Spirits From the Deep

Sophia answered Hinton again from Springfield. By then, Hinton had written to her more than once, and she had also received his reply to the letter she had sent under her true name. In this letter, she begins the painful work of reconstructing her marriage to Richard Realf: the wedding at Furnessville, his movements between Nashville, Washington, Newbern, and Vicksburg, the poems he wrote while away, and the months of uncertainty that followed.

Her memory is careful but strained. She corrects herself, qualifies dates, and admits how difficult it is to call back what she had tried for years to bury. “I have cultivated forgetfulness for so many long years,” she writes, “that it is with sheer effort that I recall anything distinctly.”

Springfield, Mass.

March 18, 1879

R.J. Hinton

Dear Sir,

Yours of the 14th & 16th arrived together, as I was absent from home when the first of the two came. I have also received the letter in answer to mine under my true name — your sympathy for myself and friendship for our lost are pleasant to me.

It is like calling up spirits from the “vastly deep” to look into that painful past of mine. If I had my marriage certificate with me now, I could give you the exact date of my union with R. It was the very first of June, and before the muster out at Nashville, Tennessee.

I recall now that he went to Nashville immediately after our marriage, and that he came home by way of Washington and was with our family at Furnessville, Indiana (Porter Co.) on July 4th, ’65, making a brief speech at a gathering on the lake shore that day. Furnessville is a small hamlet 40 miles east of Chicago, built up by my brother-in-law E. L. Furness, who still resides there. The marriage was at his house, the Rev. H. H. Morgan of Kalamazoo, Mich. — a friend of our family — performing the ceremony. I think your dates, as given, are all correct.

He returned to Washington sometime in July, came back and remained in our family until August, when he returned to W[ashington]. Those months of Oct. & Sept. were dark months — I supposed him in Washington. I received some letters, very brief & unsatisfactory, as if he were much troubled. I think he found his regiment in Newbern, N.C., for he wrote me from that place in November, as near as I can recollect. I think he said in that letter that they were ordered to Vicksburg. All the rest of my letters were dated Vicksburg, Miss., and I thought the regiment stationed there until its muster out.

He wrote me Feb. 21 that they were to be disbanded. While at Vicksburg, he wrote several poems, only one of which occurs to me now — “An Old Man’s Idyl” — [which] did not appear in Atlantic until April ’66, I think, though it was written in the winter.

In regard to the “Carl Spencer” poems, I think it will be hard to discover whether he wrote them or not, for I had the impression at the time that he concealed his real name from the Editor. There are none of them of much poetic merit — I have two entitled Homeward and Beyond. They are like yet unlike his usual style. My sister and Mr. Furness, I remember, were not convinced that they were written by R.

I have not seen Lippincott’s yet — it seemed to be out of the market altogether the day I was hunting for Johnson’s sketch. I am grieved that he forwarded his woes before the public — your account of that fiendish woman with whom our poor R. became so fatally connected is terrible, nor can I imagine how he ever fell into her power.

You may give my address to Mrs. Whapham.

I am in hopes to be with my papers soon, so that I can be more exact in regard to dates. I have cultivated forgetfulness for so many long years — at least in regard to my connection with R. — that it is with sheer effort that I recall anything distinctly. I was in error about the muster out in Chicago, and it came to me as soon as I had sent the letter.

I have written this hurriedly, that it might be ready for the next mail, and may have neglected to remember some important facts.

If he enlisted Aug. 9, ’66 in the regular army, it must have been in July that he was with Noyes at Oneida. I know nothing of his life after the Oneida affair, excepting what I saw in the newspapers.

With kind wishes for successful completion of the work you have undertaken,

I remain,

Very truly yours,

S.E.R.

26 Fremont St.