Representative women of New England/Kate Sanborn
KATE SANBORN.— Breezy Meadows, cool, shady, a brook singing along a few steps from the piazza; cattle, sleek and contented, grazing on the rolling slopes of upland pasture; fields of growing timothy and clover, grain and corn, on every hand. A garden, blossoming full with flowers of our grandmothers' day, and new varieties also, leads into but half hides another, where grow old-fashioned and new-fangled fruits, berries, and vegetables, for the refreshment of mistress and guests.
The hand of the landscape artist has never touched the place. Rose-bushes and a few shrubs grow at will about the house, which is an old-fashioned one, standing in their midst well back from the highway. Great trees are near, but not many shadow the building, which gives out such an air of sunshine, of inbred hospitality, that one smiles before pounding a summons on the brass knocker, and keeps on smiling, for the welcome from the mistress is sincere.
This is the home of Kate Sanborn; and she loves it, and delights to entertain her friends here, both the famed and the fameless. One walks through the large sunny rooms, with books everywhere, quaint things in corners and odd places. There is a distaff full of flax in a niche half-way up the stairway, and at its head a wool wheel, banded ready for use. Coming to the dining-room, one finds a great fireplace, never changed since the olden day when the house was built, immense fire-dogs, big bellows, tongs, and shovel, made in a primitive blacksmith's shop. Many a distinguished guest has chatted and laughed by its crackling fire, many a merry group surrounded it. It is not a show place, but a home; and Miss Sanborn's hospitality is much larger than her acres. Sometimes it is a picnic party out from Boston, and always a guest in the house, often half a dozen. She is a good housekeeper and an excellent farmer.
She lives outdoors, makes her garden, and walks among the growing crops. Dogs and horses know the clear, wholesome ring of her voice, and come to be petted. Even the cows are a little more attentive when she calls. Only a womanly woman, a lady born and reared, could live her life of good cheer, literary environment, and farming.
Miss Sanborn was eminently well born. Her father was Edwin D. Sanborn, who for practically all his life held a professorship in Dartmouth College. From LS37 to 1859 he occupied with distinguished ability the chair of Latin language antl literature. In the last-named year he accepted the Latin professor- ship and presidency of Washington University, at St. Louis, returning four years later to the chair of oratory and literature at Dartmouth, which he held until he retired from active work. His was a very long, able, and distinguished career. In 1837 he married Mary A., daughter of Ezekiel Webster, of Boscawen, N.H., a niece of Daniel Webster.
Of this grandfather, Daniel says: "Ezekiel was witty, quick at repartee, his conversation full of illustrative anecdote." He was a man of wonderful presence. "In manly beauty," said Daniel, "he is inferior to no person that I ever saw." He was a model lawyer and a model man, simple and temperate.
His "Credo," which is preserved, is one of the most clear, simple, and perfect papers of its kind to be found in the annals of Christianity. All his leisure from business and his family was devoted to books. Lawyers who were in court with him called him the peer of his illustrious brother, both in law and in oratory. His death in the very prime of man- hood made an intensely dramatic scene in the old Merrimack County court-house at Concord. Concluding a remarkable plea, he stood grace- fully for a moment while the court and his brothers of the bar were silent under the spell of his speech. Then he fell slowly backwanl to the floor, and was gone. What shadows we are, what shadows we pursue!" exclaimed George Sullivan, the illustrious Attorney-gen- eral of New Hampshire. He died April 10, 1829.
Mrs. Webster lived to great age, a dainty, lovely woman, dying January 31, 1896.
Miss Sanborn was educated at home by her father almost entirely, though tutors in math- ematics were employed for her. Her drill in Latin commenced at eight years with studying a Latin booklet, and continued till she left home to support herself. It comprised more than a college course. This year after year of translating, scanning, wortl selection and phrasing, was a wonderful training in language. She was obliged to connuit to memory some portion of prose or poetry daily, and also to describe something in writing. Then followetl apt quotations at the tea-table, later a good anecdote. These teachings and tasks of mind and memory were not dull drill, but part of every-day, social family life.
W'hile such instruction set the course of her career, it accomplished a thousand times more, giving a splendid memory, ready for use. Daily writing under skilled criticism, studying the light and shade of word and expression, the use of synonyms, pointed the " inevitable nib " to her pen and also to her speech, so adding another powet to naturally great mental en- dowment. It was the love of her father and her love for him which was ever the essential feature of this instruction: there was in it no drudgery for teacher or pupil.
At eleven she earned three dollars for a little story her father sent to a child's paper, and thus began a brilliant career successful beyond most and still continuing.
The brightness of Miss Sanborn's books is like sunlight glinting clear brooks and lighting their depths. There is nothing tempestuous or gusty about her composition, yet it is full of anecdote, spirit, wit — keen thrusts in plenty, but without spite, worded to a nicety, but never shorn of strength. She inherited a love for teaching, and began that employment in the ell of her father's house, then went with him to St. Louis, where she taught in Mary Institute, connected with Washington Univer- sity, at a salary of five hundred dollars per year, of which she was very proud. After, she taught elocution in Packer Institute, Brooklyn, so well that Henry Ward Beecher said, "There used to be a few prize pumpkins here, but now each pupil is doing good work." At the .same time she gave twenty lectures in New York City each season upon such subjects as "Bachelor Authors," " Punch as a Reformer," "Literary Gossips," "Spinster Authors of England," and so forth.
In its early days Smith College called her to teach English literature, and here she created the "Round Table Series of Literature," once published and used by many teachers. No mortal can go over this collection of complete and exact tables without knowing English letters correctly nor look at one diagram five minutes unprofitably. It shows marvellous power of concentration and "monumental drudgery." During her three years at Smith Miss Sanborn lectured in Springfield, at Mrs. Terhune's, and in many towns near the college. Leaving Smith, she went on a lecturing tour through the A^'est, and met success everywhere. The exact knowledge, newness of thought and subjects, elegant phrasing, and keen wit of this gifted, warm-hearted New England woman touched the Westerners. Great and enthusiastic audiences greeted her. Prairie folk were proud of this deputy from Eastern home people, and they made her stay among them a notable event.
Returning, Miss Sanborn began teaching in New York City, and also lecturing, first in Mrs. Stokes's parlor, till, outgrowing it, she moved to rooms of the Young Women's Christian Association, and finally to those in Dr. Howard Crosby's church, speaking to audiences that crowded them. This work was reported weekly in the Tribune, World, Sun, and Times. For several years she reviewed books for the Club Room Department in The Galaxy. Dr. J. G. Holland gave her the Bric-a-brac Department in Scribner's, and at this time she met ever week a class of married women at Mrs. Holland's, condensing and discussing new books. Meanwhile she was an individual and potent factor in New York social and literary life. At Mrs. John Sherwood's—or in any place where wit and wisdom gathered—she was at home, unpretending, picturesque, humorous.
She has written over forty lectures, and read them in many places in New York and the West and all over New England. Calendars are her recreation: they run right off her pen, or are collected from other penmen. "Our Calendar" gives to each date a few lines from an American author. Then we have "Cupid's," "Children's," "Sunshine," "Rainbow," "Starlight," "Indian Summer" calendars; and, just so long as Kate Sanborn exists in the flesh, they will keep coming. Certainly that is our hope.
Club work is outside her kingdom, but she was the first president of New Hampshire's Daughters, an association of women born in New Hampshire, but living in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Hers was a notable administration, and brought to the organization a prestige which remains. Rules might fail, but the brilliant president never. She governed a merry company, many of them famous, but she was chief. They loved her, and that affection and pride still exist.
She is with her sister, Mrs. Paul Babcock, at Montclair, N.J., or in New York, some part of each winter; but her home is at Breezy Meadows, Metcalf, Mass., where several years since she "adopted" an abandoned farm, which later she deserted for a farm only a short distance beyond it, on the opposite side of the road, where she settled down to agriculture, hospitality, and authorship. In each of these industries she excels, most of all in pen work.
Life is beautiful to Kate Sanborn, the homes of friends delightful; but Breezy Meadows, with its cattle, horses, and dogs, its busy outdoor life, its growing crops and old-fashioned flowers and hen-coops, its century-old fireplace and friends beside it, is ever the land of her heart's desire. Her thoughts are transfixed on the point of a sharp and fearless pen.
Miss Sanborn has published "Home Pictures of English Poets" (commendations called out by this one volume would make a book. College men and students of literature point to it as a fascinating study of facts, holding a permanent ])lace of its own); "Wit of Women" ("Its play [of wit] is like that of summer lightning on the clouds, so quick, varied, and irradiant," writes Frances Willard); "Adopting an Abandoned Farm"; "Abandoning an Adopted Farm"; "A Truthful Woman in Southern California"; "'My Literary Zoo"; "Favorite Lectures"; "Vanity and Insanity Shadows of Genius." Not a dull volume or lecture from this rarely gifted writer, and every book does one good. If sentences are picturesque, witty, they are also lessons in excellent English. How well this woman was equipped for her work, how healthy and sunny, strong and laughable, instructive and amusing, is the product of her mind! And she is still busy, preparing two new books, writing regular book chats for one paper and reviews for the National Magazine.