Text: John Grier Varner, “Chapter 13,” Sarah Helen Whitman, Seeress of Providence, dissertation, 1940, pp. 554-600 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 554:]

Spiritualism had been closely bound up with the various socialisms of the day, and Mrs. Whitman's interest had been broad enough for her to approve of navy of those movements which came so naturally with her new faith. Perhaps the most popular of the enthusiasms which were so closely connected with Spiritualism was the Fourierite movement, a movement which for some time had swept the country and which had laid the basis for the and feminist struggles from the fifties on. The Providence literati, now under the sway of Fourieristic principles, had in its time formed an organization known as the “Phalanstery” which held regular meetings and discussed at length those ideas of social and spiritual independence which had emanated to some extent from Fourier. Among the names of those who constituted this group was that of Sarah Whitman.

Interested as she was in all efforts to obtain freedom, Mrs. Whitman had for years observed sympathetically the growing struggle for feminine liberty. She had seen Mrs. Hale in Boston pleading for the rights of women. Then in the thirties she had closely followed Margaret Fuller when Margaret had shocked the little city of Providence by her political interests. She had read Women in the Nineteenth Century, that book of Margaret's which had become something of a Bible for the women, and which led to the Seneca Falls convention of 1848. Margaret had spoken of “attractive industry” and the “liberty of law,” urging first and foremost [page 555:] that women be allowed to follow their natural bent in the choice of an education. These were conceptions of woman's rights which held much weight with Mrs. Whitman, for she herself had arrived at definite ideas concerning the proper employment and the correct social sphere for women. She felt that a woman should have the right to choose her occupation, and that her social sphere should be equal to that of man.(1)

In her Women of [[in]] the Nineteenth Century Margaret Fuller had pled for elective franchise, tenure of property, and the liberty to speak in public assemblies. Her book had become a platform, for the insurgent groups of the fifties, and among those ladies who had fought to uphold Margaret's platform was Sarah Whitman. But Margaret's broad plunge came when she took her stand on the subjects of matrimony and prostitution. Her socialistic ideas of matrimony were becoming fixed in the minds of American women, but there were few, even of the liberals, who could face ‘the embarrassment of openly accepting her Fourieristie doctrines. Mrs. Whitman apparently felt no shock at Margaret's bold evasion of convention. In fact she was constrained to sympathize with Margaret in her social arrangement with D’Ossoli, the fruits of which Mrs. Whitman felt were to “fill the heaven with joy — redeem her own heart forever from its solitude and loneliness.”(2)

Certainly with the influence and example of Margaret Fuller the question of a woman's right to choose [page 556:] marriage as a part of her sphere and to sever this relation when it became intolerable had by 1857 become a prominent one, and one which interested Mrs. Whitman. The passage of Robert Dale Owen's Indiana divorce law had been a firebrand; and the presence of Fanny Kemble in America in the fifties had been an inspiration. Sarah Whitman's feelings concerning the subject of divorce were of course to some extent determined by her spiritual philosophy. In this respect she was interested in the social ideas of R. D. Owen who also derived some of his theories from Spiritualism.(1) She found much to admire also in Fanny Kemble whose divorce in 1849, particularly since it had grown out of her distaste for slavery on her husband's Southern plantation, remained touching to many hearts in the fifties. Mrs. Whitman met Fanny Kemble in Washington in 1859, and at the same time she made the acquaintance of that other pioneer of American feminism — Lucretia Mott.(2) She took a definite stand on the question of divorce when in 1860 Horace Day startled the New York social order by divorcing his own wife and marrying Sarah Gould.(3) Sarah Whitman was among the first to defend. She would advocate domestic happiness even if it meant the breaking of every bond. She was an extreme liberal, and her Spiritualistic tenets had taught that there were affinities stronger than convention.

The feminist struggles in the fifties were sufficiently adventuresome to appeal to Mrs. Whitman; and years later when the woman's movement had become too tame and settled to have the zest of adventure, she wrote with [page 557:] a feeling of regret concerning struggles of those earlier days:

Throughout the fifties the regular gathering place in Providence for those interested in current social and literary questions was in the hones of persons who constituted the “Phalanstery”. There were members of this ‘ particular group who had obtained, some national renown, and the discussions were no doubt frequently of much interest, But the “Phalanstery” was not at all times sombre in its aspect. It at times yielded some amusement and some recreation for its members, once at a meeting held at the home of John R. Bartlett, humorous epitaphs prepared in fun for yet living members were read by various individuals of the group, The epitaph to “Saint Helena”, written by her friend, Sarah S. Jacobs, gives some idea of the conception of the “Phalanstery” concerning Mrs. Whitman, and the esteem with which they held her.

Among the members of the “Phalerntry” was Paulin Wright Davis, a woman whom Mrs. Whitman had become [page 559:] personally acquainted with in the early fifties. She admired the daring, willful ways of Mrs. Davis, and for years they were closely associated in both spiritual and political interests. In 1853 Mrs. Davis established the first distinctly woman's rights paper in America in which she advocated for three years the broadest views of individual freedom; and when some years later she had assumed a role of great importance in the movement for woman's suffrage, she spoke with much praise of Mrs. Whitman's assistance in those days when few other literary women dared lend their name. Then when in 1860 Mrs. Davis went abroad for her health, she bore news of Sarah Whitman to that great English feminine reformer, Elizabeth Barrett Browning.(1)

Mrs. Whitman was at this time interested in Mrs. Browning's efforts at social reform, and in 1853, when the fugitive slave law was passed, she addressed a sonnet to Mrs. Browning in which she spoke of that lady's sympathy for the “dark fugitive”.(2) Her feelings for the cause of Abolition inspired also a sonnet to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe who soon was to produce a literary firebrand.(3) Sarah Whitman had been interested for some time in this phase of social reform, and she had lamented conditions in the South long before coming in contact with Mrs.. Stowe's propaganda. She had never been in the South, but she had numerous kin in that region who kept her informed. Once some years later she wrote Ingram with much pride: [page 560:]

Furthermore Mrs. Power had numerous relatives in the South who kept in communication with Mrs. Whitman. In 1853 John S. Long, who had married one of Mrs. Whitman's cousins in North Carolina, brought his bride to Providence for their honeymoon; and he spent some time defending the institution of slavery against the strong opposition of both Mrs. Whitman and Anna, the latter of whom was now on a high moral plane and was a strong enemy of slavery.(2) Only a few years later Long's wife begged Mrs. Whitman to visit the South in order that she might see how happy the negroes were in their bondage.(3) Then when Mrs. Whitman visited Washington late in the fifties, another cousins, William T. Marsh of North Carolina, wrote begging her to extend some of her travels further south in order that she might

Marsh warned that if she would only come to the South she would turn into a slavery propagandist.

But Mrs. Whitman never visited in the South, although her interest in Poe did at one time cause her to consider traveling to Richmond. Nevertheless, during her visits in Washington in 1858 and 1859 she was able to discuss the conditions in the South with her Aunt Rebecca, who [page 561:] had carried first hand impressions concerning the institution of slavery since those days when she had been the wife of Charles Air at Peedee; and she came in contact with political leaders who were sore beset with the question of abolition as well as the other trying problems of the period. Consequently the intensity of her passion for female franchise was somewhat lessened by the more eminent question of the rights of man. Attending the President's levee at the White House on Washington's birthday in 1859, she came away impressed with the conservative Buchanan, who in spite of conflicting opinion concerning slavery opposed Northern interference in the domestic concerns of the South.

The part which Mrs. Whitman had played in the story of Edgar Poe, and her own literary reputation had brought her some recognition in the South; but she was now informed that there had been no recent sales of her book in that region because of the fact that Greeley had reviewed it in the Tribune. Greeley's defense of the abolitionist [page 562:] cause had had a tendency to make anything that he touched distasteful to Southerners.(1) Friends in the South who had been interested in Mrs. Whitman as a literary figure now wrote of conditions and the alarming state of feelings existent. Madame Octavia le Vert, whom one of Mrs. Whitman's friends described as a great wind bag and a humbug, wrote of conditions in Mobile in 1860, and suggested that only blood would quench the fires of animosity. In the same year Ben lane Posey, a Mobile critic who had been interested in Edgar Poe and His Critics wrote Mrs. Whitman with the characteristic confidence of the pre-war Southerner, and offered hospitality in the event she should wish it.

1860 found Mrs. Whitman spending much of her time in New York where she witnessed some Of the excitement which preceded the approaching storm. In January she attended a performance of “The Octoroon” in order to study [page 563:] the character of the “Yankee overseer”. She was impressed. While at the theater she was introduced to a Mr. Helper, the author of a book called The Impending Crisis. The first subscription for this book had been made by Mr. Nicholas Brown, a member of the Providence Philanstery [[Phalanstery]], and over a thousand copies had, been sold on the day that Mrs. Whitman met Mr. Helper. But now shocking news came from the South, and, pleased as she was with Mr. Helper's book, Mrs. Whitman found cause to lament the reaction which it had brought on among Southerners. She heard that one of her own friends, a Mr. Willis of North Carolina, had been seized and condemned to hang for having a copy of Helper's book in his possession, and now she feared that Willis’ punishment might be worse than hanging, News came of a young carpenter, James Power, who had been brutally outraged in the South, and Mrs. Whitman's resentment reached a peak.

But alarming as the news of these days was, Sarah Whitman found in New York an apparent calm which struck her as being a little unusual. In November she wrote the Journal:

The affairs of the nation were now on Mrs. Whitman's mind. Poe was to some extent forgotten; no copies of Edgar Poe and His Critics had been sold in the South since the incident at Harper's Ferry.(2) Spiritualism seems to have assumed a secondary role among her active interests, and the feminine movement had now been absorbed in interests of far more importance.

The entire country was bristling for war, and Sarah Whitman's whole adventurous nature responded to this excitement. William T. Marsh, a cousin who occupied a position in the north Carolina legislature, wrote her that there were those in the South who bitterly resented the treatment which they had received from the North, but that they had hoped to give the Lincoln administration a trial — they had hoped to make demands without bloodshed.(4) O’Conner came through Providence on his way to Washington, and Mrs. Whitman sent letters by min to John Hays, now a secretary to Nicolay, and to other friends in Washington. When her your friend [page 565:] Gamalial Lyman Dwight came to bid her farewell before leaving for the wars, she playfully placed a horse-shoe in his hands and bade him carry it as a charm.(1) She herself made plans to visit Sallie Robins in Ohio, but was prevented from doing so by the gathering of troops in West Virginia.(2)

So the middle of 1861 found the country in the heat of excitement waiting for the crash which was hourly impending. And the crash came on the twenty-first of July at Manassas. Sarah Whitman in Providence waited anxiously for good news of her friends and bad news concerning the rebels.

News of the Yankee defeat came on the 23rd in a letter from Lyman Dwight who gave Mrs. Whitman some credit for his own escape.

All of Mrs. Whitman's friends at the Battle of Bull Run had not been so lucky as had been Gamaliel Dwight, [page 566:] and she experienced some sorrow at the outcome of this fight. Both Lyman Lansing Vaughan and Colonel Slocum had been killed, and she recalled with some sadness her past friendship with these two men. Writing Mrs. Freemen concerning the latter, she said:

In commemoration of those who died in the Battle of Bull Run, Mrs. Whitman penned some lines which were later published in the Journal.(2)

Through Gamaliel Lyman Dwight Mrs Whitman kept in touch with many of those in the war; and her correspondence with him was a source of pleasure to both Dwight and his companions, for often over the Virginia campfires Dwight would read the letters of Sarah Whitman to eager listeners among his comrades. For some time Dwight had been a friend of Mrs. Whitman, having frequently gathered with her Providence circle. Handsome, intellectual, and a sybarite of taste — ”always as neat as if walking down Broadway, brave as a lion and chivalric to a degree” — Dwight had found a conspicuous place among his Providence friends.(3) It was rumored that he now served as the model for Nora Perry's hero who furnished the basis for her thrilling stories of war and romance. He had always admired Poe, and thus he found in Sarah Whitman a woman of congenial tastes. She [page 567:] later told with much interest how he had passed through the battles of Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Antietam, etc. without a scar. He was always in the thickest of the fight. At Gettysburg his horse was shot from under him, and he lay for a long time weltering in blood among floundering horses and dying comrades; he passed, the fatal summer of 1863 amid the malarial swamps of Chickahominy, yet he suffered no loss of health.(1) One wonders how much of this good fortune Mrs. Whitman attributed to her horseshoe.

The Battle of Bull Run seems to have brought to many a realization not previously experienced that the war was to evolve into an affair of more serious consequences than they had expected. In the early part of the war Sarah Whitman saw this evil as merely a necessary element in progress — in this tragic struggle she saw a progress toward a more permanent peace. But her staunch optimism was not to last, and the dreadful events of the next few years of the war brought to Mrs. Whitman a realization of the price that was being paid for freedom. In 1862 came the draft riots in New York, and she was to learn that the negro could be mistreated in the North as well as in the South. Crowds in New York denouncing an ‘Abolition War’ burned buildings and terrified the negro population. Everywhere the homes of negroes were burned; the blacks were stoned in the streets; and in one instance a negro, charged with no other offense but color, was seized and hanged. The climax came with the burning of a colored orphanage which [page 568:] had been provided by philanthropic ladies at the cost of two hundred thousand dollars.

On her way to Cape Elizabeth Mrs. Whitman traveled from Boston to Portland in cars loaded with sick and wounded soldiers returning home from the hospitals. She had been particularly interested in one poor boy, worn to a skeleton, who had been exchanged and was returning after a long confinement in Libby Prison to his home in the North. She conversed with him for some time, and she watched with interest his pathetic and wistful eyes when the girls came on at Saco to sell pond lilies.(2)

It was a gay group that Mrs. Whitman found at Cape Elizabeth — there were music and dancing and cards, in all of which Mrs. Whitman still participated — but the war was never forgotten. There were political discussions which were frequently stopped by “Uncle Joe”, the proprietor of the inn, when he found the “sympathizers” getting the best of the argument, for since before the war “Uncle Joe” had been a personal friend of “Jeff”’ Davis. It was the “creme de la creme” of Portland which Mrs. Whitman met at Cape Elizabeth, and among this brilliant society were often Northern generals who brought her stories of the war [page 569:] Once at the invitation of the British Consul, Mr. Murray, she drove to a clam bake being given in honor of Generals Shepley and Franklin. Here she was charmed by the stories told by General Franklin of his recent capture and escape. Franklin's “cool simplicity and dash of quiet humor” sounded to Mrs. Whitman like the picaresque pages of Gil Blas or Charles Lever.(1)

But in the midst of the unusual gaiety at Cape Elizabeth, Mrs. Whitman preferred most to hunt out some bleak ledge where she could sit alone or with sone friend and look out at the sea. She liked a stormy sea, for in the travail of the waters she could see the travail of her nation; and in the sounds of a tempestuous sea she found inspiration for some of her lines written at Cape Elizabeth.

Much of Mrs. Whitman's time during the early sixties was occupied in a close observation of the incidents of war and in the political situation. Anna was at this period intensely interested in political problems, and Mrs. Whitman welcomed this means of keeping her sister's mind occupied. She herself maintained her friendship with John Hay who was now in the midst of public affairs, and she was closely associated with some of. those politicians who represented Rhode Island in the national government. In 1862 Mrs. Oakes Smith asked her to use her influence toward obtaining freedom for her son Appleton who had been imprisoned by Northern forces because of his participation in the slave trade. Mrs. Whitman spoke of the matter to [page 570:] Governor Anthony of Rhode Island and to Mr. Thomas Davis, now a representative In Washington, and she made other, efforts to aid Mrs. Oakes Smith; but she conscientiously withheld her own testimony as to the character of Appleton, for she did not feel that she was qualified thus to speak. This reluctance cost her the friendship of Mrs. Smith for many years, but eventually the breach was healed.(1)

During those few bleak years of the war Mrs. Whitman continued to travel, acting always as a correspondent for the Journal. 1863 found her in Newport, enjoying what social life that city now afforded. The following year she spent some time in New York and at Cape Elizabeth, near Portland, Maine. Then in 1865 she returned to New York and later to Newport where she was interested in the fashionable society which, in spite of the fortunes of war, had again assembled along the “Avenue”.(2)

The war between the states had dispersed all efforts to bring about further political .and soc al privileges for women, for most efforts were being concentrated toward the freeing of the blacks. But when the iar had closed and the few years of reconstruction had passed, leaving the women time to reconsider their own problems, they began to make plans for obtaining their legal rights, The negro now enjoyed the right to hold property and to vote, and the women felt that it was time that they should enjoy the same privileges. The year 1868, therefore, saw a renewal of concentrated energies on the part of women, and [page 571:] toward the close of the year conventions were held in both Boston and Providence. The Providence convention, meeting at the Roger Williams Hall, formed the Rhode Island Women's Suffrage Association. At this meeting Sarah Whitman was given signal recognition for her willing participation in past struggles for feminine rights, being elected as one of the vice-presidents of the Association. The first officers of this association included some few names of importance is Rhode Island. They were as follows:

Edward Gould Chace, writing of the convention a few days later to a Miss C. M. H., gives some conception of the masculine attitude toward women's rights and their participation in political activities at this time. He wrote:

It was at this meeting that Mrs. Paulina Wright Davis, in speaking as the newly elected president at the association, paid tribute to the one literary woman use efforts had been exerted from the earliest years of the struggle for feminine independence:

Sarah Whitman's past interest in the feminist movement had been notable, but she had no intention of quitting the fight until she had seen it through. The next few years, therefore, saw her pen even more active than it had been in the past, and before her death she was able to see more of those privileges gained for which she fought. But as the time passed and the struggle grew more and more calm, she regretted the lack of that excitement which had characterized the early movement. Writing in December, 1868, concerning the Boston Convention, she cemented the fact that [page 573:] this gathering had not been enlivened by same of those boisterous demonstrations which had characterized forcer meetings. The only drawback to the success of the meeting had been the fact famt everyone was too friendly — the argument was too much on one side. She now sighed for more excitement in the ferdnIne cause, an excitement which she was to see within the next few years. But at present she had reached the conclusion that the wrongs of women were “too patent,” their rights too palpable to be longer met by out-worn platitudes and vapid sentimentalities about “home duties” and the “heaven appointed sphere” of “true woman,” No true man dared meet these wrongs, and the man of the nineteenth century was now apparently ready to resign himself to the current of events. The “heaven appointed sphere of woman” was no longer altogether in the home; it was wherever she might choose to be. And whatever standards men sought for women they should practice themselves.(1) But Sarah Whitman facetiously wondered just what standard men did want women to follow other than that drudgery which “household duties” required. How could woman adjust here self to masculine standards of perfection she wrote the Providence Journal, when the standards were so capricious, so variable, and so exacting? If a woman wore long dresses, she was a street sweeper; short dresses, a bloomer. If she read, she was a blue stocking; if she dressed, she was a dandy; if she knit, she was a nobody. Men criticised Queen Victoria at her knitting as much as they did the Empress [page 574:] Eugenie in her ephemeral fashions and fineries. The difficulty in the fact that if women transcended the sphere of their grandmothers, the men thought them immoral; and the age was now advancing beyond such a stage of narrow mindedness and bigotry.(1)

Among the most immoral occupations which a woman might Puzsu,e, according to many, was that of mounting the platform in behalf of the suffrage movement; consequently, Sarah Whitman had been among those very few who had dared lend her name to the cause in the early stages of the movement. However, many more literary women were now taking up the pen in its defense. Emerson in 1868 expressed surprise at the number of women participating in a cause in which a few years previously no tender or superior woman would have actively participated. Now the most timid had mustered up so much courage that no true men dared meet them. In 1869 Mrs. Whitman wrote that the intellectual and literary women, once so different or adverse, to the agitations at the woman question, had now rallied to the rescue, and she cited Nora Perry as an example.(2) But now and then Mrs. Whitman found a female writer who threw her talents toward the defense of the imperiled rights of man, and she once cited Mrs. Rebecca Harding Davis as a woman who had “addressed herself to the masculine prejudice of an oppressed class.” Like a senatorial moralist Mrs. Davis had assumed that the present day women were destitute of feminine purity; they were too far in advance in the progress of the age to spend [page 575:] their time in or find full employment of their awakened faculties in housekeeping and gossip. To prove her point Mrs. Davis had cited a typical young man of the period, a man only mediocre in intellect with no particular mania for leaving footprints on the sands of times but a man well meaning and industrious, who hoped to make a moderate fortune, be a good citizen and an honest father, and go through life honorably, creditably and honestly. Mrs. Davis warned that though this Max; professed to be broadminded in his attitude toward the woman question, when he married he would choose the dull, dependent, old fashioned type for his wife.

Mrs. Whitman's answer to Mrs. Davis, “progressive young man” was that evidently Mrs. Davis thought this young man a matrimonial prize worth securing at the sacrifice of a young woman's progressive tastes and opinions. The cost was too great. She contimied:

As a favorable contrast to the restless, aspiring, reasoning, thinking girl of the period, who not only had ideas and opinions of her own but who expressed them with what she considered an unfeminine frankness and decision, Mrs. Davis drew a picture of a woman of the good old times when virtuous and discreet women were “content to dwell in decencies forever”. Mrs. Whitman quotes Mrs Davis:

Here was a life which Anna Bartlett might have urged in 1816, a life which Susan Warner did urge in her tear-wringing novels. But Sarah Whitman could not consent to such a narrow sphere for women.

And now what of women's rights? What could women expect from men? “Insist, I pray you, upon the same code of morals for men as for women”, John Neal had written to the Boston Convention, and Sarah Whitman had agreed with this white haired old man who seemed to her never to acquire any of the infirmities of age. She felt that although the progressive young woman, would be looked. upon as forward and immoral, she should insist upon the right of suffrage; for with suffrage would come a consideration ten thousand times more desirable than all of the hypercritical deference and courtesy which women now received. She felt that to make the right of suffrage, which could be defined as another name for self-government, depend upon brutal strength without regard to capacity, education, or morals was an outrage upon humnity and common sense which men themselves would not endure for a day if it were a new question, or if barbarians had not made the laws for women from the first. It was not the rights of men, but the rights of women which [page 578:] should concern the nation. Everywhere the question of woman's enfranchisement was now pressing itself more and more urgently on conscientious thinkers of either sex.(1) But this was a question too closely tied up with marital relations not to be looked upon with gravity by conservatives and moralists. And the stand which Sarah Whitman now took was one which revealed her liberality to the extreme — that same liberality with which she had touched upon moral questions since those days when her essays on Shelley had offended Providence moralists, and her defense of Goethe and Poe had established her as an extreme liberal.

While conservative elements were concerning themselves with problems involved in the enfranchisement of women, one of their leaders brought before the world a few facts which were to prove a moral sensation. Throughout the nineteenth century one of the chief figures for citation by the guardians of public morality had been Byron. Consequently when in 1869 the Countess Guccioli published her “Recollections of Lord Byron”, in which she charged Lady Byron with being a selfish prig who had “abandoned her husband without cause, and returned to the flesh-pots of her rich father's home”, the world had looked upon her book with interest. But Harriet Beecher Stowe, who had harbored the secret of Byron's incest with Augusta Leigh since it had been told her by Lady Byron in 1856, now felt that it was time to reveal the secret to the world. Mrs. Stowe's account appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in September, 1869, [page 579:] and the “little lady” to whom Lincoln once accredited the collapse of a nation, now came near bringing the same disaster to the Atlantic Monthly. The results were appalling.

Sarah Whitnan had no sympathy with Mrs. Stowe in the publication of Byron's secret, for she seriously doubted “whether any curious investigation into private frailties and depravities could serve to clarify the moral atmosphere of society.”

And herein lay the objection which brought an active condemnation from Sarah Whitman. Mrs. Stowe had not confined herself simply to an attack on Byron's personal life, but she had attempted to show that errors and depravities of Byron's life were sufficient excuse to justify the prohibition of his works. She had revealed her dark secret to protect the youth of America from the brilliant and baneful influence of Byron's poetry. “We cannot but be amazed,” Mrs. Whitman wrote the Journal, “at the credulity of her judgment and the innocent audacity of its avowal.”(2)

Sarah Whitman's admiration for Byron had outlasted the years. She now recalled those days back in 1814, when as a child of eleven she had listened to the discussions concerning Byron at the tea table of Rufus King at Jamaica — days when she had debated long as to whether [page 580:] to name her doll ‘Medora’ or ‘Gulnare’. She had read with avidity every thing that came from Byron's pen, and now people were trying to tell her that her interest in Byron had been due to his sublime coxcombry, the affected misanthropy of his genins, its levity, its effrontery, its profanity, its sardonic and sensational character. She would not believe such a supposition. But suppose that it were true. Like Ruskin, she was not afraid of either the word passion or sensation, still less of the thing. It was not less sensation that the world needed, but more. To Sarah Whitman, Byron was the light bringer, the fire bringer, the man who glorified America when she had no other friend, the man who aggrandized liberty and revolt against tyrants in Europe. In all public issues, in all poetry, he had served the generous ideal, the good causes and he had manfully taken the human side.(1)

Mrs. Whitman's admiration for Byron and his liberality on the subject of convention caused her to extend her sympathies even to the Countess Guiccioli, Marquise de Boissy, whose admitted liason with Byron left no question among conservatives as to her morality. The charm of the Marquise, as teported by Americans who had seen her, added to her great affection for Byron was sufficient to excuse her frailties in the eyes of Sarah Whitman, and she therefore contributed an article to the Journal in praise of this much maligned woman. But she was also interested in another phase of this lady's character — a phase which no [page 581:] doubt brought her sympathies closer than they right otherwise ever have been. The Marquise was a Spiritualist, and what is more a medium who found it easy to converse with the spirit of the dead Byron. Describing a meeting between the Marquise and an American lady, Mrs. Whitman wrote in her article for the Journal:

During those few years when Mrs. Stowe was enjoying the renown produced by the Byron story, and the world was luxuriating in the excitement of the scandal, Mrs. Whitman spent some time in the home of her friends, [page 582:] the Burleighs, at Little Compton; and she frequently sent articles to the Journal in which she described the wild grandeur of this remote place where so many congenial people gathered to enjoy those pleasures afforded by the nearby ocean and by the literary people gathered about George Shepherd Burleigh, “There is an inexpressible charm in the life that we lead here — so free, so untrammelled, so social, so kindly, so restful”, she wrote the Journal.(1) Here she still enjoyed strolling or bathing along the beach, climbing the granite stairs, or ascending to the top of some windmill to gaze out over “leagues and leagues of sea and shore”, or to think dreamily of “the most romantic of all romances wherein

Once while Mrs. Whitman was at Little Compton, it was .reported that Mrs, Stowe bsifi been seen wandering in the old graveyard at Compton Village; and Mrs. Whitman rode five miles in order to catch a glimpse of the woman who had exposed the frailties of Byron.

One of Mrs. Whitman's chief pleasures in these visits was in her association with her host, George Shepherd Burleigh, a man whom she greatly admired.

The wildness and the remoteness of the natural scenery at Seaconnet appealed strongly to Sarah Whitman, and in this scenery she found inspiration. Particularly did she enjoy this spot when there was a storm upon the water.

in all of this, Sarah Whitman found a spiritual communication, and in it all she saw the hand of a liberal God.(2)

Among the subjects frequently discussed at Little Compton was that of Spiritualism, for the Burleighs were interested in this subject and they found and a sympathy in Sarah Whitman. Once in attempting to comfort Ruth Burleigh for some great loss which she had sustained, Mrs. [page 584:] Whitman told of having thought of her while opening a book of Sarah Gould's poems, and then of having been much surprised on finding her finger resting on a stanza beginning “To the vision bright adorn”. She felt that there must be some significance in the coincidence, for the thought came to her that there would be a joyous welcome in the other world over the incident that had caused Ruth such sorrow.(1)

Another friend who remained in close touch with Mrs. Whitman and who now formed a part of the social gatherings at Little Compton was William J. Pabodie. Throughout all of those years since the night he had walked out of Mrs. Whitman's parlor with Poe to escort that gentlemen to the train for the last time, he had remained an intimate friend of Mrs. Whitman. Whether or not Pabodie ever hoped himself to win Mrs. Whitman's hand is unknown. He was approximately ten years younger than she, but those tirades against him uttered by the Hon. Wilkins Updike might indicate that Pabodie had held serious hopes — hopes which would have been blasted by the Poe episode. The fact remains that Pabodie held always a sincere admiration for Sarah Whitman. He defended her against the calumnies of Griswold, and he shared in her enthusiasm for Spiritualism, no doubt being drawn closer to her through their common interest in the subject. Pabodie published articles on Spiritualism, and in the late sixties both he and Mrs. Whitman were interested in Mrs. Olive G. Pettis, a Providence [page 585:] medium whose “autobiography of Jesus of Nazareth” seconded by divine inspiration had given her a position among Spiritualists.

Pabodie lived alone, having never married. He was a man of peculiarly sensitive temperament and was subject at times to fits of melancholia, although he was very sociable and companionable in his happy moods. But in 1867 Pabodie had purchased prussic acid for the purpose of suicide, and he frequently spoke to his friends of its deadly effects, hinting at his own self destruction.(1) Sarah Whitman thinking to prevent his dwelling upon the subject had refused to accept his threat with seriousness, and she had possibly attributed much of his depression to the use of morphine which he now frequently took. And when she observed this friend in his happier moods, leaping and shouting on the beach at Seacommet, she felt that there was no danger to be feared from his melancholia. During the year 1870 she noticed a great change for the better in him. He had lost that critical and caustic spirit in which he formerly indulged to such a great extent, and he now spoke of others always with praise.(2)

But the question of Spiritualism seems to have brought on complications in Pabodie's life. There is a story to the effect that Pabodie, upon receipt of an inheritance of one hundred thousand dollars in 1870, made plans to contribute a large sum to Mrs. Pettis for the erection of a Spiritualist Church in Providence. Relatives [page 586:] contested his action, and Pabodie threatened suicide in the event he lost his case. The relatives won.(1)

On November 18, 1870, the Providence Journal announced the death of William J. Pabodie. He had taken the prussic acid. Shocked at the news, Mrs. Whitman wrote Ruth Burleigh on November 23:

And then recalling those pleasant days at Seaconnet Mrs. Whitman added:

By 1870 the questions of Spiritualism, morality, and female enfranchisement had become rather closely in — terwined. The doctrines of affinity embraced by Spiritualism had made it easy to condone “free love” and divorce, and the women now in fighting for their rights could not keep their skirts clear of these questions. Added to it all was the fact that now one of the recognized leaders both in Spiritualism and in the woman's movement was the [page 588:] glamorous Victoria Woodhtill, who vrith her sister Tennessee Claflin, represented all of the scandals of the seventies. In May, 1871, the National Woman's Suffrage Convention met at Steinway Hall in New York for the purpose of establishing a third party; but this meeting being dispersed by Susan B. Anthony's the association split, and a portion later assembling at Apollo Hall formed a third party which nominated the negro, Fred Douglas, for vice-president of the United States, and Victoria Woodhull for president. At this meeting Mrs. Pauline Wright Davis, now a close enough friend of Victoria Woodhull to have her own words misinterpreted, offered some resolutions concerning the rights of yawn, which created a stir. Therefore Horace Greeley, a candidate for the presidency in a party opposing woman's suffrage and never able to condone any platform that endangered marriage relations, attacked Mrs. Davis through the pages of the Tribune; and Sarah Whitman defended the rights of her sex against her old friend Greeley. We do not know just when Greeley's interest in Spiritualism had waned, but we can be fairly sure that a liberal interpretation of those doctrines of affinity had made him loosen his grip as readily as he had dropped Fourierism when Margaret Fuller embarrassed him by applying such theories to her own personal life. At any rate, Sarah Whitman, who had worked so amicably with Greeley over the question of Spiritualism, now opposed him rather bitterly in matters relating to woman's rights. Writing to the Journal concerning Greeley's [page 589:] attack on Mrs. Davis, Mrs. Whitman said:

Mrs. Whitman felt that Mrs. Davis’ resolutions, “like all brave and noble utterances”, were doubtless liable to misconstruction, and that they had not failed “to alarm the tender conscience of cautious friends nor to furnish a weapon to the antagonism of avowed enemies by their uncompromising earnestness and sincerity of protest and avowal.” But Mrs. Davis had simply demanded freedom for women in all relations of life just as some twenty six years ago she had demanded equal education, especially in the medical profession. And now when she demanded woman's pecuniary independence, it was claimed that she was seeking to destroy the marriage relation. She had said nothing of affinities nor divorce, but the cry was raised that woman must be dependent on man and subject to him or there could be no marriage.

Greeley had attacked Mrs. Davis in an article called “The Anarchy of Free Love” in which he had said [page 590:] that there was no “foulness Doss Me in the whole circle of social relations” but what could find its pretext and a sort of justification in Mrs. Davis’ words. Be said that she had simply given her view of “the proper way to escape from the evils that seem inseparable from the institution of marriage.” Then Greeley had cited two atrocious crimes as sufficient excuse for people to revise their views of social relations — crimes which had nothing to do with the woman in question. Mrs. Whitman therefore replied to his attack with some sarcasm.(1)

In August of 1871 Mrs. Victoria Woodhull lectured at the Harrington Opera House in Providence in behalf of her candidacy for president of the United States. Mrs. Whitman makes no mention of having attended this lecture, but the words with which Mrs. Woodhull began her speech would lead one to suspect that Mrs. Whitman was not in her audience. Mrs. Whitman apparently avoided Victoria Woodhull, and we may be sure later was pleased at having done so; for the next few years brought the Beecher-Tilton scandal, and Victoria occupied a conspicuous position in this affairs a position which Mrs. Whitman could have in no way defended. Victoria, seeing little distinction between the “Anarchy of Free Love” which she openly practiced and the type of love which she claimed, Henry Ward Beecher preached against but secretly practiced, brought forth a story on the great pulpit orator which rocked Plymouth Church and gave New York a sensation that was to last for several years. Sarah [page 591:] Whitman knew something of the new state of affairs in Plymouth Church through her correspondence with T. C. Latto who was connected with Beecher's paper, The Christian Union and she had other friends who attended Plymouth Church; but she seems to have had no particular interest in the scandal.(1) Nevertheless she doubtless had Beecher in mind when in July, 1873, she wrote of a discussion she heard aboard a boat bound for Long Branch, New Jersey:

Mrs. Whitman had joined a party of friends who were going down to Long Branch in order to get a breath of ocean air.

Mrs. Whitman seems to have been equally interested in both sinners and saints aboard, with a slight leaning in favor of the sinners; and when the conversation of the clerical party grew wearisome, she listened with interest to the vehement discussions going on among the “swarthy-cheeked gentlemen” who followed the turf. And it is interesting to note that although Mrs. Whitman was now seventy years of age, she listened with equal enthusiasm to news concerning the many activities of life which went on about her.

In November, 1871, Mrs. Whitman had taken what was perhaps her last militant public stand for the woman's suffrage movement in the form of two poems which she published in the Providence Journal. The first of the poems defined her idea of the power sphere for women and offered a challenge to men who might seek to relegate the feminine sex to dull and obscure positions. This poem was published on November 9. Then on the following day Mrs. Whitman offered a second poem, her benediction on the woman's movement — her song of faith and freedom — her prophecy that all, would be well.(1)

Mrs. Whitman apparently took no active part in the suffrage movent after 1871. She bad been cited in the Providence Convention of 1868 for her bravery in early stages of the movement; at the Twentieth Anniversary Convention of the National Women's Suffrage Association which met in Apollo Hall October 19, 1870, she had been given special mention. for her service;(2) and then when that convention of rebellious ladies met at Apollo Hall in New York in May, 1871, Mrs. Whitman was again mentioned.(3) She was now a distinguished feminist. But she apparently cared to take no further part. It is. hardly likely that she despaired of the success of the movement or that she was repulsed by elements that had crept into the fight. The better possibility is that the movement no longer provided sufficient sensations, and she had other interests which consumed her time. [page 594:]

It was not to be long before Victoria Woodhull's exposure of Beecher brought to a head a.z s. of the unpleasant elements that had been undermiT;ing the ‘movement. And soon Susan B. Anthony was to force her way into a barber shop where election ballots were being cast and to demand the right to vote as a citizen of the United States, thus bringing to a head the question of woman's suffrage. But what of Mrs. Whitman's old friend Greeley, that grand old man of the Tribune with whom she had fought on the suffrage question? When in the presidential election of 1872 the Republican party split, Greeley, opposing the women, was nominated for the presidency on the Liberal Republican ticket. For a while he was considered with apprehension by the Republican party because as editor of the Tribune he had denounced the carpet bag regime, and again he had offered to supply bail from his own pocket for Jefferson Davis. But there was small chance for Greeley. Whitelaw Reid now controlled the Tribune and Greeley's platform was weak. Grant was elected. Victoria Woodhull always claimed that even before Greeley's nomination she had warned Theodore Tilton that clairvoyantly she saw him marching in a long procession which followed a cortege — the cortege of Horace Greeley.

A very short time after he had suffered an overwhelming defeat, Greeley was dead.(1)

A part of Mrs. Whitman's political interest possibly died with Greeley, for by 1875 she professed to [page 595:] have little farther interest of this sort. But what sympathies she did possess were for the present administrations and on her visit to Long Branch, now the “Ocean Court” of President Grant, she did not share in the feelings of those of anti-administration tendencies who looked upon this “American Biarritz” as a “paradise of pickpockets and gamblers — the head centre of extragavance [[extravagance]], mobbing, servility and ‘Caesarism’”.

This very fondness for fast horses which President Grant possessed was sometimes played upon by shrewd politicians and it is a picture of him surrounded by these men and indulging in the habit that was later to bring about his death Mrs. Whitman recorded after her visit to Long Branch:

Mrs. Whitman's interest in more momentous affairs had by no means turned her attention from those circumstances in her own city and her own state which merited care, and during the last ten years of her life she devoted her pen to many and varied causes. Her articles in the Journal dealt with such subjects as “Useless Knowledge”, “Weak English”, and “Plagiarism” as well as with more or less serious matters of local civic reform.

Since her return from Europe Mrs. Whitmann had sought to encourage a beautification of her native city, a city which she felt had more than the average possibilities for such improvement, her memory now turned back to those days in the early part of the century before the march of progress had changed a romantic city of natural beauty into a manufacturing center neglectful of its aesthetic resources. She recalled the days when the China merchants ruled, the days of spices and oriental finery — those tines when the aroma of myrrh, and sandalwood, candied fruit and India spices filled the air, and she could sit and watch the white sailed ships go out to sea. But now the old paths where she used to wander along the Woonasouatucket were gone, and the sides of the hills were ugly, the trees having disappeared for the sake of housing foreigners.

Mrs. Whitman now made a public plea for the city of Providence to set aside land for pleasure spots where its citizens could enjoy the natural scenery that she had previously known, parks along the river where people could sit and watch the ships move in and out to sea.(2) But her interest in Ptovidence civic affairs turned to other subjects than merely that of the improvement of natural scenery. She was interested in hospitals, sometimes visiting them with medical friends for inspection; and her will shows her to have been interested in the Rhode Island Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, as well as in the Providence Association for the Benefit of Colored Children, To [page 598:] the fomer organization she left the sum of one thousand dollars; to the latter, five hundred.(1)

All of Mrs. Whitman's later journalism as well as that of her earlier days shows that intense passion for liberty and reform. A statue of King Ferdinand II which Mr. Albert Dailey had found buried in Italy and had transported to his back yard in Providence inspired her to write a short lesson on the tyre of the Bourbons;(2) and a remark concerning the base, good nature of Charles II brought forth an essay on a king who had shown his liberality by putting a stop to the persecution of the Quakers in New England and by securing religious liberty for Rhode Island. Mrs. Whitman felt that it might have been through some occult law of sympathy or some latent correlation of spiritual forces that Rhode Island had always been distinguished by that easy good nature and temperamental tolerance which had characterized Charles II, Rhode Island could never lay claim to the rigid morality and austere piety of the Puritans in Massachusetts, but it could shelter all of the runaway rogues, idle apprentices, and obstinate Quakers, that Massachusetts had driven from her borders.(3)

It was this intense passion for tolerance which inspired Mrs. Whitman in 1877 to write an article for the Journal in defense of tramps. It had been advocated that Rhode Island, rather than jail her tramps, should follow the example of Delaware and return “to the barbarous methods [page 599:] of ancestors” — the scourge. But Sarah Whitman felt that no judge could be trusted to determine correctly who should need castigation. She believed that most of the vagrancy in Rhode Island was due to an unemployment situation which had recently become oppressive because of the shutting down of the mills. The same cry had come in England after the shutting down of the monasteries by the Tudors. Emigration to America had relieved England of its vagrants in the sixteenth century, and now they were importing Chinese labor. This fact should be a warning to America. And then suppose there were vagrants in Rhode Island. It should be the last state to resort to such a method as whipping, for Rhode island had been renowned as a refuge for outlaws and vagabonds, homeless wanderers from witch-ridden Massachusetts and blue law Connecticut. It was the home of tramps.(1)

It was therefore always as an advocate of personal liberty that Mrs. Whitman stood. in matters of reforms. From her very childhood she had clung to a freedom of person and of conscience which her ancestors had demanded in settling the Rhode Island wilderness. A scorner of convention herself, she had defended those who had been willing to cast off such shackles regardless of public opinion, and her enthusiasm for liberty had grown until she had been willing to subscribe as her motto the words “Break every bond”, and her friends were constrained to write of her that

Abolition, the enfranchiseruent of women, even the privilege of vagrancy in Rhode Island — any plea for freedom, either physica1 or mental — brought her readily to a defense by means of her pen. But it was perhaps as a leader in the Suffrage Movement that she became best known.

She was a little discouraged now about the possibilities of women ever obtaining their rights and being able to occupy a position of usefulness in the world. This feeling she expressed in a poem entitled “Minerva and the Doctors”, which she published in the Journal in December, 1873.(1)

Sarah Whilmian never saw the complete enfranchisement of women in America, but the leaders in the movement did not lose sight of the significant part which she played in their battle for feminine freedom. Twenty years after her death, when the fiftieth anniversary of the First Woman's Rights Convention was celebrated by the Woman's Suffrage Association in Washington, a memorial service was held, and again Mrs. Whitman was cited as “the first literary woman of reputation who gave her name to the movement which later counted among its warmest friends, Lydia Maria Child, Alice and Phoebe Cary, and Mary Clemmer.”(2)