Excerpts from Emma D. Kelley-Hawkins's Four Girls at Cottage City (1895)

Abstract

In the following excerpt, the character Charlotte Hood reflects on the shipwreck that killed her husband, brother-in-law, and beloved brother, Jo. Charlotte Hood is obviously modeled after Kelley-Hawkins's mother, Gabrelia. Moreover, several stories in Charlotte Hood's life are drawn from actual events in Kelley-Hawkins's maternal family and are footnoted in the novel as "Fact" (238, 246) and "Fact. The occurrence related here is true. It actually happened" (239). The surnames in Charlotte Hood's family are a mild scrambling of those in Kelley-Hawkins's actual ancestry.

In the following excerpt, the character Charlotte Hood reflects on the shipwreck that killed her husband, brother-in-law, and beloved brother, Jo. Charlotte Hood is obviously modeled after Kelley-Hawkins's mother, Gabrelia. Moreover, several stories in Charlotte Hood's life are drawn from actual events in Kelley-Hawkins's maternal family and are footnoted in the novel as "Fact" (238, 246) and "Fact. The occurrence related here is true. It actually happened" (239). The surnames in Charlotte Hood's family are a mild scrambling of those in Kelley-Hawkins's actual ancestry.

At no time had I questioned God's goodness as I did then. I was wild with hopeless misery. . . . They went away one cloudy day in the last of March. That night a terrible storm came up. I lay awake all night and listened to it. I loved my husband, but I worshipped my brother Jo. Was this the reason that God saw fit to take him from me? It was just and right for Him to do so, for I loved Jo better than I did God. Our "boys" never came back to us. The storm swept them away from the face of the earth, and we saw them no more—only a wreck was left off the coast of Cape Hatteras to tell us of the end they had made. (245–46)

Kelley-Hawkins's father and uncles drowned in a shipwreck; the accident rendered her mother's family destitute.

Oh those were terrible days! I have often wondered how we ever lived through them. I have known since whether mother went to find strength to endure, and found it; but then my heart was hard and bitter. I think suspense is the hardest thing of all to bear . . . the most trying. It was hard to lose husband and brother together—yes, two brothers, for Hersey was very near to me. (278)

The circumstances of the birth of Charlotte's daughter in the novel parallel Kelley-Hawkins's own birth.

Seven months after the storm, another little girl was born to me, and when I heard its first little wailing cry, I turned my face to the wall and the tears rolled down my cheeks. Poor little baby! Never in this world to look upon its father's face! Why was it born? I asked myself this question over and over again. For two or three days I would scarcely look at it, I felt so sick, and tired, and miserable. . . . (279)

Just then baby cried—a little plaintive cry that no one heard but myself—and it's [sic] little head moved slowly from side to side on my arm. Then something in my heart seemed to give way. I gathered the tiny form close to me and kissed it and cried over it. And from that hour I loved it more than anything I had ever loved before—except Jo. (279–80)