EARLY DAYS.
1824-1846.

Lucy Larcom was born on March 5, 1824, in the old seaside town of Beverly, Massachusetts. She was next to the youngest in a family of seven sisters and two brothers. Her father, Benjamin Larcom, a retired shipmaster who became a shopkeeper selling West India goods, was a man of strong natural ability, and her mother, Lois Barrett, “with bright blue eyes and soft dark curling hair, which she kept pinned up under her white lace cap,” was known for her sweetness. The Larcoms had lived for generations on the borders of the sea. Mordecai Larcom, born 1629, appeared in Ipswich in 1655, and soon after moved to Beverly, where he obtained a grant of land. His son, Cornelius Larcom, born 1658, purchased a place on the coast, in what is known as Beverly Farms. David Larcom was born 1701, and his son, Jonathan, born 1742, was the grandfather of Miss Larcom. The qualities of energy and self-reliance that come from the cultivation of Essex County soil and the winning of a livelihood as trader and sailor, were apparent in the branch of the family that lived in Wallace Lane,—one of the by-streets of the quaint village, that led in one direction through the fields to Bass River, “running with its tidal water from inland hills,” and in the other across the main street to the harbor, with its fishing schooners and glimpses of the sea.

Her sensitive nature quickly responded to the free surroundings of her childhood. The open fields with the wild flowers and granite ledges covered with vines, and the sandy beaches of the harbor, and the village streets with their quiet picturesque life, formed her playground. The little daily events happening around her were interesting: the stage-coach rattling down Cabot Street; the arrival of a ship returning from a distant voyage; the stately equipage driven from the doorway of Colonel Thorndike’s house; the Sunday services in the meeting-house; the companionship of other children, and the charm of her simple home life. These experiences are graphically recorded in “A New England Girlhood,” where she testifies to her love for her native town. “There is something in the place where we were born that holds us always by the heart-strings. A town that has a great deal of country in it, one that is rich in beautiful scenery and ancestral associations, is almost like a living being, with a body and a soul. We speak of such a town as of a mother, and think of ourselves as her sons and daughters. So we felt about our dear native town of Beverly.”In her poems there are numerous references to the town:—

In another place she says:—

Her childhood was a period which she always looked back upon with fondness, for the deep impressions made upon her mind never were obliterated. The continued possession of these happy remembrances as she incorporated them into her womanhood, is shown by the way she entered into the lives of other children, whether in compiling a book of poems, like “Child Life,” known wherever there are nurseries, or in writing her own book, “Childhood Songs,” or in some of her many sketches in “Our Young Folks,” “St. Nicholas,” or the “Youth’s Companion.” She knew by an unerring instinct what children were thinking about, and how to interest them. She always took delight in the little rivulets in the fields, or the brown thrush singing from the tree, or the pussy-clover running wild, and eagerly watched for the red-letter days of children, the anniversaries and birthdays. She had happy memories of play in the old roomy barn, and of the improvised swing hung from the rafters. She recalled the fairy-tales and wonderful stories to which she listened with wide open eyes; the reflection of her face in the burnished brass of the tongs; and her child’s night-thoughts when she began to feel that there were mysteries around her, and to remember that the stars were shining when she was tucked in bed.

Lucy Larcom’s book-learning began very early. It seems almost incredible that she should have been able to read at two and a half years of age, but such is the general testimony of her family. She used to sit by the side of her old Aunt Stanley, and thread needles for her, listening to the songs and stories that the old lady told; and Aunt Hannah, in the school held in her kitchen, where she often let the children taste the good things that were cooking, managed not only to keep her out of mischief, by her “pudding-stick” ferule, or by rapping her on the head with a thimble, but taught her the “a, b, abs,” and parts of the Psalms and Epistles.

The strongest influence in her development was that of her sister Emeline, who inspired her with love for knowledge, and instilled in her the highest ideals of girlhood. This sister supplied her, as she grew older, with books, and guided her reading. Referring to this, she once said:—

“I wish to give due credit to my earliest educators,—those time-stained, thumb-worn books, that made me aware of living in a world of natural grandeur, of lofty visions, of heroic achievements, of human faithfulness, and sacrifice. I always feel like entering a protest when I hear people say that there was very little for children to read fifty years ago. There was very little of the cake and confectionery style of literature, which is so abundant now; but we had the genuine thing,—solid food, in small quantities, to suit our capacity,—and I think we were better off for not having too much of the lighter sort. What we had ‘stayed by.’”

The books that she read were “Pilgrim’s Progress,” “Paul and Virginia,” “Gulliver’s Travels,” Sir Walter Scott’s novels; and in poetry, Spenser, Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. She knew these volumes almost by heart.

Lucy’s first love for poetry was fostered by the hymns she used to read in church, during sermon time, when the minister from his lofty pulpit entered upon a series of “finallys,” which did not seem to be meant for her. Her fondness for hymns was so great that at one time she learned a hundred. The rhythm of the musical accompaniment and the flow of the words taught her the measured feet of verse before she ever heard of an iambus or a choriambus. Finding that her own thoughts naturally expressed themselves in rhyme, she used frequently to write little verses, and stuff them down the crack in the floor of the attic. The first poem that she read to the family was long remembered by them, as, wriggling with embarrassment, she sat on a stool. Referring to her poetry at this time, she says, “I wrote little verses, to be sure, but that was nothing; they just grew. They were the same as breathing or singing. I could not help writing them. They seemed to fly into my mind like birds going with a carol through the air.”

There is an incident worth repeating, that illustrates her sweetness and thoughtfulness of others. When her father died, she tried to comfort her mother: “I felt like preaching to her, but I was too small a child to do that; so I did the next best thing I could think of,—I sang hymns, as if singing to myself, while I meant them for her.”

These happy days in the country village came to an end in the year 1835, when necessity forced Mrs. Larcom, after the death of her husband, to seek a home in the manufacturing community of Lowell, where there were more opportunities for the various members of her family to assist in the general maintenance of the home.

In Lowell, there were corporation boarding-houses for the operatives, requiring respectable matrons as housekeepers, and positions in the mills offered a means of livelihood to young girls. Attracted by these inducements, many New England families left their homes, in the mountains of New Hampshire and along the seacoast, and went to Lowell. The class of the employees in the mills was consequently different from the ordinary factory hand of to-day. Girls of education and refinement, who had no idea of remaining in a mill all their lives, worked in them for some years with the object, often, of helping to send a brother to college or making money enough to continue their education, or to aid dear ones who had been left suddenly without support:—

The intention of Mr. Francis Cabot Lowell and Mr. Nathan Appleton, when they conceived the idea of establishing the mills, was to provide conditions of living for operatives, as different as possible from the Old World ideals of factory labor. They wisely decided to regard the mental and religious education of the girls as of first importance, and those who followed these plans aimed to secure young women of intelligence from the surrounding towns, and stimulate them to seek improvement in their leisure hours.

Besides the free Grammar School there were innumerable night schools; and most of the churches provided, by means of “Social Circles,” opportunities for improvement. So in Lowell there was a wide-awake set of girls working for their daily bread, with a true idea of the dignity of labor, and with the determination to make the most of themselves. They reasoned thus, as Miss Larcom expressed it: “That the manufacture of cloth should, as a branch of feminine industry, ever have suffered a shadow of discredit, will doubtless appear to future generations a most ridiculous barbarism. To prepare the clothing of the world seems to have been regarded as womanly work in all ages. The spindle and the distaff, the picturesque accompaniments of many an ancient legend—of Penelope, of Lucretia, of the Fatal Sisters themselves—have, to be sure, changed somewhat in their modern adaptation to the machinery which robes the human millions; but they are, in effect, the same instruments, used to supply the same need, at whatever period of the world’s history.”

A few facts will show the character of these girls. One of the ministers was asked how many teachers he thought he could furnish from among the working-girls. He replied, “About five hundred.” A lecturer in the Lowell Lyceum stated that four fifths of his audience were factory girls, that when he entered the hall most of the girls were reading from books, and when he began his lecture every one seemed to be taking notes. Charles Dickens, after his visit to Lowell in 1842, wrote: “I solemnly declare that from all the crowd I saw in the different factories, I cannot recall one face that gave me a painful impression; not one young girl whom, assuming it to be a matter of necessity that she should gain her daily bread by the labor of her hands, I would have removed if I had the power.”

Mrs. Larcom kept a boarding-house for the operatives, and Lucy was thrown in close association with these strong young women. She had access to the little accumulation of books that one of them had made,—Maria Edgeworth’s “Helen,” Thomas À Kempis, Bunyan’s “Holy War,” Locke “On the Understanding,” and “Paradise Lost.” This formed good reading for a girl of ten.

Lucy’s sister Emeline started in the boarding-house two or three little fortnightly papers, to which the girls contributed. Each ran a troubled existence of a few months, and then gave place to its successor, bearing a new name. “The Casket,” for a time, held their jewels of thought; then “The Bouquet” gathered their full-blown ideas into a more pretentious collection. The most permanent of these literary productions was one that started with the intention of being very profound,—it was called “The Diving Bell.” The significance of the name was carefully set forth in the first number:—

Lucy soon became a poetical contributor; and when the paper was read, and the guessing as to the author of each piece began—for they were anonymous—the other girls were soon able to tell her work by its music and thought. Among the yellow and worm-eaten pages of the once popular “Diving Bell,” we find the following specimen of her earliest poetry:—

From the interest excited by these little papers, the desire of the girls became strong for more dignified literary expression; and by the advice and assistance of the Rev. Abel C. Thomas, of the Universalist Church, the “Lowell Offering” was started in October, 1840, and the “Operative’s Magazine” originated in the Literary Society of the First Congregational Church. These two magazines were united, in 1842, in the “Lowell Offering.” The editors of the “Offering,” Miss Hariett Farley and Miss Hariot Curtiss, factory girls, were women of superior culture and versatility, and made the magazine a unique experiment in our literature. In its pages were clever sketches of home life, humorous and pathetic tales, charming fairy stories, and poems. Its contributors, like the editors, were mill-girls. It was successful for five years, at one time having a subscription list as high as four thousand, which the girls tried to increase by traveling for it, as agents. This periodical attracted wide attention by reason of its unusual origin. Selections were made from it, and published in London, in 1849, called, “Mind Among the Spindles;” and a gentleman attending the literary lectures, in Paris, of PhilarÈte Chasles, was surprised to hear one in which the significance and merit of the “Lowell Offering” was the sole theme. Our young author contributed to the “Offering,” over the signatures “Rotha,” or “L. L.,” a number of poems and short prose articles, proving herself to be of sufficient ability to stand as a typical Lowell factory girl.

The principle of the interest of manufacturers in the lives of their operatives was illustrated in Lowell, though it was not carried out always as intelligently as it should have been. Children were allowed to work too young. Lucy began to change the bobbins on the spinning frames at eleven years of age, and the hours of work were sometimes from five in the morning to seven at night. But the day passed pleasantly for her, the bobbins having to be changed only every three quarters of an hour; and the interval between these periods of work was occupied by conversation with the girls in the same room, or by sitting in the window overlooking the river. On the sides of one of these windows she had pasted newspaper clippings, containing favorite poems, which she committed to memory when she sat in this “poet’s corner.”

During these years of mill-work she formed some of the ruling ideas of her life, those that we can see influencing her later thoughts, in her poetry and prose, and, best of all, her living. Her sympathy for honest industry, without any regard for its fictitious position in so-called “society,” was developed by her acquaintance with those earnest girls who were struggling for their own support and education. Her capacity for friendship was continually tested; she opened her nature to the influence of the other lives around her.

The questions in relation to human life and its meaning became part of her deepest interests. In private conversations with her companions, in the meetings at the churches, and in her own meditations, these thoughts struggled for a hearing:—

The answers she gave were the truest. Her thought instinctively turned to the Invisible Power of the Universe, not solely as an explanation of things as they exist, or as a philosophical postulate, but as a Spirit whose presence could be felt in nature, in persons, and in her own heart. In other words, a love for God as a Being of Love began to take possession of her; it seized upon her at times like the rushing inspiration of the prophets; her trust was what is spoken of in theology as an experimental knowledge. Her early training by Puritan methods in the thought of a Sovereign Lord, deeply affected her, yet she seems to have rediscovered God for herself, in the beauty that her poet’s eye revealed to her—beauties of river and sea and sky, of flowers rejoicing in their color and perfume, and of human sympathies. Welling up in her own soul, she felt the waters troubled by the angel’s touch, and was confident of God.

With this faith as a guide, the answers to other questions became plain. Life itself was a gift which must be used in His service; no evil thought or purpose should be allowed to enter and interfere with the soul’s growth; duties were the natural outlets of the soul; through them the soul found its happiness. When she thought of death, there was only one logical way of looking at it: as a transition into a fuller life, where the immortal spirits of men could draw nearer to each other and to God. She seems never, from the very first, to have had any doubts as to what the end of life meant. There was always the portal ready to open into the richer Kingdom of Heaven.

The churches in Lowell stimulated her religious thought. At thirteen years of age, she stood up before her beloved minister, Dr. Amos Blanchard, and professed her belief in the Christian religion, and for many years found refreshment in the Sunday services. But as she grew older, she found many of the doctrines of Calvinistic Orthodoxy difficult for her to accept, and she regretted the step she had taken. The worship was not always helpful to her, especially the long prayer:—

She admired the picturesque Episcopal church of St. Ann’s, with its vine-wreathed stone walls, “an oasis amid the city’s dust.” The Church for which this venerable edifice stood was to be her final religious home, and in its stately services and sacred rites she was to find the spiritual nourishment of her later years.

She took an interest in the movements of politics, especially the question of slavery; she was an Abolitionist with the strongest feelings, from the first. She had some scruples about working on the cotton which was produced by slave labor:—

Whenever a petition for the abolition of slavery was circulated, to be sent to Congress, it was always sure to have the name of Lucy Larcom upon it. The poetry of Mr. Whittier had aroused her spirit, and though she does not seem to have written any of her stirring anti-slavery verses until years later, she was nursing the spark that during the Civil War blew into a flame.

It was in 1843, while in Lowell, that she first met Mr. Whittier, who was editing the “Middlesex Standard.” Being present at one of the meetings of the “Improvement Circle,” he heard her read one of her poems, “Sabbath Bells:”—

This introduction began one of her most beautiful friendships; it lasted for half a century. She learned to know and love the poet’s sweet, noble sister, Elizabeth, and Lucy was treated by her like a sister. There was something in Miss Larcom’s nature not unlike Mr. Whittier’s,—the same love for the unobserved beauties of country life, the same energy and fire, the same respect for the honest and sturdy elements in New England life, the same affection for the sea and mountains, and a similar deep religious sense of the nearness of God.

Having worked five years in the spinning-room, she was transferred at her own request to the position of book-keeper, in the cloth-room of the Lawrence Mills. Here, having more time to herself, she devoted to study the minutes not required by her work, reading extracts from the best books, and writing many of the poems that appeared in the “Offering.”

It was her habit to carry a sort of prose sketch-book, not unlike an artist’s, in which she would jot down in words the exact impression made upon her by a scene or a natural object, using both as models from which to draw pictures in words. In this way she would describe, for instance, an autumn leaf, accurately giving its shape, color, number of ribs and veins, ending with a reflection on the decay of beauty. In turning over the leaves of this sketch-book, one finds descriptions of the gnarled tree with its bare branches thrusting themselves forth in spiteful crookedness; the butterfly lying helpless in the dust with its green robes sprinkled with ashes; the wind in the pines singing a melancholy tune in the summer sunlight; and other subjects of equal beauty. As an illustration of these prose-poems, the suggestion for which she derived from Jean Paul Richter, the following may be of interest: it is called, “Flowers beneath Dead Leaves:”—

“Two friends were walking together beside a picturesque mill-stream. While they walked they talked of mortal life, its meaning and its end; and, as is almost inevitable with such themes, the current of their thoughts gradually lost its cheerful flow.

“‘This is a miserable world,’ said one. ‘The black shroud of sorrow overhangs everything here.’

“‘Not so,’ replied the other. ‘Sorrow is not a shroud; it is only the covering Hope wraps about her when she sleeps.’

“Just then they entered an oak grove. It was early spring, and the trees were bare; but the last year’s leaves lay thick as snowdrifts upon the ground.

“‘The liverwort grows here, I think,—one of our earliest flowers,’ said the last speaker. ‘There, push away the leaves, and you will see it. How beautiful, with its delicate shades of pink, and purple and green, lying against the bare roots of the oak tree! But look deeper, or you will not find the flowers: they are under the dead leaves.’

“‘Now I have learned a lesson which I shall not forget,’ said her friend. ‘This seems to me to be a bad world; and there is no denying that there are bad things in it. To a sweeping glance it will sometimes seem barren and desolate; but not one buried germ of life and beauty is lost to the All-Seeing Eye. Having the weakness of human vision, I must believe where I cannot see. Henceforth, when I am tempted to despair on account of evil, I will say to myself, Look deeper; look under the dead leaves, and you will find flowers.’”

Lucy Larcom almost imperceptibly slipped into womanhood during these Lowell years. From being an eager and precocious child, she became an intelligent and thoughtful woman. The one characteristic which seemed most fully defined was her tendency to express her thoughts in verse and prose. As is the case with young authors, her early verses were artificial, the sentiments were often borrowed, and the emotions were not always genuine. It is not natural to find a healthy young girl writing on such themes as “Earthly joys are fleeting,” “Trust not the world, ’twill cheat thee.” “The murderer’s request” was—

But when she wrote out of her own experience, and recorded impressions she had felt, there was a touch of reality in her work that gave some prophecy of her future excellence. She could write understandingly about the boisterous March winds, or “school days,”—

One cannot find any evidence that she made a study of verse-making, not even possessing “Walker’s Rhyming Dictionary.” Her powers were cultivated mainly by reading the poetry of others and unconsciously catching their spirit and metre. Her ear for music helped her more than her knowledge of tetrameters or hexameters.

The most important results of these years were the development of her self-reliance and sweetness, the stirring up of her ambitions to win an education, and the dawnings of her spiritual life. She was laying up stores of impressions and memories, also, that were to be permanently preserved in her more finished poems of later years. The imagery of her maturer verse recalls her early days, when in the freedom of childhood she roamed the fields and the woods, and lived on the banks of the Merrimac. We see her youth again through her reminiscences of the barberry cluster sweetened by the frost; the evening primrose; roses wet with briny spray; the woodbine clambering up the cliff; heaps of clover hay; breezes laden with some rare wood scent; the varied intonations of the wind; hieroglyphic lichens on the rocks; the mower whistling from the land; the white feet of the children pattering on the sand; the one aged tree on the mountain-top, wrestling with the storm wind; the candles lighted at sunset in the gambrel-roofed houses; the lightning glaring in the face of the drowning sailor; the tragedy of unconscious widowhood; the mill-wheel, the hidden power of the mill, with its great dripping spokes; and the mystery of meeting and blending horizons.

In the spring of 1846 the scene of Lucy Larcom’s life was changed, when her sister Emeline married, and went to seek a home in the West, for she shared with the new family their pioneer life in Illinois. A few days before they started on their journey, she wrote some lines of farewell in her scribbling-book, which show that she was beginning to use real experiences for the subject of her verses.