| | 1 | Author: | Stowe
Harriet Beecher
1811-1896 | Add | | | Title: | We and our neighbors, or, The records of an
unfashionable street  | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | “WHO can have taken the Ferguses' house, sister?”
said a brisk little old lady, peeping through
the window blinds. “It's taken! Just come here and
look! There's a cart at the door.” MY Dear Belle: Well, here we are, Harry and I,
all settled down to housekeeping quite like old
folks. All is about done but the last things,—those little
touches, and improvements, and alterations that go off into
airy perspective. I believe it was Carlyle that talked
about an “infinite shoe-black” whom all the world could
not quite satisfy so but that there would always be a
next thing in the distance. Well, perhaps it 's going to be
so in housekeeping, and I shall turn out an infinite housekeeper;
for I find this little, low-studded, unfashionable
home of ours, far off in a tabooed street, has kept all my
energies brisk and busy for a month past, and still there
are more worlds to conquer. Visions of certain brackets
and lambrequins that are to adorn my spare chamber
visit my pillow nightly, while Harry is placidly sleeping
the sleep of the just. I have been unable to attain to
them because I have been so busy with my parlor ivies
and my Ward's case of ferns, and some perfectly seraphic
hanging baskets, gorgeous with flowering nasturtiums
that are now blooming in my windows. There is a
dear little Quaker dove of a woman living in the next
house to ours who is a perfect witch at gardening—a
good kind of witch, you understand, one who could
make a broomstick bud and blossom if she undertook it
—and she has been my teacher and exemplar in these
matters. Her parlor is a perfect bower, a drab dove's
nest wreathed round with vines and all a-bloom with geraniums;
and mine is coming on to look just like it. So
you see all this has kept me ever so busy. MY Dear Mother: Harry says I must do all the
writing to you and keep you advised of all our
affairs, because he is so driven with his editing and proof-reading
that letter-writing is often the most fatiguing
thing he can do. It is like trying to run after one has
become quite out of breath. “You were right, my dear Eva, in saying, in our last
interview, that it did not seem to you that I had the kind
of character that was adapted to the profession I have
chosen. I don't think I have. I am more certain of it
from comparing myself from day to day with Ida, who
certainly is born and made for it, if ever a woman was.
My choice of it has been simply and only for the reason
that I must choose something as a means of self-support,
and more than that, as a refuge from morbid distresses
of mind which made the still monotony of my New England
country life intolerable to me. This course presented
itself to me as something feasible. I thought it,
too, a good and worthy career—one in which one might
do one's share of good for the world. But, Eva, I can
feel that there is one essential difference between Ida and
myself: she is peculiarly self-sustained and sufficient to
herself, and I am just the reverse. I am full of vague
unrest; I am chased by seasons of high excitement, alternating
with deadly languor. Ida has hard work to
know what to do with me. You were right in supposing,
as you intimate in your letter, that a certain common
friend has something to do with this unrest, but you cannot,
unless you know my whole history, know how much.
There was a time when he and I were all the world to
each other—when shall I ever forget that time! I was
but seventeen; a young girl, so ignorant of life! I never
had seen one like him; he was a whole new revelation to
me; he woke up everything there was in me, never to go
to sleep again; and then to think of having all this tide
and current of feeling checked—frozen. My father overwhelmed
him with accusations; every baseness was laid
to his charge. I was woman enough to have stood for
him against the world if he had come to me. I would
have left all and gone to the ends of the earth with him
if he had asked me, but he did not. There was only
one farewell, self-accusing letter, and even that fell into
my father's hands and never came to me till after his
death. For years I thought myself wantonly trifled with
by a man of whose attentions I ought to be ashamed. I
was indignant at myself for the love that might have been
my glory, for it is my solemn belief that if we had been
let alone he would have been saved all those wretched
falls, those blind struggles that have marred a life whose
purpose is yet so noble. CONGRATULATE us, dear mother; we have had
a success! Our first evening was all one could
hope! Everybody came that we wanted, and, what is
quite as good in such cases, everybody staid away that
we didn't want. You know how it is; when you
intend to produce real acquaintance, that shall ripen
into intimacy, it is necessary that there should be no
non-conductors to break the circle. There are people
that shed around them coldness and constraint, as if they
were made of ice, and it is a mercy when such people
don't come to your parties. As it is, I have had the
happiness to see our godly rector on most conversable
terms with our heretic doctor, and each thinking better
of the other. Oh! and, what was a greater triumph yet,
I managed to introduce a Quaker preacheress to Mr. St.
John, and had the satisfaction to see that he was completely
charmed by her, as well he may be. The way it
came about, you must know, is this:— I HAD not thought to obtrude myself needlessly on
you ever again. Oppressed with the remembrance
that I have been a blight on a life that might otherwise
have been happy, I thought my only expiation was
silence. But it had not then occurred to me that possibly
you could feel and be pained by that silence. But
of late I have been very intimate with Mrs. Henderson,
whose mind is like those crystalline lakes we read of—
a pebble upon the bottom is evident. She loves you so
warmly and feels for you so sympathetically that, almost
unconsciously, when you pour your feelings into her
heart, they are revealed to me through the transparent
medium of her nature. I confess that I am still so selfish
as to feel a pleasure in the thought that you cannot
forget me. I cannot forget you. I never have forgotten
you, I believe, for a waking conscious hour since that
time when your father shut the door of his house between
you and me. I have demonstrated in my own
experience that there may be a double consciousness all
the while going on, in which the presence of one person
should seem to pervade every scene of life. You have
been with me, even in those mad fatal seasons when I
have been swept from reason and conscience and hope
—it has added bitterness to my humiliation in my weak
hours; but it has been motive and courage to rise up
again and again and renew the fight—the fight that must
last as long as life lasts; for, Caroline, this is so. In
some constitutions, with some hereditary predispositions,
the indiscretions and ignorances of youth leave a
fatal irremediable injury. Though the sin be in the
first place one of inexperience and ignorance, it is one
that nature never forgives. The evil once done can
never be undone; no prayers, no entreaties, no resolutions,
can change the consequences of violated law.
The brain and nerve force, once vitiated by poisonous
stimulants, become thereafter subtle tempters and traitors,
forever lying in wait to deceive and urging to ruin;
and he who is saved, is saved so as by fire. Since it is
your unhappy fate to care so much for me, I owe to you
the utmost frankness. I must tell you plainly that I am
an unsafe man. I am like a ship with powder on board
and a smouldering fire in the hold. I must warn my
friends off, lest at any moment I carry ruin to them,
and they be drawn down in my vortex. We can be
friends, dear friends; but let me beg you, think as little
of me as you can. Be a friend in a certain degree, after
the manner of the world, rationally, and with a wise
regard to your own best interests—you who are worth
five hundred times what I am—you who have beauty,
talent, energy—who have a career opening before you,
and a most noble and true friend in Miss Ida; do not
let your sympathies for a very worthless individual lead
you to defraud yourself of all that you should gain in
the opportunities now open to you. Command my services
for you in the literary line when ever they may be
of the slightest use. Remember that nothing in the
world makes me so happy as an opportunity to serve
you. Treat me as you would a loyal serf, whose only
thought is to live and die for you; as the princess of
the middle ages treated the knight of low degree, who
devoted himself to her service. There is nothing you
could ask me to do for you that would not be to me a
pleasure; and all the more so, if it involved any labor
or difficulty. In return, be assured, that merely by being
the woman you are, merely by the love which you have
given and still give to one so unworthy, you are a constant
strength to me, an encouragement never to faint
in a struggle which must last as long as this life lasts.
For although we must not forget that life, in the best
sense of the word, lasts forever, yet this first mortal
phase of it is, thank God, but short. There is another
and a higher life for those whose life has been a failure
here. Those who die fighting—even though they fall,
many times trodden under the hoof of the enemy—will
find themselves there made more than conquerors
through One who hath loved them. My Dear Friend: How can I thank you for the confidence
you have shown me in your letter? You were
K
not mistaken in thinking that this long silence has been
cruel to me. It is more cruel to a woman than it can
possibly be to a man, because if to him silence be a pain,
he yet is conscious all the time that he has the power to
break it; he has the right to speak at any time, but a
woman must die silent. Every fiber of her being says
this. She cannot speak, she must suffer as the dumb
animals suffer. MY Dear Mother: When I wrote you last we were
quite prosperous, having just come through with
our first evening as a great success; and everybody since
has been saying most agreeable things to us about it.
Last Thursday, we had our second, and it was even
pleasanter than the last, because people had got acquainted,
so that they really wanted to see each other again.
There was a most charming atmosphere of ease and
sociability. Bolton and Mr. St. John are getting quite
intimate. Mr. St. John, too, develops quite a fine social
talent, and has come out wonderfully. The side of a
man that one sees in the church and the pulpit is after
all only one side, as we have discovered. I find that he
has quite a gift in conversation, when you fairly get him
at it. Then, his voice for singing comes into play, and
he and Angie and Dr. Campbell and Alice make up a
quartette quite magnificent for non-professionals. Angie
has a fine soprano, and Alice takes the contralto, and the
Doctor, with his great broad shoulders and deep chest,
makes a splendid bass. Mr. St. John's tenor is really
very beautiful. It is one of those penetrating, sympathetic
voices that indicate both feeling and refinement,
and they are all of them surprised and delighted
to find how well they go together. Thursday evening
they went on from thing to thing, and found that they
could sing this and that and the other, till the evening
took a good deal the form of a musical. But never
mind, it brought them acquainted with each other and
made them look forward to the next reunion as something
agreeable. Ever since, the doctor goes round
humming tunes, and says he wants St. John to try the
tenor of this and that, and really has quite lost sight of
his being anything else but a musical brother. So here
is the common ground I wanted to find between them. “Dear Mrs. Henderson: You have tried hard to save me; but
it's no use. I am only a trouble to mother, and I disgrace you. So
I am going, and don't try to find me. May God bless you and
mother. “Dear Little Wifie: I have caught Selby, and we can have him
at dinner to-night; and as I know there's nothing like you for
emergencies, I secured him, and took the liberty of calling in on
Alice and Angie, and telling them to come. I shall ask St. John,
and Jim, and Bolton, and Campbell—you know, the more the merrier,
and, when you are about it, it's no more trouble to have six or
seven than one; and now you have Maggie, one may as well spread
a little. DEAR Mother: I have kept you well informed of
all our prosperities in undertaking and doing: how
everything we have set our hand to has turned out beautifully;
how “our evenings” have been a triumphant
success; and how we and our neighbors are all coming
into the spirit of love and unity, getting acquainted, mingling
and melting into each other's sympathy and knowledge.
I have had the most delightful run of compliments
about my house, as so bright, so cheerful, so
social and cosy, and about my skill in managing to
always have every thing so nice, and in entertaining with
so little parade and trouble, that I really began to plume
myself on something very uncommon in the way of what
Aunt Prissy Diamond calls “faculty.” Well, you know,
next in course after the Palace Beautiful comes the Valley
of Humiliation—whence my letter is dated—where I
am at this present writing. Honest old John Bunyan
says that, although people do not descend into this place
with a very good grace, but with many a sore bruise and
tumble, yet the air thereof is mild and refreshing, and
many sweet flowers grow here that are not found in more
exalted regions. MY Dear Mother: I sit down to write to you with
a heart full of the strangest feelings and expeririences.
I feel as if I had been out in some other
world and been brought back again; and now I hardly
know myself or where I am. You know I wrote you all
about Maggie, and her leaving us, and poor Mary's
trouble about her, and how she had been since seen in a
very bad neighborhood: I promised Mary faithfully that
I would go after her; and so, after all our Christmas
labors were over, Harry and I went on a midnight excursion
with Mr. James, the Methodist minister, who has
started the mission there. “My Dear Sir: Ever since that most sad evening when I went
with you in your work of mercy to those unhappy people, I have
been thinking of what I saw, and wishing I could do something to
help you. You say that you do not solicit aid except from the dear
Father who is ever near to those that are trying to do such work
as this; yet, as long as he is ever near to Christian hearts, he will
inspire them with desires to help in a cause so wholly Christ-like. I
send you this ornament, which was bought in days when I thought
little of its sacred meaning. Sell it, and let the avails go towards
enlarging your Home for those poor people who find no place for
repentance in the world. I would rather you would tell nobody
from whom it comes. It is something wholly my own; it is a relief
to offer it, to help a little in so good a work, and I certainly shall not
forget to pray for your success. DEAR Mother: You've no idea how things have
gone on within a short time. I have been so excited
and so busy, and kept in such a state of constant
consultation, for this past week, that I have had no time
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