LETTER: ALS to her brother, Samuel C. Blackwell.
Early Letter to her Brother
Blackwell, Elizabeth. Autograph letter signed, “E,” to her brother, Samuel C. Blackwell, Asheville, North Carolina, August 2, 1845; 4 pages.
A revealing letter from Blackwell to her brother Samuel in which she discusses her life in Asheville, North Carolina, and her work there as a music teacher. The funds from that job were to fund her medical education, however she could find it. Blackwell was also an active abolitionist in Asheville, where she established a day school for free black children and also began providing religious instruction to slave children -- against the wishes, and even the laws, of her neighbors. In this letter she also touches upon her struggle “to cope with feelings that she viewed as contradictory – a powerful sexual attraction to men and the passionate desire to give purpose and direction to her life.”
It reads in full:
Dear Sam,
I wish you could often fill that same chair to which you refer and give me as pleasant a chat in person as you have sent me on paper. I was surprised and delighted at your rapid journey for I am sure your knees must have been cramped, and your constitution almost exhausted by constant sitting and one meal a day. I don’t wonder you looked thin. I only am surprised that your bones did not come through the skin, but I suppose the sun had so well tanned that outer case that it was proof against the sharp instruments inside. My remembrance of the journey is also very pleasant I assure you and my retrospective sketches amuse Anna and Emily exceedingly. I have just received a long letter from Anna, a part of which relating to Dr. Cox and my letter I will copy for your benefit. My message she referred to was a request that Emily would thank him for his kind letter. “A short time after you wrote us that you had consulted Dr. C., Dr. Schraeder was in the city, and met him accidentally at the house of Dr. Greene, Mrs. S’s family physician. Dr. C immediately informed him that he had received a letter from you, ‘ a sister of Anna’s out there in the West’, which he assured Dr. S was the most out of the way, absurd, quixotic and ridiculous thing he ever saw in his life and informed him further of its purport, speaking of your project in the most contemptuous and bitter manner and winding up with the declaration that he had written you ‘such’ a reply, pointing out the grossness, indelicacy and foolery of such a step, that he was very sure, if you had a particle of ‘the lady’ in you, that you would never venture to think of such a thing again”. All this was said with every tone and gesture of contempt and impatience. Dr. S did not tell me this until while reading your letter to him (because he is just like Mother, in his love for other people’s epistles) I came to the message to Dr. C. He looked the picture of amazement, and would not believe that I was reading from the letter until I showed him the passage. Then he got up and walked indignantly about the room, wondering whether hypocrisy could farther go.” –
It certain was not candid of him to behave so. I wish much that I had written him a few lines on receiving his answer, thanking him, for his very kind and sensible letter – it would certainly have been the severest reproof. But now of course the matter will quietly drop.
What a dreadful fire they’ve had in New York. I was quite glad to think our nervous Anna was fifteen miles away. I see it began in Van Doren’s oil factory. I suppose that is our puffing Cincinnati teacher. I saw in the last National Intelligencer a letter from a colored man in Liberia to Mrs. Charles F. Pond of Hartford, Connecticut – Harriet Phelps, is it not? – giving a little account of his residence there, written in a very sober straightforward way. He had been with difficulty induced to go there, having received a strong prejudice against the colony, but was now very happy, had a feeling of independence, that he never could gain in America, wante
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