I Was His Wife

In March of 1879, four months after Richard Realf’s death, Sophia Realf answered Richard J. Hinton’s letter.

Sophia writes carefully, restrained, but wounded. She does not write as a woman seeking revenge. She writes as someone who had once been legally and emotionally bound to Richard Realf, who had suffered the consequences of his abandonment, yet understands that his life was being shaped into memory. She had but a few of his poems, but she had information a sincere biographer ought to know.

Springfield, Massachusetts

March 8, 1879

R. J. Hinton

Dear Sir,

Through the kindness of Rev. A. Clark, I was aware that you were collecting materials for a biographical memoir of your unfortunate friend. But I am surprised that any of my correspondence with Mr. Clark has been transmitted to you. I cannot distinctly recall the contents of that letter — I only know that the article in the Republican excited my indignation by what I then considered its misrepresentations and malignity. For I had only seen the telegraphic notice of his death and did not know that any woman complications or marital trouble had caused his last act.

Doubtless the tenor of my letter gave you the impression (as it would, I think, anyone) that I had been R.’s comrade during his army life. I was not with him. I knew that part of his history only through his letters to me, through friends of mine who were with him, and through his own relation of events.

I submit a true statement of my relation to him — reluctantly — for I would not add another dark chapter to his already too much blurred life. I was his wife—and, if all reports be true, one of the numerous relicts he left behind him.

The 88th Illinois, the regiment in which R. served, was formed in Chicago. The Colonel (Chadbourne, of Maine formerly) of this regiment was a connection of mine, and many of the privates were young men or boys who had been my pupils or neighbors in that small western town where I then lived. It was through my interest in the welfare of these soldiers that I became intimate with Realf.

We were married in June 1865, just before the regiment was disbanded at Chicago. R. remained with me until August or September, when, having received a commission in a colored regiment stationed at Vicksburg, he went there, leaving me at the home of my brother-in-law, E. L. Furness, in northern Indiana. It was intended that I should join him speedily, but it became evident that the troops of the South would soon be mustered out of the service, and I awaited his coming North again.

His letters were frequent and full of plans for our future — of his literary ventures and of his trials while investigating cases against the Negroes. On February 2, 1866, I received a brief letter stating that the troops were to be immediately disbanded and that he should be on his way “home” before I could have time to answer. That was the last letter I ever received from him. I never saw him again.

Inquiries were made, but the officers who were with him during the winter only knew that they had left him at Vicksburg, ready — as he told them — to come North or “home.” In October of that year, through the letter of some journalist in the New York Independent, I learned that he had been at Oneida, with the Community there. From inquiry, I learned that there had been a correspondence between him and Mr. Noyes in regard to his becoming a member of that Community. Noyes did not state why he did not remain with them, but he sent me some copies of R.’s letters to him. In giving Noyes a statement of his past life, R. made no mention of his marriage to me, nor that he had ever formed any marital relation.

I learned by these letters that he had gone directly to New York City from Vicksburg. After reading them, I determined that if domestic ties were burdensome to him, he should never be annoyed or troubled by me. He might seek me if he chose, but I would never go to him. I knew that I had made a marriage that could only bring misery in some form or other, and I accepted the penalty without a murmur.

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.

When his poems or items in regard to him met my eyes, I received a shock, as if some long-lost friend had suddenly been recalled to mind. But when I saw the account of his untimely end, I found that I could still feel sorrow for the woes he had heaped upon himself by his reckless life. For many weeks, newspapers became a torture to me through their distressing reports. And now, with all my sad experience, I cannot believe that he was as heedless of all moral or social laws as these reports — if true — would make him.

My chief object in writing to Mr. Clark was, if possible, to receive a refutation of these seeming scandals: that a wife had followed him to California, another wife and children were in New York, and another in Springfield. No wonder the man became odious to me — and I at once notified my friends to address me by another name.

I had nearly concluded that these “newspaper wives” were all mythical beings — and now you mention an orphaned boy. I am interested in that child. Where is he, and whom does he call mother?

You will see it stated in the Republican article that he married the woman said to have followed him to San Francisco in 1866. I know nothing of his course the latter part of that year, but he certainly never married her in Indiana, as stated.

I wish that I could refer you to some of his war companions, but I do not know where any of them can be found now. I think, if you had access to files of the Chicago Tribune from the summer of ’65 to the close of the war, you would find letters of his to that paper. I recollect an account of the battle at Nashville, Tennessee, appeared in that paper. He participated in nearly all of those battles in the West in which the 4th Army was engaged.

I regret now that I have but a very few of R.’s letters, having, during my illness — being convinced that I should not recover — destroyed the greater part of the papers relating to my husband in any way, among them the letters from Noyes. What letters and manuscripts I yet have are in a distant place, and I shall not be able to get them until I return to my friends near Boston. I am in Springfield only for the winter.

Be assured that you have my sympathy in the friendly task you have undertaken. For R.’s life, like that of many a brother soul, will bear no deep scrutiny into its mysteries. Tread lightly upon his marital enormities — if mentioned at all in the work — for the sake of that child and those aged parents.

Had R. realized that “Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,” he would have left a brighter record behind him. The passion of the moment seemed ever too strong for him — and thus, instead of a heroic life, we have one blurred and spotted by much that is unmanly and cowardly. But I would not deal harshly with his memory — for “God and the angels know” along what paths were his temptations, struggles, and atonement during his ill-starred and suffering life.

I do not know in what condition R. left his literary effects, and imagine that it may be difficult for you to collect his writings. I think, for three years after he left me, that he did not write under his true name. 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.

He frequently spoke of his English friend Hinton — and if you are that person, you have unquestionably a more intimate acquaintance with R. than I ever had. But if I can assist you in any way — directly or indirectly — I will gladly do so.

When your letter came, I hesitated, and concluded at first that I would not answer it. But considering that you too were his friend, and that if this communication were detrimental to R.’s honor it would receive no publicity at your hand, I have written. And now I trust that by so doing I have not added still more to the complications of your work.

I should like to hear from you again.

Very truly,

Sophia Emery Realf

Address:

E. L. Emery

26 Fremont Street

Springfield, Mass.

P.S. I supposed that I could get the Republican, as you requested, but have not been able to find one at the office of publications. I sent Mr. Clark the only copy I had. Perhaps he can furnish it.