LIII Lydia Sigourney
(Born 1791 — Died 1865.)
The Lesson of a Useful and Beautiful Life
“A beautiful life I have had. Not more trial than was for my good. Countless blessings beyond expectation or desert.... Behind me stretch the green pastures and still waters by which I have been led all my days. Around is the lingering of hardy flowers and fruits that bide the Winter. Before stretches the shining shore.”
These are the words of Mrs. Sigourney, written near the close of a life of seventy-four years. All who have much observed human life will agree that the rarest achievement of man or woman on this earth is a solid and continuous happiness. There are very few persons past seventy who can look back upon their lives, and sincerely say that they would willingly live their lives over again. Mrs. Sigourney, however, was one of the happy few.
Lydia Huntley, for that was her maiden name, was born at Norwich, Connecticut, on the first of September, 1791. Her father was Ezekiel Huntley, an exceedingly gentle, affectionate man, of Scotch parentage, who had as little of a Yankee in him as any man in Connecticut. Unlike a Yankee, he never attempted to set up in business for himself, but spent the whole of the active part of his life in the service of the man to whom he was apprenticed in his youth. His employer was a druggist of great note in his day, who made a large fortune in his business, and built one of the most elegant houses in the State. On his retirement from business his old clerk continued to reside under his roof, and to assist in the management of his estate; and, even when he died, Mr. Huntley did not change his abode, but remained to conduct the affairs of the widow. In the service of this family he saved a competence for his old age, and he lived to eighty-seven, a most happy, serene old man, delighting chiefly in his garden and his only child. He survived as late as 1839.
Owing to the peculiar relations sustained by her father to a wealthy family—living, too, in a wing of their stately mansion, and having the free range of its extensive gardens—Lydia Huntley enjoyed in her youth all the substantial advantages of wealth, without encountering its perils. She was surrounded by objects pleasing or beautiful, but no menial pampered her pride or robbed her of her rightful share of household labor. As soon as she was old enough to toddle about the grounds, her father delighted to have her hold the trees which he was planting, and drop the seed into the little furrows prepared for it, and never was she better pleased than when giving him the aid of her tiny fingers. Her parents never kept a servant, and she was brought up to do her part in the house. Living on plain, substantial fare, inured to labor, and dressed so as to allow free play to every limb and muscle, she laid in a stock of health, strength, and good temper that lasted her down to the last year of her life. She never knew what dyspepsia was. She never possessed a costly toy, nor a doll that was not made at home, but she passed a childhood that was scarcely anything but joy. She was an only child, and she was the pet of two families, yet she was not spoiled.
She was one of those children who take naturally to all kinds of culture. Without ever having had a child’s book, she sought out, in the old-fashioned library of the house, everything which a child could understand. Chance threw a novel in her way (“Mysteries of Udolpho”), which she devoured with rapture, and soon after, when she was but eight years of age, she began to write a novel. Poetry, too, she read with singular pleasure, never weary of repeating her favorite pieces. But the passion of her childhood was painting pictures. Almost in her infancy she began to draw with a pin and lilac-leaf, and advanced from that to slate and pencil, and, by and by, to a lead-pencil and backs of letters. When she had learned to draw pretty well, she was on fire to paint her pictures, but was long puzzled to procure the colors. Having obtained in some way a cake of gamboge, she begged of a washerwoman a piece of indigo, and by combining these two ingredients she could make different shades of yellow, blue, and green. The trunks of her trees she painted with coffee-grounds, and a mixture of India ink and indigo answered tolerably well for sky and water. She afterwards discovered that the pink juice of chokeberry did very well for lips, cheeks, and gay dresses. Mixed with a little indigo it made a very bad purple, which the young artist, for the want of a better, was obliged to use for her royal robes. In sore distress for a better purple she squeezed the purple flowers of the garden and the field for the desired tint, but nothing answered the purpose, until, at dinner, one day, she found the very hue for which she longed in the juice of a currant and whortleberry tart. She hastened to try it, and it made a truly gorgeous purple, but the sugar in it caused it to come off in flakes from her kings and emperors, leaving them in a sorry plight. At length, to her boundless, inexpressible, and lasting joy, all her difficulties were removed by her father giving her a complete box of colors.
At school she was fortunate in her teachers. One of them was the late Pelatiah Perit, who afterward won high distinction as a New York merchant and universal philanthropist. Her first serious attempts at practical composition were translations from Virgil, when she was fourteen years of age. After leaving school she studied Latin with much zeal under an aged tutor, and, later in life, she advanced far enough in Hebrew to read the Old Testament, with the aid of grammar and dictionary. To these grave studies her parents added a thorough drill in dancing. Often, when her excellent mother observed that she had sat too long over her books, she would get her out upon the floor of their large kitchen, and then, striking up a lively song, set her dancing until her cheeks were all aglow.
This studious and happy girl, like other young people, had her day-dream of the future. It was to keep a school. This strange ambition, she tells us in her autobiography, she feared to impart to her companions, lest they should laugh at her; and she thought even her parents would think her arrogant if she mentioned it to them. The long-cherished secret was revealed to her parents at length. Her mother had guessed it before, but her father was exceedingly surprised. Neither of them, however, made any objection, and one of the pleasantest apartments of their house was fitted up for the reception of pupils. She was then a delicate-looking girl of about eighteen, and rather undersized. As soon as her desks were brought home by the carpenter, the ambitious little lady went around to the families of the place, informed them of her intention, and solicited their patronage at the established rate of three dollars a quarter for each pupil. She was puzzled and disappointed at the coolness with which her project was received. Day after day she tramped the streets of Norwich, only to return at night without a name upon her catalogue. She surmised, after a time, that parents hesitated to intrust their children to her because of her extreme youth, which was the fact. At length, however, she began her school with two children, nine and eleven years of age, and not only did she go through all the formalities of school with them, working six hours a day for five days, and three hours on Saturday, but at the end of the term she held an examination in the presence of a large circle of her pupils’ admiring relations.
Afterwards, associating herself with another young lady, to whom she was tenderly attached, she succeeded better. A large and populous school gathered about these zealous and admirable girls, several of their pupils being older than themselves. Compelled to hold the school in a larger room, Lydia Huntley walked two miles every morning, and two more every night, besides working hard all day; and she was as happy as the weeks were long. Her experience confirms that of every genuine teacher—from Dr. Arnold downward—that, of all employments of man or woman on this earth, the one that is capable of giving the most constant and intense happiness is teaching in a rationally conducted school. So fond was she of teaching, that when the severity of the Winter obliged her to suspend the school for many weeks, she opened a free school for poor children, one of her favorite classes in which was composed of colored girls. In the course of time, the well-known Daniel Wadsworth, the great man of Hartford sixty or seventy years ago, lured her away to that city, where he personally organized a school of thirty young ladies, the daughters of his friends, and gave her a home in his own house. There she spent five happy years, cherished as a daughter by her venerable patron and his wife, and held in high honor by her pupils and their parents.
It was in 1815, while residing in Hartford, that her fame was born. Good old Mrs. Wadsworth, having obtained sight of her journals and manuscripts in prose and verse, the secret accumulation of many years, inflamed her husband’s curiosity so that he, too, asked to see them. The blushing poetess consented. Mr. Wadsworth pronounced some of them worthy of publication, and, under his auspices, a volume was printed in Hartford, entitled “Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse.” The public gave it a generous welcome, and its success led to a career of authorship which lasted forty-nine years, and gave to the world fifty-six volumes of poetry, tales, travels, biography, and letters.
So passed her life till she was past twenty-eight. She had received many offers of marriage from clergymen and others, but none of her suitors tempted her to forsake her pupils, and she supposed herself destined to spend her days as an old maid. But another destiny was in store for her. On her way to and from her school, “a pair of deep-set and most expressive black eyes” sometimes encountered hers and spoke “unutterable things.” Those eyes belonged to a widower, with three children, named Charles Sigourney, a thriving hardware merchant, of French descent, and those “unutterable things” were uttered at length through the unromantic medium of a letter. The marriage occurred a few months after, in the year 1819.
For the next fifteen years she resided in the most elegant mansion in Hartford, surrounded by delightful grounds, after Mr. Sigourney’s own design; and even now, though the Sigourney place is eclipsed in splendor and costliness by many of more recent date, there is no abode in the beautiful city of Hartford more attractive than this. Mr. Sigourney was a man of considerable learning, and exceedingly interested in the study of languages. When he was past fifty he began the study of modern Greek. Mrs. Sigourney became the mother of several children, all of whom, but two, died in infancy. One son lived to enter college, but died at the age of nineteen, of consumption. A daughter grew to womanhood, and became the wife of a clergyman.
After many years of very great prosperity in business, Mr. Sigourney experienced heavy losses, which compelled them to leave their pleasant residence, and gave a new activity to her pen. He died at the age of seventy-six. During the last seven years of Mrs. Sigourney’s life, her chief literary employment was contributing to the columns of the New York Ledger. Mr. Bonner, having while an apprentice in the Hartford Current office “set up” some of her poems, had particular pleasure in being the medium of her last communications with the public, and she must have rejoiced in the vast audience to which he gave her access—the largest she ever addressed.
Mrs. Sigourney enjoyed excellent health to within a few weeks of her death. After a short illness, which she bore with much patience, she died in June, 1865, with her daughter at her side, and affectionate friends around her. Nothing could exceed her tranquility and resignation at the approach of death. Her long life had been spent in honorable labor for the good of her species, and she died in the fullest certainty that death would but introduce her to a larger and better sphere.