The Publication of Edward Hicks's Memoirs

THE PEACEABLE KINGDOM By EDWARD HICKS (Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College) A version of Hicks's painting commemorative of "the Progress of Religious Liberty" ? See pages 12-30. The BULLETIN of Friends Historical Association Vol. 50Spring Number, 1961No. 1 TWO NOTES ON EDWARD HICKS In what was probably the first major exhibition ever devoted to the work of a Quaker artist, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection at Williamsburg, Virginia, presented in October I960 a handsomely mounted showing of some forty paintings of Edward Hicks (1780-1849) of Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania . For this exhibit Mary Black, Curator of the Collection, prepared a valuable annotated and illustrated catalogue (Edward Hicks, 1780-1849: A Special Exhibition Devoted to His Life and Work, with an Introduction and Chronology by Alice Ford, Williamsburg , I960). In the afterglow of this notable exhibit of Hicks's "primitive" art, the Bulletin offers two documentary notes which, it is hoped, will throw further light on this Quaker minister's troubled approach to artistic self-expression. THE PUBLICATION OF EDWARD HICKSS MEMOIRS By Alice Ford* The Memoirs of the Life and Religious Labors of Edward Hicks, Late of Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania are as rare, as obscure and forgotten, as his Peaceable Kingdom paintings are now known and prized. His dedicated art, which in the last quartercentury has won him, by popular consent across the Western World, the rank of foremost American primitive painter, is known and loved by all manner of friends. His conquests have been made not only by his luminous original oils but often by the murkiest of murky reproductions. In the wake of the first Edward Hicks retrospective exhibition at Williamsburg, Virginia, a little coda about the Memoirs suggests itself. This volume includes, besides the Memoirs themselves, two of his sermons—"A Little Present for Friends and Friendly People" and "A Word of Exhortation to Young Friends." The first of these is the perfect elucidation of his painted ministry.1 Published in 185 1, the book has a history which would be deserving of attention in itself even if it did not supply a key to the iconography of his paintings. For an appreciation of the full strength of his ministry, powerfully suggested by his painted Peaceable Kingdoms—oftrepeated and rather like so many sweet echo chambers—it is to his own words that one must turn. Ministry hailed as great in its day,2 it is still, for all its antiquated style and sometimes embarrassing peevishness, deeply moving. *Alice Ford is the author of books on Edward Hicks and John James Audubon. She wishes to express grateful acknowledgment to the Editor of the Bulletin for his additions in text and footnotes to this article. 1 See Alice Ford, Edward Hicks: Painter of the Peaceable Kingdom (Philadelphia, 1952), pp. 85-88. See also note 5, infra. 2 [For example, a Philadelphia Friend wrote in 1822, after hearing him preach: "He has displayed great natural eloquence and called forth the admiration of the Society as well as Strangers. ... He attracted as much attention during his last visit as Elias (Edward's cousin, Elias Hicks) does The Publication of Edward Hicks's Memoirs5 One day in 1843, the small, frail, always heavily burdened Quaker minister and coach painter (with quite a local name for easel painting as well) began the record—part diary, part retrospective autobiography, part contemplative soliloquy—which he himself hoped one day to see into print: "Newtown, 4th mo. 4th, 1843: I am, this day, sixty-three years of age, and I have thought right to attempt, at least, to write a short narrative of my Hie, by way of testimony to the mercy and goodness of a gracious God. . . ." On July 13, 1849, forty-one days before his death, he closed his Memoirs: ". . . seriously, and awfully, and thoughtfully"—and in mortal pain—he penned his farewell.3 For nineteenth-century Friends publication posed delicate problems , since there was, and continued to be, much doubt, at least among Hicksites, as to the wisdom of publishing anything of a religious or controversial nature. "Spent pretty much [time] in writing," Hicks had written on June 27, 1846, "which I am afraid will be...