LETTER: Autograph letter signed, to Charles Gordon Ames, concerning her religious beliefs.
Autograph Letter Signed ('Helen Campbell') from the American social reformer Helen Stuart Campbell to 'Mr. Ames' [Charles Gordon Ames of Philadelphia], concerning her religious beliefs and the wife of the spiritualist Andrew Jackson Davis.
411 Adelphi Street, Brooklyn. 18 November 1884. 3pp., 12mo. Bifolium. Fair, on aged paper, with slight wear and glue discoloration to reverse of second leaf. Docketed in pencil at head of first page. She begins: 'I wonder what good spirit prompted you to send me exactly what I should most have wished - the Kindergarten sermon with the direct bearing on a bit of my work - the "Inward Witness", as a weapon against those who affirm that radical Unitarianism holds no spirituality'. She has read it 'to a semi-invalid friend who is with me a good deal - Mary F. Davis the wife of A J Davis' [Mary Fenn Davis (1824-1886), nee Robinson], a 'wonderful soul' with whom Ames may be acquainted: 'her eyes, not every day eyes at all, but two windows, looking through which, one sees something lambent and glowing, from which one retreats, half afraid, wholly allured.' She and Mrs Davis 'read it and believed it all, and wished there were more, and are going to read it again'. She regrets that her 'two years of Philadelphia' did not hold 'more outlook' and 'less grubbing'. Nevertheless, she counts herself one of Ames's 'people'. Within a year Davis would divorce his wife, after informing her that they were not true 'affinities'.
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