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Were any intelligent American citizen now asked to name the
American woman, who, for a quarter of a century before 1855, held a higher place in the respect and affections of the
American people than any other woman of the times had secured, it can hardly be questioned that the prompt reply would be,
Mrs. Lydia Huntley Sigourney.
And this would be the answer, not simply on the ground of her varied and extensive learning;: nor on that of her acknowledged poetic gift|; nor o that of her voluminous contributions to our current literature, both in prose and verse; but rather, because with these gifts and this success, she had with singular kindliness of heart made her very lifework itself a constant source of blessing and joy to others.
Her very goodness had made her great.
Her genial goodwill had given her power.
Her loving friendliness had made herself and her name everywhere a charm.
So that, granted that other women could be named, more gifted in some endowments, more learned in certain branches, and even more ably represented in the literature of the times; still, no one of them, by universal consent, had succeeded in winning so largely the esteem and admiration of her age.
It is of this woman that we need not hesitate to write, when we would make up our list of the representative women of our times.
She was a woman so rare, we need not hesitate
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to claim it, for her native gifts, and still more, so genial and lovable, in deed and spirit, that her very life seemed a sort of divine benediction upon our age. And who, more worthily than she, can represent to us the best and highest type of cultivated womanhood?
Lydia Howard Huntley, the only child of
Ezekiel and
Sophia (
Wentworth)
Huntley, was born in
Norwich, Connecticut, Sept. 1, 1791.
In her parentage and birthplace we have no indistinct prophecy of her future life.
Their lessons, wrought into the very texture of her sensitive soul, served as the good genius of her long and bright career.
She could never forget or deny them.
Their precious memory was to her a perpetual and exceeding joy.
Witness this sweet picture of her early home, drawn by her own child-hand, yet, even so early, foreshowing the lifelong brightness of her loving spirit:--
My gentle kitten at my footstool sings
Her song, monotonous and full of joy.
Close by my side, my tender mother sits,
Industriously bent — her brow still bright
With beams of lingering youth, while he, the sire,
The faithful guide, indulgently doth smile.
What but a blessed influence over her could such a home have had?
And we shall not wonder, when, fifty years later, we find her filial hand sketching, so exquisitely, the “beaming smile,” and “the love and patience sweet,” with which those dear names were embalmed.
Few, very few, have borne with them through life, so freshly and so lovingly, the forms and the affections of their home-friends.
The impression they made upon her must have been exceedingly precious to her heart; and so her affectionate love kept faithful vigil over these dearest treasures of her memory.
Hardly less forceful than these home-influences, must have been the beautiful and romantic sceneries, and the genial
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social life of her native town.
It could but have stirred and educated such a soul as hers to have spent her childhood amid such scenes:--
Rocks, gray rocks, with their caverns dark,
Leaping rills, like the diamond spark,
Torrent voices, thundering by,
Where the pride of the vernal floods swelled high.
It is her own testimony which reveals to us the power of these home-charms over her life,--a testimony given, when, to use her own felicitous figure, she was now “journeying towards the gates of the
West” :--
“Yet came there forth from its beauty a silent, secret influence, moulding the heart to happiness, and love of the. beneficent Creator.”
And still again she records their power:--
We have garnered those charms and attractions that bring
A spell o'er our souls when existence was young.
So nurtured, we can understand the secret of that love for
Norwich and its scenery which she never failed to show to her latest day. It only needed an invitation to her to revisit the “dear old places” of her childhood, to kindle anew the fervors of more than her childhood joy:--
We accept, we will come, wheresoever we rove,
And wreathe round thy birthday our honor and love.
We love thee, we love thee; thy smile, like a star,
Hath gleamed in our skies, though our homes were afar.
Added to the affection of her parents, and to these sweet charms of her native town, was still another, and a very marked home-influence, which was destined to prove educational to her.
Madame Lathrop, one of the noblest of the many worthy
Norwich matrons of that day, a daughter of
Governor Talcott, of
Hartford, and widow of
Daniel Lathrop,
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a wealthy and accomplished citizen of
Norwich, had made her own elegant and hospitable home that also of the Huntley family.
She took great interest in Lydia, and drew strongly to her own the heart of the sensitive girl.
And did she not, in the daily communing of their souls, leave somewhat of her own noble spirit of self-denial and rich charity as fruitful seed in that young heart?
What other proof do we need than that which comes from the oft-repeated testimony of the child herself, even down to her latest years?
Let her sketch for us, in her own sweet way, the record of this blessed influence over her character and life:--
“A fair countenance, a clear blue eye, and a voice of music return to me as I recall the image of that venerated lady over whom more than threescore and ten years had passed ere I saw the light.
Her tall, graceful form, moving with elastic step through the parterres whose numerous flowers she superintended, and her brow raised in calm meditation from the sacred volume she was reading, were to me beautiful.
The sorrowful came to be enlightened by the sunbeam that dwelt in her spirit, and the children of want to find bread and a garment.
The beauty of the soul was hers that waxeth not old. Love was in her heart to all whom God had made.
At her grave I learned my first lesson of a bursting grief that has never been forgotten.
Let none say that the aged die unloved or unmourned by the young.”
It must have been an influence of great power which such a character wielded over such a nature; and we cannot wonder that, long years after that hallowed intimacy, we find the grateful child thus recording her remembrance of it: “The cream of all my happiness was a loving intercourse with venerable old age.”
Nor can we deny her the dutiful Joy of dedicating one of her earliest publications, as “an offering
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of gratitude to her whose influence, like a golden thread, had run through the whole woof of my life.”
It was under influences like these that her life had its dawning.
Exceedingly sensitive and impressible, she readily responded to their power.
They found her a keen observer, and a very rapid learner.
Her infancy seems to have been like the later childhood of most girls, and her girlhood wore the thoughtfulness and reached the attainments of ordinary womanhood.
The insight into this earliest period of her life, which her “Letters of life” so artlessly give us, is one of the most curious pages in our autobiographic literature.
We have here, perhaps, the most unaffected and childlike prattle about child-life, in the language of doting old age. Possibly there may be something excessive in the coloring given to the whole picture; but surely we can afford to let the pen of old age use the freedom which a warm heart, warming anew amid the scenes and play-places of its young life, might dictate.
Let the venerated authoress, if in her deep joy she recalls the events which seemed so important to her young fancy, tell the whole story, which once she might have hesitated to do, and which other authors, more careful to prune their thoughts to the accepted proprieties, would not assuredly have done.
It certainly cannot harm us to be made, once in our lives, familiar in letters with the very precocities, if you will, which are so often seen in bright children, yet which we do not usually elevate to the dignity of the printed page.
If she speaks of the little attempts at conversation made in the first year of her life, have we not all heard and been charmed with hearing the same thing in our own little ones?
If she details even the prattle, and the occasional wise and overscholarly sayings or fancies of her third summer among the flowers, why not give her credit for what, though perhaps not
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very common, is still plainly possible to a child of gifts, especially if she has spent her first three years under the most helpful of influences?
It need not be counted an offence if she tell us over what nobody else will be likely to tell us, -the whole story of her doll-teaching and training.
It is a pretty picture which that same scene makes when acted in all of our homes, and why should not its sketch, whether by the pencil of the artist or the pen of the writer, charm us too?
But is there not, also, in this the very best of sense?
How it aids us to understand the woman, to see the little one with her dolls around her, and hear her begin there her work of persuasion and authority!
It instructs as well as charms us to visit the artless child in her “spacious garret;” to note her curious search among its gathered household treasures; to find her settling herself down like the bee to its flower-food, as she finds an old hymn-book there; to see her hearty love for the “large black horse,” “the red-coat cows,” “the crowing, brooding, and peeping poultry,” and the “pliant pussy” which sat in her lap or sported by her side, and which was “as a sister” to her. It will instruct us, where we shall need light, to roam awhile with the laughing babe and child, “from garden to garden;” to run with her “at full speed through the alleys;” to recline by her side, “when wearied, in some shaded recess,” or even on the “mow of hay in the large, lofty barn,” where we can together “watch the quiet cows over their fragrant food;” and then to sit down with her at the family table, and taste with her of the bread so sweet, “made in capacious iron basins.”
Suppose, in this way, we learn how early and how regular her meals were; how uniform and simple the diet on which she was reared; and how exact and respectful and decorous the behavior of that hour.
Do not all of these lessons explain the character which they so certainly help to form?
And so we may well thank the authoress of seventy years that she allowed herself to recall,
for our
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delight and instruction, those germinal forces of her favored childhood.
Let us now follow this child, as she prepares herself for the life-work before her. At four years of age we find her in the school nearest to the house of her parents; and we only learn of that first school, that its “spelling-classes” were the chief delight of the child.
Trivial as this fact is, it gives us no unmeaning hint.
Her second teacher, a gentleman, perhaps the teacher of the winter school, won the child to the use of the pen, and laid the foundation of that distinct, print-like chirography which was so serviceable to her whole future career.
Next, the teacher of needle-work does her good service by starting her well in this feminine art, of which she made later the best of use. And now comes the young ladies' school, under an English lady of varied accomplishment; and here she makes a good beginning in music and painting and embroidery.
And here, too, we get valuable hints, and it would well repay us, had we time, to watch the child in the beginning of her art-life.
It was full of meaning,--that extemporized studio at home, that “piece of gamboge,” that “fragment of indigo, begged of the washer-woman,” those coffee-grounds — to give the ambered brown, and those child-experiments, again and again repeated, to secure desired tints.
We may note, too, about this time, how the literary taste and enthusiasm of the child was aroused.
How life-like was its beginning She started a story, which the record does not finish; for they all said it was too much for her. She was “only just eight years old.”
Next we find her in the school of a graduate of
Dublin, and here she makes rapid progress in mathematics.
Her next step forward, in the school on the
Green, under an educated and veteran teacher, places her at the head of the reading-classes.
Then, under the training of
Mr. Pelatiah Perit, who became so eminent among the business men of the country,
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she spent another year of successful study.
Pursuing still the
English classics and Latin, she finished in her fourteenth year her school-life at home.
Then followed a course of domestic training in the duties of house-keeping, yet not so pressingly as to hinder the private study of the
Latin.
For the higher ornamental branches she spent parts of two years in
Hartford; and, with more than ordinary mental activity and attainment, she takes leave of her school-life.
Yet, such was her thirst for learning, that nothing could hinder her studies; and we find her, with the enthusiasm of a scholar, devoting her later girlhood to the study of even the original
Hebrew of the
Christian Scriptures.
And now begins her career as teacher,--a life which she seems to have chosen scarcely more for want of something to do than from love of teaching itself.
Her first experiment had been made in her father's house, and the result confirmed her purpose to make it her life-work.
In her nineteenth year, in company with
Miss Nancy M. Hyde, a very intimate friend, she opened a select school for girls in
Chelsea, now Norwich City.
Her interest in the work was very great, and her success no less so. We can readily accept her later testimony that she found her daily employment “less a toil than privilege.”
But, through the influence of
Mr. Daniel Wadsworth, of
Hartford, she was induced to establish for herself a private school for girls in that city; and, in 1814, she entered upon its duties.
During the five years she remained in this school she won a twofold reputation.
Her success as teacher was well-nigh unparalleled for the times, and deservingly so; while her influence over the social circles of the city had become no less marked.
Her influence over her pupils was something wonderful.
They loved her with a love which nothing could repress; and their devotion was as true and lasting as their love.
What testimony to the strength of her hold upon
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them those annual reunions on their commencement day furnishes!
Even long years after they had become scattered over the land, those days were held sacred in their hearts.
And when their little ones began to gather about them, they, too, were taken to the hallowed place, that on them also might fall the sweet influence which had so long blessed their mothers.
But, from the very beginning of her life in
Hartford, she made for herself a place in the confidence and affections of the people, which every successive year only served to confirm.
She became, in the just language of as high authority as the venerable
S. G. Goodrich, “the presiding genius of its young social circle,” and she was never called in her long career to vacate that post of honor.
It was while thus winning her way as teacher that she also began her public literary life.
At the urgent request of her friend,
Mr. Wadsworth, she consented to issue her first volume, entitled, “Pieces in prose and verse.”
This work was printed in 1815, at the expense of
Mr. Wadsworth.
And the list of subscribers, which was also printed, indicates thus early the reputation which newspaper publicity had given her.
But another event soon interrupts her career as teacher.
Charles Sigourney, a merchant of the city, a gentleman of wealth and literary culture and high social position, solicits and wins her hand.
Their marriage was celebrated in the Episcopal church of her native town, in the early summer of 1819.
Mr. Sigourney, of
Huguenot descent, was already a communicant in the Episcopal church; and, on her marriage,
Mrs. Sigourney, who, since 1809, had been a devoted Christian and a member of the Congregational church, felt it to be her privilege and duty to transfer her membership to the church to which her husband belonged.
This marriage threw upon
Mrs. Sigourney the care of the
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three children of her husband by a former wife; and that care was assumed with a singular devotion to their comfort and welfare; and in this field only did she find room henceforth for her gifts as teacher.
But both her position at the head of the first circle in the leading metropolis of the
State, and her means, and the culture of her husband, conspired to encourage her in the literary field in which she was now winning such a triumph.
Besides the volume printed in 1815, in 1816 she had published her “Life and writings of
Nancy Maria Hyde,” an interesting tribute to the memory of her most intimate friend and fellow-teacher; and during the year of her marriage appeared, also, “The square table,” a pamphlet designed as a corrective of what were deemed the harmful tendencies of “
Arthur's round table,” which was then exciting considerable attention in the community.
From this date to that of her death our record must be that of an earnest woman, filling up every hour of her day with its allotted duty, cheerfully and nobly done.
Few women have been so diligent workers, few have maintained such fervency of spirit, and few have, in all their working, no faithfully served the
Lord.
Her position, that of second wife and step-mother, has not always been found an easy one to fill; yet, even with the temptations which her literary tastes might be supposed to offer, she could never be justly reproached for neglecting any home-duty.
Bound to her friends with no ordinary ties of affection, she lived, first of all, for them.
Even her literary life is most crowded with its witnesses to her home-love, and indeed was largely its result.
She worked, and wrote, and prayed, that she might faithfully meet this prime claim upon her heart and life.
We cannot follow, in detail, this busy and painstaking career.
We find her at the head of her household, which at times was large, shrinking from no burden or self-denial
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needed in her work,--living to see her two step-daughters educated and settled in life, and their brother, at the age of forty-five, consigned to a consumptive's grave; to educate her own daughter and son, and then, just on the verge of a promising manhood, to follow him, too, to his grave; to care for both her own parents, until, in a good old age, she might tenderly hand them down to their last rest; to follow her beloved and honored husband to his grave; to give her own only daughter away in acceptable marriage; and then to settle herself down, joyful and trustful yet, in her own home, vacated indeed of her loved ones, but filled still with precious mementos of their love, until her own change should come.
These forty-six years, between her marriage and her death, were mainly spent at her home in
Hartford.
Her travels were chiefly those of brief journeys through the
Eastern and Middle States.
Once she visited
Virginia, and once crossed the
Atlantic, visiting within the year the chief points of attraction in
England,
Scotland, and
France.
The rest of those forty-six years were most industriously employed in her own loved home, filled up with domestic duties or with literary and benevolent work; and it is safe to say that few women have ever worked to better account.
She won universal respect and love.
The poor and the rich, the ignorant and the educated, alike found in her that which delighted and charmed them; and so she came to occupy a place in their affections which they accorded to no other.
But, doubtless, it will be as a literary woman that she will be most widely known.
And no estimate of her career which leaves out of the account the character and value of her writings can do justice to her memory.
Beginning in 1815, and closing with her posthumous “Letters of life” in 1866, her published writings numbered fifty-seven volumes.
Besides these, our newspaper and magazine literature must have furnished nearly as much more.
Her correspondence,
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not published, amounting to nearly one thousand seven hundred letters annually for several years, must have exceeded largely these printed writings; so that she must have been one of the most voluminous writers of her age.
We have not space for a critical analysis of her writings.
We would simply indicate their aim and success.
Whatever may be said of their artistic execution, of one thing we are sure, that their spirit and aim are as noble as ever inspired human literature; and the world has already accepted them as a worthy offering.
A sharp critical judgment must agree with
Mrs. Sigourney's own decision, that she wrote too much for highest success, both in invention and style.
But when we stop to ask why she wrote so much, we shall find our answer in the very elements of her character, which contributed most to her eminence.
Her first published volume reveals with great clearness at least these two qualities of the writer: the strength of her affections, and her equally strong sense of duty to others.
We feel that she wrote what her kind heart prompted, that she might please or aid those who seemed to her to have just claims upon her. Instead of using the precious moments on the mere style of her expression, she was ever hurrying along on some urgent call of affection or duty.
She could not stop to think of her literary reputation when some dear friend was pleading at her heart, or some sorrowing soul needed to be comforted.
More than almost any other writer of the day, she wrote not for herself, but for others.
And it is precisely here that we find the real key, both to whatever faults of style her writings may betray, and to the very best success of her life.
For, while she greatly blessed the multitudes for whom she so rapidly wrote, we cannot but notice, also, how in her successive works, she is gaining both in the force and beauty of her style.
We see on almost every page of her writings how tender
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her spirit, how sensitive her sympathy was. From the beginning, her affections, sanctified by a Christian purpose, took the lead.
We know that it was her greatest
joy to raise
The trembler from the shade,
To bind the broken, and to heal .
The wounds she never made.
But we must not dwell on these charming witnesses to the tenderness of her loving heart.* It is easy to see that one so ruled, would not regard the mere style of her expression of highest value.
And yet it would do injustice to
Mrs. Sigourney, to leave out of the account the care and painstaking, with which she sought to make her writings most effective.
We know she must have sought ease and fluency as well as exactness and vigor of expression.
Her writings abound in witnesses innumerable to these graces.
The call made upon her pen from the first magazines of the day, and from the more solid works issuing from our best publishing-houses, of itself testifies to the great merit even of her style.
No critic can read that beautiful poem on the “Death of an infant,” commencing with
Death found strange beauty on that polished brow,
And dashed it out,
without feeling that none but a true poet, practised in the art, could have written it. We might instance her “Scottish weaver,” “Breakfast,” “Birthday of
Longfellow,” “My stuffed Owl,” “
Niagara,” and hundreds of other poems, in all of which may be found passages of great beauty and power.
We are sure we cannot afford, these many years, to let those graceful, and at times exquisite, gems, drop out of our literature; nor can we doubt that their author will continue to rank high even among the poets of her age.
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Without space for repeating the entire list, even of her poetic works, it is due to our readers to indicate those which shall best exhibit the merits and the extent of her poetic writings, and we believe we shall do this by naming the eight following volumes, with their dates:--
Her Poems, 1827, pp. 228;
Zinzendorf, and other Poems 1835, 2d edition, pp. 300;
Pocahontas, and other Poems, 1841, pp. 284;
London edition, 1841, pp. 348; Select Poems, 1842, pp. 324, fourth edition, of which eight thousand copies had been already sold; Illustrated edition, 1848, pp. 408; Western Home, and other Poems, 1854, pp. 360; and Gleanings, 1860, pp. 264.
Of her prose works we can only indicate that which most clearly establishes the writer's rank among our very best prose-writers of the age. Her “Past
Meridian,” given to the world in her sixty-fifth year, which has now reached its fourth edition, is one of our most charming classics.
One cannot read those delightful pages, without gratitude that the gifted author was spared to give us such a coronal of her useful authorship.
It were easy to collect quite a volume of the most enthusiastic commendations of this charming work; but we must leave it, with the assurance that it gives a new title to its beloved author to a perpetual fame in English literature,
And what a testimony we also have in the reception our authoress has received among even our best critics!
It certainly was no mean praise, which
Hart, in his selections from the
Female Prose Writers gives us, when he so graphically and truthfully says of her writings, that they “are more like the dew than the lightning.”
Peter Parley pronounced her, “next to
Willis, the most successful and liberal contributor to the Token.”
Professor Cleveland, in his Compend of English Literature, could not more truthfully have characterized her writings than he did, as “pure, lofty, and holy in tendency and influence.”
C. W. Everest, in his
Connecticut
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Poets, only repeats the common judgment in his decision, “Love and religion are the unvarying elements of her song.”
E. P. Whipple, the very
Nestor of our critics, was obliged to bear testimony to the popularity of her works.
He speaks of her facility in versification, and her fluency both in thought and language; and only claims, what all critics will easily allow, that from the very quantity of her writing, she “hardly does justice to her real powers.”
But we need not pursue our citations of critical approval further.
We acknowledge the skill with which
Mrs. Sigourney used our flexible English tongue; but we still more admire, and would never fail to honor, the deep undertone of “the still, sad music of humanity,” which hallowed all her song.
We will let her, though unwittingly, while describing the noble devotion of the pleading Queen Philippa, sketch herself:--
The advocate of sorrow, and the friend
Of those whom all forsake.
We cannot but return to this ruling spirit of her life, equally unaffected and controlling in her girlhood and her latest years.
Her gifts of charity and love often exceeded the allowance of her income which she saved for herself.
What monuments she thus built for herself in grateful hearts!
Witness her frequent visits to the
Reform School in
Meriden.
Those delighted boys cannot soon forget that beautiful orchard, whose thrifty trees she gave as her blessing to them; nor that last gift, the generous
Easter cake, which made that festival so joyous to them; nor, most of all, that beautiful smile of hers, always so radiant with her hearty good — will and hope.
Oh, there was a blessing in that presence, even for young lives that have been tempted down into the dark shadows of a premature disgrace!
Or who shall make her presence good to the pupils of the
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Deaf and Dumb Asylum in her own city, on whose mute joy her very looks beamed a more eloquent sympathy than our best words can express?
Or when will the poor orphans of the asylums she so loved to visit forget her tenderness and love?
Hear this good woman, even amid the pain and exhaustion of her last sickness, thoughtful still of the suffering ones who might miss her timely charity, tenderly asking, morning after morning, “Is there any gift for me to send to-day?”
More touchingly still, as you stand over her on the very last night of her stay on earth, you will hear this faintly, yet clearly uttered wish of the dying woman, “I would that I might live until morning, that I may, with my own hand, do up that little lace cap for that dear little babe.”
And so she left us, with her thought of love still on those whom she was to leave behind.
Blessed departure, that!
And did she not find how true her own sweet verse proved:--
And thy good-morning shall be spoke
By sweet-voiced angels, that shall bear thee home
To the divine Redeemer?
And how appropriate the last lines of the last poem that she was permitted to write on earth,--the beautiful image of her soul to leave for us to look on forever:--
Heaven's peace be with you all
Farewell!
Farewell!
Saturday morning, June 10, 1866, was the date of her death.
Her funeral was itself a witness to us of all that we have claimed for her in the city where she lived and died.
Specially fitting was it, that those “children of silence” to whom she had loved to minister, and those now doubly orphaned little ones from the asylum, should have their place in that mourning throng.
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And after the funeral, when the papers of the city attempted to sum up the city's loss, it was specially fitting that from the pen of a neighbor we should have this testimony: “For fifty years this good lady has blessed our city.”
To these abundant witnesses to
Mrs. Sigourney's noble goodness, we can only add that of her personal friend,
S. G. Goodrich, who was, also, extensively acquainted with the best characters of the generation to which she belonged: “No one whom I know can look back upon a long and earnest career of such unblemished beneficence.”
And how can we better close this too brief sketch of this honored woman, than in the words in which she so well has announced the imperishable fame of the gifted
Mrs. Hemans:--
Therefore, we will not say
Farewell to thee; for every unborn age
Shall mix thee — with its household charities.
The sage shall greet thee with his benison,
And woman shrine theee as a vestal flame
In all the temples of her Sanctity;
And the young child shalt take thee by the hand
And travel with a surer step to heaven.
