Whispers of Cruel Wrongs: The Correspondence of Louisa Jacobs and Her Circle, 1879-1911 ed. by Mary Maillard (review)

There are two kinds of research projects: those that are provoked by a question (nagging, burning, pressing) and those that are provoked by a discovery. Research projects provoked by a question are perhaps the more interesting because the researcher approaches her task already in motion, already questioning, with an assessment of existing knowledge from which the "why" or "how" questions emerge.

Mary Maillard's Whispers of Cruel Wrongs begins with the story of having the correspondence of Louisa Jacobs, the daughter of Harriet Jacobs, author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), almost literally thrust into her hands. Maillard tells the story of how this came to pass with particular graciousness and gratitude to the family members and scholars who helped her bring these letters to light, to situate them in literary history and to contextualize them fully. There are seventy-eight documents, all addressed to Eugenie "Genie" Webb, niece of Frank J. Webb, author of The Garies and Their Friends (1857). Fifty-eight are written by Louisa Jacobs; thirteen are by Annie Purvis, daughter of poet Sarah Louise Forten; the balance are by others, including Frank Webb. For those who work on nineteenth-century African American literature and culture, particularly on Jacobs and Webb, these letters are indeed a gift for tying together the loose threads of people and families and for offering facts that shed light on characters, incidents, silences, and the circulation of knowledge.

Scholars know the salient details of Louisa's life from her brief biographical treatment in the Harriet Jacobs Family Papers, published in 2008 and edited by Jean Fagan Yellin. The HJFP includes the dozen or so previously known letters written by Louisa to various people, including her mother. From the HJFP we know that Louisa became a speaker for the Equal Rights Association with Susan B. Anthony and Charles Lenox Remond. We know she taught school, had various government jobs, and worked for Howard University. We know that she was at her mother's side, nursing her through various illnesses including her mother's death in 1897, and we know that Louisa and Harriet are buried next to each other in Auburn Cemetery.

The most important new information provided by the letters included in Whispers of Cruel Wrongs is that Louisa lived a quiet life as a loving and faithful daughter as well as a thoughtful and caring friend to her wide circle of friends and acquaintances, including members of the Forten-Purvis-Grimké-Webb family. There are no surprises to upend what is already known. Louisa was educated, beautiful, and single; no hints of romance emerge from these letters. Her primary correspondent, Genie Webb, also remained single. A hint of something beyond friendship is offered in a long letter of January 1881, a little over a year after their correspondence began. About halfway through the letter Louisa writes:

Now darling a little word more particularly about ourselves. You said in your letter that the altar is the place to carry our heaviest burden and fondest dreams, then why ask me if it was sinful to ask God to make our bond of friendship a tie for all time? Nay Genie He himself is love, and bade but to love one another. So we love not the creature better than the creator it is all right.

(77-78)

While one doesn't want to speculate too far afield, responding to what must have been a serious emotional concern about friendship was of clear importance to Louisa and one wants more explanatory context than Maillard offers in vague footnote about spiritual perfection. I turned immediately to Andreá Williams's work on "blessed singleness" and the intimate relationships of single women that set aside questions of sexuality to focus on what other forms of long-term intimate relationships functioned among single women.

The missed opportunities to contextualize these letters and...