Representative women of New England/Harriet P. Spofford
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD, successful author in prose and verse, was born in Calais, Me., April 3, 1835, the eldest child of Joseph N. and Sarah (Bridges) Prescott. Her father, Joseph N. Prescott, was a son of William Pepperell Prescott and his wife, Harriet de Les Dernier, whose father, Peter F. C. de Les Dernier, was born in Halifax, N.S., of Swiss parents.
Henry Prescott, father of William P. Prescott, was a lineal descendant, in the fourth generation, of John Prescott, an early settler of Lancaster, Mass. Mary Newmarch Prescott, wife of Henry, was a daughter of Joseph and Dorothy (Pepperell) Newmarch, a grand-daughter of William* Pepperell, of Kitt^ry, and niece of Sir William^ Pepperell, the victor of Louisburg.
The second Prescott ancestor, Captain Jonathan,^ father of the Rev. Benjamin Prescott and grandfather of his son Henry, named above, married Elizabeth Hoar, sister of Daniel Hoar, remote ancestor of Senator George F. Hoar. Mrs. Spofford's mother was a daughter of John Bridges, of Calais, Me.
Mi-s. Rose Terry Cooke, in bygone years a fellow-worker with the pen, thus wrote of Harriet Prescott in her girlhood in Maine: A "lithe, active child, full of quaint wit and keen questioning, she ran wild through her earlier years in the pure air and fragrant breath of pine forests and sea breezes, laying the foundation of her exceptional health and. strength." At the age of fourteen Harriet Prescott went to Newburyport to live with an aunt and attend the Putnam Free School, "a remarkably good school," as it has been described, "kepi by William G. Wells, a celebrated teacher." Her native talent soon manifested itself: she received the first prize, in a series instituted by Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Professor Alpheus Crosby, "for a very daring and original essay on Hamlet, written at sixteen." She further attained an enviable distinction and popularity among her classmates by writing several dramas, which were enacted in the school exhibitions. After her graduation from the Putnam School she continued her studies for a time at Pinkerton Academy in Derry, N.H., where her widowed mother and the younger children were then living. Before long the family returned to Newburyport.
Not admiring friends and schoolmates alone, but judicious counsellors, among them Colonel Higginson, encouraged her literary aspirations. Sketches, stories, and verses from her pen found their way into print, and probably brought money into her purse.
Her first contribution to the Atlantic Monthly, "In a Cellar," appearing in February, 1859, is remembered by one whose opinion is of value as "an ingenious and amusing story, well told." The same early reader and critic adds: "Her tale of *The Amber Gods,' published soon afterward in the same magazine, was of a higher and larger scope, full of power and passion. Scarcely less powerful was a sketch named ’Circumstance.' These stories at once gained for the author a high place among writers of fiction."
She continued to use her pen. To quote again from Mrs. Cooke: "Under her quiet aspect, wistful regard, and shy manner, lay a soul full of imagination and passion and a nature that revelled in the use of words to express this fire and force. In her hands the English language became sonorous, gorgeous, burning."
In 1865 Harriet Prescott was married to Richard S. Spofford, of Newburyport. Joy in the birth of a child in the ensuing year was followed a few months later by sorrow for its loss. With the exception of some time spent in Washington, D.C., the home of Mrs. Spofford has been on Deer Ishind, between Newburyport and Amesbury. Here Mr. Spofford died in August, 1888. Several winter seasons of recent years Mrs. Spofford has passed in Boston. In the sunmier of 1908 she went to Europe with her sister, her niece, and her ward, sailing on the same steamer with her friend, Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton, in her annual visit to England. The present winter (1903-1904) she is in Paris.
Mrs. Spofford as a writer is exceptionally happy in her estimates and appreciations of other women authors and their work: witness, for example, the biographical sketch appearing over her signature in another i)art of this book, her criticism of the poems of Anne Whitney in the North American Review for 1860, and her article on "The Author of Charles Auchester," in the Atlantic Monthly, June, 1862.
Among her books may here be mentioned, not to give an exhaustive list: "Sir Rohan's Ghost," "Azarian," "New England Legends," "Art Decoration," "The Servant Question," "Hester Stanley at .Saint Mark's," "Poems," "In Titian's Garden," "Ballads about Authors," "The Children of the Valley" (1901), "The Great Procession" (1902).
Her most recent work in the Atlantic (November and December, 1903), "The Story of the Queen," a short novel in two chapters, is one that could hardly have been written before the dawn of the twentieth century, and would never have been written, just so felicitously and out of the heart, by any other pen than that of Mrs. Spofford, idealist.
"I read it with delight," says Mrs. Moulton, referring to this story, and adding these words to emphasize her admiration for Mrs. Spofford as a poet as well as a story writer: "There is a far-reaching grandeur of thought and imagination in her poetic work. To lyric grace and charm she adds breadth of view and nobility of conception. She is neighbor to the stars. The blind poet, Philip Bourke Marston, was a great admirer of her work, as are many other English readers of high degree, among them the professor of poetry at the University of Oxford. She is a poet of deep emotion, of far-reaching vision, of splendid power."
But beyond all the literary graces and achievements of Mrs. Spofford—and it is a pleasant note to close with — this same gifted contemporary and intimate friend appreciates "her noble womanhood, her unselfish devotion to her family and her friends, her loyalty to all high and noble ideals."