Ann Radcliffe, Gothic Great Enchantress, Part 2

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy D. Wilson. It's Accidental Anne Radcliffe Week YEP. Today is part two of the life of Anne Radcliffe, who is considered in many ways one of the pioneers of gothic fiction. You'll see that phrase thrown about a lot. In part one, we talked about Anne's early life and her marriage, and her literary career, which she abruptly stepped away from after publishing her fifth novel, The Italian. Today, we will pick up right there, starting with the many theories that people started to come up with about why she stopped publishing her work. Some of these are ones that happened right then, and others have developed over time via literary historians. So yeah, as we mentioned last time, Radcliffe had a brief but also extremely successful, few year career of publishing novels, and there were a lot of theories about why she stopped. One was that she wanted to step away from writing fiction, and gothic fiction in particular, because it was a problematic genre. Well before Anne, this genre had sort of a seedy reputation at the worst status as more of a pulpy, trash kind of fiction at best. I feel like this is not a surprising perception to anyone who has read horror or other genre fiction today. Anne was really the standout, though, and her insistence that she was writing romances may have been an effort on her part to try to align her work with another genre, one that was not gothic or horror. And during her again very successful, the very brief career, she was lauded for elevating gothic writing, other writers were perceived as going in the opposite direction. For example, Matthew Lewis released The Monk in seventeen ninety six, and it featured a monk named Ambrosio and his struggle with the temptation of lustful desires. It also had a number of other salacious elements and created a total scandal when it hit the market, particularly as it featured women also being tempted by sexual desire and there were comparisons made between her work and his, and she did not like that, So this may have been another reason that she stepped away from a successful career. That was a theory that Sir Walter Scott publicly supported Yeah, it's kind of like one of those things where again we mentioned in the last episode that she made what was for the time a lot of money on her last two books, and other people immediately kind of do that thing where they try to run to where the lightning struck last and see if they can get in on that same kind of success. And so a lot of people started churning out their versions of Gothic romances, which were often very, very trashy by the standards of the day. If we read them today, we'd be like, this is really tame. But at the time, the idea that a woman was grappling with sexual attraction and whether or not to act on it was like pornography to them in many ways. So another aspect of her experience as an author that may have made her no longer wish to publish was a barrage of attacks in literary circles. There were a few different kinds of these, but there's one example which seems to have been particularly painful for Radcliffe, although it happened after she had retired, but it may have kept her from going back to publishing. In this case, confusion had arisen when a work titled Plays on the Passions was published anonymously in seventeen ninety eight. Anne and William were visiting the country for William's health at the time. They didn't know any about it, but there was a lot of speculation going around London about whether the plays were actually Anne Radcliffe's work. They were not. They were the work of dramatist Joanna Bailey. That was revealed in eighteen hundred when Bailey acquiesced to include her name on the third printing. The way this story and Radcliffe's dismay about it all plays out is a bit of a social and timeline tangle. So we're going to work through it pretty carefully. I hope I even got it right. I read several different accounts of it, like several different layouts of it. It's very confusing, so we're we're going slow for my benefit more than anyone's. This particular drama that happened did not get to Radcliffe until years after the fact, when she was already retired, and at that point one of the key players had already died. But it still was very upsetting. So first we have to introduce Anna Seward, who was a poet and a woman of letters. Born in seventeen forty two, her nickname was the Swan of Litchfield. She was really connected to sort of everyone of social and intellectual standing in England in the late eighteenth century. She died in eighteen oh nine, more than a decade after Plays on the Passions came out in eighteen eleven. Seward's letters were published posthumously as Letters of Anna Seward, written between the year seventeen eighty four and eighteen oh seven. Whereas Anne Radcliffe left behind almost no examples of personal correspondence when she died, Anna Seward left behind a lot her letters filled six volumes, and a letter that was included in the fifth volume from May seventeen ninety nine, written to Sarah ponsonby, who he talked about in Our Ladies of lang Coffin episode, Anne Radcliffe's name comes up specifically. Anna Seward is relaying to Sarah Ponsonby the impression that another woman named only as Missus Jackson had of the Plays on the Passion and why she thought Anne Radcliffe was the anonymous author. This opinion is not kind so and what's attributed to this Missus Jackson? The description is as follows quote before the author was known. I observed so much of the power and defects of Missus Radcliffe's composition in these dramas as to believe them hers, and I hear she owns them. Missus Radcliffe, in whatever she writes, attentive solely to the end, is not sufficiently attentive to observe probability in the means she uses to attain it. She bends her plan, or if it will not bend, she breaks it to her catastrophe by making it grow out of preceding events. Still, she always takes hold of the reader's feelings and affects her purpose boldly, if not regularly. Her descriptive talent used to satiety in her novels, is here employed with more temperance and consequently to better purpose. This an interesting setup in and of itself, because it's like, we already know who the who the true writer is at this point, because it opens with before the writer was known. But then it also says I think she owns them, and I'm like, I don't. It's what's going on here, gossip. So at the point when all of this correspondence was published, it was known to absolutely everyone that Joanna Bailey had written the plays on the Passions, but it is also apparent that Seward and her friends continued to gossip about whether Anne had written them for a while after that letter, and Seward also accused Radcliffe of basically plagiarizing another writer, William Godwin, when it came to the plot of the plays, which she had not written. Seward also wrote to another person a month after the Sarah Ponsenbee letter, this time to a Reverend Wally, that quote in all Missus Radcliffe's writings attentive only to terrific effects, She bestows no care upon their causes, and rashly cuts the knot of probability, which she seems to want patients to untie. One has heard of a laboring mountain bringing forth a mouse. In missus Ours writings, mice bring forth mountains. Even once the confusion over who exactly had written Plays on the Passions had been cleared up, Anna Seward still wrote some barbs about Radcliffe in her correspondence, noting in one letter that even though the plays have some of the same problems that Radcliffe's work has, she did always think some sections were just too good to have been her work. Biographer Richter Norton noted in his nineteen ninety nine book that the missus Jackson who started this rumor that Radcliffe had written the plays was Eliza E. Jackson, who was a very smart woman who, along with Seward and several other ladies of England's Salon Society, seemed to like to just talk trash about Anne Radcliffe in their letters. Just in case you thought people hating on successful creatives was a brand new thing. Yeah, this reads like so many drama spols within the worlds of like authors and publishing. Yes, that I've seen play out on social media. Yeah, we're just doing the same thing over and over. None of us are. Originally, when Seward's Letters were published in eighteen eleven, all of this was hugely upsetting to Anne. She tried to track down Missus Jackson, first hearing that she was in Bath and then in Edinburgh to set the record straight. Missus Jackson knew Sir Walter Scott, and Radcliffe was worried that he might believe the rumors that made her look like she would let other people think she wrote something that she had not written. The reality was she didn't know anything about anyone attributing Bailey's work to her until just way later. So to outsiders, her silence on this whole matter may have looked like she was like enjoying all of this attention. She wasn't. She had no idea any of this was going on for a decad which also reminds me of the many times I have seen someone on whatever social media saying so and so has not even acknowledged this. It's exactly what it is. Yeah, because they were not online at the moment. Yeah. She and William were both very upset about all of this and how it was going to make her look and that people might think ill of her for something she wasn't even aware of. But she didn't manage to find missus Jackson by the time she looked her up in Edinburgh I believe through one of her lawyers, she was not living there any longer, so she could not source the origin point of this rumor. So she didn't feel comfortable reaching out to Joanna Bailey, although she wanted to to assure her that she would never let a rumor continue that suggested anyone else's work was her own. Because there was no resolution to this whole thing. It really weighed on her for a long time. In a biography written shortly after her death, the writer states, quote the subject, which was always painful to her, is rather now alluded to as an instance of the singular apprehensiveness of her moral sense than as at all required for the vindication of her character. So one of the aspects of her having a pretty small social circle in her life that probably wound up causing her some grief was that in these instances where other people said something about her that caused her to feel hurt or wronged, those things seemed even larger than they might have if she had had like a bigger, wider social circle as a backdrop to kind of dilute the impact of all of it. It really seems like Anne was subjected to the barbs of fame without really indulging in any of its luxuries. And to her these comments never seemed offhanded. They always felt like or seemed to be very pointed attacks. Yeah, you know, when you're not talking to everybody and you're not in the noise of like a bigger social sphere, it's seems like everyone is talking about me and saying that I let someone think I wrote some something that I didn't and I never would. But like to those people, probably anyone who was part of that or had moved on from it didn't even remember it. But to Anne it was very, very heartbreaking. Coming up, we're going to talk about the weird rumors that circulated about Anne, including the time that she was reported as dead when she was still very much alive. But before that, we will take a quick sponsor break. Anne Radcliffe's low profile life also led at one point to the false rumor that she had died well before her time came. In eighteen ten, a poem called Ode to Terror was published and that stated rather confidently that the author had died a deranged woman. She was still very much alive. There were also some additional, extraordinarily outlandish claims about her life. There was one that went around that she ate raw meat before bed to fuel nightmares to give her inspiration so she could get back to writing her terror novels. She chose not to address any such rumors publicly. Now there is to me a bit of coincidence in all of this, because Radcliff's own writings were full of things that seemed terrifying or fantastic but then turned out to be mundane, and if her speculating fans or public had learned anything from her novels, they may have come to the boring but truthful conclusion that her retirement was just that it was the understandable and mundane desire of a woman who just wanted to retire from work. As Anne and William got older, their twice yearly travels became less frequent and shorter in distance, although they did keep spending summers traveling by carriage around London and the surrounding area and just stopping wherever their hearts desired. Sometime around eighteen ten or eighteen eleven, And began having serious issues with asthma, and her health generally declined. In the autumn of eighteen twenty two, she visited the seaside town of Ramsgate in the hopes of improving her health, and she was refreshed by it temporarily. In early January, she had what one biographer called end quote attack of her disease. Per that account, which we're going to talk about in a little more depth in a moment, A doctor was called two days after her issues began, arriving on January eleventh, eighteen twenty three. In an odd detail in that account, it stated that she read about a recent murder a couple of weeks later, and that due to her weekend state and the shock of this information that she read, which the biographer says happened accidentally, she experienced a temporary delirium. But though that passed and she was doing well the first week of February, Anne Radcliffe died in her sleep on February seventh, eighteen twenty three. Perhaps more unsettling than anything Radcliffe ever wrote in her work was her biographer's claim that quote her countenance after death was delightfully placid, and continued so for some days. She was interred at Saint George's at Hanover Square in the Chapel of Ease. Yeah, I'm like you just watched her look peaceful for several days, okay. Perhaps indicative of the quiet style of her life. There were not a ton of obituaries in the papers, the way that you would normally expect to see for a famous person. The ones that do appear are brief. One from the Yorkshire Harold Reads in its entirety quote on Friday week Missus Anne Radcliffe. The wife of William Radcliffe, Esquire of Stafford Place, Pimlico. This is like, that's the whole sentence, because it's like a list of obituaries. So when you're like, that doesn't make sense. That's why. She had been indisposed for some time with a violent cold, which terminated in inflammation and took from this life. The much admired author of the Mysteries of Udolpho and other works of imagination and genius, almost equally popular among the female ornaments of English literature, she will long hold one of the highest places. Missus r was we believe, between fifty and sixty years of age. She was a lady of the most amiable and interesting character, possessed not only of all the accomplishments, but all the virtues that could adorn her sex. She had lived long enough to see her own work satirized. Shortly after Jane Austen's death in eighteen seventeen, her novel Northanger Abbey was published. This story is a satire of Gothic novels, and one of the characters is given a copy of Mysteries of Udolpho. Austin is said to have completed this book in eighteen oh three, so it would have been a fairly fresh response to Radcliffe's famous works, being part of the zeitgeist of the time. In eighteen twenty six, Radcliffe's last work of fiction was published, titled Gaston de BLANDVILLEU. She probably called it Gaston de Blondeville. We don't know. She had actually written this book well before her death in eighteen oh two, after being inspired by a visit to Kenilworth Castle, but she chose not to publish it. The book is set in Anne's contemporary time, but the bulk of it was a story within a story that's set in the thirteenth century, and it was, according to the accompanying text, that it got with publication. Never intended to be published, but it was written merely as an amusement for Anne and William. Preceding the release of this book, in October eighteen twenty five, the Sunday Dispatch of London ran a blurb that read, mister Radcliffe, husband of the great enchantress Anne Radcliffe, author of the Mysteries of Udolpho the Italian, The Romance of the Forest, etc. And who died about the year eighteen twenty three, has at length though very reluctantly consented to publish a romance which this celebrated lady left behind her. The plot of Gaston de Blainville is very much in line with Radcliffe's other books. The thirteenth century story unfold at his wedding, which is held in the court of King Henry the Third, when Gaston is accused of murder by a merchant. At the event, the king holds a trial to uncover all of the evidence. There is a biography of her at the beginning of the book, written by Sir Thomas Nuon Talford, with information supplied in part by William This is the biography we mentioned earlier. I originally was calling it a brief biography, but then I realized it takes up a full one third of the book, and the rest of her work is the next two thirds. This book begins with the following rather charming and quaint description. And when I say quaint, I mean I mean that in a way that is maybe not the kindest quote. The life of Missus Radcliffe is a pleasing phenomenon in the literature of her time, during a period in which the spirit of personality has extended its influence till it has rendered the habits and conversation of authors almost as public as their compositions. She confines herself with delicate apprehensiveness to the circle of domestic duties and pleasures known only by her works. Her name was felt as a spell by her readers. We'll talk more about this biography, but Telford's biography, which is written it's described as a biographical memoir, suggested that Radcliffe retired from publishing when she did because she didn't see a way to surpass her last two novels and thought it better to retire on top. This opening also goes on to mention that once she'd retired from her fiction career, the supernatural tone of her writing led her devoted fan base to come up with all kinds of wild stories about what had happened to her and why she stopped publishing. There were rumors that she had died or that she had a mental illness, but the reality was most likely that she had made enough money from her work she didn't need to work anymore unless she wanted to, and at that point she wrote mostly for herself. This eighteen twenty six biography states that she was quote thankfully enjoying the choicest blessings of life with a cheerfulness as equable as if she had never touched the secret springs of horror. Now, that mention of horror would have probably irked Anne Radcliffe, while she was considered the grand d'aume of Gothic fiction. To her, there was a very important distinction between terror and horror, and she wrote about that in an unfinished essay that was included with the publication of Gaston de Blanville, titled on the Supernatural in Poetry, which means it was published right alongside this memoir. She wrote in it, terror and horror are so far opposite that the first expands the soul and awakens the faculty to a high degree of life. The other contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them. I apprehend that neither Shakespeare nor Milton, by their fictions, nor mister Burke, by his reasoning anywhere, looked to positive horror as a source of the sublime, though they all agree that terror is a very high one. That mister Burke, she referenced there was Edmund Burke. She was making a callback to his essay, A philosophical inquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful, in which he suggested that terror was a source of the sublime and that it could be used to produce the strongest of human emotions. And in a move that seems sort of weird, there's a statement from Anne's doctor in the introductory biography. It's intended to put to rest all the various rumors of madness. Doctor Scudmore's statement reads quote. Missus Radcliffe had been for several years subject to severe catarrhal coughs, and also was occasionally afflict with asthma. In March eighteen twenty two, she was ill with inflammation of the lungs and for a considerable time remained much indisposed. With the summer season and change of air, she regained a tolerable state of health. In the early part of January eighteen twenty three, in consequence of exposure to the cold, she was again attacked with inflammation of the lungs, and much more severely than before. Active treatment was immediately adopted, but without the desired relief, and the symptoms soon assumed a most dangerous character. At the end of three weeks, However, and contrary to all expectation, the inflammation of the lungs was overcome, and the amendment was so decided as to present a slight prospect of recovery. Alas, our hopes were soon disappointed. Suddenly, in the very moment of seeming calm from the previous violence of disease, a new inflammation seized the membranes of the brain. The enfeebled frame could not resist this freshness. So rapid in their course were the violent symptoms that medical treatment proved wholly unavailing. In the space of three days, death closed the melancholy scene. The doctor's statement goes on to say that other than the end when she had a brain infection, Missus Radcliffe's mind quote was perfect in its reasoning powers. All of this information, which is odd to have a doctor's statement of biography, was included, though, according to Telford, because in the wake of Anne's death the rumors of mental illness had begun again. But the rest of the memoir of Anne Radcliffe that he wrote reads so flowery in its praise of her that there have been a lot of questions over the years as to whether this was kind of a very carefully developed piece of writing intended to establish the most perfect version of her on the public record. And when we say flowery praise, here's the kind of thing we're talking about. It described her in terms like inquisitely proportioned and perfectly well bred. So it kind of feels like he's going beyond what you might normally write about someone, even if you deeply admire them. So is this a scenario where the biographer was simply prone to flowery wording or is it one where there is a clear intention to really puff up the subject's image. We don't really know. One bit of insight that comes from Telford's analysis of Radcliffe's work, because that's also included here, is that she always explained the scary components in her books as simply following the rules and conventions of Gothic novels. She felt that she did not have the leeway as a creator to claim that something supernatural was real. That's something that she was often criticized for, like, oh, why do you dial it back at the end, But that is the explanation that Talford gave. Whether that's true or not, it's certainly an interesting take. Next, we'll talk about the volume of poetry that was published after Anne Radcliffe's death, and we'll get to that. And it's less than enthusiastic reviews after we hear from the sponsors. That keeps stuffymus in history class going. Radcliffe's epic poem Saint Alban's Abbey was also published posthumously. It was not well received. Biographer Ruth Facer wrote of it, quote, it does her no justice. It is long, rambling and tedious. I will give you the poem's opening stanza, which will give you a pretty clear indication of what the whole thing is like. No, Ye, that pale and ancient choir, whose Norman tower lifts its pinnacled spire, where the long abbey aisle extends and battled roof or rufe ascends, cornered with buttresses shapely and small, that sheltered the saint in a canopied stall, and enlightened with hanging turret's fair that's so proudly they're mental coronals wear they blend with a holy, a warlike air, while they guard the murder's tomb beneath and patient warriors laid in death. This wasn't the first time her poetry had been published, but it was the first time An authorized book of her poetry was released in eighteen sixteen. An unauthorized book was assembled from various pieces of poetry that she had included in the narratives of her prose. Christina Rosetti, the mid nineteenth century writer famous for Goblin Market and other poems, attempted a biography of Radcliffe during her career, but found that there just was not enough material available to her to complete it. That project was intended to be part of a series initiated by John Ingram titled Eminent Women. But aside from a handful of brief biographies that did not hold a lot of information, there's the one from Talford we talked about, and one from Sir Walter Scott Rossetti was only able to turn up a short letter and a small amount of journal material, which was about travel details. For example, the kinds of things that Anne wrote in her travel journals were things like quote, made our way in the gig through the long, narrow streets and then leaving Chatham on the left, mounted a very steep road, having wide views of Chatham, the docks, the shipping, the new barracks, a town themselves rising up a hill with cannon and two small artificial hills with flags a great prospect, but too broken and full of scars and angles of fortifications and other buildings and excavations to be quite pleasing. So it's an interesting example of writing about surroundings and the details she included, but it doesn't really offer insights into the author's personal story and probably wouldn't help a biography much beyond lake she was in this place at this time. Anne Radcliffe had not, to the best of anyone's knowledge, kept a personal journal or written friends or family about her private thoughts and feelings. Her descriptions of places often read like little stories, but there about the things she saw and her imagined life for them. When visiting Noll House in the town of Seven Oaks, southeast of London in eighteen oh seven, she wrote of this Holme's impressive portrait gallery quote and the little closet of entrance. The countenance of Guardini, the composer, gives you the idea that he is listening to the long drawn notes of his own violin Holbeinn's Erasmus, and the gallery must be truth itself. There are some exceptions, but they're kind of few and fleeting. For example, in one entry. While she and William were visiting Seaford in the late seventeen nineties, and who really loved that visit wrote an entry that gives insight into her religious views and her feelings on having lost her parents. Quote. Saw the sunset behind one of the vast hills. The silent course over this great scene awful, the departure melancholy. Oh God, Thy great laws will one day be more fully known by thy creatures. We shall more full understand thee and ourselves. The God of order and of all this, and of far greater grandeur. The creator of that glorious sun, which never fails in its course, will not neglect us. His intelligent, though frail creatures, not suffer us to perish. Who have the consciousness of our mortal fate long before it arrives, And of him, He who called us from nothing, can again call us from death into life. In this month, on the twenty fourth of July, my dear father died. Two years since on the fourteenth of last March, my poor mother followed him. I am the last leaf on the tree. The melancholy greatness with which I was surrounded this evening made me very sensible of this, with lack of ready information about Anne might have been part of life. For a long time, scholarly interests in her work really died back quite a bit. What there was of it was often riddled with assumptions, are colored by the rumors of madness that had sprung up while Anne was still al live. The texts of her books had been the bulk of what people actually knew and little else. It wasn't until the late twentieth century that biographers really started trying to dig deeper into what might be available to piece together the otherwise disparate pieces of information that were known about her personal life. Literature professor Dale Townsend, writing for the British Library in twenty fourteen, points to David Puncher's book The Literature of Terror, released in nineteen eighty as the spark that reignited scholarly interest in Radcliffe. We did find mention of her in major press that predated that, though, so it wasn't as though no one was talking about Anne Radcliffe in her work. The press mention that I found and read was in The Guardian in the summer of nineteen sixty four, and it was part of an article by Donald Thomas that was titled Queen of Terrors and was all about Anne. One of the biographies published since then, Mistress of Udolpho, was written by historian Richter Norton in nineteen teen ninety nine, and it offered up details which had not been known until Norton hunted them down in obscure places. One of the things that Norton points out, which is often left out of the more brief narratives regarding Radcliffe, is that she was definitely a classist. She could be really condescending to people that she perceived as of a lower class than herself. Yeah. He shares some examples of them, and it is a little like that's a pity. In twenty fourteen, there was a surprise in the Anne Radcliffe story when a letter that she had written her mother in law was found amongst a batch of other miscellaneous letters by Greg Boswell, a British Library curator. That letter, which is dated August thirty first, seventeen ninety seven, reads, Dear Madam, we are concerned to hear such frequent complaints. The reasonableness of things in Yorkshire is well known, but without insisting upon that if you cannot be acommodated with the necessaries of life, and without being a burden to anybody. If the supplies which William sends are not sufficient, we can only desire you to come and live with us, where you shall always find plenty. Whatever you may do elsewhere, you will recollect the unwillingness which William formerly expressed to send money to you at Broughton, and your positive desire and assurances upon the subject. In my last I assured you we did not for a moment suppose you had received a two pound note when you assured us to the contrary, and it was therefore unnecessary for you to vindicate yourself again. He joins me in love and good wishes to you, and I remain dear Madam your affectionate A Radcliffe. So it seems like William and Ann had sent William's mother Deborah Radcliffe some money, but it had not arrived. So Anne's essentially saying, this would be a heck of a lot easier if you would move to London so we could take care of you. Mister Buzzwell believes this may be an indicator that Anne's relationship with Zabra Burah had informed the strained relationship between the character of Elena Rosalba in the book The Italian and her fictional mother in law. I do love that bit at the end of like you told me you didn't get it. I believed you. You don't have to keep telling me. There are two quotes that make the most sense to me, at least to end on when summing up the life of Anne Radcliffe. The first is by Sir Walter Scott, and it sums up her literary life. Quote. Missus Radcliffe as an author has the most decided claim to take her place among the favored few who have been distinguished as the founders of a class or school. She led the way in a particular style of composition, affecting powerfully the mind of the reader, which has since been attempted by many, but in which no one has attained or approached the excellencies of the original inventor. In his biography of Anne Radcliffe, Richter Norton wrote this description of her, which it seems like a good place to end things, since it sums her up not so much as a writer, but as a person. Quote. The public image of Missus Radcliffe as a mad genius and the sensational nature of her novels are in sharp contrast to the ordinary preoccupations of her middle class domestic life. She loved dogs and music, enjoyed excursions to Dover and Worthing, was fond of the sound of Greek, though she could not understand a word of it, and felt it was at least as important to be considered a gentlewoman as a genius. Anne Radcliffe, I hope we find tons more stuff of hers, but I doubt we will. Yeah, like somewhere there's a cash of letters where she's like those mean girls. I doubt it. I have listener mail. This is another one that goes back to William Morgan, the gift that keeps giving because lots of people have thoughts about William Morgan. This one is from our listener Alice, who writes, thank you Holly and Tracy for the recent podcast on William Morgan. I listened to with special interest remembering a news article I'd seen on my second great grandfather's connection to Morgan. Judge Moses Taggart Esquire, my second great grandfather, was credited with a part in the Memorial to Morgan in eighteen eighty two. I'm including a link to one article citing Taggart's participation. My ancestors have a long history as judges, postmasters and attorneys in Batavia. I sincerely wish I could get back there to visit. Thank you for helping to bring this bit of my history to life. A little from that paper, she includes a quote. A few weeks later, it is reported in the same paper that the Wetland Ladies had supplemented Missus Morgan's little New Year's gift with twenty dollars. Her card of acknowledgment is worth reading. The undersign tenders to the Ladies of Wheatland her warmest expressions of gratitude for their friendly condolence and benevolent and well timed donation. Such expressions of kindness serve to gladden the heart of a disconsolate and helpless female suffering under one of the most singular and distressing bereavings that has ever befallen her sex. She is a stranger in a strange land, and dependent on charity for support. This affecting epistle was written, it is said, by mister Taggart, a lawyer of Batavia, who, at the dedication of Morgan's monument at Batavia September eleventh, eighteen eighty two, was among the liveliest in his reminiscences of that martyr. Alice also attaches pictures of fur babies. Yeah, Gandolf, the Gray and Bonds who are twelve years old and very beautiful babies, both of them. I don't know. We have twelve year old cats that I think are speeding up. I'm a little scared of it, but we'll see what happens. Alice, thank you so much for sharing this. I always love when people have connections to the stories that we tell. If you have such a connection, maybe you have a secret letter from Mann Radcliffe, please write us. If you do, you can do that at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also find us on social media as missed in History and it's a great time to subscribe to the show if you haven't already. You can do that on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.