Child: true economy of housekeeping

Lydia Maria Child had only been a wife for about a year and a month when, on November 12, 1829, she published The Frugal Housewife (later renamed The American Frugal Housewife). The book was a huge success and was republished in dozens of editions over the next few years. It was dedicated "to those who are not ashamed of Economy." That purpose begins in the first sentence of the introduction:

The true economy of housekeeping is simply the art of gathering up all the fragments, so that nothing be lost. I mean fragments, of time, as well as materials. Nothing should be thrown away so long as it is possible to make any use of it, however trifling that use may be; and whatever be the size of a family, every member should be employed either in earning, or saving money.

In the pages that follow, Child offers tips on removing stains, on cooking, common injuries or illnesses, and "how to endure poverty," all in a world without running water. Her writing is almost stream of conscious, quickly shifting from one scrap of advice to another without particular attention to theme or organization. This lack of organization drew the attention of critics, including Sarah Josepha Hale, but what really bothered Hale was the book's obsession with money — or, more accurately, with its implication that women should be obsessed with saving money. As she wrote:

Now we do not think that either in earning or saving money consists the chief importance of life... Our men are sufficiently money-making. Let us keep our women and children from the contagion as long as possible.

Hale went so far as to suggest that Child was underqualified to write such a book as she did not yet have children. Nevertheless, the book went into at least 35 editions and was later reissued in a modern version which remains in print in the 21st century. Perhaps Child would have answered her critics with this quote from page 6:

The writer has no apology to offer for this cheap little book of economical hints, except her deep conviction that such a book is needed. In this case, renown is out of the question, and ridicule is a matter of indifference.

For some of the information in this post, I am indebted to Carolyn L. Karcher's work The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child (1998).

Hurrah for Thanksgiving Day!

Though she was an ardent abolitionist, a novelist, and a prolific author, Lydia Maria Child is best remembered for one poem. She was a household name for the better part of the 19th century; most people in the 21st only have a vague recollection of the song originally presented as the poem usually titled "A New England Boy's Song (About Thanksgiving)," first published in 1844:

Over the river and through the wood,
   To grandfather's house we go;
      The horse knows the way
      To carry the sleigh
   Through the white and drifted snow.

Over the river and through the wood —
   Oh, how the wind does blow!
      It stings the toes
      And bites the nose,
   As over the ground we go.

Over the river and through the wood,
   To have a first-rate play.
      Hear the bells ring,
      "Ting-a-ling-ding!"
   Hurrah for Thanksgiving Day!

Over the river and through the wood
   Trot fast, my dapple-gray!
      Spring over the ground,
      Like a hunting-hound!
   For this is Thanksgiving Day.

Over the river and through the wood,
   And straight through the barn-yard gate.
      We seem to go
      Extremely slow,—
   It is so hard to wait!

Over the river and through the wood —
   Now grandmother's cap I spy!
      Hurrah for the fun!
      Is the pudding done?
   Hurrah for the pumpkin-pie!

Read it, if your prejudices will allow

On August 5, 1833, a book was published with the long title An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans, widely accepted as the first antislavery book published in the United States. Its author was Lydia Maria Child, who was inspired in part by William Lloyd Garrison to take a stand as an abolitionist. She knew, however, that the book would be controversial. In her preface, she wrote:

Reader, I beseech you not to throw down this volume as soon as you have glanced at the title. Read it, if your prejudices will allow, for the very truth's sake: Read it, from sheer curiosity to see what a woman (who had much better attend to her household concerns) will say upon such a subject.

Child said that forced enslavement was a debasement of nature. She recognized that it Africans were forced into slavery then told they have to remain one because they have not seen freedom. "We first crush people to the earth," she wrote, "then claim the right of trampling on them forever because they are prostrate." She recognized that white people called these people unintelligent only after they had denied them access to education. Further, she notes that even Northerners who do not participate in the institution of slavery directly still hold "the very spirit" of it by falling into the same prejudices and encouraging segregation. The assumption was that black people did not resist enslavement but she noted:

By the thousands and thousands, these poor people have died for freedom. They have stabbed themselves for freedom — jumped into the waves for freedom — starved for freedom — fought like very tigers fro freedom! But they have been hung, and burned, and shot — and their tyrants have been their historians!

Much of her research for the book was done at the Boston Athenaeum; the private library exclusively granted membership to men but offered special access to Child after her novel Hobomok (1824) proved popular. Shortly after the publication of her Appeal, however, her access was revoked. At the time, Child was also editing Juvenile Miscellany, a children's magazine, which soon suffered from scores of canceled subscriptions. Even so, some scholars credit Child's Appeal with inspiring more men and women to join the abolitionist cause than any other publication.

*For information in this post, I am indebted to Tongue of Flame: the Life of Lydia Maria Child (1965) by Milton Meltzer.

Child: We are not dead; we are the living

After an accomplished career as a writer and a proponent of reform movements (including abolitionism), Lydia Maria Child died at the age of 78. Two days later, on October 23, 1880, her funeral was held before her burial at North Cemetery in Wayland, Massachusetts. There were very few in attendance — friends, neighbors, nieces, the few remaining fellow abolitionists, and "poor people who had been recipients of her charity."

Child's majors works included a domestic manual for those with only a modest income and her Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans (1833). The book, printed still early in the active anti-slavery movement, was controversial; the Boston Athenaeum even revoked Child's free library privileges. It argued that slavery was destructive to everyone, including slave owners, and urged northerners to take action. It was read by people like William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Sumner, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Wendell Phillips. Phillips in particular credited Child's book as a main source of inspiration for his own anti-slavery efforts.

In fact, it was Phillips that presented the eulogy at Child's funeral in 1880. "Mrs. Child's character was one of rare elements," he said, "and their combination in one person rarer still." Phillips said that she always followed one divine rule: "Bear ye one another's burdens." He also noted that she never slowed down, even inher old age. She had "still the freshness of girlhood... [with] ready wit, quick retort, mirthful just." He also claimed that, in their last meeting, Child thought "spirit hands" had given her the words which should inscribe her epitaph: "You think us dead. We are not dead; we are the living." Those words were, in fact, inscribed on her gravestone.

Child's good friend John Greenleaf Whittier was particularly saddened by her death. To her, he dedicated his poem "Within the Gate." The poem concludes:

And so, since thou hast passed within the gate
      Whereby awhile I wait,
I give blind grief and blinder sense the lie:
      Thou hast not lived to die!

Whittier, Child, Sumner, Beecher: Abolitionists after slavery

From his home in Amesbury, Massachusetts, John Greenleaf Whittier wrote to Lydia Maria Child on September 20, 1874. "I make many new friends," he began, "but my heart, as I grow older, turns longingly to the surviving friends of my early years, who had shared in the struggles and triumphs of a great cause." Whittier was referring to the anti-slavery cause, for which both he and Child were strong advocates.

By 1874, both were getting old (Whittier, though only 66, noted in the letter, "We are all growing old and nearing the unknown shore") and the movement against slavery was won. In fact, Child had sent Whittier an image of one of abolitionism's greatest champion, Senator Charles Sumner, who had died only recently. Without their cause, however, both writers continued writing. Whittier mentioned that his "little book," Hazel-Blossoms, would be published soon and promised to send a copy to Child. The two were dear friends after all: "We have so much in common," Whittier noted. "We so nearly agree on so many points."

But all was not well in the world. Whittier referenced a growing scandal in New York involving another anti-slavery man, one who used his voice more often than his pen: Henry Ward Beecher, brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe (whose own anti-slavery writing allegedly caused a whole war). "I have loved Beecher so much!" Whittier wrote, never actually mentioning the details of the sex scandal in Brooklyn. "I cannot believe him guilty as is charged, and yet it looks very dark." He called it "a most mournful tragedy."

Birth of Fanny Osgood

Frances Sargent Locke was born on June 18, 1811 in Boston, Massachusetts, though most of her early life was spent in nearby Hingham. Years later, she submitted her first poems to Juvenile Miscellany, a publication edited by Lydia Maria Child. She met Samuel Stillman Osgood at the Boston Athenaeum; they married in 1835 and soon had three daughters. She often directed her poetry to her family.

In the late 1830s, living in London while her husband pursued his career as a painter there, "Fanny Osgood" (as she came to be known), published her first two collections of poems. After returning to the United States, she published about a half-dozen more. One of her biggest advocates was the influential editor/anthologist Rufus Wilmot Griswold, who called her work "forcible and original" as well as "picturesque." He believed she was constantly improving as well: "Every month her powers have seemed to expand and her sympathies to deepen." Griswold doted on her enough that it was rumored he was falling in love with her. Either way, Osgood's popularity among American women poets was truly unparalleled up to her early death in 1850.

Modern critics are on the fence with Osgood. Some dismiss the occasionally-flirtatious Osgood and some rate her work with the kind of sentimental, domestic poetry which deserves to be forgotten. One poem which would have feminist critics up in arms is "A Song," which asks a lover to "Call me a bird" before the narrator is locked in a cage, "ne'er dreaming of flight," but only existing to sing to entertain her lover. But the tenderness in some of her domestic works, particularly those addressed to her children, reveal a sincere motherly affection. Literary historian Emily Stipes Watts notes that these poems "are honest attempts to express thoughts and emotions never so fully expressed before by women in poetry" and depict a sincere concern for her daughters' development and well-being. Of course, making any generalization for such a prolific writer is impossible. Even choosing a sample is never fully representative, but I'll go with this one:

  Ah! woman still
  Must veil the shrine,
Where feeling feeds the fire divine,
  Nor sing at will,
  Untaught by art,
The music prison'd in her heart!
  Still gay the note,
  And light the lay,
The woodbird warbles on the spray,
  Afar to float;
  But homeward flown,
Within his next, how changed the tone!

  Oh! none can know,
  Who have not heard
The music-soul that thrills the bird,
  The carol low
  As coo of dove
He warbles to his woodland-love!
  The world would say
  'Twas vain and wild,
The impassion'd lay of Nature's child;
And Feeling so
Should veil the shrine
Where softly glow her fires divine!

Fuller and Child have dinner

According to a letter, Margaret Fuller dined with Lydia Maria Child on March 19, 1846. Both women were journalists, authors and — perhaps the subject of their conversation that day — reformers, particularly advocating for the rights of Native Americans and for the abolition of slavery.

Each must have admired the other — Child had been the editor of the Liberty Bell at the same time that Fuller was editing The Dial. Both had a great appreciation for writing of all kinds, be it fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. Child once said that Fuller referred to the world as the "literature of God."

Child, older than Fuller by eight years, had published her book An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans in 1833. In it, she argued that people of African descent were just as intelligent as those of European descent and called for the immediate abolition of slavery (she called it "the sacred cause of emancipation"). Fuller's more-recently published book, Summer on the Lakes, 1844, was not directly about slavery but, in it, she discussed both Africans and Native Americans. Child had already advocated for that group, too; her novel, Hobomok, was published anonymously in 1824 and featured a white woman marrying a Native American man.

Likely, both reform ideas were the topic of their discussion the day the two women dined. In fact, they were meeting at the New York home of Isaac Hopper, credited by some as the founder of the Underground Railroad. In his 70s at the time he offered his table to Child and Fuller, Hopper began organizing a system for slaves to escape to freedom when he was 16 years old — at least, according to legend. A year after he died, Child published a biography of him.

At the time they were meeting, each had already published her most enduring work. Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century (considered the first major book on women's rights in the United States) had been published in 1845; though still in print, it doesn't seem to be required reading in most schools or colleges (it should be). Child's most famous work was published as a Thanksgiving poem in 1844. Though certainly not as important, daring, or literary as her other works, "Over the river and through the wood, to Grandfather's house we go..." seems much more familiar

*On a personal note: the image of Fuller, above, is from an original daguerreotype in the collection of Houghton Library, Harvard University. The exhibit "Margaret Fuller: Woman of the Nineteenth Century" is open to the public through March 26; as guest curator, I highly recommend a visit.