Lucy Larcom: Life, Letters, and Diary. Daniel Dulany Addison
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:—
“Oh, what questionings
Of fate, and freedom, and how evil came,
And what death is, and what the life to come—
Passed to and fro among these girls!”[2]
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:—
“That long prayer
Was like a toilsome journey round the world,
By Cathay and the Mountains of the Moon,
To come at our own door-stone, where He stood
Waiting to speak to us, the Father dear,
Who is not far from any one of us.”[3]
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:—
“When I have thought what soil the cotton plant
We weave is rooted in, what waters it—
The blood of souls in bondage—I have felt
That I was sinning against light, to stay
And turn the accursèd fibre into cloth
For human wearing. I have hailed one name—
You know it—‘Garrison’—as a soul might hail
His soul’s deliverer.”[4]
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:”—
“List! a faint, a far-off chime!
’Tis the knell of holy time,
Chiming from the city’s spires,
From the hamlet’s altar fires,
Waking woods and lonely dells,
Pleasant are the 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