Crow Harriet Beecher Stowe, A Biography for Girls

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-3-98826-214-1
Verlag: OTB eBook publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 237 Seiten

Reihe: Classics To Go

Excerpt: ?In a little saucer-like valley of the lower Berkshires, where the hills stand about in a wide circle, lies that most beautiful of Connecticut villages, Litchfield. Here Harriet Beecher Stowe was born. There was not a day when she and her brothers and sisters did not run to the window to see that blue rim of hills, and even when they were grown into women and men they did not forget the charm of their early home in the mountains. From the door of the house where they lived there was an extended view. Here Harriet often stood and looked over to the distant horizon, where Mt. Tom reared its round, blue head against the sky, and the Great and Little Ponds gleamed out amid a steel-blue expanse of distant pine groves. Turning to the west, she saw a rounded height called Prospect Hill, and many a pensive, wondering hour she sat on the stone threshold of that doorway, watching the splendor of the sunsets that burned themselves out beyond that hill. Harriet often said that her home was at the precise point of the country where the hills were most inspiring and vivacious, reminding one of the Psalm, ?The little hills rejoice on every side.? Mountains are grand, she thought, and sometimes even dreary; but these half-grown hills uplift one like the waves of the sea.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Crow, Martha Foote

Leseproben

CHAPTER I
THE EARLY HOME OF HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
In a little saucer-like valley of the lower Berkshires, where the hills stand about in a wide circle, lies that most beautiful of Connecticut villages, Litchfield. Here Harriet Beecher Stowe was born. There was not a day when she and her brothers and sisters did not run to the window to see that blue rim of hills, and even when they were grown into women and men they did not forget the charm of their early home in the mountains. From the door of the house where they lived there was an extended view. Here Harriet often stood and looked over to the distant horizon, where Mt. Tom reared its round, blue head against the sky, and the Great and Little Ponds gleamed out amid a steel-blue expanse of distant pine groves. Turning to the west, she saw a rounded height called Prospect Hill, and many a pensive, wondering hour she sat on the stone threshold of that doorway, watching the splendor of the sunsets that burned themselves out beyond that hill. Harriet often said that her home was at the precise point of the country where the hills were most inspiring and vivacious, reminding one of the Psalm, “The little hills rejoice on every side.” Mountains are grand, she thought, and sometimes even dreary; but these half-grown hills uplift one like the waves of the sea. Once when Harriet returned by stage-coach from a visit to her relatives down in Guilford, she could not restrain her raptures on beholding her mountains again. As the quaint old coach went lumbering along the winding road, the keen-eyed little girl leaned out of the window, peering in every direction, determined to let no bluebird’s flight escape her and no columbine flower pass unadmired. She took in all the sweeping bends of the beautiful brown river and watched the curves of water as they flowed over the shining rocks. After a while the coach wound up amid hemlock forests whose solemn shadows were all aglow with pink clouds of blossoming laurel. Presently they entered into great vistas of mountains whose cloudy, purple heads stretched and veered around the path like moving forms in a dream. There were the hills which meant home. Writing about this years afterward, she cried out, “Can there be anything on earth as beautiful as these mountain rides in New England?” So she gave to her childhood’s home the name of Cloudland, and its inheritance of clear air and height and spaciousness became a part of her nature. Any one would have loved the quiet village in 1811, the year when Harriet Beecher was born, with the large Green in the center on which stood the meeting-house where her honored father, Dr. Lyman Beecher, preached. From here extended to the four points of the compass the four spacious avenues, North, South, East, and West Streets, all of them thickly planted with double rows of fine elm trees, through which one could see the stately colonial mansions that had been there since before the days of the Revolution. These mansions had looked upon many a thrilling scene, for in those Revolutionary days the town of Litchfield had been a place of great activity. The direct state road from Boston across to West Point and thence down the river to the city of New York passed at that time through the town, making connection with the station for military stores that were kept there. So on training days there would be dramatic episodes on the ample Green, while on many a dark night that great message-bearer, Paul Revere, would ride swiftly and mysteriously through the town. In fact, the town of Litchfield, in the days of the Beecher family, fairly bristled with traditions of that ancient, eventful era. It is certain that the little Harriet would be told about the time when the service of war had claimed all the men in the patriotic township of Litchfield except eight, who were too old or too young to go out and fight. It must also have been impressed upon her that the women of her native town shared in an especial degree this lofty patriotism, for it is related that when the leaden statue of King George was knocked off its pedestal in Bowling Green, in New York City, the shattered pieces were conveyed to the military storehouse at Litchfield and there hidden away. Then when the great need arose, the aristocratic ladies of Litchfield melted the broken fragments of that rejected statue and with their own hands molded the lead into bullets. Harriet’s heart swelled with pride as she heard this story or as she passed the very house where the lead was molded over or perhaps was shown the precious memorandum that indicated how many thousand bullets each helper had made. Litchfield, indeed, a very storehouse of patriotic tradition, was a fitting home for Harriet Beecher Stowe whose soul was to be a perfect flame of patriotic feeling by virtue of which she was to perform a great and permanent work. In Harriet’s own childhood, too, Litchfield was a very busy place. There were some forty mills along the streams, not one of which remains to-day, and there was a famous law school, the first one in America, and a celebrated school for young ladies. The society in the village was singularly good; it was a place where piety, intelligence, and refinement were united. Mrs. Stowe, remembering the history that lay back of it in Colonial and Revolutionary days, spoke of it as “burning like live coals with all the fervid activity of an intense, newly kindled, peculiar and individual life.” Perhaps one would realize this somewhat better on a Sunday than on a week day. Then from the fine old residences that adorned the principal street the families of comfortable means and impressive traditions proceeded in a dignified manner and solemnly entered the little church. From the outlying population for miles around came also processions of wagons, bearing the well-dressed wives, stalwart sons and blooming daughters of the well-to-do farmers, all punctual as a clock to the ringing of the second-bell. They were alert-minded, independent people; it was a highly intelligent audience that gathered to hear Dr. Beecher expound problems of theology, which his hearers were quite ready to debate with him if they thought he bent a little too far to the one side or to the other in some hair-splitting argument. The parsonage where Dr. Beecher lived, and where seven of his thirteen children were born, was a roomy edifice that seemed to have been built by a succession of afterthoughts. It was first a model New England house, built around a great brick chimney which ran up like a lighthouse in the center of the square roof; but various bedroom additions had been gradually made and a new kitchen had been built on, and out of the kitchen a sinkroom, and out of the sinkroom a woodhouse, and out of the woodhouse a carriage house, and so on through a gradually lessening succession of out-buildings, until it might seem as if the house has been constructed on the model of a telescope. And besides all this, there were four great attics! What a wonderful house in which to play tag or blind-man’s bluff! The house stood at the highest point on North Street in the midst of a colony of noble elms that gathered about the plain, old-fashioned parsonage like classic pillars, giving it a grand air of scholarly retirement. The surroundings of this rambling old house were delightful. There was the tall well-sweep, and a gate that swung with a chain and a great stone. From the pantry window could be seen a whole neighborhood of purple-leaved beets and feathery parsnips; the gooseberry bushes were rolled up by the fence in billows, and here and there stood an aristocratic quince tree. Far off in one corner a little patch penuriously devoted to ornament flamed with marigolds, poppies, snappers and four-o’clocks. Then there was a little box by itself with one rose geranium in it, which looked around the garden in a frightened way, as much a stranger as a French dancing master would be in a Yankee meeting-house. The little foreigner, however, received delicate attention at the hands of Harriet’s beauty-loving mother. But, although the house was a big one, there was not too much room for the Beecher family. Besides the father and mother, there were, when the last arrival completed the magic number, thirteen children in all. Then there was sometimes an aunt, or a grandmother, or a cousin; there were generally a number of students as boarders, and these, together with one Rachel and one Zillah, both black, completed the household circle. Rich in children was this New England family, but not in other wealth. Economy in the Beecher family was a necessity, but economy was also a law of New England life. Dr. Beecher in one of his reminiscences tells of an old parishioner of his who was so steeped in the prevailing spirit of economy that he boasted of having kept all of his accounts for thirty years with one quill pen; that he knew exactly how to lean his arm on the table so as not to take the nap off the sleeve; and how to set down his foot with the least possible wear to the sole of his shoe. It stands to reason that when the minister has to deal with such deacons as this the minister’s wife will turn a dress several times, and must be forgiven if she requires even the smallest children of her family to overcast the long seams of the linen sheets and to hem interminable towels. This is what the little Harriet had to do, and perhaps it did not cause her any harm. In spite of this rather narrowed way of living, the children in this family did not feel poor. Once there was sent from Boston to the Litchfield parsonage a barrel of dishes embellished with figures which you could worship without worshiping the image of anything...