The life of Alice Freeman Palmer

Front matter

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Contents

I. Introduction . . . . 1

II. Childhood . . „ 17

III. Girlhood . 31

II

Alice Elvira Freeman was born on the night of February 21, 1855, at Colesville, Broome County, New York. The influences which chiefly shaped her childhood were her country life, her narrow means, and her father’s change of occupation. All else is subordinate to these.

Colesville is rather a collection of farms than of houses, Windsor, its nearest considerable village, being seven miles away; its nearest town, Bingham¬ ton, a dozen miles from Windsor. All the child’s early years were passed in a tract of smiling country, where hills, woods, fertile fields, and the winding stream of the Susquehanna expressed the beauty and friendliness of nature with nothing of its savagery. These gracious influences became a rich endowment. Nature did for her what it did for Wordsworth’s Lucy, imparted to her its mystery, its poise, its soli¬ tude, its rhythmic change, its freedom from haste and affectation. Social being as she afterwards be¬ came, her days with dumb things were fortunately preparatory. They taught her to know the elemental background of human existence, to respect it, ’to value in herself and others the blind motions of its unconscious wisdom, and to carry into subsequent life and literature the senses it had trained. She used to pity persons born in cities, and thought that the country-bred were provided with securer sources of happiness. Throughout life, when she would chase fatigue and fear, she fled from “the great town’s harsh heart- wearying roar” and quickly renewed herself by lying in green grass or walking by the bank of a favorite brook in the deep woods. There she needed no other companion than the hopping birds. With them she was an intimate from her earliest years, and she became in later life an expert in their names and ways. One of her most successful ad¬ dresses was on the glories of a country life; and I remember her saying that the opening sections of Emerson’s Essay on Nature affected her as if they were the recollections of her brooding childhood. Her refinement had ever an earthy stock beneath it, so that she was not easily shocked or inclined to count common things unclean. She loved to mix with horses. She knew the farmyard, the country road, the breeding cattle, and the upturned soil; and she cared for them as heartily as for college girls, picture galleries, and companies where there are “quick returns of courtesy and wit.” When Ulysses stepped naked from the thicket on the seashore, Nausicaa’s maidens fled, while she herself stood unalarmed to learn what he might need. Alice Freeman’s country training enabled her all her days to behave as did the Phseacian princess.

But persons were with the child as well as natural objects. We are all offshoots of a family. Sometimes we speak as if each of us were a single individual, standing solitary, existing alone; but nothing of the sort is true. The smallest conceivable personality is threefold, — father, mother, child. No one of us starts as an individual or can ever after become such, being essentially social, a member merely, a part of a larger whole. It is therefore of extreme consequence, if our life is to be a fortunate one, that the family of which we are portions shall be noble and have a high descent. That was the case with Alice Freeman; for though on both sides, so far as I am aware, few of her ancestors figured in the newspapers, or had any considerable share of wealth or learning, they we.'e of that sturdy stock which has been the glory of America — men and women who in quiet homes pride themselves on duty and intelligence, who think about each day’s work and carefully accom¬ plish it; people on whom neighbors can rely, and who are willing to be overlooked in the public inter¬ est. James Warren Freeman, the hard-working, self-forgetting father, was of Scottish blood. His mother was a Knox; her father being James Knox of Washington’s Life Guard. From her fathei

Alice derived much of her moral beauty, and also that gleam of red which undershot her dark hair. Perhaps too from his side came some of her love of adventure; for her paternal grandfather walked from Connecticut through the wilderness and be¬ came one of the first settlers of Central New York.

The mother, Elizabeth Josephine Higley — her mother Elvira Frost — was one of five beautiful daughters of a Colesville farmer. Their dark hair and large eyes passed over to the child, their vivacity too, and their forceful intellectual disposition. Mother and grandmother had been for brief terms teachers. The mother herself had unusual execu¬ tive ability and a strong disposition to improve social conditions around her. She interested herself in temperance, and in legislation for the better pro¬ tection of women and children. In later years, af¬ ter a long illness had led her to reflect on the lack of medical provision for women, she raised by her own efforts, though far from rich herself, sufficient money to build and equip an extensive hospital for women in her city of Saginaw. Both father and mother were of large physical frame, tough in fibre, and capable of enduring constant toil. But on the mother’s side there was a tendency to consumption.

When Alice was born, her mother was but seven¬ teen and a half years old “I grew up with my mother,” she used to say. In the next five years came a boy and two girls. Neither Mrs. Freeman nor her husband had inherited property, and the conditions of farming in a young country are severe. I remem¬ ber Alice’s speaking of the rarity of fresh meat in her childhood, and of associations of luxury with a keg of salt mackerel. On these isolated farms no servants were kept, nor were means of communica¬ tion easy. Newspapers, letters, and books were rare. The family itself was the community. Comforts were little thought of. He was lucky who could command the necessities.

It is now acknowledged that the most question¬ able advantage of large wealth is its influence on children. Those who acquire it are likely enough to grow with its pursuit, and the control over the world which it brings to its vigorous accumulator is uot unfavorable to enjoyment or to still further ad¬ vance. But children who have never known want get few deep draughts of joy. Whoever prizes human conditions in proportion to their tendency to develop powers must commiserate the children of the rich and think of them as our unfortunate classes. They associate less with their parents than do others ; their goings and comings are more hampered; they are not so easily habituated to regular tasks; they are pressed less to experiment, foresee, adapt ; they have less stimulus to energetic excellence, and when tempted to vice or mediocrity they have little countercompulsion to support their better purpose. Wise rich parents know these dangers and give their most anxious thought to shielding their children from the enervating influence of wealth.

At the opposite extreme, poverty is for certain children, and at certain ages, tonic in its effect. It may be too severe and become blighting. Middle conditions are for the average undoubtedly safest. At the time of turning from childhood to youth there appears in the normal child a craving for the expan¬ sion of personal tastes. If this cannot in some measure be gratified, damage results. The child is stunted. At an earlier age the importance of money is less clear. The child’s nature determines whether nar¬ row means are to be a blessing or a curse. A gentle child, slow, unobservant, unromantic, little disposed to projecting itself into things, is in danger of being •rushed by a bleak environment, or at least of hav¬ ing its undesirable qualities confirmed. It grows up dull, coarse, or bitter. But little children of a more aggressive type are nourished by poverty and in it are often afforded their best opportunity for early expansion.

So it was with small Alice Freeman. She found a careful home fortunate, or possibly made it so; for in her case the distinction between finding and mak¬ ing was seldom quite clear. She has often assured me of the happiness of her childhood; and one can see how to so rich a nature — alert, forceful, and creative — the exactitudes of a restricted existence might not be unfriendly. In that environment the fourfold germs of the moral sense very early gathered their proper warmth, and grew delightedly toward God, and toward her superiors, inferiors, and equals.

In this home God was reverenced and man con¬ tent. Both parents were profoundly religious, the father an elder of the Presbyterian church. Whatever came therefore, gentle or severe, was felt to come with kindness and to bring its call to cheerful and considered acceptance. In such serious circumstances the words of the Bible, of the Pilgrim’s Progress, of the great hymns, penetrate the soul with a depth of meaning incredible to those who read them carelessly or in the intervals of other exciting volumes. Re¬ ligion roots best in isolation. “ Be still, and know that I am God,” says the Psalmist. In the silence of the country a child can hear God’s voice. Then too, whatever the hardships were or however severe, they were shared ; and difficulties met together strengthened the dearest of human ties. To her young mother Alice soon became rather a sister than a child, a peculiar relation maintained through life, and more natural at that time because there was usually in the house an aunt or two of about her own years.

Where too there was so little money and so much to do, the smallest took part in the universal work; no burdensome part, but one which, though a kind of play, contributed to the common gain. Sociologists say that the sports of animals and children are edu¬ cative, really performances in miniature and for pure pleasure, of the employments of later life. This buoyant child found participation in the daily toil such an anticipatory sport, and almost from infancy helpfulness grew habitual. About as soon as she could walk she was employed to call her father from the field, to assist her mother with the dishes and the beds, and to gather eggs from the barn. When she was five, she had three younger children to attend, henceforth her daily charge. She dressed them, brushed their hair, took them to school, and per¬ formed all those offices of the little mother which fall upon the eldest girl in a household of slender means. These are the kindergartens of the country, admirable training schools for such small persons as can meet their requirements. At an age when children of the well-to-do are hardly out of their nurses’ arms Alice Freeman was already well started in heartfelt dependence on the Eternal, in the cheer¬ ful performance of regular work, in lightening the labor of those above her, and in accepting respon¬ sibility for those below. Any one can see how these early habits prepared her for future power.

Intellectually her case seems less favorable. A district school, of the disordered and elementary sort usual in a sparsely settled country, was the only one accessible. Its teacher was paid two dollars a week and “ boarded round.” To it Alice went when she was four. But already at three she had taught herself to read, and her beautiful voice was always afterwards much in request for reading aloud — excellent preparation for subsequent public speaking. Though books were few, they were read many times, about the only mode of reading which yields profit to the young. Favorite poems were committed to memory. Alice’s first public appearance, occasioned by one of these, amusingly illustrates her instinct¬ ive identification of herself with those around.

When five years old she was taken to a village gathering, where the entertainment chiefly consisted of music and speeches. While these incomprehensible matters were in progress she was allowed to fall asleep, but at the appropriate moment was waked, stood on a table, and told to repeat her poem. It was one she was fond of, and she spoke it with the same fervor as if she were alone. The delighted audience broke into applause. But their feelings at once became hers too, and she clapped her little hands as heartily as did any of her hearers. Her parents from the beginning knew her to be a golden child and gave much care to her mental growth.

To it the country also brought its precious contribu* tions. The natural thoughts of a child, the poet says, “are long, long thoughts/’ Thoughts of these dimen¬ sions come most easily in the country. A daguerreo¬ type of her, taken when she was five and published here, shows that she already has them.

Then too while country life, especially in the early years, benumbs the intellect that is merely scholastic, it calls into perpetual activity the practical intellect in those fortunate enough to possess it. In the coun¬ try, when one needs anything, he cannot step into a neighboring store and purchase for his use what has been provided by the forethought of others. He is dependent on himself. He must find, invent, or go without his article; either master nature or be mas¬ tered by her. It is true that in the long run the majority of country people are mastered and tamely submit to daily inconvenience. Nevertheless it is a great advantage to a vigorous young person, destined for future affairs, to be brought up where there is little division of labor, where therefore readv wits and practical good sense are at a constant premium. On the whole we must count Alice Freeman fortu¬ nate in those early circumstances which shaped her originally strong intelligence and fitted it for diverse and ready action.

But there is one danger which besets so restricted a household. However intelligent, industrious, or brave, it tends to routine and to resting satisfied with the supply of daily needs. Ideals die under too great pressure. But that was not the case here; for hers were ambitious parents, ambitious for attaining wider work through self-improvement. The father was a man of unusual kindness, much disposed to look after those about him. By degrees the idea of becoming a physician took strong hold of him. It was encouraged by his wife, who offered to maintain herself and the four children during the two years’ absence necessary for his training at the Albany Medical School. And this was actually accomplished between Alice’s seventh and ninth years. Where means were found for maintaining father and family during the audacious interval I have never been able to discover. Of course the cares of the household were doubled, yet in so splendid a cause as to fix forever in the mind of one of them the wisdom of sacrificing present comforts to ideal ends. Alice Freeman never forgot those glorious years. They were among the few events of her childhood to which she often referred; for they set a pattern to which she was ever after eager to conform, of noble aims, willing suffering, resourcefulness, persistence, and ultimate arrival at greater ability to serve.

When Dr. Freeman returned, equipped for pro¬ fessional work, a change of residence became ad¬ visable. The farm was abandoned and a house was taken in the village of Windsor. Practice came quickly to one who was as truly a physician of the mind and soul as of the body. Soon it extended over miles of the surrounding country. In his long rides among his scattered patients a little girl accom¬ panied her father. To drive was exhilarating; she talked to him on the road ; she held the horse during his visit ; and when he came forth grave from the bed¬ side, she shared his anxieties over the dangerous case. So the intimacy between the pair grew strong. Among her papers written in later life I find a pas¬ sage evidently suggested by these early years in which she uses their happy memories to interpret similar experiences in the life of a friend who had died. Of this friend she writes: —

“ She was fortunate in being bred in the country, responsive to its birds and flowers, to the stars above her head and the stones under her feet, and to the simplicity of its quiet pleasures. A country doctor’s granddaughter, she came close in childhood to his good and high influence, close to sickness, to sorrow, to hardship, and to loss. In sympathetic relations with him she learned to love humankind in all de¬ grees of trouble and poverty, as well as to rejoice in natural beauty. She has told me of that village home and her village friends. We who knew her used often to say, even down to these last years, ‘You have a girl’s heart and a country girl’s loves and enthusiasms.’ It made no difference that she went forth into high public station. She brought back from the drawing-rooms of Washington and the salons of Paris the highmindedness, the human affections, and the swift sympathies which her grandfather gave her through long contact with sorrow and heart-break.”

It would be hard to describe more exactly what Alice Freeman derived from her father, and per¬ haps it may be well to show here the permanence of that influence, and the sort of passionate devotion it fixed in her for the silent man who gave it. I quote some lines which she wrote the year before she died. Dr. Freeman had been struck down by a violent illness which seemed likely to bring sudden death. She was summoned from Cambridge by telegraph. As she rode she wrote the following verses, showing them to no one. After her death I found them among her papers, marked “ On the Train, April 12, 1902.” The reference in the fifth stanza is to her sister Stella, who had died twenty-three years before.

How long and weary stretch the miles away Between us, O my father, as I come

To catch again your dear voice, if I may.

Here in our earthly home.

Perhaps ere this your lips are cold and still; Perhaps you hear the angels’ triumph song, so

And smile upon us from some heavenly hill The blessed saints among.

They are not sick or sorry any more;

And you are strong and young and glad again. What will you do on that wide shining shore Where all are free from pain ?

All your long life you healed the sick and sad;

You gave as God gives, counting not the cost. Your presence made the little children glad ;

With you no soul was lost.

How many happy ones will greet you there About our starlike girl, so long awTay!

Ah, but to see her shining eyes and hair As on that sad June day!

I will not grieve, my father, for your peace.

I will rejoice if you have won your rest Where Springs fade not, where sorrows ever cease, And all the good are blest.

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The settlement at Windsor marks a second period in Alice Freeman’s life. By degrees she turns from childhood to girlhood. What the nature of the change is. or at what precise time it occurs, is seldom evident either to onlookers or to the child herself. But the transition, though gradual, is momentous and not altogether pleasing. In Alice Freeman I judge it appeared about two years earlier than ordinary.

Girlhood begins when little by little the child comes to think for herself and to regard herself as a person of importance. She accordingly seeks to assert and enlarge that importance. Earlier than this she has hardly had possession of her powers. By herself and others she has been accounted merely a member of a family. Few articles are called hers. Her wishes are not much regarded. She is included in family plans, but has too little experience and foresight to form them. Very properly she is ex¬ pected to subordinate herself to her elders, the chief work of the years of childhood being to train us to live in collective fashion. We then accept the property, knowledge, beliefs, habits, ideals accumulated in the family group. During absorptive childhood we have little which we have not received.

Maturity discloses more. Gradually we become aware of something precious within us which is just ourself. We are somebody. The consciousness that I am I parts me from others. Not that we then cease to recognize duties to the family. These continue, but undergo a change. Henceforth we perform them in freedom, conscious that we too are persons of im¬ portance and have duties to ourselves as well. Other people are now discovered to be “ selves ” also, and the adjustment of us to them becomes a puzzling prob¬ lem. The period when this self-consciousness begins to make itself felt is usually an awkward one. The early spontaneous charm has disappeared, while personal dignity has not jet arisen. Jarrings and antagonisms are ordinary indications that such a period is approaching.

That one so sympathetic as Alice Freeman would be saved from the worst of such clashes may easily be guessed. I can learn of few of the self-assertions and aberrations which usually appear in this epochmaking transition. She had a will of her own, was liable to anger, and easily resented personal annoy¬ ance. But her consciousness of much beside herself steadied her. Even in parting from the family she took the family with her. Once at evening prayers a large June-bug buzzed through the window and

THE SUSQUEHANNA VALLEY

as seen from the Freeman House, Windsor, New York settled in a curl of her hair. He would not be de¬ tached. She kept herself quiet through the several minutes of prayer; then, as all rose from their knees, she cried out, “ I wanted to scream, but I could n’t upset you and God.” “Of course not,” said her father, gravely dislodging the creature. For a good while bursts of passion broke out when her will was crossed. She would throw herself down and beat the floor with her heels. But when one day she saw her brother in a similar paroxysm, she examined him with horror and at bedtime told her mother that she should never be angry again. “Fred mustn’t be.” And though through after life rage at wrong often boiled below the surface and came to an occasional explosion, it was soon controlled, and rarely parted her from him who occasioned it.

Yet however considerately the transition was managed, childhood, the period of absorption in the family, was ending as Alice Freeman settled into the new life at Windsor; self-seeking girlhood began, an epoch stretching forward as far as the attainment of the college degree. In this period the vigorous girl or boy longs for enlargement, the forces ordi¬ narily impelling most powerfully toward it being education, love, and religion. All these came to Alice Freeman, as they come to every girl; but to her they came unusually early, orderly, and transformingly.

The considerable village of Windsor where the family was now living contained a school of supe¬ rior rank, Windsor Academy. Its principal, Joseph Eastman, was a man of more breadth than most country towns can show. After graduating from Dartmouth, he had gone through the Harvard Medi¬ cal School and Andover Theological Seminary. He was now both minister of the Presbyterian Church in the village and principal of the Academy. Besides himself the Academy employed half a dozen other teachers, gave instruction in the languages, and was the finishing school for most of its students. It was much like one of our modern high schools, though of looser organization and without the dominant aim of preparing its pupils for college. On coming to Windsor Dr. Freeman did much to raise its grade and to change it from the school of a village to an academy for all the country around. This school Alice entered in September, 1865. Here her real education began. Previously she had been her own teacher, or had picked up what little was to be had on the benches of a district school. Here at the age of ten she learned to mix with a considerable company of girls and boys, to feel the influence of accomplished teachers, to see how large is the field of knowledge and how small the amount which any one can gather. Young as she was, she eagerly seized her opportunity and began to form interests of her own. Throughout life she acknowledged her indebtedness to this important school; and when in 1901 the Academy celebrated its semi-centennial, she visited it and renewed her gratitude to it and its pretty village. From a report of her address on that occasion I take the following passage : —

“ Words do not tell what this old school and place meant to me as a girl. I am proud to say that I was the daughter of a farmer of the Susquehanna, and for me there never can be another such village as this. When I graduated in 1872 and went a thousand miles westward to college, I bore away remembrances of our magnificent river, its enormous width, strong currents, and terrible freshets. But I recall that when a college classmate came home with me for a vacation, her eyes were reproachful as she said, ‘I thought you told me it was larger than the Missis¬ sippi.’ I believed then that all the nicest people lived in Windsor ; that all the patriots of the country were of our political party — no matter which party ; and that all the good people belonged to the Presbyterian Church. No one told me so, but I believed it. I have changed my mind about some things since then. But my faith in the old school has not grown less, but more. Here we gathered abundant Greek, Latin, French and Mathematics, though we have forgotten a part; here we were taught truthfulness, to be up¬ right and honorable ; here we had our first loves, our first hopes, our first ambitions, our first dreams, and some of us our first disappointments. We owe a large debt to Windsor Academy for the solid ground¬ work of education which it laid.” I still have her little Greek Testament with the name of the Academy penciled on the fly-leaf.

That from the first she was something of a leader in the school I infer from the following anecdote. In the winter of 1867, when she was twelve, four ,';chools of Broome County held a literary contest. Each school was to prepare a set of compositions. These were to be put in charge of a delegate for arrangement and for public reading. The other schools chose teachers as delegates; Windsor chose her. She carried off the prize on all three counts : for arrangement, for reading, and for her own composition.

In 1868 a deeper impulse began. There came to the Academy a singularly inspiring teacher. Such an event has formed the turning-point of many a life, and more often than any other has been decisive in bringing about a studious career. Some one person has vitalized knowledge for us — it matters little what branch — and almost magically our vague and variable desires for learning, power, public service, become crystallized and take a shape which de¬ fies the batterings of after years. Personal influence is a commanding factor everywhere; but nowhere has it so immediate or lasting an effect as in the schools.

Alice’s teacher was a young man who, after grad¬ uating from Union College, had spent a year in Princeton Theological Seminary. Being in debt for his college education, he thought it well before ad¬ vancing further toward his profession to teach a while at Windsor. There he deeply influenced the whole school, for his character was as strong as his scholarship. But he had the discernment to single out a child in one of the lower classes, and to this large-eyed girl gave special care. Apparently from the first he knew her precocious ability. Whether she would ever have known it if he had not given her insight, I have doubted. He taught her both ac¬ curacy and enthusiasm. He made her think herself worth while. He lent her books, fashioned her tastes, talked with her, walked with her, showed her a great human being to admire, made clearer her reverence for Nature and for God, and in the two years of their acquaintance transformed her into a woman. Was it strange that he then began to love her whom he had seemed to create? I have told how she was always long in advance of her years. His sure eye knew incipient excellence, and his idealizing nature enjoyed beauty before it was blown. One gets a high impression of a man who could be so affected by au unfolding thing. On her side there seems to have been dumb wonder and obedient esteem. How could she refuse what one so exalted asked? She could comprehend little of his love. Through all he had done for her she had more easily felt a great in¬ fluence than understood its words. But if in that high region where he lived he wished her company, her merry laughter, her picture, her hand, who else could have an equal right ? With few girlish dreams and small foresight of the future, but seriously and with dignity, she consented to an engagement at fourteen.

In every deep nature thoughts of love are allied with thoughts of God. This year she joined the Presbyterian Church. It is a heroic moment for any one of us when, face to face with God, we formally announce that henceforth we are accountable to Him alone. It marks the attainment of full self-conscious¬ ness. The young soul now takes itself in charge and says, “Mine is the decision. I have chosen my way of laying hold on life.” The authority of parents is at an end, supplanted by the laws of reason, right¬ eousness, and human welfare. So at least Alice Freeman understood her crisis. To it education, love, and religion all contributed. Experiences which fall upon most of us separately and at much later periods she encountered in their collective force when she had barely entered her teens. Her scale of growth is different from the ordinary. She needed to start early, so as to pack into her forty-seven years what others hardly include in their threescore and ten.