This week in Brattleboro history we will speak about the power of childhood memories and how they can have a lasting impact on people for the rest of their lives.
In December, 1925 the famous author Mary Wilkins Freeman wrote to our local newspaper about her memories of growing up in Brattleboro. She was seventy two years old at the time, but she wrote about growing up in Brattleboro as if it were just the other day.
Mary had moved away from town almost fifty years earlier but her memories were crisp and clear. She began by writing about the natural beauty of Brattleboro. When she was growing up she lived in the downtown area and the splendor of Mount Wantastiquet stayed with her through the years. Here’s what she wrote to the local paper:
“We used to sit in the front room of the old house and watch for the moon, always for me there was a slight doubt as to her appearance. I cannot now rid myself of the conviction that it was a special moon, rising nowhere else in the world. Its glory would fling out its road before it, then the first gleam of celestial fire would show over the mountain summit. We continued watching that moon’s slow triumph of advance and the joy of beauty lighted our souls and remained with us.
That mountain is not really a mountain at all, merely a reasonably high hill, but for me it was my first mountain of earth and remains first. Always I can awaken old delight with the memory of the mountain in summer mornings, with the dew-lights flashing out of lovely shadows until the whole mountain was ablaze for the day. The mountain in winter with sunshine on ice and snow was a crescendo of jewels. In the Fall I used to stand at the top of High Street and look at that mountain, giving to all who were willing to receive, colors wonderful enough to transform lives, no matter what troubles were in store for them, and it is something to be thankful for.
When I was a young girl I used to sit beside the window in the Congregational Church during prayer meetings and listen to the congregation sing hymns to God. I would also hear a whippoorwill in the trees along the riverbank below and the rushing song of the Connecticut River. I did not hear much of the prayers offered in those meetings because of listening to the more beautiful natural voices calling through the open chapel window. Those sounds have blessed my whole life, although I ought to have listened closer to the prayers.”
Mary Wilkins Freeman became one of the first financially successful, independent female authors in the United States. In the 1880’s she began writing short stories and novels depicting independent New England female characters. In 1890 the Harper’s Bazaar magazine published her short story “The Revolt of Mother”. The story addresses themes of rebellion, self-assertion, tradition, and the repression of women in a male-dominated society. This story became one of her most famous.
Mary Wilkins Freeman died in 1930, at the age of 77. She had moved away from Brattleboro while in her 20’s, but she often returned and kept touch with her old friends in town. During her life there were 47 books of her writings published and countless magazine articles.
Amid all of those writings, we remember her letter to the local paper when she was 72 years old and recalling memories of her youth. While she had traveled far and wide; and had more professional success than most women of her time, she remembered her early days discovering the wonders of nature in her hometown of Brattleboro.