Stowe in Her Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of Her Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, F

[Memories of My Childhood in Litchfield, 1811–1824]

M [1] [Memories of My Childhood in Litchfield, 1811–1824] Harriet Beecher Stowe DearBrother,—MyearliestrecollectionsofLitchfieldarethoseofitsbeautiful scenery, which impressed and formed my mind long before I had words to give names to my emotions, or could analyze my mental processes. I remember standing often in the door of our house and looking over a distant horizon, where Mount Tom reared its round blue head against the sky, and the Great and Little Ponds, as they were called, gleamed out amid a steelblue sea of distant pine groves. To the west of us rose a smooth-bosomed hill called Prospect Hill; and many a pensive, wondering hour have I sat at our play-room window, watching the glory of the wonderful sunsets that used to burn themselves out, amid voluminous wreathings, or castellated turrets of clouds—vaporous pageantry proper to a mountainous region. Litchfield sunsets were famous, perhaps watched by more appreciative and intelligent eyes than the sunsets of other mountain towns around. The love and notice of nature was a custom and habit of the Litchfield people; Throughout his life, Stowe’s father, Lyman Beecher, carefully preserved his letters, journals, and other papers, with an eye toward eventually writing his autobiography. According to Barbara M. Cross, Beecher decided in about 1850 that he needed assistance in the preparation of his life story.1 Six of his eleven children took notes of his reminiscences and also contributed their individual recollections, letters, and papers to Charles Beecher, who prepared the two-volume Autobiography Correspondence, Etc., of Lyman Beecher for publication in 1864. Stowe contributed several sections to the lengthy work. In the chapter of the Autobiography that follows, written in the form of a letter to her brother, she provides memories of her childhood in Litchfield, Connecticut , where her father was the pastor of the Congregational church from 1810 until 1826. In addition to offering insights into her relationship with her larger-than-life father, Stowe’s account provides details about her early reading , education, and experiences at school. stowe in her own time [2] Lyman Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, ca. 1859. Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Hartford, Connecticut. and always of a summer evening the way to Prospect Hill was dotted with parties of strollers who went up thither to enjoy the evening. On the east of us lay another upland, called Chestnut Hills, whose sides were wooded with a rich growth of forest-trees; whose changes of tint and verdure, from the first misty tints of spring green, through the deepening hues of summer, into the rainbow glories of autumn, was a subject of con- Harriet Beecher Stowe [3] stant remark and of pensive contemplation to us children. We heard them spoken of by older people, pointed out to visitors, and came to take pride in them as a sort of birthright. Seated on the rough granite flag-steps of the east front door with some favorite book—if by chance we could find such a treasure—the book often fell from the hand while the eye wandered far off into those soft woody depths with endless longings and dreams—dreams of all those wild fruits, and flowers, and sylvan treasures which some Saturday afternoon’s ramble had shown us lay sheltered in those enchanted depths. There were the crisp apples of the pink azalea—honeysuckle apples we called them—there were scarlet wintergreen berries; there were pink shell blossoms of trailing arbutus , and feathers of ground pine; there were blue, and white, and yellow violets, and crowsfoot, and bloodroot, and wild anemone, and other quaint forest treasures. Between us and those woods lay the Bantam River—a small, clear, rocky stream, pursuing its way through groves of pine and birch—now so shallow that we could easily ford it by stepping from stone to stone, and again, in spots, so deep and wide as to afford bathing and swimming room for the young men and boys of the place. Many and many a happy hour we wandered up and down its tangled, rocky, and ever-changing banks, or sat under a thick pine bower, on a great granite slab called Solitary Rock, round which the clear brown waters gurgled. At the north of the house the horizon was closed in with distant groves of chestnut and hickory, whose waving tops seemed to have mysteries of invitation and promise to our childhood. I had read, in a chance volume of Gesner’s Idyls, of tufted groves, where were altars to...