In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Introduction: Twenty Years a Wanderer On July 4, 1893, Constance Woolson wrote from Venice to her niece Kate Mather, “It is a curious fate that has made the most domestic woman in the world,—the one most fond of a home, a fixed home, and all her own thingsabout her,—that has made such a woman a wanderer for nearly twenty years.” On this Fourth of July, her last, she had seen American flags flying from the balconies of expatriates, yet had forgotten the date herself until the flags reminded her of home. Home remained goodtoher, her popularity in theUnited States guaranteeingher publication in one of the nation’s premier outlets, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, and earning her a cover photo on Harper’s Bazar. By 1893, she had been living in Europe for thirteen yearsandplannedeventually toreturn toAmerica. But, shelamentedtoKate:“Iam so tired of changing, and sometimes so disheartened at the thought of all the labor thatmustbegonethrough beforea newplaceisanywherenear comfortable,—that it seems as if, after I am settled this time, I shall never have the strength or courage to move again.” She had recently left Oxford, England, for Venice and was staying in unsatisfactory rooms at the Casa Biondetti, editing the book version of her last novel, Horace Chase, and looking for an apartment where she could have her own things brought from storage in Florence. By mid-October, Woolson found more suitable rooms in the Casa Semitecolo and rediscovered her joy in Venetian life. Despite frequent complaints about the effort of moving, Woolson was nurtured on movement and travel. In 1839, her parents, Charles Jarvis and Hannah Cooper Pomeroy Woolson, hadjourneyedasfar westasMilwaukee, Wisconsin, stoppingin Cooperstown, New York, along the way to visit Hannah’s Cooper relatives. When they returned in the late summer, Hannah was pregnant with her sixth daughter, Constance,whowasbornonMarch5,1840.ByApril3rd,threeofthelittledaughters had died of scarlet fever, leaving Constance with two older sisters, Georgiana and Emma. When winter arrived, the family left forever the scene of so much pain to settle in Cleveland, Ohio, where they had friends and opportunity. As a child, Woolson enjoyed the permanence of a “fixed home” that her letters suggest was idyllic despite the lingering sorrow over so many deaths. More children were born to Jarvis and Hannah—Clara, Alida, who died within a year of her birth, and Charles Jarvis Jr. An array of dogs were also treated as family members. Together, they frequently traveled by wagon, by train, by boat: to Cooperstown, to Mackinac Island, Michigan, to the Ohio religious community at Zoar. Woolson • xxxii · Introduction: Twenty Years a Wanderer loved the adventure of travel. In her first surviving letter, written while she was still a child in Cleveland’s Miss Hayden’s School, she quizzes an older girl named Louisa, who was at boarding school in New York: Does Louisa like being away? Doesshehavea“firein[her]room”orisshe“likemostboarding-schoolgirlsfrozen to death?” Does she “sleep in a large room with a great many girls, or in a small one with one girl?” Did she receive any valentines? Was there a show on Washington’s Birthday? Did she leave school at Christmas? Even in childhood, Woolson wanted to see, to learn, to go “away from home for a time.” And go away she did. She attended Madame Chegaray’s School in New York City, years later describing for poet and critic Edmund Clarence Stedman her impressions of the mostly Southern girls who were her classmates. No letters survive from Woolson’s time at school or from the years surrounding the Civil War, which she seems to have spent in Cleveland, but later letters indicate that, her friendship with Southern girls aside, she remained “a red hot abolitionist , Republican and hard-money advocate” (Hayne, Apr. 17, 1876). Throughout her life, she was fascinated with a war whose scenes of battle she never witnessed. The romance and excitement she remembered sometimes caused her to forget the pain and resentment that must have shaped the memories of so many Southerners. One with whom she shared her thoughts of the war was poet Paul Hamilton Hayne, who had fought for the Confederacy. On July 23, 1875, she wrote, “So you were at Sumter.—And I (lately) was on Morris Island! What days they were! After all, we lived then. It is in vain for our generation to hope to be any other than ‘people who remember.’ Sometimes even now, I wake early, and think I hear the distant call of the...

Share