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Harold MacGrath - "Half a Rogue"

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Books: The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe

C >> Charles Edward Stowe >> The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe




LONDON, _November_ 5,1856.

DEAREST FRIEND,--I return these. They have held mine eyes waking. How
strange! How unaccountable! Have you ever subjected the facts to the
judgment of a medical man, learned in nervous pathology? Is it not
insanity?

"Great wits to madness nearly are allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide."

But my purpose to-night is not to write to you fully what I think of
this matter. I am going to write to you from Paris more at leisure.

(The rest of the letter was taken up in the final details of a charity
in which Lady Byron had been engaged with me in assisting an
unfortunate artist. It concludes thus:)

I write now in all haste, _en route_ for Paris. As to America,
all is not lost yet. Farewell. I love you, my dear friend, as never
before, with an intense feeling that I cannot easily express. God
bless you.

H. B. S.

The next letter is as follows:--

PARIS, _December_ 17, 1856.

DEAR LADY BYRON,--The Kansas Committee have written me a letter
desiring me to express to Miss ---- their gratitude for the five
pounds she sent them. I am not personally acquainted with her, and
must return these acknowledgments through you.

I wrote you a day or two since, inclosing the reply of the Kansas
Committee to you.

On that subject on which you spoke to me the last time we were
together, I have thought often and deeply. I have changed my mind
somewhat. Considering the peculiar circumstances of the case, I could
wish that the sacred veil of silence, so bravely thrown over the past,
should never be withdrawn during the time that you remain with us. I
would say then, leave all with some discreet friends, who, after both
have passed from earth, shall say what was due to justice. I am led to
think this by seeing how low, how unworthy, the judgments of this
world are; and I would not that what I so much respect, love, and
revere should be placed within reach of its harpy claw, which pollutes
what it touches. The day will yet come which will bring to light every
hidden thing. "There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed,
neither hid that shall not be known;" and so justice will not fail.

Such, my dear friend, are my thoughts; different from what they were
since first I heard that strange, sad history. Meanwhile I love you
forever, whether we meet again on earth or not.

Affectionately yours,

H. B. S.

Before her article appeared in print, Mrs. Stowe addressed the
following letter to Dr. Holmes in Boston:--

HARTFORD, _June_ 26,1869.

DEAR DOCTOR,--I am going to ask help of you, and I feel that
confidence in your friendship that leads me to be glad that I have a
friend like you to ask advice of. In order that you may understand
fully what it is, I must go back some years and tell you about it.

When I went to England the first time, I formed a friendship with Lady
Byron which led to a somewhat interesting correspondence. When there
the second time, after the publication of "Dred" in 1856, Lady Byron
wrote to me that she wished to have some private confidential
conversation with me, and invited me to come spend a day with her at
her country-seat near London. I went, met her alone, and spent an
afternoon with her. The object of the visit she then explained to me.
She was in such a state of health that she considered she had very
little time to live, and was engaged in those duties and reviews which
every thoughtful person finds who is coming deliberately, and with
their eyes open, to the boundaries of this mortal life.

Lady Byron, as you must perceive, has all her life lived under a
weight of slanders and false imputations laid upon her by her husband.
Her own side of the story has been told only to that small circle of
confidential friends who needed to know it in order to assist her in
meeting the exigencies which it imposed on her. Of course it has
thrown the sympathy mostly on his side, since the world generally has
more sympathy with impulsive incorrectness than with strict justice.

At that time there was a cheap edition of Byron's works in
contemplation, meant to bring them into circulation among the masses,
and the pathos arising from the story of his domestic misfortunes was
one great means relied on for giving it currency.

Under these circumstances some of Lady Byron's friends had proposed
the question to her whether she had not a responsibility to society
for the truth; whether she did right to allow these persons to gain
influence over the popular mind by a silent consent to an utter
falsehood. As her whole life had been passed in the most heroic self-
abnegation and self sacrifice, the question was now proposed to her
whether one more act of self-denial was not required of her, namely,
to declare _the truth_, no matter at what expense to her own
feelings.

For this purpose she told me she wished to recount the whole story to
a person in whom she had confidence,--a person of another country, and
out of the whole sphere of personal and local feelings which might be
supposed to influence those in the country and station in life where
the events really happened,--in order that I might judge whether
anything more was required of her in relation to this history.

The interview had almost the solemnity of a deathbed confession, and
Lady Byron told me the history which I have embodied in an article to
appear in the "Atlantic Monthly." I have been induced to prepare it by
the run which the Guiccioli book is having, which is from first to
last an unsparing attack on Lady Byron's memory by Lord Byron's
mistress.

When you have read my article, I want, _not_ your advice as to
whether the main facts shall be told, for on this point I am so
resolved that I frankly say advice would do me no good. But you might
help me, with your delicacy and insight, to make the _manner of
telling_ more perfect, and I want to do it as wisely and well as
such story can be told.

My post-office address after July 1st will be Westport Point, Bristol
Co., Mass., care of Mrs. I. M. Soule. The proof-sheets will be sent
you by the publisher.

Very truly yours, H. B. STOWE.

In reply to the storm of controversy aroused by the publication of
this article, Mrs. Stowe made a more extended effort to justify the
charges which she had brought against Lord Byron, in a work published
in 1869, "Lady Byron Vindicated." Immediately after the publication of
this work, she mailed a copy to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, accompanied
by the following note:--

BOSTON, _May_ 19, 1869.

DEAR DOCTOR,--. . . In writing this book, which I now take the liberty
of sending to you, I have been in . . . a "critical place." It has
been a strange, weird sort of experience, and I have had not a word to
say to anybody, though often thinking of you and wishing I could have
a little of your help and sympathy in getting out what I saw. I think
of you very much, and rejoice to see the _hold_ your works get on
England as well as this country, and I would give more for your
opinion than that of most folks. How often I have pondered your last
letter to me, and sent it to many (friends)! God bless you. Please
accept for yourself and your good wife, this copy.

From yours truly,

H. B. STOWE.

Mrs. Stowe also published in 1870, through Sampson Low & Son, of
London, a volume for English readers, "The History of the Byron
Controversy." These additional volumes, however, do not seem to have
satisfied the public as a whole, and perhaps the expediency of the
publication of Mrs. Stowe's first article is doubtful, even to her
most ardent admirers. The most that can be hoped for, through the
mention of the subject in this biography, is the vindication of Mrs.
Stowe's purity of motive and nobility of intention in bringing this
painful matter into notice.

While she was being on all hands effectively, and evidently in some
quarters with rare satisfaction, roundly abused for the article, and
her consequent responsibility in bringing this unsavory discussion so
prominently before the public mind, she received the following letter
from Dr. 0. W. Holmes:--

BOSTON, _September_ 25, 1869.

MY DEAR MRS. STOWE,--I have been meaning to write to you for some
time, but in the midst of all the wild and virulent talk about the
article in the "Atlantic," I felt as if there was little to say until
the first fury of the storm had blown over.

I think that we all perceive now that the battle is not to be fought
here, but in England. I have listened to a good deal of talk, always
taking your side in a quiet way, backed very heartily on one occasion
by one of my most intellectual friends, reading all that came in my
way, and watching the course of opinion. And first, it was to be
expected that the Guiccioli fanciers would resent any attack on Lord
Byron, and would highly relish the opportunity of abusing one who,
like yourself, had been identified with all those moral enterprises
which elevate the standard of humanity at large, and of womanhood in
particular. After this scum had worked itself off, there must
necessarily follow a controversy, none the less sharp and bitter, but
not depending essentially on abuse. The first point the recusants got
hold of was the error of the two years which contrived to run the
gauntlet of so many pairs of eyes. Some of them were made happy by
mouthing and shaking this between their teeth, as a poodle tears round
with a glove. This did not last long. No sensible person could believe
for a moment you were mistaken in the essential character of a
statement every word of which would fall on the ear of a listening
friend like a drop of melted lead, and burn its scar deep into the
memory. That Lady Byron believed and told you the story will not be
questioned by any but fools and malignants. Whether her belief was
well founded there may be positive evidence in existence to show
affirmatively. The fact that her statement is not peremptorily
contradicted by those most likely to be acquainted with the facts of
the ease, is the one result so far which is forcing itself into
unwilling recognition. I have seen nothing, in the various hypotheses
brought forward, which did not to me involve a greater improbability
than the presumption of guilt. Take that, for witness, that Byron
accused himself, through a spirit of perverse vanity, of crimes he had
not committed. How preposterous! He would stain the name of a sister,
whom, on the supposition of his innocence, he loved with angelic ardor
as well as purity, by associating it with such an infamous accusation.
Suppose there are some anomalies hard to explain in Lady Byron's
conduct. Could a young and guileless woman, in the hands of such a
man, be expected to act in any given way, or would she not be likely
to waver, to doubt, to hope, to contradict herself, in the anomalous
position in which, without experience, she found herself?

As to the intrinsic evidence contained in the poems, I think it
confirms rather than contradicts the hypothesis of guilt. I do not
think that Butler's argument, and all the other attempts at
invalidation of the story, avail much in the face of the acknowledged
fact that it was told to various competent and honest witnesses, and
remains without a satisfactory answer from those most interested.

I know your firm self-reliance, and your courage to proclaim the truth
when any good end is to be served by it. It is to be expected that
public opinion will be more or less divided as to the expediency of
this revelation. . . .

Hoping that you have recovered from your indisposition,

I am Faithfully yours,

0. W. HOLMES.

While undergoing the most unsparing and pitiless criticism and brutal
insult, Mrs. Stowe received the following sympathetic words from Mrs.
Lewes (George Eliot):--

THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, _December_ 10, 1869.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--. . . In the midst of your trouble I was often
thinking of you, for I feared that you were undergoing a considerable
trial from the harsh and unfair judgments, partly the fruit of
hostility glad to find an opportunity for venting itself, and partly
of that unthinking cruelty which belongs to hasty anonymous
journalism. For my own part, I should have preferred that the Byron
question should never have been brought before the public, because I
think the discussion of such subjects is injurious socially. But with
regard to yourself, dear friend, I feel sure that, in acting on a
different basis of impressions, you were impelled by pure, generous
feeling. Do not think that I would have written to you of this point
to express a judgment. I am anxious only to convey to you a sense of
my sympathy and confidence, such as a kiss and a pressure of the hand
could give if I were near you.

I trust that I shall hear a good account of Professor Stowe's health,
as well as your own, whenever you have time to write me a word or two.
I shall not be so unreasonable as to expect a long letter, for the
hours of needful rest from writing become more and more precious as
the years go on, but some brief news of you and yours will be
especially welcome just now. Mr. Lewes unites with me in high regards
to your husband and yourself, but in addition to that I have the
sister woman's privilege of saying that I am always

Your affectionate friend,

M. H. LEWES.




CHAPTER XX.

GEORGE ELIOT.


CORRESPONDENCE WITH GEORGE ELIOT.--GEORGE ELIOT'S FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF
MRS. STOWE.--MRS. STOWE'S LETTER TO MRS. FOLLEN.--GEORGE ELIOT'S
LETTER TO MRS. STOWE.--MRS. STOWE'S REPLY.--LIFE IN FLORIDA.--ROBERT
DALE OWEN AND MODERN SPIRITUALISM.--GEORGE ELIOT'S LETTER ON THE
PHENOMENA OF SPIRITUALISM.--MRS. STOWE'S DESCRIPTION OF SCENERY IN
FLORIDA.--MRS. STOWE CONCERNING "MIDDLEMARCH."--GEORGE ELIOT TO MRS.
STOWE DURING REV. H. W. BEECHER'S TRIAL.--MRS. STOWE CONCERNING HER
LIFE EXPERIENCE WITH HER BROTHER, H. W. BEECHER, AND HIS TRIAL.--MRS.
LEWES' LAST LETTER TO MRS. STOWE.--DIVERSE MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF
THESE TWO WOMEN.--MRS. STOWE'S FINAL ESTIMATE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM.

It is with a feeling of relief that we turn from one of the most
disagreeable experiences of Mrs. Stowe's life to one of the most
delightful, namely, the warm friendship of one of the most eminent
women of this age, George Eliot.

There seems to have been some deep affinity of feeling that drew them
closely together in spite of diversity of intellectual tastes.

George Eliot's attention was first personally attracted to Mrs. Stowe
in 1853, by means of a letter which the latter had written to Mrs.
Follen. Speaking of this incident she (George Eliot) writes: "Mrs.
Follen showed me a delightful letter which she has just had from Mrs.
Stowe, telling all about herself. She begins by saying, 'I am a little
bit of a woman, rather more than forty, as withered and dry as a pinch
of snuff; never very well worth looking at in my best days, and now a
decidedly used-up article.' The whole letter is most fascinating, and
makes one love her." [Footnote: George Eliot's Life, edited by J. W.
Cross, vol. i.]

The correspondence between these two notable women was begun by Mrs.
Stowe, and called forth the following extremely interesting letter
from the distinguished English novelist:--

THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, _May_ 8,1869.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I value very highly the warrant to call you friend
which your letter has given me. It lay awaiting me on our return the
other night from a nine weeks' absence in Italy, and it made me almost
wish that you could have a momentary vision of the discouragement,--
nay, paralyzing despondency--in which many days of my writing life
have been passed, in order that you might fully understand the good I
find in such sympathy as yours, in such an assurance as you give me
that my work has been worth doing. But I will not dwell on any mental
sickness of mine. The best joy your words give me is the sense of that
sweet, generous feeling in you which dictated them. I shall always be
the richer because you have in this way made me know you better. I
must tell you that my first glimpse of you as a woman came through a
letter of yours, and charmed me very much. The letter was addressed to
Mrs. Follen, and one morning I called on her in London (how many years
ago!); she was kind enough to read it to me, because it contained a
little history of your life, and a sketch of your domestic
circumstances. I remember thinking that it was very kind of you to
write that long letter, in reply to inquiries of one who was
personally unknown to you; and, looking back with my present
experience, I think it was kinder than it then appeared, for at that
time you must have been much oppressed with the immediate results of
your fame. I remember, too, that you wrote of your husband as one who
was richer in Hebrew and Greek than in pounds or shillings; and as an
ardent scholar has always been a character of peculiar interest to me,
I have rarely had your image in my mind without the accompanying image
(more or less erroneous) of such a scholar by your side. I shall
welcome the fruit of his Goethe studies, whenever it comes.

I have good hopes that your fears are groundless as to the obstacles
your new book ("Oldtown Folks") may find here from its thorough
American character. Most readers who are likely to be really
influenced by writing above the common order will find that special
aspect an added reason for interest and study; and I dare say you have
long seen, as I am beginning to see with new clearness, that if a book
which has any sort of exquisiteness happens also to be a popular,
widely circulated book, the power over the social mind for any good
is, after all, due to its reception by a few appreciative natures, and
is the slow result of radiation from that narrow circle. I mean that
you can affect a few souls, and that each of these in turn may affect
a few more, but that no exquisite book tells properly and directly on
a multitude, however largely it may be spread by type and paper.
Witness the things the multitude will say about it, if one is so
unhappy as to be obliged to hear their sayings. I do not write this
cynically, but in pure sadness and pity. Both traveling abroad and
staying at home among our English sights and sports, one must
continually feel how slowly the centuries work toward the moral good
of men, and that thought lies very close to what you say as to your
wonder or conjecture concerning my religious point of view. I believe
that religion, too, has to be modified according to the dominant
phases; that a religion more perfect than any yet prevalent must
express less care of personal consolation, and the more deeply awing
sense of responsibility to man springing from sympathy with that which
of all things is most certainly known to us,--the difficulty of the
human lot. Letters are necessarily narrow and fragmentary, and
when one writes on wide subjects, are likely to create more
misunderstanding than illumination. But I have little anxiety in
writing to you, dear friend and fellow-laborer; for you have had
longer experience than I as a writer, and fuller experience as a
woman, since you have borne children and known a mother's history from
the beginning. I trust your quick and long-taught mind as an
interpreter little liable to mistake me.

When you say, "We live in an orange grove, and are planting many
more," and when I think you must have abundant family love to cheer
you, it seems to me that you must have a paradise about you. But no
list of circumstances will make a paradise. Nevertheless, I must
believe that the joyous, tender humor of your books clings about your
more immediate life, and makes some of that sunshine for yourself
which you have given to us. I see the advertisement of "Oldtown
Folks," and shall eagerly expect it. That and every other new link
between us will be reverentially valued. With great devotion and
regard,

Yours always,

M. L. LEWES.

Mrs. Stowe writes from Mandarin to George Eliot:--

MANDARIN, _February_ 8, 1872.

DEAR FRIEND,--It is two years nearly since I had your last very kind
letter, and I have never answered, because two years of constant and
severe work have made it impossible to give a drop to anything beyond
the needs of the hour. Yet I have always thought of you, loved you,
trusted you all the same, and read every little scrap from your
writing that came to hand.

One thing brings you back to me. I am now in Florida in my little hut
in the orange orchard, with the broad expanse of the blue St. John's
in front, and the waving of the live-oaks, with their long, gray
mosses, overhead, and the bright gold of oranges looking through dusky
leaves around. It is like Sorrento,--so like that I can quite dream of
being there. And when I get here I enter another life. The world
recedes; I am out of it; it ceases to influence; its bustle and noise
die away in the far distance; and here is no winter, an open-air
life,--a quaint, rude, wild wilderness sort of life, both rude and
rich; but when I am here I write more letters to friends than ever I
do elsewhere. The mail comes only twice a week, and then is the event
of the day. My old rabbi and I here set up our tent, he with German,
and Greek, and Hebrew, devouring all sorts of black-letter books, and
I spinning ideal webs out of bits that he lets fall here and there.

I have long thought that I would write you again when I got here, and
so I do. I have sent North to have them send me the "Harper's Weekly,"
in which your new story is appearing, and have promised myself
leisurely to devour and absorb every word of it.

While I think of it I want to introduce to you a friend of mine, a
most noble man, Mr. Owen, for some years our ambassador at Naples, now
living a literary and scholar life in America. His father was Robert
Dale Owen, the theorist and communist you may have heard of in England
some years since.

Years ago, in Naples, I visited Mr. Owen for the first time, and found
him directing his attention to the phenomena of spiritism. He had
stumbled upon some singular instances of it accidentally, and he had
forthwith instituted a series of researches and experiments on the
subject, some of which he showed me. It was the first time I had ever
seriously thought of the matter, and he invited my sister and myself
to see some of the phenomena as exhibited by a medium friend of theirs
who resided in their family. The result at the time was sufficiently
curious, but I was interested in his account of the manner in which he
proceeded, keeping records of every experiment with its results, in
classified orders. As the result of his studies and observations, he
has published two books, one "Footfalls on the Boundary of Another
World," published in 1860, and latterly, "The Debatable Land Between
this World and the Next." I regard Mr. Owen as one of the few men who
are capable of entering into an inquiry of this kind without an utter
drowning of common sense, and his books are both of them worth a fair
reading. To me they present a great deal that is intensely curious and
interesting, although I do not admit, of course, all his deductions,
and think he often takes too much for granted. Still, with every
abatement there remains a residuum of fact, which I think both curious
and useful. In a late letter to me he says :--

"There is no writer of the present day whom I more esteem than Mrs.
Lewes, nor any one whose opinion of my work I should more highly
value."

I believe he intends sending them to you, and I hope you will read
them. Lest some of the narratives should strike you, as such
narratives did me once, as being a perfect Arabian Nights'
Entertainment, I want to say that I have accidentally been in the way
of confirming some of the most remarkable by personal observation.

. . . In regard to all this class of subjects, I am of the opinion of
Goethe, that "it is just as absurd to deny the facts of spiritualism
now as it was in the Middle Ages to ascribe them to the Devil." I
think Mr. Owen attributes too much value to his facts. I do not think
the things contributed from the ultra-mundane sphere are particularly
valuable, apart from the evidence they give of continued existence
after death.

I do not think there is yet any evidence to warrant the idea that they
are a supplement or continuation of the revelations of Christianity,
but I do regard them as an interesting and curious study in
psychology, and every careful observer like Mr. Owen ought to be
welcomed to bring in his facts. With this I shall send you my
observations on Mr. Owen's books, from the "Christian Union." I am
perfectly aware of the frivolity and worthlessness of much of the
revealings purporting to come from spirits. In my view, the worth or
worthlessness of them has nothing to do with the question of fact.

Do invisible spirits speak in any wise,--wise or foolish?--is the
question _a priori_. I do not know of any reason why there should
not be as many foolish virgins in the future state as in this. As I am
a believer in the Bible and Christianity, I don't need these things as
confirmations, and they are not likely to be a religion to me. I
regard them simply as I do the phenomena of the Aurora Borealis, or
Darwin's studies on natural selection, as curious studies into nature.
Besides, I think some day we shall find a law by which all these facts
will fall into their places.