I Was His Wife, by S.E. Crie
Finding Realf
Chapter Eight
Sophia’s knowledge of Richard’s life ended almost entirely with the Oneida affair. What follows is not Sophia’s recollection, but the record that survives in regard to Richard Realf's life.
Realf believed he had failed to secure a commission in the regular Army because he refused to endorse President Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction policy. It was a policy he would have seen play out when he was in the South — Black Codes, vagrancy laws, labor-contract rules, apprenticeship laws, and other measures meant to bind freedpeople to plantation labor under new names. A Black man or woman without proof of employment could be arrested as a vagrant; children could be apprenticed away from their parents; laborers who left an employer could be fined, jailed, or forced back to work.
And so it was, the men of the 50th were mustered out of the army, but Realf stayed in Mississippi for a few months. He may have gone to Washington to see a young woman he had met before and corresponded with during the war. When he did leave Vicksburg, he did not go North to his wife, Sophia. He was in New York City when he wrote the Oneida Community in July, but by October had moved on.
A poet by the name of Carl Spencer, of Catskill, New York begins to be published in magazines and newspapers by December of 1866.
In 1867, Realf reenlists in the military “with the view," he wrote years later, "of getting out on the Plains (there were Indian troubles then), and getting also a kindly bullet through me.”[1]
Instead of duty on the Plains he was a private assigned to a recruitment office in Rochester, New York. By June 1867 his poetry began to regularly appear in the Daily Union and Advertiser under the pen-name of “R.R.”[2]
Dreaming and Covenanting.
BY R. R.
I was a Soldier; and sometimes,
When the lyric impulse touched my lips,
I sang my cheery and homely rhymes
Of simple loves and fellowships.
She was of those whose presence brings
A sense of the Peace we can recall
From our far-off Angel-haunted springs;—
So I stood dreaming: that was all.
My heart was parched with terrible drouth;
Her heart with Pity was dewy sweet;
And ever around her sacred youth
All things holy and fair did meet.
O in what meek, unconscious mood,
She wore the beautiful coronals
Of her perfect, gracious womanhood:—
So I stood dreaming: that was all.
Closer and closer, higher and higher,
Something drew me, each day, to her;
And I dreamed (O passionate heart of fire!)
That I was not shut in a sepulchre,
Stifling forever a moaning cry,
Lest haply my heaviness should fall
Upon brooding lovers passing by:—
But I was dreaming: that was all.
O tender face I kiss in the night,
When I glide in sleep through my prison bars,
And my spirit walks erect in the light—
In the dawn of the Everlasting stars!
O eyes of sweet austerity;
O blessed voice that trilled in the hall,
Like the sound of flutes on the open sea;—
But I stand dreaming: that is all.
O serene loveliness of mien;
O balmy, spiritual effluence,
That made the air about her clean
With smells of Eden-innocence;
So that all evil things in the street
Crouched, when she passed, in the shade of the wall;
Else stricken dead at her saintly feet:—
Yet I am dreaming: that is all.
I stand here now in the dark, and think;
I stand here now in the dark, and pray:—
O Father! I will be strong to drink
My bitter aloes, if Thou alway
Wilt shine in the paths her feet must tread;
So that no hurt nor harming shall
Vex one dear hair of my darling’s head:—
This is my covenant: that is all.
Rossiter Johnson, then an editor of the competing paper would write of Realf’s poems:
“. . . They were all dated at Rochester, and signed "R. R.," and were so utterly above and beyond all newspaper and most magazine poetry that as they appeared day after day I read them with amazement. Perhaps also with a touch of jealousy, for at that time I had the pleasure of being Robert Carter's assistant in editing the Rochester Democrat, and we never had the good luck to have any such poems sent to us. After a time the series included "Remembering and Waiting," which bore such a close resemblance to "An Old Man's Idyl," published in the Atlantic for March, 1866, that nobody who had read both could fail to observe it. Some one, unknown to me, immediately published a note to the editors, calling it a case of plagiarism. This brought out R. R. with an explanation over his full signature, and Richard Realf stood confessed. "Remembering and Waiting" was a recast of "An Old Man's Idyl," and not an improvement upon it.”[3]
By the time “R.R.” was revealed to be Richard Realf, he was in a relationship with a woman that would change the course of his life. Her name was Catherine “Kate” Cassidy who on July 10, 1867 was arrested for being drunk in public[4] and whose reputation was so questionable[5] that his friends tried in vain to bring Richard to his senses and rid himself of any obligation to her.
Rossiter Johnson gave her little credit, save to say that she had once nursed Richard through a serious sickness.
On October 29, 1867, Richard entered into a bigamist marriage, at the Church of the Trinity when he made Catherine Cassidy his wife.
Realf would later tell his friend Richard Hinton that he was not in his right mind, when he married her, others would say he was drinking heavily and Realf himself would explain:[6]
Meeting her casually, & learning something of the sad character of her earlier history (she had been seduced and was then the mistress of a certain person). I grew to pity her greatly.
She became, or pretended to become, deeply attached to me and I avouch, as in the presence of my Maker, that she fell upon her bended knees one day, entreating me to make her my wife, to the end that she might escape the alternative of entering a brothel.
I married her —and I take Heaven to witness, I have endeavored to be to her a good and true and loving husband. My friends—all of them averse to my step—warned me against the misery I was bringing on myself, but I thought I could save her from degradation, and I made her my wife.
Realf rarely denied his follies outright. Instead, he transfigured them. Error became anguish; recklessness became sacrifice; and the man responsible for the trouble somehow emerged as one of its injured parties.
By the end of January 1868, Richard and Kate left Rochester for New York City where Realf was stationed at Fort Columbus on Governor’s Island, made librarian and was the editor of the Soldier’s Bulletin.[7] At the Independence Day celebration in July, private Realf was chosen to give the address.[8]
According to Rossiter Johnson, Realf told him that when General John M. Schofield, then Secretary of War, learned of his “whereabouts and condition,” he was discharged from the army. Johnson does not explain what “condition” meant, but in the charged politics of 1868 it may have referred to Realf’s public radicalism, or perhaps his heavy drinking, or some combination of both.
Meanwhile, Sophia Graves Realf had left Indiana and returned to Maine where her health was restored, and her collection of Carl Spencer poetry grew.[9] She began teaching again and later would write, “After recovering from a serious illness that followed his desertion, I returned to my relatives in Maine and have lived a quiet, retired life with them ever since. Not many of my relatives or friends—so reticent have I been in regard to my marriage and desertion—know that the R. R. of John Brown notoriety was in any way connected with my husband.”[10]
Richard and Kate began living in New York City. Realf took a civil position as confidential clerk to General Rufus Ingalls, Assistant Quartermaster-General. The gesture was not theatrical charity. Ingalls was a hard-tested General, a man whose reputation rested on supply, discipline, and practical judgment. That he gave Realf employment suggests that even after discharge, Richard had not exhausted the patience of all who knew him. Some still saw the gifted, damaged soldier beneath the radical poet.
Realf began to move in literary and political circles that brought him invitations, acquaintances, and eventual scandal.
Of this period of marital life, Realf would describe Kate as:
Coarse—illiterate—with no tastes for things higher than gross indulgences and grosser scandal—furious in temper, more jealous than words can express—she was a tiger.
She made my home a torture.
Invited into polite society, requested to take part in literary, political, & other social gatherings, I deprived myself of these pleasures for her sake—choosing to remain at home.[11]
How many deprivations Realf incurred is up for question for by the last months of 1868, he had established a friendship with a milliner and dressmaker in Brooklyn who admired his poetry and over ten years had hoped to meet him. On New Year’s Day, 1869, Realf exchanged a picture of himself for an illustration of him that was made in the Kansas days. The woman hung Realf’s portrait on her wall.[12]
A few days later an article appeared in the New York Times that had been first published in the Worcester Spy out of Washington. In it was a short biography of Realf and included the lines of a poem recently published in a Pensacola paper. The author of the article assumed Realf was living in Florida. Six days later a correction appeared, no doubt written by Realf, though it wasn’t signed.[13]
A Correction.
To the Editor of the New-York Times:
Under the heading of “Reminiscences of John Brown’s Men,” I observe in the TIMES of the 4th instant an extract from the Washington correspondence of the Worcester Spy, in which the writer, after very generous mention of the war-services of RICHARD REALF, the “so-called Secretary of State in the Provisional Government” of JOHN BROWN, quotes a couple of stanzas from a poem by Mr. REALF, recently printed in the Pensacola (Fla.) Observer, and adds his belief that the author is now in the regular army as a non-commissioned officer, stationed at Pensacola.
The writer is mistaken. The “war lyric” from which the quotation is made was originally published several years ago, and has doubtless floated into the Observer in the ordinary way, being mutilated on its passage. Mr. REALF is a resident of this City, quietly engaged in the discharge of the duties by which he earns his bread, and devoting his leisure hours to literary studies and pursuits. He has lost nothing of his young love of liberty—nothing of his early belief in the ultimate triumph of humanity over ignorance, prejudice, caste and privilege—nothing of his youthful faith that God has in store no blessing for noble nations that will not some day be won by this nation. But with years and experience have come patience and charity; and while he holds that the costs of freedom have been fully paid in the lifting up of a degraded race from the sloughs of servitude, in our own escape from the deadly sickness which poisoned our politics, and in our recognition of the sanctity of natural rights, the venerableness of man’s nature, and the identity of pure justice with political interest—he has learned also that (for himself at least,) the highest work in which he can engage is to resist and put down whatever habit or tendency impairs his full ability to be a man, with a healthy soul, conscious of rights and duties, owning its gifts, and valuing above everything else the liberty to place its happiness in being noble and true. Thoroughly convinced that the reformation of the world—the restitution of things to reality—is not to be effected by hammering and tinkering upon the outside of systems and societies, he prefers henceforward to work on spiritual essentials, beginning with his own nature.
NEW-YORK, Jan. 6, 1869.
Steely-eyed Kate must have wondered where and with whom Richard was devoting his leisurely pursuits, and discovered where the woman lived and visited her home in Brooklyn. What transpired according to Realf was Kate disgracing "herself by using language too foul for any lips, and by getting together a vast crowd of loiterers to witness her furious insanity. She stormed into the woman’s house, took the picture from the wall and returned with it to the city” then went to Richard’s office, and “in the presence of distinguished personages let loose her floods of foul & false accusation.”
“I could endure no more. I determined to leave her—for I had known no rest, no peace during the whole period of our married life.”[14]
And Realf left her. The public scandal cost him his job.
When Kate found out that Richard and the seamstress were planning to leave for the South, he was arrested.
ONE OF OLD JOHN BROWN’S RAIDERS IN TROUBLE.
—On Saturday one Richard Realf, an Englishman, aged 35 years, was arrested by Detective Bennett and brought before Justice Hogan, at the Tombs, on a charge of theft, preferred by his father-in-law, James Cassidy, of No. 502 West Thirty-third street, who accuses him of having stolen $40. The prisoner was committed to the Tombs. The wife of Realf, an interesting young woman, declared if he had not been committed on the charge of theft, she would have preferred one of abandonment. She stated that he had of late taken up with an abandoned woman, and that he had engaged passage for himself and companion on one of the Charleston steamers. Realf was at one time editor of The Soldiers’ Bulletin, published by the garrison on Governor’s Island, and is also the author of several poems of average merit. It is alleged that he was one of the small party who accompanied John Brown, when he made his memorable raid on Harper’s Ferry, Va. It is more than probable that Realf is partially insane. He threatened to commit suicide while on the way to his cell.—N. Y. Tribune.[15]
Realf plead not guilty to grand larceny and there being no evidence against him he was released.[16]
Richard and the seamstress left New York for South Carolina. She went on to Charleston to reestablish herself in business, while Realf made his way to Graniteville, where he started a school. No one would rent him a building, so he built one himself out of brush, teaching the children of the formerly enslaved by day and their parents by night. He also wrote for the Republican State, winning political and personal friends among Reconstruction Republicans, Black leaders, teachers, and others committed to education and civil rights for the freedpeople. But in the South, those alliances were dangerous.[17]
Then Kate showed up. She was “color phobic” and before she had gotten there, Richard had moved the school into his house. On threat of suing him for abandonment she forced him to give up the school.
By the summer of 1869, Richard Realf entered another kind of federal service. He was appointed United States deputy assessor of internal revenue in the Edgefield District, a position that placed him not in the army, but still very much in the contested ground of Reconstruction. A revenue officer carried the reach of Washington into counties where the old order had yet to surrender. The news of his appointment made newspapers across the entire country, and he had risen in the ranks of Old Man Brown’s army, suddenly Realf was the youngest of the band and Brown’s right-hand man at Harper’s Ferry. That of course, made him a marked man.
Edgefield and Abbeville were being harassed by bands of “regulators” and Ku-Klux men, some slipping across from Georgia after committing violence. Revenue officers were threatened, and a small force of United States troops had to be sent for their protection. At Graniteville, Realf was placed under guard.[18] Governor Scott’s constabulary, armed with Winchester rifles, stood nearby while state and federal authority tried to impose order.[19]
Realf did not shrink. Meetings were held in which Judge Hoge,[20] Colonel Chamberlain,[21] and Realf addressed local citizens, urging them to join with the state authorities in punishing the outlaws.
Newspaper editorials called him a carpetbagger, painting him as an outsider, a political intruder, and a dangerous Reconstruction ally of freedpeople. “Englishman” made him foreign; “John Brown raider” made him incendiary. Together, the labels were more than insults. They were a dog whistle, endangering his life when and where words could summon violence.[22]
Around him, the violence wasn’t abstract. In Lexington County, armed and disguised men were driving away Black laborers. Some were whipped or shot at. Many had neglected to make written contracts, and terror was being used to cheat them of their share of the crops. At Newberry, an elderly Black man was beaten to death by a Ku-Klux party. The war had ended, but the question Realf had always cared about most hadn’t been settled: whether freedom would be protected by law, or abandoned.
A Revenue officer had to travel in order to collect taxes and licensing fees. Kate had him on a short leash, and the strife in his home came to a head in December of 1869. He was late returning home.
Richard told the story not long after the events occurred:[23]
Upon my arrival home on Wednesday, I think, instead of finding any welcome I was bidden “to go back to my n––gg–r wh–r– h–se,”[24] & informed that she purposed to publish me as a “wo-ho-master”[25] throughout the town.
It was Circus-day. A vast crowd was in town. I thought she was insane. She acted so, and looked so. I told her how utterly false her accusations were. She only became more enraged, and did go into the street and spread her shameful story.
Then a little while afterwards, James Ramsey was shot, and in company with Eckelsberger I had him to my house, and placed him on my bed. This act of simple humanity rendered my wife still more enraged, and not even the presence of the physicians, of Ramsey’s mother & friend was sufficient, powerful to make her respect herself. She raved and cursed, and forbade the use of my bed to the poor suffering boy.[26] At last I spoke indignantly and warned her to remain quiet, or I should expel her from the house. Thereupon she assailed me with an awful volley of abuse, and still I refrained. But at last her taunts goaded me beyond mercy, and I opened for her the door.
She went voluntarily, and at once with her clenched fist smashed in the windows of my office. After the removal of Ramsey she returned for her trunks. I was in agony, all night. She had procured me no food—I had eaten nothing since leaving Edgefield. The next morning I sent for her, but she returned me curses . . .
When she left on Thursday she took all, amounting to about $70.[27] I was ill on Thursday. On Friday, I came to Augusta to assess Robinson’s Circus at Graniteville[28] & met her on the train. I begged of her to return to me the funds due the Gov’t.”
Richard would go on to explain that Kate told him she would return the money, and after spending an evening together they went to their respective lodgings. The next morning they met up and while walking on Broad Street, Kate told Richard she had changed her mind and would not be returning the money and launched into curses. Realf threatened to have her arrested and she denounced him as a “John Brown” man.
Realf left her in the street, Kate went to the newspapers and the Augusta paper printed her “atrociously false and calumnious statements” in the Sunday paper, stating he had a “Negro courtesan” in Columbia."[29] The article was quoted in newspapers as far off as Kansas.
“I thought at first I would die, and to end all the misery & shame…”
Realf resigned his office, contemplated suicide, pulled himself together, and went to Atlanta, where he began writing friends for help: money to settle his debts and enough to carry him to Indiana, where he hoped to obtain a quick divorce.[30]
Charleston Daily News, December 24, 1869
Shreds of State News. — The Edgefield Advertiser says: Richard Realf, the “Englishman,” carpet-bagger, John Brown raider, and United States Internal Revenue Assessor for Edgefield, has resigned his office as assessor, and gone the way “Ward’s geese”[31] went. The “poor girl,” the “simple Irishwoman,” the wife of the said Realf, is still in our midst, and is apparently master of the situation.”
From Atlanta Realf went to Indianapolis, Indiana[32] and began lecturing, but Kate found him again.
In April of 1870, Realf abandoned Kate in Indiana and began lecturing throughout Pennsylvania for the Young Men’s Temperance Society[33] and was secretary of the Young Men’s Christian Association. A hostile Pittsburgh notice dragged Realf’s John Brown past back into view, mocking him as an English radical and accusing him of helping plan the “servile insurrection” attempted at Harper’s Ferry.[34] A long rebuttal appeared in friendlier paper and gave a lengthy biography of Realf and explained that Richard wasn’t at Harper’s Ferry at the time of the failed raid, but in Texas.[35]
Realf could not hide his past, or his name from the newspapers, or from Kate. When she discovered that he was in Pittsburgh, she showed up there in December with a babe in her arms and had Realf arrested for abandonment.[36]
While jailed in Pittsburgh in January 1871, Realf wrote poetry. One was a tribute to a railroad worker who had recently died and was featured in the Pittsburg Gazette, while another was found in Richard Hinton's papers. The title of the second poem is arresting because Sophia was known in her family as Sophie, but the poem itself is spoken by a father mourning a dead little girl.
To Sophie
In the grave deep dear, deeper still is love
They cannot hide thee from thy father’s heart:
Thou liest below and I stand here above
Yet are we not apart.
The lyric patter of thy blessed feet,
That made a poem of the nursery floor—
The sweet eyes dancing toward me down the street
Are with me evermore.
My breath is balmy with thy clinging kiss
My hand is soft wherein thy soft palm lay,
And yet there is a something which I miss,
And mourn for night and day.
My eyes ache for thee. God’s heaven is so high,
We cannot see its singers: when thou dost—
With thy lark’s voice makes palpitant all the sky;
I moan and pain the most.
Because the hunger of my vision runs
Most swift in to swift seeking after thee
I yearn through all the systems and the sun
But none doth answer me
And then I grow a-weary and do tire
And not my darling in this earthly place,
Can wean the passion with which I desire
Thy lips upon my face
If I could fondle with thee for an hour
But now thou art too sacred. I must stand
Silent and reverent. Thou hast grown to power
And fitness to command
And I walk here: thou art above me now;
I may no longer teach thee anything
Thou dost not need thy blessing on thy brow,
Nor any comforting.
Now changed - how changed. A little while ago
And all the beautiful vast care was mine
Out from my bosom gushed the overflow
Of sacrificial wine
And now thou art God’s angel unto me;
Thus his ways mix: And he is ever good.
Reach me thy hand wife; we are held all three
In His Infinitude
Richard Realf
Pittsburgh Jan 3, 1871
The trial that began January 9th, 1871 played out in the courtroom and the press. Richard acted as his own attorney, Kate had brought one along, and the baby. Realf testified for and hour and half: swearing that the child was not his, that he intended to divorce her and he would rather lie in jail than live with his wife. The court ordered he pay alimony and he resumed lecturing.
Unsatisfied, Kate showed up at his lectures to heckle him and cause a general ruckus. In June she took Realf into court again to charge him with abandonment, but the court discharged the case and held Kate liable for court costs.[37]
In September Realf brought a charge of surety against Kate, asking the court to require her to post a bond as a guarantee that she would stop harassing, threatening, disturbing, or otherwise troubling him. The judge did not immediately make her post bond. Instead, he warned her: if she caused Realf “any more trouble,” the court would require her to give bail for her future good conduct.[38]
Unrelenting Kate kept up the harassment and at one lecture she disrupted, Mr. Brigham an editor of the Pittsburgh Commercial felt sorry for Realf. He knew that Realf was a good writer and after the lecture he arranged to meet with Richard in the morning. At the meeting, Brigham hired him on the spot and was embarrassed when Realf broke into tears of relief.[39] In August, 1873, Richard Realf filed for divorce, on the grounds that he “suffered such indignities as to make his life burdensome” and that Kate had committed adultery.[40] Realf prevailed and Kate was made liable for the court costs and by this time there was no mention of a child. Some would speculate that she borrowed a child from an orphange, while others would say that the baby died.
In February of 1874 he became engaged[41] presumably to Elizabeth “Lizzy” Whapham[42] and sailed to England to visit his parents who he had not seen for fifteen years.[43] Upon his return to Pittsburgh he discovered that the state Supreme Court had reversed the divorce. Not only was he still married to Kate, he owed alimony. When the news came to him he fainted into a heap on the floor of his office and stayed depressed a long time.
He had just assisted his sister, her husband and their ten children to the United States and they relied on Richard for help to get settled. Richard was buried in obligation, yet he was a literary success, made lasting friendships and a home with young “Lizzie”[44] whom he called his wife. Rumors circulated that he was a bigamist, but he was never prosecuted and his only legal marriage to Sophia remained hidden, though Realf had told his sister Sarah that his first wife had died.[45]
Kate continued to show up at his lectures to heckle him, turned up at his home to create a nuisance in the streets, and once threw a brick into their carriage as he and Lizzie were traveling at night.[46]
On April 24, 1875, Realf and Lizzie had a son they named after his father.
Richard had six financially stable years at the paper, becoming the assistant editor, publishing poetry and lecturing. When the Pittsburgh Commercial merged with the Pittsburgh Gazette, in 1877, Realf lost his job.
By early 1878 the couple were living in a boarding house in New York City — Lizzy expecting the birth of another child. Richard was lecturing, but they were poor.
He came home for dinner one evening and was met by an Irish nurse who when relating the story weeks later said:
Ye've an addition to your family, Mr. Realf.' 'Ye don't say so!' says he. -'Yes,' says I: 'twins, Mr. Realf!' 'T-w-i-n-s!' says he, just like that.'Yes, sir,' says I: 'they're over there.' And he walked over and turned down the flannel from the pillow, and took a look at two of the dear little faces. After he fully understood that, 'There's another one over here, Mr. Realf,' says I. 'Good God!' says he.
They were overwhelmed of course and triplets a rare enough occurrence that the newspapers reported triplet births. After the notice ran, a man came to the newspaper office and gave twenty-five dollars to be given to the family. A reporter delivered the gift and then reported in the newspaper that he “found the mother of the babes as comfortable as could be expected, and the infants themselves distributed in sundry baskets in various parts of the room. The mother is evidently a well-bred English woman, apparently under 30 years of age, and the father, who was absent from home last evening, is said to be a man something over 50; and the woman in attendance upon Mrs. Ralf, in explanation of the ‘reputable national achievement” in which he was said by the correspondent of THE TIMES to have been engaged, said that he was one of the men associated with John Brown in his famous raid upon Harper’s Ferry. ‘God bless him, whoever he is,’ was all that Mrs. Ralf was able to say when the roll of greenbacks was placed in her hands"
Rossiter Johnson, who had admired Realf’s poetry when they both lived in Rochester, had gone to the recruiter’s office to meet Richard, many years before, but Realf had been already been sent to the fort on Governors Island. When Johnson happened across the article in the New York Times, he and his wife traveled to the city to be of assistance. A year later Johnson would write of his first meeting with Richard:
We found a single room occupied by the young mother and her children (a little boy of two or three years besides the triplets), a voluble Irish nurse and a kindly neighbor or two. Colonel Realf had gone to fulfill a lecture engagement.
At the next visit the father was at home, and welcomed us with as much grace and dignity as if to a palace. Then for the first time I saw Richard Realf. He was of medium height, a trifle stout, and very neatly dressed. He had a full, round face, clean shaven except a heavy moustache, a generous forehead, a Grecian nose and dark, liquid eyes: The curve from lip to chin, so seldom successful, was perfect. His dark, straight hair was touched with gray about the ears and temples. Altogether, I thought it one of the handsome faces I had ever seen.
We had had some correspondence on the subject of his poems, for which he had asked me to find a publisher. When I requested to see the manuscript I found to my astonishment that he had no manuscript prepared. He did not even possess copies of all his poems. But he drew from his pocket a worn and crumpled roll of newspaper cuttings which contained perhaps half of them. Thereupon I produced copies of two or three which I had been re-reading just before leaving home. He found one among them that he had not seen for years.
"This, Lizzie," said he to his wife, "is one you have never heard;" and immediately he began to read it in a low, musical voice, while his face lighted up with a sudden glow, and it was evident that he was far from that little chamber far away in Dreamland, whither he had gone by way of the camp-fire and picket-line where he had first scratched the verses.
Rossiter left Realf with the promise to try to find a publisher for his poems. When he next heard from Richard the news was grim:
"I told you that my wife and children had gone into the country. They are back here now - wife and boy, that is to say, the triplets being in charge of the Children's Hospital, New Brighton, Staten Island. Two weeks ago last Thursday wife and all the children went thither, the understanding I had of the character of the institution being that it was a pleasant, benevolent home for reputable women with children in reduced circumstances. I left them there hopefully. My poor wife was very ill - helplessly crippled, indeed, with acute rheumatism—but I trusted she would recover, and that I meanwhile could earn some money.
"But a few days after her arrival I went to see her, and was informed by the managers that she had been admitted under a misapprehension. They supposed her to be able to take personal charge of her three babes, whereas she herself needed the constant attendance of a nurse. I was instructed that unless she speedily recovered I must remove her.
"My little boy was separated from his mother, and was fretting himself to death. He had contracted also a terrible affection of the eyes, from which he is still suffering greatly.
"Last Monday I received written notice that they would keep the children if desired, but that, inasmuch as my wife did not come within the scope of the institution, I must remove her. I went down on Tuesday and brought away my boy, who would have died with heartbreak soon. On Friday I brought my wife back. She is utterly helpless. I have nursed her and my boy, and have cooked and swept as best I could. I have expended all the money of which I am possessed in the world with the exception of some five dollars. I have paid the rent of our little room for the current month. We have left the dear little triplets down there. It was a case of imperative necessity.
"I thank you very deeply for all your goodness. But you can judge how impossible it has been for me, in this culminative stress, to do any worthy work. Sometimes I fear I am losing my grip on myself. Do you know of anybody in the city who would give me a hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars, cash down, for the sole right and title to all I may have written? If I could get a hundred and fifty dollars for my verses, I would send Lizzie to a hospital and take for myself a second-class ticket to San Francisco at once. I should take my boy with me, and Lizzie would come as soon as I could send for her and she was able to travel.
“I will tell you when I see you the reasons why I am so desirous to get far away, far away. They are not base ones, but I shall never be able to do that of which I am capable in the East at least, not until a certain person dies;47 and you know it is written that 'the good die first.' Out in San Francisco I can find work and recover my poise. I have written to Colonel Hinton, now of that city, and have numerous friends there and in other parts of the State.
“I should have had money enough to carry us through the summer except for Lizzie's prolonged illness and the pressure of other burdens. But now, not having been able to save anything, I am pushed to this sore extremity. I never thought to have breathed these privacies to living man, but I am in an agony of apprehension and dread concerning the immediate future of my wife and child unless I can somehow manage to sell my poor verses for the sum I have named. I would sell them for a ticket to San Francisco and a hundred dollars.
“I am very greatly perturbed and distraught, and I am sure you will pardon the incoherence of this. I am not at all to blame for the pecuniary misfortunes that have overtaken me. I shall recover from them if my health and mind hold. And pray, dear sir, do not permit any part of these imposed confidences to get into the newspapers - at least while I live.
“I am ever most gratefully yours,
RICHARD REALF.”
Rossiter Johnson would go on to explain what happened next:
The next time I saw Realf he was flat on his back and his face was covered with a cloth. But for the voice that came from beneath it and the hand extended to meet my own, I might have thought he had found that rest which now seemed the only one for him. He had caught the disease of the eyes from his little boy, and was suffering acutely. That day we made arrangements to place him in the Ophthalmic Hospital in Twenty-third street, and send his wife to the Homeopathic Hospital on Ward's Island. She was discharged, cured, in September. His own recovery was rapid, and I soon found him as hopeful and enthusiastic as if he were a boy just setting out in life, instead of a man with silvered temples who had already fought half through its roughest battle. He was discharged from the hospital on June 11, and as soon as practicable started for San Francisco, whither passes had been procured.
Realf made it to San Francisco on June 23rd, rented a room, and found a job at the mint, handling molten metal, holding out until a job as a clerk might open. By this time his health had broken, he had spinal and bladder problems due to war wounds and railroad wrecks and his eyesight was poor.[49] He lectured in the evenings, returned to writing poetry for Harper’s Weekly, the San Francisco newspapers and prepared to bring his family west.
SUNBEAM AND I
BY RICHARD REALF
We own no houses, no lots, no lands,
No dainty viands for us are spread;
By sweat of our brows and toil of our hands
We earn the pittance that buys us bread.
And yet we live in a nobler state—
Sunbeam and I—than the millionaires
Who dine off silver and golden plate,
With liveried lacqueys behind their chairs.
We have no riches in bonds or stocks,
No bank books show our balance to draw,
Yet we carry a safe key that unlocks
More treasures than Croesus ever saw.
We wear no velvets or satins fine,
We dress in a very homely way;
But O, what luminous lustres shine
About Sunbeam’s gowns and my hodden gray.
No harp, no dulcimer, no guitar
Breaks into singing at Sunbeam’s touch;
But do not think that our evenings are
Without their music; there are none such
In the concert halls where the lyric air
In palpitant billows swims and swoons;
Our lives are as psalms, and our foreheads wear
The calms of the hearts of the perfect Junes.
When we walk together (we do not ride,
We are far too poor), it is very rare
We are bowed unto from the other side
Of the street—but not for this do we care,
We are not lonely; we pass along,
Sunbeam and I—and you cannot see
(We can) what a tall and beautiful throng
Of Angels we have for company.
When cloudy weather obscures our skies,
And some days darken with drops of rain,
We have but to look at each other’s eyes,
And all is balmy and bright again.
Ah! ours is the alchemy that transmutes
The dregs to elixir, the dross to gold;
And so we live on Hesperian fruits,
Sunbeam and I—and never grow old.
Never grow old, and we dwell in peace,
And love our fellows and envy none;
And our hearts are glad at the large increase
Of plenteous virtue under the sun.
And the days go by with their thoughtful tread,
And the shadows lengthen toward the West,
But the wane of our young years brings no dread
To harm our harvests of quiet rest.
Sunbeam’s hair will be streaked with gray;
And Time will furrow my darling’s brow;
But never can Time’s hand take away
The tender halo that clasps it now.
So we dwell in wonderful opulence,
With nothing to hurt us, nor upbraid;
And my life trembles with reverence,
And Sunbeam’s spirit is not afraid.
—S. F. Post.
Then Kate found him again!
NOTES
1 Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, March 1879, “Richard Realf” by Rossiter Johnson.
2 “Symbollisms”, Rochester Daily Union and Advertiser, June 8, 1867
3 Lippincott’s Monthly, March 1879
4 Rochester Daily Union, July 10, 1867.
5 Rossiter Johnson would write that Kate Cassidy was a “woman about town” in a nineteenth-century or early twentieth-century moralizing context, it could carry a nudge-nudge implication: a woman not safely domestic, not sheltered, perhaps flirtatious, perhaps “fast,” perhaps living by charm and male attention. It did not automatically mean prostitute, but it could shade in that direction depending on who said it and how spitefully.
6 Letter written by Richard Realf to R. Hinton, Atlanta Georgia, December 15, 1869, Richard Hinton Papers, Kansas State Library.
7 Rochester Daily Union, January 17, 1868
8 New York Daily Herald, July 5, 1868
9 Sophia to R. Hinton, March 8 and 18, 1879. Sophia wrote, “He wrote chiefly for Harper’s, Scribner’s, the New York Independent, and the Christian Union (later). “Carl Spencer” was his nom de plume during that time. I know this only by a poem that appeared in The Independent in the fall of ’66 under that signature—a poem that R. had composed and read to me before he left for the South.”
10 Sophia to R. Hinton, March 8, 1879
11 Letter written by Richard Realf to R. Hinton, Atlanta Georgia, December 15, 1869, Richard Hinton Papers, Kansas State Library.
12 Ibid
13 New York Times, January.4 and 10, 1869
14 Ibid.
15 Baltimore Sun, February 17, 1869 (reprinted from the New York, Tribune)
16 New York Times, February 19, 1869
17 “Richard Realf,” Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, March 1879; Richard J. Hinton, Poet, Soldier, and Workman.
18 New York Times, September 16, 1868
19 New York Tribune, September 6, 1869
20 Solomon Lafayette Hoge, an Ohio-born Union veteran and Republican, moved to South Carolina after the war and was elected associate justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court in 1868. He soon left the bench for Congress, serving South Carolina’s Third District from 1869 to 1871 and again from 1875 to 1877. See “HOGE, Solomon Lafayette,” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
21 Daniel Henry Chamberlain, a Massachusetts-born Union veteran and Republican, came to South Carolina in 1866, served in the 1868 constitutional convention, and was elected state attorney general before later becoming Reconstruction governor of South Carolina.
22 Abbeville Press and Banner, July 23, 1869; Charleston Daily Courier, July 28, 1869
23 Letter written by Richard to an unknown recipient from Atlanta Georgia on December 15, 1869, Richard J. Hinton papers, Kansas State Library
24 “go back to my n––gg–r wh–r– h–se” — Realf quotes his wife as saying, “Go back to your nigger whorehouse,” a deeply racist and misogynistic slur. In relaying this, Realf does not question the language itself, but uses it to underscore her alleged instability and cruelty. The phrase implies that she accused him of consorting with or housing Black sex workers, a charge that, in the Reconstruction-era South, would have carried extreme social danger.
25 “wo-ho-master” — A phonetic spelling of “whore-master,” a derogatory term historically used to describe a man who keeps company with prostitutes or facilitates sex work. Realf presents this as one of several public insults hurled at him by his wife during a street confrontation, portraying her as vulgar and intent on ruining his reputation.
26 While Realf does not state James Ramsey’s race explicitly, context suggests he was likely Black. Realf’s wife had, by his account, “an unconquerable aversion to the negro,” and reacted with violent hostility when Realf brought Ramsey—wounded, accompanied by his mother and physicians—into their home. This, coupled with Realf’s Reconstruction-era work on behalf of freedpeople in the South, points to Ramsey’s probable identity as a young Black man.
27 It was revenue funds, not personal money.
28 His task was not amusement but assessment: determining or collecting the federal revenue due from the show.
29 Daily Commonwealth (Topeka, Kansas), December 21, 1869
30 South Carolina did not yet have a practical divorce system in 1869. Although the Reconstruction constitution of 1868 opened the door to divorce, the state’s brief statutory divorce period is generally dated from 1872 to 1878. In 1869, separation, desertion, or public accusation remained the more immediate means by which an unhappy spouse might attempt to escape or control a marriage. Indiana had a reputation as a divorce state. It was known in the nineteenth century as an early center of “migratory divorce.” A later legal-history article even calls it the “Birthplace of Migratory Divorce,” but by 1870 a year’s residency was required.
31 “Gone the way ‘Ward’s geese’ went” was a colloquial expression meaning that Realf had departed or disappeared. The phrase is used here mockingly, suggesting flight rather than orderly resignation.
32 The Indianapolis News, March 8, 1870, “Richard Realf of South Carolina will give a lecture at the Colored Methodist Church on the Duties and Responsibilities of our Colored Citizens.”
33 The Pittsburgh Gazette, August 21, 1870
34 Pittsburgh Post, September 2, 1870
35 Pittsburgh Commercial, September 6, 1870
36 Pittsburgh Post, December 21, 1870; Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette, January 9, 1871; Muscatine Evening Journal (Iowa), January 10, 1871; Pittsburgh Post, January 16, 1871
37 Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette, June 26,1871
38 Pittsburgh Gazette, September 11, 1871
39 Richard J. Hinton, ed., Richard Realf: Poet, Soldier, Workman (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1894), p. lxxxii
40 The Pittsburgh Post, August 2, 1872
41 Buffalo Daily Republic, February 6, 1874. The newspaper doesn’t name the woman, but it can be assumed it was Elizabeth Whapham.
42 Not be be confused with Realf’s sister Sarah who was married to John Whapham.
43 Reading Times, May 24, 1874. Richard Hinton was never sure if Richard had gone to England after the Convention at Chatham, but this suggests that he had.
44 Elizabeth “Lizzie” Whapham, was born in Sussex County, England October, 1847
45 “Richard Realf,” The Literary Digest, June 1897, 161. The article states that ““Realf believed his deserted wife was dead. He so told his sister, Mrs. Whappam.” And “The acknowledgment, some years after, to his sister was all stated to me. He sought at one time to find her whereabouts, but the removal [Sophia from Indiana to Maine] made him believe also that she was dead.”
46 Lippincoott’s Monthly, March, 1879
47 He is likely referring to Catherine “Kate” Cassidy Realf.
48 Passenger list, San Francisco Chronicle, June 24, 1878.
49 “Richard Realf,” The Literary Digest, June 1897, 161. The article quoting Hinton states that “Army injuries and railroad accidents hurt his system. He had spinal and bladder troubles, and was at last taken with ophthalmic erysipelas. He was cared for in a New York hospital, and from thence, half-blind, aided by friends, was enabled to travel to California.”