LETTER: Autograph letters signed, to Start.
“[You] do not need poor tired out, fogged-out, banged-out, worked-out
Mary Livermore”
Livermore, Mary A. Autograph letter signed, “Mary A. Livermore,” to “Mrs. Start,” Melrose, May 7, 1886; one ca. 8 x 10-inch leaf; bifolium; writing on both sides; creased where folded; two small tears at center fold but intact.
An exhausted Mary Livermore writes to “Mrs. Start” to cancel an upcoming speaking obligation. Her letter, in full:
I think I must recall my promise to speak for your assn. Thursday May 27. I am tired out, and my work holds on, and holds on. I leave for Ct.[?] this morning to be gone a fortnight, speaking every night, Saturdays and Sundays, and then to Providence, Marlboro, Hoburn, Andover and other places – speaking in every instance for temperance and woman suffrage, I must stop. And I have cancelled all engagements for the season, excepting these, relating to those reformed which are my religion. So I write you at an early date, that you may put someone in my place. You have a host of men and women to draw from and do not need poor tired out, fogged-out, banged-out, worked-out Mary Livermore.
Livermore (1820-1905) was an American journalist who worked closely with “almost every progressive movement of the 19th century: abolitionism, the struggle for women’s rights, the temperance movement, even Spiritualism. From the 1860s on she became nationally known as a writer, organizer, and lecturer, and by the 1870s she was the Victorian equivalent of a pundit, frequently offering comments on issues that pertained to women” (Venet, Wendy Hamand. A Strong-minded woman: the Life of Mary Livermore. University of Massachusetts Press, 2005).
Though early in her life she had been ambivalent about the women’s movement, Livermore’s role as director of the Northwestern branch of the United States Sanitary Commission during the Civil War convinced her “that women were capable of achieving great things, and that the country was doing them a disservice by denying them their place in the public arena” (ibid). In 1870, she founded the feminsist publication The Agitator, which later merged into Woman’s Journal, the periodical published by Lucy Stone and Henry Browne Blackwell. The author of a number of fiction and nonfiction books, Livermore frequently traveled around the country speaking at various suffrage events on women’s rights, history, and religion. Livermore “estimated that she gave her most popular lecture, “What Shall We Do With Our Daughters?” over 800 times” (ibid).
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