Part 3

She joined the tabooed circle in 1821, and wrote from Stockbridge, "Some of my friends here have, as I learn, been a little troubled, but after the crime of confessed Unitarianism, nothing can surprise them"; she longs to look upon a Christian minister who does not regard her as "a heathen and a publican." An aunt, very fond of her, said to her, one day as they were parting, "Come and see me as often as you can, dear, for you know, after this world we shall never meet again."

These religious tribulations incited her to write a short story, after the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, to contrast two kinds of religion, of one of which she had seen more than was good. The story was to appear as a tract, but it outgrew the dimensions of a tract, and was published as a book under the title of "A New England Tale." It is not a masterpiece of literature but, like all of Miss Sedgwick's works, it contains some fine delineations of character and vivid descriptions of local scenery. It can be read to-day with interest and pleasure. As a dramatic presentation of the self-righteous and the meek, in a New England country town a century ago, it is very effective. "Mrs. Wilson" is perhaps a more stony heart than was common among the 'chosen vessels of the Lord,' but so the Pharisee in the parable may have been a trifle exaggerated. The advantage of this kind of writing is that you do not miss the point of the story.

Miss Dewey says The New England Tale gave Miss Sedgwick an "immediate position in the world of American literature." Her brother Theodore wrote, "It exceeds all my expectations, fond and flattering as they were"; her brother Harry, "I think, dear Kate, that your destiny is fixed. As you are such a Bibleist, I only say don't put your light under a bushel." That the book did not fall still-born is evident when he says further, "The orthodox do all they can to put it down." On the other hand, her publisher wanted to print a cheap edition of 3,000 copies for missionary purposes. I should like to see that done to-day by some zealous liberal-minded publisher.

The New England Tale appeared in 1822, when Cooper had only published "Precaution" and "The Spy." In 1824, Miss Sedgwick published "Redwood," of which a second edition was called for the same year, and which was republished in England and translated into French. It reached distinction in the character of Deborah Lenox, of which Miss Edgworth said, "It is to America what Scott's characters are to Scotland, valuable as original pictures." Redwood was reviewed by Bryant in the North American, in an article which, he says, was up to that time his "most ambitious attempt in prose." "Hope Leslie" appeared in 1827. It was so much better than its predecessors, said the Westminster Review, that one would not suppose it by the same hand. Sismondi, the Swiss historian, wrote the author a letter of thanks and commendation, which was followed by a life-long friendship between these two authors. Mrs. Child, then Miss Francis and the author of "Hobomok" and "The Rebels," wrote her that she had nearly completed a story on Capt. John Smith which now she will not dare to print, but she surrenders with less reluctance, she says, "for I love my conqueror." "Is not that beautiful?" says Miss Sedgwick. "Better to write and to feel such a sentiment than to indite volumes."

"Clarence" was published in 1830, and I am glad to say, she sold the rights to the first edition for $1,200, before the critics got hold of it. The scene is laid in New York and in high life. The story, said the North American Review, is "improbable" but not "dull." Miss Dewey says, "It is the most romantic and at the same time the wittiest of her novels," but Bryant says it has been the least read. "The Linwoods, or Sixty Years Since in America," appeared in 1835, and Bryant called it "a charming tale of home life, thought by many to be the best of her novels properly so called."

If Miss Sedgwick had written none of these more elaborate works, she would deserve a permanent place in our literature for a considerable library of short stories, among which I should name "A Berkshire Tradition," a pathetic tale of the Revolution; "The White Scarf," a romantic story of Mediaeval France; "Fanny McDermot," a study of conventional morality; "Home," of which the Westminster Review said, "We wish this book was in the hands of every mechanic in England"; "The Poor Rich Man and the Rich Poor Man" of which Joseph Curtis, the philanthropist, said, "in all his experiences he had never known so much good fruit from the publication of any book"; and, not least, "Live and let Live: or domestic service illustrated," of which Dr. Channing wrote, "I cannot, without violence to my feelings, refrain from expressing to you the great gratification with which I have read your 'Live and let Live.' Thousands will be better and happier for it.... Your three last books, I trust, form an era in our literature."

This was high praise, considering that there was then no higher literary authority in America than Dr. Channing. However, a message from Chief Justice Marshall, through Judge Story, belongs with it: "Tell her I have read with great pleasure everything she has written, and wish she would write more." She had gained an enviable position in literature and she had done a great deal of useful work during the fifteen years since the timid appearance of "A New England Tale," but she seems to have regarded her books as simply a "by-product": "My author existence has always seemed something accidental, extraneous, and independent of my inner self. My books have been a pleasant occupation and excitement in my life.... But they constitute no portion of my happiness--that is, of such as I derive from the dearest relations of life. When I feel that my writings have made any one happier or better, I feel an emotion of gratitude to Him who has made me the medium of any blessing to my fellow creatures."

In 1839, Miss Sedgwick went to Europe in company with her brother Robert, and other relatives. The party was abroad two years and, on its return, Miss Sedgwick collected her European letters and published them in two volumes. They give one a view of Europe as seen by an intelligent observer still in the first half of the last century. She breakfasted with Rogers, the banker and poet, with whom she met Macaulay whose conversation was to her "rich and delightful. Some might think he talks too much; but none, except from their own impatient vanity, could wish it were less." She had tea at Carlyle's, found him "simple, natural and kindly, his conversation as picturesque as his writings." She "had an amusing evening at Mr. Hallam's"; he made her "quite forget he was the sage of the 'Middle Ages.'" At Hallam's she met Sydney Smith who was "in the vein, and we saw him, I believe, to advantage. His wit is not, as I expected, a succession of brilliant explosions but a sparkling stream of humor."

In Geneva, she visited her friends, the Sismondis, and in Turin received a call from Silvio Pellico, martyr to Italian liberty. "He is of low stature and slightly made, a sort of etching of a man with delicate and symmetrical features, just enough body to gravitate and keep the spirit from its natural upward flight--a more shadowy Dr. Channing."

Soon after Miss Sedgwick's return from Europe, she became connected with the Women's Prison Association of New York City, of which from 1848 to 1863 she was president. An extract from one letter must suffice to suggest the nature of her activities in connection with this and kindred philanthropies: "It is now just ten, and I have come up from the City Hall, in whose dismal St. Giles precincts I have been to see a colored ragged school.... My Sundays are not days of rest.... My whole soul is sickened; and to-day when I went to church filled with people in their fine summer clothes, and heard a magnificent sermon from Dr. Dewey, and thought of the streets and dens through which I had just walked, I could have cried out, Why are ye here?"

A fellow-member of the Prison Association, who often accompanied her on her visits to hospitals and prisons, "especially the Tombs, Blackwell's, and Randall's Island," says, "In her visitations, she was called upon to kneel at the bedside of the sick and dying. The sweetness of her spirit, and the delicacy of her nature, felt by all who came within her atmosphere, seemed to move the unfortunate to ask this office of her, and it was never asked in vain."

Always a philanthropist, Miss Sedgwick was not a "reformer" in the technical sense; that is, she did not enlist in the "movements" of her generation, for Temperance, or Anti-Slavery, or Woman's Rights. She shrunk from the excesses of the "crusaders," but she was never slow in striking a blow in a good cause. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was published in 1852, but its indictment of slavery is not more complete than Miss Sedgwick made in "Redwood," her second novel, twenty-five years before. A planter's boy sees a slave starved to famishing and then whipped to death. It hurt his boy heart, but he afterward became hardened to such necessary severity and he tells the story to a fellow planter with apologies for his youthful sentimentality. Does "Uncle Tom's Cabin" show more clearly the two curses of slavery: cruelty to the slave and demoralization to the master?

She sympathized with the abolitionists in their purpose but not always with their methods: "The great event of the past week has been the visit of the little apostle of Abolitionism--Lucy Stone." This was in 1849 when Mrs. Stone was thirty-one. "She has one of the very sweetest voices I ever heard, a readiness of speech and grace that furnish the external qualifications of an orator--a lovely countenance too--and the intensity, entire forgetfulness and the divine calmness that fit her to speak in the great cause she has undertaken." But in spite of this evident sympathy with the purpose of the Abolitionists, Miss Sedgwick declined to attend a meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society, saying: "It seemed to me that so much had been intemperately said, so much rashly urged, on the death of that noble martyr, John Brown, by the Abolitionists, that it was not right to appear among them as one of them."

Not even Lucy Stone, however, could have felt more horror at the institution of slavery. The Compromise Measures of 1850 made her shudder: "my hands are cold as ice; the blood has curdled in my heart; that word compromise has a bad savor when truth and right are in question." When the Civil War came, in her seventieth year, she had "an intense desire to live to see the conclusion of the struggle," but could not conjecture "how peace and good neighborhood are ever to follow from this bitter hate." "It is delightful to see the gallantry of some of our men, who are repeating the heroic deeds that seemed fast receding to fabulous times." Some of these young heroes were very near to her. Maj. William Dwight Sedgwick, who fell on the bloody field of Antietam was her nephew, Gen. John Sedgwick, killed at the battle of Spottsylvania, was her cousin.

As she was not in the Anti-Slavery crusade, so she was not in the Woman's Rights crusade. She wished women to have a larger sphere, and she did much to enlarge the sphere of her sex, but it was by taking it and making it, rather than by talking about it. "Your might must be your right," she says in a chapter on The Rights of Women, in "Means and Ends." Voting did not seem to her a function suited to women: "I cannot believe it was ever intended that women should lead armies, harangue in halls of legislation, bustle up to ballot-boxes, or sit on judicial tribunals." The gentle Lucy Stone would not have considered this argument conclusive, but it satisfied Miss Sedgwick.

In 1857, after a silence of twenty-two years, in which only short stories and one or two biographies came from her hand, she published another two-volume novel entitled, "Married or Single." It is perhaps her best work; at least it has been so considered by many readers. She was then sixty-seven and, though she had ten more years to live, they were years of declining power. These last years were spent at the home of her favorite niece, Mrs. William Minot, Jr., in West Roxbury, Mass., and there tenderly and reverently cared for, she died in 1867.

Bryant, who was her life-long friend, and who, at her instance wrote some of his hymns, gives this estimate of her character: "Admirable as was her literary life, her home life was more so; and beautiful as were the examples set forth in her writings, her own example was, if possible, still more beautiful. Her unerring sense of rectitude, her love of truth, her ready sympathy, her active and cheerful beneficence, her winning and gracious manners, the perfection of high breeding, make up a character, the idea of which, as it rests in my mind, I would not exchange for anything in her own interesting works of fiction."

MARY LOVELL WARE

Of all the saints in the calendar of the Church there is no name more worthy of the honor than that of Mary Lovell Ware. The college of cardinals, which confers the degree of sainthood for the veneration of faithful Catholics, will never recognize her merits and encircle her head with a halo, but when the list of Protestant saints is made up, the name of Mary L. Ware will be in it, and among the first half dozen on the scroll.

The writer was a student in the Divinity School at Cambridge when a classmate commended to him the Memoirs of Mrs. Ware as one of the few model biographies. It was a book not laid down in the course of study; its reading was postponed for that convenient season for which one waits so long; but he made a mental note of the "Memoirs of Mary L. Ware," which many years did not efface. There is a book one must read, he said to himself, if he would die happy.

Mrs. Ware's maiden name was Pickard. To the end of her days, when she put herself in a pillory as she often did, she called herself by her maiden name. "That," she would say, "was Mary Pickard." I infer that she thought Mary Pickard had been a very bad girl.

Her mother's name was Lovell,--Mary Lovell,--granddaughter of "Master Lovell," long known as a classical teacher in colonial Boston, and daughter of James Lovell, an active Revolutionist, a prominent member of the Continental Congress and, from the end of the war to his death, Naval officer in the Boston Custom House. Mr. Lovell had eight sons, one of whom was a successful London merchant, and one daughter, who remained with her parents until at twenty-five she married Mr. Pickard and who, when her little girl was five years old returned, as perhaps an only daughter should, to take care of her parents in their old age. So it happened that the childhood of Mrs. Ware was passed at her grandfather Lovell's, in Pearl St., Boston, then an eligible place of residence.

Mr. Pickard was an Englishman by birth, and a merchant with business connections in London and Boston, between which cities, for a time, his residence alternated. Not much is said of him in the Memoirs, beyond the fact that he was an Episcopalian with strong attachment to the forms of his church, as an Englishman might be expected to be.

Of Mrs. Pickard we learn more. She is said to have possessed a vigorous mind, to have been well educated and a fine conversationalist, with a commanding figure, benignant countenance, and dignified demeanor, so that one said of her, "She seems to have been born for an empress." Like her husband she was an Episcopalian though, according to the Memoirs, less strenuously Episcopalian than Mr. Pickard. She had been reared in a different school. Her father,--Mr. James Lovell--we are told, was a free-thinker, or as the Memoirs put it, "had adopted some infidel principles," and "treated religion with little respect in his family." The "infidels" of that day were generally good men, only they were not orthodox. Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and Washington were such infidels. After Channing's day, this kind of man here in New England was absorbed by the Unitarian movement, and, as a separate class, disappeared. Mrs. Pickard was bred in this school and she appears never to have forgotten her home training. "She was unostentatious and charitable," says an early friend, "and her whole life was an exhibition of the ascendency of principle over mere taste and feeling."

Her religious attitude becomes interesting, because in an exceptional degree, she formed her remarkable daughter,--who was an only child and until the age of thirteen had no teacher except this forceful and level-headed mother.

With these antecedents, Mary Lovell Pickard was born in Boston, October 2, 1798, John Adams being then President. In 1802, Mary having passed her third summer, Mr. Pickard's business called him to London, where he resided with his family two years, so that the child's fifth birthday was duly celebrated in mid-ocean on the homeward voyage. In a letter of Mrs. Pickard, written during this London residence, she says, "Mr. Pickard is even more anxious than I to go home. Mary is the only contented one. She is happy all the time." There is so much that is sad in this record that, before we have done, the reader will be glad the little girl had at least a bright and sunny childhood to remember. It appears she did remember it. It may not be remarkable, but it is interesting, that the experiences of this early London life,--between her third and fifth year,--made an indelible impression upon her, so that twenty years later when she was again in England, much to her own delight, she "recognized her old London home and other objects with which she was then familiar."

A lady who was a fellow passenger of the Pickards on their homeward voyage was struck by the gentle management of the mother and the easy docility of the child. To say, "It will make me unhappy if you do that," was an extreme exercise of maternal authority, to which the child yielded unresisting obedience. This, of course, is told to the credit of the child, but the merit, probably belongs to the mother. Doubtless we could all have such children if we were that kind of a parent. A little tact, unfailing gentleness, and an infinite self control: with these, it would seem one may smile and kiss a child into an angel.

On arriving in Boston, Mrs. Pickard took her family to her father's, where she remained until her death, and where, we read, "with parents and grandparents, Mary found a home whose blessings filled her heart." Being an only child, with four elderly persons, Mary was likely to be too much petted or too much fretted. We are glad to know that she was not fretted or over-trained. In a letter of retrospect, she writes, "For many years a word of blame never reached my ears." An early friend of the family writes, "It has been said that Mary was much indulged; and I believe it may be said so with truth. But she was not indulged in idleness, selfishness, and rudeness; she was indulged in healthful sports, in pleasant excursions, and in companionship with other children."