Mrs. Lydia Huntley Sigourney, author, born in Norwich, Conn., 1st September, 1791, and died in Hartford, Conn., 10th June, 1865. She was the daughter of Ezekiel Huntley, a soldier of the Revolution. She was a very precocious child. At the age of three years she read fluently, and at seven she wrote verses. She was educated in Norwich and Hartford, and she taught a private girl’s school in Hartford for five years. In 1815 she published her first volume, “Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse.” In 1819 she became the wife of Charles Sigourney, a literary and artistic man, of Hartford. She then devoted herself to literature. Her books became very popular. In her posthumous “Letters of Life,” published in 1866, she names forty-six separate works from her pen, besides two thousand articles contributed to three-hundred periodicals…. She was active in charity and philanthropy, and she had many pensioners. In 1840 she visited Europe, and in 1842, she described her journey in “Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.” While in London, Eng., she published two volumes of poetry. Her best works are: “Traits of the Aborigines of America,” a poem (1822); “Sketch of Connecticut Forty Years Since” (1824); “Letters to Young Ladies” (1833, twentieth American and fifth English edition in 1853); “Letters to Mothers” (1838, with several English editions); “Pocahontas and Other Poems” (1841); “Scenes in My Native Land” (1844); “Voice of Flowers” (1845); “Weeping Willow” (1846); “Water Drops” (1847); “Whisper to a Bride” (1849); “Letters to My Pupils” (1850); “Olive Leaves” (1851); “The Faded Hope,” a memorial of her only son, who died at the age of nineteen years (1852); “Past Meridian” (1854); “Lucy Howard’s Journal” (1857); “The Daily Counselor” (1858); “Gleanings,” poetry (1860), and “The Man of Uz, and Other Poems” (1862). Her whole married life, with the exception of the time she spent in Europe, was passed in Hartford.
Personal
She is free from any the least pretension, and shines in my eye far more in private than in her books. I have never talked with a more sensible or a more unassuming woman.
Few persons living have exercised a wider influence than Mrs. Sigourney; no one that I know can look back upon a long and earnest career of such unblemished beneficence.
Were any intelligent American citizen now asked to name the American woman, who, for a quarter of a century before 1855, held a higher place in the respect and affections of the American people than any other woman of the times had secured, it can hardly be questioned that the prompt reply would be, Mrs. Lydia Huntley Sigourney.
She was a mild, sweet, and gentle woman, of an essentially feminine nature, and gifted with a high order of mind. Those who knew her well bear testimony to her many noble and lovable qualities.
General
Her writings in blank verse are remarkable for the music of their flow. In their style of thought and expression, they remind us of those passages of Cowper, where the movement of the verse is in perfect keeping with the gravity and tenderness of the subject. Like him, she is attracted only by Nature’s soothing and gentle aspects; her spirit holds no communion with the elements in their wrath; she takes no delight in witnessing the whirlwind and the storm; she looks on all the seasons, as they change, not to people them with images of gloom, but to draw from them whatever of happiness and instruction they can give. A voice of praise is uttered in her Winter Hymn; the beautiful drapery of the woods in autumn reminds her less of approaching decay, than the newness of life which is to follow. We could not desire that the moral influence of her writings should be other than it is; while she pleases the fancy, she elevates the heart.
Freedom, dignity, precision, and grace, without originality, may be properly attributed to her. She has fine taste, without genius.
The poems of Mrs. Sigourney include almost every variety of subject, yet all are happily made to subserve a high moral sentiment. They are characterized by harmonious measure, felicitous rhyme, great powers of expression, and an almost unrivalled purity of thought. A heart of the liveliest and tenderest susceptibilities has thrown a charm into her verse, which has won not only admiration, but esteem and love, alike in the highest literary circles, and, we may venture to say, in every village and hamlet of the land.
The moral character of her writings is un exceptionable. She possesses great facility in versification, and is fluent both in thoughts and language. But much that she has written is deformed by the triteness and irregularity consequent upon hasty composition and hardly does justice to her real powers. “Niagara,” “The death of an infant,” “Winter,” and “Napoleon’s Epitaph,” are favourable specimens of her talents.
Mrs. Sigourney has acquired a wider and more pervading reputation than many women will receive in this country. The times have been favorable for her, and the tone of her works such as is most likely to be acceptable in a primitive and pious community. Though possessing but little constructive power, she had a ready expression, and an ear naturally so sensitive to harmony that it has scarcely been necessary for her to study the principles of versification in order to produce some of its finest effects. She sings impulsively from an atmosphere of affectionate, pious, and elevated sentiment, rather than from the consciousness of subjective ability…. Whether there is in her nature the latent energy and exquisite susceptibility that, under favorable circumstances, might have warmed her sentiment into passion, and her fancy into imagination; or whether the absence of any deep emotion and creative power is to be attributed to a quietness of life and satisfaction of desires that forbade the development of the full force of her being, or whether benevolence and adoration have had the mastery of her life, as might seem, and led her other faculties in captivity, we know too little of her secret experiences to form an opinion: but the abilities displayed in “Napoleon’s Epitaph” and some other pieces in her works, suggest that it is only because the flower has not been crushed that we have not a richer perfume.
Of her prose works we can only indicate that which most clearly establishes the writer’s rank among our very best prose writers of the age. Her “Past Meridian,” given to the world in her sixty-fifth year, which has now reached its fourth edition, is one of our most charming classics. One cannot read those delightful pages, without gratitude that the gifted author was spared to give us such a coronal of her useful authorship. It were easy to collect quite a volume of the most enthusiastic commendations of this charming work; but we must leave it, with the assurance that it gives a new title to its beloved author to a perpetual fame in English Literature.
Mrs. Sigourney’s poems have a musical flow, and are inspired with a deep religious feeling; her thoughts are not profound, but are expressed in clear phrase, and are frequently enlivened by poetic fancy. Many of her productions have the qualities that should preserve them, and a judicious collection would undoubtedly be welcome, especially with religious readers.
Mrs. Sigourney, voluminous and mediocre, is amusing because so absolutely destitute of humor, and her style, a feminine Johnsonese, is absurdly hifalutin and strained.
A gentle and pious womanhood shone through her verse; but her books are undisturbed and dusty in the libraries now, and likely to remain so.
There is absolutely nothing of any high order of merit in her poems…. The one great characteristic of Mrs. Sigourney’s verse is its uniform propriety. It is pure, chaste, and insipid, highly moral but lowly poetical.
Obtained the coveted title of “the American Mrs. Hemans;” she is still useful as an index to the taste of the times, which left its impress upon greater writers as well, and helps to explain some of their artistic shortcomings.
