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Sara Payson Willis, daughter of Nathaniel and
Sara Willis, was born in
Portland, Maine, in midsummer of the year of our
Lord 1811.
In that fine old town, in that fine old State, where as she says, “the timber and the human beings are sound,” she spent the first six years of her life.
During those years, our country passed through a troublous time, -a supplementary grapple with the old country,--final, let us hope, and eminently satisfactory in its results, to one party at least.
But it is not probable that the shock and tumult of war seriously disturbed the little
Sara, sphered apart from its encounters, sieges, conflagrations, and unnatural griefs, in the fairy realm of a happy childhood.
Whether we made a cowardly surrender at
Detroit, or incarnadined
Lake Erie with British blood,--whether we conquered at
Chippewa, or rehearsed
Bull Run at
Bladensburg,--whether our enemy burned the
Capitol at
Washington, or was soundly thrashed at New Orleans,--it was all the same to her. However the heart of the noble mother may have been pained by the tragedies, privations and mournings of that time, it brooded over the little baby-life in sheltering peace and love ;--as the robin, when her nest rocks in the tempest, shields her unfledged darlings with jealous care.
I have a theory, flanked by whole columns of biographical history, that no man or woman of genius was ever born of
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an inferior, or common-place woman.
The mother of Nathaniel, Richard, and
Sara Willis was a large-brained, as well as great-hearted woman.
The beautiful tributes of her poet-son made all the world aware of her most lovable qualities --her faithful, maternal tenderness and broad, sweet charity; but to these were added rare mental power and character of singular nobility and weight.
From a private letter, addressed by the subject of this biographical sketch to a friend, in answer to some questions concerning this noble mother, I am permitted to take the following touching tribute: “All my brother's poetry, all the capability for writing which I possess — be it little, or muchcame from her. She had correspondence with many clergymen of the time and others, and, had she lived at this day, would have been a writer worthy of mention.
In those days women had nine children — her number and stifled their souls under baskets of stockings to mend and aprons to make.
She made every one who came near her better and happier for having seen her. She had a heart as wide as the world, and charity to match.
Oh, the times I have thrown my arms wildly about me and sobbed ‘Mother’ till it seemed she
must come!
I shall never be ‘weaned,’ never I
She understood me. Even now, I
want her, every day and hour.
Blessed be eternity and immortality!
That is what my mother was to me. God bless her!”
In 1817
Mr. Willis removed to
Boston, where he for many years edited the “Recorder,” a religious journal, and “The youth's companion,” a juvenile paper, of blessed memory.
In Boston, Sara spent the remainder of her childhood; and a grand old town it is to be reared in, notwithstanding the east wind, its crooked, cow-path streets, and general promiscuousness,--notwithstanding its exceeding self-satisfaction, its social frigidity, its critical narrowness and its contagious
isms; among the most undesirable of which count conventionalism
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and dilettanteism; and it s an admirable town to emigrate from, because of these notwithstandings.
The stern
Puritan traditions and social prejudices of the place seem not to have entered very strongly into the character of
Sara Willis.
She probably chased butterflies on Boston Common, or picked wild strawberries (if they grew there) on
Bunker Hill, without much musing on the grand and heroic associations of those places.
She doubtless tripped by Faneuil Hall occasionally, without doing honor to it, as the august cradle of liberty.
She must have been an eminently happy and merry child; indulging in her own glad fancies in the bright present, with little reverence for the past, or apprehension for the future,--much given to mischief and mad little pranks of fun and adventure.
Sara was educated at
Hartford, in the far-famed Seminary of
Miss Catharine Beecher.
At that time,
Harriet Beecher,
Mrs. Stowe, was a teacher in this school.
She was amiable and endearing in her ways, and was recognized as a decidedly clever young lady, with a vein of quiet humor, a sleepy sort of wit, that woke up and flashed out when least expected; but of a careless, unpractical turn of mind.
She was not thought by any means the equal in mental power and weight of her elder sister, whose character was full of manly energy, who was a clear thinker, an excellent theologian, a good, great, high-hearted woman, with a strong will and remarkable executive abilities.
Of all his children,
Dr. Beecher is said to have most highly respected Catharine.
Sara Willis must here have laid an excellent foundation for successful authorship, though probably nothing was farther from her thoughts at the time than such a profession.
It would have seemed too quiet and thought-compelling a career for her, with her heart as full of frolic as a lark's breast is of singing.
There are yet traditions in that staid old town of
Hartford, of her merry school-girl escapades, her “tricks and
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her manners,” that draw forth as hearty laughter as the witty sallies, humorous fancies, and sharp strokes of satire that give to her writings their peculiar sparkle and dash.
If she grappled with the exact sciences it is not probable that they suffered much in the encounter.
For Geometry she is said to have had an especial and inveterate dislike.
Indeed, her teacher,
Mrs. Stowe, still tells a story of her having torn out the leaves of her Euclid to curl her hair with.
So she laid herself down to mathematical dreams, her fair head bristling with acute angles, in parallelogrammatic and paralellopipedonic
papillotes,--in short, with more Geometry outside than in. A novel way of getting over “the dunce bridge,” by taking that distasteful Fifth Proposition not only inwardly, but as an outward application; so that it might have read thus: “The angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal to one another; and if the equal sides be produced in curl papers, the angles on the other side of the
os frontis are also equal.”
But in the laughing, high-spirited girl there must have existed unsuspected by those about her, almost unsuspected by herself, the courage and energy, the tenderness, the large sympathy, the reverence for the divine and the human, which love and sorrow, the trials and stress of misfortune, were to evolve from her nature, and which her genius was to reveal.
A seer that might have perceived towering above the ringleted head of her absent-minded young teacher, a dark attendant spirit, benignant, but mournful,--poor, grand, old world-bewept, polyglotted Uncle Tom,--might also have seen in the few shadowy recesses of her young pupil's sunny character, the germs of those graceful “
Fern leaves” that were to bring to the literature of the people new vigor and verdure, the odors of woodlands, and exceeding pleasant pictures of nature.
It must have been while Sara was at school in
Hartford,
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that her brother Nathaniel began to be famous as a poet.
In that unlikely place, Yale College, he seems to have had a period of religious enthusiasm, or sentiment, and his scriptural poems were the result.
They have always continued to be his most popular productions, but they are far from being his best.
They are Scripture diluted, though diluted with rose-water.
The young school-girl must have had a sister's pride in this handsome, brilliant brother, in the golden dawn of his fame.
And here, let one whom he once befriended add this slight tribute to the poet's memory: What though his life did not wholly fulfill the promise of its fair morning?
It was a life marked by many a generous act, though beset by more than ordinary temptations to utter worldliness and egotism,--a life that gladdened with its best thoughts and most brilliant fancies lives less fortunate, and yet perhaps less sad. His genius delighted us long; for his faults, who, standing over his grave, feels true and earnest and blameless enough to sternly condemn him?
Miss Willis, soon after leaving school, married
Mr. Eldridge, of
Boston, and for several years lived in ease and comfort, and, what was far better, in domestic happiness.
Three daughters were born to her, and the wondrous experience of motherhood must have come to her to exalt, yet subdue the passionate impulses and the undisciplined forces of her nature.
Doubtless life with the new gladness, put on new solemnity; with the new riches, must have come humility.
Love had done much for
Sara Eldridge, maternity more; but she needed yet another heavenly teacher and helper,one no less benignant than they, but stern of aspect, mysterious, relentless,--Death.
He descended on that happy little household, “the angel with the amaranthine wreath,” and the husband and father “was not.”
Again he descended and bore away the first born,--a lovely, spiritual little girl, who
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m numbering over her bright, blameless years, could only say, “Seven times one are seven.”
Then came a weary beating out against the heavy sea of sorrow, of that dismantled pleasure-boat of a life, with one poor, grieving, inexperienced soul at the oars, and still such a precious freight of helpless love and childish dependence!
Behind was the lee-shore of despair; beneath cold, bitter, merciless want, and very faintly in the horizon shone the fair, firm land.
It is not for me to paint the cruel anxieties and perplexities of the widowed mother,--of a proud, independent woman, who could not ask for the help, withheld with what seemed to her unnatural indifference.
The experience doubtless infused into a nature generous and frank, but strongly passionate in both its loves and resentments, an element of defiant, almost fierce, bitterness and hate, which caused it to be condemned by some whose good opinion would have been worth the gaining, and applauded by others whose praise brought no honor.
But such an infusion of deadly night-shade juice as misanthropy and estrangement from friends once held most dear, could not long poison a mental organization so healthy as hers; it had a quick, fiery run through her blood, struck, once or twice, with deadly effect, and was gone.
It must be that her clear reasonable mind, seeing the swift, stern flight of the unrecallable days, must soon have felt that “Life is too short for such things as these,” as poor
Douglas Jerrold said, when extending his hand to a friend from whom he had been for some time separated by a misunderstanding,--“an estrangement for which,” said that noble friend,
Charles Dickens, with generous tenderness, “I was the one to blame.”
In 1851 “
Fanny Fern” was born into literary life.
Aessay was penned by the widowed mother, on whose heart lay a great burden of loving care.
That care .was her inspiration, her desperate hope.
Her muses were a couple of
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curly-haired little maidens, in short frocks, who, in that gay unconsciousness of young girlhood, so charming, yet so exasperating, called innocently for new frocks, cloaks, and hats,
kid gloves, slippers, ribbons, and
French candies.
So an essay was penned,--a little essay it was, I believe, measured by paragraphs and lines, but it was in reality “big with the fate” of Fanny and her girls.
It was a venture quite as important to its author as was the first “Boz” sketch to
Charles Dickens, or as was “
Jane Eyre” to
Charlotte Bronte.
After a patient trial and many rebuffs, she found, in a great city, an editor enterprising, or charitable, enough, to publish this essay, and to pay for it,--for he was a just man, who held that verily “the laborer is worthy of his hire,” --to pay for it-
fifty cents! It is to be hoped this
Maecenas found himself none the poorer for his liberality at the end of the year.
The essay proved a hit, “a palpable hit,” and was widely copied and commented on. It was followed by others, written in the same original, fearless style, which were gladly received by the public, and a little better paid for by publishers.
A few months more of patient perseverance and earnest effort in her new field, and
Fanny Fern could command her own price for her labor.
Her head was above water, never again to be submerged, let us trust.
The winds of good fortune scattered those first “
Fern leaves” far and wide, till the country was green with them everywhere.
Their peculiar dash and electrical vitality made.
for the unknown author thousands of eager, questioning admirers, and literary curiosity almost mobbed the publication office from which they emanated.
Critics were not wanted. -oh, not by any means!--critics who charged the new story-writer and essayist with eccentricity, flippancy, cynicism, irreverence, masculinity,--with every conceivable sin of authorship except sentimentality, pharisaism, and prosiness.
There was an unprofessional freedom and fearlessness in her
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style that made her very faults acceptable to that indefinite individual, “the general reader,” --an honest easy-going fellow, who is little inclined to raise fine points in regard to an author's manner of expression, provided the feeling be all right.
I remember thinking that this bold rival was poaching a little on my own “merrie”
Greenwood preserves; but as I watched her cool proceedings, saw how unerring was her aim, and with what an air of proprietorship she bagged her game, I declined to prosecute, and went to
Europe.
When I returned I found she had the whole domain to herself, and she has kept it to this day. So mote it be!
A most astonishing instance of literary success was the first book of “
Fern leaves,” of which no less than seventy thousand copies were sold in this country alone!
I would not seem to detract in the slightest degree from the genius of our author,--I would not rob her chaplet of one Fern Leaf,but I must say she was extremely fortunate in her publisher.
Had she made choice of some aristocratic houses, for instance, her books would have borne the envied Athenian stamp, but then, regarding copies sold, the reader of this veracious biography would have read for thousands-hundreds.
But
Fanny Fern, with her rare business sagacity and practical good sense, did not choose her publisher as young Toots chose his tailor,--“
Burgess & co., fash'nable, but very dear.”
Then followed “Little Ferns, for Fanny's little friends,” --whose names seem to have been Legion, for there were no less than thirty-two thousand of these young
Fern gatherers.
Then came a “Second series of
Fern leaves,” in number thirty thousand.
Total,
one hundred and thirty-two thousand! I write it out carefully, for not having a head for figures, I am almost sure to make some mistake if I meddle with them.
Moreover, these American Ferns, fresh and odorous with the freedom and spirit of the New World, took quick root in
England, and spread and flourished like the
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American rhododendron.
The mother country took fir British home consumption forty-eight thousand copies, and much good did they do our little cousins, I doubt not.
In 1851 “Ruth Hall” (I had almost said Ruth-less
Hall) was published.
In 1857 “Rose
Clarke,” a kindlier book.
These are, I believe, the only novels of
Fanny Fern.
They were eagerly read, much commented upon, and had, like the “Leaves,” a large sale.
They were translated into French and German.
In 1856
Fanny Fern was married to
Mr. James Parton, of New York; a man of brilliant, but eminently practical, ability as a writer.
It was a marriage that seemed to the world to promise, if not happiness of the most romantic type, much hearty good fellowship, with mutual aid and comfort.
Both were authors whose provinces bordered on Bohemia.
They had apparently many tastes and characteristics in common; they were both acute, independent thinkers, rather than students or philosophers; they were rather special pleaders than reasoners,--rather wits than logicians.
The style of each writer has decidedly improved of late years; yet neither has lost in individuality by this happy consolidation of provinces.
Mr. Parton's style has gained much in nerve and terseness, and even more in polish.
Mrs. Parton's has more softness than of old, with no less vigor; it shows a surer grasp on, yet a more delicate handling of, thought; she does not startle as frequently as in her first essays, but she oftener pleases.
Five years ago sorrow came again to this brightened and prosperous life.
It came like a relentless ploughshare, and every smiling hope and ripe ambition went under for a time.
It came like a volcanic sea-rise on a fair day, sweeping over the firm land of assured good fortune.
A beloved daughter, a young wife and mother, died suddenly, leaving an infant child, for whose dear sake that brave soul gathered up all
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75 its forces and staggered up, and on. To this young life, “bought with a price,” this frail flower, born in anguish and nurtured with tears,
Fanny Fern has since devoted herself with more than a mother's tender solicitude.
In this work, as in household duties, she has been efficiently aided and supported by her sole remaining daughter.
Mrs. Parton has been from the first a most acceptable writer for children.
Her motherhood, a true motherhood of the heart, has given her the clue to the most mysterious, angel-guarded labyrinths of a child's soul.
She is the faithful interpreter of children, from the poor “tormented baby,” on its nurse's knee, trotted, and tickled, and rubbed, and smothered, and physicked,--all the way up through the perils, difficulties, and exceeding bitter sorrows of childhood, out of short flocks and roundabouts, into the rosy estate of young womanhood and the downy-lipped dignity of young manhood.
Having a heart of perennial freshness, full of spontaneous sympathies and enthusiasms, she never gets so far away from her own youth that she cannot feel a thrill of kindred delight in looking on the pleasures of the young,--on their bright, glad, eager faces.
Bulwer says, “Young girls are very charming creatures, except when they get together and fall a-giggling.”
Now I will venture to say this is just the time when
Fanny Fern likes them best,--unless, indeed, the giggling is ill-timed, and therefore ill-mannered.
In a scene of festal light, bloom, and music, of glancing and dancing young figures, she would never stand aside in the gloom of dark shrubbery, hard and cold and solemnly envious, like the tomb in a certain landscape of
Poussin, bearing the inscription, “I also once lived amid the delights of
Arcadia.”
Yet, while ready to rejoice in the innocent mirth and exultant hopes of youth, this true woman can also feel a tender charity for its follies, and a yearning pity for its errors.
No poor unfortunate in her utmost extremity of shame and mad
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abandonment, need fear from her lips a word of harsh rebuke, from her eyes a look of lofty scorn or merciless condemnation.
But for the heartless wrong-doer, for the betrayer of an innocent, though ever so foolish, trust,--for the despoiler of hearts and homes, she has rebukes that scathe like flame, and scorn that bites like frost.
With a healthy reverence for all truly devout souls, all earnest, humble, practical Christians,--for all things essentially pure and venerable,--
Fanny Fern has an almost fierce hatred of cant, of empty pomp and formalism, assuming the name of religion.
She valiantly takes sides with God's poor against the most powerful and refined pharisaism.
She would evidently rather sit down to worship with the “old salts,” in
Father Taylor's Seaman's Chapel, than in the most gorgeously upholstered pew, under the most resplendent stained windows, in the highest high church on Fifth Avenue. Not that she is wanting in a poet's sensuous delight in bright colors, rich textures, beautiful, refined faces, grand music and noble church-architecture, but that in the lives of the poor, colorless, homely, ungraceful, almost blindly aspiring and devout, there is something that moves her heart more tenderly and yet more solemnly.
In “the low, sad music of humanity” there is something that touches a higher than the poetic sense; and to her the humblest Christian soul, simple and ignorant, but trusting and loving, is a grander temple of God than the
Cathedral of Milan, with its wondrous Alp-like peaks of snowy architecture, sentinelled with sculptured saints.
Another noticeable characteristic of
Fanny Fern is her hearty contempt for all pretensions, affectations, and dainty sillinesses; be they social, literary, or artistic.
She is eminently a woman “with no nonsense about her.”
She detests shams of all sorts, and sentimentality, French novels and French phrases.
Almost as fiercely as she hates cant, she hates snobbery.
Her honest American blood boils at the
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sight of a snob, and she never fails soundly to “chastise him with the valor of her tongue.”
For that unnatural little monster, that anomaly and anachronism, an American flunkey, even her broadest charity can entertain no hope, either for here, or hereafter.
Though whole-hearted in her patriotism,
Fanny Fern is not a political bigot.
She probably does not aver that she was born in
New England at her “own particular request;” she has found that life is endurable out of
Boston; she would doubtless admit that it can be borne with Christian philosophy out of
Gotham,--even in small provincial towns, in which the Atlantic monthly and “New York Ledger” are largely subscribed for. When here, she was enough of a cosmopolitan to praise our great city market,--uttering among some pleasant things, this rather dubious compliment: “What have these Philadelphians done, that they should have such butter?”
Done?--lived virtuously, dear Fanny,--refused to naturalize the “Black crook,” or to send prize-fighters to Congress.
But to return.
Not because of the happy accident of her birth, does
Fanny Fern stand gallantly up for our
America; but because it is what it is,--the hope, the refuge, the sure rock of defence for the poor and oppressed of all nations,their true
El Dorado, their promised land.
Mrs. Parton is now, if parish registers, family records, and biographers do not lie, fifty-seven years old. But time which has done “its spiriting gently” with the style of the writer, softening and refining it, cannot have touched the woman roughly, or drawn very heavy drafts on her energy and vitality; for they who have seen her within a late period, speak of her as yet retaining all the spirit and wit of what are called “a woman's best days,” but which were, to her, days of care, trial, and toil, that would have borne down a heart less brave, and prostrated an organization less healthful.
She must have
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had from the first a rare amount of “muscular Christianity” -must have been a conscientious self-care-taker — must have lived wisely and prudently,--in short, must have kept herself well “in hand,” or she would have gone down in some of the ugly ditches, or stuck in some of the hurdles she has had to leap in this desperate race of a quarter of a century.
Some New York paragraphist tells of having encountered her on
Broadway, a short time since,--not as usual, walking with a hurried and haughty tread, the elastic step of an Indian princess, of the school of
Cooper,--but pausing, after a manner quite as characteristic, to talk to a lovely baby in its nurse's arms; and, our amiable
Jenkins relates, her face then and there shone with the very rapture of admiration and unforgotten maternal tenderness, melting through its mask of belligerent pride and harshness, and in that wonderful transfiguring glow,seemed to wear the very look of the time when it first hung over a little cradle, or nestled down against a little baby-face, in the happy long ago. Yet it had looked on many a dear coffined face since then.
Fanny Fern has been the subject of many piquant and amusing anecdotes, some of them, perhaps most of them, having a foundation in fact,--for she is a person of too much spirit and character not to have noteworthy things happening to her and round about her rather frequently.
Hers is a stirring, breezy life, to which anything like a dead calm is impossible.
She is too swift and well freighted a craft not to leave a considerable wake behind her. She sails with all her canvas spread, by a chart of her own, so occasionally dashes saucily athwart the bows of steady-going old ships of the line, or right under the guns of a heavy man-of-war.
As an author and woman, she consults neither authority, nor precedent, fashion, nor policy.
As woman and author, she has always defied and despised that petty personal criticism, that paltry gossip which is the disgrace of American journalism;
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which insists on discussing the author's or artist's most private and intimate life,--his domestic relations, his holiest affections, his most sacred human weaknesses and virtues,on unveiling every sanctuary of sorrow, and following a poor wounded soul into its last fastnesses of decent reserve.
Among the most spicy anecdotes of my subject ever set floating about the country, is one of her having smashed, with her own vengeful hand, the china-set in her room, at the
Girard House in
Philadelphia,--because, after honorably reporting the accidental breaking of a bowl, she found herself charged a round sum for the entire toilet-set.
This story we of a fun-loving and justice-loving household, have laughed over many times; but, as poor
Beatrice Cenci says, “We shall not do it any more;” for alas, the story isn't true!-that is, as to the grand dramatic denouement.
Wishing to chronicle only the exact truth in a matter of so much importance, I addressed to
Mrs. Parton a letter of inquiry, and received in reply the following succinct statement:--
Mr. Parton and I had been stopping at the Girard House, and just as we were about starting for the cars, I said, “ Wait till I wash my hands.”
As I did so, the bowl slipped from my soapy fingers, and was broken.
I said, “Report that when you pay the bill, lest the blame should come upon the poor chambermaid;” whereupon, to my intense disgust, the landlord charged for the whole toilet-set 1 Then, in my indignation, I did say to Mr. Parton, “I have a good mind to send all the rest of the set flying out of the window ” His less impetuous hand-stayed me. I assure you it was no virtue of mine.
My blood is quick and warm.
This frank account spoils an excellent story, and shows us how meanness and injustice again went unpunished, after the manner of this miserable, mismanaged world, which it will take many a
Fanny Fern and much crockery-smashing to set right.
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Fourteen years ago
Fanny Fern made an engagement with
Mr. Banner, of the “New York Ledger,” to furnish an article every week for his journal,--that giant among literary weeklies, but by no means a weakly giant, of the Pickleson order, with a “defective circulation,” nor even of the style of the seven league-booter, and freebooter of fairy lore; but rather of the type of the Arabian genii, who were anywhere and everywhere at once.
Fourteen years ago,
Fanny Fern made an engagement with
Mr. Bonner, to furnish an article every week for the “Ledger,” and “thereby hangs a tale,” the most wonderful fact in this veracious biography: Behold I
from that time to this, she has never failed one week to produce the stipulated article, on time! Think, my reader, what this fact proves!
what habits of industry, what system, what thoughtfulness, what business integrity, what super-woman punctuality, and O
Minerva — Hygeia!
what health!
Aspasia was,
Plato says, the preceptress of
Socrates; she formed the rhetoric of
Pericles, and was said to have composed some of his finest orations; but
she never furnished an article every week for the “Ledger” for fourteen years.
Hypatia taught mathematics and the Philosophy of
Plato, in the great school of
Alexandria, through most learned and eloquent discourses; but
she never furnished an article for the “Ledger” every week for fourteen years.
Elena Lucrezia Comoso Piscopia,--eminently a woman of
letters,--manfully mastered the Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, and
French; wrote astronomical and mathematical dissertations, andreceived a doctor's degree from the
University of Padua;
Laura Bassi, Novella d'andrea, and Matelda Tambroni were honored with degrees, and filled professors' chairs in the
University of Bologna; but as far as I have been able to ascertain, by the most careful researches, not one of these learned ladies ever furnished an
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article for the “Ledger” every week for fourteen years.,
Corinna, for her improvisations, was crowned at the
Capitol in
Rome with the sacred laurel of
Petrarch and
Tasso; but
she never furnished an article every week for the “Ledger” for fourteen years.
Miss Burney,
Miss Porter,
Mrs. Radcliffe,
Miss Austin,
Miss Baillie,
Miss Mitford,
Miss Landon,
Mrs. Hemans,
Mrs. Marsh,
Mrs. Gaskell, and the Brontes did themselves and their sex great honor by their literary labors; but not one of them ever furnished an article for the “Ledger” every week for fourteen years. Neither
Mrs. Lewes nor
Mrs. Stowe could do it, George Sand wouldn't do it, and Heaven forbid that
Miss Braddon should do it!
Why, to the present writer, who is given to undertaking a good deal more than she can ever accomplish; who is always surprised by publication-day; who postpones every literary work till the last hour of grace, and then, a little longer; who requires so much of self-coaxing and backing, to get into the traces, after a week or so of freedom and grass,--all this systematic purpose, this routine, and rigid exactitude, is simply amazing,--it verges on the parvellous,--it is
Ledger-demain.
Ah, Fanny, is then your
Pegasus always saddled, and bridled, and whinnying in the court?
Is the steam always up in that tug-boat of a busy brain?
Is the wine of your fancy never on the lees?
Are there no house-cleaning days in your calendar?
Don't your country friends ever come to town and drop in on your golden working-hours?
Are there no autograph-hunters about your doors?
Do not fond mammas ever send in their babies to deliciously distract you on a “Ledger” day?
Do your dear five hundred friends always respect it, and postpone their weddings, musical
matinees and other mournful occasions?
Does the paper-hanger never put you to rout?
Do you never have a bout with your
sewing-machine
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and get your temper
ruffled? Does not that “wonderful wean,” that darling grandchild, dainty little
Effie, ever have a fit of naughtiness, or whooping-cough, or a tumble downstairs, on that day?
Don't you ever long, on just that day, to lie on the sofa and read
Thackeray?
Ah, do not wars and influenzas, national crises and kitchen imbroglios, disappointed hopes and misfitting dresses, an instinctive receliiou against regulations and resolutions, even of your own making,
ever interfere with your writing for the “Ledger” ? Doubtless you have been tempted, in times of hurry, or languor, in journeyings and dog-day heats, to break your agreement; but an honest fealty to a generous publisher has hitherto constrained you to stand by; and we like you for it. Other publishers may be
bon, but he is
Bonner. So you do not demean yourself by following the triumphal chariot of his fortunes (
Dexter's trotting wagon) like
Zenobia in chains, -since the chains are of gold.
As a writer of brief essays and slight sketches,
Fanny Fern excels.
She seems always to have plenty of small change in the way of thoughts and themes.
She knows well how to begin without verbiage, and to end without abruptness.
She starts her game without much beating about the bush.
She seems to measure accurately the subject and the occasion, and wastes no words,--or, as poor
Artemus Ward used to say, never “slops over.”
As a novelist, she is somewhat open to the charge of exaggeration, and she is not sufficiently impersonal to be always artistic.
Her own fortunes, loves, and hates live again in her creations,--her heroines are her doubles.
As a moralist, she is liable to a sort of uncharitable charity and benevolent injustice.
In her stout championship of the poor, of the depressed and toil-worn many, she seems to harden her heart against the small, but intelligent, rich but respectable, portion of our population, known as “Upper-tendom.”
Can any good thing come out of Fifth
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Avenue?
is the spirit of many of her touching little sketches.
She seems to think that the scriptural comparison of the difficult passage of the camel through the eye of the needle settled the case of
Mr. Croesus.
Her tone is sometimes a little severe and cynical when treating of the shortcomings of the world of fashion.
It is so easy to criticise from the safe position of a philosopher or poet; but how many of us would dare to answer for our Spartan simplicity and moderation, and our Christian charity and benevolence,--virtues which of course we all now possess in abundance,--should for tune take a sudden turn, open for us her halls of dazzling light, provide for us ample changes of purple and fine linen, of the fashionable cut, wine and strong drink, and terrapin suppers, chariots, and horses, yachts, opera-boxes, diamonds, and
French bonnets?
Fanny Fern herself regrets that she has not been able to give more careful study to her writing,--to concentrate here, and elaborate there,--to be, in short, always the artist.
She has done many things well,--she might have done a few things surpassingly well.
But she has, I doubt not, written out of an honest heart always, earnestly and fearlessly,--written tales, sketches, letters, essays spiced with odd fancies, satire, and humor,--some exquisitely tender and pitiful, some defiant and belligerent in tone; but none with a doubtful moral ring about them.
She has chosen to feed the multitude on the plain with simple, wholesome food, rather than to pour nectar for the Olympians.
Her genius is practical and democratic, and so has served the people well, and received a generous reward in hearty popular favor.
She has probably not accomplished the highest of which she is capable, but all that the peculiar exigencies of her life have permitted her to accomplish.
In faithfully doing the work nearest to her hand she may be consoled by the consciousness that art has been shouldered aside by duty alone.
Speaking of her little
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grand-daughter, in a private letter, she says: “Our little
Effie has never been left with a servant, and, although to carry out such a plan has involved a sacrifice of much literary work, or its unsatisfactory incompleteness, I am not and never shall be sorry.
She is my poem.”
By these things we may see that whatever masks of manly independence, pride, or mocking mischief
Fanny Fern may put on, she is, at the core of her nature, “pure womanly.”
I have written this article with little more personal knowledge of
Mrs. Parton than I have been able to obtain from brief biographical sketches, and the recollections and impressions of friends.
Not from choice have I so done, after the manner of the critic, who made it a rule not to read a book before reviewing it, for fear of being “prejudiced;” but because I have never been so fortunate as to cross orbits with my brilliant, but somewhat erratic subject.
Her life has been attempted many times; indeed, literary biographers seem to be under the impression that “the oftener this wonderful woman is repeated the better,” to quote from the immortal
Toots.
May that life have years enough and fame and prosperity enough to justify many other sketches, worthier than this, before the coming of that
Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history.
And may that scene come with tender gradations of purple twilight shades, deepening into a night, star-lit with hope, and sweet with love — all balm, and rest, and peace; “the peace of God which vasseth all understanding.”
