The Victorian Age's Best Selling Novel

9 February 1891 - Hartford, Hartford, Connecticut

Harriet Beecher Stowe House

Next door to Samuel Clemens house lives another author, another national treasure. Harriet Beecher Stowe, now eighty years old, is a delicate woman with sparkling eyes. I would call her retired, but she wrote a book just last year.

I was fortunate enough to make an appointment to interview her. Here is some of our conversation:

Howe: I understand your book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was this century’s best seller.

Stowe: No, that would be the Bible, sir. My book was the second best seller.

Howe: It must have made you rich.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Stowe: Three quarters of those books were pirated, so I received no money. Still I didn’t write the book to get rich. I wrote it to show people the evils of slavery and that it had to be stopped. If those pirated books changed one mind, then I suppose they served a purpose.

Howe: How did you get involved in the abolitionist movement?

Stowe: That would be my father, Lyman Beecher. He was a Presbyterian minister. Several of my brothers followed in his footsteps. Father saw slavery as a sin. What good Christian could treat a fellow human being like an object?

Howe: So that is what inspired your book?

Stowe: That and my work with the Underground Railroad when I lived in Cincinnati. It’s just across the river from Kentucky.

Howe: You were in the Underground Railroad?

Josiah Henson

Stowe: Yes, I and my husband, Calvin, God rest his soul, hid fugitive slaves in our home more than once. The tales they told were heart-breaking. And I heard stories from others in the Railroad. I also read The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself. Have you read his book, Mr. Howe?

Howe: No, I will have to.

Stowe: Henson was a run away that later helped other runaway slaves settle in Canada. After my book he republished his as The Memoirs of Uncle Tom. Apparently he approved of my book. I was also inspired by the work American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses. I mentioned them both in my book A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Howe: A sequel?

Stowe: No. It was non-fiction. After Uncle Tom’s Cabin came out, many said I made the whole thing up, that slaves were treated kindly by their masters who treated them like family. Poppy-cock! My novel may have been fiction, but it was all based on true stories. I wrote the book to site my sources. So then people started writing anti-Tom stories.

Howe: Replacing the passive figure of Uncle Tom with a hero more assertive?

Dred - first edition

Stowe: No, anti-Tom stories were pro-slavery novels that portrayed slaves as child-like idiots who needed masters to take care of them. In ‘56 I did write another anti-slavery novel called Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp. Dred is a slave who runs away and hides out in a swamp, preaching against slavery and helping slaves to escape. Nothing passive about this gentleman. That book wasn’t as popular. I never meant to portray Uncle Tom as a man who gives in to his slavers, but as a good Christian. Simon Legree kills Tom when he refuses to betray the whereabouts of his fellow slaves who escaped.

Howe: Tom doesn’t sound like a betrayer or coward to me. Was there any final event that galvanized you to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin?

Stowe: Yes! It was when Congress passed that dreadful Fugitive Slave Law, making it illegal for anyone anywhere to assist runaway slaves. That was in 1850. I was so angry. It was bad enough these evil men had no Christian charity in their souls, but to try to force others to abandon their fellow men? I wanted people to break the law and help runaways. So I started writing a serial for the abolitionist journal New Era. I wanted to subtitle it The Man That Was A Thing but the editors changed it to Life Among the Lowly. It became so popular John Jewett wanted to publish it in book form. I didn’t believe it would sell that well, but I agreed. I was shocked at how well it sold.

Howe: Everyone agrees the book did spur the anti-slavery movement.

Stowe: Before when you heard about slavery, it was just something that happened to some other people. I wanted to put a face on it. Make people feel what the slaves felt.

Howe: Yes, a bit like the Diary of Anne Frank.

Stowe: Who?

Howe: Erm...Dutch girl in the...erm...war. I say, you must have made quite a bit of money in those stage productions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Stowe: Sir, I did not authorize any of those. I refused! Father taught us never to trust drama. From what I understand those shows put on anything they liked. Some made the characters look like clowns, turned it into a farce. Some are even pro-slavery! All right, I will admit I did attend George Aiken's adaptation. It did follow the book somewhat and kept my message intake. I thought Caroline Howard did a marvelous Topsy.

Howe: Yes, Topsy. The ignorant pickaninny.

Stowe: Yes, Topsy was ignorant. She was taken away from her mother so young she doesn’t remember her. She has no family, just herself. She is a tragic figure and shows the disregard slave owners had for the sanctity of family. I hate it when they show her as happy-go-lucky. She is a ragamuffin who was treated little better than an animal. Is it any wonder she is cynical?

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Anna Blunden
showing Eva and Topsy

Howe: Yes, I suppose she is a tragic figure at that.

Stowe: I know many have criticized my book. They say it’s too sentimental. It’s too melodramatic. That the slaves and the women in it are too passive. It may not be perfect...but it made a lot of people think twice about slavery. If I had any hand in its abolishment, then I am very proud.

Howe: I think you also inspired something called protest literature, novels pointing out social problems.

Stowe: That would be good, too

Mrs. Stowe and I talked for awhile more. I could see she was tiring and I did not wish to overstay my welcome. I thanked her for the interview and for the honor of meeting her. She is a most humble and charming woman.

A hundred years from now (1891) a novel like Uncle Tom’s Cabin would have been laughed at for being too melodramatic, for having characters too stereo-typed, for being too preachy. But this is the Victorian Age. The book made people cry and get angry and take action. For that reason alone, Uncle Tom’s Cabin deserved to be this century’s best seller.

Short documentary on Uncle Tom’s Cabin

The Painful History of Painless Dentistry

31 January 1891 - Hartford, Connecticut

Horace Wells statue in Bushnell Park

In Bushnell Park, near the east end of the pond, stands the bronze statue of a gentleman wearing a bowtie and holding a cane. On the pedestal is carved: “Horace Wells, the Discoverer of Anaesthseia, December 1844.” I was intrigued by this. Who was Wells and why was his statue here in Hartford?

What I uncovered was a tale that sounded like something out of a Gothic horror--a gentle doctor turned into a monster by his own experiments! A real life Jekyll and Hyde. And yet a man whose soul purpose was to help humanity.

Horace Wells was born in 1815 in the town of Hartford, Vermont into a well-to-do, family. Wells learned Dentistry in Boston and in 1836 setup practice here in Hartford, Connecticut. He became quite successful with some of the city’s most illustrious citizens as his patients. He was well known for his promotion of dental hygiene, in effect trying to put himself out of business.

However these were the early days of dentistry. Dentists learned their trade from other dentists. Extraction was usually the only method of treatment and had to be performed without painkillers. The best dentists were those who could pull teeth the fastest while the patient squirmed and screamed in pain. There was no known effective painkiller. Yet it was necessary. An abscessed tooth killed many a man before dentists.

Horace Wells

Wells was a highly sensitive soul who was sometimes so traumatized by the pain he inflicted he would have to take a day or two off to recover. There had to be a better way.

Elizabeth Wells thought a night’s entertainment might do her husband Horace some good. On 10 December 1844 “Professor” Gardner Quincy Colton came to town with his show. A former medical student, he left school when he discovered he could make good money putting on demonstrations with nitrous oxide, better know as laughing gas.

Nitrous oxide had been around since the 1790s. No one could find a good use for it, except as a recreational drug for the rich or as sideshow entertainment. Lectures like Colton’s would let volunteers take a few puffs on stage, so their neighbors could laugh at their antics. One of the most common effects was to give the user the giggles, thus the name “laughing gas.”

That evening one of the volunteers was Samuel Cooley, a clerk at the local drugstore. He got inebriated by the gas, stumbled and hit his leg. He came down off the stage and sat next to Wells. Cooley pulled up his pants leg revealing a wound. “I can’t feel a thing!” Cooley said in amazement.

Wells instantly saw the significance. Could nitrous oxide be used to stop the pain of pulling teeth? Wells needed a guinea pig to prove his theory. Being the noble man that he was, he decided he would be the volunteer.

Gardner Colton

Wells asked Colton to come to his office the next day. Colton administered the gas until Wells became unconscious. Wells’ student, John Riggs, pulled Well’s worst molar. When Wells woke up he exclaimed he hadn’t felt a thing. Painless dentistry was born.

In the following weeks Wells used nitrous oxide on over a dozen patients with great success. This was too good to keep a secret. The world needed to know. So in January 1845 Wells went to the Boston, home of the Harvard Medical School. At Massachusetts General Hospital he demonstrated his new discovery.

Something went wrong. The gas was probably pulled away too soon. When Dr. John Warren extracted the tooth, the patient woke up howling in pain. The students laughed and booed, the doctors scoffed, and Wells slunk away humiliated.

Wells had a nervous breakdown and had to quit his practice. In July he had recovered enough to help local surgeons by administering nitrous oxide to their patients. Harvard might have rejected him, but Hartford believed in him.

William Morton

Then in 1846, Wells former student, William Morton, gave a demonstration to the same audience pulling a tooth using ether (except Morton called it “letheon,” hoping to patent it.) Wells had experimented with ether, but had decided nitrous oxide was safer. Morton’s demonstration went without a hitch and he was proclaimed a genius. Wells now felt betrayed.

Wells left the country and went to France, hoping to start a business as an art dealer. However his reputation proceeded him. He was persuaded to give demonstrations in some leading medical institutions in Paris. The French were amazed and began using his methods. You can find a statue to Horace Wells in Paris today.

In January of 1848, Wells moved to New York City. He began studying chloroform as a possible anesthesia, trying to find the best and safest doses. As always he used himself as the first test subject. He very quickly discovered that the sweet-smelling liquid is not only highly addictive, it’s highly toxic and causes one to become deranged!

While under the influence, Wells ran out in the street and threw sulfuric acid on the clothes of two prostitutes. One was burned on the neck. He was immediately arrested and sent to New York City’s Tombs Prison. After a week Wells head cleared and the full horror of what he had done hit him. He took one last dose of chloroform to blot out the pain, then slit a major artery in his thigh and quickly bled to death.

Horace Wells was only thirty-three years old. He left a letter to his wife telling her he had become mad and begging her forgiveness. His body was taken back to Hartford, Connecticut and buried at Cedar Hill Cemetery. Hartford was horrified at the bizarre fate of their beloved dentist. In 1875 they erected this lovely statue to him.

As for the fate of the other players:
William Morton spent the rest of his life trying to prove he invented the use of anesthesia and trying to patent it. He went so far as to attempt to sue the United States Government.

John Riggs

Wells other student, John Riggs, inherited Wells practice, and later went on to become the leading authority on periodontal disease and its treatment in the United States.

And Gardner Colton decided to strike it rich in California. Failing that, he moved back east in 1863. He started the Colton Dental Association with clinics in New Haven and New York City, using his old knowledge of administering nitrous oxide. Between 1864 and 1897, Colton and his associates used the gas to safely extract tens of thousands of teeth. Ironically, it was the former huckster who made nitrous oxide popular with dentists everywhere.

I’m sure Horace Wells would have been pleased at “Professor” Colton’s success and helping to spread the word. Wells never wanted to get rich off his discovery. He only wanted to make dentistry painless. He gave his life to that cause.