Mrs. Embury to Sarah Josepha Hale

Metadata

Title

Mrs. Embury to Sarah Josepha Hale

Date

1841-12-23
December 23, 1841

Subject

Hale, Sarah Josepha Buell, 1788-1879

Medium

Manuscripts

Language

eng

Type

text

Collection

Sarah Josepha Hale Collection, The Athenaeum of Philadelphia

Identifier

46-M-196

Rights

http://www.philaathenaeum.org/rights.html

Text

Brooklyn Dec. 23rd /41

My dear Mrs Hale

I was most agreeably surprised by your
kind letter this morning, just as I was preparing to address
you on rather a singular affair which occurred a few days since.
Need I say that I value your warm hearted epistle doubly
because it has been thus voluntarily proffered. With regard to my
editorship, I am glad to receive your approbation, and hope that the
receiving a commission under another flag will not be considered
a desertion from your ranks. I have kept myself free from restrictions,
and while pledged to the performance of certain duties with regard
to one magazine, and still at liberty to 'do what I please with
mine own', in all others where I may choose to employ my pen.
I had nothing to do with the choice of my coadjütors - I am not
personally acquainted with Mrs. Stephens and probably never shall
be; indeed I know nothing of her except her writings, and with
Mrs Seba Smith and Mrs Osgood I am equally unacquainted. You
know my home propensity, and how little I have heretofore made
literature a business. The most I can do in that way is to reply to
propositions; and indeed I never made a proposal to editor or
publisher in my life, except to Mr Godey when I was desirous of
continuing my series of historical sketches. My ill success then convinced
me that I was not a good diplomatist and I now content myself
with my own affairs, writing only as much as I please and publishing
when and where I may choose.
I am glad to learn that you like Philadelphia, I was there too short
a time to be able to judge of it, but if you can be so well pleased

with it, after having been so long attached to a residence in
Boston, it certainly must be a most agreeable place. I thank
you for your kind invitation to visit your 'city of sojourn' this winter,
but can scarcely hope to avail myself of it. The bank is, as you
imagine, in apple-pie order, but even an humble applepie
requires a [just?] eye and careful hand to attend to its equal,
daily distribution, and my husband rarely feels willing to delegate
his duties to another. My own time will be much occupied this winter.
My illness last summer together with my absence from home while
in search of health has shortened my year by about two months;
so that I shall have to economize hours and minutes until I
make up the deficiency. But really I shall fill my paper before
I come to the story I have to tell. To begin at the beginning as
the fairy tale says: I was just going out one afternoon, when I was
met at the hall door by two ladies in deep mourning who visited to see Mrs
Embury. I introduced myself and led them into the parlour, wondering
what could be their business with me. One of the ladies (whose name I did
not learn) introduced the other as "Mrs Marshall" and stated that she (Mrs
M.) had lost a daughter in August last. This accounts for the deep
dejection, the heartbroken expression of Mrs Marshall's countenance, and
with a strangely blended feeling of curiosity, surprise and sympathy I
listened to the enthusiastic description given by the bereaved mother and
her friend, of the deceased who it appears had ruptured a blood [vessel?]
and died after a few days' illness, in the twentysecond year of her age.
I still wondered why I was called upon to listen to the painfully
affecting details, but in a little while, the mother produced a small
parcel of manuscripts in the hand writing of her daughter which
she wished me to read, and she finished by begging me, with tears,

to write some poetry on the death of her darling child which might
be published in her favorite Magazine The Lady's Book. Was it
not a most singular request when it is remembered that I have
never seen the daughter and knew nothing of the mother but her
name. Mrs M was evidently a woman who knew nothing of literature
and only valued it because it had been something which her child had
loved. She seemed to feel as if her grief would be mitigated by the
thought that her child was commemorated in verse, and unwilling
as I was to undertake such a thing, my feelings of sympathy, and
I might almost say charity for the distressed would not allow me to refuse.
The manuscripts which she left me for examination were chiefly extracts
and the little of [?] which I found among them was characterized by
good taste but nothing more. To show how little the mother knew [of]
such matters, she was not aware that the Book was published in
Philadelphia - and after I had promised to write something she as delicately
as possible, ventured to ask "What would be the charge." You will smile
I dare say and I do not wonder, for really nothing but the bereaved
mother's deep wretchedness prevented the whole affair from being ludicrous.
There is indeed but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and had I not
know from bitter experience, the anguish of a mother's heart I should scarcely
have been able to sympathize with the stranger. I have written the verses, but
like every thing else that I do upon compulsion, they do not please me, However

your time with the long story? The explanation is one which I
wished to make in case the verses should be sent to you, and I
prefer sending them to you instead of forwarding them to Mr Godey, because
if it is to gratify the mother at all, they should be published at as early a
date as possible. I should not have dared to write him with so diffuse
a communication [piece?] judging from his rather epistolary style, he values a
letter in proportion to its brevity! With kind regards to your daughters and