Lucy Larcom | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Larcom published in 1893 | |
| Born | March 5, 1824 Beverly, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | April 17, 1893(1893-04-17) (aged 69) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Resting place | Beverly, Massachusetts |
| Occupation |
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| Language | English |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Monticello Female Seminary |
| Signature | |
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Lucy Larcom (March 5, 1824 – April 17, 1893) was an American teacher, poet, and author. She was one of the first teachers at Wheaton Female Seminary (nowWheaton College) inNorton, Massachusetts, teaching there from 1854 to 1862. During that time, she co-foundedRushlight Literary Magazine, a submission-based student literary magazine which is still published. From 1865 to 1873, she was the editor of the Boston-basedOur Young Folks, which merged withSt. Nicholas Magazine in 1874.[1][a] In 1889, Larcom published one of the best-known accounts ofNew England childhood of her time,A New England Girlhood, commonly used as a reference in studying antebellum American childhood; the autobiographical text covers the early years of her life inBeverly Farms andLowell, Massachusetts.[2]
Among her earlier and best-known poems are "Hannah Binding Shoes," and "The Rose Enthroned." Larcom's earliest contribution to theAtlantic Monthly, when the poetJames Russell Lowell was its editor, a poem, that in the absence of signature, was attributed to Emerson by one reviewer. Also of note was "A Loyal Woman's No" which was a patriotic lyric and attracted considerable attention during theAmerican Civil War.[3] Larcom was inclined to write on religious themes, and made two volumes of compilations from the world's great religious thinkers,Breathings of the Better Life (Boston, 1866) andBeckonings (Boston. 1886). Her last two books,As it is in Heaven (Boston, 1891) andThe Unseen Friend (Boston, 1892), embodied much of her own thought on matters concerning the spiritual life.[3]
Lucy Larcom was born inBeverly, Massachusetts, on March 5, 1824, to Lois and Benjamin Larcom.[4] She was the ninth of ten children, eight of whom were daughters. According to her autobiography,A New England Girlhood, outlined from memory,[5] Beverly was a small village at this time where she was able to play with neighbor children. She developed an early interest in reading and writing which she developed by reading children's fiction of the period. Titles includedAlonzo and Melissa,The Children of the Abbey, and collective fairy tales.[5] She borrowed books from the Sabbath-school library, includingThe Pilgrim's Progress. Other favorites from acirculating library includedThe Scottish Chiefs,Paul and Virginia,Gulliver's Travels, andThe Arabian Nights.[5] Again according to her autobiography, at the age of seven she wrote and self-published multiple collections of poetry.[5] This period of her life ended when her father died in 1832, leaving her mother as a widow with ten children to raise.[6]
Mr. Larcom's death coincided with the rise of theIndustrial Revolution inLowell. The Lowell Mills were hiring young women as factory workers and older women to run the boarding houses where theLowell Mill Girls lived. Mrs. Larcom found employment as a boarding house supervisor while Lucy and her siblings found employment in the mills.[6][7] While in Lowell, she helped her mother with household work in the intervals between her hours of school and work.[8]
At age eleven, in 1835, she began working atBoott Mills,[9] acotton mill in Lowell, as adoffer, to earn extra money for her family. She was among the very youngest of those employed at the mills. Her first work as a Lowell operative was in a spinning-room, doffing and replacing thebobbins, after which she tended a spinning-frame and then a dressing-frame, while looking out windows towards the river. Later, she was employed in a "cloth-room," considered to be a more agreeable working-place because of its fewer hours of confinement, its cleanliness, and the absence of machinery. The last two years of her Lowell life, which covered in all a period of about ten years, were spent in that room, not in measuring cloth, but as bookkeeper, recording the number of pieces and bales. There, she pursued her studies during leisure moments, some textbooks in mathematics, grammar, English or German literature usually laying open on her desk.[3]
Here, as in her earlier childhood, she put words to her visions through verses and by telling herself stories. Of those days, Larcom stated,— "While yet a child, I used to consider it special good fortune that my home was at Lowell. There was a frank friendliness and sincerity in the social atmosphere that wrought upon me unconsciously, and made the place pleasant to live in. People moved about their every-day duties with purpose and zest, and were genuinely interested in one another; while in the towns on the seaboard it sometimes was as if every man's house was his castle in almost a feudal sense, where the family shut themselves in, on the defensive against intruders." Still, she never lost her love and allegiance to the seaside area where she was born, while frequent visits kept up the charm, and gave her links to her home town.[8]The ten years that Larcom spent at the mills made a huge impact on her. TheLowell Offering, a magazine whose editors and contributors were "female operatives in the Lowell mills," was published 1839–1845, and soon after it was launched Larcom became one of its corps of writers. One of her first poems was entitled "The River," and many of her verses and essays were found in its volumes. Some of thoseLowell Offering essays appeared afterwards inSimilitudes, her first published work.[3]
It was at one of the meetings of the literary circle, established among the "mill girls", that Larcom first met the poet,John Greenleaf Whittier, who was then in Lowell editing aFree Soil journal. He became her friend, showing his real interest in her at once by criticising her share in the written contributions of the evening. She was then very young, but it was the beginning of an interest and gratitude that continued mutually in an established friendship. Afterward, when she had come to know and dearly love Whittier's sister, Elizabeth ("Lizzie"), the three spent time together. During happy sojourns atSalisbury Beach, near the respective homes atAmesbury and Beverly, in visits at Amesbury, in counsel and work together, out of which in recent time have grown the beautiful compilations ofChild-life, andSongs of Three Centuries, their lives ran near together and contributed the one to the other.[8]
One after another, Larcom's sisters married out of the home, until only two remained. At about twenty years of age, Larcom accompanied the oldest of the Larcom sisters in Lowell, Emeline,[10] to the then wild prairies of Illinois. Here, she shared in the efforts of a clergyman's household in pioneer times. A truly pioneer life was theirs as they moved many times from place to place, dependent upon who summoned the clergyman. Somewhere in this prairie Larcom taught school in a vacated log building to a 2 miles (3.2 km) neighborhood. Her students came from small colonies within this radius. It was in the corner of a big township which included three counties. She taught under the auspices of a district committee, before whom, previous to induction to office, the candidate was obliged to hold up her right hand and swear to acquaintance, sufficient to instruct from, with writing, spelling, arithmetic, and geography. Her salary wasUS$40 for three months; and once, when the time for payment arrived, and her brother-in-law visited the committee-man whose duty it was to make it, his reminder was met with the rather startled remark, as if the subject had never presented itself in so strong a light before:— "Forty dollars! Well, that's a lot o' money to pay a young woman for three months' teaching'! She oughta know considerable!" When the official was reassured by a statement of what Larcom's antecedents in study and achievement had been, he replied:— "Well, that's a good deal for her to ha' done!" before handing over the money.[8]
During another sojourning, Larcom found herself in the neighborhood of an excellent young ladies' school. Switching from teacher to scholar, she spent three years atMonticello Female Seminary, following the full course of study. During the last two years, she took charge of the preparatory department of that institution.[8]
Eventually, Larcom tired of life in the west, so she went back to Beverly, where, for a year or two, she taught a class of young ladies before accepting a position as teacher in Wheaton Female Seminary, at Norton. She remained there for six years, conducting classes in rhetoric, English literature, and composition, while sometimes adding history, mental and moral science, or botany. Larcom's health began after these few years to suffer from such a constant strain of teaching work that she had to relinquish regular employment, although, from time to time, she lectured upon literature, or taught classes in various young ladies' schools of Boston.[8]
Her first poem in theAtlantic was "The Rose Enthroned" and it is remembered as her greatest inspiration. It was a parable-epic of creation with twenty-one four-line stanzas. Previously to this,— as far back as during her early residence in Illinois,— some poems were published with the name, and some slight sketch of the writer, in Griswold'sFemale Poets of America; and at about the same time, verses of hers were printed inSartain's Magazine. During 1852–53, she wrote frequently for theNational Era, of which Mr. Whittier was corresponding editor. Later, theIndependent and theBoston Congregationalist, and various other magazines received and published her contributions. "Hannah Binding Shoes" appeared first in the New YorkCrayon; perhaps no single poem of hers was better known or more admired. WhenOur Young Folks magazine was started, Larcom became one of its assistant editors. Subsequently, for a year or two, she was the leading editor. For the next seven years, she lived quietly and independently at Beverly Farms.[8]
In the spirit of ministry, she gathered together the compilation ofBreathings of a Better Life.Roadside Poems, andHillside and Seaside, were compilations from readings of nature.Childlife,Childlife in Prose, andSongs of Three Centuries, were pulled together in company with Whittier, and which he edited. The volume,Wild Roses of Cape Ann came after these.[8]
Larcom served as a model for the change in women's roles in society. She was a friend ofHarriet Hanson Robinson, who worked in the Lowell mills at the same time. Robinson also became a poet and author; later, she was prominent in the women's suffrage movement.[11] Both contributed to the literary magazineLowell Offering.[b]
Larcom died at age 69 on April 17, 1893, in Boston and was buried in her hometown of Beverly, Massachusetts. Her influence is still felt in Beverly. A local literary magazine entitledThe Larcom Review is named for her, as is the library at theBeverly High School. A theatre built in Beverly in 1912 was named theLarcom Theatre Music and Performing Arts after Larcom as well.[13]
Larcom Mountain, located in theOssipee Mountains inNew Hampshire, is named after her, as she frequented the area during the late 1800s. At Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, the Larcom Dormitory is named after her. Rushlight Literary Magazine, which she founded, is still in publication today. Larcom's legacy is honored in Lowell, Massachusetts, where she worked as a "mill girl" at the Boott Mills, and as such, the Lucy Larcom Park was named after her to honor her works of literature that recounted her life at the mills. The park is located between the two Lowell High School buildings, and excerpts from her writings can be found on monuments, statues and other works of art throughout the park.
Larcom's later writings, assumed a deeply religious tone, in which the faith of her whole life found complete expression. In retrospection, she wroteIdyl of Work. Notwithstanding the fact that she really meant to set forth the image she had in her mind of her own elder sister, she unconsciously gave herself also, perhaps, through family likeness, in some touches of her portrayal of "Esther" in theIdyl.[8] In herIdyl of Work and also inA New England Girlhood, Larcom described her early life. In theIdyl, the mill-life of forty or fifty years earlier was portrayed.[3]
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This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain:Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart; Stowe, Harriet Beecher; Cooke, Rose Terry (1884).Our Famous Women: An Authorized Record of the Lives and Deeds of Distinguished American Women of Our Times ... (Public domain ed.). A. D. Worthington & Company. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain:Willard, Frances Elizabeth; Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice (1893).A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life (Public domain ed.). Moulton.ISBN 9780722217139.
