A Biography of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Scoville SamuelЧитать онлайн книгу.

      The Beecher Residence at Litchfield.

      “Uncle Samuel Foote,” the mother’s sea-captain brother, “came among us, on his return from each voyage, as a sort of brilliant genius of another sphere, bringing gifts and wonders that seemed to wake new faculties in all. Whenever he came to Litchfield he brought a stock of new books, which he and Aunt Mary read aloud.”

      It will be seen that, without referring to other inmates of the family, such as boarders and visitors, who afforded a great variety, some amusing and others instructive, the things which Henry Ward said were “the great treasures of a dwelling—the child’s cradle, the grandmother’s chair, the hearth and the old-fashioned fireplace, the table and the window”—were all there, and a great many things beside.

      There were trials, almost hardships we should call them, as appears from a letter of Mrs. Beecher’s dated January 13, 1811, but none of them sufficient to bring discouragement or destroy her interest in scientific subjects: “… Would now write you a long letter, if it were not for several vexing circumstances, such as the weather extremely cold, storm violent, and no wood cut; Mr. Beecher gone, and Sabbath day, with company—a clergyman, a stranger; Catharine sick; George almost so; Rachel’s finger cut off, and she crying and groaning with the pain. Mr. Beecher is gone to preach in New Hartford, and did not provide us wood enough to last, seeing the weather has grown so exceedingly cold. … As for reading, I average perhaps one page a week besides what I do on Sundays. I expect to be obliged to be contented (if I can) with the stock of knowledge I already possess, except what I can glean from the conversation of others. … Mary has, I suppose, told you of the discovery that the fixed alkalies are metallic oxides. I first saw the notice in the Christian Observer. I have since seen it in an Edinburgh Review. The former mentioned that the metals have been obtained by means of the galvanic battery; the latter mentions another and, they say, a better mode. I think this is all the knowledge I have obtained in the whole circle of arts and sciences of late; if you have been more fortunate, pray let me reap the benefit.”

      Looking at both its sunshine and its shadows, this Litchfield parsonage offers an illustration of an ideal New England home. The household was large, large enough to contain in itself a great variety of resources, and able in that roomy house to offer a broad hospitality to all comers. Democratic in the best sense of the word, servants being considered and treated as constituent members; wide awake, reading all the new books, discussing all the vital questions of the day, arguing all the knotty points of theology; industrious and frugal; allied to the best life of the place and the times, with a broad outlook that took within its horizon all the interests of country and humanity, of the kingdom of God at home and abroad, social, political, and spiritual, it was good soil, and a good exposure for planting a tree whose branches should spread abroad throughout the land and the whole earth.

      Into this family was born a son, June 24, 1813—“the fourth, fifth, sixth, or seventh child, somewhere thereabouts,” as he himself says in a speech before the London Congregational Board, with that forgetfulness of numbers which was always characteristic of him. In fact, the ninth child, the eighth living at the time. It was in one of his favorite months, that of June, “which bursts out from the gates of heaven with all that is youngest, and clothed with that which is the most tender and beautiful,” that he began his career.

      The grandmother, Roxana Foote, being with her daughter at the time, and remembering her own two favorite sons, who died in youth, named the new-born infant after his uncles, Henry and Ward.

      They were stirring times, those of the early summer of 1813. The second war of our national independence was then in progress, and tidings had just reached the village that Fort Brown had been captured by the United States forces. Lyman Beecher says of those times:

      “Our dangers in the war of 1812 were very great, so great that human skill and power were felt to be in vain. Thick clouds begirt the horizon, the storm roared louder and louder; it was dark as midnight, every pilot trembled, and from most all hope that we should be saved was taken away; and when from impenetrable darkness the sun burst suddenly upon us and peace came, we said: ‘Our soul is escaped as a bird from the snare of the fowler. The snare is broken and we are escaped.’ ”

      Across the water Napoleon was rallying from the disaster of his Russian campaign, and making the Continent again resound with the roar of his cannon. Not only did these events stir mind and heart of all alike, but the increased taxation and the high prices that resulted from a world at war were severely felt in the parsonage. Mrs. Lyman Beecher wrote: “We feel the war somewhat more than we should one between the Turks and Crim Tartars, inasmuch as, for the most part, every article is double or treble the former price, and some things even more than that.”

      These were also the days of the inauguration of some of those great moral movements that are even now in progress in this State and in the land. It was but the year before that the General Association of Connecticut, under the leadership of Lyman Beecher, had taken decided action upon the temperance question. In speaking of it he says:

      “I was not headstrong then, but I was heart-strong—oh! very, very! From that time on the movement went on, not only in Connecticut but marching through New England and marching through the world. Glory to God! Oh! how it wakes my old heart up to think of it!”

      Morals in general at this time were at a low ebb, and he secured the organization of a “General Society for the Suppression of Vice and the Promotion of Good Morals in the State.”

      His sermon upon the “Building of Waste Places” resulted in the institution of a “Domestic Missionary Society” for the work of home evangelization in Connecticut, and he had already secured a Foreign Missionary Society for Litchfield, which was one of the most efficient auxiliaries of the American Board, then but recently established. The conflict concerning the Standing Order which in 1818 resulted in the withdrawal of State aid from the Congregational churches, and which Dr. Beecher feared as likely to open the flood-gates of ruin upon the State, and by reason of which he says, “I suffered what no tongue can tell, for the best thing that ever happened to the State of Connecticut,” was just beginning.

      In all the movements of this progressive period stands this village parsonage, like an outpost of an advancing army, held almost within the enemy’s lines.

      Added to these public labors and troubles a very heavy family sorrow was laid upon them during this year. The mother, for months before the birth of her ninth child, saw her favorite sister, Mary Hubbard, slowly wasting away with consumption, and had need to call up all her resources of faith and resignation to meet this complication of trials that was upon them.