If I May Not Say Sister

Sophia wrote for the first time to Sarah Realf Whapham, Richard’s sister. Hinton had given both women their respective addresses, and Sarah wrote Sophia at once. Sophia opened her reply cautiously but tenderly: “My dear Mrs. Whapham, — if I may not say sister —.” The phrase was not casual. Sophia knows that she is one of many that claimed his name.

She also knows that Richard had left behind “a wife and child." She may not yet have understood how closely Sarah Whapham was also connected to Lizzy — Richard’s later companion and the mother of his children.

Springfield, Mass.

March 26, 1879

26 Fremont Street

My dear Mrs. Whapham ,— if I may not say sister — your letter found me two days since, suffering under a temporary illness which has left me quite weak, but I take it so kind in you, with all your cares, to find time to write to me, that I must answer as quickly and cheerfully as possible.

I have the letter before me written in 1866–67 by your Aunt Hylands — the first addressed to Richard, the second to myself, under the name of Miss Graves. I do not remember that I in any way alluded to his marriage in my letter to Mrs. H., but probably my inquiry relative to any former marriage may have induced you to think there had been some such connection in this country.

We were married in June 1865, at Furnessville, Indiana, at the home of my brother-in-law, E. L. Furness. He [Richard] was with me during the summer, save some short absences. In August he went to Washington, and some time during the fall he went to Vicksburg, Miss., with the colored regiment in which he had obtained a commission. I was to be sent for when matters became somewhat settled, but it soon became evident that the troops would speedily be mustered out, and it was thought best for me to await his return to the West. It seems now that I might have saved him much sin and suffering had I obeyed my own instincts, rather than his advice or that of friends, and gone South that winter.

His letters during the winter were affectionate and full of plans for our future — said that he was learning to be economical and was saving his means to begin life with when he returned. The last letter I received from him is dated February 24, 1866, at Vicksburg, Miss., and stated that he should be with me in two or three weeks. After five or six weeks had passed without news from him, inquiries were made, but nothing definite was learned. I thought for a while that death had separated us.

I suffered much during that anxious summer of ’66, but before friends and relatives I was outwardly cheerful — even gay. I put myself heartily into every work for the good of our community, acted as superintendent for the school, and oversaw the building of a new schoolhouse. But notwithstanding my efforts to lose my trouble in work, it wore upon me. And when I learned that Richard was alive and well in New York City, I was prostrated with illness and did not fully recover until I came East a year and a half later. He was dead to me. I never spoke of him — nor heard his name spoken in all these years. My friends — only my nearest relatives — knew whom I had married. They waited for me to speak — I did not, and they were silent.

I was with a married niece the autumn of 1878, not so far from Boston that Richard’s poetry couldn’t reach me.

If an item in the papers or magazines appeared, it was placed before me quietly, with no word of comment. I have always endeavored to avoid pity or sympathy for myself, and my general cheerfulness has been such that casual acquaintances often remark, “I believe that Mrs. R. never had a trouble in her life.”

I spoke of him then for the first time. The painful news moved and shocked me unutterably. I could not bear to be with my friends while so many terrible revelations were being made through the press. I came to Springfield to an old friend and relative, and where no one else knew — and have passed a quiet winter.

When I saw in a Springfield paper facts in regard to his connection with that woman-friend, I did not believe them and wrote to Rev. A. Clark in hopes that he could deny the truth of these distressing rumors. I learned through him that a wife and child existed — and for their sake I determined that I would not be publicly known as his wife.

Col. Hinton has kindly submitted all that he can learn of R.’s life to my inspection. He sent me last week a full account of R.’s connection with the vile creature who caused his last fatal act.^⁠[1] I can only account for that connection — so terrible to any reasonable being — through my knowledge of his drinking habits, which I think destroyed for a time his moral accountability.

I think also that after he saw what misery his indulgences had brought upon him, he became a better man and tried to lead a regular and honest life. But if our misguided one sinned greatly, have nothing in our hearts but pity and sorrow for his misfortunes.

These matters are painful to me, and yet more distressing to you, who have loved him since childhood with the patient affection of a sister. And I will speak of a pleasanter matter — the thirteen children — I would like to know something about them. Having no such ties of my own, and having lived much with children as a teacher, all children are very dear to me.

How long have you been in this country? Is your husband living? I mean to come and see you sometime in the future. I do not see the way clear to go very soon. It has always been my dream that sometime I would go to England — the home of my ancestors — and seek out the father and mother and other relatives of Richard and tell them what my relation was to them.

I should very much like to see the photographs of R.’s parents. When I am able to do so I will get a photograph of myself and send it to you. I have none in my possession now.

I meant to have written this letter chiefly about myself — to have given you some idea as to what kind of person I am — but I will only tell you now my maiden name and where I was born.

I am one of a large family — the thirteenth child of Lois Emery and Nathaniel Graves. Look in your children’s school maps and you will find the bay-indented coast of Maine — on Penobscot Bay is the city of Rockland, originally a part of Thomaston, in which town I first saw the light and sight of the Atlantic and its rocky islands. I lived there until my early womanhood, when, at the death of both parents, I — being alone on the homestead — went to the West to be with my only sister, Lois Furness, the only sister near my own age. The other sisters were married and had left home. When I was a child, they were more like aunts instead of sisters to me.

I have a brother and four sisters living, two in the West — the others in Maine. I have a host of relatives on the Emery side, but more on my father’s side. I will send you an account of the Emery Reunion some time, which will give you some token of my family connections.

Sophia opens explaining that she has had a temporary illness, likely brought on by the long letter that Hinton sent her, but she promises Sarah she will respond cheerfully as possible.

Sophia’s reference to Aunt Hylands points back to the first months after Richard’s disappearance. Sometime in 1866 or 1867, while trying to understand what had happened to him, Sophia had written to one of Richard’s aunts living in the United States. Aunt Hylands answered her, but addressed her not as Mrs. Realf, but as “Miss Graves.” It is doubtful that Sophia wrote her inquiry as Richard’s wife, but Sophia could not remember if she had or had not.

That small phrase suggests how uncertain and hidden Sophia’s position had become. She may not have plainly told Aunt Hylands that she and Richard were married, or Aunt Hylands may not have known enough to recognize her as Richard’s wife. Apparently though, Sophia had asked Aunt Hylands whether Richard had any “former marriage,” evidently trying to learn whether he had already been bound to someone else before he married her.

Sadly, the surviving letter to Hinton ends just as Sophia turns from Richard’s story toward her own. She had meant, she told Sarah, “to have written this letter chiefly about myself — to have given you some idea as to what kind of person I am.” What followed is missing from the surviving file. Whether lost, discarded, or separated, the absent pages leaves Sophia once again at the ragged edge of the record — present enough to prove Richard’s marriage, wounded enough to explain his abandonment and her heartbreak, but interrupted just as she begins to tell Sarah about her life.

NOTES

1 Sophia is likely reffering to the letter Realf wrote from Atlanta, Georgia on December 15, 1869. The letter was in the Richard Hinton papers in the Kansas State Library.