LHMP #491e Cleves 2014 Charity & Sylvia Chapter 7 & 8

Chapter 7: Never to Marry 1800

In 1800, Charity—finding her welcome wearing out in her sister’s household, which was beset with illness—returned to her brother’s household, which she had previously left due to gossip about her intimate friendships. Yet in the letter announcing her intent, she explicitly laid out her plan never to marry, stating that it was a matter of principle and that marriage would not be “productive of happiness.” (The rest of the chapter spends a lot of time exploring the possibility that Charity’s position could be due to a failed/impossible m/f romance, only to dismiss the theory.)

Chapter 8: Charity and Mercy 1805

The concern that Charity and her girlfriends had about the nature of their relationships shows up in letters talking about the need for keeping those letters secret, or the advisability of destroying them, despite their sentimental value.

[Note: This also sheds light on why documentation of women’s intimate relationships can seem so rare, if women understood there was a boundary of acceptability beyond which the details must be kept secret. If that self-awareness meant that documentary evidence of relationships “beyond the pale” was selectively more likely to be destroyed, it creates the illusion that more passionate relationships didn’t exist. Later in the book, we’ll see the efforts Charity went through to try to manage her legacy by retrieving and destroying letters.]

Not all Charity’s intimate friends were from the educated circle of teachers. Mercy Ford lived with a controlling mother and hired out to do domestic service, leaving her little free time for her romance with Charity. (Earlier, Charity’s friendship with Nancy Warner had formed over a shared interest in religious philosophy, but Nancy’s religious sensibilities were part of why she distanced herself when Charity began courting her.)

Mercy and Charity did destroy most of their correspondence, due to concerns over the content becoming public. Some that do survive make clear they had a dual letter stream: one for public consumption, and one containing material “so particular…it will do by no means for the world.”

Other surviving letters express passionate feelings and language that may be coded terms for sex, but certainly express a desire to share a bed alone together. Their continued devotion and disinterest in marriage (along with previous gossip about Charity) eventually resulted in Charity’s parents forbidding Mercy to visit, and Mercy’s mother to make her life such a misery that Charity decided she must move elsewhere. This was when she left home the second time to go live with a brother.

[Note: The timeline in the book keeps looping back and jumping ahead, which is hard to keep track of.] At this point, Charity was 28 years old.