days were free from household and other cares, and when relieved from her duties as teacher, or as editor, her time was free to use in her own chosen way.

In this, her life differed from that of many women writers, who, whether married or not, often have exacting cares which interrupt and hinder the expression of their written thoughts. Miss Larcom did not have that hindrance; and she had the chance through most of her life to carry out her idea, as she expressed it, of “developing the utmost that is in me.” She had no family or domestic cares, and her children were all “dream children.”

Miss Larcom might have married, once when she was quite young, and again later; but for reasons of her own she declined, — reasons, the validity of which, in one instance at least, I did not see. I have been asked if Mr. Whittier and Miss Larcom were never more than friends. I can truly answer, no. Miss Larcom was the intimate friend of Elizabeth Whittier, the poet’s sister, who, as she said, “was lovely in character, and had fine poetic taste.”

She often visited their home, and after the death of the sister the friendship with the brother continued. Miss Larcom was Mr. Whittier’s assistant in compiling the books of selections which bear his name, and did a great deal of the actual work in collecting material ; they were true friends.

In a letter written shortly after his death, she says, —

“I have not spoken of Mr. Whittier going away. You will know that it is a real sorrow to me, and yet a joy that he has entered into a larger life… This imperfect existence of ours can be but the shadow of the true life; in that, there is no death.” …

One of her last letters to me was written from Boston a few weeks before her death, and is as follows : —

Dear H., — I have been here nearly a month, but have hardly been out at all. I have never been so much of an invalid, and I don’t like it. I suppose I have been steadily “running down,” the last year or so, but have gone on just as if I were well. Now I am brought to a stop, and am told that I must never do any more hard work. Lack of strength is what I feel most. They tell me that if I will really rest, brain and body, I may yet accomplish a good deal before I die. I do not feel as if I had got through yet; but who knows? I am trying to realize that it does not make much difference what part of the universe we are in, provided we are on the right track upward. Somehow I feel nearer Emmeline and Mr. Whittier, — as if we knew each other better now than before they went away. I should like to leave my life and work here just when I can go on with what is waiting for me elsewhere. But there is a Master of life who takes care of all that.

Ever truly yours,
Lucy Larcom.

Of her religious life, it may be said that in her early childhood Lucy became a communicant of the Congregational church; but in later years, as her mind broadened, she became deeply imbued with a sense of the divine fatherhood of God, and the impossibility that He would leave one of the souls that He had made to perish eternally, or, as she says, to quote from her “Biography,” “After probing my heart, I find that it utterly refuses to believe that there is any corner in God’s universe where hope never comes, . . . where love is not brooding, and seeking to penetrate the darkest abyss.”

In 1879 she first listened to Phillips Brooks, and his preaching to her “was the living realization of her own thought.” She did not give up her Puritanism, but thought she saw, in the belief and service of his church, a new way of finding the right path towards the end of her journey in search of the truth. As she wrote, “It is not the church, but only one way of entering Christ’s church.” Her religious faith was not so much changed as deepened by this departure from some of the old-time beliefs; for, in writing of the matter to me, she said, “I count the faith of my whole life as one.”

Miss Larcom partook of the Holy Communion in Trinity Church, Boston, Easter, 1887, and was confirmed March 20,1890. By this service, she said, her “heart was fixed,” and she could think of herself as “avowedly in the visible church.” It was after her connection with the Episcopal Church that Miss Larcom wrote her most important religious books, and these embody much of her own thought in matters concerning the deepest spiritual life.

“Similitudes,” a collection of prose poems, was published in 1853; and during the remaining years of her life she published and compiled fourteen books in prose and verse. Her last book, “The Unseen Friend,” was published in 1898. The above list does not include the two volumes of poetical selections compiled by her self and Mr. Whittier.

A complete edition of “Larcom’s Poems” was published by Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., in the Household edition of the poets, in 1884. In writing of this, Miss Larcom, with characteristic modesty, said, “The idea of my being ranked with other American poets.”

She was also editor of Our Young Folks from about 1865 to 1872.

Although it is probable that Miss Larcom’s fame was achieved as an author of verse, yet she was the best satisfied with her prose produc tions. As she once said to me, “Essay writing would be my choice, rather than any other form of expression.”

It is probable that her name will be the longest remembered by her best-known lyric, “Hannah Binding Shoes;” but this was by no means her favorite, nor would she desire to be remembered by it alone, nor to have it considered as one of the best of her poems. And yet it contains the deep pathos and the tragedy that is in the lives of many solitary women, and as long as such exist, the story of “Poor Lone Hannah” will be read and remembered.

“Hannah Binding Shoes” was written shortly after Miss Larcom’s return from Illinois, when the great contrast between the rugged seacoast, so familiar to her early years, and the “boundlessness of commonplace,” of the level country she had just left, impressed her most vividly. One summer afternoon, in riding through Marblehead, a face at a window riveted her attention, and haunted her for weeks. Meanwhile, the refrain of the lyric, with its peculiar meter, and the face, continually chased each other through her mind, until, to get rid of their importunate presence, she one day sat down, and imprisoned them together in “immortal verse.”

Another poem which takes high rank is “The Rose Enthroned,” her earliest contribution to the Atlantic Monthly, which, in the absence of signature, was attributed to Emerson. Also, “A Loyal Woman’s No,” a patriotic lyric that attracted great attention during our Civil War.

It is such poems as these, with her religious writings and her “Childhood Songs,” that will make Lucy Larcom’s name remembered. And thousands of earnest working-women will thank her for all that she has written, and go on their way refreshed and encouraged by her success and the fulfilment of her aspirations.

In personal appearance Miss Larcom was tall and stately; her hair was wavy and of a light brown color. Her eyes were of a lovely smiling blue, and her whole face was lit by the charm of them. And who that has heard it can forget her musical laugh, so attractive that even strangers would turn and listen to it, or lose the memory of her beautiful smile, so radiant, so illuminating, that lasted even to the end of her life and that left its lingering gleam on her face after it was cold in death, then to be transplanted to that other life because it was a part of her own immortal self!

Her whole atmosphere was full of a benignant interest in those with whom she came into personal relations. She lived up to her profession, both in religion and in ethics, and was a bright example of what a woman can become, who believes that this life is but the beginning of the next, and who takes the higher law for her inspiration and her guide.

She died April 17, 1898, and is buried in Beverly, Mass., her native place. There, by the seashore, where the salt breezes —

"Chase the white sails o’er the sea,"

and linger lovingly over her grave, her tired body finds its earthly resting-place.

Farewell, old friend and work-mate, but not forever; I too have the conviction, the faith, that this is not all of life, but that sometime, somewhere, we shall take up these broken threads, and go on with our appointed work “on the right track upward.”

SARAH SHEDD.

Miss Shedd may be called the philanthropist, par excellence, of the early mill-girls. Her whole life was one of self-sacrifice. Her early years were devoted to earning money for the support or the education of members of the family; and at its close she bequeathed the sum of $2,500 for the establishment of the free library in her native town of Washington, N.H.

Her parents were in narrow circumstances ; but they had endowed her with a good mind, and had given her a fair education, which was supplemented by tuition under Mary Lyon, of Holyoke Seminary, one of the first women preceptors of her time. She had a great desire to further continue her education, but was obliged to do it unaided. She began to teach a summer school when fifteen years of age, and worked in the cotton-mill in the winter, and thus was enabled to help her family, as well as to gratify her taste for reading and study.

In early life she educated a brother; and later she nearly supported him, and also assumed the whole expense of her aged mother’s maintenance. And yet, in spite of these large drains upon her resources, she saved, solely from her own money, enough to start the library which bears her name, that her townspeople might enjoy the ad vantages she had so much desired. The Hon. Carroll D. Wright, United States Commissioner of Labor, was one of her pupils, and he delivered the address at the dedication of The Shedd Free Public Library, in 1882, speaking thus in praise of his well-beloved teacher : —

“The first school I ever attended was kept by her, in the front room of the store opposite the post-office. Her genial smile won the hearts of the children. . . . We longed for her coming, regretted her going. She wandered with us over the hills and fields, gave us instruction from her heart and mind, as well as from the the books we used… . Her genial disposition lighted the pathway of many a boy and girl, and gave them glimpses of a mind and soul, which in themselves make her memory as fragrant as spring flowers.”

Miss Shedd was not a prolific writer, and her contributions for The Offering were always of a serious nature. She spent no money on fine clothes nor ornaments; I remember her as a tall, spare, stooping woman, most plainly dressed in calico. We younger ones did not understand her, and were awed by her silence and reserve. But later some of us came to recognize her character as that of one studious, gentle, and self-sacrificing. She remains in my mind as one of the “solitary” among us. She died in Washington, N.H., April 5, 1867.

It is one of the coincidents of history, that, at about the same time Miss Shedd’s money was given towards founding this library, another native of the same little town, Mr. Luman T. Jefts, who had also worked his way up and earned every cent of his money, should supplement Miss Shedd’s gift by adding a sum large enough to erect a suitable library building to contain the books bought by her bequest.

And thus their names are linked together by their grateful townsmen, not only as benefactors of their kind, but also as two earnest and sincere persons who have struggled with adversity and narrow surroundings, have conquered, and fulfilled their cherished aim in life.

ELIZABETH EMERSON TURNER.

The subject of this sketch is one of the few of the early mill-girls who are still living; my acquaintance with her has been kept up since early girlhood, and our correspondence has been almost uninterrupted. She married Mr. Charles B. Sawyer, of Chicago, who died in 1896. Mrs. Sawyer has always retained her interest in the old factory days, and was and is proud of her connection with The Lowell Offering. In our letters, the prospect of publishing a book containing the material I had collected was often discussed; and she expressed her sympathy with the enterprise, saying, —

“I wish you would take up such a work as you allude to, in justice to those most interested, and to that class of girls in the Lowell mills. You are the one best fitted to do them full credit. I think the book would meet with a good sale, as labor is now becoming once more honorable and respectable.… We will see if our Lowell Offering cannot be made to live for many, many years to come; and be an object-lesson to the mill girls of the present day.”

Lizzie Turner was born in Lyme, N.H., Aug. 27, 1822. Her father, Jacob Turner, Esq., was a descendant in the sixth generation from Humphrey Turner, who came from England, and settled in Plymouth, Mass. He was for twenty years a justice of the peace in Lyme, and for two years a member of the New Hampshire Legislature. He lost his health before he reached middle life, and about the same time lost nearly all of his property by signing a note for a friend, who ran away to Canada, leaving him to pay the debt. In order to do this he sold his farm ; and after paying the sum required, he had just five hundred dollars left. With this he went to Lowell, in 1833, where so many families who had lost their bread-winner had preceded him, and where the mother and children could assist in supporting the home. Mrs. Turner opened a boarding-house for operatives; her children, as fast as they were old enough, went to work in the mill; and thus the invalid father was well taken care of for the rest of his life.

Lizzie went into the mill to work at eleven years of age. Her school-days ended at fourteen, when she was just fitted for the high school, having worked at least two-thirds of the time in the factory; and after this her time and strength were needed to help support the family. She was one of the very earliest of the writers for The Offering, and she continued to be a contributor until Mr. Thomas ceased to be the editor. Her early recollections are very valuable, and all through these pages I have made free use of what information she has given me. She was just eighteen when she began her contributions; and her own account of her connection with the magazine and of its inception, will be of interest here. She says : —

“The whole plan of his Circle and Offering originated with Brother Thomas. I remember his saying one evening, after the reading of our papers, that there were many of the articles well worthy of publication, and that he should publish them in a magazine, to `show what factory-girls could do.’… I must tell you that I had never attempted writing anything but letters till Brother Thomas insisted that I must write something for the Circle, so that almost my first essays in composition were those articles.”

Miss Turner was one of the paid contributors; she bought herself a mahogany bureau with some of this money, and that article of furniture she cherishes among her choicest possessions, as a most valuable memento of the old Lowell Offering.

I remember Lizzie Turner, when a young girl, as an intellectual factor among the contributors to The Offering, and also as a prominent worker in the Universalist Church. She was sprightly, vivacious, and universally popular. She was tall and graceful, had dark-brown hair, and star bright eyes, which now, although she is a grand mother, have lost very little of their lustre, nor is her kindly and smiling expression diminished.

To illustrate the simplicity of dress of the mill-girls, before spoken of, and also to show how little thought they had of rivalling or of outdoing each other in matter of adornment, I venture to give the following as related to me by Mrs. Sawyer: —

“There were ten of us girl friends (the majority of whom wrote for The Offering) who one summer had each a purple satin cape for street wear. These were trimmed with black lace; and this, with a small-figured, light Merrimack print (or calico), constituted our walking costume. We had nothing better for Sunday wear; and as we walked along, sometimes all together, I am sure that it never occurred to one of us that we were not as well-dressed as any lady we met.”

During the Civil War, Mrs. Sawyer was one of the most efficient among the many women in Chicago who worked for the soldiers and the country, and she has devoted much time and thought to the woman suffrage cause. She is a voter and an active member of The Illinois Woman’s Alliance, of the Illinois Woman’s Press Association, and of the Chicago Woman’s Club.

Her sister, Abby D. Turner, was also one of the earliest writers for The Offering ; her first contribution was written when she was sixteen years of age. She was married while in her teens to Mr. John Caryl. She has been a widow many years, and has been entirely devoted to her children and grandchildren.

CLEMENTINE AVERILL.

Among the “girl graduates” from the New England cotton-mill, there is one who, although not a writer for The Offering, yet deserves to be included in a book like this. This is Clementine Averill.

There was often doubt thrown upon the accounts of the superior mental, moral, and physical condition of the Lowell factory-girl; and at one time (in 1850) a Senator of the United States, named Clemens (of Alabama, I think), stated in Congress that “the Southern slaves were better off than the Northern operatives.” Miss Averill, then at work in the Lowell mill, answered this person’s allegation in a letter to the New York Tribune, as follows : —

LETTER FROM A FACTORY-GIRL TO SENATOR CLEMENS.
Communicated for The Weekly Tribune.

Lowell, March 6, 1850.

Mr. Clemens, — Sir, in some of the late papers I have read several questions which you asked concerning the New England operatives. They have been well answered perhaps, but enough has not yet been said, and I deem it proper that the operatives should answer for themselves.

Ist, You wish to know what pay we have. I will speak only for the girls, and think I am stating it very low when I say that we average two dollars a week beside our board. Hundreds of girls in these mills clear from three to five dollars a week, while others, who have not been here long, and are not used to the work, make less than two dollars. If my wages are ever reduced lower than that, I shall seek employment elsewhere.

2d, Children are never taken from their parents and put into the mill. What an idea! No person has a right to take a child from its parents, whether they be black or white, bond or free, unless there is danger of the child’s suffering harm by remaining with its parents. Girls come here from the country of their own free will, because they can earn more money, and because they wish to see and know more of the world.

3d, One manufacturer will employ laborers dismissed by another if they bring a regular discharge and have given two weeks’ notice previous to leaving.

4th, We never work more than twelve and a half hours a day; the majority would not be willing to work less, if their earnings were less, as they only intend working a few years, and they wish to make all they can while here, for they have only one object in view.

5th, When operatives are sick they select their own physician, and usually have money enough laid by to supply all their wants. If they are sick long, and have not money enough, those who have give to them freely ; for let me tell you, there is warm-hearted charity here, as well as hard work and economy.

6th, I have inquired, but have not ascertained that one person ever went from a factory to a poor-house in this city.

7th, Any person can see us, who wishes to, by calling for us at the counting-room, or after hours of labor by calling at our boarding-places.

8th, The factory girls generally marry, and their husbands are expected to care for them when old. There are some, however, who do not marry, but such often have hundreds and thousands of dollars at interest; if you do not believe it, come and examine the bank-books and railroad stocks for yourself.

9th, We have as much and as good food as we want. We usually have warm biscuit, or nice toast and pie, with good bread and butter, coffee and tea, for breakfast; for dinner, meat and potatoes, with vegetables, tomatoes, and pickles, pudding or pie, with bread, butter, coffee and tea; for supper we have nice bread or warm biscuit, with some kind of sauce, cake, pie, and tea. But these questions seem to relate merely to our animal wants. We have all that is necessary for the health and comfort of the body, if that is all; and the richest person needs no more. But is the body all? Have we no minds to improve, no hearts to purify? Truly, to provide for our physical wants is our first great duty, in order that our mental faculties may be fully developed. If we had no higher nature than the animal, life would not be worth possessing; but we have Godlike faculties to cultivate and expand, without limit and without end. What is the object of our existence, if it is not to glorify God? and how shall we glorify him but by striving to be like him, aiming at the perfection of our whole nature, and aiding all within our influence in their onward progress to perfection? Do you think we would come here and toil early and late with no other object in view than the gratification of mere animal propensities? No, we would not try to live; and this is wherein consists the insult, both in your questions and in your remarks in the Senate; as though to provide for the body was all we had to live for, as though we had no immortal minds to train for usefulness and a glorious existence.

Let us see whether the “Southern slaves are better off than the Northern operatives.” As I have said, we have all that is necessary for health and comfort. Do the slaves have more? It is in the power of every young girl who comes here to work, if she has good health and no one but herself to provide for, to acquire every accomplishment, and get as good an education as any lady in the country. Have the slaves that privilege? By giving two weeks’ notice we can leave when we please, visit our friends, attend any school, or travel for pleasure or information. Some of us have visited the White Mountains, Niagara Falls, and the city of Washington; have talked with the President, and visited the tomb of him who was greatest and best. Would that our present rulers had a portion of the same spirit which animated him; then would misrule and oppression cease, and the gathering storm pass harmless by. Can the slaves leave when they please, and go where they please? are they allowed to attend school, or travel for pleasure, and sit at the same table with any gentleman or lady? Some of the operatives of this city have been teachers in institutions of learning in your own State. Why do your people send here for teachers if your slaves are better off than they? Shame on the man who would stand up in the Senate of the United States, and say that the slaves at the South are better off than the operatives of New England; such a man is not fit for any office in a free country, Are we torn from our friends and kindred, sold and driven about like cattle, chained and whipped, and not allowed to speak one word in self-defence? We can appeal to the laws for redress, while the slaves can not…. And now, Mr. Clemens, I would most earnestly invite you, Mr. Foote, and all other Southern men who want to know anything about us, to come and see us. We will treat you with all the politeness in our power. I should be pleased to see you at my boarding place, No. 61 Kirk Street, Boott Corporation. In closing, I must say that I pity not only the slave, but the slave-owner. I pity him for his want of principle, for his hardness of heart and wrong education. May God, in his infinite mercy, convince all pro-slavery men of the great sin of holding their fellow-men in bondage! May he turn their hearts from cruelty and oppression to the love of himself and all mankind! Please excuse me for omitting the “Hon.” before your name. I cannot apply titles where they are not deserved. CLEMENTINE AVERILL.

Miss Averill had many letters of congratulation upon this letter, from different parts of the country; and among them was one from the celebrated Quaker philanthropist, Isaac T. Hopper, who indorsed her words, as follows: —

New York, 3d mo., 19th, 1850.

My much esteemed friend, Clementine Averill, — I call thee so on the strength of thy letter of the 6th inst., addressed to Senator Clemens, which I have read in the Tribune of this morning with much satisfaction. I ought to apologize for thus intruding upon thy attention, being an entire stranger; but really I experienced so much gratification on reading it that I could not resist the inclination I felt to tell thee how much I was pleased with it. The information it contained, though perhaps not very gratifying to the advocates of slavery, may be useful, as it so clearly exhibits the wide difference there is between liberty and slavery, and it shows the ignorance of the Southern people as to the condition of the Northern operatives. I think Senator Clemens must have been greatly surprised in reading thy letter, not only at its statement of facts, but at the talent displayed by a “factory-girl” in answering his questions. Some years ago I attended a meeting appointed at Lowell by a minister of the Society of Friends, at which it was said there were about three hundred “factory girls;” and I have often expressed the satisfaction I felt in observing their independent and happy countenances and modest and correct deportment. I saw nothing like gloom or despondency. Indeed, I think in a general way they would not suffer by a comparison with the daughters of the Southern slaveholders. I believe it would be found, that, for refinement, intelligence, and for any qualification that is requisite to constitute an agreeable companion, the “factory-girls ” are not inferior to any class of women in the South, notwithstanding the slurs that are often flung at them. It is surely true, that as the benign spirit of the gospel pervades the minds of men, slavery will be seen in its true character, and be finally abolished from every community professing Christianity. I would not limit the mercy of our beneficent Creator, but I am free to confess that I am unable to see what claim a slaveholder can have to the name of Christian. Avarice and an undue love of the world blinds the eyes and hardens the hearts of many. The speech of Daniel Webster, from whom the friends of liberty had a right to expect much, has disappointed them, and has not pleased his pro-slavery coadjutors. He has manifested himself to be a timeserver, a character not very desirable. If he had possessed as much Christian principle and independence of mind as thy letter exhibits, he would have given utterance to sentiments that would have gained him the applause of the wise and good, and have been a lasting honor to him self. “With the talents of an angel a man may make himself a fool.” The subject of slavery is not new to me. I have been instrumental in rescuing from the hand of the oppressor some hundreds, and now in my declining years I can look back upon those labors with unmingled satisfaction. I don’t know how to express my views of slavery better than in the language of John Wesley, “It is the sum of all villanies.”

I am, with sincere regard,
Thy friend,
Isaac T. Hopper.

I am indebted to Miss Averill’s sister, Mrs. A. L. O. Stone of Cleveland, Ohio, for the means of communicating with her, and of obtaining some account of her life. Miss Averill’s letter is as follows: —

Valrico, Fla., Mar. 15, 1893.

Dear Mrs, Robinson, — … I do not remember the date of my first entrance into the City of Spindles, but think it must have been in 1828; and it was the summer of 1830 that I was baptized in the Concord River, at the age of fifteen, and joined the First Baptist Church. I was born at Mt. Vernon, N.H., in the year 1815; so now I am seventy-eight.

About my Florida life, I must first tell the motive.

As you are aware, after the war, many were out of employment; and it was a great question, what should be done with them. I could see no better way than co-operative homes. Therefore, with two others, I started out to find a place, and set an example. I thought of some other places, but was much interested in Florida, having just read its history, and also my friends wished to come here. And, indeed, they did come before I was quite ready. A month later I came alone, December, 1877, just at Christmas time, and found the people here celebrating the day by firing guns. At Tampa I found one of my friends who had already selected land, and wished me to take an adjoining quarter-section. Had to come out from Tampa twelve miles to examine the land before I could enter my claim, then returned to register, and move my baggage out to a deserted log cabin in an old field by the side of the woods. The cabin had no floor but the bare ground, no window, and but one door. I spread a carpet of pine straw, and slept well.”

She spent the winter in her forlorn log cabin, but in the spring she had a kitchen and bed room, and soon after a split board floor. She “planted two hundred orange-trees, and cared for them two years.” She made a living by “keeping transient boarders, by washing, needle work, baking bread and cakes to sell, and keeping house for various persons.”

When her health began to fail, she made an agreement with one of her neighbors, Mr. Green, “to take care of me as long as I lived for half of my land; so the deed was made out and recorded, and I have only sixty acres for the industrial home.” Later she writes: —

I have never, for a moment, given up the idea of having an industrial home and school here sometime.

It is a pleasant location, having a small pond all under my control, with beautiful pine and oak trees all around it, and green slope down to the water. It is only ten minutes’ walk to the station and post-office, and most of the way on my land. I gave right of way for a railroad through one corner, and yesterday gave one acre for a Baptist church.

I want a co-operative home here, established by homeless people who are willing to form a Mutual Aid Society. Then I can deed my land to the society, for a perpetual home here, as long as human beings need a home on this earth.

Perhaps you know some persons who might wish to join this home. If you do, please put me in communication with them, and they can ask all the questions they wish, and I will answer.

This station is fourteen miles east of Tampa, on the Florida Central and Peninsula Railroad.

Truly your friend,
CLEMENTINE AVERILL.”

1. Miss Larcom prepared this sketch for another purpose, two years before she died; and it is substantially the same, with the addition of a few details, which she suggested and permitted me to supply.