Chapter 5




POVERTY AND SICKNESS, 1840-1850.


FAMINE IN CINCINNATI.--SUMMER AT THE EAST.--PLANS FOR LITERARY WORK.--
EXPERIENCE ON A RAILROAD.--DEATH OF HER BROTHER GEORGE.--SICKNESS AND
DESPAIR.--A JOURNEY IN SEARCH OF HEALTH.--GOES TO BRATTLEBORO'
WATERCURE.--TROUBLES AT LANE SEMINARY.---CHOLERA IN CINCINNATI.--DEATH
OF YOUNGEST CHILD.---DETERMINED TO LEAVE THE WEST.

On January 7, 1839, Professor Stowe wrote to his mother in Natick,
Mass.: "You left here, I believe, in the right time, for as there has
been no navigation on the Ohio River for a year, we are almost in a
state of famine as to many of the necessities of life. For example,
salt (coarse) has sold in Cincinnati this winter for three dollars a
bushel; rice eighteen cents a pound; coffee fifty cents a pound; white
sugar the same; brown sugar twenty cents; molasses a dollar a gallon;
potatoes a dollar a bushel. We do without such things mostly; as there
is yet plenty of bread and bacon (flour six and seven dollars a
barrel, and good pork from six to eight cents a pound) we get along
very comfortably.

"Our new house is pretty much as it was, but they say it will be
finished in July. I expect to visit you next summer, as I shall
deliver the Phi Beta Kappa oration at Dartmouth College; but whether
wife and children come with me or not is not yet decided."

Mrs. Stowe came on to the East with her husband and children during
the following summer, and before her return made a trip through the
White Mountains.

In May, 1840, her second son was born and named Frederick William,
after the sturdy Prussian king, for whom her husband cherished an
unbounded admiration.

Mrs. Stowe has said somewhere: "So we go, dear reader, so long as we
have a body and a soul. For worlds must mingle,--the great and the
little, the solemn and the trivial, wreathing in and out like the
grotesque carvings on a gothic shrine; only did we know it rightly,
nothing is trivial, since the human soul, with its awful shadow, makes
all things sacred." So in writing a biography it is impossible for us
to tell what did and what did not powerfully influence the character.
It is safer simply to tell the unvarnished truth. The lily builds up
its texture of delicate beauty from mould and decay. So how do we know
from what humble material a soul grows in strength and beauty!

In December, 1840, writing to Miss May, Mrs. Stowe says:--

"For a year I have held the pen only to write an occasional business
letter such as could not be neglected. This was primarily owing to a
severe neuralgic complaint that settled in my eyes, and for two months
not only made it impossible for me to use them in writing, but to fix
them with attention on anything. I could not even bear the least light
of day in my room. Then my dear little Frederick was born, and for two
months more I was confined to my bed. Besides all this, we have had an
unusual amount of sickness in our family. . . .

"For all that my history of the past year records so many troubles, I
cannot on the whole regard it as a very troublous one. I have had so
many counterbalancing mercies that I must regard myself as a person
greatly blessed. It is true that about six months out of the twelve I
have been laid up with sickness, but then I have had every comfort and
the kindest of nurses in my faithful Anna. My children have thriven,
and on the whole 'come to more,' as the Yankees say, than the care of
them. Thus you see my troubles have been but enough to keep me from
loving earth too well."

In the spring of 1842 Mrs. Stowe again visited Hartford, taking her
six-year-old daughter Hatty with her. In writing from there to her
husband she confides some of her literary plans and aspirations to
him, and he answers:--

"My dear, you must be a literary woman. It is so written in the book
of fate. Make all your calculations accordingly. Get a good stock of
health and brush up your mind. Drop the E. out of your name. It only
incumbers it and interferes with the flow and euphony. Write yourself
fully and always Harriet Beecher Stowe, which is a name euphonious,
flowing, and full of meaning. Then my word for it, your husband will
lift up his head in the gate, and your children will rise up and call
you blessed.

"Our humble dwelling has to-day received a distinguished honor of
which I must give you an account. It was a visit from his excellency
the Baron de Roenne, ambassador of his majesty the King of Prussia to
the United States. He was pleased to assure me of the great
satisfaction my report on Prussian schools had afforded the king and
members of his court, with much more to the same effect. Of course
having a real live lord to exhibit, I was anxious for some one to
exhibit him to; but neither Aunt Esther nor Anna dared venture near
the study, though they both contrived to get a peep at his lordship
from the little chamber window as he was leaving.

"And now, my dear wife, I want you to come home as quick as you can.
The fact is I cannot live without you, and if we were not so
prodigious poor I would come for you at once. There is no woman like
you in this wide world. Who else has so much talent with so little
self-conceit; so much reputation with so little affectation; so much
literature with so little nonsense; so much enterprise with so little
extravagance; so much tongue with so little scold; so much sweetness
with so little softness; so much of so many things and so little of so
many other things?"

In answer to this letter Mrs. Stowe writes from Hartford:--

"I have seen Johnson of the 'Evangelist.' He is very liberally
disposed, and I may safely reckon on being paid for all I do there.
Who is that Hale, Jr., that sent me the 'Boston Miscellany,' and will
he keep his word with me? His offers are very liberal,--twenty dollars
for three pages, not very close print. Is he to be depended on? If so,
it is the best offer I have received yet. I shall get something from
the Harpers some time this winter or spring. Robertson, the publisher
here, says the book ('The Mayflower') will sell, and though the terms
they offer me are very low, that I shall make something on it. For a
second volume I shall be able to make better terms. On the whole, my
dear, if I choose to be a literary lady, I have, I think, as good a
chance of making profit by it as any one I know of. But with all this,
I have my doubts whether I shall be able to do so.

"Our children are just coming to the age when everything depends on my
efforts. They are delicate in health, and nervous and excitable, and
need a mother's whole attention. Can I lawfully divide my attention by
literary efforts?

"There is one thing I must suggest. If I am to write, I must have a
room to myself, which shall be my room. I have in my own mind pitched
on Mrs. Whipple's room. I can put the stove in it. I have bought a
cheap carpet for it, and I have furniture enough at home to furnish it
comfortably, and I only beg in addition that you will let me change
the glass door from the nursery into that room and keep my plants
there, and then I shall be quite happy.

"All last winter I felt the need of some place where I could go and be
quiet and satisfied. I could not there, for there was all the setting
of tables, and clearing up of tables, and dressing and washing of
children, and everything else going on, and the constant falling of
soot and coal dust on everything in the room was a constant annoyance
to me, and I never felt comfortable there though I tried hard. Then if
I came into the parlor where you were I felt as if I were interrupting
you, and you know you sometimes thought so too.

"Now this winter let the cooking-stove be put into that room, and let
the pipe run up through the floor into the room above. We can eat by
our cooking-stove, and the children can be washed and dressed and keep
their playthings in the room above, and play there when we don't want
them below. You can study by the parlor fire, and I and my plants,
etc., will take the other room. I shall keep my work and all my things
there and feel settled and quiet. I intend to have a regular part of
each day devoted to the children, and then I shall take them in
there."

In his reply to this letter Professor Stowe says:--

"The little magazine ('The Souvenir') goes ahead finely. Fisher sent
down to Fulton the other day and got sixty subscribers. He will make
the June number as handsome as possible, as a specimen number for the
students, several of whom will take agencies for it during the coming
vacation. You have it in your power by means of this little magazine
to form the mind of the West for the coming generation. It is just as
I told you in my last letter. God has written it in his book that you
must be a literary woman, and who are we that we should contend
against God? You must therefore make all your calculations to spend
the rest of your life with your pen.

"If you only could come home to-day how happy should I be. I am daily
finding out more and more (what I knew very well before) that you are
the most intelligent and agreeable woman in the whole circle of my
acquaintance."

That Professor Stowe's devoted admiration for his wife was
reciprocated, and that a most perfect sympathy of feeling existed
between the husband and wife, is shown by a line in one of Mrs.
Stowe's letters from Hartford in which she says: "I was telling Belle
yesterday that I did not know till I came away how much I was
dependent upon you for information. There are a thousand favorite
subjects on which I could talk with you better than with any one else.
If you were not already my dearly loved husband I should certainly
fall in love with you."

In this same letter she writes of herself:--

"One thing more in regard to myself. The absence and wandering of mind
and forgetfulness that so often vexes you is a physical infirmity with
me. It is the failing of a mind not calculated to endure a great
pressure of care, and so much do I feel the pressure I am under, so
much is my mind often darkened and troubled by care, that life
seriously considered holds out few allurements,--only my children.

"In returning to my family, from whom I have been so long separated, I
am impressed with a new and solemn feeling of responsibility. It
appears to me that I am not probably destined for long life; at all
events, the feeling is strongly impressed upon my mind that a work is
put into my hands which I must be earnest to finish shortly. It is
nothing great or brilliant in the world's eye; it lies in one small
family circle, of which I am called to be the central point."

On her way home from this Eastern visit Mrs. Stowe traveled for the
first time by rail, and of this novel experience she writes to Miss
Georgiana May:--

BATAVIA, _August_ 29, 1842.

"Here I am at Brother William's, and our passage along this railroad
reminds me of the verse of the psalm:--


"Tho' lions roar and tempests blow,
And rocks and dangers fill the way."

Such confusion of tongues, such shouting and swearing, such want of
all sort of system and decency in arrangements, I never desire to see
again. I was literally almost trodden down and torn to pieces in the
Rochester depot when I went to help my poor, near-sighted spouse in
sorting out the baggage. You see there was an accident which happened
to the cars leaving Rochester that morning, which kept us two hours
and a half at the passing place this side of Auburn, waiting for them
to come up and go by us. The consequence was that we got into this
Rochester depot aforesaid after dark, and the steamboat, the canal-
boat, and the Western train of cars had all been kept waiting three
hours beyond their usual time, and they all broke loose upon us the
moment we put our heads out of the cars, and such a jerking, and
elbowing, and scuffling, and swearing, and protesting, and scolding
you never heard, while the great locomotive sailed up and down in the
midst thereof, spitting fire and smoke like some great fiend monster
diverting himself with our commotions. I do think these steam concerns
border a little too much on the supernatural to be agreeable,
especially when you are shut up in a great dark depot after sundown.
Well, after all, we had to ride till twelve o'clock at night to get to
Batavia, and I've been sick abed, so to speak, ever since."

The winter of 1842 was one of peculiar trial to the family at Walnut
Hills; as Mrs. Stowe writes, "It was a season of sickness and gloom."
Typhoid fever raged among the students of the seminary, and the house
of the president was converted into a hospital, while the members of
his family were obliged to devote themselves to nursing the sick and
dying.

July 6, 1843, a few weeks before the birth of her third daughter,
Georgiana May, a most terrible and overwhelming sorrow came on Mrs.
Stowe, in common with all the family, in the sudden death of her
brother, the Rev. George Beecher.

He was a young man of unusual talent and ability, and much loved by
his church and congregation. The circumstances of his death are
related in a letter written by Mrs. Stowe, and are as follows:
"Noticing the birds destroying his fruit and injuring his plants, he
went for a double-barreled gun, which he scarcely ever had used, out
of regard to the timidity and anxiety of his wife in reference to it.
Shortly after he left the house, one of the elders of his church in
passing saw him discharge one barrel at the birds. Soon after he heard
the fatal report and saw the smoke, but the trees shut out the rest
from sight. . . . In about half an hour after, the family assembled at
breakfast, and the servant was sent out to call him. . . . In a few
minutes she returned, exclaiming, 'Oh, Mr. Beecher is dead! Mr.
Beecher is dead!' . . . In a short time a visitor in the family,
assisted by a passing laborer, raised him up and bore him to the
house. His face was pale and but slightly marred, his eyes were
closed, and over his countenance rested the sweet expression of
peaceful slumber. . . . Then followed the hurried preparations for the
funeral and journey, until three o'clock, when, all arrangements being
made, he was borne from his newly finished house, through his blooming
garden, to the new church, planned and just completed under his
directing eye. . . . The sermon and the prayers were finished, the
choir he himself had trained sung their parting hymn, and at about
five the funeral train started for a journey of over seventy miles.
That night will stand alone in the memories of those who witnessed its
scenes!

"At ten in the evening heavy clouds gathered lowering behind, and
finally rose so as nearly to cover the hemisphere, sending forth
mutterings of thunder and constant flashes of lightning.

"The excessive heat of the weather, the darkness of the night, the
solitary road, the flaring of the lamps and lanterns, the flashes of
the lightning, the roll of approaching thunder, the fear of being
overtaken in an unfrequented place and the lights extinguished by the
rain, the sad events of the day, the cries of the infant boy sick with
the heat and bewailing the father who ever before had soothed his
griefs, all combined to awaken the deepest emotions of the sorrowful,
the awful, and the sublime. . . .

"And so it is at last; there must come a time when all that the most
heart-broken, idolizing love can give us is a coffin and a grave! All
that could be done for our brother, with all his means and all the
affection of his people and friends, was just this, no more! After
all, the deepest and most powerful argument for the religion of Christ
is its power in times like this. Take from us Christ and what He
taught, and what have we here? What confusion, what agony, what
dismay, what wreck and waste! But give Him to us, even the most
stricken heart can rise under the blow; yea, even triumph!

"'Thy brother shall rise again,' said Jesus; and to us who weep He
speaks: 'Rejoice, inasmuch as ye are made partakers of Christ's
sufferings, that when his glory shall be revealed, ye also may be glad
with exceeding joy!'"

The advent of Mrs. Stowe's third daughter was followed by a protracted
illness and a struggle with great poverty, of which Mrs. Stowe writes
in October, 1843:--

"Our straits for money this year are unparalleled even in our annals.
Even our bright and cheery neighbor Allen begins to look blue, and
says $600 is the very most we can hope to collect of our salary, once
$1,200. We have a flock of entirely destitute young men in the
seminary, as poor in money as they are rich in mental and spiritual
resources. They promise to be as fine a band as those we have just
sent off. We have two from Iowa and Wisconsin who were actually
crowded from secular pursuits into the ministry by the wants of the
people about them. Revivals began, and the people came to them saying,
'We have no minister, and you must preach to us, for you know more
than we do.'"

In the spring of 1844 Professor Stowe visited the East to arouse an
interest in the struggling seminary and raise funds for its
maintenance. While he was there he received the following letter from
Mrs. Stowe:--

"I am already half sick with confinement to the house and overwork. If
I should sew every day for a month to come I should not be able to
accomplish a half of what is to be done, and should be only more unfit
for my other duties."

This struggle against ill-health and poverty was continued through
that year and well into the next, when, during her husband's absence
to attend a ministerial convention at Detroit, Mrs. Stowe writes to
him:--

_June_ 16, 1845.

"MY DEAR HUSBAND,--It is a dark, sloppy, rainy, muddy, disagreeable
day, and I have been working hard (for me) all day in the kitchen,
washing dishes, looking into closets, and seeing a great deal of that
dark side of domestic life which a housekeeper may who will
investigate too curiously into minutiae in warm, damp weather,
especially after a girl who keeps all clean on the _outside_ of
cup and platter, and is very apt to make good the rest of the text in
the _inside_ of things.

I am sick of the smell of sour milk, and sour meat, and sour
everything, and then the clothes _will_ not dry, and no wet thing
does, and everything smells mouldy; and altogether I feel as if I
never wanted to eat again.

Your letter, which was neither sour nor mouldy, formed a very
agreeable contrast to all these things; the more so for being
unexpected. I am much obliged to you for it. As to my health, it gives
me very little solicitude, although I am bad enough and daily growing
worse. I feel no life, no energy, no appetite, or rather a growing
distaste for food; in fact, I am becoming quite ethereal. Upon
reflection I perceive that it pleases my Father to keep me in the
fire, for my whole situation is excessively harassing and painful. I
suffer with sensible distress in the brain, as I have done more or
less since my sickness last winter, a distress which some days takes
from me all power of planning or executing anything; and you know
that, except this poor head, my unfortunate household has no
mainspring, for nobody feels any kind of responsibility to do a thing
in time, place, or manner, except as I oversee it.

Georgiana is so excessively weak, nervous, cross, and fretful, night
and day, that she takes all Anna's strength and time with her; and
then the children are, like other little sons and daughters of Adam,
full of all kinds of absurdity and folly.

When the brain gives out, as mine often does, and one cannot think or
remember anything, then what is to be done? All common fatigue,
sickness, and exhaustion is nothing to this distress. Yet do I rejoice
in my God and know in whom I believe, and only pray that the fire may
consume the dross; as to the gold, that is imperishable. No real evil
can happen to me, so I fear nothing for the future, and only suffer in
the present tense.

God, the mighty God, is mine, of that I am sure, and I know He knows
that though flesh and heart fail, I am all the while desiring and
trying for his will alone. As to a journey, I need not ask a physician
to see that it is needful to me as far as health is concerned, that is
to say, all human appearances are that way, but I feel no particular
choice about it. If God wills I go. He can easily find means. Money, I
suppose, is as plenty with Him now as it always has been, and if He
sees it is really best He will doubtless help me."

That the necessary funds were provided is evident from the fact that
the journey was undertaken and the invalid spent the summer of 1845 in
Hartford, in Natick, and in Boston. She was not, however, permanently
benefited by the change, and in the following spring it was deemed
necessary to take more radical measures to arrest the progress of her
increasing debility. After many consultations and much correspondence
it was finally decided that she should go to Dr. Wesselhoeft's
watercure establishment at Brattleboro', Vt.

At this time, under date of March, 1846, she writes:

"For all I have had trouble I can think of nothing but the greatness
and richness of God's mercy to me in giving me such friends, and in
always caring for us in every strait. There has been no day this
winter when I have not had abundant reason to see this. Some friend
has always stepped in to cheer and help, so that I have wanted for
nothing. My husband has developed wonderfully as house-father and
nurse. You would laugh to see him in his spectacles gravely marching
the little troop in their nightgowns up to bed, tagging after them, as
he says, like an old hen after a flock of ducks. The money for my
journey has been sent in from an unknown hand in a wonderful manner.
All this shows the care of our Father, and encourages me to rejoice
and to hope in Him."

A few days after her departure Professor Stowe wrote to his wife:--

"I was greatly comforted by your brief letter from Pittsburgh. When I
returned from the steamer the morning you left I found in the post-
office a letter from Mrs. G. W. Bull of New York, inclosing $50 on
account of the sickness in my family. There was another inclosing $50
more from a Mrs. Devereaux of Raleigh, N. C., besides some smaller
sums from others. My heart went out to God in aspiration and
gratitude. None of the donors, so far as I know, have I ever seen or
heard of before.

"Henry and I have been living in a Robinson Crusoe and man Friday sort
of style, greatly to our satisfaction, ever since you went away."

Mrs. Stowe was accompanied to Brattleboro' by her sisters, Catherine
and Mary, who were also suffering from troubles that they felt might
be relieved by hydropathic treatment.

From May, 1846, until March, 1847, she remained at Brattleboro'
without seeing her husband or children. During these weary months her
happiest days were those upon which she received letters from home.

The following extracts, taken from letters written by her during this
period, are of value, as revealing what it is possible to know of her
habits of thought and mode of life at this time.

BRATTLEBORO', _September_, 1846.

MY DEAR HUSBAND,--I have been thinking of all your trials, and I
really pity you in having such a wife. I feel as if I had been only a
hindrance to you instead of a help, and most earnestly and daily do I
pray to God to restore my health that I may do something for you and
my family. I think if I were only at home I could at least sweep and
dust, and wash potatoes, and cook a little, and talk some to my
children, and should be doing something for my family. But the hope of
getting better buoys me up. I go through these tedious and wearisome
baths and bear that terrible douche thinking of my children. They
never will know how I love them. . . .

There is great truth and good sense in your analysis of the cause of
our past failures. We have now come to a sort of crisis. If you and I
do as we should for _five years_ to come the character of our
three oldest children will be established. This is why I am willing to
spend so much time and make such efforts to have health. Oh, that God
would give me these five years in full possession of mind and body,
that I may train my children as they should be trained. I am fully
aware of the importance of system and order in a family. I know that
nothing can be done without it; it is the keystone, the _sine qu�
non_, and in regard to my children I place it next to piety. At the
same time it is true that both Anna [Footnote: The governess, Miss
Anna Smith.] and I labor under serious natural disadvantages on this
subject. It is not all that is necessary to feel the importance of
order and system, but it requires a particular kind of talent to carry
it through a family. Very much the same kind of talent, as Uncle
Samuel said, which is necessary to make a good prime minister. . . .

I think you might make an excellent sermon to Christians on the care
of health, in consideration of the various infirmities and impediments
to the developing the results of religion, that result from bodily ill
health, and I wish you would make one that your own mind may be more
vividly impressed with it. The world is too much in a hurry. Ministers
think there is no way to serve Christ but to overdraw on their
physical capital for four or five years for Christ and then have
nothing to give, but become a mere burden on his hands for the next
five. . . .

_November_ 18.

"The daily course I go through presupposes a degree of vigor beyond
anything I ever had before. For this week, I have gone before
breakfast to the wave-bath and let all the waves and billows roll over
me till every limb ached with cold and my hands would scarcely have
feeling enough to dress me. After that I have walked till I was warm,
and come home to breakfast with such an appetite! Brown bread and milk
are luxuries indeed, and the only fear is that I may eat too much. At
eleven comes my douche, to which I have walked in a driving rain for
the last two days, and after it walked in the rain again till I was
warm. (The umbrella you gave me at Natick answers finely, as well as
if it were a silk one.) After dinner I roll ninepins or walk till
four, then sitz-bath, and another walk till six.

"I am anxious for your health; do be persuaded to try a long walk
before breakfast. You don't know how much good it will do you. Don't
sit in your hot study without any ventilation, a stove burning up all
the vitality of the air and weakening your nerves, and above all, do
amuse yourself. Go to Dr. Mussey's and spend an evening, and to
father's and Professor Allen's. When you feel worried go off somewhere
and forget and throw it off. I should really rejoice to hear that you
and father and mother, with Professor and Mrs. Allen, Mrs. K., and a
few others of the same calibre would agree to meet together for
dancing cotillons. It would do you all good, and if you took Mr. K.'s
wife and poor Miss Much-Afraid, her daughter, into the alliance it
would do them good. Bless me! what a profane set everybody would think
you were, and yet you are the people of all the world most solemnly in
need of it. I wish you could be with me in Brattleboro' and coast down
hill on a sled, go sliding and snowballing by moonlight! I would
snowball every bit of the _hypo_ out of you! Now, my dear, if you
are going to get sick, I am going to come home. There is no use in my
trying to get well if you, in the mean time, are going to run yourself
down."

_January_, 1847.

MY DEAR SOUL,--I received your most melancholy effusion, and I am
sorry to find it's just so. I entirely agree and sympathize. Why
didn't you engage the two tombstones--one for you and one for me?

I shall have to copy for your edification a "poem on tombstones" which
Kate put at Christmas into the stocking of one of our most
hypochondriac gentlemen, who had pished and pshawed at his wife and us
for trying to get up a little fun. This poem was fronted with the
above vignette and embellished with sundry similar ones, and tied with
a long black ribbon. There were only two cantos in very concise style,
so I shall send you them entire.


CANTO I.

In the kingdom of _Mortin_
I had the good fortin'
To find these verses
On tombs and on hearses,
Which I, being jinglish
Have done into English.

CANTO II.

The man what's so colickish
When his friends are all frolickish
As to turn up his noses
And turn on his toses
Shall have only verses
On tombstones and hearses.

But, seriously, my dear husband, you must try and be patient, for
this cannot last forever. Be patient and bear it like the toothache,
or a driving rain, or anything else that you cannot escape. To see
things as through a glass darkly is your infirmity, you know; but the
Lord will yet deliver you from this trial. I know how to pity you, for
the last three weeks I have suffered from an overwhelming mental
depression, a perfect heartsickness. All I wanted was to get home and
die. Die I was very sure I should at any rate, but I suppose I was
never less prepared to do so."

The long exile was ended in the spring of 1847, and in May Mrs. Stowe
returned to her Cincinnati home, where she was welcomed with sincere
demonstrations of joy by her husband and children.

Her sixth child, Samuel Charles, was born in January of 1848, and
about this time her husband's health became so seriously impaired that
it was thought desirable for him in turn to spend a season at the
Brattleboro' water-cure. He went in June, 1848, and was compelled by
the very precarious state of his health to remain until September,
1849. During this period of more than a year Mrs. Stowe remained in
Cincinnati caring for her six children, eking out her slender income
by taking boarders and writing when she found time, confronting a
terrible epidemic of cholera that carried off one of her little flock,
and in every way showing herself to be a brave woman, possessed of a
spirit that could rise superior to all adversity. Concerning this time
she writes in January, 1849, to her dearest friend:--

MY BELOVED GEORGY,--For six months after my return from Brattleboro'
my eyes were so affected that I wrote scarce any, and my health was in
so strange a state that I felt no disposition to write. After the
birth of little Charley my health improved, but my husband was sick
and I have been so loaded and burdened with cares as to drain me dry
of all capacity of thought, feeling, memory, or emotion.

"Well, Georgy, I am thirty-seven years old! I am glad of it. I like to
grow old and have six children and cares endless. I wish you could see
me with my flock all around me. They sum up my cares, and were they
gone I should ask myself, What now remains to be done? They are my
work, over which I fear and tremble."

In the early summer of 1849 cholera broke out in Cincinnati, and soon
became epidemic. Professor Stowe, absent in Brattleboro', and filled
with anxiety for the safety of his family, was most anxious, in spite
of his feeble health, to return and share the danger with them, but
this his wife would not consent to, as is shown by her letters to him,
written at this time. In one of them, dated June 29, 1849, she says:--

MY DEAR HUSBAND,--This week has been unusually fatal. The disease in
the city has been malignant and virulent. Hearse drivers have scarce
been allowed to unharness their horses, while furniture carts and
common vehicles are often employed for the removal of the dead. The
sable trains which pass our windows, the frequent indications of
crowding haste, and the absence of reverent decency have, in many
cases, been most painful. Of course all these things, whether we will
or no, bring very doleful images to the mind.

On Tuesday one hundred and sixteen deaths from cholera were reported,
and that night the air was of that peculiarly oppressive, deathly kind
that seems to lie like lead on the brain and soul.

As regards your coming home, I am decidedly opposed to it. First,
because the chance of your being taken ill is just as great as the
chance of your being able to render us any help. To exchange the
salubrious air of Brattleboro' for the pestilent atmosphere of this
place with your system rendered sensitive by water-cure treatment
would be extremely dangerous. It is a source of constant gratitude to
me that neither you nor father are exposed to the dangers here.

Second, none of us are sick, and it is very uncertain whether we shall
be.

Third, if we were sick there are so many of us that it is not at all
likely we shall all be taken at once.

_July_ 1. Yesterday Mr. Stagg went to the city and found all
gloomy and discouraged, while a universal panic seemed to be drawing
nearer than ever before. Large piles of coal were burning on the cross
walks and in the public squares, while those who had talked
confidently of the cholera being confined to the lower classes and
those who were imprudent began to feel as did the magicians of old,
"This is the finger of God."

Yesterday, upon the recommendation of all the clergymen of the city,
the mayor issued a proclamation for a day of general fasting,
humiliation, and prayer, to be observed on Tuesday next.

_July_ 3. We are all in good health and try to maintain a calm
and cheerful frame of mind. The doctors are nearly used up. Dr. Bowen
and Dr. Peck are sick in bed. Dr. Potter and Dr. Pulte ought, I
suppose, to be there also. The younger physicians have no rest night
or day. Mr. Fisher is laid up from his incessant visitations with the
sick and dying. Our own Dr. Brown is likewise prostrated, but we are
all resolute to stand by each other, and there are so many of us that
it is not likely we can all be taken sick together.

_July_ 4. All well. The meeting yesterday was very solemn and
interesting. There is more or less sickness about us, but no very
dangerous cases. One hundred and twenty burials from cholera alone
yesterday, yet to-day we see parties bent on pleasure or senseless
carousing, while to-morrow and next day will witness a fresh harvest
of death from them. How we can become accustomed to anything! Awhile
ago ten a day dying of cholera struck terror to all hearts; but now
the tide has surged up gradually until the deaths average over a
hundred daily, and everybody is getting accustomed to it. Gentlemen
make themselves agreeable to ladies by reciting the number of deaths
in this house or that. This together with talk of funerals, cholera
medicines, cholera dietetics, and chloride of lime form the ordinary
staple of conversation. Serious persons of course throw in moral
reflections to their taste.

_July_ 10. Yesterday little Charley was taken ill, not seriously,
and at any other season I should not be alarmed. Now, however, a
slight illness seems like a death sentence, and I will not dissemble
that I feel from the outset very little hope. I still think it best
that you should not return. By so doing you might lose all you have
gained. You might expose yourself to a fatal incursion of disease. It
is decidedly not your duty to do so.

_July_ 12. Yesterday I carried Charley to Dr. Pulte, who spoke in
such a manner as discouraged and frightened me. He mentioned dropsy on
the brain as a possible result. I came home with a heavy heart,
sorrowing, desolate, and wishing my husband and father were here.

About one o'clock this morning Miss Stewart suddenly opened my door
crying, "Mrs. Stowe, Henry is vomiting." I was on my feet in an
instant, and lifted up my heart for help. He was, however, in a few
minutes relieved. Then I turned my attention to Charley, who was also
suffering, put him into a wet sheet, and kept him there until he was
in a profuse perspiration. He is evidently getting better, and is
auspiciously cross. Never was crossness in a baby more admired. Anna
and I have said to each other exultingly a score of times, "How cross
the little fellow is! How he does scold!"

_July_ 15. Since I last wrote our house has been a perfect
hospital. Charley apparently recovering, but still weak and feeble,
unable to walk or play, and so miserably fretful and unhappy. Sunday
Anna and I were fairly stricken down, as many others are, with no
particular illness, but with such miserable prostration. I lay on the
bed all day reading my hymn-book and thinking over passages of
Scripture.

_July_ 17. To-day we have been attending poor old Aunt Frankie's
[Footnote: An old colored woman.] funeral. She died yesterday morning,
taken sick the day before while washing. Good, honest, trustful old
soul! She was truly one who hungered and thirsted for righteousness.

Yesterday morning our poor little dog, Daisy, who had been ailing the
day before, was suddenly seized with frightful spasms and died in half
an hour. Poor little affectionate thing! If I were half as good for my
nature as she for hers I should be much better than I am. While we
were all mourning over her the news came that Aunt Frankie was
breathing her last. Hatty, Eliza, Anna, and I made her shroud
yesterday, and this morning I made her cap. We have just come from her
grave.

_July_ 23. At last, my dear, the hand of the Lord hath touched
us. We have been watching all day by the dying bed of little Charley,
who is gradually sinking. After a partial recovery from the attack I
described in my last letter he continued for some days very feeble,
but still we hoped for recovery. About four days ago he was taken with
decided cholera, and now there is no hope of his surviving this night.

Every kindness is shown us by the neighbors. Do not return. All will
be over before you could possibly get here, and the epidemic is now
said by the physicians to prove fatal to every new case. Bear up. Let
us not faint when we are rebuked of Him. I dare not trust myself to
say more but shall write again soon.

_July_ 26. MY DEAR HUSBAND,--At last it is over and our dear
little one is gone from us. He is now among the blessed. My Charley--
my beautiful, loving, gladsome baby, so loving, so sweet, so full of
life and hope and strength--now lies shrouded, pale and cold, in the
room below. Never was he anything to me but a comfort. He has been my
pride and joy. Many a heartache has he cured for me. Many an anxious
night have I held him to my bosom and felt the sorrow and loneliness
pass out of me with the touch of his little warm hands. Yet I have
just seen him in his death agony, looked on his imploring face when I
could not help nor soothe nor do one thing, not one, to mitigate his
cruel suffering, do nothing but pray in my anguish that he might die
soon. I write as though there were no sorrow like my sorrow, yet there
has been in this city, as in the land of Egypt, scarce a house without
its dead. This heart-break, this anguish, has been everywhere, and
when it will end God alone knows. With this severest blow of all, the
long years of trial and suffering in the West practically end; for in
September, 1849, Professor Stowe returned from Brattleboro', and at
the same time received a call to the Collins Professorship at Bowdoin
College, in Brunswick, Maine, that he decided to accept.




Art of Worldly Wisdom Daily
In the 1600s, Balthasar Gracian, a jesuit priest wrote 300 aphorisms on living life called "The Art of Worldly Wisdom." Join our newsletter below and read them all, one at a time.
Email:
Sonnet-a-Day Newsletter
Shakespeare wrote over 150 sonnets! Join our Sonnet-A-Day Newsletter and read them all, one at a time.
Email: