Chapter 4 No.4

By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps,

Author of "The Gates Ajar," "A Singular Life," etc.

THE BURNING OF THE PEMBERTON MILLS.-THE STORY OF "THE TENTH OF JANUARY."-WHITTIER AND HIGGINSON.-THE WRITING AND PUBLICATION OF "THE GATES AJAR."

THE town of Lawrence was three miles and a half from Andover. Up to the year 1860 we had considered Lawrence chiefly in the light of a place to drive to. To the girlish resources which could, in those days, only include a trip to Boston at the call of some fate too vast to be expected more than two or three times a year, Lawrence offered consolations in the shape of dry goods and restaurant ice-cream, and a slow, delicious drive in the family carryall through sand flats and pine woods, and past the largest bed of the sweetest violets that ever dared the blasts of a New England spring. To the pages of the gazetteer Lawrence would have been known as a manufacturing town of importance. Upon the map of our young fancy the great mills were sketched in lightly; we looked up from the restaurant ice-cream to see the "hands" pour out for dinner, a dark and restless, but a patient, throng; used, in those days, to standing eleven hours and a quarter-women and girls-at their looms, six days of the week, and making no audible complaints; for socialism had not reached Lawrence, and anarchy was content to bray in distant parts of the geography at which the factory people had not arrived when they left school.

Sometimes we counted the great mills as we drove up Essex Street-having come over the bridge by the roaring dam that tamed the proud Merrimac to spinning cotton-Pacific, Atlantic, Washington, Pemberton; but this was an idle, ?sthetic pleasure. We did not think about the mill-people; they seemed as far from us as the coal-miners of a vague West, or the down-gatherers on the crags of shores whose names we did not think it worth while to remember. One January evening, we were forced to think about the mills with curdling horror that no one living in that locality when the tragedy happened will forget.

At five o'clock the Pemberton Mills, all hands being at the time on duty, without a tremor of warning, sank to the ground.

At the erection of the factory a pillar with a defective core had passed careless inspectors. In technical language, the core had "floated" an eighth of an inch from its position. The weak spot in the too thin wall of the pillar had bided its time, and yielded. The roof, the walls, the machinery, fell upon seven hundred and fifty living men and women, and buried them. Most of these were rescued; but eighty-eight were killed. As the night came on, those watchers on Andover Hill who could not join the rescuing parties, saw a strange and fearful light at the north.

Where we were used to watching the beautiful belt of the lighted mills blaze,-a zone of laughing fire from east to west, upon the horizon bar,-a red and awful glare went up. The mill had taken fire. A lantern, overturned in the hands of a man who was groping to save an imprisoned life, had flashed to the cotton, or the wool, or the oil with which the ruins were saturated. One of the historic conflagrations of New England resulted.

With blanching cheeks we listened to the whispers that told us how the mill-girls, caught in the ruins beyond hope of escape, began to sing. They were used to singing, poor things, at their looms-mill-girls always are-and their young souls took courage from the familiar sound of one another's voices. They sang the hymns and songs which they had learned in the schools and churches. No classical strains, no "music for music's sake," ascended from that furnace; no ditty of love or frolic; but the plain, religious outcries of the people: "Heaven is my home," "Jesus, lover of my soul," and "Shall we gather at the river?" Voice after voice dropped. The fire raced on. A few brave girls sang still:

"Shall we gather at the river,

There to walk and worship ever?"

But the startled Merrimac rolled by, red as blood beneath the glare of the burning mills, and it was left to the fire and the river to finish the chorus.

At the time this tragedy occurred, I felt my share of its horror, like other people; but no more than that. My brother, being of the privileged sex, was sent over to see the scene; but I was not allowed to go.

Years after, I cannot say just how many, the half-effaced negative came back to form under the chemical of some new perception of the significance of human tragedy.

It occurred to me to use the event as the basis of a story. To this end I set forth to study the subject. I had heard nothing in those days about "material," and conscience in the use of it, and little enough about art. We did not talk about realism then. Of critical phraseology I knew nothing; and of critical standards only what I had observed by reading the best fiction. Poor novels and stories I did not read. I do not remember being forbidden them; but, by that parental art finer than denial, they were absent from my convenience.

It needed no instruction in the canons of art, however, to teach me that to do a good thing, one must work hard for it. So I gave the best part of a month to the study of the Pemberton Mill tragedy, driving to Lawrence, and investigating every possible avenue of information left at that too long remove of time which might give the data. I visited the rebuilt mills, and studied the machinery. I consulted engineers and officials and physicians, newspaper men, and persons who had been in the mill at the time of its fall. I scoured the files of old local papers, and from these I took certain portions of names, actually involved in the catastrophe; though, of course, fictitiously used. When there was nothing left for me to learn upon the subject, I came home and wrote a little story called "The Tenth of January," and sent it to the "Atlantic Monthly," where it appeared in due time.

This story is of more interest to its author than it can possibly be now to any reader, because it distinctly marked for me the first recognition which I received from literary people.

Whittier, the poet, wrote me his first letter, after having read this story. It was soon followed by a kind note from Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Both these distinguished men said the pleasant thing which goes so far towards keeping the courage of young writers above sinking point, and which, to a self-distrustful nature, may be little less than a life-preserver. Both have done similar kindness to many other beginners in our calling; but none of these can have been more grateful for it, or more glad to say so, across this long width of time, than the writer of "The Tenth of January."

It was a defective enough little story, crude and young; I never glance at it without longing to write it over; but I cannot read it, to this day, without that tingling and numbness down one's spine and through the top of one's head, which exceptional tragedy must produce in any sensitive organization; nor can I ever trust myself to hear it read by professional elocutionists. I attribute the success of the story entirely to the historic and unusual character of the catastrophe on whose movement it was built.

Of journalism, strictly speaking, I did nothing. But I often wrote for weekly denominational papers, to which I contributed those strictly secular articles so popular with the religious public. My main impression of them now, is a pleasant sense of sitting out in the apple-trees in the wonderful Andover Junes, and "noticing" new books-with which Boston publishers kept me supplied. For whatever reason, the weeklies gave me all I could do at this sort of thing. In its course I formed some pleasant acquaintances; among others that of Jean Ingelow. I have never seen this poet, whom I honor now as much as I admired then; but charming little notes, and books of her own, with her autograph, reached me from time to time for years. I remember when "The Gates Ajar" appeared, that she frankly called it "Your most strange book."

This brings me to say: I have been so often and so urgently asked to publish some account of the history of this book, that perhaps I need crave no pardon of whatever readers these papers may command, for giving more of our space to the subject than it would otherwise occur to one to do to a book so long behind the day.

Of what we know as literary ambition, I believe myself to have been as destitute at that time as any girl who ever put pen to paper. I was absorbed in thought and feeling as far removed from the usual class of emotions or motives which move men and women to write, as Wachusett was from the June lilies burning beside the moonlit cross in my father's garden. Literary ambition is a good thing to possess; and I do not at all suggest that I was superior to it, but simply apart from it. Of its pangs and ecstasies I knew little, and thought less.

I have been asked, possibly a thousand times, whether I looked upon that little book as in any sense the result of inspiration, whether what is called spiritualistic, or of any other sort. I have always promptly said "No," to this question. Yet sometimes I wonder if that convenient monosyllable in deed and truth covers the whole case.

When I remember just how the book came to be, perceive the consequences of its being, and recall the complete unconsciousness of the young author as to their probable nature, there are moments when I am fain to answer the question by asking another: "What do we mean by inspiration?"

That book grew so naturally, it was so inevitable, it was so unpremeditated, it came so plainly from that something not one's self which makes for uses in which one's self is extinguished, that there are times when it seems to me as if I had no more to do with the writing of it than the bough through which the wind cries, or the wave by means of which the tide rises.

The angel said unto me "Write!" and I wrote.

It is impossible to remember how or when the idea of the book first visited me. Its publication bears the date of 1869. My impressions are that it may have been towards the close of 1864 that the work began; for there was work in it, more than its imperfect and youthful character might lead one ignorant of the art of book-making to suppose.

It was not until 1863 that I left school, being then just about at my nineteenth birthday. It is probable that the magazine stories and Sunday-school books and hack work occupied from one to two years without interruption; but I have no more temperament for dates in my own affairs than I have for those of history. At the most, I could not have been far from twenty when the book was written; possibly approaching twenty-one.

At that time, it will be remembered, our country was dark with sorrowing women. The regiments came home, but the mourners went about the streets.

The Grand Review passed through Washington; four hundred thousand ghosts of murdered men kept invisible march to the drum-beats, and lifted to the stained and tattered flags the proud and unreturned gaze of the dead who have died in their glory.

Our gayest scenes were black with crape. The drawn faces of bereaved wife, mother, sister, and widowed girl showed piteously everywhere. Gray-haired parents knelt at the grave of the boy whose enviable fortune it was to be brought home in time to die in his mother's room. Towards the nameless mounds of Arlington, of Gettysburg, and the rest, the yearning of desolated homes went out in those waves of anguish which seem to choke the very air that the happier and more fortunate must breathe.

Is there not an actual occult force in the existence of a general grief? It swells to a tide whose invisible flow covers all the little resistance of common, human joyousness. It is like a material miasma. The gayest man breathes it, if he breathe at all; and the most superficial cannot escape it.

Into that great world of woe my little book stole forth, trembling. So far as I can remember having had any "object" at all in its creation, I wished to say something that would comfort some few-I did not think at all about comforting many, not daring to suppose that incredible privilege possible-of the women whose misery crowded the land. The smoke of their torment ascended, and the sky was blackened by it. I do not think I thought so much about the suffering of men-the fathers, the brothers, the sons-bereft; but the women-the helpless, outnumbering, unconsulted women; they whom war trampled down, without a choice or protest; the patient, limited, domestic women, who thought little, but loved much, and, loving, had lost all-to them I would have spoken.

For it came to seem to me, as I pondered these things in my own heart, that even the best and kindest forms of our prevailing beliefs had nothing to say to an afflicted woman that could help her much. Creeds and commentaries and sermons were made by men. What tenderest of men knows how to comfort his own daughter when her heart is broken? What can the doctrines do for the desolated by death? They were chains of rusty iron, eating into raw hearts. The prayer of the preacher were not much better; it sounded like the language of an unknown race to a despairing girl. Listen to the hymn. It falls like icicles on snow. Or, if it happen to be one of the old genuine outcries of the Church, sprung from real human anguish or hope, it maddens the listener, and she flees from it, too sore a thing to bear the touch of holy music.

At this time, be it said, I had no interest at all in any especial movement for the peculiar needs of women as a class. I was reared in circles which did not concern themselves with what we should probably have called agitators. I was taught the old ideas of womanhood, in the old way, and had not to any important extent begun to resent them.

Perhaps I am wrong here. Individually, I may have begun to recoil from them, but only in a purely selfish, personal way, beyond which I had evolved neither theory nor conscience; much less the smallest tendency towards sympathy with any public movement of the question.

In the course of two or three years spent in exceptional solitude, I had read a good deal in the direction of my ruling thoughts and feeling, and came to the writing of my little book, not ignorant of what had been written for and by the mourning. The results of this reading, of course, went into the book, and seemed to me, at the time, by far the most useful part of it.

How the book grew, who can say? More of nature than of purpose, surely. It moved like a tear or a sigh or a prayer. In a sense I scarcely knew that I wrote it. Yet it signified labor and time, crude and young as it looks to me now; and often as I have wondered, from my soul, why it has known the history that it has, I have at least a certain respect for it, myself, in that it did not represent shiftlessness or sloth, but steady and conscientious toil. There was not a page in it which had not been subjected to such study as the writer then knew how to offer to her manuscripts.

Every sentence had received the best attention which it was in the power of my inexperience and youth to give. I wrote and rewrote. The book was revised so many times that I could have said it by heart. The process of forming and writing "The Gates Ajar" lasted, I think, nearly two years.

I had no study or place to myself in those days; only the little room whose one window looked upon the garden cross, and which it was not expected would be warmed in winter.

The room contained no chimney, and, until I was sixteen, no fire for any purpose. At that time, it being supposed that some delicacy of the lungs had threatened serious results, my father, who always moved the sods beneath him and the skies above him to care for a sick child, had managed to insert a little stove into the room, to soften its chill when needed. But I did not have consumption, only life; and one was not expected to burn wood all day for private convenience in our furnace-heated house. Was there not the great dining-room where the children studied?

It was not so long since I, too, had learned my lessons off the dining-room table, or in the corner by the register, that it should occur to any member of the family that these opportunities for privacy could not answer my needs.

Equally, it did not occur to me to ask for any abnormal luxuries. I therefore made the best of my conditions, though I do remember sorely longing for quiet.

This, at that time, in that house, it was impossible for me to compass. There was a growing family of noisy boys-four of them-of whom I was the only sister, as I was the oldest child. When the baby did not cry (I have always maintained that the baby cried pretty steadily both day and night, but this is a point upon which their mother and I have affectionately agreed to differ), the boys were shouting about the grounds, chasing each other through the large house, up and down the cellar stairs, and through the wide halls, a whirlwind of vigor and fun. They were merry, healthy boys, and everything was done to keep them so. I sometimes doubt if there are any happier children growing anywhere than the boys and girls of Andover used to be. I was very fond of the boys, and cherished no objection to their privileges in the house. But when one went down, on a cold day, to the register, to write one's chapter on the nature of amusements in the life to come, and found the dining-room neatly laid out in the form of a church congregation, to which a certain proportion of brothers were enthusiastically performing the duties of an active pastor and parish, the environment was a definite check to inspiration.

I wonder if all Andover boys played at preaching? It certainly was the one sport in our house which never satiated.

Coming in one day, I remember, struggling with certain hopeless purposes of my own, for an afternoon's work, I found the dining-room chairs all nicely set in the order of pews; a table, ornamented with Bible and hymn-books, confronted them; behind it, on a cricket, towered the bigger brother, loudly holding forth. The little brother represented the audience-it was usually the little one who was forced to play this duller r?le-and, with open mouth, and with wriggling feet turned in on the rounds of the chair, absorbed as much exhortation as he could suffer.

"My text, brethren," said the little minister, "is, 'Suffer the little children to come unto me.'

"My subject is, God; Joseph; and Moses in the bulrushes!"

Discouraged by the alarming breadth of the little preacher's topic, I fled up-stairs again. There an inspiration did, indeed, strike me; for I remembered an old fur cape, or pelisse, of my mother's, out of fashion, but the warmer for that; and straightway I got me into it, and curled up, with my papers, on the chilly bed in the cold room, and went to work.

It seems to me that a good part of "The Gates Ajar" was written in that old fur cape. Often I stole up into the attic, or into some unfrequented closet, to escape the noise of the house, while at work. I remember, too, writing sometimes in the barn, on the haymow. The book extended over a wide domestic topography.

I hasten to say that no person was to blame for inconveniences of whose existence I had never complained. Doubtless something would have been done to relieve them had I asked for it; or if the idea that my work could ever be of any consequence had occurred to any of us. Why should it? The girl who is never "domestic" is trial enough at her best. She cannot cook; she will not sew. She washes dishes Mondays and Tuesdays under protest, while the nurse and parlor maid are called off from their natural avocations, and dusts the drawing-room with obedient resentment. She sits cutting out underclothes in the March vacations, when all the schools are closed, and when the heavy wagons from the distant farming region stick in the bottomless Andover mud in front of the professor's house. The big front door is opened, and the dismal, creaking sounds come in.

The kind and conscientious new mother, to whom I owe many other gentle lessons more valuable than this, teaches how necessary to a lady's education is a neat needle. The girl does not deny this elemental fact; but her eyes wander away to the cold sky above the Andover mud, with passionate entreaty. To this day I cannot hear the thick chu-chunk! of heavy wheels on March mud without a sudden mechanical echo of that wild, young outcry: "Must I cut out underclothes forever? Must I go on tucking the broken end of the thread into the nick in the spool? Is this LIFE?"

I am more than conscious that I could not have been an easy girl to "bring up," and am sure that for whatever little difficulties beset the earlier time of my ventures as a writer, no person was in any fault. They were doubtless good for me, in their way. We all know that some of the greatest of brain-workers have selected the poorest and barest of spots in which to study. Luxury and bric-a-brac come to easy natures or in easy years. The energy that very early learns to conquer difficulty is always worth its price.

I used, later, to hear in Boston the story of the gentleman who once took a friend to see the room of his son at Harvard College. The friend was a man of plain life, but of rich mental achievement. He glanced at the Persian rugs and costly draperies of the boy's quarters in silence.

"Well," cried the fond father, "don't you think my son has a pretty room?"

"Sir," said the visitor, with gentle candor, "you'll never raise a scholar on that carpet."

Out of my discomforts, which were small enough, grew one thing for which I have all my life been grateful-the formation of fixed habits of work.

I have seldom waited for inspiration before setting about a task to be done. Life is too short for that. Broken health has too often interrupted a regimen of study which ought to have been more continuous; but, so far as I may venture to offer an opinion from personal experience, I should say that the writers who would be wise to play hide and seek with their own moods are few.

According to my custom, I said nothing (so far as I can remember) to any person about the book.

It cannot be said that I had any hope of success with it; or that, in my most irrational dreams, anything like the consequences of its publication ever occurred to my fancy. But I did distinctly understand that I had set forth upon a venture totally dissimilar to the safe and respectable careers of my dozen Sunday-school books.

I was asked only the other day why it was that, having such a rare critic at first hand as my father, I did not more often submit my manuscripts to his judgment. It would be difficult to say precisely why. The professor of rhetoric was a very busy man; and at that time the illness which condemned him to thirty years of invalid suffering was beginning to make itself manifest. I can remember more often throwing down my pen to fly out and beg the children to be quiet in the garden while the sleepless man struggled for a few moments' rest in the daytime; or stealing on tiptoe to his locked door, at any hour of the night, to listen for signs of sudden illness or need of help; these things come back more easily than the desire to burden him with what I wrote.

Yet perhaps that abnormal pride, whose existence I have admitted, had quite as much to do with this restraint.

When a thing was published, then quickly to him with it! His sympathy and interest were unfailing, and his criticism only too gentle; though it could be a sword of flame when he chose to smite.

Unknown to himself I had dedicated "The Gates Ajar" to him. In this dedication there was a slip in good English, or, at least, in such English as the professor wrote and spoke. I had used the word "nears" as a verb, instead of its proper synonym, "approaches." He read the dedication quietly, thanked me tenderly for it, and said nothing. It was left for me to find out my blunder for myself, as I did, in due time. He had not the heart to tell me of it then. Nor did he insinuate his consciousness that the dedication might seem to involve him-as it did in certain citadels of stupidity-in the views of the book.

The story was sent to its publishers, Messrs. Ticknor and Fields, and leisurely awaited their verdict. As I had written somewhat for their magazines, "The Atlantic" and "Our Young Folks," I did not come as quite a stranger. Still, the fate of the book hung upon a delicate scale. It was two years from the time the story went to its publishers before it appeared between covers. How much of this period the author was kept in suspense I cannot remember; but, I think, some time.

I have the impression that the disposal of the book, so far as that firm went, wavered for a while upon the decision of one man, whose wife shared the reading of the manuscript. "Take it," she said at last, decidedly; and the fiat went forth. The lady afterwards became a personal friend, and I hope I may not forfeit the treasure of her affection by this late and public recognition of the pleasant part she bore in the fortunes of my life.

The book was accepted, and still this piece of good luck did not make my head spin. I had lived among book-makers too much to expect the miracle. I went soberly back to my hack work, and on with my Sunday-school books.

One autumn day the customary package of gift copies of the new book made its way to Andover Hill; but: I opened it without elation, the experience being so far from my first of its kind. The usual note of thanks was returned to the publishers, and quiet fell again. Unconscious of either hope or fear, I kept on about my business, and the new book was the last thing on earth with which I concerned myself.

One morning, not many weeks after its publication, I received a letter from Mr. James T. Fields. He, who was the quickest of men to do a kindness, and surest to give to young writers the encouraging word for which they had not hope enough to listen, had hurried himself to break to me the news.

"Your book is moving grandly," so he wrote. "It has already reached a sale of four thousand copies. We take pleasure in sending you-" He enclosed a check for six hundred dollars, the largest sum on which I had ever set my startled eyes. It would not, by my contract, have been due me for six months or more to come.

The little act was like him, and like the courteous and generous house on whose list I have worked for thirty years.

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EDITORIAL NOTES.

TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR SHORT STORIES.

We find considerable difficulty in getting the two hundred first-class short stories that we require each year. We are delighted to be able to publish so many stories by eminent authors, but we should like to get more good stories from writers whose fame is yet to be made. We therefore announce a liberal policy in regard to payment, and invite contributions from every one who can write a good story. The scale of payment will be such as to please every contributor, whether he is famous or not.

We need every year about fifty stories of from four to six thousand words in length; about one hundred stories of from two to three thousand words in length, and not less than fifty stories a year for young people, about two thousand words in length. Of these stories thirty or forty are for McCLURE'S MAGAZINE, and the remainder are for the newspaper syndicates controlled by the publishers of this magazine.

A regular manuscript department has been established by the editors, and it is the intention to report upon every manuscript within a week after it is received. We also welcome contributions to every branch of literature represented in the magazine.

THE McCLURE'S "EARLY LIFE OF LINCOLN."

This volume contains all the articles published in the first four Lincoln numbers of McCLURE'S MAGAZINE (November to February, inclusive). These numbers, although repeatedly reprinted, are now out of print, and the "Early Life of Lincoln" was published mainly to meet a demand we could not fill with the magazine. It contains a great deal more, both in text and pictures, than appeared in the magazine. It is mailed to any address for fifty cents; or for one dollar, if bound in cloth. We intend having our own plant, to reprint the March and subsequent numbers whenever necessary.

THE McCLURE'S NEW "LIFE OF GRANT."

We have been greatly surprised, in preparing our new "Life of Grant," to find so much new and valuable material, especially about Grant's earlier life. No more fascinating and dramatic story has ever been lived. We have been especially fortunate in securing the collaboration of Mr. Hamlin Garland to write this life of Grant. Mr. Garland was selected for this work for two reasons-first, he has always loved and admired Grant; second, he is familiar in general with the conditions of life in the middle West, and is especially qualified to tell the truth both in color and fact. The tastes and training of a realistic novelist are an admirable equipment for a biographer, provided the hero of his story and his environment appeal to the novelist.

We propose to publish the best Life of Grant ever written.

We have collected a great quantity of pictures and other illustrations, and we ask our friends to help us as they are helping us in our "Life of Lincoln." Every one who has a contribution, either in picture or incident, to our knowledge of this great man ought to bring it before the two or three million readers that McCLURE'S will have when we begin to publish the "Life of Grant" next November.

NEW PICTURES OF LINCOLN.

Almost every week we add to our collection of Lincoln pictures. Many of these ambrotypes and photographs are of the greatest value in adding to our knowledge of Lincoln. We hope to reach one hundred before the end of the year. We had only fifty portraits last November. We have eighty now.

THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND PRACTICAL ARTS.

Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, was the scene of one of the most important of the debates between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Douglas. The debate took place on a platform at the east end of the main college building. At this memorable debate the students carried a banner on which was inscribed "Knox for Lincoln." In April, 1860, before he was nominated for the Presidency, Knox College conferred the degree of LL.D. on Abraham Lincoln. At their recent midwinter meeting, the board of trustees unanimously voted to establish a memorial to Lincoln; and this memorial will be the scientific department of Knox College, and will be called "The Abraham Lincoln School of Science and Practical Arts."

The founders of this magazine are all alumni of Knox College, and are particularly pleased at this action of their alma mater. Knox College affords a splendid opportunity to young men and women of limited means. The editors of this magazine can afford to pay the living expenses and tuition for one year at this college of any young man or woman who secures five hundred subscribers, as proposed and explained on the second advertising page of this number of the magazine.

The editors of McCLURE'S MAGAZINE are thoroughly acquainted with Knox College, and can recommend it, knowing that students who go there will live under the best possible influences and receive a sound education. All inquiries should be addressed to the president, John Finley, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois.

THE HOUSE IN WHICH LINCOLN'S PARENTS WERE MARRIED.-A CORRECTION.

The picture of the house in which Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks were married, printed in McCLURE'S MAGAZINE for November, 1895, was credited by mistake to the Oldroyd collection. The photograph from which the reproduction was made came from the Oldroyd collection; but this photograph is, we are informed, from a negative now in the possession of Mr. A.D. Miller of Brazil, Indiana, and credit is therefore due to Mr. Miller.

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