it is from these letters of Elizabeth Whitman, printed in part in her
little book by Mrs. Dall, that we may obtain our most direct knowledge
of her personality. After reading them one closes the book with the
conviction that here was a rare and lovely woman. Here is wit,
originality, sympathy--one is almost tempted to say a certain
tenderness--encouragement, good sense and good advice. The writer
obviously had that quality that will forever be wholly captivating to
the masculine mind--the ability to enter whole-heartedly into the
aspirations and ambitions of a friend, to make them her own, and to
supply the comforting assurance and admiration that the male sex so
frequently craves and that is so often the spur to high endeavor. There
is something very winning about this affectionate sympathy as displayed
in these old letters, all, with one exception, written to Joel Barlow at
the time when he was striving for accomplishment and recognition as a
poet. Yet the writer's praise is not blind or overdone, for she does
not hesitate to criticise adversely, though in a most engaging way, some
of Barlow's verses that he sends to her for her comment:
"There are so many beauties in your elegies, that it
looks like envy or ill-nature to pass them and dwell
upon the few faults; but you know that I do not leave
them unnoticed or unadmired. If you will have me find
fault, I can do it in a few instances with the
expression. The sentiments are everywhere beautiful,
just and above all criticism. . . . Why are you gloomy?
You must not be. Expect everything, hope everything,
and do everything to make your circumstances
agreeable."
Perhaps Elizabeth did not feel incompetent to assume the rôle of a
critic and literary adviser, for she herself had the true artist's
desire for self-expression and this found relief in her own poetry which
usually took the form of the heroic couplet.
It is inevitable that the reader of these letters should ask himself:
Was there anything more than friendship between Barlow and Elizabeth?
Doubtless the answer is in the negative. When Elizabeth Whitman first
met the poet he was engaged to be married to Ruth Baldwin who always
remained one of Elizabeth's closest friends and who through all of
Barlow's strange career was his faithful and beloved wife. Yet it is
evident that in his correspondent Barlow's wavering and self-centered
spirit found a steadying and assuring solace that he could never have
forgotten. Is it possible that he knew the secret of the final mystery?
Of love affairs, other than those here indicated, that may have
transpired in Elizabeth's experience before the catastrophe, we know
little or nothing. No doubt certain emotional adventures occurred as the
years passed. She was exceptionally cultivated and entertaining and all
accounts agree that she was beautiful, though her exact type of beauty
is a matter of speculation, for her portrait which for years after her
death hung in her old home was destroyed in 1831, when the house was
burned--perhaps with much memoranda which would have given us a clue to
her secret.
The following well-rounded sentence from Mrs. Locke's historically
inaccurate but emotionally true preface to the edition of 1866 of "The
Coquette" is not without its character-illuminating quality. "By her
exceeding personal beauty and accomplishments," wrote Mrs. Locke of
Elizabeth, of whose personality she seems to have had some reliable
evidence, "added to the wealth of her mind, she attracted to her sphere
the grave and the gay, the learned and the witty, the worshippers of the
beautiful, with those who reverently bend before all inner graces."
For a young woman of the period her life was reasonably varied and her
acquaintance extensive. At President Stiles's home, and elsewhere in New
Haven, where she often visited, she met many men of distinction. She and
Betsy Stiles both spoke French fluently and it is said that Elizabeth
was greatly admired by several of the French officers who had known Dr.
Stiles at Newport and who called upon him from time to time at New
Haven. Certain, it must be confessed rather indefinite, "foreign
secretaries" are alleged to have fallen victims to her charms.
There is an intimation that after her father's death she did not always
find life at home congenial. This is an inference--though not entirely
an inference--that one may readily accept. There was an irony in the
fate that placed this vivid creature in a New England parsonage in the
last half of the eighteenth century. Paris or Florence in the days of
the Renaissance--in such a setting one can visualize her. But, alas!
there was little in common between the New England of 1780 and the
France or Italy of three hundred years before.
And yet one thing was common--as it is common wherever individuals of
the human race abide. When the great passion overwhelmed her and swept
her away from all that she had known to a mysterious end, Elizabeth
Whitman was no longer a young girl. She was a woman of experience,
knowing the ways of her world as well as any one of her day and time.
The love that broke down all restraints, that surrendered everything,
that threw the world away, was no ordinary affair of the heart. It was,
in truth, the irresistible, the incredible, the historic passion. It was
of a piece with the substance of which the great dramas of the world are
made and against the New England scene it now became the motif of a
tragedy.
On a day late in May, 1788, Elizabeth took the stage at Hartford for
Boston where she was to visit her friend, Mrs. Henry Hill. No doubt her
family knew that something was wrong. They knew, among other things,
that she had spent all the preceding night alone in the starlight on
the roof of William Lawrence's house on the north side of the old State
House square. It was a strange proceeding, but their daughter and sister
was, after all, a strange, temperamental creature whose impulses and
mental processes they seldom understood and frequently disapproved. Of
how much more they were aware we do not know--they must have had their
suspicions--but at least they were ignorant of her purpose in her
journey. From the moment when she drove away in the stage neither they
nor any one of her Hartford friends saw her again--nor did she reach her
destination.
On Tuesday, July 29, 1788, the Salem "Mercury" printed the following
notice:
"Last Friday, a female stranger died at the Bell
Tavern, in Danvers; and on Sunday her remains were
decently interred. The circumstances relative to this
woman are such as to excite curiosity, and interest
our feelings. She was brought to the Bell in a chaise,
from Watertown, as she said, by a young man whom she
had engaged for that purpose. After she had alighted,
and taken a trunk with her into the house, the chaise
immediately drove off. She remained at this inn till
her death, in expectation of the arrival of her
husband, whom she expected to come for her, and
appeared anxious at his delay. She was averse to
being interrogated concerning herself or connections;
and kept much retired to her chamber, employed in
needlework, writing, etc. She said, however, that she
came from Westfield [Wethersfield?], in Connecticut;
that her parents lived in that state; that she had
been married only a few months; and that her husband's
name was Thomas Walker,--but always carefully
concealed her family name. Her linen was all marked E.
W. About a fortnight before her death, she was brought
to bed of a lifeless child. When those who attended
her apprehended her fate, they asked her, whether she
did not wish to see her friends. She answered, that
she was very desirous of seeing them. It was proposed
that she should send for them; to which she objected,
hoping in a short time to be able to go to them. From
what she said, and from other circumstances, it
appeared probable to those who attended her, that she
belonged to some country town in Connecticut. Her
conversation, her writings, and her manners, bespoke
the advantage of a respectable family and good
education. Her person was agreeable; her deportment,
amiable and engaging; and, though in a state of
anxiety, and suspense, she preserved a cheerfulness
which seemed to be not the effect of insensibility,
but of a firm and patient temper. She was supposed to
be about 35 years old. Copies of letters, of her
writing, dated at Hartford, Springfield, and other
places, were left among her things. This account is
given by the family in which she resided; and it is
hoped that the publication of it will be a means of
ascertaining her friends of her fate."
The hope of the editor of the "Mercury" was realized. This notice,
coming to the attention of Mrs. Hill, finally resulted in the
identification of the mysterious lady of the Belt Tavern as Elizabeth
Whitman.
[Illustration: Monument and Bell Tavern, Danvers.]
And that, really, is the whole story. The succinct newspaper statement,
with its contemporary note and its effect of reality, furnishes a more
effective climax than the phrases of any modern chronicler.
Yet one cannot quite close the record without mention of a few incidents
of the last days.
The copies of letters mentioned as found among Elizabeth's belongings
evidently escaped her, for, fearful of the outcome of her illness, she
burned, as she supposed, all her papers. A poem and part of a letter,
both clearly addressed to her lover or husband, though no name was
given, escaped her.
"Must I die alone?" she wrote in those final days.
"Shall I never see you more? I know that you will
come, but you will come too late: This is, I fear, my
last ability. Tears fall so, I know not how to write.
Why did you leave me in so much distress? But I will
not reproach you: All that was dear I left for you:
but do not regret it.--May God forgive in both what
was amiss:--When I go from hence, I will leave you
some way to find me:--if I die, will you come and drop
a tear over my grave?"
There is a legend, perhaps apocryphal, that one afternoon she wrote in
chalk on the inn door, or on the flagging before it, her initials or
other sign, which a small boy rubbed out without her knowledge. That
evening, the legend runs, an officer in uniform rode into the town on
horseback looking carefully at all the doors and walks, but speaking to
no one. Not finding what he evidently sought, he is said to have ridden
despondently away.
During all her stay at Danvers, Elizabeth wore a wedding ring and at her
request it was buried with her.
As to the identity of the man whom Elizabeth loved there have been many
speculations. A cousin of hers, an able man, distinguished in the
history of his time, has often been assumed to have been the cause of
her tragedy, but it is fair to his memory to say that he denied this
assumption vehemently. The late Charles Hoadly, State Librarian of
Connecticut, had a theory that the man was a prominent member of the
Yale class of 1776, but no evidence for this belief is given. Another
supposition is that Elizabeth, against the wishes of her family, had
contracted a marriage with a French Romanist who, had he acknowledged
this union, would have forfeited his inheritance. Probably Jeremiah
Wadsworth, who was her friend and adviser, knew the secret, but if so it
perished with him.
Her brother William, who was eight years younger than she, long survived
her, dying in Hartford on Christmas Day, 1846, at the age of eighty-six.
In the old man, who was one of the last in his city to wear the knee
breeches of the preceding century, it would have been difficult to
recognize Elizabeth's "little rogue of a brother" whom she frequently
commended to Joel Barlow's care while at Yale. Through a slight
knowledge of medicine he acquired the title of "Doctor," but he was also
admitted to the bar and for some time was Town Clerk, and Clerk of the
City Court. In his later years he became something of an antiquary and
after the Wadsworth Atheneum was built he found in that castellated home
of the humanities, particularly in the library, a grateful refuge from
the world, where he was always ready to converse with other visitors
upon incidents of days long gone by. One subject, however, was
universally accepted as unapproachable. With his son, who died unmarried
in Philadelphia in 1875, the line of the Rev. Elnathan Whitman became
extinct.
After Elizabeth's death her brother is not known to have mentioned her
name outside of the family, but for many years he made an annual
pilgrimage to her grave with his sister Abigail. The letter of an old
resident tells us that after Elizabeth died the door of her room in the
Whitman home was kept locked and nothing disturbed till fire destroyed
the building.
_III: The Hemans of America_
IN 1866, the year after her death, Timothy Dwight, later beloved
president of Yale University, contributed to "The New Englander" an
article on Mrs. Sigourney in the form of a review of her posthumous
autobiography, entitled "Letters of Life." This article deserves to be
remembered because, for one thing, it reflects from its author's mind a
sense of humor which Mrs. Sigourney never, even in her most inspired
moments, displayed.
We all recall the old story of the Hartford personage who achieved a
certain measure of fame by remarking that Mrs. Sigourney's personal
obituary poems had added a new terror to death. Dr. Dwight's paper
begins with a reference to this same phase of the poetess.
"Whenever any person has died in our country," he says, "during the last
score of years, who was of public reputation sufficient to justify it
. . . a kind of calm and peaceful confidence has rested in our minds,
that, within a brief season, a poetical obituary would appear in the
public prints from the well-known pen of Mrs. Sigourney. Indeed so
general has been this confidence among the people of Connecticut, that
some persons, who, from peculiar modesty or from some other reason, have
desired to escape the notice of the great world after death, have been
beset by a kind of perpetual fear that she might survive them, and thus,
having them at a great disadvantage, might send out their names unto all
the earth."
And later on in the essay he mentions the reported story of the man who
was unwilling to travel from New Haven to Hartford on the same train
with the distinguished Hartford lady lest in case of a railroad accident
she might put him into rhyme.
Though it is doubtful if the author of "The Anthology of Spoon River"
ever heard of these obituary poems, they form a strange precedent for
that original collection of verse. Some of them were gathered by their
authoress in a volume entitled "The Man of Uz, and Other Poems,"
published at Hartford in 1862, where the literary antiquarian may still
peruse them. If they originally possessed any poetry it is now extinct,
and the only interest remaining is the personal one. To those for whom
the older Hartford still has its appeal such names as those of Colonel
Samuel Colt, Samuel Tudor, "The Brothers Buell," Harvey Seymour, D. F.
Robinson, Judge Thomas S. Williams, Deacon Normand Smith, Governor
Joseph Trumbull, and Mary Shipman Deming--to mention only a few--have
their memories and possibly their family associations.
Perhaps it is not strange that such a considerable part of Mrs.
Sigourney's facile effusions related to the tomb for hers was the age of
pensive sentiment. It was the time when the weeping willow was popular
in all forms of art, from the tombstone to the mezzotint illustration,
when young ladies sang captivatingly, to the harp, of an early death,
when funeral sermons were printed, widely circulated and even read, and
when everybody was wondering whether they were numbered among the
"elect" or--not.
Yet it would be a mistake to give the impression that all the sentiment
of the time, or all of Mrs. Sigourney's poetry, partook of gloom. Far
from it. Though there was, to be sure, a kind of background of agreeable
melancholy, and such alluring titles of her books as "Whisper to a
Bride" and "Water Drops" (a plea for temperance) were doubtless not
intentionally humorous, Mrs. Sigourney could be playful at times and she
invariably painted the immediate scene in colors of the rose. She was,
in fact, an idealist. She so far idealized her early surroundings in
Norwich, where she was born, that Dr. Dwight, who also knew Norwich in
his boyhood, finds difficulty in identifying places and people. She even
idealized the Park River, sometimes known in her day, as in ours, by a
less euphonious title, alluding to it as "the fair river that girdled
the domain [her home on what is now known as Asylum Hill] from which it
was protected by a mural parapet." Who other than Mrs. Sigourney could
have transformed an ordinary stone wall into a "mural parapet"?
[Illustration: THE SIGOURNEY MANSION]
Speaking of the Park River, Mrs. Sigourney, in the course of describing
the pastoral surroundings of what was then her country home, confesses
that she could never understand why pigs were unmentionable in polite
society--though we think she herself refrained from referring to them
by their ordinary term. "Such treatment," she asserts "is peculiarly
ungrateful in a people who allow this scorned creature to furnish a
large part of their subsistence, to swell the gains of commerce and to
share with the monarch of ocean the honor of lighting the evening lamp."
Here are two other references, quoted by Dr. Dwight, to this rural
"domain" of which the dwelling house, it will be remembered, is still
standing:
"Two fair cows, with coats brushed to a satin sleekness, ruminated at
will, and filled large pails with creamy nectar."
And again, the poultry "munificently gave us their eggs, their offspring
and themselves."
But even this idealized Sabine farm was not exempt from the troubles
that lie in wait for all of us, and we must be chivalrous enough to
admit that Mrs. Sigourney bore the sorrows that came to her with grace
and dignity. Soon after the poetess and her husband took up their
residence here Mr. Sigourney was overtaken by business troubles, which
his wife translates into "obstructions in the course of mercantile
prosperity," and she cheerfully undertook various economies, among
which was "prolonging the existence of garments by transmigration."
Later the family moved to a less pretentious home on High street where
the latter part of the life of Mrs. Sigourney, who survived her husband,
was spent.
Later still this house became a kind of shrine, and a distinguished Yale
teacher and poet, whose people, back in his undergraduate days of the
sixties, dwelt for a time in the poetess's old home, has told the writer
how nice old ladies from the country used to make pilgrimages thither to
pluck a spray of lilac from the garden where the poetess was wont to
walk and to see the room where she "mused."
The fact is that she appears to have dwelt in a world of the mind that,
however real to her, was in reality distinctly artificial, like most of
her poetic writings. In these faded verses there now appears to be
little real thought, still less real poetry. The only stanzas about
which any flavor of poetic eloquence still clings are those entitled
"The Return of Napoleon from St. Helena" and "Indian Names." Compare her
"Niagara" and "The Indian Summer" with the poems on the same subjects by
J. G. C. Brainard, another now almost forgotten Hartford poet of her
time, whose early death prevented the flowering of a fame that was just
beginning to unfold, and the reader grasps at once the difference
between a certain graceful turn of thought and facility of phrase on the
one hand, and genuine poetic genius on the other.
[Illustration: LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY
FROM A MINIATURE IN THE COLT COLLECTION
BY PERMISSION OF THE WADSWORTH ATHENEUM]
And yet in her day she had a prodigious vogue and the reference to her
as "The Hemans of America," while now holding a certain facetious
implication, was gravely accepted at the time. Her journey abroad after
her husband's death was in its way a sort of mild ovation. She met Queen
Victoria and it is significant as well as amusing to find that our
Hartford citizeness alluded to the Queen as "a sister woman." Her verses
were translated into several languages and she received presents and
letters of commendation from the King of Prussia, the Empress of Russia
and the Queen of France.
The explanation of her contemporary popularity must lie in the state of
mind of the period. In that era "sensibility" was the passport to
literary success and Mrs. Sigourney certainly possessed sensibility, if
nothing else, to a high degree. Those sentimental, yearly gift books
known as "annuals" were a phenomenon of the time, and no "annual" was
complete without one or more of her poems. It is time that some
qualified person gave to the world a study of this old "annual"
literature, so sentimental, so romantic, and so generally languishing.
The most delightful appreciation that comes to mind at the moment, of
the "annual" as a literary curio is contained in Professor Beers's life
of Willis in the American Men of Letters series--or in his essay on
Percival in "The Ways of Yale."
There is a certain pathos in the fact that the years have denied this
Hartford poetess's gentle claim to immortality, because the
impossibility of granting this claim has led the world to neglect two
very definite and admirable characteristics she possessed.
One is that she was a remarkably good woman. She carried her Christian
precepts into her daily practice in a way that few of us seem to succeed
in doing. In spite of a little harmless vanity, everyone who came in
contact with her appears to have admired and loved her.
In the social life of the old city she was a leading and popular figure.
Samuel G. Goodrich in his "Recollections of a Life Time" describing
Hartford in the second decade of the nineteenth century says of Mrs.
Sigourney, then Miss Huntley: "Noiselessly and gracefully she glided
into our social circle and ere long was its presiding genius. . . .
Mingling in the gayeties of our social gatherings and in no respect
clouding their festivity, she led us all toward intellectual pursuits
and amusements. We had even a literary cotery under her inspiration, its
first meetings being held at Mr. Wadsworth's." Before the writer lie a
half dozen of Mrs. Sigourney's letters written in her distinct and
regular handwriting. They relate to business matters, to social
engagements, and a few are letters of consolation. Perhaps they seem a
little stilted and formal, but in all the personal notes there is
evident a very genuine and very charming spirit of sympathy and
kindliness.
The other trait that has been largely forgotten is that she was a
natural teacher of youth. In her early days in Hartford she conducted a
school for girls on singularly successful and somewhat original lines.
This she relinquished on her marriage, but for nearly half a century
those of her old pupils who lived never failed to meet annually with her
in remembrance of their early association. Clearly, she inspired in
them all an ardent and lasting affection.
On the writer's desk, among her letters, lies an ancient school
copy-book containing the transcript of an address she made to her old
scholars August 17, 1822, "on their meeting to form a Charitable and
Literary Society." It is characteristic that the greater part of this
composition is concerned with affectionate and what now seem rather
pathetic sketches of the five young girls of her flock who had died. The
address confirms what we know from other sources--that her school was
started in 1814, soon after she came from Norwich to Hartford.
The old manuscript abounds in unimpeachable moral aphorisms. One may,
perhaps, smile at the carefully balanced phraseology of this: "Some
sciences are more attractive to ambition, more congenial with fame, more
omnipotent over wealth, but I know of none so closely connected with
happiness as the science of doing good." Yet most of us would be better
men and women if we applied that maxim in our lives as constantly as did
this gentle "lady of old years." In her teaching "the science of doing
good" was not a theoretical matter alone. It was directed to practical
ends. "During a period of somewhat less than two years and a half," she
says, "you completed for the poor 160 garments of different
descriptions, many of which were carefully altered and repaired from
your own--among them 35 pairs of stockings, knit without sacrifice of
time during the afternoon reading and recitation of history. You
likewise contributed ten dollars to the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb,
five dollars to the schools then established among the Cherokees, and
distributed religious books to an amount exceeding ten dollars, among
the children of poverty and ignorance. . . . Some of you were accustomed
to gain time for these extra employments by rising an hour earlier in
the morning."