H. B. S.
The winter of 1857 was passed quietly and uneventfully at Andover. In
November Mrs. Stowe contributed to the "Atlantic Monthly" a touching
little allegory, "The Mourning Veil."
In December, 1858, the first chapter of "The Minister's Wooing"
appeared in the same magazine. Simultaneously with this story was
written "The Pearl of Orr's Island," published first as a serial in
the "Independent."
She dictated a large part of "The Minister's Wooing" under a great
pressure of mental excitement, and it was a relief to her to turn to
the quiet story of the coast of Maine, which she loved so well.
In February, 1874, Mrs. Stowe received the following words from Mr.
Whittier, which are very interesting in this connection: "When I am in
the mood for thinking deeply I read 'The Minister's Wooing.' But 'The
Pearl of Orr's Island' is my favorite. It is the most charming New
England idyl ever written."
"The Minister's Wooing" was received with universal commendation from
the first, and called forth the following appreciative words from the
pen of Mr. James Russell Lowell:--
"It has always seemed to us that the anti-slavery element in the two
former novels by Mrs. Stowe stood in the way of a full appreciation of
her remarkable genius, at least in her own country. It was so easy to
account for the unexampled popularity of 'Uncle Tom' by attributing it
to a cheap sympathy with sentimental philanthropy! As people began to
recover from the first enchantment, they began also to resent it and
to complain that a dose of that insane Garrison-root which takes the
reason prisoner had been palmed upon them without their knowing it,
and that their ordinary watergruel of fiction, thinned with sentiment
and thickened with moral, had been hocussed with the bewildering
hasheesh of Abolition.
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