A true teacher; Mary Mortimer, a memoir

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Preface

The closing decade of the nineteenth century has no more distinguishing characteristic than the enlarged opportunities which it offers to women. The education which enables women to enter upon these opportunities has been the preparatory work of the whole century. Its sources are in rills which appeared, mostly in New England, in the first quarter of the century, and which gathered volume in the second quarter, notably in the opening of Oberlin, a co-educational college, in 1833, and of Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary in 1837. The third quarter witnessed greatly increased growth and momentum, by reason of the founding of Vassar and other colleges for women which approach the standard of the best colleges for men ; and the fourth quarter, not yet completed, has seen the remarkable enlargement of this far-reaching movement.

The great world-story of this new factor in history must be written in succeeding centuries. At present, its phenomena are attracting chief attention. The present is also the time when contributions to the study of the movement must be secured. Some of its early phases are of surpassing interest and importance,

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PREFACE.

Such, it is believed, is the story told for the first time in this volume. The work of Mary Mortimer in Christian Education intertwined as it is with that of Catherine Beecher, has had no superior in the difficult and delicate work of awakening women to their duties and responsibilities without undue emphasis on their rights and privileges. It was work which found its appropriate field in the best intellect and the highest moral nature. It was never noisy nor self-asserting, but quiet, operative, intense, unique.

The material for the chapter on the early history of the higher education of women has been gathered with painstaking from many sources which have been recognized and acknowledged as far as practicable.

That the volume may promote the true interests of woman and of humanity, and commend itself especially to the homes, the mothers, the daughters, and the schools of the better day in whose dawn we already stand, is the motive which has led to its preparation. M. b. n.

Part I. The Preparation

Chapter. Page.

I. Childhood and Youth 3

II. Education and Conversion 12

III. Earl\ Teaching . , 27

Summary 67

Part II. The Life Work

I. The New West 73

II. Catherine Beecher — Education 99

III. Miss Mortimer and Miss Beecher 115

IV. The Milwaukee School 124

V. Rest and Change 171

VI. Baraboo Female Seminary 188

VII. Second Administration at Milwaukee College. 231

VIII. Willow Glen — Last Days 281

Part III. Retrospect

I. Miss Mortimer and her Work 295

II. Tributes 315

Part I. The Preparation

Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree — how its

stem trembled first, Till it passed the kid's lips, the stag's antler ; then

safely outburst The fan-branches all round ; and thou mindest when

these, too, in turn, Broke abloom, and the palm-tree seemed perfect."

— Browning's ' * Saul. "

"To study the lives, to meditate on the sorrows, to commune with the thoughts of the great and holy men and women of this rich world, is a sacred discipline, which deserves at least to rank as the fore-court of the temple of true worship." — James Martineau.

Chapter I. Childhood And Youth

Amid the green fields and majestic trees of southwestern England, surrounded by rich rolling meadows which are bounded by hedgerows, shaded by grand old oaks and spotted with grazing cattle, lies the town of Trowbridge in Wiltshire. Ten miles to the northwest is the city of Bath, with a history which spans the Christian era ; twenty miles to the southeast, across the plain of Stonehenge, the spire of Salisbury Cathedral pierces the sky. About as far to the southwest, the finest group of ecclesiastical buildings in England clusters about the wells of living water which have given their name to cathedral, city, and bishopric, and the Abbey of Glastonbury, the earliest seat of English history and Christianity, lifts its ruined and ivy-mantled walls above the traditional burial-place of Joseph of Arimathea and of King Arthur.

Trowbridge is to-day a woolen manufacturing, railroad town of twenty thousand inhabitants, with the villas of prosperous tradesmen adorning its suburbs. Seventy-five years ago it was an ancient village where clear west country heads and stout English hearts wrought with vital strength and

MARY MORTIMER.

power, in patience, after the manner of the

fathers. There the established church of St.

James reared its venerable walls, within which the poet Crabbe,

"Though nature's sternest painter, yet the best/'

officiated as rector, and there, too, the great renaissance of religious life had made its home in a stone chapel for the worship of the people called Methodists.

It was the England which had felt in great earthquake shocks the throes of the French Revolution, and over which had surged a refluent wave of conservatism ; which had marveled at the sudden splendors of the First Empire across the Channel, and shuddered at Marengo and Austerlitz and Leipsic and blazing Moscow ; which had buckled on its armor and gone forth with Nelson at Trafalgar, with Wellington to the Peninsula. It was the England in which women sat by lonely hearths and wept for husbands, sons, and brothers who fell last year on the field of Waterloo, the England which scarcely yet breathed freely in the knowledge that he who had overwhelmed Europe in blood was safe on his rock at St. Helena. Great debt hung heavy upon the neck of Britain, and from Land's End to John O'Groat's there was severe agricultural distress, to be followed soon by corresponding depression in trade and manufactures.

De Quincy has well said : —

THE PREPARATION.

"The agitation, the frenzy, the sorrow of the times reacted upon the human intellect, and forced men into meditation. Their own nature was held up before them in a sterner form. They were compelled to contemplate an ideal of man far more colossal than is brought forward in the tranquil aspects of society : and they were often engaged, whether they would or not, with the elementary problems of social philosophy. Mere danger forced a man into thoughts which else were foreign to his habits. Mere necessity of action forced him to decide."

It was in England at such a time that Mary Mortimer was born, at Trowbridge, Dec. 2, 1816. Her parents, William Mortimer and Mary (Pierce), his wife, with a name reaching back to the time of the Plantagenets, were plain and simple folk, and bequeathed to their children, along with their name, a most honest and honorable character. Loyal English souls they were, too,- judging from the historic baptismal name, Edmund, bestowed on the eldest son, while the eldest daughter bore that of the Princess Charlotte, whose untimely death plunged all England into heart-felt grief before these Mortimers had left their native land.

Mary was the sixth child and fourth daughter in a family of seven children. Before she had completed her fifth year, the family emigrated to America. The Trowbridge home, on the site of the ancient castle-hill at the head of Court street, surrounded by trees of the father's planting, was

MARY MORTIMER.

not, however, sold ; and when the family arrived at Bristol, that port whence so many English emigrants had ventured forth to the New World, the eldest son, a boy of sixteen, refused to go. The family remained at Bristol for a week, when the father, wisely yielding to the manly desire of the son to remain and make his own way in the land of his birth, returned to Trowbridge with him and arranged home and business for the youth. Then, though the mother's heart lingered pathetically with her boy, the family sailed for New York.

It was long before the days of railways and ocean-steamers, and the voyage, in a sailing-vessel, was one of weeks which lengthened into months. What impression the sublimity of the sea made upon the young child's susceptible nature we do not know, for her memory did not retain it. It was one of her keen regrets that in twice crossing the ocean in mature life, the "malady of the sea" kept her from enjoying the sight of its billows and its storms.

The land of her birth was but a dim memory to Mary until she revisited it half a century afterward. On her journey from Liverpool to London, in 1871, she wrote : ' ' Four thousand miles from home and from you, I bethink myself this is my native land, the home of my father and mother of blessed memory to their children. A dim, vague memory of learning the large letters in the large old Bible I have in Milwaukee, under the guidance of my

THE PKEPARA TION.

mother's hand, seems to rise from the past, — the far past, when King George Fourth, of not blessed memory reigned over these islands. As I muse, seeing the beautiful and cultivated landscape before me, and remembering the hardships of my mother's life in America, my heart aches for her."

The family lived at first in the city of New York, where the seventh and youngest child, John, was born. They afterward removed to the central part of the State, much of which was then almost a wilderness. In Cayuga County they took up their abode, and finally settled on a farm, near the village of Waterloo, and not far from Geneva. Amid this beautiful lake-region of central New York, Mary's intense love of nature was nourished by congenial influences, and perhaps she first here became conscious of that English preference for country over city life which she often emphatically expressed in later years. ■

1 ' Her childhood was marked by many peculiarities that no one seemed fully to understand," writes a relative, ' ' and she was not a popular or pleasing child. She seldom joined in the plays of other children, but sought, in such books as she could find, her chief recreation. A wonderful depth of heart and mind was concealed by a modest and diffident exterior to an extent often most painful to herself and perplexing to her friends."

After a few years the eldest son and brother joined his parents in America, bringing with him a

MA R Y MOR TIMER.

young English wife. Not long after the son's arrival, in the summer of 1829, both the parents were stricken down with one of the fevers incident to a new country, and within the brief space of a single week, death removed, first the mother, and then the father of the young family.

Mary, a mature child of twelve years, seemed to realize fully the awful nature of this stroke. To the thoughtful brain, God had joined a passionately affectionate nature which was now overwhelmed in hopeless sorrow. Her chief earthly ties had been sundered by a swift and sudden blow. She stood orphaned in the world, her heart crushed, blindly, instinctively groping for help she knew not how to find. Friends who heard her refer, in later years, to this bereavement, — not with many words but always with the deepest feeling, — can never forget the impression of its bitter agony.

The tendrils of her loving nature, thus rudely torn from their natural support, twined themselves round her older sister, Sibyl, whom, to the end of life, she regarded with the utmost devotion, and who possessed a character worthy of such rare affection. Her brother, John, five years younger than herself, also shared regally in the wealth of her affectionate heart. Possessing uncommon strength of regard for all her near kindred, she yet bestowed her utmost love upon this sister and brother. In her strong womanhood, after family ties had bound them to their own for many years,

THE PREPARATION.

and her life had been filled with cares and trials in a widely diverging path, she was crushed to the earth by their death, and out of these great sorrows she rose up to lay garlands of touching remembrance and imperishable affection upon the grave of each.

The calamity which had deprived the family of both parents left the eldest son and brother, Edmund, chief counsellor among the children, and guardian of their slender patrimony. Mary's share she wished to transmute into material for feeding her unbounded craving for knowledge, but her guardian, with true English thrift, refused his permission. She, however, attended the common schools, and for a short time the Academy at Auburn, N. Y. , where her eldest brother, after a time, took up his residence, and in whose family she found a home. At the age of sixteen she began to teach a country school, but the same qualities which had marked her childhood interfered with her apparent success, and her deep, original nature not easily falling into the educational traditions of the time, she relinquished the work. Not far from this time Mary and her sister, Sibyl, found for some months a most congenial abode in a Quaker family in Scipio, N. Y. As the better educational advantages for which she deeply longed were denied her, she devoted all the time she could win from other duties to private study. She has been heard to refer to her home study of geometry in these years, with the book propped open behind the coffee-mill, at which she would glance occasionally as she went to and fro in household duties, reciting to herself every morning the demonstrations from the beginning as far as she had learned. The home in which she found herself at Scipio was presided over by a sweet Quaker matron who in quietness of spirit brought about great results with small outlay. The favorite motto from Goethe of Mary's mature life, 4 'Without haste, without rest," found brightest illustration in this cherished friend of her youth, and hundreds of Miss Mortimer's pupils learned lessons of value from references to "Aunt Susy" long after the serene Quaker face was under the sod.

The marriage of her sister Sibyl, who became the wife of Mr. L. S. Bannister, was a great trial to the youthful Mary, second only to the terrible stroke which had deprived her of her parents. Her intense affection could brook no rival in the regard of the idolized sister, but was, perhaps, not so much the morbid passion that it may have seemed to those who could not understand the strangely intense young girl, as the exponent of a great nature, with wonderful powers of thought and emotion, and which was all the more tempestuous, because its fastidious shrinking found few friends fitted to call it forth — perhaps none perfectly so.

During all these years of unguided study and struggle she was wandering amid the desolations of religious unbelief. At times speaking of the great problems of life and destiny to her brothers and sisters, some of whom shared the same skeptical tendencies, more often pondering these things silently in her heart, she was deeply unhappy.

Thus sorely in need of help, of sympathy and guidance, she reached the age when she could legally take possession of her share of the paternal estate, and turned with the elasticity of the bent bow toward her long-desired object, the attainment of a better education. In the year 1837 sne entered the seminary for young ladies under the care of Mrs. Ricord in Geneva, N. Y., with no very definite aim beyond the longing to gratify her insatiable craving for knowledge.

Chapter II. Education And Conversion

At the time when Miss Mortimer entered the Geneva Seminary, the principal was temporarily absent, and the school was under the charge of Miss Clarissa Thurston, associate principal. Miss Mary A. Bradley, a young lady near Miss Mortimer's own age, was also a teacher there. The friendships she at once formed with these teachers were most influential to the end of life. After an unbroken intimacy with Miss Mortimer for forty years, Miss Thurston wrote : ' ' The years at Geneva were, in many respects, the most important and decisive of her life," and a family friend writes, " It was at Geneva that she first began really to live."

It has been said that at Geneva Seminary Miss Mortimer went through a four years' course of study in two years. Miss Thurston says : "In two years she did acquire a thorough knowledge of the principal branches in the course, and besides studying, in the second year she taught several classes. Often she sat up until after midnight and rose before day to pursue her studies. She entered at the middle of a term and took up Chemistry, and Mental Science, Latin, and I think, Paley's Natural

Theology. She recited alone in Latin and made rapid strides. In the other studies she was soon altogether in advance of those who had been pursuing them during the whole term. The next term she took up Algebra, Evidences of Christianity, Ancient History, Astronomy, and continued her Latin. Later she studied Rhetoric, Moral Philosophy, a History of Modern Europe in three volumes, Geometry, Butler's Analogy, and some time, I hardly know when, she acquired considerable knowledge of French. We gave no diploma to a graduating pupil, but a certificate stating the branches she had studied. History, Mathematics, and Metaphysics were absorbing studies to her. " These three lines of study continued to be Miss Mortimer's pre-eminent choices through life, and her remarkable attainments in the first, and wonderful analytic and constructive powers in the last, marked most truly the scope and grasp of her mind.

The friendships formed at Geneva with her teachers, and the large liberty for heart and mind afforded by the atmosphere of this Christian school were of the greatest service to the unformed but rapidly unfolding character of this remarkable pupil, and made of Geneva a heart-home which had never before been found by the orphaned girl. As leafy verdure in a backward spring-time shrinks within the cover of the buds from the cold winds, giving no sign of life until the warm breezes blow, and then bursts forth almost to maturity in a day, all the more vigorously because held back so long, so this shrinking soul soon clothed itself in the garments of praise when congenial sympathies and influences were at work about it.

At the time of her going to Geneva, Miss Mortimer's burning thirst for knowledge was second only to her intense spiritual struggles, She had by nature a strong tendency to question any system which challenged her belief until she had followed, link by link, its entire chain of evidence, pausing at each until a full measure of light shone upon it. She was known among her schoolmates as an infidel and condemned by certain ones, who fancied themselves superior in faith, because she did not believe in Christianity. This she once said in after years, ' ' was unspeakably cruel. I longed in agony to believe, and I could not." But under the quick sympathy and the clear teachings of her instructors she gradually came to the light.

Miss Thurston writes of this period : —

"One sultry morning, July 14, 1837, among the group of young ladies assembled for the opening exercises of the school, I observed a stranger-pupil, her countenance attractive from its being lighted up with intelligence, and indicating a maturity of mind that quite distinguished her from others of the youthful audience.

"When I conferred with her as to the studies she wished to pursue, I found she had made good progress and was desirous of taking up branches in the higher department. She was quite sure that she could attend to more studies than seemed to me possible, the classes being so far advanced at that time in the term. She was plain in her appearance and taciturn in her manners, but her speaking face and her readiness in recitation soon rendered her conspicuous among her classmates. Her teachers were much impressed with her superior mental endowments, and with her faithful attention to every school duty

" Much interest being thus awakened in regard to our new pupil, we were led to seek the secret springs that gave direction to her course of action. We found much that was pleasing, — an intense desire for knowledge, a fine literary taste, a delight in delving into foundation principles, a mind not satisfied to take upon trust the conclusions of others, but intent upon arriving at the truth by pursuing a train of reasoning for itself.

"The change in her character wrought at Geneva was remarkable. In the pride of her intellect she had built for herself a fine structure of morality upon which she purposed to model her character without the aid of Divine power or the teaching of Revelation. In this state of mind she entered the class in Moral Philosophy, and that in Evidences of Christianity. She became convinced of the truth that the Bible is a revelation from God, and that a religion not based upon this cannot save the soul. . . . The Gospel plan of Salvation was unfolded to her. She accepted it, not without great struggles, but at last, in true humility of spirit, became a believer in Jesus. . . . With all the ardor of her nature and the power of her intellect, she entered into the service of her Master, never resting, until bidden to come up higher and enter into the joy of her Lord."

The anniversary of the Sabbath day, Dec. 31, 1837, which was to her the climax of decisive change, was ever after a time of abiding memories and deepest gratitude. To the friend who stood nearest her at this crucial hour, she wrote, eleven years afterward : —

" Years ago there was a Sabbath, like this the last day of the year. On the morning of that day, which was made bright and beautiful by the sunlight of heaven, walked a lone child of earth to an earthly temple. Lonely she was in spirit; none sympathized in or knew the feelings which worked at her heart, which fevered her brow, — lonely most of all had she been in the conviction which for long weary years had pressed upon her that for her there dwelt no Friend above, whose existence, Eternity, and whose nature, Love, could satisfy the deepest, loftiest yearnings of her nature. She had been proud and self-willed, and had looked to her own understanding for guidance until ' darkness which might be felt' had settled upon her ; her best, dearest, earthly friends lay silent beneath the clods of the valley. No wonder that earth to her had become a dreary waste, that she was desolate, oh ! how desolate. Glad faces and beating hearts were all about her, the earth in its varied beauty was spread out around her, and the glorious canopy of heaven was over her. She saw it, felt it all, but only the more fully to realize her desolation. . . . She could not reach the glorious Creator of whom

THE PREPARATION. Yl nature in her speaking beauty, whispered. She could only cry, ' O Thou Lofty One that inhabitest eternity, wilt Thou not hear a worm of earth and reveal Thyself to her?* But pride and self were still unconquered, and the darkness only grew darker. . . . With no Bible, for it was but 'foolishness and a stumbling-block ' to her, with no God, no Saviour, she had stoically resolved to nerve herself for the conflict of life, to gather any flowers she might find in the dreary way, and to be content until the grim monster, Death, to her vision an Angel of Light, should come to her relief.

" But that sunlit Sabbath a new light was shining upon her, 'a light which the darkness comprehended not/ and such a tumult was excited within her that she scarcely realized her bodily existence.

"The Only-Wise had left her to the chosen guidance of her own wisdom until she was convinced by bitter and undeniable experience that it was but an ignis fatuus, which had only bewildered and dazzled her, . . . that virtue, even, a dim abstraction which she had idolized, she could not attain. Thus was she humbled and fitted to appreciate the force of the evidence which, faithfully and earnestly, had at length been set before her, to prove that He who made all things had revealed Himself to the children of men, that He would hear their cry and give to them bread from heaven and water from the river of life, — and in a gush of intense overpowering emotion, she was pondering the question now pressing upon her, < Can it be that the book I have so despised and derided is the word of the Holy One ? that He has condescended to speak and offer Himself to be a Friend to such an one as I, and I have stopped my ears and blinded my eyes to the blessed truth ?

" She dared not believe that He had done all this; she trembled at the thought that she had made such a return. What a history is the human heart ! Who can portray it ? That lone wanderer from her Father's house, in amazement and consternation, mentally stood still. It seemed as if some miracle would be wrought before her to settle the startling question. She unconsciously looked to see ' a strong wind rend the mountain or an earthquake shake the earth, or a fire break out before her,' but all was calm and unmoved. Her heart alone, as she went to that earthly temple, beat so tumultuously that she scarcely heard the preacher's voice. She was unconscious of the 'still small voice' that was whispering to her, and that God was in the voice. The service closed. Mechanically she walked with the multitude toward her abode, when lo ! thou didst appear before her, thou who wast the?i her friend, thou who hadst gently, kindly, but earnestly and faithfully plead with her for the truth of God ; thou who hadst almost convinced her that there was 'balm in Gilead and a physician there ' to heal all maladies, that she need no longer wander lone and desolate on earth. ... In silence ye walked together until in low and earnest tones thou didst inquire, 'M., have you yet resolved to be a Christian ? ' Little didst thou know how that question thrilled through every nerve of her to whom it was addressed.

" ' No,' she said to herself, ' I have not, but if I give this answer, I shall be asked, why ? What can I, shall I say ? This friend, kind and true as she is, knows not my difficulties ; she cannot appreciate them ; I cannot utter them.' The obligation to be a Christian if she might be one, she had long seen and felt, it pressed as the weight of a world upon her now, — but then, perhaps \t ^2,% not true, — and there arose before her the objections which for long years had been gathering strength within her, and darkness was again settling over her, when athwart that view, clear as if the light of Heaven shone upon it, came the arguments which so faithfully thou hadst set forth for the truth of Jesus, and she felt < None can refute them, ' ' the Bible must be true. ' Still a lingering doubt remained, a doubt which boded ruin. < It may not be, and then, if I should make this resolution, I could not keep it, and it is folly and wickedness to make and break vows.' Such was the specious plea which well-nigh overcame her, but in that hour of fearful conflict between darkness and light, between the flesh and the spirit, the Good One sent his angel to whisper, * If thou resolvest to do what thy clearest convictions show to be thy highest duty, thou canst incur no guilt from this, . . . fear not.' And that heart quivering on the line which separates light from darkness, life from death, with one earnest prayer to an ' unknown God ' for strength, with the energy of despair and hope combined, threw itself toward the point whence it believed light would come, ... as its possessor turned to thee, still silent by her side, and answered, ' / have resolved. '

"On this, the anniversary of that day so dark, yet so fraught with blessings, that twilight of her existence, she turns to thee with unutterable emotions. . . . She yearns to express to thee the deepest gratitude of her heart for thy faithful labors to lead her to the light and truth. She would tell thee, if words could utter it, howbright at length has arisen upon her the sun of which thou dost so beautifully reflect the rays ; how darkness has become light and the crooked places straight before her. She would describe how precious has become the Being whom then she knew not, how like hues of living light His word appears. At the foot of the cross the problem of life has been solved, truth has been found, the spirit healed of its maladies, and a glorious immortality opened to the ravished vision of the once desolate wanderer. Thou who didst guide her to that cross wilt pardon the gush of emotion which impels her once more to obtrude herself upon thee, and the incident of which this day is commemorative, and which is stamped in burning characters on her memory. . . . May He who in mercy sent thee to her in her hour of need, shed upon thee the richest blessings, may He lead thee into the green pastures and beside the still waters of his love, may 'His candle' ever enlighten thy dwelling. May He send his angels to strew flowers of beauty, of peace, and love in thy pathway on earth, and at last open to thee the portals of everlasting blessedness."