Book Review: Harriet Beecher Stowe in Florida

“Harriet Beecher Stowe in Florida, 1867-1884” by Olav Thulesius (2001)
 
This short (170 pages) work answers the questions: Why did Harriet go to Florida, why did she settle in Mandarin, and how was she received?  The book’s great virtue, as the author says, is that he “let the writer of Palmetto Leaves speak for herself, painting a picture of Florida….”  In the preface the author writes that he became interested in the subject while writing his “Edison in Florida” (1997).  In addition to exploring Harriet’s role as “Florida’s most eminent promoter,” Thulesius shows “that she also sounded an early voice for the protection of the environment.”
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The book begins with brief background material on both the state of Florida and the life of Harriet, with a special emphasis on her health issues and her attraction to hydropathy, or the water-cure movement.  Florida attracted Harriet not only for its reputation for healing, but also as an escape or refuge from the pressures of her fame, the turmoil of her brother Henry’s adultery trial, and cost of keeping up Oakholm, her impractical Hartford mansion.
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We learn of her first foray to Florida, the less-than-successful attempt to set-up her son Frederic with the Laurel Grove cotton plantation.  The story moves on to her falling in love with the area known as Mandarin for its orange cultivation, and her purchase of a cabin along the St. Johns river. The author investigates Harriet’s project of establishing a school to educate formerly enslaved persons, and its connection to an earlier pledge she had made to Frederick Douglass.
After chapters about Harriet’s house, and the school and the church that she helped establish, we learn how her collection of writings about Florida, Palmetto Leaves, came to be published.  The book includes reports of Harriet’s explorations in Florida, providing a view of her love of animals and of nature.

Harriet recruited her brother Charles to move to Florida, and the author details his role as plantation owner, clergyman, and Florida’s second Superintendent of public instruction.  In her later years Harriet was forced to give up her Southern idyll, first because of her husband Calvin’s health and later her own infirmities.  The book concludes with the story of the only trace that remains in Mandarin, a Tiffany window in the church, which sadly was destroyed in 1964 by Hurricane Dora.
Thulesius’s writing is sometimes less than lyrical but always concise and informative, and there are many helpful illustrations.  It is a rewarding read.

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About the author:
Frederick Warren is a docent at the Harriet Beecher Stowe House, as well as a tour guide for the Friends of Music Hall. He is a retired estimator for a book printing and binding firm in Cincinnati.