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(UrplLfij

Copyright^0.

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT:

THE

ELIZABETH WHITMAN

MYSTERY

,

Deacon John
Whitman.

Daniel N
Foster. F

Deacon=MAHY
John Foster.
Whitman,
of Stow,
1717-1763.

. V

1

Rev. Isaac
Foster, o
Stafford

Rev. Em-
erson

Foster,

who was
at Killing-
ly, Conn.,

1774-82 ?

Hannah=
rlau. Grant
Webster,
and aunt
of Prof.
John W.
Webster,
of Harv'rd

College.
Author of
"The Co-
quette."

:Rev. Jceph
Fostester,
of Brijjts-

ton,*),
1763-102.

THE

ELIZABETH WHITMAN

MYSTERY

AT THE OLD BELL TAVERN IN DANVERS

A Study of "Eliza Wharton," the heroine
of a famous New England Romance

BY

CHARLES KNOWLES BOLTON

"No love hath she, no understanding friend."

PEABODY HISTORICAL SOCIETY,
PBABODY, MASSACHUSETTS,
1912

ELIZABETH WHITMAN'S FAMILY CONNECTIONS.

Rev. Zechakiah
Whitman.

I

Rev. Solomon Stoddard,
1044-1729, of Northampton.

I

Col. Nathaniki.
Stanley, of Hart-
ford, 1683-1755.

Rev. William
Williams,
of Weston.

DeaconrrMAitr Rev. Isaac Nathan Abigails
John Foster. Fostkr, of Foster, Stanley,
Whitman, Stafford. b. 172S. d. 1795.

of Stow,
1717-1703.

Rev. Em-
erson

Foster,

who was
at Killing-
ly, Conn.,

1774-82 ?

IIannah=
dau. Grant
Webster,
and aunt
of Prof.
.John W.
Webster,
of Harv'rd

College.
Author of
"The Co-
quette."

I
=Rev. John
Foster,
of Brigh-
ton,
1763-1829.

=Rev. Elna-

THAN

Whitman,
of Hartford
1708/9-1776.

Rev. Joseph

BUCKMINS

of Rutland.

Elizabeth
Whitman,
1752-1788.

"Eliza
Wharton."

I

Mary Whit

man, m. Dr.

R. Skinner.

d. 1834.

William Elnathan

Whitman,

1801-1875 unm.

IlENRiETTAr^=ELi Whitney, Aaron Burr,
Edwards inventor of Vice-Pres. of

the cotton-gin. the U. S.

^*?>.

f^A

Copyright, 1912, by The Peabody Historical Society.

THREE HUNDRED COPIES

PRINTED BY S. E. CASSINO CO.

SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS

V

>CI.A3 5JL078 &

CONTENTS.

Page

Preface xi

I. A Strange Lady at the Bell

Tavern 9

II. The Last Rites 33

III. The Author of "The Coquette" 51

IV. Elizabeth and her Friends 75
V. Elizabeth's Choice of Danvers 99

VI. The Man of Her Heart 109

VII. A Final Word 133
Notes on Various Editions of

"The Coquette''' 147

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Elizabeth Whitman's family connec-
tions— Frontispiece.

Wall Paper from the chamber occu-
pied by Elizabeth Whitman at the
Bell Tavern. Now at the Peabody
Historical Society .... 13

Door-step of the Bell Tavern, removed,
with other stones when the Tavern
was torn down, by John Hart, who at
the time built himself a house on
Wallis Street. Presented to the Pea-
body Historical Society by Mrs.
Oliver Emerson .... 23

Table book-rack used by Elizabeth
Whitman while at the Bell Tavern.
Now owned by C. R. Parker,
Auburndale .... 25, 28

The old Main Street Burial ^ Ground,
where Elizabeth Whitman is buried 31

Inventory of the effects left at the Bell
Tavern at the death of Miss Whit-
man. Given to the Peabody His-
torical Society by Charles K. Bolton,
Shirley 38, 40

Silver spoon found in the Bell Tavern,
1840, with other articles belonging to
Elizabeth Whitman. Given to Mrs.
Lyman P. Osborn, for the Peabody
Historical Society by Mrs. Emma
(Trask) Wood of East Boston . 42

Gravestone Inscription as printed in
The Coquette 44

Portrait of the mother of Elizabeth
Whitman, from the painting at the
Hartford Athenaeum 76

The Stage Route from Watertown to
West Hartford, from Low's Alma-
nack for 1788 92

Conventional picture of the Bell
Tavern, in Bickerstaff's American
Almanack for 1779, printed at Dan-
vers by E. Russell, "next the Bell
Tavern." That for 1778 was printed
at the Tavern .... 104

The Bell Tavern, Danvers . . 120

"Eliza Wharton," engraved by James
Eddy, for the eleventh edition of
The Coquette . . . . . 134

Lady Agar-Ellis, engraved by S. W.
Reynolds from the painting by John
Jackson . . . . . . 136

Gravestone of Elizabeth Whitman . 143

Title-page of the First Edition of
"The Coquette" . . . .148

PREFACE.

In this age of science the novel is
the most popular form of literature.
It is our troubadour, singing of the
mystery and the passion of life, while
the living hero is at the bottom of an
ore shaft, and the heroine is studying
the chemistry of food. We who
believe that what is is best, would not
have it otherwise.

The following pages, however, tell
of an era when there was less of
variety in a girl's daily round, and
few opportunities for the expression
of her individuality. These pages tell
also of one who chafed under these
conditions; and the story of her suf-

XI

PREFACE

fering, whether we consider it to have
been retributive or not, will always
appeal to us.

I have attempted to gather all that
may now be had relating to Elizabeth
Whitman. To Mrs. Elizabeth C.
Osborn, who has placed at my service
the treasures of the Peabody His-
torical Society, I am under great
obligation, not only for facts of value,
but for counsel and encouragement;
and to Mr. Lyman P. Osborn, Libra-
rian of the Peabody Institute, Pea-
body, I am indebted for aid. Mr.
George Francis Dow of the Essex
Institute, Miss Mary C. Crawford,
the author, Rev. Edwin P. Parker of
the Second church in Hartford, Mr.
Albert Matthews, and Mr. M. A.

XII

PREFACE

DeWolfe Howe have all added to my
store of knowledge.

The opportunity to print the inven-
tory I owe to the generosity of Mr,
Charles E. Goodspeed of Boston, who
kept in mind a chance remark of
mine, and gave me the precious bit of
crumbling paper when it came into
his hands.

And finally I would not fail to
record the life-long interest in
Elizabeth felt by my mother, Mrs.
Sarah K. Bolton, who often heard
her history during a girlhood spent in
Hartford.

As I look back upon the pages of
Elizabeth Whitman's life-story I feel,
vaguely, that she needed not an
advocate so much as a persistent

PREFACE

searcher for the truth. And we may
hope that Time may bring a harvest
of truth which no mere industry has
been able to obtain.

C K. B.

A STRANGE LADY

AT

BELL TAVERN

THE ELIZABETH WHITMAN
MYSTERY

I. A Strange Lady at the Bell
Tavern.

(T~\ ccasionally a domestic trag-

^-^ edy, which appears at first to

have no elements of general interest,

gathers importance with increasing

years and becomes part of the social

history of the time. So it was with

the life of Beatrice Cenci whose not

altogether unlovely story has been

told again by the sympathetic and

masterly pen of Marion Crawford.

A young woman's distress and

lonely dying at a quiet Massachusetts

town, far from her home, has become,
9

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

through the pen of another novelist,
an enduring part of the history of
American fiction.1 Because the story
was discussed at every fireside a cen-
tury ago as a mystery and as a
romance, its every detail and con-
jecture now call for final record.

On a day late in May or early in
June in the year 1788, a lady of thirty-
six, refined and accustomed to move
in the highest social and intellectual
life of New England, engaged a
chaise and post-boy at a tavern in
Watertown and set out for Danvers,

1 More recently Miss Mary C. Crawford, while
retelling the story in her delightful "Romance of
Old New England Churches," suggests that Haw-
thorne may have found his heroine for the Scar-
let Letter in Elizabeth Whitman. This theory
was first put forward by a young reporter in
Salem, without evidence of fact to fortify him.
Hawthorne's friends never heard of the sug-
gested origin of the Scarlet Letter.

10

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

near Salem. Her arrival at the Bell
Tavern1 in Danvers caused no un-
usual remark; the landlord, Captain
Goodhue, gave her the south-east
room, had her trunk carried up the
stairs, and dismissed the post-boy.
This was probably Captain William
Goodhue who had recently retired
from the management of the Sun
Tavern in Salem.2

The lady explained that her hus-
band, Thomas Walker,3 would arrive

i Washington Street, corner Main Street, near
the Lexington monument in the present town of
Peabody.

2 Low's almanacs show that Goodhue kept the
"Inn at Danvers" in 1788, 1789 and 1790.

3 In the Salem Mercury for July 15, 1788, may

be seen : "Died in Boston, Thomas Walker,

Esq., late of Montreal." In the Massachusetts
Centinel for July 12, 1788, we find that "On Tues-
day last, died Thomas Walker, Esq., aged 70, late
of Montreal." The inventory of this "virtuous
and patriotic gentleman" may be seen in Suffolk
Probate Records, vol. 87, p. 395 and the adminis-
tration was allowed the widow, Martha Walker.

11

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

in a few days from Westfield, Con-
necticut. Thereafter she settled down
to needlework, reading, and the writ-
ing of letters and verses. Nor was
she averse to singing for she had a
good voice.1 She rarely left her room
until twilight fell upon the town, and
then only for a walk along the coun-
try road. A lady who saw her often
in these days described her as hand-
some, with a sad face, and ever busy
with her pen.2

The Bell Tavern faced the road
now called Washington Street, with
its northerly end toward the present

i Nathaniel Annable, the blacksmith, heard this
from aged people. He spoke of it to Mrs Sarah
K. Bolton when she visited the grave March 31,
1895-

2 Fowler papers in the Essex Institute, vol. 16,
p. 150.

12

WALL PAPER, FROM

MISS whitman's

ROOM IK THE
BELL TAVERN.

¥ '':

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Main Street. The south-east room
was at the corner away from the
roads. Its walls were covered with
paper of a whitish color, crossed by
perpendicular green stripes which
.were ornamented with conventional
dark red and white flowers. The
stripes were not straight bands but
the green expandeH and contracted,
giving to each strip somewhat the
effect of a chain of long, large willow
leaves.1

"The Bell," as it was called, was
more renowned than the quiet of
Danvers would imply. Here Mr.
Russell issued his Boston Almanack
in 1777, and from 1778 to 1781 he

1 The Peabody Historical Society has a piece of
this paper, vouched for and given by Mrs. Isaac
Drowne.

13

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

had his printing office near the
Tavern. Wherever the almanac went
the purchaser saw a picture of the
Bell Tavern.

As the days wore on into July and
no husband appeared the village
dames began to gossip over their tea
cups about the strange lady at "The
Bell." She was evidently a woman of
social position and she was surely dis-
tressed that the man whom she ex-
pected did not arrive ; this much they
knew.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth was ever

busy with her pen. What she felt at

this time we know from the following

letter, written by her in her hours of

trial, alone at Danvers. It was in

stenographic characters and was fol-
14

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

lowed by a pastoral poem bearing the
title, "Disappointment." The letter
reads i1

"Must I die alone? Shall I never
see you more? I know that you will
come, but you will come too late:
This is, I fear, my last ability. Tears
fall so, I know not how to write. —
Why did you leave me in so much dis-
tress? But I will not reproach you:
All that wras dear I left for you: but
do not regret it. — May God forgive in
both what was amiss: — When I go
from hence, I will leave you some way
to find me; — if I die, will you come
and drop a tear over my grave ?"

The following poem was found
with the letter :

i It bore this title in the newspaper: "A letter
in characters decyphered."

15

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY
Disappointment

With fond impatience all the tedious

day
I sigh'd, and wish'd the lingering

hours away;
For when bright Hesper led the

starry train,
My Shepherd swore to meet me on the

plain ;
With eager haste to that dear spot I

flew,
And linger 'd long, and then with1

tears withdrew:
Alone, abandon'd to love's tenderest

woes.
Down my pale cheeks the tide of sor-
row flows ;

i"The" in the Centinel.

16

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Dead to all joys that fortune can

bestow,
In vain for me her useless1 bounties

flow;
Take back each envied gift ye pow'r2

divine,
And only let me call Fidelio mine.

Ah, wretch ! what anguish yet thy
soul must prove,

Ere thou canst hope to lose thy care in
love ;

And when Fidelio meets thy fearful3
eye, ■

Pale fear and colcl despair his pres-
ence fly ;

With pensive steps, I sought thy
walks again,

i First printed "future."

2 Mrs. Morton gives "pow'rs."

3 Mrs. Morton gives "tearful."

17

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

And kiss'd thy token,1 on the verdant
plain ;

With fondest hope, thro' many a
blissful hour,

We gave the souls to fancy's pleas-
ing pow'r;

Lost in the magick of that sweet em-
ploy,

To build gay scenes, and fashion
future joy,

We saw mild peace o'er fair Canaan
rise,

And shower2 her pleasing from benig-
nant skies ;

On airy hills our happy mansion rose,

Built but for joy, no room for future
woes;

1 First printed "kiss'd thee, smiling."

2 First printed "show."

18

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Round the calm solitude, with cease-
less song

% sj« ^s :Js sH

Sweet as the sleep of innocence, the

day,
By transports measur'd, lightly danc'd

away;
To love, to bliss, the union'd soul was

given,
And each1 too happy, ask'd no brighter

heaven.
And must the hours in ceaseless

anguish roll ?
Will no soft sunshine cheer my

clouded soul?
Can this dear earth no transient joy

supply?

i First printed, "But, ah !"
19

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Is it my doom to hope, despair and
die?

Oh! come, once more, with soft en-
dearments come,

Burst the cold prison of the sullen
tomb;

Thro' favour'd walks, thy chosen
Maid attend,

Where well-known shades their pleas-
ing branches bend ;

Shed the soft poison from thy speak-
ing eye,

And look those raptures lifeless
words deny;

Still be, tho' late, re-hearH what ne'er
could tire,

But, told each eve, fresh pleasures

would inspire ;

Still hope those scenes which love and
20

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

fancy drew ;
But, drawn a thousand times, were
ever new.

Can fancy paint, can words ex-
press;
Can aught on earth my woes re-
dress ;
E'en thy soft smiles can ceaseless

prove
Thy truth, thy tenderness and love :
Once thou could every bliss inspire,
Transporting joy, and gay desire;
Now cold Despair her banner rears,
And pleasure flies when she ap-
pears ;
Fond hope within my bosom dies,
And agony her place supplies :

O, thou ! for whose dear sake I bear,
21

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

A doom so dreadful, so severe,
May happy fates thy footsteps

guide,
And o'er thy peacefulhomz preside ;

Nor let E a's early tomb

Infect thee, with its baleful gloom.1

These lines may be interpreted in
several ways. A woman, whose in-
stinct is strong in such a case, will
ask: Is it not a cry of expiation,
wrung from a soul that has learned
through generations of Calvinism to
expect punishment for sin? Others
will read in the lines despair but
nothing more. There is no want of
faith in him, even though he may
come too late, but an utter helpless-

i Massachusetts Centinel, Septemfier 20, 1788.
Corrected in the issue for September 24, 1788.

22

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

ness since he is helpless to aid her ex-
cept through the comfort of his pres-
ence. Even this she cannot have.
She is strong in her devotion to him ;
there is no censure for him and very
little for herself. Having taken the
fateful step, whether sinful or merely
injudicious through its secrecy, she
involuntarily cries out in her despair.
But it is not the despair of a weak
woman nor of one necessarily crushed
by sin. In her loneliness she turned
to her pen as one might seek a com-
forter.

Tradition says that she was seen
one day to write upon the flagging
before the door with a piece of chalk.
Later in the afternoon a neighbor's

lad named Symonds, while sitting idly
23

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

upon the door step, saw the marks
and amused himself by erasing them.1
As the sun set a commanding figure in
American uniform came up the vil-
lage street on horseback, alighted, and
studied carefully the flagging, lintels,
and threshold of the tavern door, then
turned slowly away, wrapping his
coat about his face, and mounted his
horse.2

i Mrs. Dall states this on the authority of two
persons, Elizabeth's nephew, and the Rev. Joseph
Howe's grand niece. — Springfield Republican.

2 The version by "Curiosos in the Centinel of
September 20th, reads : "She wrote E. Walker
on the door of the house, and when a gentleman
who happened to come along the road stopped
and read the name and went away, she said she
was undone." This version leads one to ask why
Elizabeth's lover should "happen to come along"
a road in the village of Danvers. If he came to
Danvers to find her and saw her name on the
door why did he go away without communicating
with her? If he did not wish to communicate
with her why did he visit the town? Evidently
he came, expecting to find the inscription, failed
to find it and went away.

24

STAND USED BY MISS WHITMAN.

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

He had come and gone, and the
lady in the south-east room from that
hour gave herself up to despair.1

In the anxiety of these days her pen
expressed her emotions in verse as
faithfully as it had done under hap-
pier skies :

"And must the hours in ceaseless

anguish roll?
Will not soft sunshine cheer my

clouded soul ?
Can this dear earth no transient joy

supply?
Is it my doom to hope, despair, and

die?"

Her plight awakened sympathy

i Mrs. Dall's Romance of the Association, p. 37.
She says that Elizabeth never knew of his visit.
Would the gossips of a country tavern have left
her in ignorance?

25

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

among the few who were admitted in
some slight measure to her confidence.
Opposite the Tavern on Main Street,
in a fine old gambrel-roofed house,
lived a wealthy tanner named Joseph
Southwick. He and his wife Bethiah
were Quakers, some indication per-
haps of their benevolent spirit. Mrs.
Southwick was a frequent if not daily
visitor now at the Tavern. She
and "Mrs. Walker," or "Elizabeth
Walker" as she was called, sat to-
gether over their sewing, and Mrs.
Southwick has said that in these days
Elizabeth never spoke a word of com-
plaint or accusation. In conversation
her face brightened as it must have
done at home.1

1 Mrs. Locke's preface to "The Coquette," 1855,
p. 21.

26

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

The Southwicks had the easiest and
most comfortable chaise in Danvers.
Friend Southwick also had a large
heart. He often sent his youngest
apprentice, Isaac Frye, a boyish, in-
nocent-spoken lad, with the horse and
chaise to carry Elizabeth out in the
twilight. These drives made a deep
impression upon the boy, and years
after the time of these experiences he
spoke feelingly to his wife of Eliza-
beth's tragedy.1

As the hour for her confinement
drew near she is said to have been in-
vited to move to a private house that
she might have loving care and the
surroundings of a home.2 The Salem

1 Letter from my friends Miss Mary P. and
Miss Serena Frye, granddaughters of Isaac Frye.

2 Hanson's "Danvers."

27

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Mercury, however, distinctly states
that she remained at the tavern.1

About the tenth of July Elizabeth
gave birth to a deabl child, dead no
doubt from the terrible heartache and
anxiety experienced by the mother.
Elizabeth was not too ill to know of
the fate of her little one, but it may be

1 Mrs. Dall writes in the Romance, page 109,
that in 1875 at Andover she saw a book-rack in
the home of "Dr." Putnam, inherited by him from
his grandfather, "Dr. James Putnam of Danvers,"
and that it had been used by Elizabeth Whitman.
This would not be proof that Elizabeth had lived
with the Putnams, for they might easily have ob-
tained the book-rack from the Bell Tavern. There
is difficulty in the identification of these physi-
cians. Mrs. Osborn of Peabody, tells me that old
Dr. Amos Putnam had a son, James Phillips Put-
nam, who acquired some medical lore. James's
grandson, Alfred, was a baker in Andover, and
Alfred may have met Mrs. Dall. Alfred Put-
nam's great grandson, Carl Rust Parker of
Auburndale, now owns the book-rack mentioned
by Mrs. Dall. He has presented the accompany-
ing photograph. A gentleman of some promin-
ence in Andover, Mr. John Pickering Putnam,
was a grandson of Deacon Gideon Putnam (1726-
1811), the village store-keeper in Danvers. Did
Mrs. Dall meet Gideon's grandson?

28

STAND USED BY MISS WHITMAN.

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

that she, remembering her condition,
could say with resignation, "Thy will
be done." She grew alarmed, how-
ever, as puerperal fever began to sap
her waning strength. Calling Mrs.
Very, a neighbor, to her bedside, she
asked for a warming pan of glowing
coals. When the coals had been
brought and were held near her,
Elizabeth with her own hand laid
upon them the letters which, for good
or ill, held the secret of her life.1 If
her lover were her husbancl she there-
by freed him from every obligation
which the child, if it had lived, might
have forced her for its sake to claim

l Miss Helen Philbrick to Mrs. Lyman P. Os-
born. Her uncle, Samuel Philbrick, of Brookline,
married Eliza Southwick, a granddaughter of
Joseph and Bethiah Southwick.

29

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

from him. That last act of devotion
in her hours of fever and in the pres-
ence of death was very different from
the loathing which turns an injured
woman from the man who has won
and deserted her.

She lingered for a fortnight, and
died on Friday, the 25th day of July,
1788. The man whom she loved she
did not see.

"You loiter'd on the road too long,

You trifled at the gate :
The enchanted dove upon her branch

Died without a mate ;
The enchanted princess in her tower

Slept, died, behind the grate ;

Her heart was starving all this while

You made it wait."
30

THE OLD MAIN STREET BURIAL GROUND,
ELIZABETH WHITMAN IS BURIED.

ELIZABETH WHITMAN- MYSTERY

"Is she fair now as she lies?

Once she was fair ;
Meet queen for any kingly king,

With gold-dust on her hair.

Now there are poppies in her locks,
White poppies she must wear ;

Must wear a veil to shroud her face
And the want graven there:

Or is the hunger fed at length,
Cast off the care?"

Sunday was a beautiful, peaceful

day. It was then that they laid her

beside her baby in the old South Dan-

vers burying ground, now a part of

Peabody. The newspaper says that

she was "decently interred," and

Hanson states that the entire village

and many from neighboring towns
31

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

attended these final rites over the
strange lady of the Tavern. She was
at last beyond the sorrows of the
world, asleep with her baby by her
side, and her secret within her silent
heart. The next day Sylvester Proc-
tor, a good citizen of the town, refer-
red in his diary to "a strange woman
that was brought to the Bell Tavern
to lay in — a person not known, agecl
about 35 years who died in about a
week after she was brought to bed."1
There is no mention of her death
upon the records of Danvers, other
than this quotation from his diary.

i Mr. Proctor, who was Born October 26, 1738,
and died March 21, 1790, lies near Elizabeth in
the "Old Burying Ground."

32

THE LAST RITES.

II. The Last Rites.

/'""^uriosity, not improperly, be-
^— / came intense in the little town,
and the lady whose lover never came
to her excited pity, and also the
respect due a superior woman in mis-
fortune. The following notice ap-
peared in The Salem Mercury for
July 29, 1788, written probably by or
at the request of Captain Goodhue :

"Last Friday, a female stranger
died at the Bell Tavern, in Danvers;
and on Sunday her remains were de-
cently interred The circumstances
relative to this woman are such as
excite curiosity, and interest our feel-
ings. She was brought to the Bell in
33

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

a chaise, from Watertown, as she
said, by a young man whom she had
engaged for that purpose. After she
had alighted, and taken a trunk with
her into the house, the chaise im-
mediately drove off. She remained
at this inn till her death, in expecta-
tion of the arrival of her husband,
whom she expected to come for her,
and appeared anxious at his delay.
She was averse to being interrogated
concerning herself or connexions;
and kept much retired to her chamber,
employe3 in needle-work, writing,
etc. She said, however, that she came
from Westfield, in Connecticut; that
her parents lived in that State; that
she had been married only a few

months; and that her husband's
34

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

name was Thomas Walker; — but
always carefully concealed her family
name. Her linen was all marked
E. W. About a fortnight before her
death, she was brought to bed of a
lifeless child. When those who at-
tended her apprehended her fate,
they asked her, whether she did not
wish to see her friends : She
answered, that she was very desirous
of seeing them. It was proposed that
she should send for them; to which
she objected, hoping in a short time to
be able to go to them. From what
she said, and from other circum-
stances, it appeared probable to those
who attended her, that she belonged
to some country town in Connecticut :

Her conversation, her writings and
35

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

her manners, bespoke the advantage
of a respectable family and good
education. Her person was agree-
able; her deportment, amiable and
engaging; and, though in a state of
anxiety and suspense, she preserved
a cheerfulness which seemed to be
not the effect of insensibility, but of
a firm and patient temper. She was
supposed to be about 35 years old.
Copies of letters, of her writing,,
dated at Hartford, Springfield, and
other places, were left among her
things. This account is given by the
family in which she resided ; and it is
hoped the publication of it will be a
means of ascertaining her friends of
her fate."

The notice which appeared in The
36

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Salem Mercury was reprinted in the
Massachusetts Centinel and was
copied widely. It soon reached the
eyes of Mrs. Henry Hill1 of Boston
who had awaited since May the ar-
rival of Miss Elizabeth Whitman of
Hartford. An inspection of the per-
sonal trifles left at Captain Goodhue's
proved that the visitor who never
reached Boston was indeed Elizabeth.
An inventory of these has been
preserved, and the record on a faded
sheet of paper, never yet put in print,
bears the inscription: "Invoice of
articles left by Mrs. Elizabeth Whit-

* Anna Barrett married July 8, 1762, Henry
Hill, a prominent Boston merchant who had
graduated at the Public Latin School in 1746 and
at Harvard in 1756. He died in 1828. She died
of old age December 16, 1822, aetat 83. They left
no children.

37

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

man at her deceas at Capt. Good-
hew's." J

It is distinctly a feminine ward-
robe; theje are no evidences of liter-
ary taste except an "ink case with
sealing wax and wafers," and "ten
sheets of paper." Her private writ-
ings may have been removecl by her
friends by common consent. In the
inventory such words as "pinch
back," "musslen Tuckers," "figured
lutstring," "fustin pokets," "calash,"
"camblet riding hood" and "calimico
shoes," carry us back to the home life
of a century ago. Two significant
items there are, "silver tea spoons
marked E. W.," and at the very end

1 Given to the author by Mr. Charles E. Good-
speed.

38

/"

/.'/. .A, /«..-• 2 J.//C-". ,

..;.«y/....^-^^^ v ' ■"-' 'V '/*-jrc. -' ?••<*- X".,, ^

J. ,/».*„ ,3 /-H ftr*if. r.' ipT *',- #-^ yf,.*-,'

«♦*■ ^ " .v '• y _ . .

-/'

,„../"

•7'

7

THE INVENTORY.

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

"Sundry babe cloths." This inven-
tory reveals the most intimate knowl-
edge that we now have of those days
of anguish endured by a lady whose
sorrow was to be borne alone and
among strangers.

The inventory reads:

2 ginneys, 1 crown, 2-4 pistoreens dollars.

6 silver teaspoons, Marked E. W.

1 pinch back ring set with a Stone, 1 gold
twisted ring.

1 quilt working pocket book, 1 small
chiney green Box.

1 silver probe, & 1 pr. Silver Fosseps, 1
pr. Sizers, 1 doble Bladed Knife.

4 Musslen Tuckers, 1 black lace, 2 rib-
bens.

1 pr. Muslen ruffles, 2 Lawn and 1
Muzlen apron.

1 Black Mode apron, 1 gause apron, 2
39

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

gause Handkerchiefs.

2 Lace Handkerchiefes, I black Silk do,
1 Shaul cotten.

1 Mizlen cloke, 1 remnant of gauze, 2
gilt Fanns.

2 ribbons, 3 pr. cloath & 1 pr. Leather
gloves.

1 figured Lutstring gound, 1 lite patch —
found in ye trunks with other triffling small
things.

3 cloath capps, 2 calico gounds & 1 skirt
ditto.

2 pr. fustin Pokets, 4 pr. cotten & 1 pr.
thread Hose.

4 Linen Shifts, 1 Mercilions quilt.

1 pr. Russels Shoes, 1 cotten shaul found
wrapted in Draper cloth.

1 calash, 1 black Bonet, 1 black Satten
cloke.

1 camblet Riding hood, 1 pr. Stays, 1 pr.

old leather and 1 pr. of old calimico Shoes,
40

It

7 • v

/U/f....,, .

,n •//„/.

i- /zn

-v_h_*~«4~

l!

BACK PAGE OF THE INVENTORY.

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

1 Japand Qt Kenister of green Tea.

1 Ink case with Sealing wax, wafers, etc.

1 work bag and kniting worker, etc.

1 pr. white Mettle Shoe Buckles.

1 old Silk Handkerchief, including Sun-
dry Babe cloths.

1 Box with Sundry pieces of Ribbons,
Small Looking glass, a gauze capp, etc.,
Ten sheets of paper.

One item in this inventory is of es-
pecial interest to us, for one of the
"six silver teaspoons mark'd E. W.,"
may still be traced.

When the old Bell Tavern was
torn down, a sketch relating its his-
tory was written by Mr. Fitch Poole,
and published in the Salem Gazette
for February 18, 1840. Here we read

"that in removing one of the chim-
41

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

neys of the old house, in a small
recess connected with the closet of
her chamber several articles have
been recovered which have some in-
terest .... Perhaps some of the letters
may possess sufficient interest for
publication, and it is presumed in the
meantime that there can be no objec-
tion to having the originals examined
by any who choose to do so, as well
as the other articles by applying at
the store of Mr. Amos Trask, near
the monument."

Among these relics was a small
silver teaspoon with the initials E. W.
This teaspoon, Mr. Amos Trask gave
to his little daughter who has careful-
ly preserved it (Mrs. Emma [Trask]

Wood, of East Boston.) Mr. Trask
42

SILVER SPOON MARKED E. W

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

was a great collector of antiquarian
relics, and his books and papers sold
after his death to Boston dealers may
have included articles and papers of
Elizabeth Whitman which may yet be
found. On the back of the spoon may
be seen the mark of the silversmith,

w.c. | the dots being perpendicular

scratches and the letters touched by

the enclosing line.

A stone was soon erected over the

grave. Mrs. Foster, author of "The

Coquette, or The History of Eliza

Wharton" (i. e. Elizabeth Whitman),

who wrote less than ten years after

her death, certainly must have known

the circumstances connected with the

erection of this memorial. She says

in letter LXXI V of the novel : "Mrs.
43

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Sumner [Mrs. Henry Hill] gave or-
ders for a decent stone to be erected
over her grave, with the following in-
scription:"

Before reprinting the inscription it
should be said that Mrs. Dall believes
the slab of red sandstone to have been
cut at or near Hartford and placed in
Danvers by a Connecticut stone-
mason, the Whitman family bearing
the expense. Also she suggests Joel
Barlow, the poet, as the author of the
inscription. The lines, if they do not
actually condemn Elizabeth, show a
lack of faith in her innocence among
her closest and best friends — nay,
more, a willingness to record it
publicly for all time. I do not believe

that Elizabeth's family had anything
44

THIS HUMBLE STONE,

IN MEMORY Of

ELIZA WHARTON,

7$ INSCRIliED BY HER WEE PING FfiI£ND£* ...,
TO WHO M_S-HE EX>»Q *HWrrr*f1TlFfFTr n y ,j yCQJMLMO V
TENDERNESS AND AFFECTION,
ENDOWED IVUFH SUPERIOR ACQUIREMENTS,
SHE. WAS STILL MORE DISTINGUISHED BY HUMIL-
ITY AND BENEVOLENCE.
i.ET CANDOR THROW A VEIL OVER HER FRA4LTIES,
FOR GREAT WAS HER CHARITY TO OTHERS. '

SHE -SUSTAINED, THE LAST

TA1NFUI, SCENE,. FAR FROM EVERY FRIEND- ;

AND EXHIBITED AN EXAMPLE

OF CALM RESIGNATION.

HER DEPARTURE WAS Off THE %$th DAY OF

JULY, A. D. — — ,

IN THE tfih YEAR (TF HEJt AGE,

AND THE TEARS OF STRANGERS WATERED HER.

G R A V E.M

GRAVE-STONE INSCRIPTION AS PRINTED IX THE COQUETTE

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

to do with the stone. If they were
plunged in shame and sorrow a very
short inscription would have answer-
ed every neeel1. It seems more natural
to believe that Mrs. Hill and Mrs.
Foster, the friend and the relative,
came together and devised the me-
morial. What would be more natural
than that Mrs. Foster should write
the lines which appear upon the stone,
and reappear in the novel ? Mrs. Fos-
ter's opinion of Elizabeth as ex-
pressed in the novel coincides with
that upon the stone, and she plainly
states that Mrs. Hill ordered the
stone to be placed over Elizabeth's
grave.

Mrs. Dall, however, says: "The

appeal upon Elizabeth's gravestone to
45

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

the charity of those who read it was
natural to Joel Barlow, whose secret
marriage to Ruth Baldwin, Elizabeth
had disapproved and forgiven." This
view may be reasonable, if the word
"frailties" be taken to mean a secret
marriage, but the case for Mrs. Fos-
ter, especially when we consider her
style of literary composition, seems to
me too strong to be gainsaid. The
inscription as copied by the late
Henry M. Brooks of Salem, before
relic-hunters had chipped it almost
entirely away, reads: "This humble
stone in memory of Elizabeth Whit-
man is inscribed by her weeping
friends, to whom she endeared her-
self by uncommon tenderness and

affection. Endowed with superior
46

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

genius and accomplishments she was
still more endeared1 by humility and
benevolence. Let candour throw a
veil over her frailties, for great was
her charity to others. She sustained
the last painful scene far from every
friend, and exhibited an example of
calm resignation. Her departure was
on the 25th day of July, A. D. 1788, in
the 37th year of her age ; and the tears
of strangers watered her grave." In
April, 1885, Mr. Brooks found on the
line next to the last only "A. D. 1788,"
and then the last pathetic and dra-
matic words, "the tears of strangers
watered her grave."

In "The Coquette" the grouping of
lines is not a guide to the original

1 The novel has "Distinguished."

47

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

form of the inscription because the
length of printed line is governed by
the breadth of the type page. But the
original must have been of the form
given below, if we may reconstruct
the inscription from the few words
and letters which remained when Mr.
Frank Cousins photographed the
stone in the year 1891.

48

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

r:^ H-, h *j r< £ w sL sr

> £. Ph ,. 13*0 a r~ p o>

^1 ^ s £r°3 8 1 S 3 §

H)M.< £L fl> C^X C ^ M I— I ' '

sp^mip^b td 3 h

M ^KN 2.^ ^i 3 5.H.H, 15 ^ O

g, hk^ » 2 co p g. ff I rt. > 5

§ ° Ss ££^3

S • o

3

49

THE AUTHOR OF "THE
COQUETTE."

III. The Author of the Coquette.

IV T rs. Hannah Foster was then
-*-▼-*■ at the age of about thirty, the
daughter of Grant Webster, a Boston
merchant. Her husband, the Rev. John
Foster of Brighton, was a cousin of
the wife of Deacon John Whitman
of Stow, who was in turn a cousin
german of Elizabeth's father.1 She
was in spirit one with the brilliant
circle which was making Hartford a
centre of the revival of culture in
New England — a renaissance Fer-
rara in its humble wav Eager to
write and to encourage others, she

i Mrs. Locke in her preface gives the connec-
tion incorrectly.

51

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

soon won results which must have far
exceeded her dreams. Her enthusi-
asm awakened the slumbering ambi-
tion of a farmer's lad, Phineas
Adams, who founded the Anthology
Review in Boston, and helped to
usher in a golden age of literature in
America. Mrs. Foster also wrote a
novel which was destined to find its
way into many pious homes, to lie
beside the family Bible, and to point
the narrow way that leads to salva-
tion. Her prudery distresses a mod-
ern reader, but possibly her respected
husband's sermons would also dis-
tress a present-day congregation.
We must not judge her too severely
after more than a century.

For the theme of her novel she took
52

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

the life of Elizabeth Whitman, and
imitating more or less consciously the
Clarissa Harlowe of still greater
fame, she told her story in a series of
letters. Elizabeth Whitman's career
is only in part the inspiration of her
heroine's career, but Mrs. Foster has
fashioned Elizabeth for all time in
the form of her heroine, Eliza Whar-
ton, and it seems almost a hopeless
task to correct the portrait.1

Mrs. Foster probably owed less to

i Mr. George E. Hoadley gives the following
extract from an aunt's letter written many years
ago:

"Quite near the old church was a house known
as the old Whitman house, which was burned
down in my girl days. Billy Whitman lived
there; he had a sister, the heroine of a novel
written in days long before, called Eliza Wharton.

"The heroes, two of them, lived in Hartford;
one was Daniel Wadsworth, then a young man
and the other Nat Terry, also a young man. Of
course their real names were not called. And
another was a professor at Yale. In the book
he was called Lamb. He admired her much and

53

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Clarissa Harlowe than to a much
more recent novel, The Power of
Sympathy, written by Mrs. Perez
Morton, and published in Boston in
1789. Another model for her facile
pen was Charlotte Temple which
Mrs. Rowson, a popular school mis-
tress, had issued in 1790. The cir-
cumstances and associations of each
must have made a deep impression
upon Mrs. Foster's mind. Charlotte's
real name was Stanley and Elizabeth

gave her a ring which I with a number of others,
with consent of Mrs. Whitman, all tried on.
The room of the heroine was kept locked and
nothing disturbed till the house was burned, and
all was lost."

This version, evidently written in old age when
accurate detail had faded from memory, has
nevertheless something of "local color." Daniel
Wadsworth, later the founder of the Wadsworth
Athenaeum, was the son of Colonel Jeremiah,
Elizabeth's contemporary and friend. Daniel's
sister Catherine married Nathaniel Terry, men-
tioned above, and later a member of Congress.
Lamb was Buckminster.

54

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Whitman's mother was a Stanley,
although not of the same stock.
Charlotte's lover, Colonel John Mon-
tresor, was a kinsman of Mrs. Row-
son,1 so that the story of poor Char-
lotte was family gossip.

In Mrs. Morton's novel the
"heroine" was her own sister, Fanny
Apthorp, and the lover was reputed to
be the author's own husband, a sus-
picion that persisted in the popular
mind, although the Centinel of Octo-
ber 8, 1788 (the very year of Eliza-
beth's death), printed a carefully
worded paragraph to show that John
Adams and James Bowcloin did not
hold Mr. Morton to be proven guilty.

1 Mrs. Rowson's brother John bore Montresor
for his middle name.

55

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

These books were in the epistolary
form and each ended very properly
with a "monumental inscription."
Elizabeth's case was so similar to
those of Miss Stanley and Miss
Apthorp in the eyes of Mrs. Foster,
the kinswoman with literary am-
bitions, that she found her task an
easy one.

Elizabeth Whitman was thus in-
evitably associated in Mrs. Foster's
mind and so in the minds of her read-
ers with two young women of good
family who came to a tragic end. It
is said that Beatrice Cenci would not
have suffered death had it not been
her misfortune to be convicted at a
time when the Roman prison held

other noble scions who had murdered
56

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

their sires. Beatrice died as a warn-
ing to others; and Elizabeth Whit-
man who expired protesting her in-
nocence, and wearing her marriage
ring, has been held up as a warning to
young girls, associated with Miss
Stanley whose open shame and pitiful
life were known to all New York, and
with Miss Apthorp who made confes-
sion in suicide.1

Miss Whitman was condemned at
the outset, but it is difficult to deter-
mine how widespread the belief in
her guilt may have been. In Danvers

i The Massachusetts Spy, September 25, 1788,
prints the poem "Disappointment" in its incorrect
form, copied from the Herald of Freedom of the
18th, and in an editorial note states that it was
not written by Miss Frances Theodora Apthorp,
sister of Mrs. Perez Morton, but "it is now known
to be the production of the late unfortunate Mis$
Whitman, who lately died at the Bell Tavern in
Danvers."

57

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

many thought her innocent, and these
have handed down their faith to their
children's children. But the writer
who signed her(?)self "Curiosos,"
and sent to the Centinel the poem
"Disappointment" as well as the later
corrections spoke in no uncertain
language :

"While the fate of this unfortunate
fair one, furnishes a good lesson
against coquetry, etc., the following
lines will add another proof in favour
of the observation that there is some-
thing in the composition of females
which renders them incapable of
hatred even to the perfidious liber-
tine, who has been the cause of their

ruin.

58

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

"Oh thou, for whose dear sake I bear,
"A doom so dreadful — so severe —
"May happy fates thy footsteps guide,
"And o'er thy peaceful home preside."

We have still further evidence of
Elizabeth's reputation, and this time
with no name by which the author
may be identified.

The Independent Chronicle, Bos-
ton, September n, 1788, quotes an
"extract of a letter from Boston"
which probably first appeared in a
New York paper. The writer thinks
the fate of Miss Whitman "a good
moral lecture to young ladies," and
continues : "She refused two as good
offers of marriage as she 'deserved,
because she aspired higher than to be

a clergyman's wife; and having
59

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

coquetted till past her prime, fell, into
criminal indulgences, proved preg-
nant and then eloped — pretending
(where she lodged and died) to be
married, and carried on the deception
till her death." One may note in
passing that Elizabeth was engaged
to marry the first clergyman, men-
tioned above, when he died. The
second clergyman broke his engage-
ment in a fit of anger. She did not
refuse either clergyman.

Now, when we have surveyed the
field we find that pretty much all the
knowledge which we have of Eliza-
beth Whitman comes from seven
sources.

i. The article in the Salem Mer-
cury, respectful and non-committal,
60

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

written by the landlord of the tavern
or at his request.

2. The notice in the Massachusetts
Centinel of September 20th, which
precedes the poem "Disappointment,"
and tells how her character was in-
jured by romances.1 This is the basis
of Hanson's account in his History of
Danvers. It is signed by "Curiosos,"
who claims to have had the poem
"some weeks." The editor of the
Massachusetts Spy evidently thought
the poem to be genuine.

3. The corrections in the Centinel.
These were made by "Curiosos."

4. The extract from a letter from

1 "She was a great reader of romances, and
having formed her notions of happiness from that
corrupt source, became vain and coquettish, and
rejected some very advantageous offers of mar-
riage in hope of realizing something more splen-
did."

61

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Boston, which lays stress upon Eliza-
beth's ambition to be more than a
clergyman's wife.

5. The inscription on the grave-
stone, which condemns her rather
gently.

6. The Coquette, by Mrs. Foster.

7. A note by Mrs. Morton in her
Power of Sympathy.

The landlord's colorless statement
we may dismiss from our considera-
tion; and we have left six unfriendly
statements. The second and third
refer to Elizabeth's private papers,
and so probably came from Mrs. Fos-
ter or Mrs. Hill, who could claim
some right to use them. Mrs. Foster,
as a literary woman, is the more prob-
able author. Again, the fourth, with
62

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

its reference to the social station of a
clergyman's wife suggests Mrs. Fos-
ter, who occupied a position which
Elizabeth was said to consider of
slight importance. The fifth, being
the inscription on the grave-stone, I
have already ascribed to Mrs. Foster,
who used it in her novel. The sixth
is The Coquette, Mrs. Foster's novel.
The seventh, a note by Mrs. Morton,
is very evidently based upon two and
four, newspaper notices.

In the second reference we have the
word "coquettish," in the fourth
"coquetted," and in the sixth the con-
summation of the idea or theory
which was developing in Mrs. Fos-
ter's brain, The Coquette. Is not this

a natural and logical sequence?
63

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

To sum up: if the above surmises
are correct every contemporary word
in print bearing adversely upon the
character of Elizabeth Whitman, has
had its source in the condemning pen
of Mrs. Foster. And who was this
Mrs. Foster? A distant connection
by marriage who may never have
seen Elizabeth nor visited in Hart-
ford. She had that sixth sense for
the picturesque which is no nearer
than a second cousin to the truth.

But after all that can be said has
been said a relentless world places the
burden of proof of innocence upon the
accused rather than upon the ac-
cuser ; and time has shown that there
is little hope of lifting this burden.

No record of marriage, whether valid
64

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

or a fiction, whether in 1787 or as late
as 1788, has yet come to light. Our
only evidence that can be brought for-
ward in her favor must be her poems,
her letters, her friendships. These
we are accustomed to consider of
little value in a court of law. But in
the story of a great man's life they
transcend all other biographical mater-
ial. Can these evidences be ignored?
Are they nothing against the reiter-
ated views of one woman in New
England literature? A woman who
perhaps never had the finer spirit and
the rich intellectual associations that
fell to Elizabeth Whitman in the days
of the "Hartford Wits."

Mrs. Caroline H. Dall in her

Romance of the Association treats of
65

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

the injustice which an historical novel
like The Coquette, may perpetuate.
She says :

"Eliza is represented as a provin-
cial belle, weary of the restraints of
poverty and a parsonage, and am-
bitious of a sphere she cannot fitly
fill.

"After Mr. Howe's death, which is
made to follow her father's, although
it really preceded it, she is sent to
New Haven in search of gayety and
diversion.

"Here she is thrown into military
society, and made to meetEdwards1 as
if for the first time. In reality, she
passed her time when at New Haven
in the family of the president of Yale

i Pierrepont Edwards.
66

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

College, and EdwarHs was her cousin,
whom she had known as a married
man ever since he was nineteen, —
some eighteen years.

"Her inquiries into his habits and
character pique Edwards, who, in
formal imitation of Lovelace, is made
to assert that the woman who under-
takes to reform him deserves what-
ever fate impends ; and because she is
a prude, shall be doomed. But the
real Eliza was no prude: she was
more than once reproached for not
indicating by her manner the real dis-
tinction between vice ancl virtue.

"In the midst of his courtship,

Edwards marries for money, and,

when married, removes into Eliza's

neighborhood, for the express pur-
67

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

pose of insulting with his attentions
the woman whom Howe and Buck-
minster had loved. The simple fact
is, that, married at nineteen, before he
ever courted any other than his wife,
at no time did he ever live nearer to
Hartford than New Haven, when a
weekly post, carried by a man on
horseback, connected the two places.

"Eliza is once made to say, in the
pages of the novel, that, in literary
conversation, Edwards coul3 not bear
a distinguished part; but it is cer-
tainly true of Edwards, as well as
Aaron Burr, that when in the society
of women, the highest culture, the
most exquisite wit, and a perfect
savoir jaire, as well as a sure instinct

of spiritual things, were added to that
68

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

foreign grace which fitly distin-
guished the Irish blood derived from
the Dukes of Kingston.

"The final surrender of his love by
Buckminster, just as she was about to
fix her wedding-day, is macle to turn
upon the fact that he surprised her in
a private interview with Edwards in
the arbor of the old garden. Citizens
of Hartford will show you to-day the
paved street that crosses the spot
where that arbor stood, but will tell
you at the same time that it was not
Edwards whom she met there.1

"After this issue, the novel plunges
Eliza into dejection and despair; but
my letters2 are about to show her, at

iMrs. Dall says that Colonel Wadsworth was
with her.
2 Miss Whitman's letters to Joel Barlow,

69

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

that very moment, cheerful, industri-
ous, and useful.

"When her fatal departure draws
near, the novel represents her as con-
fessing her guilt, confiding in her
friend, and writing to her mother;
but no confession passed her lips, no
confidence was ever given, no letter
was ever written by her, for the
simple reason that all the circum-
stances of her departure were open
and natural.

"The novel represents her as car-
ried away at night by her seducer, un-
known to those who loved her. In

printed by Mrs. Dall. These delightful letters
written in 1779-1782, refer to many well known
people. Edwards however is not mentioned.
Barlow sailed for France May 25, 1788. to spend
several years abroad as agent for a land com-
pany. Mrs. Barlow and Elizabeth were very close
friends.

70

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

simple fact, she went away in the
regular stage-coach, at high noon,
with everybody's warm approval.

"The novel describes its hero as
aware of her retreat, and allows him
to represent her as lecturing him with
the innocent air of a Clarissa. For
her sake, his injured wife quits her
husband's roof.

"But these are the fables of a warm
imagination, intent on holding out
Mrs. Yorke's "blood-red light" to the
unwary, and heated by the reading of
Richardson's novel.

"The general tone of the letters

which constitute the novel is wholly

unlike that of the real letters. They

indicate a style of living and manners

wholly different from the actual facts.
71

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

They contain confessions of volatility
which Eliza never had occasion to
make, and allusions to her own
charms and the perplexities in which
they involved her, unlike the humble
and modest girl she really showed
herself. In reading the novel, one is
compelled to think that for the
heroine the pivot of the world's his-
tory is her own possible marriage.

"If the real Eliza had been in the
least like the heroine of the book, we
should not now be seeking in vain to
solve the mystery of her fate.

"I have long thought that there is
no form of human injustice so bitter
and so enduring as that perpetrated
by the author of an historical novel,

yet I do not know that we are entitled

72

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

to criticise the use made of these
materials."

73

ELIZABETH AND HER
FRIENDS.

IV. Elizabeth and Her Friends.

T % 7E may now touch upon some
of the problems which con-
front every one who would know the
true history of Elizabeth Whitman.
The first question which was indeed
of the greatest interest in Danvers at
the time — her parentage — is easy of
solution.1 Her father, the Reverend
Elnathan Whitman, was at this time
dead, having been pastor of the Sec-
ond Church in Hartford for many
years. He came of a -line of minis-
ters, and exhibits in his portrait a

i Elizabeth Whitman was baptized March 8,
1751-2, by the Rev. Edward Dorr of the First
Church in Hartford, the successor of the Rev.
Daniel Wadsworth, father of Colonel Jeremiah.

75

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

distinguished bearing and high in-
tellectual attainments. Elizabeth's
mother was Abigail, a daughter of
Colonel Nathaniel Stanley, a promi-
nent man, once Treasurer of the
Colony, and connected by blood and
ties of marriage with a group of
families that had ruled Connecticut
for generations. Portraits of Mr.
and Mrs. Whitman hang upon the
walls of the Athenaeum in Hartford.

Elizabeth's kinsmen included the
delightful circle of literary and mili-
tary men and women in Hartford at
the close of the Revolutionary war.
Chief among these for his strong
character and lea3ership was Colonel
Jeremiah Wadsworth, whose wife,

Mehitabel Russell, was on her
76

ELIZABETH WHITMAN S MOTHER,
MRS. ABIGAIL WHITMAN.

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

mother's side a Pierrepont and a niece
of Mrs. Jonathan Edwards. The
Colonel was a Commissary General of
Purchases in the Revolution, and had
recently returned home from service
as a Commissary of the French army.
Later he made a reputation as a
representative in Congress.

Among her own cousins on the
Whitman side was John Trumbull,
LL.D., popular as the author of
"McFingal," a satire on the tories of
the Revolutionary period. His mother
was a sister of Elizabeth's father.

A still more famous cousin was the

Reverend Jonathan Edwards of

Northampton, whose mother was a

sister of Elizabeth's grandmother.

Edwards had married that "vision of
77

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

God's spirit," Sarah Pierrepont, and
became the father of Judge Pierre-
pont Edwards, as well as the grand-
father of Aaron Burr, vice-president
of the United States. The Judge's
handsome face and brilliant wit did
not save him from the fate of becom-
ing the victim of the historical novel-
ist. He appears in The Coquette
as Major Sanford, Eliza's lover, a
villain of the melodramatic school of
writers.

Another kinsman of Elizabeth,
the Reverend Joseph Buckminster,
was like Edwards, a great grandson
of the Reverend Solomon Stoddard of
Northampton, just as she was a great
granddaughter of the same divine.

After an ardent courtship, in which

78

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

she wavered between her growing
affection for him and an irrepressible
fear of his fits of terrible mental
depression,1 he became angry, made
an end to their friendship, and moved
to Portsmouth in New Hampshire.
There he married, and had a son
whose short but distinguished career
as a preacher in Boston and as a
member of the Anthology Society
encouraged the literary spirit which
had been awakened by Mrs. Hannah
Foster's protege, Phineas Adams.
Buckminster would never listen to
an unkind comment on Elizabeth.

Of the Stanley relatives of her
grandfather, the Treasurer of Con-

1 For an account of these see Mrs. Lee's
biography of Buckminster, p. 17. For a possible
veiled opinion of Elizabeth see p. 304.

79

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

necticut, no more need be said than
that they added to the circle their
share of beauty and wit.

Joel Barlow, whose poem, "The
Vision of Columbus," hacl recently ap-
peared, was a warm friend, and his
beloved wife Ruth was perhaps her
dearest companion.

Elizabeth's letters to the Barlows,
written between 1779 and 1782, are
full of playful romance, literary com-
ment and criticism, with overflowing
sympathy for the poverty and trials
of a poet's family. In April, 1779,
Elizabeth writes:

"Your 'plan' pleases me extremely,

Whether it is romantic or not, I am

not as yet able to judge, but I have

done nothing but fancy fine things for
80

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

you ever since I saw it. If I were to
give the soberest opinion I can frame,
I should say the foundation was laid
in reason ; but your romantic imagina-
tion had a little share in the finishing.
I long to know what story you will fix
upon for a poem of some eminence.
It will not do for you much longer
only to coquet with the Muses."

And again in reference to a pro-
posed subscription to raise the needed
funds to publish one of Barlow's
books, she writes :

"Let me beg you, dear friend, not

to be discouraged with regard to your

design, though it should not proceed

at this time, and above all things not

to give yourself any uneasyness about

what your friends have attempted.
81

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

If it should not succeed, it cannot pos-
sibly be of any disadvantage to you
that I can think of .... I know your
soul is as superior to the sordid love of
wealth as your genius is to that of the
generality of men. All I wish for you
is a decent independence. That will
enable you to gratify your favorite
inclinations. If those who can help
you to this will not, you must help
yourself; for you will certainly meet
with assistance. Keep up your spirits,
and be certain of the constant affec-
tion of your friends."

Again in February, 1 780, Elizabeth
writes :

"Pray what has Quammeny [Mel-
pomene, the Muse of Poetry] done

with my song? If she has not fin-
82

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

ished it, she is an idle hussy, and I beg
you will set her immediately about it."
And in May: "Give my love to
Ruthe, and tell her that I do try to be
as generous as possible, and do not
begrudge you to her but a little. I
will write the dear girl by the very
first opportunity." The last letter of
the series, written November 25,
1782, is a long one to Mrs. Barlow,
beginning :

"My Dear Ruthe, — I thank you a
thousand times for your letter and
the agreeable news it contains. Will
we admit you, do you ask, into this ex-
cellent town of Hartford? Yes, with
as much pleasure as a lawyer his
client, or a lady her lover ; and rather

than you shoulcl not have room, I
83

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

should be willing to turn out several
that I know of, notwithstanding that
I always thought myself very public-
spirited, and know that the riches of
a community consists in the number
of its inhabitants." There is much
in the letter about the fellowship of
poverty and genius, evidently written
to comfort Ruth, and a little about
the duty of a father to a daughter who
had married secretly the man of
genius, for Joel and Ruth were still
rather coldly received by Ruth's
father. Elizabeth concludes:

"Pray give my love to Joel, if he is
returned. Mr. Wadsworth sends his
to you, and thanks you for remember-
ing him when you were at Ridgefield.

Mamma, Abby, everybody, send love
84

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

to you, and wish to see you. You see,

my dear, I have no less propensity to

write long letters than you have.

Don't you think it is the sign of a

fertile genius? But I must bid you

adieu, for the present.

E. W."

As we recite the names of her
friends may we not say, who indeed
of the powerful and talented in those
Connecticut days were not her ad-
mirers? The blood which Elizabeth
held in common with her two riotous
cousins, Pierrepont Edwards and
Aaron Burr, came from the Reverend
Solomon Stoddard of Northampton, a
nephew in turn of Sir George Down-
ing,1 that baronet who so well repre-

i George Downing came to America in 1638
with his father, Emanuel Downing, to whom the

85

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

sented King Charles as ambassador to
Holland. It was not, however, this
blood which is said to have dominated
the lives of Edwards and Burr, but
the strain of the Pierreponts, received
through a mother who as a child had
gone "from place to place, singing
sweetly," because she was "beloved of
that great Being who made and rules
the world" — through Sarah Pierre-
pont, the great granddaughter of
parson Hooker, the founder of Hart-
ford ! Elizabeth Whitman had none
of the Pierrepont blood to account for
her career.

town of Salem granted a large farm at what is
called to-day, Proctor's Crossing, Peabody, Mass.
Here, writes Mr. Upham, George Downing spent
his later youth and opening manhood, until he
returned to England in 1645 ; having meanwhile
graduated with the first class from Harvard Col-
lege.

86

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

The following poem shows Eliza-
beth's affection for the Barlows, and
her sweet womanly views :

To Mr. Barlow, by his friend, Miss
Whitman, on New Year's Day,
1783.

Should every wish the breast of

friendship knows,
Be to your ear convey'd in rustick

prose,
Lost in the wonders of your eastern

clime,
Or wrapt in vision to some unborn

time;
The unartful tale might no attention

gain,

For friendship knows not like the

muse to feign.
87

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Forgive her then, if in this weak
essay,

She tries to emulate thy daring lay,

And give to truth, and warm affec-
tion's glow,

The charms that from the tuneful sis-
ters flow,

On this blest morning's most auspi-
cious rise,

Which finds thee circled with domes-
tick joys ;

May thy glad heart its grateful trib-
ute pay

To him who shap'd thy course and
smooth'd the way,

That guardian power, who, to thy
merit kind,

Bestow'd the bliss most suited to thy

mind;

88

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Retirement, friendship, leisure,

learned ease,
All that the philosophick soul can

please ;
All that the muses love, the harmoni-
ous nine,
Inspire thy lays, and aid each great

design :
But more than all the world could else

bestow,
All pleasures that from fame or

fortune flow,
To fix secure in bliss thy future life,
Heaven crown'd thy blessings with a

lovely wife;
Wise, gentle, good — O! every grace

combin'd,
That charms the sense, or captivates

the mind !

89

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Skill'd every soft emotion to improve

The joy of friendship, and the wish
of love;

To sooth the heart which pale mis-
fortune's train,

Invades with grief or agonizing pain ;

To point through devious paths, the
narrow road

That leads the soul to virtue and to
God.

O friend ! O sister ! to my bosom dear,

By every tie that binds the soul sin-
cere.

O while I fondly dwell upon thy name,

Why sinks my soul unequal to the
theme ? —

But though unskill'd thy various

worth to praise,

Accept my wishes and excuse my lays.
90

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

May all thy future days like this be

gay,
And love and fortune blencl their

kindest ray:
Long in their various gifts may thou

be blest,
And late ascend the endless realms of

rest.1

Elizabeth Whitman's first lover
had been the Reverend Joseph Howe,
pastor of the New South Church on
Church Green in Boston.2 This early
and close relationship led her in her
dire distress in 1788 to appeal for aid
to the Reverend Mr. Howe's family at
Killingly in Connecticut. The Boston

1 From the Massachusetts Centinel, September
27, 1788.

2 Pastor May 19, 1773, to August 25, 1775. —
Bowen's Picture of Boston, 1833, p. 136.

91

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

mail coach which she took at Hart-
ford in May, on her intended visit to
Mrs. Hill, wife of a very prominent
Boston merchant, covered the "upper"
post-route by way of Springfield and
Worcester. She must have left the
coach at Worcester, for her letters
show that she passed through Spring-
field. Worcester was only a few miles
from Killingly, the home of the
Howes.

A word more should be said of the
Howe family, whose devotion to her
in good fortune and in distress are
the brightest strands in the tangled
skein.

The Reverend Joseph Howe was

born at Killingly January 14, 1747, a

son of the Reverend Perley Howe.
92

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1

THE STAGE ROUTE FROM WATERTOWN TO WEST
HARTFORD (LOW'S ALMANACK).

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

The father was a Harvard man, but
Joseph graduated at Yale. Upon the
recommendation of his college presi-
dent Joseph was given charge of a
public school in Hartford, probably in
1765. The father had been a friend
of the Reverend Elnathan Whitman,
and the young man of eighteen was
welcomed into the home. There he
saw Elizabeth, the flower of the fam-
ily, a precocious girl of thirteen.

Howe was licensed to preach in
1769, and soon became a tutor at
Yale. Here until 1772 he taught and
studied, being known and admired for
his literary accomplishments, elo-
quence and social qualities. At this
time he spoke of his "frail, weak,

crazy constitution." In May, 1773,
93

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

he was ordained pastor of the New
South Church in Boston, where he
had preached a year earlier while tar-
rying to improve his health.

If we may place any reliance what-
ever in Mrs. Foster's story Eliza-
beth's or Eliza's visits to Mrs. Sum-
ner (Mrs. Hill) may have begun with
a desire to hear and see Mr. Howe at
the "New South."

In the spring of 1775 British oc-
cupation of Boston and the siege
forced many families into the coun-
try. The Quincys, Greenes and others
accompanied Mr. Howe to Norwich.
Here Howe's health failed rapidly.
He went to New Haven, and upon his
return stopped at Hartford to visit

Elizabeth. Through three weeks of
94

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

increasing illness she cared for him
with untiring tenderness until he died,
on the 25th of August. His biogra-
pher has said that after making due
allowance the contemporary eulogies
show that he must have been a
remarkable man.

By a curious turn of the wheel of
fate he lies in an unmarked and per-
haps unknown grave, while the girl
who but for his frail constitution
would have graced his Boston home
sleeps a few miles from Church Green
in a spot that will be visited by
strangers so long as love and mystery
exert their sway.

Joseph had three brothers, Isaac
Cady Howe, Captain Perley Howe1

1 I am indebted to the captain's great grandson,

95

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

and Sampson Howe. I have been un-
able to determine surely to which of
these Elizabeth appealed, but it ap-
pears certain that they were not
clergymen as Mrs. Mason, a relative
of the family, supposed.

A clue may be sought in the fact
that after 1782 Sampson Howe was
in Hartford once and sometimes
twice a year as a representative from
Killingly to the General Assembly, so
that he doubtless met Elizabeth often.
He was present in October, 1787, in
January, 1788, and again in May. It
is a fair inference that it was Samp-
son Howe whom Elizabeth came to
know well, and that Sampson and his

Mr. M. A. De Wolfe Howe, and to Judge
Daniel Wait Howe, for information.

96

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

wife Huldah are the persons who are
said to have carried her to Water-
town, or as seems much more prob-
able to Worcester where she would
again take the stage.

Surrounded by the best of friends
Elizabeth Whitman left them all,
trusting that the loyalty and love of
one man would bring him to her in
the quiet of a distant town. Tradi-
tion says that this one friend came,
but by a cruel fate or perhaps by the
exercise of a too cautious reserve he
never found her.

97

ELIZABETH'S CHOICE OF
DANVERS.

V. Elizabeth's Choice of Dan-
vers.

WHEN Elizabeth left the stage
coach at Watertown to avoid
Boston why did she go on to Danvers ?
No reason has ever been given other
than the evident one that Danvers
was a quiet town with a well-known
inn, far from Hartford. Her only
guide to the choice may have been in-
formation gleaned from an almanac,
or Mr. Howe may have offered the
advice which led her there.

Is it possible that there was a more
potent purpose in the selection ? Dan-
vers is near Salem, and Salem in

those days was important both as a
99

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

sea-port and as a point on the post-
route. If Elizabeth's lover was to
come to her openly or in secret a town
situated asDanvers was, haH manifest
advantages. If he was a French
officer (disguised by an American
uniform), as has been often sug-
gested, a sea port was indispensable,
for they could then meet without forc-
ing him to take a long over-land
journey.

In a letter written at Mrs. Dall's
dictation and dated March 29, 1908,
she says of Elizabeth :

"Mr. Howe who had known her
from childhood and believed fully in
her integrity, took her with his wife
in a carryall and drove her to Water-
town where he put her into the charge
100

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

of the lad who drove her to Danvers.
These facts are perhaps known only
to Mrs. Dall; Mrs. Mason1 who re-
ceived them from her aunt and uncle
above referred to, being now dead."
Mrs. Dall thinks that this circum-
stance settles the question of Eliza-
beth's own belief in her actual mar-
riage, and her friends' acceptance of
it as true. Would Elizabeth, we may
ask, have appealed to these Christian
people to whom she was as a sister —
more truly so perhaps because the
grave of their brother sanctified their
relationship — if she came as a victim

1 Mrs. Mason of Virginia, a grand niece (?)
of Reverend Joseph Howe. She said that Joseph's
brothers were aged clergymen of East Killingly,
one being settled there and the other, to whom
iilizabeth went, not having any parish — so un-
reliable are the details of a tradition ! — See Per-
kins's Old Houses of Norwich, p. 338, for an ac-
count of the Howe family.

101

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

of sin? Must she not at least have
believed herself married? Could she
hope to deceive the Howe brothers,
two young men of about her own
age, one of whom was familiar with
the political and social gossip of Hart-
ford where she had lived?

The tradition mentioned above that
Mr. ancl Mrs. Howe of Killingly, car-
ried Elizabeth some forty miles to
Watertown, seems improbable, al-
though we have no facts to oppose to
the statement. The more natural sup-
position is that Sampson and Huldah
Howe carried her back from Killingly
to Worcester, where she took another
coach of the same line and went on to
Watertown. The western post road

from Philadelphia, according to
102

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Low's Astronomical Diary or Al-
manack for 1788, left Bull's tavern at
Hartford for Boston, stopping at
Windsor, Suffield, West Springfield,
Springfield, Springfield Plains, Wil-
braham, Palmer, Western, Brook-
field, Spencer, Leicester, Worcester
(Pease's, Stower's, or Mower's tav-
ern), Shrewsbury, Northborough.
Marlborough, West Sudbury, East
Sudbury, Weston, Waltham, and
Watertown (Willington's).

It may be said, then, with some
color of the truth that Elizabeth took
advantage of Mrs. Hill's invitation
to set out for Boston, perhaps accom-
panying Mr. Howe on his return from
the Assembly; that she decided to

leave the stage at Worcester for a
103

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

consultation in Killingly; and from
Killingly she was carried by the
Howes to Worcester, although pos-
sibly they carried her all the way to
Watertown. She then went on to
Danvers.

The next question which naturally
arises is : Why Hid she wish to be in
Danvers at a well known tavern ? And
how had she heard of "The Bell ?" We
know that Ezekiel Russell's Almanac
was on sale in Hartforcf, since in 1778
the scarcity of paper forced Mr. Rus-
sell to announce that his Hartford
patrons in order to be sure to obtain
the next issue should leave their
names with the local bookseller, Mr.
N. Patten.

We can thus almost see Elizabeth
104

i libftj46«« liwtfld «kufe to h*wt«hem bcisftd, Ae? we c e itr«dj
fo»ifrit«tiwaa»o<l«bferifeiftg,«*'itl»yai»IJ k»»c them
ce st «»"« ftiiiicgs jo plain iW»|, «xi etfcht J«tf>*«i <Ht aa<U

J lettered,— Ii!. Tr>« natae* of the S^<i>«f*r.witi» tteii BfJcJ
nr occapaiiont, atti the iwarttt in whith tlkey d*«eil» with t>n
number of booka ejch perfoo fnbfcrtbed f«, #ilf "6* printed in;
alphabetical order st the ead of th* hit nutBkw<-JY- 3"' e!
work will be immediately potto the ptefs. wheo » fi*f5<ien'j
■a ember of books are ft! bferi bed for barely todefrsy tW| ijjfflfl ,1
Svhich the Pocliiber fia.terr him'elf will be in a few *&&*> atj
•s number cf tbcm are .-.'ready ei-gag.'d. Tfcofc who (u*>ftrfl»
;i'or fix books *«S have a *ever.;h ^ratij. The rr,or>ey to b»|
!paid on delivery ci each- dumber, ,. j

! CJ* As the prefect di'r^iiltv c.'' procuring p<tper »iil prevent
:« large e<n*ior>, tb/iie Gentlemen who are dctirous of fubfoibj
ing. far the above ingeni.K:« Poer.. , are rocp.elied to )ea»e tbei
name* wi:K 5. RutlVo, the ruMllber. a: his ritiotlog-olftce oext
nhe bel.'-tavetc, io Di&vers ; \ieff. piects, Draper and Folfocu,
•N^Coveriv. Pj inter*, are Md&s Kbox and Green and M'Doc-
igali, Bookftliers, ir» K.,flsr.; Benjamin Weft, Ef<j; and Mr. j Car-
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PAGE FROM BICKERSTAFF S BOSTON ALMANACK

FOR 1779, SHOWING THE BELL TAVERN

AND "MR. N. PATTEN, BOOKSELLER

IN HARTFORD."

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Whitman early in 1788 as she turns

over the leaves of an old copy of

Russell's American Almanac, and

reads the statement that it was

printed "next the bell-tavern in Dan-

vers." Nay more, she sees there a

picture of the very building, rudely

and quaintly drawn.

Elizabeth at Danvers declined to

have Mrs. Hill informed of her

presence at the Bell Tavern. Was

this due to her feeling of guilt ? She

gave as her reason for withholding

information from her friends her

wish to go to them after her recovery.

AncI she may reasonably have hoped

to recover. But if this reason of hers

was but an excuse for delay what

could she have hoped to do had her
105

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

baby lived?

One man's explanation may be as
good as another's. With the baby
alive she may have hoped to touch the
heart of "Mr. Walker" and to induce
him to acknowledge a marriage, or
she may have hoped that by the time
the baby was old enough to travel
"Walker" would take her to another
country to remain until circumstances
so changed that he could acknowledge
the marriage.

Her visit to Mrs. Hill, if really in-
tended, may have been abandoned at
the last moment on account of an in-
timation from "Walker" that unex-
pected circumstances had made im-
possible an early acknowledgment of

the marriage. Her stay with Mrs.
106

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Hill under these conditions and with-
out explanations which she could not
offer would have been intolerable.
With the baby dead — land it was dead
when she was most earnestly pressed
to send for her friends — Elizabeth
perhaps expected to go to Mrs. Hill
with a tale of delay on the journey
from Hartford, or illness which tem-
porarily clouded her mind. In any
event, a secret marriage being granted
as possible, Elizabeth might have felt
that she must at once acknowledge
the man's name and so break a bond
of secrecy, or she must settle the fate
of her confinement before meeting her
friends in Boston. We should remem-
ber that the temptation to remain in

seclusion until "Walker" came — and
107

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

upon his coming she constantly relied,
saying finally in her anguish "You
will come but you will come too late"
— was the temptation to wait until
she had seen the man, and could em-
erge triumphantly. She staked her
all upon this — and lost. To us the
successful consummation seems dim-
cult or even impossible, but is this not
true of every tragedy in a novel or on
the stage? Without its mystery the
story of Elizabeth Whitman would
have been forgotten.

108

THE MAN OF HER HEART.

VI. The Man of Her Heart.

I" F we could see those letters which
**■ Elizabeth held over the coals as
she lay upon her death bed at the Tav-
ern there would be no reason for this
chapter. We should know her secret.
Tradition hints that Colonel Wads-
worth knew this secret and shared the
knowledge of her plans. He was fre-
quently at her home late in the May
evenings of the year 1788. He had
been in France, and she had changeH
French gold at the bank. Was this
money his, or was he acting in behalf
of a French friend of high rank who

would not or could not disclose a
109

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

secret marriage P1

To a man of the world who has be-
come a cynic a secret marriage would
seem very improbable; but this was
the very form of marriage uppermost
in Elizabeth's mind. Her most in-
timate friends, Joel and Ruth Barlow,
had kept their marriage secret for
almost a year, and Elizabeth knew
their plans. To persuade her to take
part in a secret marriage would not
seem, therefore, strange or difficult.

The question which will ever recur
in the study of the real life of the

1 There was no dearth of foreigners in Hart-
ford and New Haven at this time. Dr. Ezra
Stiles refers in his Diary August 13, 1787, to a
"foreigner" whose letter to a friend in New York
was published that the Doctor's style of funeral
sermon might be held up to ridicule. The New
Haven Gazette for November 1, 1787, gives ex-
tracts from Crevecceur's letters, "by a French
gentleman" who had recently returned from the
"Western Country."

110

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

heroine of Mrs. Foster's novel is this
question of a secret marriage. Did
she have a husband? Mrs. Dall be-
lieves that she did, or at least that
when she died, wearing a ring and
protesting her sinlessness, she sup-
posed that she was legally married.

Mrs. Foster in her novel, with all its
untruth, has convincingly (for the
reader) placed the fatherhood of
Elizabeth's child upon Pierrepont
Edwards, her brilliant cousin, and has
thus emphasized the idea that her
lover already had a wife. She places
Edwards in the arbor when Buck-
minster surprises her there and leaves
in jealous rage, never again to return
to supplicate her favor. In reality it

was her other cousin, Jeremiah Wads-
Ill

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

worth, with whom she was in consulta-
tion. But no breath of scandal has
ever touched his honored name. Like
Edwards, he continued to hold high
office throughout these eventful days
in Elizabeth's history. Edwards left
New Haven at about the time she took
the coach at Hartford for Boston ; he
is recorded as in attendance on the
Continental Congress at Philadelphia
June 9, 1788. He returned probably
in November, and was a member of
the Connecticut House which met in
Hartford in May, 1789, when he was
chosen to preside. It is recorded that
Mrs. Whitman wrote to him at Phila-
delphia to ask if he knew where her
daughter was, and he answered with

an impatient oath that he "wished to
112

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

God he did."1 The above dates of
course show that he was away until
long after her fate had become
known. It was not unnatural that his
name should be associated with hers,
for his reputation is said not to have
been of the best. But he was a mar-
ried man, of high political rank, and a
mark for scandal in a community that
could not rest until it had found some
solution of a mystery. To mention
his name was an easy and simple solu-
tion, especially to those who love to
think ill of men in high station. If
the accusation which Mrs. Foster is
said to make was widely accepted as
true in Hartford in the winter of
1788-89 it seems difficult to believe

1 Romance, p. 74.

113

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

that the convention, sitting in the
same city, would have chosen Edwards
to its highest place of honor. In Bos-
ton when Perez Morton lay under
similar charges it seemed to John
Adams and James Bowdoin wise to
appear in print in an attempt to clear
his name.1 Could Hartford have
been less sensitive if the people really
believed that Edwards was guilty of
dastardly misconduct ?

What did Elizabeth think of the
man who really was the father of her
child ? Are her verses applicable to a
married man like Edwards, written as
they were when the glamor of love
must have ceaseH to blind her eyes,
and truth would, if ever, appear in her

1 Massachusetts Centinel, October 8, 1788.

114

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

lines ?

In the poems which remain of those
said to be in Elizabeth's handwriting
there are passages which appear to be
autobiographical. The first of these,
called "Disappointment," has already
been noticed. It seems to spring
from real feeling, and gives unmis-
takable prescience of "a Hoom so
dreadful, so severe" that it must
refer to conditions and events in
Danvers.

Let us return then to Pierrepont
Edwards. Could it be true that in
Elizabeth's days of courtship :

"Sweet as the sleep of innocence the

day,

By transports measured, lightly

danced away.
115

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

To love, to bliss, the unioned soul was

given,
And — ah, too happy! — asked no

brighter heaven,"

if her love was being given to her
married cousin? Of him could she
truly say:

"E'en thy soft smiles can ceaseless

prove
Thy truth, thy tenderness, and love."

She continues :

"O, come once more, with soft en-
dearments, come;

Through favored walks thy chosen
maid attend

Where well-known shades their pleas-
ing branches bend."
116

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

The only theory consistent with
Edwards would be a promise on his
part to procure a divorce from his
wife in order to be free to remarry.

If Edwards was not her lover who
was the man ? I have said that Colonel
Wadsworth had been in France.
Elizabeth had another friend who
knew many distinguished French
officers during a pastorate in Newport
in 1756-77. This was Dr. Ezra Stiles,
afterward president of Yale College.
His (laughter Betsey1 was a dear
friend of Elizabeth, and together they
must have met many of the staff
officers of Rochambeau and Lafayette.
They spoke French fluently, and in

1 The first wife of Rev. Abiel Holmes, father
of Oliver Wendell Holmes.

117

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

one of Elizabeth's letters Mons. Beau-
tonaux, the French master at New
Haven, is spoken of with affectionate
banter.1 If she married in secret a
French officer high in rank the union
with a Protestant minister's daughter
might have endangered his paternal
allowance and so been a reason for
secrecy. When mother and child were
dead the officer may have departed
thoughtlessly, or even with the deter-
mination to bury the adventure in her
grave. If the marriage were legal
and Colonel Wads forth knew of it
one must believe that for his cousin's
goo3 name he would have felt bound

1 St. John de Crevecoeur and other distinguished
Frenchmen had associations with New Haven.
See Proceedings Mass. Historical Society,
February, 1906, page 63, etc.

118

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

to make the fact public, even had he
promised Elizabeth that it should
never through him become known.
But what his views were we cannot
tell.

The idea of a husband for Eliza-
beth certainly had a place in her his-
tory from an early date. Mrs. Mor-
ton in her novel, The Power of Sym-
pathy, written in the autumn of
1788, gives on page 50 of the first
volume a long account of Miss Whit-
man to illustrate her contention that
a young lady who imbibes her ideas of
the world from desultory reading
often falls a sacrifice to her credulity.
Mrs. Morton says that Elizabeth
"acquainted her lover of her situation,

and a husband was proposed for her,
119

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

who was to receive a considerable sum
for preserving the reputation of the
lady ; but having received security for
the payment, he immediately with-
drew/'

Is it probable that the gentleman
had an opportunity to withdraw if the
management of the affair was in the
hands of either Edwards or Colonel
Wadsworth? If so, they were not
the masterful men we have reason to
think they were.

A vague tradition places Eliza-
beth's lover in hiding at Danvers dur-
ing her life at the Bell Tavern, where
he could see her signal from day to
day — a towel twisted into her blind —
to inform him of her welfare. It

would be difficult to believe that such
120

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

a coward could have won her love, or
that she could in her distress write of
his delay in coming if she knew all the
time that he was in town.1

We have still another poem to con-
sider, one which refers to unhappy
events in Elizabeth's love life. The
events described seem to point to a
much earlier period of composition
than the days in Danvers, but here
again there is matter for debate.

Two years after Elizabeth's death
the following poem was printed in the
"Centinel" as an unfinished frag-
ment :

"Thy presents to some happier lover
send;

i Mrs. Mehetabel C. P. Baxter (Mrs. James
Phinney Baxter) tells me of this tradition.

121

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Content thyself to be Luanda's

friend ;
The soft expressions of thy gay

design
111 suit the sadness of a heart like

mine;
A heart like mine, forever doom'd to

prove
Each tencler woe, but not one joy of

love.

"First from my arms a dying lover

torn,
In early life it was my fate to mourn ;
A father next, by fate's relentless

doom,
With heartfelt woe I followed to the

tomb:

Now all was lost — no friends re-
122

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

mainfed1] to guide
My erring steps, or calm life's
boist'rous tide.

"Again the admiring youths around

me bow'd, '
And one I singled from the sighing

crowd ;
Well skill'd he was in every winning

art,
To warm the fancy, or to touch the

heart;
Why must my pen the noble praise

deny,
Which virtue, worth, and honour

should supply.
O youth belov'd — what pangs [my2]

1 Supplied by Mrs. Locke. If Elizabeth is in
truth the author why does she ignore her mother
who remained to guide her steps to the very end.

2 "His" in the Centinel.

123

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

breast has born[e]
To find thee false, ungrateful, and

forsworn ;
A stygean1 darkness o'er my prospects

spread,
The damps of night, and death's

eternal shade;
The scorpion sting, by disappointment

brought,
And all the horrours of despairing

thought —
Sad as they are I might perhaps en-
dure,
And bear with patience what admits

no cure;
But here my bosom is to madness

mov'd,
I suffer'd by the faults2 of him I

1 "Shade and" in Mrs. Locke.

2 "Wrongs" in Mrs. Locke.

124

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

lov'd;
O! had I died by pitying Heav'n's

decree,
Nor prov'd so black, so base a mind in

thee ! .
But vain the wish; my heart was

doom'd to prove,
Each torturing pain — but not one joy

of love;
Would' st thou again fallacious pros-
pects spread,
And woo me from the confines of the

dead?
The pleasing scenes that charm'd me

once retrace
Gay scenes of rapture and perpetual

' bliss?
How did my heart admire1 the dear

i "Embrace" in Mrs. Locke.

125

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

deceit,
And I myself request the pleasing1

cheat !
Delusive hope, and wishes idly2 vain,
Unless to sharpen disappointment's

pain!
Could'st thou in language like the

blest above,

Point to my views that paradise of
love,

Could'st thou3 * * * *
What significance are we to attach
to these lines ? They lack the strength
and passion of the poem, "Disappoint-
ment." Elizabeth, if she is the author,
refers to the death of Mr. Howe and
then to the loss of her father. The

1 "And fondly cherish the deluding" in Mrs.
Locke.

2 "Sadly" in Mrs. Locke.

3 Columbian Centinel, August ir, 1790.

126

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

next event would seem to be Mr.
Buckminster's suit, although the
young clergyman, depressed and ill
much of the time during his friend-
ship with Elizabeth, could hardly be
described as "well skill'd in every
winning art." If we can possibly con-
ceive the reference to be to a lover's
quarrel with him and the "presents"
to be peace offerings, the lines still
have no connection with the tragedy
of her cleath. They are rather an ex-
pression of disapproval of and grief
over a vacillating lover.

The description is not of Edwards,
for he could not be called a "youth
belov'd" in 1788 when he was thirty-
eight. Nor is it probable that he sent

her presents, accompanied by "soft
127

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

expressions" of a "gay design," while
he was attending to the business of
Congress in Philadelphia, certainly not
if he were the lover and thus knew of
her condition.

Mrs. Locke, in her introduction to
The Coquette, reprints the poem, but
she appears to alter the text from
the "Centinel" version with an ease
which surprises a student of our day.

Indeed, the whole question of Eliza-
beth's poetry is made unsatisfactory
by Mrs. Foster's evident hand in al-
most every line. We cannot be cer-
tain that the poems as they first ap-
pear in a Boston newspaper were
written by Elizabeth. But if they are
from her pen the many alterations

made in the versions given by Mrs.
123

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Locke in her preface to the novel sug-
gest revision also by Mrs. Foster be-
fore they first appeared in print.

Elizabeth's letters to the Barlows
speak of her own poems so that we
feel sure that she did write verses.
But a careful examination of the con-
temporary periodicals has not brought
to light any poem bearing her name as
the author. We can only hope that
time will bring some evidence.

A few words must now be said in
connection with a name never before
mentioned in the life of Elizabeth.
The late Mr. Charles J. Hoadly, for
many years state librarian of Con-
necticut, had a theory in regard to the
Elizabeth Whitman mystery which

he would never divulge ; but after Mr.
129

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Hoadly's death his copy of The
Coquette was found to have been
annotated in his own hand. Against
"Major Sanford" stands the name of
James Watson,1 the first president of
the New England Society in the City
of New York and for a short time a
United States senator. Watson was
the grandson of John Watson of
Hartford. He graduated at Yale in
1776, and ten years later moved to
New York where he became a wealthy
merchant, a brilliant and handsome
man, and the centre of an influential
circle. President Stiles of Yale dined
at his home a few months after the
tragic death of Elizabeth. Would

1 For a portrait and sketch see the Magazine
of American History for January, 1884.

130

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Dr. Stiles have sat at the table of a
seducer of his daughter's intimate
friend ? Or if Watson was guilty and
the doctor did not know the facts how
did Mr. Hoadly after a century
obtain information which contem-
poraries did not have ?

At present we have no evidence to
support the charge of guilt implied
in this bare mention of Watson's
name, so that we gain very little from
this new conjecture.

131

A FINAL WORD.

VII. A Final Word.

*T^HE face of Elizabeth Whitman
•*- can no longer be seen, for the
miniature by Malbone has been lost.1
What would we not give to be able to
look upon her features again ! To see
her character depicted by a master
hand and a discerning eye woulcl set
at rest some of the disquiet that has
clung to her name.

Readers of Mrs. Foster's novel are
familiar with the heroine's alleged
portrait in two forms. The engraved

i Romance, p. 106.

The New London Gazette for Wednesday, May
16, 1827, states that on Wednesday, the 9th, the
Whitman house was burned with the greater part
of the furniture. It stood on Main Street, where
Capitol Avenue (formerly called College Street)
opens on to Main Street.

133

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

portrait, which forms the frontis-
piece of the eleventh edition of The
Coquette, published by Abel Brown
at Exeter in 1828, is from a paint-
ing by John Jackson, the celebrated
English portrait painter who clied
in 1 83 1. The engraver of the plate
was James Eddy, an excellent worker
in stipple, who was in 1828 connected
with William and John Pendleton's
copper-plate and lithographic business
in Graphic Court, Boston.

Jackson exhibited one hundred
and forty-six portraits at the Royal
Academy between 1804 and 1830.
Of these about thirty which repre-
sented women were painted before
1828, -although not more than half

a dozen probably were engraved
134

ELIZA WHARTON, ENGRAVED BY
JAMES EDDY.

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

and so could have reached Eddy's
eye. A spirited portrait of Lady
Georgiana Agar-Ellis, later known as
Lady Dover, was engraved by S. W.
Reynolds and issued February I,
1824, by Colnaghi and Company. A
glance at the reproduction in Alfred
Whitman's "Samuel William Rey-
nolds" (London, 1903, opposite page
108) will show the general resem-
blance of Eddy's portrait to Lady
Georgiana. If Eddy based his Eliza
Wharton upon it, as seems probable,
he made several important alterations.
Eliza's face is stronger and more
mature. Her mouth is firmer, and the
face exhibits less hauteur. Lady
Georgiana's beautiful ermine cloak is

replaced by a simple empire dress, cut
135

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

low, with elbow sleeves, ruffle trim-
mings, and short waist — a fashion
then popular.1 Instead of drawing on
her glove Eliza's left hand clasps the
right arm. The hat with its plumes
retains much of Jackson's character-
istic grace of form; and the hair in
both pictures is essentially the same.

The fact that the Eddy portrait is
reversed is in itself some evidence
that it is a copy, in part at least.

Assuming that the engraver copied
the English beauty what interest has
the frontispiece for us ? Did Eddy in
making his alterations have the aid of

1 The popularity of this dress is shown in a
little book of copper-plate engravings for children,
issued by Benjamin Johnson of Philadelphia in
1813, with the title "The Farm, or a Picture of
Industry." The women, whether raking hay,
churning, or knitting, all appear in similar
costume.

136

LADY AGAR-ELLIS, ENGRAVED BY
S. W. REYNOLDS.

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

those who knew Elizabeth Whitman ?
I think he must have been guided by a
skilled adviser who proffered helpful
suggestions, if this adviser did not, in-
deed, have something like a sketch or
a silhouette to offer. My mother's
grandmother, Lucy Stanley of West
Hartford (Mrs. Samuel Miller), who
often visited at the Whitman home,
maintained that this picture was "a
good likeness of Cousin Bessie Whit-
man." Mr. J. Warren Upton, for
many years librarian of the Peabody
Institute, stated that his mother, who
had seen and talked with Elizabeth,
called it a correct likeness.

We have also indirect evidence to
support these assertions. The Eddy

engraving of Eliza Wharton was sub-
137

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

mittecl to Mr. John Briggs Potter,
keeper of paintings at the Museum of
Fine Arts in Boston, a keen critic of
portraiture. Beside it was laid a copy
of the portrait of Elizabeth's mother.
After a careful study of the two
faces Mr. Potter declared that they
exhibit "no contradiction in type."
The eyes and nose of the Eddy por-
trait are singularly like what we
might expect in an authentic portrait
of Elizabeth Whitman. With this
view everyone will agree. And it fol-
lows that the portrait in the eleventh
edition of The Coquette, whether or
not altered from Jackson's Lady
Georgiana Agar-Ellis, has an abiding
interest.

Less moving because less forceful
138

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

is the portrait used in the historical
edition published by Fetridge in 1855.
It appears to be merely a fanciful pic-
ture of a young lady sitting by an
open window, with a shawl about her
arms. The dress has a close-fitting
corsage, full above. The picture is of
the Evangeline type, and suggests
that the artist, Nathaniel Southworth,
may have added to his work as a
miniature painter by commissions for
annuals of the Keepsake order. The
engraver, G. F. Storm, was an Eng-
lishman who spent a few years in
America.

If neither portrait has a proved
resemblance to Elizabeth we still have
the lovely face of her mother to aid

us in our endeavor to make her being
139

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

real. The daughter was distin-
guished in bearing, and brilliant in
conversation. As a girl she some-
times resented her mother's admoni-
tion to thrift by stamping her foot and
exclaiming, "I won't stoop to pick up a
pin, I vow."

The Rev. Edwin P. Parker, pastor
of Dr. Whitman's church in Hart-
ford, has two precious relics of her
early and happy days, a piece of green
silk that once formed part of her
gown, and an invitation to a dance,
written on the obverse side of the six
spot of spades — in the Hays when
playing cards were printed on one side
only. The names, which represent
families prominent in Hartford, are

in script, the rest roughly printed with
140

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY
a pen. The invitation reads :

HARTFORD DANCING ASSEMBLY,

THURSDAY EVENING, 6 O'CLOCK

ADMIT FOR THE SEASON Miss E. Whitman.

J. Bull ]

CJ. Pratt ["Managers

C. Hopkins \

In this age of art and music, whole-
some romances and social freedom, it
is difficult to understand the distrust
which the social pleasures of Miss
Whitman, the Barlows and others of
the younger literary circle in Hart-
ford awakenecf, since we approve like
enjoyment now. Society in a small
New England city did not know the
freer life then known in London or
Paris, and it disapproved the faint
echo which Elizabeth and her friends

introduced. The Barlows and their
141

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

associates lived a century before their
life came to be the customary life.
Therefore when a member of the
circle fell under suspicion he or she
suffered ten fold. We must read Mrs.
Foster's philosophy of life and her
admonition to the young, if we would
know the rigid rules which were a
part of the fibre of the period. The
student of to-day must exercise a tem-
perate judgment lest he condemn too
severely the standards and ideals of
other days. In her time and environ-
ment Elizabeth Whitman could not
expect compassion for her apparent
sin. In our day transgression still
brings its own retributive penalty,
but we can judge temperately and

may even withhold judgment until we
142

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

know all.

The public condemned the Rever-
end Josiah Crawley, that consistently
exasperating creature of Anthony
Trollope's brain, but he was able to
save himself within this world.

Elizabeth Whitman as silently bore
disgrace in her own circumscribed
sphere, with no extending days in
which to vindicate her course. Did
she ever think of this as the night
closed in upon her in that little corner
room at the Bell Tavern? Did she
ever falter? Yes, as all must falter
before the opening door of an eter-
nity. But she was of those who are
unconquerable by circumstance; she
knew her own heart, and bravely

faced the future with sealed lips.
143

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

"It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate :
I am the captain of my soul."

Opinions never wholly agreed as to
the innocence of "the stranger at the
Bell," and that may be one explana-
tion of the deep impression which her
death has made upon the people of the
town. For many years the children
wended their way to the little green
schoolhouse under the hill, a few steps
from the grave of Elizabeth Whit-
man. Some, coming from homes of
doubt, avoided that grass-grown spot
in their play among the headstones,
oppressed by a dread that they could
not understand. Others lingered there,

knowing as little as did their play-
144

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

mates, but conscious of the hush
which fell upon their elders when
Elizabeth's name was mentioned. To
these, tradition would have us believe,
the grave became in time a lovers'
trysting place, for they held her to
have been faithful unto the end. From
the wide world year by year travellers
have come to stand beside the grave,
and they have chipped away the stone
until its last sad line alone is legible.
And to-day, having "the tears of
strangers," she needs no other monu-
ment.

145

NOTES ON VARIOUS EDI-
TIONS OF 'THE COQUETTE."

C O Q.UE T T E.

TITLE PAGE OF THE FIRST EDITION OF THE COQUETTE.

The First Edition

The | COQUETTE ; | or, the | History
of Eliza Wharton ; | a | NOVEL ; | founded
on fact. | BY A LADY OF MASSACHU-
SETTS. | Boston: | Printed by Samuel
Etheridge, | FOR E. Larkin, | No. 47,
CORNHILL. | 1797.

12 mo., half-title, title, pp. 5—261, (1).
Verso of page 261 has the copyright notice.
Half-title reads : The | Coquette ; | or, the |
History of Eliza Wharton; | a | NOVEL.
The Columbian Centinel advertises Septem-
ber 6, 1797, the "Boarding School," by the
author of The Coquette, showing that The
Coquette must have been issued early in
the year. [Peabody Historical Society;
Lenox Library.]

Second Edition

The Coquette; | or, the | History of
Eliza Wharton : | a | Novel ; | Founded on
Fact. By a lady of Massachusetts. |
Charlestown : | Printed by Samuel Ether-
idge, | For E. and S. Larkin, | No. 47,
Cornhill, Boston. | 1802.

149

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

8 vo. pp. 161. S. G. Drake's Sale
Catalogue says "Original edition of this
celebrated work." [Essex Institute.]

Third Edition

The j Coquette; | or, | The history of |
Eliza Wharton. | A novel : | Founded on
fact. | By a lady of Massachusetts, j Third
edition, j Published according to act of
Congress. | Newburyport: | Published by
Thomas & Whipple, | Proprietors of the
copy-right. | Sold at their Book-Store, No.
2, State- Street — and by | Henry Whipple,
Salem, Mass. | 1811.

16 mo., pp. 242. [Boston Public Library.]

Fourth Edition

The | Coquette; | or, | the history of |
Eliza Wharton. | A novel : | Founded on
fact. | By a lady of Massachusetts. | Fourth
Edition. | Newburyport: j Published by
Charles Whipple. | Sold also by Whipple &
Lawrence, Salem. | 1824.

16 mo., pp. 303. Printed by T. H. Miller,
Portsmouth. [Boston Athenaeum.]

Eleventh Edition
The | Coquette; | or, the | History of |
150

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Eliza Wharton, | a novel : | Founded on
Fact. | By a Lady of Massachusetts. |
Eleventh edition. | Exeter: j Published by
Abel Brown. | 1828.

16 mo., pp. 264. Copyright by Brown.
Frontispiece of "Eliza Wharton" ; "J. Jack-
son pinxt" ; "Eng. & Printed at Pendletons.
Eddy Sc."

The thirtieth edition is from the same
type, much worn, or from stereotype plates,
and the portrait is a cheap reproduction of
the engraving. The original engraving was
used in 1829 by J. P. Peaslee of Boston
for Mrs. Foster's "Boarding School" where
the lady appears as "Clara." This is the
portrait with hat trimmed with plumes.

The Essex Institute has the tenth edition
with the same date and place of publica-
tion.

1831 Edition

The Coquette; or, the History of Eliza
Wharton, a novel: founded on fact. By a
Lady of Massachusetts. Twelfth edition.
New- York: published by J. P. Clusman.
1831.

18 mo., pp. 264. Frontispiece portrait of
Eliza Wharton, "J. Jackson pinxt., Eng. &

151

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Printed at Pendletons, Eddy & Co." [Lenox
Library.]

Thirtieth Edition

The | Coquette; | or, the | History| of j
Eliza Wharton, | a novel : | Founded on
Fact | By a lady of Massachusetts. | Thir-
tieth Edition. | Boston : | Printed and Pub-
lished by Charles Gaylord | 1833. [Con-
gregational Library, Boston.]

Thirtieth Edition

A reprint was made in 1840. The copy
in the Congregational Library in Boston
has no portrait. Above the words "Thir-
tieth Edition" there is a very black design,
a heart pierced by an arrow, and encircled
by a wreath, a lighted torch over all. [Con-
gregational Library.]

New Edition

The | Coquette; | or, | the history of |
Eliza Wharton. | A novel : | Founded on
fact. | By j a lady of Massachusetts. | New
Edition. | With an historical Preface, | and |
a memoir of the author. | Boston : | Wil-
liam P. Fetridge and Company. | 1855.

8 vo., pp. 286. Preface pp. 3-30. The

152

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

frontispiece, a lady seated with a shawl
over her arms, curls, and no hat, has "N.
Southworth, del." ; "G. F. Storm, Sc." For
a review see the New England Historical
and Genealogical Register, ix. 191. A news-
paper notice states that "Fetridge & Com-
pany will publish Wednesday, Jan. 24th.
[1855], The Coquette; or the history of
Eliza Wharton. A Novel Founded on Fact.
By a lady of Massachusetts, with an His-
torical Preface, a memoir of the author and
a Beautiful steel Engraving of Eliza Whar-
ton, the ill-star'd victim of her aristo-
cratic cousin, "the most remarkable feature
of whose character (says his biographer)
was his unbridled licentiousness." In the
Historic Preface the real names of the prin-
cipal actors in this most affecting and la
mentable Drama are for the first time given
to the public by the daughter of the author
who possesses peculiar means to ascertain
the FACTS." [Boston Athenaeum.]

Peterson Edition

The Coquette; | or, the | life and letters
of Eliza Wharton. | a novel, founded on
fact. | By Mrs. Hannah Foster. | wife of
Rev. John Foster, of Brighton, and daugh-

153

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

ter | of Grant Webster, of Boston. | With
an historical preface, | and a | memoir of
the author, by Jane E. Locke. | Philadel-
phia : | [ 1866] . T. B. Peterson & Brothers ; |
306 Chestnut Street.

Copyrighted, 1866. 8 vo. pp. 302. Title
page; copyright entry on reverse; pp. 17,
18, "publishers' preface"; pp. 19-46, "His-
torical preface, including a memoir of the
author." [Salem Public Library.]

The | NEW ENGLAND COQUETTE |
From the History of the | celebrated |
ELIZA WHARTON. | a tragic i

DRAMA IN THREE ACTS. By J.

Horatius Nichols, author of | Jefferson
& Liberty, Essex Junto, &c. |
"In spite of all the virtues we can boast, |
The woman who deliberates, is lost." |

For savage man, the fiercest beast of prey, |
Assumes the face of kindness to betray, |
His giant strength against the weak em-
ploys [
And woman, whom he should protect,
destroys. |

Salem — Printed by N. Coverly. |

16 mo. pp. 44, coarse brown paper covers.

154

ELIZABETH WHITMAN MYSTERY

Some time before the second edition of
Eliza Wharton in 1802, this Drama was
published.

We find in Felt's Annals, that N. Coverly,
Jr., was a Printer in Salem in 1798 and was
taxed there in 1802. He was in Boston in
1803. [Essex Institute, Salem; Pea-
body Historical Society, Peabody.]

155

INDEX.

Adams, John, 55, 114.

Agar-Ellis, Lady Georgiana, 1352, 138.

"A Lady of Massachusetts," 1492, 1502, 1512, 1522.

Annable, Nathaniel, 12.

Anthology Review, 52.

Barlow, Joel, 44, 46, 69, 70, 80, 81, 842, 87, no.
Barlow, Mrs. Ruth (Baldwin), 46, 70, 80, 832,

843, no.
Barlows, 80, 87, 129, 1412.
Baxter, Mrs. Mehitabel C. P., 121.
Beautonaux, Monsieur, 118.
Bell Tavern, 9, 11-142, 262, 28, 322, 332 41, 57, 6i,

104, 1052, 109, 120, 143, 144.
"Boarding School," 151.
Bolton, Mrs. Sarah K., XIII, 12.
Boston, 37, 51, 52, 592, 62, 95, 103, 114, 134, 149,

1523.
Boston Athenseum, 150, 153.
Boston Public Library, 150.
Bowdoin, James, 55, 114.
Bowen's Picture of Boston, 91.
Brighton, 51, 153.
Brooks, Henry M., 46, 47.
Brown, Abel, 134.

Buckminster, 54, 68, 69, 78, 79, in, 127.
Burr, Aaron, 68, 78, 85, 86.

Cenci, Beatrice, 9, 56, 57.

"Charlotte Temple," 54.

"Clarissa Harlowe," 53, 54, 71.

Clusman, J. P., 151

Columbian Centinel, 126.

Congregational Library, 1522.

Connecticut, 12, 34, 35, 44, 76, 80, 85, 91, 1122, 129

Cousins, Frank, 48.

INDEX

Coverly, Nathaniel, 154, 155.
Crawford, Marion, 9.
Crawford, Mary C, XII, 10.
Crevecceur, St. John de, no, 118.
Curiosos, 24, 58, 61 2.

Dall, Mrs. Caroline H., 24, 25, 28*, 44, 45, 65, 69,

70, 100, 1012, in.
Danvers, 10, 11 2, 13, 14, 242, 272, 33, 44, 572, 61,

75, 99-101, 1042, 1052, ns, 120.
"Disappointment," 15, 16, 57, 58, 61, 115, 126.
Dorr, Rev. Edward, 75.
Dow, George Francis, XII.
Downing, Sir George, 852, 86.
Drake, S. G., 150.
Drowne, Mrs. Isaac, 13.

East Boston, 42.

Eddv, James, 134-138, 151.

Edwards, Mrs. Jonathan, yy.

Edwards, Rev. Jonathan, 772.

Edwards, Judge Pierrepont, 66-70, 782, 85, 86,

in2, 1122, 1142, n6, 1172, 120, 127.
"Eliza Wharton," 22, 43, 532, 66-69, 72, 78, 94,

135-137, I493, 155-
Essex Institute, 150, 151, 155.
Etheridge, Samuel, 1492.
Exeter, 134, 151.

Felt's Annals, 155.

Fetridge, William P., 139, 152.

Fetridge & Company, 153.

Foster, Mrs. Hannah, 43, 45-47, 51-54, 562, 62-64.

79, 94, 11 1 2, 113, 128, 129, 133, 142.

Foster, Rev. John, 51, 153.

Fowler Papers, 12.

Frye, Isaac, 27.

Frye, Miss Mary P., 27.

Frye, Miss Serena, 27.

Gaylord, Charles, 152.

Goodhue, Capt. William, n 3, 33, 37, 38.

Goodspeed, Charles E., XIII, 38.

INDEX

Hanson, 27, 31, 61.

Hartford, XIII2, 36,^7, 44, 51, 53, 64, 68, 69, 752,

762, 83, 92-94, 90. 99, 102-104, 107, no, 112,

114, 130, 1402, 1412,
Harvard, 37, 93.
Herald of Freedom, 57.
Hill, Mrs. Henry, 37, 44, 45, 62, 92, 94, 103,

105-107.
Hoadley, Charles J., 129-131.
Hoadley, George E., 53.
Howe, Judge Daniel Wait, 96.
Howe Family, 92, 101.
Howe, Mrs. Huldah, 97, 102, 104.
Howe, Isaac Cady, 95.

Howe, Rev. Joseph, 24, 66, 68, 91-95, toi, 126.
Howe, Mark Anthony De Wolfe, XIII, 96.
Howe, Captain Perley, 95.
Howe, Rev. Perley, 92.
Howe, Sampson, 96^, 99-104.

Independent Chronicle, 59.
Invoice, 37-43.

Jackson. John, 1342, 138, 1512.

Killingly, Conn., 91, 922, 96, 102, 1042.

Lafayette, 117.

Larkin, E, 149.

Larkin, E. and S., 149.

Lee, Mrs., 79.

Lenox Library, 149.

Locke, Mrs. Jane E., 26, 51, 123-126, 128, 129, 154.

Low, Nathaniel, n, 103.

Magazine of American History, 130.

Malbone, 133.

Mason, Mrs., 96, 1012.

Massachusetts Centinel, n, 16, 22, 24, 37, 55, 58,

6i2, 91, 114, 121, 123, 128.
Massachusetts Historical Society, 118.
Massachusetts Spy, 57, 61.
Matthews, Albert, XIII.

INDEX

Miller, Mrs. Samuel, 137.

Miller, T. H., 150.

Morton, Perez, 55, 114.

Morton, Mrs. Perez, 172, 54, 55, 57, 62, 63, ug2.

N. E. H. & G. Register, 153.

Newburyport, 1502.

New Hampshire, 68, 79.

New Haven, 182, 662, 94, no, 112, 118.

New Haven Gazette, no.

New London Gazette, 133.

New South Church, 91, 942.

New York, 59, no, 151.

Nichols, J. Horatius, 154.

Northampton, yy, 78, 85.

"Old Burial Ground," 31, 3?

Osborn, Lyman P., XII.

Osborn, Mrs. Lyman P., XII, 28, 29.

Parker, Carl Rust, 28.

Parker, Rev. Edwin P., XII, 140.

Patten, Nathaniel, 104.

Peabody Historical Society, XII, 13, 149, 155.

Peabody, Mass., 11, 31, 34, 155.

Peabody Institute, Peabody, Mass., XII, 137.

Pendleton, William and John, 134, 151.

Pendletons, Eddy & Co., 152.

Peaslee, 151.

Peterson, T. B. & Brothers, 154.

Philadelphia, 102, 112, 128, 136, 154.

Philbrick, Miss Helen, 29.

Philbrick, Samuel, 29.

Pierrepont, yy, 86.

Pierrepont, Sarah, 78, 86.

Poole, Fitch, 41.

Portsmouth, N. H., 79, 150.

Post Chaise Route in 1788, 92, 102, 103.

Potter, John Briggs, 1382.

Proctor, Sylvester, 322.

Putnam, Dr., 28.

Putnam, Alfred, 28s.

Putnam, Dr. Amos, 28.

INDEX

Putnam, Deacon Gideon, 282.
Putnam, Dr. James Phillips, 28.
Putnam, John Pickering, 28.

Richardson, 71.

Rochambeau, 117.

Romance of the Association, 25, 65, 113.

Romance of Old New England Churches, 10.

Rowson, Mrs. Susanna H., 54, 552.

Russell, Ezekiel, 13, 1042, 105.

Russell, Mehitabel, 76.

Salem, 11, 992 150, 155.

Salem Gazette, 41.

Salem Mercury, 11, 27, 28, 33, 37, 60.

Salem Public Library, 154.

South Danvers, 31.

Southwick, Mrs. Bethia, 26, 27, 29.

Southwick, Eliza, 29.

Southwick, Joseph, 26-29.

Southworth, Nathaniel, 139, 153.

Springfield, 36, 92, 103.

Springfield Republican, 24.

Stanley, 54, 55, 79.

Stanley, Miss, 54-57.

Stanley, Abigail, 76.

Stanley, Lucy, 137.

Stanley, Col. Nathaniel, 76.

Stiles, Betsey, 117.

Stiles, Dr. Ezra, no, 117, 130, 131.

Stoddard, Rev. Solomon, 78, 85.

Storm, G. F., 139, 153-

Stow, 51.

Sun Tavern, Salem, n.

Symonds, 23.

Terry, Nathaniel, 53, 54.

The Coquette, 26, 43, 47, 62, 632, 66, 78, 128, 130,

134, 138, 147, 1494, 1503, 151, 1522, 1532.
The New England Coquette, a drama, 154.
The Power of Sympathy, 54, 62, 119.
The Hartford Wits, 65.
The Vision of Columbus, 80.

INDEX

Thomas & Whipple, 150.
Trask, Amos, 42s.
Trumbull, John, 77.

Upton, J. Warren, 137,

Very, Mrs., 29.

Wadsworth, Daniel, 53, 54.

Wadsworth, Rev. Daniel, 75.

Wadsworth, Col. Jeremiah, 54, 69, 75-77, 84, 109.

in, 117, 118, 120.
Walker, Elizabeth, 24, 262, 28.
Walker, Thomas, 113, 35, io63, 107.
Watertown, 10, 34, 97-100, 102-104.
Watson, James, 1302, 1312.
Watson, Tohn, 130.
Webster, Grant, 51, 154.
Westfield, Conn., 12, 34.
Wharton, Eliza, 22, 43, 53, 66-69, 722 78, 94,

I3S-I37, 149-155-
Whipple, Charles, 150.
Whipple, Henry, 150.
Whipple & Lawrence, 150.
Whipple, Thomas &, 150
Whitman, Dr., 140.
Whitman, Mr. and Mrs., 76, 112, 138.
Whitman, Mrs. Abigail, 76, 84, 112, 138, 139.
Whitman, Mrs. Wm., 54.
Whitman, Billy, 53.
Whitman, Miss Elizabeth, XII, XIII, 10, 14,

24-29, 32, 35, 372, 38, 41-46, 49-51, 53, 55-573,
592, 602, 622-65, 69, 70, 75-772, 802, 82, 85.

87, 91, 942, 96,-105, 107-112, 114, 115, 117-1212,

123, 126-130, 133, 137-139, I4I-I45-
Whitman, Rev. Elnathan, 51, 75, 76, 93, 126, 140.
Whitman family, 44, 77.
Whitman house, 53, 137.
Whitman, Deacon John, 51.
Wood, Mrs. Emma (Trask), 42.
Worcester, 92s, 97, 102-104.

Yale College, 53, 66, 932, 117, 130.
Yorke, Mrs., 71.

JUL 19 «

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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