Yearning for the New Age: Laura Holloway-Langford and Late Victorian Spirituality

10. “Dear Friend and Sister”

208 The years following the demise of the Seidl Society were difficult for Laura Holloway-Langford. Not only had she lost her position at the center of Brooklyn social and cultural life, but in the late 1890s her husband suffered financial setbacks. In January 1901, her sister, Anne Catherine Terry, died, and in summer 1902, after a long period of declining health, Edward Langford passed away. During this time of loss and uncertainty, she renewed her friendship with the Shakers at Mount Lebanon , New York. The Shakers welcomed her attention, finding that “Friend Laura” could assist in their dealings with “the world.” In particular, they enlistedhertowritenewspaperarticlespublicizingtheirmissionandcontradicting negative reports about the Society.1 Some Shakers in the North Family dared to hope that HollowayLangford might join their ranks as a sister, but she remained an outsider. She agreed with them that a new spiritual age was commencing, but she disagreed on how to bring it about. For the Shakers, celibacy, not philanthropy , was the essential requirement of the spiritual life. It entailed separation from the world so that members could pursue lives of perfection . Holloway-Langford, in contrast, thought that rather than limiting their role to examples of personal purity, Shakers should welcome into their communities all those who needed physical as well as religious renewal . When she purchased a farm that had been the home of the Upper Canaan Shakers, Holloway-Langford expected that her physical proximity to Mount Lebanon would be mirrored in a spiritual kinship. Rather 10 “Dear Friend and Sister” S front/backmatter 209 “Dear Friend and Sister” 209 than bringing her closer to the Shakers, however, the purchase led to misunderstandings over the property and to estrangement from them. Despite these conflicts, Holloway-Langford popularized the Shakers among the seekers of alternative religion, promoting an image of them as feminists and social reformers. At the same time, she spread ideas from Theosophy and Eastern religious traditions to the Shakers. Never an original thinker, Holloway-Langford mediated among disparate religious traditions , recombining them in ways that became characteristic of an emerging American spirituality. SHAKER FRIENDSHIPS Inthe1870s,LauraHolloway-LangfordhadcorrespondedwithFrederick W. Evans and Antoinette Doolittle, the leaders of the North Family Shakers . She sent at least one impoverished child to them, and she proposed thatcitychildrenwhowouldbenefitfromruralliving,freshair,andhealthy food come to Mount Lebanon for summer holidays. The Shakers, however, rejected this idea. Evans reminded her that the Shaker mission was not to provide for the city’s poor, and that they only accepted children who were of “the better class.”2 While in Germany in 1884, Holloway-Langford wrote Evans,claiming that she had represented Shakerism to the “vegetarians& temperance philosophers” with whom she was living. On returning to the UnitedStates,shetoldtheShakersaboutamindcurethatwasof great interest to Evans, who hoped to employ it in his community.3 She also debated concepts such as reincarnation with the Shakers, arguing that human suffering was the result of an individual’s karma, caused by his or her own actions . Alonzo Hollister of Mount Lebanon was not convinced. He wrote: I see no necessity for those whose one incarnation has been to them an unspeakable affliction, coming back to try it over, & perhaps again & again. To say everything we suffer here is a punishment for sins previously committed by us, seems to me neither based on positive nolej [sic] nor provable nor reasonable , nor probable. The appearance of things is that the best people suffer most for the sins of others—or from causes they never set in motion. . . . If a man gets angry at me & strikes me in a way to break my arm, it does not mend nor mitigate my suffering, for him to get served in the same 210 front/backmatter 210 Yearning for the New age manner. If he kills me, it does not aid me an atom, to know that he must be killed to atone for his crime.4 Holloway-Langford, nevertheless, persisted, presenting Hollister with a copy of The Gospel of Buddha by Paul Carus.5 Despitetheseearlyinteractions,intheyearsafterAntoinetteDoolittle’s death in 1886 Laura Holloway-Langford had only intermittent contact with the Shakers. In 1901, however, she wrote the North Family inquiring once again about their policy on taking children. Eldress Anna White reiterated the Society’s position: “We take children but not all kinds, they need sorting. We have taken Asylum children, but the Asylum trait was upon all of them. Most of them were from the slums, and...