Chapter VIII (1)

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 honest 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 politics 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 S. 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 the 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.

Later, in 1860, she writes from the family home in St. Albans, Vt.

“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 thereafter, 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 leading 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 newspapers, 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.

_An Idyl of Work._

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 sculptress.

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 Westport 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 53 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 invaluable 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.[3]

[3] 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.

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, however, 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.), Elizabeth 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 lineage.

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 pleasant 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.

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 dont 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 truthfully 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.