Lydia Maria Child, Letters of Lydia Maria Child
John Greenleaf Whittier, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Winslow Sewall, Ed.

[263]

Appendix.

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Remarks of Wendell Phillips at the funeral of Lydia Maria Child, October 23, 1880.

Mrs. Child's character was one of rare elements, and their combination in one person rarer still. She was the outgrowth of New England theology, traditions, and habits -the finest fruit of these: but she could have been born and bred nowhere but in New England.

There were all the charms and graceful elements which we call feminine, united with a masculine grasp and vigor; sound judgment and great breadth; large common sense and capacity for every-day usefulness; “endurance, foresight, strength, and skill.”

A creature not too bright and good
For human nature's daily food.

But lavishly endowed, her gifts were not so remarkable as the admirable conscientiousness with which she used them. Indeed, an earnest purpose, vigilant conscientiousness, were the keys to her whole life and its best explanation.

We shall better understand her life if we remember it was governed by the divine rule, “Bear ye one another's burdens.” This, in fact, explains her courage, her economy, her painstaking industry, her interest and activity in reforms, and the scrupulous fidelity with which she cultivated every power. [264]

How early her mind ripened and in what girlhood it opened to the most advanced thought of her times! And the first draught of fame, usually so intoxicating, never disturbed her clear judgment or tempted her to any undue compromise.

There were few women authors when, in 1821-22, she published her first novels. The success of these was so brilliant, and a woman's success then so rare, that the Boston Athenaeum,--still the most fashionable and aristocratic, and then the only, public library — paid her the almost unique compliment of sending her a free ticket of admission. When, in 1833, she published her “Appeal in behalf of that Class of Americans called Africans,” she of course sent that library a copy. Whether they ever placed the book on their shelves I do not know, but at any rate the directors immediately withdrew her ticket of admission. And a prominent lawyer, afterwards a notorious attorney-general of Massachusetts, is said to have used tongs to fling the obnoxious volume out of his window.

This is a sad record; but to recall it is only fair tribute to the young author, who never faltered; only gave to the hated and struggling cause a more public adhesion and a more liberal support. Hardly ever was there a costlier sacrifice. Few of us can appreciate it to-day. Narrow means just changing to ease; after a weary struggle, fame and social position in her grasp; every door opening before her; the sweetness of having her genius recognized.

No one had supposed that independence of opinion on a moral question would wreck all this. It was a thunderbolt from a summer sky. But confronted suddenly with the alternative, gagged life or total wreck,--she never hesitated.

One blow, and the spreading tree is dead. At the call of duty the young woman struck it without repining, and saw the whole scene change at once. Obloquy and hard work ill-paid; almost every door shut against her, the name she had made a talisman turned to a reproach, and life henceforth [265] a sacrifice. How serenely she took up that cross, how bravely she bore it almost till life's close!

In religious speculation Mrs. Child moved in the very van. Her studies and friendships were with the foremost scholars. But it was not merely indifferentism, dissent, and denial — that negative and aggressive element to which Emerson has, of late, so strongly objected. She was penetrated with a deep religious fervor; as devotional, as profound and tender a sentiment as the ignorant devotee.

It has been my lot to find more bigotry and narrowness among free religionists than among their opponents. But Mrs. Child in her many-sidedness did not merely bear with other creeds; she heartily sympathized with all forms of religious belief, pagan, classic, oriental, and Christian. All she asked was that they should be real. That condition present, she saw lovingly their merits and gave to each the fullest credit for its honesty of purpose.

Her “Progress of Religious Ideas” was no mere intellectual effort. It was the natural utterance of a deep, kindly, and respectful sympathy with each. There was no foolish tenderness, no weak sentimentality about her. She held every one, as she did herself, strictly to the sternest responsibility. Still there was the most lovable candor and an admirably level fairness of judgment; always making every allowance and believing to the last in honesty of purpose.

She practised the most rigid economy always and in even the minutest particular. Her own hands ministered to her wants and those of her husband; waste was almost crime. But this hard and painstaking care with one hand was only that the other might be full for liberal gifts.

Franklin has had on one or two generations an evil influence that made them save only to accumulate, resulting in that despicable virtue “prudence ;” despicable when it saps independence and shuts up the over-careful hand.

But Mrs. Child's prudence never held back one needed bold word, and was only to make her more able to give.

There was a delicate shrinking from receiving too many [266] favors; a pride of independence that never left her. To one who strove to do for her unpaid, she invented ways of remuneration until the balance of obligation was often on his side.

It was like her to refuse a gift of several thousand dollars, and, and when I suggested that the large-hearted friend who offered it had more than she could do to wisely distribute her income, and that Mrs. Child could and should help her in that, it was like her also to change her mind, accept the trust, portion out every dollar of income while she lived, and devise it, at her death, to the ideas and movements she loved.

And yet this princely giver kept till death the cheap, plain fashion of dress which early narrow means had enforced,--used an envelope twice, and never wrote on a whole sheet when half a one would suffice. “I do not think, Mrs. Child, you can afford to give so much just now,” I said to her once, when, in some exigency of the freedmen's cause, she told me to send then from her a hundred dollars. “Well,” she answered, “I will think it over, and send you word to-morrow.” To-morrow word came, “Please send them two hundred.”

Her means were never large: never so large that a woman of her class would think she had anything to give away. But her spirit was Spartan. When she had nothing for others, she worked to get it. She wrote me once, “I have four hundred dollars to my credit at my publishers for my book on ‘ Looking towards Sunset.’ Please get it and give it to the freedmen.”

“ I want a dictionary,” one said to her whom she was always importuning to allow her to give him something, “if you will insist on giving it to me ; it will cost ten dollars.” She sent the most valuable, costing double. But we who knew her cannot forget that this was not a hard life nor a harsh one. It bubbled up with joy. Threescore years and ten had still the freshness of girlhood, the spirits noticing could dull or quench; the ready wit, quick retort, mirthful [267] jest. Her memory was a storehouse of fact, proverb, curious incident, fine saying, homely wisdom, touching story, brave act; and hence her conversation, fraught with all this treasure, was indescribably charming. Few scholars ever gave such fair play to their mother-wit; were so little overloaded and cumbered with massive accumulations. What variety of gifts! everything but poet. Narrative, fiction, journalism, history, sketches of daily city life, ethics, consolation for the evening of life, ennobling our nature by showing how, under all error, there lives the right purpose and principle. And she had nothing of the scholar's disease, timidity and selfishness. Her hand was always ready for any drudgery of service. It was she, as much as her lionhearted husband, who, at their own cost, saved Boston from the crime and infamy of murdering the twelve pirates before they had even the mockery of a trial. The fallen woman, the over-tempted inebriate, she could take to her home and watch over month after month. And prison doors were no bar to her when a friendless woman needed help or countenance against an angry community.

Her courage was not merely intellectual. I remember well her resolute rebuke, spoken in the street, to the leader of one of the Sunday mobs of 1861,--so stern, brief, and pungent that it left him dumb. She was among the first to welcome John Brown. While anti-slavery senators and governors excused him as a “madman,” and leading reformers smiled pityingly on the “fanatic,” her sword leapt from its scabbard in his defence. While it yet hung in the balance whether the nation should acknowledge its prophet or crucify him, she asked to share his prison, and with brave appeal stirred the land to see the prophet vouchsafed to it.

She had much of that marvellous power which disinterestedness always gives. We felt that neither fame, nor gain, nor danger, nor calumny had any weight with her; that she sought honestly to act out her thought; obeyed the rule,--

Go put your creed
Into your deed;

[268] was ready to die for a principle and starve for an idea; nor think to claim any merit for it! What measureless power this has! With what hooks of steel this binds men to one! A dear lovable woman, welcome at a sick bedside ; as much in place there as when facing an angry nation; contented in the home she made; the loyal friend ; such ingenuity in devising ways to help you; the stalwart fidelity of friendship, rare in these easy going, half-and-half, non-committal days; such friendship as allowed no word of disparagement, no doubt of a friend's worth, to insult her presence. A wise counsellor, one who made your troubles hers and pondered thoughtfully before she spoke her hearty word : we feel we have lost one who would have stood by us in trouble, a shield. She was the kind of woman one would choose to represent woman's entrance into broader life. Modest, womanly, simple, sincere, solid, real, loyal; to be trusted; equal to affairs and yet above them; mother-wit ripened by careful training, and enriched with the lore of ages; a companion with the pass-word of every science and all literatures; a hand ready for fireside help and a mystic loving to wander on the edge of the actual, reaching out and up into the infinite and the unfathomable ; so that life was lifted to romance, to heroism and the loftiest faith. May we also have a faith that is almost sight. How joyful to remember, dear friend, your last counsel, the words you thought spirit hands had traced for your epitaph: “You think us dead. We are not dead; we are the living.”

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[269]

Within the gate.

L. M. C.

We sat together, last May-day, and talked
Of the dear friends who walked
Beside us, sharers of the hopes and fears
Of five and forty years

Since first we met in Freedom's hope forlorn,
And heard her battle-horn
Sound through the valleys of the sleeping North,
Calling her children forth,

And youth pressed forward with hope-lighted eyes,
And age, with forecast wise
Of the long strife before the triumph won,
Girded his armor on.

Sadly, as name by name we called the roll,
We heard the dead-bells toll
For the unanswering many, and we knew
The living were the few.

And we, who waited our own call before
The inevitable door,
Listened and looked, as all have done, to win
Some token from within.

No sign we saw, we heard no voices call;
The impenetrable wall
Cast down its shadow, like an awful doubt,
On all who sat without.

Of many a hint of life beyond the veil,
And many a ghostly tale [270]
Wherewith the ages spanned the gulf between
The seen and the unseen,

Seeking from omen, trance, and dream to gain
Solace to doubtful pain,
And touch, with groping hands, the garment hem
Of truth sufficing them,

We talked; and, turning from the sore unrest
Of all all-baffling quest,
We thought of holy lives that from us passed
Hopeful unto the last,

As if they saw beyond the river of death,
Like Him of Nazareth,
The many mansions of the Eternal days
Lift up their gates of praise.

And, hushed to silence by a reverent awe,
Methought, 0 friend, I saw
In thy true life of word, and work, and thought,
The proof of all we sought.

Did we not witness in the life of thee
Immortal prophecy?
And feel, when with thee, that thy footsteps trod
An everlasting road?

Not for brief days thy generous sympathies,
Thy scorn of selfish ease;
Not for the poor prize of an earthly goal
Thy strong uplift of soul.

Than thine was never turned a fonder heart
To nature and to art
In fair-formed Hellas in her golden prime,
Thy Philothea's time. [271]
Yet, loving beauty, thou couldst pass it by,
And for the poor deny
Thyself, and see thy fresh, sweet flower of fame
Wither in blight and blame.
Sharing His love who holds in His embrace
The lowliest of our race,
Sure the Divine economy must be
Conservative of thee!
For truth must live with truth, self-sacrifice
Seek out its great allies;
Good must find good by gravitation sure,
And love with love endure.
And so, since thou hast passed within the gate
Whereby awhile I wait,
I give blind grief and blinder sense the lie:
Thou hast not lived to die!