Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s early letters document the intellectual development of a prolific woman writer from her childhood in the early national period through the 1813 death of her father Theodore Sedgwick, a Federalist member of Congress and Massachusetts supreme court judge. The youngest daughter in a family of seven siblings, Sedgwick practiced epistolary conventions in her early letters while introducing her lifelong theme of balancing personal and family expectations with the obligation to write. As Sedgwick reported in her later autobiography, she felt that she lacked a satisfactory formal education, but “these great deficiencies” were offset by the quality of her homelife. Her adolescent years were marked by her mother’s chronic ill health and death in 1807, her father’s remarriage in 1808, and her engagement with her siblings’ growing families throughout the period. By 1812, as a 22-year old republican woman reflecting on her social position, CMS felt the call of a “life dignified by usefulness” and compared her father’s contributions to her own potential: “You may benefit a Nation my dear Papa, & I may improve the condition of a fellow being” (1 Mar. 1812).
Letters from Sedgwick’s pre-publication adulthood demonstrate her intellectual and religious development as she grappled with events both personal and national. Her siblings became the central focus of her domestic life, and the Sedgwicks’ experiences with “the market of matrimony” (15 Aug. 1813) provide intriguing fodder for epistolary debate. Sedgwick rejected at least two marriage proposals in her twenties, one in 1812 and another in 1819. In the summer of 1821, she traveled to Niagara Falls and Montreal and began keeping a journal. As Sedgwick developed her authorial persona and worked on her first novel, her full-throated dedication to family, female relationships, and personal usefulness emerged as primary concerns. Sedgwick’s letters also become more philosophical, and her lifelong dedication to republican service and intellectual Unitarianism come into focus. Sedgwick explains her sense of vocation to her lifelong friend Eliza Cabot Follen: “my ministry must be one of watchfulness and steady devotion, and all those cares that love teaches, and can pay without being asked” (15 Nov 1822).
With her first novel A New-England Tale (1822), Sedgwick established herself as a professional writer, and she published four additional literary novels and more than 30 stories during this period. As a dedicated family woman, who also chose to be single and an author, she constructed domestic arrangements that complemented her writing career. She lived in the homes of her brothers and sisters-in-law in Stockbridge, Lenox, and New York City, deepening her relationships with her siblings as well as caring for the children and contributing to their education. Redwood, her second novel, received “much more praise and celebrity than [she] expected” (18 Oct. 1824). As her fame grew, she continued to find her spiritual home in Unitarianism, while her range of acquaintances expanded to include artists, politicians, reformers, educators, and intellectuals. Sedgwick began to travel more widely, visiting friends in Boston, Newport, and Philadelphia, and making extended trips to Washington DC and the South. As a measure of her celebrity, she was selected for inclusion in the National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans (1834), the only woman included other than Martha Washington. The period was also punctuated by “the real and bitter sorrows that cloud our life” (13 Mar. 1830), including the deaths of her sister Eliza, her childhood nurse Elizabeth Freeman, and her brother Harry.
As a member of the American literati, Sedgwick navigated transatlantic fame while experiencing personal loss at home. She pursued new avenues of benevolent activism in her life and writings. Letters from this period will be available soon.
Sedgwick’s engagement with mid-nineteenth-century reform movements informed her writings during this period. Her primary residences continued to be New York City and the Berkshires. She deepened her relationships with her niece Kate Minot and other members of the next generation of Sedgwicks. Letters from this era will be available at a future date.
During the Civil War period, Sedgwick grappled with issues of national importance alongside personal losses at home. She published her last book and final story and, after a medical crisis, resigned as Director of the New York Women’s Prison Association. In her final years, she resided with Kate Minot and her family near Boston. Letters from this era will be available at a future date.
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- Friendship
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What in the world is the reason dearest Eliza that I donot hear from you? -- Are you writing a book? -- -- I forbore to notice the intimation in your last letter that you were copying your manuscript tho' I has a secret perhaps a presumptuous hope that I was to be enriched by your labors -- but now I begin to think you are perhaps employed upon something more important than copying -- -- With true femality I have suspected Eliza that there might be some sentiment in the case -- -- women are "kittle cattle" 1 and when we don't know what the heart is upon, it is not extravagent to fancy it may be spinning one of those innumerable
Whatever it may be, laugh at 2 my guesses as much as you please, but do not punish me by condemning me to ignorance --
I cannot tell you dear how much pleasanter my room seems to me for you once having shared it with me --
I can sit here alone and without any aid from my senses conjure up sweet sights and sounds -- the blessed Memory! that without these mute instruments can furnish forth such festivals for the heart -- -- -- --
But I sat down to scribble a line by Uncle Robert and I must not spend any time upon fancy articles -- --
I daresay you would like to know something of the opera but I have not yet seen it -- You know we are none of us fanatics about music -- and we have been waiting for that convenient 3 opportunity that is always so long coming The fashionable world, and the musical world, and the admiring that is to say the vulgar world are all in ecstasies -- -- --
I wish if it comes in your way that you would make acquaintance with Dr Follen -- a German (don't be frightened nor laugh at me) who is just appointed Professor or teacher of German at the C University 2 He waited on my authorship but notwithsatnding I found him very agreeable -- I donot beleive he is afraid of wetting his feet or driving a horse provided it be not rampant, so do forego all German prejudices and speak kindly to the man -- -- --
"Our accomplished Countryman Mr Bradish" has at last returned and to the great joy of his friends he is not any more elegant than when he went away -- -- 4
I enclose you your lace dear Eliza which owing to my being in mourning 3 has been put away with some of those splendid capes you sent to Mrs Miller -- and had slipped through my mind as completely as it had thro' your fingers --
My best love to the dear girls -- and to all your kith and kin my kind regards -- Jeanie tho cumbered with her children never forgets to love you --
rsmost truly
I cant tell you how pleased we all were to find some of your hymns in that Boston collection for children -- It was the unexpected sight of a friend in a strange land -- I had purchased the book for Kate all unconscious of the treasure -- She says, whenever she meets one that particularly pleases her Aunt Kitty this must be Miss Cabot's, it is so very beautiful
Anna Payne will not marry Mr
Do give my best love to the Minots 4-- I envy you their Society
Letter
Massachusetts Historical Society
Catharine Maria Sedgwick Papers I
Wax blot and tears; an anthropomorphized bird is drawn on page 4 beneath the address. PSs are cross-written in the margins of pages 1-3.
Miss E. L. Cabot --/Boston --/Ford by/Mr Rogers --
"(people who or animals which are) capricious, rash, or erratic in behavior; (things which are) difficult to use or deal with" (OED).
Harvard University
Sedgwick was likely in mourning for her nephew, Egbert Benson Pomeroy, who died the previous July.
Likely the family of Sedgwick's longtime friend, Louisa Davis Minot, and her husband, William Minot, who was also the brother of Sedgwick's sister-in-law, Jane Minot Sedgwick.