Memorial of Madame Kossuth Meszlenyi.
Rose Hawthorne’s Copy
Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer. Memorial of Madame Susanne Kossuth Meszlenyi. Boston: Sold by N.C. Peabody, 1856.
8vo.; brown printed wrappers; string-tied; minor staining and eating away at fore-edge, not affecting text; lightly general soiling. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition of Peabody’s tribute to Susanne Kossuth Meszlenyi, a Hungarian activist who “had been imprisoned twice for her liberal connections, despite her heroic efforts at opening hospitals for all soldiers injured in the revolution” (Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: A Reformer in Her Own Terms, by Bruce A. Ronda, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, p. 244). A family association copy, from the library of Rose Hawthorne, with her signature and note on the cover: Rose Hawthorne Lathrop/ from Aunt Lizzie.
Peabody circulated this memorial in an effort to raise general awareness among New England cognoscenti of the plight of European political refugees, and to raise funds to settle on a New Jersey fruit farm Emilie Kossuth (Susanne’s sister) and her children, who had “fled both the wrath of the Austrians and that of her husband, whom she had divorced.” At the time of its publication, Peabody was aggressively involved in aiding the struggles of political exiles, and devoted much time and energy to interesting the moneyed intellectuals of her circle in their cause. With this memorial pamphlet Peabody hoped to galvanize her peers; she wrote,
For Americans to realize their relations and duty to the exiles for liberty is not only of vast importance to their own culture of intellect and heart, not only important to all the exiles, who will, if neglected, die by the slow torture of broken-heartedness, but it is important to the Liberal party of Europe, which is the vanguard in the march of humanity.
She addressed her female readers specifically:
And can any American woman read even this humble notice of so great a life, and which was so pre-eminently womanly too, and not feel that she also can work effectually for the world-wide cause of liberty? She does so whenever she makes an exertion or a sacrifice to sweeten the bitter cup of exile to a martyr of the principle; and for this woman need not go out of the sphere of home.
Though the number of copies printed is unknown, it was likely small; at the end of April 1856 Peabody wrote to Samuel Gridley Howe to send a copy to another potential patron: “wish you would mail to him one of those copies of Mad. Meszlenyi—for that has been the spell by which I have conjured hitherto—& also send one to Mrs. Wm. W. Twain New Bedford & one to Benjamin Rodman New Bedford. I have not got any more here—& I do not know whether any are left at my brother’s” (Letters of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, American Renaissance Woman, by Rhonda ed., Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1984, p. 281).
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