All the Days of My Life: An Autobiography

Into which of these rooms was He going? I listened awestruck and breathless. Past my door, my study, and the guest room He went; past the open door leading into Alice’s rooms, and then I heard the same fateful tread going down the two steps into the outer hall, after which there was dead silence. In a few minutes I was able to move, and I sat up and considered. I was certain that I had locked the door between the corridor and the small hall. Yet there had been no delay at the door, nor any sound of a lock turning. I struck a light and went to the door. It was locked. It had been no impediment unto Him who passed through it, shut and locked. Alice was in a deep sleep; Mrs. Kirkpatrick, also. I went back to my room and sat down. And that night I slept no more.

In the morning Mrs. Kirkpatrick told me she was sick. “I will go home,” she said, “and send my daughter to do my work. I shall be well in a day or two.” I held her hand as she spoke, and looked into her kind face, where I saw written what no mortal could either write, or blot out. As she passed through the gate, I called Alice, to “come and take a last look at Mrs. Kirkpatrick;” and we both watched her hurrying up the hill, until she was out of sight. Seven days after she died of pneumonia.

That night as I sat quite alone by the parlor fire, praying for the passing soul, Lilly came to me. And I cried with joy, while together we sought “Him that … turneth the shadow of death into the morning” (Amos, 5:8). She spent two days in packing and preparing the house for the winter, and on the third day, I went with Alice to the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York, leaving Thomas Kirkpatrick, the sorrowful husband, in charge of the house.

I do not like to write much about 1899. The first three months my doctor forbid me to write, and I amused myself by reading everything I could find on the new cults and “isms” then clamoring for recognition. Theosophy for a few weeks fascinated me, but Christian Science, never for one hour made any impression. I thought it, only a huge misunderstanding of the Bible. Spiritualism I had examined many years previously, and discarded its pretensions at once. Truly God speaks to men, but when he so favors any soul, He asks no dollar fee, and needs no darkened room, veiled cabinet, nor yet any hired medium to interpret His message. He can make Himself heard in the stir and traffic of Broadway, and in the sunshine of midday, as well as in the darkness of midnight. And when I had satisfied my foolish curiosity, I was sorry and ashamed, and with deep contrition asked only to be permitted to say once more “Our Father!” Going back to my Bible, was like going back home, after being lost in a land of darkness and despair.

This three months’ reading, often by electric light, made havoc with my sight, and I was obliged to spend six weeks in a darkened room after it. Lilly spent them with me, and I was greatly consoled by this proof of her affection for me. I was very anxious about money matters, for though I could not write, the expenses of the house went on. But God did not forget His Promise to me. Towards the end of March Mr. Stone of Chicago wrote to me for a novel, and I sold him “Was It Right to Forgive?” for twelve hundred dollars; soon after Mr. Jewett came up to Cherry Croft, told me he had gone into the publishing business with his friend Taylor, and bought the book rights of “Trinity Bells,” for two thousand dollars. These two events, both most unexpected, made my mind easy; and I improved so rapidly, that in May I began to write a little. Then Dr. Klopsch ordered twenty short articles, and these gave me just the work I could do, because I could leave it, and take it up, whenever it was prudent to do so.

I spent the winter of 1900 at Atlantic City, and on the sixth of February, the novelist, Robert Barr of London, came to visit me. He was delighted with Atlantic City, and stayed more than a week. At this time I had a remarkable dream. I thought I stood on the piazza at Cherry Croft, and was looking upward at an immense black African bull, that rose and fell between the sky and the earth. Sometimes he was very high, sometimes he came near to the ground, but as I watched he fell to the earth, and his head came off, and rolled out of sight. And the grass was high, and I called Kirkpatrick and said, “The grass is ready, you will cut it to-morrow.”

After that dream I read all the newspapers I wanted to read. I knew the Boers would fail, and fall, and the English flag float over their conquered states. On the twenty-eighth of February I read of Cronjes’ defeat, and on the fifteenth of March, a few days after my return home, Mr. Henry Hunter of Cornwall, sent his son through a great storm, late at night, up to Cherry Croft to tell me that the English had possession of the capital of the Orange Free State. The next morning I walked to the end of the piazza, and noticing the grass high, I called to Kirkpatrick and said, “Kirk, the grass is too high, cut it down tomorrow.” Then my dream flashed across my mind, and I thanked God and was happy.

The eleventh of July was the fiftieth anniversary of my wedding day. Alice was with Lilly in Brooklyn, and I was quite alone, neither had I any letters referring to it. All my world had forgotten it, so I made it memorable to myself, by commencing my Cromwell novel, which I that day named “The Lion’s Whelp.” In the afternoon I sat in the sunshine, and thought over the incidents of my fifty wedding days. It was a little story for my own pleasure and I shall never write it down. On that day also, I resolved to give up all social visiting, and devote myself entirely to my work.

I worked steadily afterwards on “The Lion’s Whelp” but did not finish it until April second, 1901. Then I note in my diary, “I finished my dear Cromwell novel today, five hundred fifty pages. I leave it now with God and Mr. Dodd.” It was hard to leave it. For some days I could not bring myself to finish the last few sentences, and my eyes were full of tears when I wrote “Vale Cromwell!” I had the same reluctance to close “Remember the Alamo.” In both cases, I was bidding farewell to characters with whom I had spent some of the happiest hours of my life.

After finishing “The Lion’s Whelp,” I collected a volume of my short stories for Dr. Klopsch, and on July fourth I began a novel for Mr. Jewett called “Thyra Varrick.” The scene was laid in the Orkney Isles, and the wind of the great North Sea blew all through it, while it had the brilliant blundering of Prince Charles Stuart for a background. It was a great favorite, for it was the initial story of the Delineator, and I received the following letter from Charles Dwyer, the editor, after it was published:

Dear Mrs. Barr:

I take leave of “Thyra Varrick” in the May number, with the greatest regret. It seems like parting with an old friend, and one who has conferred many favors on you. It is the first serial that has appeared in the magazine, and I consider myself very fortunate in being able to present such a story. A copy of the book has come in from the publishers, and is now in the hands of the reviewer. When it comes back to me, I shall take the liberty of sending it to you for an autograph.

With every good wish for a pleasant summer, and that we may be again in association, I am

    Very faithfully yours,
    Charles Dwyer.

On May the third, my sister Alethia died of apoplexy, and I am now the last of a family that had been more than a century at home when Edward the Confessor reigned. A very ancient prophecy regarding the family said, “It will go out with a lass.” So it will. I stand at the end of a long, long roll of priests and heroes, but though I am only a woman, I have fought a good fight, my hands are clean, my honor unstained, and I have never written a line that I would wish to blot, if I was dying. I am not afraid to meet any of my ancestors, and I shall be glad to look my dear father in the face. He was a great scholar, but he was too busy preaching to write a book. And when I tell him I have written over sixty books, I shall add, “But that is because I am your daughter.”

On June the sixteenth, I had the following letter, and among the hundreds I have received, not one has given me more soul pleasure:

    War Department.
    United States Engineer’s Office.
    Mobile, Ala.

Mrs. Amelia E. Barr.

Dear Madam:

Allow me to thank you for Chapter Seven, “Souls Of Passage.” I am on a higher plane since reading it, and thoughts, heretofore merely in solution in my mind, have flashed into beautiful and permanent crystallization. I do not apologize for addressing you, for I feel that it must please you to know, that your soul in its passage, has helped another.

    Very respectfully,
    William Stoddard McNeill.

From the middle of August unto the end of the year, Alice was very ill, and I could not leave her night or day, unless Lilly was with her. So I went early to the city this year. I finished “Thyra Varrick” on December nineteenth, and then rested until the New Year.

On the second of January, 1902, I was in the Historical Library, then on Second Avenue, where I worked all day, and then bought from the library a large and very valuable book on the Loyalists of New York City during its captivity to the English. It is written by one of the De Lancey family, and is a monumental book that ought to be better known. Alice was in a most unhappy condition all month, and I write sorrowfully on February first: “I am heartbroken about Alice. I can get no hopeful response spiritually from her. She is always conscious of some inimical Presence, whom she cannot pray against, and she is miserably depressed, and will not go out.”

On the fifteenth I had a letter from a small town in Turkey-in-Asia, asking permission to translate my articles in Success into Greek, and thus I discovered that Success had been using my work without my knowledge, or permission, for I never wrote for the paper except one article for the opening number. The success founded on such methods had in it no lasting elements, and the paper has disappeared.

On the twenty-eighth Alice begged me to take her home, and on the third of March I did so. Kirkpatrick had the house beautifully warm, and Lilly went up to Cherry Croft with us, and put all in order.

On March twenty-ninth, my seventy-second birthday, I had had a night of prayer and watching, but I fell asleep at dawn, and woke up wonderfully refreshed; and to my happy amazement, Alice gave me a kiss and a blessing, when I went to her room. “Dear God!” I prayed, “add Thy Blessing to it.” The mail brought me a present of violet pins from Lilly, and all my soiled lace done up with her own hands, and looking like new. Her husband sent me a very handsome scrap-book for my newspaper clippings. I had one hundred seventy-five dollars from Rutger, royalty money, and Mary had made and sent me a pretty kimono. I was very happy indeed; for, thank God, I still keep my child heart, and “little things” make me happy.

On April second I began “The Song of a Single Note.” It carried on the story of “The Bow of Orange Ribbon,” and a month later I wrote, “Alice is well and happy; our days go on calm and sweetly, and I am enjoying my work.”

On May the twenty-first, Mrs. Harry Lee called to see me for the first time. I liked her at once. She is now one of the two women I really love. There is no set time for her calls, she can come morning, noon or night, and be welcome. She is loving and intellectual, and never gets bored or has a train to meet, if our conversation slips into grave, or even religious subjects. From a good tree, we expect good fruit, and she is the eldest daughter of the late well-beloved E. P. Roe. Her love for me also runs into physical and material grooves, which are very enjoyable; many a time she has walked over the fields to my house, with a basket of fine fruit, or a dish of whipped cream, or some other delicacy. And as she is a fashionable woman in the social world, I think such little attentions show a sweet and homely affection, that I value highly.

On May thirty-first I made a note that causes me to smile as I read it – “a kind of dictatorial letter, from a firm who want me to write a novel for them —they are both young!” I also, rejoice, because I have got the grip of the story I am writing, and now it will be easy work.

On June the twelfth, I had a remarkable experience, one I shall never forget. I heard the clock strike three, and thought I had a letter in my hand from my mother. It was written on the old-fashioned large, square letter paper, and contained two sheets, the last one not quite full; folded as we folded letters before envelopes had been thought of, and closed with a seal which I carefully broke. In this letter she told me of all that she had suffered, and how she had prayed to God, and I buried my face in the letter and wept bitterly. Yes, I felt the tears, and I said, “O dear, dear Mother, you had to die, and I had to grow old, to know how much I love you!” A strange thing was, I saw plainly her address, and she had signed herself “Mary Singleton,” her maiden name, “Kingdom of Heaven.” There were two other lines in the address, which I have forgotten, but I knew they were the names of city and street. I was wonderfully comforted by this letter, and its enthralling, heavenly perfume lingered about me for many days.[8 - It is worth noting that the Manx, a very primitive religious people, restore to a wife as soon as she dies her maiden name. Death instantly absolves her from her thraldom to her husband. She regains her individuality, and with it her birth name, which is put both upon her coffin and her tombstone. It is likely that this custom has its source in the words of Christ – Luke, 20:27, Mark, 12:13, and Matthew, 22:23.]

On June thirtieth Charles Francis Adams sent me a copy of his oration about Cromwell’s having a statue in the New England Colonies. He deserved it. If England had not so urgently needed him, he would have accompanied his friend, Long John Wentworth, to Massachusetts. If Mr. Adams had only told the New Englanders, that Cromwell was the best ball player in England, and that Wentworth was the only man who could match him, they would doubtless have taken the statue into serious consideration.

At the end of August I finished “A Song of a Single Note” and Mary and Kirk fortunately came from Florida, to pay me a visit. My days of remembrance, the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth of September, I spent reading Professor James’s “Varieties of Religious Experience,” a wonderful, wonderful book, which none who read thoughtfully can ever forget. I have read it through many times; it always makes a good time for me, spiritually.

On October, the twenty-sixth, Mr. Hearst gave me fifty dollars for permission to copy my article on “Divorce” from the North American Review into his paper; and on the sixth of December I went to the Marlborough House in Atlantic City. Alice and I spent Christmas alone; she was very sweet and reflective, and talked to me long of the Christmases gone forever. “So fair! So sad!” I said; and she answered with a smile, “They are with God.”

On February fifteenth, I was again settled at Cherry Croft, and began “The Black Shilling,” but on the twenty-sixth I tore up all I had written, and began it over again. On the twenty-ninth of March, my seventy-third year of travail through this life, I write gratefully, “I have good health, a good home, good daughters, good servants, many friends, and one hundred three pages of ‘The Black Shilling’ written to my satisfaction. Lilly was here, and Alice is quite well, and Rutger remembered my birthday and sent me one hundred thirty dollars royalty.” I finished “The Black Shilling” on the twenty-ninth of July; and my eyes were so tired, I went into a darkened room for three weeks, and on the thirtieth of October I went to New York in order to be under the care of Dr. Hunter, a fine oculist, and no alarmist. He told me there was not the slightest evidence of any disease, they only wanted rest; and the relief his verdict gave me was unspeakable, and in itself curative.

From the fourteenth to the nineteenth of December I went to Princeton to stay with the Libbeys. I had sent out no cards this winter, and I saw no one but Dr. and Mrs. Klopsch, and Rutger Jewett. On the whole 1903 was a hard year, and my eyes were so troublesome that I only wrote “The Black Shilling,” and a few little articles for the daily press.

“Jan. 1st, 1904. When I opened my Bible this morning my eyes fell upon this cheering verse, ‘Having obtained help of God, I continue unto this day.’ (Acts, 26:22.)” Three days afterwards I went back to Cornwall, and on the sixteenth I had a visit from Mr. Platt of the Smart Set, about writing for him. He was an English gentleman of a fine type, but I am sure he understood at once, that I could not write for a set I knew nothing about. Nevertheless I enjoyed his visit. I read all January for “The Belle of Bowling Green,” which I began on February, the eighth, and finished on June, the twenty-seventh. All August, I was writing for Mr. Rideing and Dr. Klopsch; but on September, the eighteenth, I began “Cecilia’s Lovers,” which I finished on February eighth, 1905.

All April, May and June I was writing articles for the Globe on social subjects, such as slang, bored husbands, colossal fortunes, et cetera. On November fifteenth, I had an invitation to a dinner given to Mark Twain on his seventieth birthday. I did not go to the dinner, but I sent Mr. Clemens the wish that Dr. Stone wrote to me on my seventieth birthday. “The days of our life are three score years and ten, and if by reason of strength it be four score years, yet is it labor and sorrow. May you have the labor without the sorrow.”

On November, the twenty-fourth, I made a contract with Mr. Lovell to write him a novel for five thousand dollars. I wrote him one called “The Man Between,” and it was finished and paid for on March thirty-first, 1906. In April of 1906, I began “The Heart of Jessy Laurie,” which was sold to Mr. Dodd on September the seventeenth. In November I began a book that is a great favorite, and whose writing gave me constant pleasure, “The Strawberry Handkerchief.”

I began 1907 in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and on the fifteenth had finished the first chapter of “The Strawberry Handkerchief,” but on the thirtieth I took pneumonia, and was very near to death. With God’s blessing on the skill of Dr. Charles Nammack, and Lilly’s faithful care, my life was saved. Her husband gave me an equally loving service. Every afternoon he came to the hotel, read and answered my letters, and sat with Alice, while Lilly had a long, sound sleep. Then he went for medicines, and if likely to be needed, remained all night. My own son could have done no more for me, nor done it any more lovingly.

On the twenty-third of February, I had one of the most wonderful spiritual experiences of my life. Lilly had gone home, and taken Alice with her, and I was quite alone. The room which they occupied, while in the hotel, opened into my room; but it was now empty, and the proprietors had promised to put no one into it, unless obliged by stress of business; for it had been very convenient, for changing the air in my room. I awoke from sleep about three A.M. and found my room distressingly hot. I rose, put on wool slippers, stopped at the table, ate a few grapes, and drank a glass of milk, and then thought I would open the door between the two rooms. I was very weak, but I reached the door, and had my hand on the key. Then Some One in the adjoining room thrust quickly a heavy bolt across the other side of the door. I concluded the room had become occupied while I was asleep, was a little annoyed at not being informed, but thought no more of the circumstance, until the chambermaid came to me in the morning.

“Do you know,” she said, “I left both the windows in the next room open, and it has been the coldest night of the winter. The room was like an ice box this morning; for the heat was turned off and the wind blowing, and freezing as it blew.”

“But the room was occupied,” I answered.

“No, indeed!” she continued. “I went in an hour ago, and shut the windows and put on the heat, and I will take you there while I make this room comfortable.” She did so, and I was lying wrapped in a blanket upon a sofa, when I remembered the almost angry drawing of the bolt, and turned my head to look at the door. There was no bolt there. There was nothing but a little brass screw in the lintel, that a child’s finger could turn noiselessly. Yet the bolt I heard was one of the large iron bolts, used in the farm and manor houses of Westmoreland, and the North Country. They crossed the whole door, and fell into the socket provided, with a great noise – the noise I had heard early that morning. Who had been watching me through the long night hours? One step into that freezing room would have chilled the spark of life in me. Who had prevented it, and that in such a manner as should convince me that it was no mortal hand, and no mortal bolt that saved me? That day, I could do nothing but pray and wonder, and then pray again. I thought I was alone, and I was not alone. Some angel had charge over me, and I remembered that there was just a touch of impatience in the driving of the bolt, as if the watcher had the feeling of a mother, vexed at her child’s imprudence. I have had many spiritual experiences but few that affected me more than this one.

About the eighteenth of March I resolved to go home, and Lilly’s husband went to Cornwall, had the water put on, and the fires lighted; and on the twentieth Lilly and Alice followed, taking a servant with them. I waited as patiently as I could for Lilly to send me word the house was warm and comfortable; then Mr. Munro came and packed my trunks, and on the twenty-sixth my captivity ended. God let me go home, and I found Love and every comfort waiting for me.

On March, the twenty-ninth, I wrote: “I am getting well. This is a new birthday. A happy day.” I had written two chapters of “The Strawberry Handkerchief” when I was taken ill, but I was not able to return to it until May, the nineteenth, and I did not finish it until January, the seventh, A.D. 1908, when we were staying at Bretton Hall Hotel, for the three cold months.

On January, the thirty-first, Mr. and Mrs. Dodd gave me a “Bow of Orange Ribbon” dinner. All decorations were in the dominant color, and it was a very pretty affair. Mrs. Dodd is a charming hostess, and Mr. Dodd knows the exact tone at which a company of happy, sensible people should be kept. He sets it, and he keeps it, and every one follows his lead, as naturally in pleasure, as they do in business.

On February, the twenty-ninth, I was guest of honor at the Press Club Reception, held at the Waldorf Astoria. I enjoyed this occasion thoroughly, for I like the men and women of the press. I sat beside Mr. Pollock, a man of extraordinary genius. I had a very sore throat that day, but his speech made me forget I had anything but a heart and a brain. Bishop Potter sat near me. I had a pen and ink acquaintance with him, but had never before met him personally. As a man, he was delightful; as a bishop, he fell below my ideal. But then my ideal had been formed on the English Spiritual Lords, and I thought of Carpenter, and others, and wondered if they ever forgot their office so far as to tell a great public assemblage funny stories. The stories were excellent, and quite in keeping with what one of them called “his job,” but somehow they fell below the office he filled in the church. Yet everyone enjoyed them, and my quibble may be laid to my English superstitions about sacred things.

I had a little reception after the meeting, and never in all my life had I been so petted and praised. The young women crowded round me and kissed my hands, and my cheeks, and I wished they were all my daughters. Mrs. Klopsch had sent me an immense bouquet of violets, and I gave every flower away to them. If ever fame tasted sweet to me, it was during that half hour among the lovely women of the New York press.