Part 1

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MEMOIR OF MARY L. WARE,

WIFE OF HENRY WARE, JR.

BY EDWARD B. HALL.

Seventh Thousand.

BOSTON: CROSBY, NICHOLS, AND COMPANY. NEW YORK: CHARLES S. FRANCIS AND COMPANY 1854.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by CROSBY, NICHOLS, AND COMPANY, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY METCALF AND COMPANY, PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.

CONTENTS.

I. INTRODUCTION

II. CHILDHOOD

Parentage.--Character of the Mother.--First Training of Mary Pickard.--Early Visit to England.--Friends there.--Voyage Home.--Extracts from Letters.--Residence in Boston.--Pearl Street.--First Friendships.--Nature and Education.--A Friend's Description of Mary.

III. MENTAL AND MORAL CULTURE

School at Hingham.--A Teacher's Reminiscence.--Sickness and Death of Mrs. Pickard.--Mary's Position.--Her Father's Circumstances.--Dr. Park's School.--Earliest Letters.--Thoughts and Themes.--Chosen Friend.--Peculiar Confidence.--Return to Hingham.--Teacher's Account.--Moral Decision and Declaration.--Letters.--Joining the Church.--Henry Ware.

IV. DISCIPLINE AND CHARACTER

Mr. Pickard's Embarrassments.--His Correspondence with Mary.--Her Sympathy and Faith.--Her Teacher's Testimony to her Piety.--She leaves Hingham.--Her Grandfather's Death.--Devotion to her Grandmother.--Visit to Northampton.--Her Self-distrust.--Interest in Dr. Churning.--Letters on his Preaching, and Interview with him.--Correspondence with Miss Cushing.--Death of her Grandmother.

V. CHANGES AT HOME

Leaving Pearl Street.--Fears for the Future.--Pecuniary Means.--Business and Travel.--New York and Baltimore.--Mr. Pickard's Displeasure.--Return to Boston.--Letters on Providence and Bereavement.--Death of J. E. Abbot.--Living in Dorchester.--Morbid Feelings.--Marriage of her Friend.--Her own Trials.--Influence upon others.--Interesting Case.--Dr. Channing's Absence and Return.--Death of her Father.

VI. VISIT ABROAD

Loneliness.--Invitation to go Abroad.--Letters relating to it.--A Friend's Admiration.--Arrival in England.--Mrs. Freme.--Letters from London and Broadwater.--Isle of Wight.--Paris.--Her Friends' Return to America.--She remains with Relatives in England.--Chatham.--Burcombe House.--Many Letters.--Arrival of E. P. F. from America.--Letters from Sydenham.--Tour to Scotland.--Description of the Country.

VII. SCENES OF SUFFERING

The Poor Aunt.--Osmotherly.--Sickness and Sorrow among Kindred.--Mary the Chief Nurse and Devoted Laborer.--Details in Successive Letters.--She goes to Penrith.--Recalled to Osmotherly.--Further Changes.--Her own Sickness.--Anxiety of Friends in England and America.--Joy at her Escape.

VIII. NEW RELATIONS

Return from England.--Welcome Home.--Labors of Love.--Henry Ware's Preaching.--Interest and Engagement.--Their Letters to Friends.--Views of the Relation of Stepmother.--Parish Relations and Duties.--Sense of Responsibility.--Desire of Usefulness.--Visit to Northampton.--Disappointments.--Husband's Illness at Ware.--She goes to him.--Thence to Worcester.--Birth of her First Child.--Husband's Journey for Health.--Poetical Epistle to his Wife.--Newton.--Return to Sheafe Street.--Attachment and Removal.--Brookline.--Plan for Cambridge.--Thoughts of Europe.--End of Parish Life.

IX. EUROPEAN TOUR

Sailing for England with her Husband.--Her Feelings at leaving the Children.--Difference between this and her former Visit.--Her Husband's Sickness and Depression.--The Great Trial.--Their Route.--England and Scotland.--The Continent.--Geneva and Letters.--The Treatise on Christian Character.--Italy.--Naples and Rome.--Annual to Mrs. Paine.--Birth of a Daughter.--Mr. Ware's Discouragement.--Mrs. Ware's Anxiety.--Her Account of Sufferings and Exertions.--Their Return to France and England.--His Excursion alone.--Her Provision for her Aunt.--Letter to her Children.--Passage Home.--Husband's Illness.--Arduous Offices.--Her View of her own Constitution.

X. LIFE IN CAMBRIDGE

Final Leave of the Parish in Boston.--Removal to Cambridge--New Position.--Chief Anxieties.--Pecuniary Straits.--Mrs. Ware's Sickness, long and serious.--Husband's Feelings.--Emma's Visit.--Letters to Mrs. Paine and Emma.--Mrs. Ware's Recovery and Summons to Concord.--Mr. Ware's Illness there, and Apprehensions.--Her Use of the Warning, and Habit of Preparation.--Death of her Son Robert.--Her Account.--Devotion to her Children.--Letters to John.--Cases of Hospitality.--Crowded, but never worried.--Journal to John.--Letters at the End of 1832 and 1833.--Dangerous Illness of a Child.

XI. LIFE IN CAMBRIDGE. (CONTINUED.)

Prudence in Sickness.--Mrs. Ware's View of it, and Experience.--Her Principle and Practice in Regard to Dress.--Exemption from Sickness.--Social and Private Efforts for Others.--Moral Cases.--General Intercourse.--Sympathy with Children.--Hatred of Gossip.--Husband's Severe Illness in 1836.--The Aid she rendered him.--Her Interest in the Theological Students.--Their Testimony to her Kindness and Influence.--Pecuniary Embarrassment--Death of a Sister.--View of Events and Circumstances.--Continued Mercies.--Pleasant Letters.--A Change approaching.--Various Records.--Her Husband goes to New York.--His Sickness there, and her Joining him.--Return, and Resignation of Office.--Dark Prospects.--Strong Faith and Hope.--Leaving Cambridge.

XII. LIFE IN FRAMINGHAM

Pain of Removal.--New Residence.--Generosity of Friends.--Extracts from Letters.--Faithful Domestic.--Views of Service.--Larger Extracts.--Death of Dr Channing.--Kindness of Neighbors.--Mr. Ware's Illness in Boston.--Her Feelings.--Return to Framingham.--His Jaunts and final Sickness.--His Death.--First Sabbath.--Burial at Cambridge.--Letters to Children and Friends.--Isolation and Suffering.--Labor, Mental and Manual.--Preparation of a Memoir.--Communion with her Husband and the Departed Ones.--Letters to her Son.--Looking for a new Residence.--Decision for Milton.--Last Record of Framingham.

XIII. LIFE IN MILTON

Mrs. Ware's Fears of Loss of Power.--First Letter from Milton, describing her Condition.--Progress of Mind seen in her Letters.--Views of Education.--Reliance upon her Children.--Various Records.--The New Cottage.--Love of Nature.--Beginning of Disease.--Continued Work.--School.--Views of separating Children.--Trust for Things Temporal and Spiritual.--Annuals for 1845 and 1846.--Letters of Sympathy.--Letters to her Children.--Son at Exeter.--Her Visit there.--Views of Preaching and Preachers.--Tribute of a Pastor.--Family Religion.--Important Letters.--Equanimity in Sickness.--Death of Emma.--Visit to Cambridge.--End of the Year.--The Time yet remaining.

XIV. THE END

Last Days natural, not wonderful.--Quietness and Enjoyment.--Relative Duties.--Decline of Strength.--Disclosure of her Disease.--Private Paper.--Visit to her Son.--Once more a Nurse and Helper.--Sinking and Rallying.--Accounts of her by Friends.--Her own Account.--Influence upon Others.--Her Pain at being praised.--Letter from England.--Her last Letter.--Conversation on the Future.--Her Pastor's Visit.--Closing Expressions.--Her Husband's Words.--Death and Burial.--Conclusion.

MEMOIR.

I.

INTRODUCTION.

The life of an unpretending Christian woman is never lost. Written or unwritten, it is and ever will be an active power among the elements that form and advance society. Yet the written life will speak to the larger number, will be wholly new to many, and to all may carry a healthy impulse. There are none who are not strengthened and blessed by the knowledge of a meek, firm, consistent character, formed by religious influences, and devoted to the highest ends. And where this character has belonged to a daughter, wife, and mother, who has been seen only in the retired domestic sphere, there may be the more reason that it be transferred to the printed page and an enduring form, because of the very modesty which adorned it, and which would never proclaim itself.

Such are our feelings in regard to the subject of the following Memoir, and such our reasons for offering it to the public. It has not been without scruple, and after an interval of years, that the family and nearest friends of Mrs. Ware have consented to the publication of facts and thoughts so private and sacred as many which must appear in a faithful transcript of her life. Perhaps this reluctance always exists, particularly in regard to a woman and a mother. In this instance it has been very strong, and it is but just that it be made known. Never was there a woman, we may believe, more retiring or peculiarly domestic than she of whom we are to speak. Never, we are sure, were the materials of a life more entirely private, and in one sense confidential, than those which we are to use; for letters are all the materials we have, and letters written in the unrestrained freedom of personal friendship, in the midst of pressing cares, and with a rapidity and unstudied naturalness, which will appear in all the extracts, but are still more manifest in the entire originals. Her correspondence was voluminous, to an extent unsurpassed perhaps in a life so quiet, with no pretence to literary character, and nothing ever written except for the eye of the receiver. How would the writer have felt, had she supposed these letters were ever to be opened to the public eye? It is a question which many ask,--some with pain, some with decided disapproval. It is a question which we have asked ourselves, and we prefer to answer it before we enter upon the work.

To answer it unfavorably, to yield to this natural reluctance to publish any thing designed to be private, and in its nature personal, would deprive us of the best biographies that are written. It would restrict to single families, and to a brief period, the knowledge of facts and features, of all most reliable, most valuable. Indeed, it is this very fact of humility and reserve, of freedom and naturalness, indulged in confidential communion and the quiet of home, that reveals most the reality of virtue, force of character, disinterested nobleness, and the power of religion. Who is willing that the knowledge of such examples should be withheld from the many who crave it, and whom it would stimulate and bless? Shall we make no sacrifice of our own feelings, supposing it to require one, shall we hoard exclusively for our own use the richest of God's gifts, when those by whom the gifts have come to us spent their lives in service and sacrifice for us? To these obvious considerations, we will add our firm faith in the knowledge which departed friends have of the motives from which we are acting, and of the influence which their own modest virtues and lowly efforts on earth may exert upon those remaining here; thus continuing, in a higher and surer way, the very work for which the loved and the pure always live, and are willing to die.

It is in point, not only for our immediate purpose, but for the exhibition in part of the character we would delineate, to say that these were the feelings of Mrs. Ware herself, in regard to a memoir of her husband. Public as a large portion of his life was, she shrunk from the exposure of that which was private, and which seemed to be sacredly committed to her own keeping. She remembered, too, his peculiar sensitiveness in this connection, and the injunctions he gave when under the influence of disease and depression. But another voice came to her from his present higher abode and larger vision; and thus she wrote to a friend, of the conflict and the decision, in language applicable now to her own case:--"I cannot tell you the agony it has given me at times, to realize that that sacred inner life, which I had felt was my own peculiar trust, was no longer mine, but was to be shared by the whole world. But this was sinful, selfish, earthly; and I have gradually left it all far behind, and can now only be glad that such a life is shown for the aid and encouragement of others."

It is our desire to give to this Memoir as much as possible of the character of an autobiography. We have few facts except those found in the letters, with the advantage of an intimate intercourse for more than twenty years. In the several hundred letters and notes that have been put into our hands, there is nothing that might not appear, so far as any one else is concerned. This fact is well worthy of note, as belonging to the character, and revealing a remarkable elevation and purity of thought,--that in such a mass of free epistolary writing, from different countries and to persons of every age, not a single severe stricture, not one unkind allusion or offensive personality, much less any approach to petty gossip, can be found. We feel the greater freedom in making copious extracts; and shall attempt little more than so to arrange and connect them as to give a fair view of the whole life, or rather of the mind and character that appear in every part of the life. That a life so private contained such a variety of incident, and a measure of unavoidable publicity, was the ordering of Providence; and may serve to show that the sphere of woman, even the most domestic and silent, is broad enough for the most active intellect and the largest benevolence.

II.

CHILDHOOD.

Mary Lovell Pickard was an only child, her parents having but one other, who died an infant before the birth of Mary. She was born in Atkinson Street, Boston, on the 2d of October, 1798. Mark Pickard, her father, was an English merchant, who came to this country on business, and remained here. Her mother was Mary Lovell, daughter of James Lovell, and granddaughter of "Master Lovell," so long known as a classical teacher in Boston. James Lovell, the grandfather of the subject of this Memoir, was a man of mind and influence. He had been active in the Revolutionary war, and was once made prisoner at Halifax, sharing there, it is said, the prison of Ethan Allen. Subsequently he was a prominent member of the Continental Congress, and at the adoption of the Constitution received the appointment of Naval Officer in the Boston custom-house, a place which he retained until his death. A man of free and bold thought, associating much at one time with French officers, Mr. Lovell adopted some infidel principles, became familiar and fond of Paine's arguments, and, as we are led to infer, treated religion with little respect in his family; the family in which Mary Pickard, as well as her mother, passed her childhood and youth. James Lovell had nine children, but only one daughter, Mary, who grew up the idol of the family. At the age of twenty-five she married Mark Pickard, who was seventeen years her senior, but not her equal in intellect or energy, we infer, yet always kind and most tenderly attached to her. She was a woman of rare excellence, in whose character, as drawn by those still living who knew her well, we can see, as usual, much that accounts for the character of the daughter.

Mrs. Pickard had been educated in Boston, and well educated, having a naturally vigorous mind and strong common sense. She was a woman of self-culture, loving books and choosing the best, conversing with marked propriety as well as ease, and exhibiting decided energy and generosity of character. In person, she is described as remarkable; of so commanding figure, benignant countenance, and dignified demeanor, as to draw general observation in public, and suggest the thought once expressed by a gentleman of intelligence,--"She seems to me as if she were born for an empress." Yet her empire was only the home, and her life peculiarly domestic; with enough of discipline and change to prove her fortitude, but never to damp her cheerfulness. She was a Christian. In early life, perhaps from causes already referred to, her mind had been disturbed, and apparently doubts raised, though never fixed, by sceptical writers and so-called philosophical reasoners,--more common in good society then than now, and more bold and insidious, notwithstanding our complaints of present degeneracy. A gentleman to whom Mrs. Pickard had once communicated her difficulties, and who was less a believer than she, spoke of her the day after her death, in reference to that conflict, as "one of strong mind, who took nothing upon trust" even at that early age when she approached him with "obstinate questionings." Whatever the effect upon his faith, her own was strengthened by all inquiry and experience. She was a member of the Episcopal Church, though apparently less a devotee to its ritual than Mr. Pickard. Not sect, but piety, was the source of her power and peace. "In religion," says one most intimate, "she was unostentatious and charitable, but decided and sincere; and her whole life was an exhibition of the ascendancy of principle over mere taste and feeling."

Such was the mother, who was the constant companion and instructor of an only daughter, through the whole of childhood; for Mary never attended school, that we can find, until she was nearly thirteen years old. But in that best of schools for the very young, an intelligent and quiet home, she was well instructed in the common branches, in habits of order, refinement, and frugality, in principles of undeviating truth and integrity, and in that most essential of all accomplishments for a girl, whether in ordinary or exalted station, the use of the needle. Her mother also taught her to sing, being herself passionately fond of music, with one of the sweetest voices, and, though not a great performer, enough so to impart a love of it to her child which always continued, associated with holy recollections. "Often," says one, "at early evening, just before going to rest, have I seen the little girl upon her mother's lap, and have heard her singing her evening hymn:--

'Teach me to live, that I may dread The grave as little as my bed'; &c."

In January, 1802, Mr. Pickard was called to England on business, and took with him his wife and the little Mary, then but three years old. They remained there a year and a half, visiting both his and her relatives, in different parts of the kingdom; Mrs. Pickard being connected, on her mother's side, with Alexander Middleton, a Scotch farmer, in whose family Ferguson, the astronomer, lived as a shepherd boy, and of whom, with his wife and three children, there are still existing likenesses drawn in pencil by that lad, so celebrated as a man. Among such friends, and in such new scenes, we can believe a deep impression would be taken by an observing, thoughtful child, though at an age when it is considered of little consequence what a child sees or hears. Mary never forgot the enjoyment or the instruction of that visit. When she was again in England, twenty years later, she wrote her friends here that she was surprised to find herself recognizing her old home in Guildford Street, London, and other objects with which she was then familiar. And years afterwards, when her own children came round her with the never-satisfied request, "Mother, do tell us about when you were a little girl," the standing favorites were incidents which occurred either in England or on the voyage home, and particularly the following. During the voyage, her fifth birthday came round, and the captain promised her baked potatoes for her dinner, but, as the cook burnt them, threatened to give him the "cat-o'nine-tails"; when poor little Mary, not taking the joke, burst into tears, and begged him "not to hurt the kind, good sailor, who didn't mean to burn the potatoes."

A lady who came as passenger in the same vessel, has told us of the peculiar sweetness of little Mary, and the universal interest and love inspired by her in the ship's company. And this from no outward attractions, or efforts to commend herself, but by the simple power of goodness, and her ever-prompt obedience. If inclined to go anywhere, or do any thing, not approved by her mother, it was always enough to say,--"It will make me unhappy, my child, if you do that."

A few extracts which we are permitted to make from letters that passed, during this absence abroad, between Mrs. Pickard and her parents, will help to show the respect and affection which the daughter inspired, as well as the interest felt in the little granddaughter.

Under date of January 10, 1802, James Lovell writes from Boston to his daughter in England:--

"I constantly recur to the joyful consideration, that you, though absent, are still left to me, an amiable object, within the reach of hope, and a source of expected comfort for my last days. I think of you, at this moment, as safely arrived with your most worthy husband, and my _None-such_, in health, and happy among your friends. My engagements in office, especially since General Lincoln has been confined by sickness at Hingham, have occupied me very much. Though it is evening, little Dickey is bristling up and attempting to sing, that I may not forget to tell my dear little _Molly Pitty_ how constantly he looks for her in the morning, at the rattling of the tongs and fender. Kiss the dear child for me.

"JAMES LOVELL,--need I add, your affectionate father?"

In February, 1803, Mrs. Pickard writes home to her mother:--

"Your pickles and berries came in good order, and were very acceptable, particularly to my darling Mary. She often thanks you for them, and is now writing to you, and interrupts me every minute to hear her read her letter. My father must not laugh, and say I call my goose a swan; every one allows she is a charming child. You will not be able to deny her a large portion of your love, though you have so many lovely ones with you. She has been an inexhaustible source of comfort to me since I left you; and, as if she knew it would please us all, most of her conversation is of home and the friends she left there. She has a sad cold, but she says she is always happy. Farewell, dear mother. God bless you all."

March, 1803. From the same:--

"We are still in Guildford Street, but think of going into the country, where Mary may have more field for exercise. She is pretty well, but wants a little country air. I wish you knew all her little chat about you, so pleasing to hear, but so foolish to write. She is very tall and lively.... Mr. P. is even more anxious than I to go home. Mary is the only contented one. She is happy all the time. She has a very sweet disposition, and I hope will one day be as great a comfort to you as she is to me. She is telling me a thousand little affectionate things to say to you."