Lucy Larcom: Life, Letters, and Diary. Daniel Dulany Addison
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:—
“Not always to be here among the looms—
Scarcely a girl she knew expected that;
Means to one end, their labor was—to put
Gold nest-eggs in the bank, or to redeem
A mortgaged homestead, or to pay the way
Through classic years at some academy;
More commonly to lay a dowry by
For future housekeeping.”[1]
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:—
“Our Diving Bell shall deep descend,
And bring from the immortal mind
Thoughts that to improve us tend,
Of each variety and kind.”
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:—
“I sit at my window and gaze
At the scenery lovely around,
On the water, the grass, and the trees,
And I hear the brook’s murmuring sound.
“The bird warbles forth his soft lays,
And I smell the sweet fragrance of flowers,
I hear the low hum of the bees,
As they busily pass the long hours.
“These pleasures were given to man
To bring him more near to his God,
Then let me praise God all I can,
Until I am laid ’neath the sod.”
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