Hannah Whitman Heyde: The Complete Correspondence

By Hannah Whitman Heyde [1823-1908]

The correspondence of Hannah Whitman Heyde (1823-1908), younger sister of poet Walt Whitman, provides a rare glimpse into the life of a nineteenth-century woman. Married to well-known Vermont landscape artist Charles Louis Heyde (1820-1892), Hannah documented in letters to her mother, Louisa Van Velsor Whitman (1795-1873), and other family members, her lived experience of ongoing physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her husband. Hannah has long been characterized in biographical and scholarly studies of Whitman’s family as a neurotic and a hypochondriac—a narrative promulgated by Heyde himself—but Walt Whitman carefully preserved his sister’s letters, telling his literary biographer that his intention was to document her plight. Hannah’s complete letters, gathered here for the first time and painstakingly edited and annotated by Maire Mullins, provide an important counternarrative, allowing readers insight into the life of a real nineteenth-century woman, sister, and wife to famous men, who endured and eventually survived domestic violence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bucknell University Press
• Release date: Dec 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781684483624

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Introduction

The youngest of Walt Whitman’s sisters, Hannah Whitman Heyde (November 28, 1823–July 18, 1908) was also the favorite sister of the Whitman siblings.¹ Prior to her marriage to Charles Louis Heyde (1820–1892) at the age of twenty-eight, Hannah lived at home with the Whitman family. Cheerful, industrious, creative, and tender-hearted, Hannah loved to sew and to read. Hannah was emotionally close to her family, but perhaps closest of all to her mother, Louisa Van Velsor Whitman (Mother Whitman),² whom she deeply loved, admired, and respected. Hannah also had a close bond with her older brother Walt.³ After her marriage Walt consistently sent Hannah small amounts of money, newspapers, books, and periodicals, as well as the latest edition of his book of poems, Leaves of Grass. In nearly every letter she writes Hannah comments on the thoughtfulness of her brother. I never in my life see anybody so good & have so much patience with me as Walt does, Hannah wrote to her mother in 1867. I dont know what makes him so good.… [I]ts the kindness I care for (Letter 39). Walt was not wealthy, but he loved his youngest sister dearly and enriched her life with his support and his steady concern for her well-being. Shortly after her marriage to one of Vermont’s most famous landscape painters, Charles Louis Heyde, Hannah reveals in her letters that she was experiencing intimate partner violence. This escalating emotional, verbal, and physical abuse lasted four decades, from 1852 until Charlie’s⁴ death in 1892. Yet Hannah’s story as understood through her letters has yet to be told.

While many of her letters are missing or were destroyed, there is enough evidence in the letters that remain to provide deeper insight into Hannah’s situation and into the phenomenon of intimate partner violence in the mid-nineteenth century. I feel I dont deserve the treatment I get, Hannah writes to Walt (Letter 52). In contrast to decades of critical commentary on Hannah, readers are provided with an alternative perspective—Hannah’s own, in which she describes her living conditions, her loneliness and isolation, and her response to Charlie’s violent behavior. I think sometimes a person should speak for themselves, I think its right they should, Hannah writes (Letter 16). Describing what was happening to her took a great deal of courage and perseverance, because Charlie was explosive, unpredictable, and angered by small, seemingly innocuous interactions; to save my life I cannot do any thing without his finding fault little foolish things that no one would notice, she writes (Letter 12). Her life with Charlie was unstable and at times miserable; Hannah had no resources to turn to aside from her family. She did not have close friends, nor is there any evidence that she had close ties or relationships among the communities that the Heydes lived in during the 1850s and 1860s. Reading Hannah’s complete extant correspondence allows readers to contextualize Hannah’s situation and to weigh what she reports in her letters against the overwhelmingly negative portrayal of her in the biographies of Walt Whitman.⁵ For the first time, readers have access to the materials that the Whitman family had access to: Hannah’s letters have been restored to their original chronological order, transcribed, annotated, and edited.

The seriousness and the complexity of Hannah’s situation, its impact on the Whitman family, and its effect on Walt have been misconstrued by Whitman scholars and biographers, beginning with the portrayal of Hannah in two influential works: Katherine Molinoff’s biographical sketch of Hannah in her monograph, Some Notes on Whitman’s Family (1941), and a collection of Whitman family letters edited by Clarence Gohdes and Rollo G. Silver, Faint Clews and Indirections: Manuscripts of Walt Whitman and His Family (1949). Molinoff writes, in forty years of married life Hannah never learned to cook, was known to her neighbors as a ‘shifless’ housekeeper, dressed carelessly and without style, liked to boast about wealth which had no foundation in fact, and was ill for long periods of time.⁶ In their editorial note to Charlie’s letters, Gohdes and Silver write, As the years rolled on he found no better subject for his epistles to Mother Whitman or to Walt than the wretched health or the perverse disposition of his wife. It is clear that Hannah was not a good housekeeper and that her illnesses were a trial.⁷ Charlie’s accounts of Hannah’s health and lack of housekeeping skills in his letters to the Whitman family were considered credible by ensuing Whitman biographers. Gay Wilson Allen asserts that Hannah secretly enjoyed her misery—subsequent letters were to reveal an unmistakable masochistic tendency.⁸ Roger Asselineau states that Hannah was a neurotic, incapable of keeping house.⁹ Justin Kaplan dismisses both Heydes as psychotic.¹⁰ Jerome Loving characterizes Hannah as a hypochondriac caught up in a bad marriage.¹¹ David S. Reynolds calls Hannah hapless, adding, The neurotic Hannah dressed carelessly, never learned to cook, and kept a messy house.¹² In addition, according to Edwin Haviland Miller, passages in Walt’s letters that were deemed too critical of Charlie were excised by Walt’s literary executors because Walt was so abusive in his references to Heyde; Miller then describes Hannah’s letters as whining, self-condemning, hysterical, and concludes that though the Whitmans often considered fetching her, she willingly remained with her husband.¹³

Whitman family members, particularly Mother Whitman, Walt, George, and Jeff, dismissed Charlie’s claims, and over time became increasingly concerned about the accounts of violence reported in Hannah’s letters.¹⁴ Family members devised plans to remove Hannah, but for a variety of reasons these plans never came to fruition. As her letters reveal, Hannah’s situation and her family’s response to her ongoing distress were implicated in wider mid-nineteenth-century social, judicial, and cultural attitudes and social norms about women and about domestic violence. Writing more generally of intimate partner violence in nineteenth- century America, Linda Gordon says that many abused women did not seem to believe they had a ‘right’ to freedom from physical violence.… In a patriarchal system there were neither institutions nor concepts defending absolute rights, but rather custom and bargaining; moreover, Gordon notes that because women did not directly speak out against their abusers does not mean that they liked being hit or believed that their virtue required accepting it.¹⁵ Hannah survived because she developed tactics to avoid debilitation: her connection to her family provided her with strength, but without close support networks or contemporary societal understanding of her situation, she had to cultivate strategies for survival. Her primary strategy was letter writing.

This collection brings together all of Hannah’s extant letters so that the reader can gain deeper insight into Hannah’s life, from Hannah’s perspective.¹⁶ Although some of Hannah’s letters have been published,¹⁷ the sixty-three letters in this collection provide a more complete picture of Hannah’s experience and her deep emotional connectedness to her family, particularly her relationship with her mother and with her brother Walt. Hannah’s correspondence offers a rare glimpse into the life of a nineteenth-century woman who experienced severe intimate partner violence over a period of four decades, from the standpoint of the survivor. That Hannah was married to a Vermont landscape painter whose work is still celebrated deepens our cognizance of the gap between the public persona that Charlie created and the private person that Hannah experienced. Walt wanted the story to be told, and in fact carefully preserved the letters that Mother Whitman had handed on to him. He told his literary biographer, Horace Traubel, that his motivation for keeping the letters was to provide a clearer understanding of what had happened to Hannah. Traubel writes:

W. gave me a pencil draft of a letter of inquiry he had written to Dr. Thayer twenty years before. I asked W.: Has she always had this trouble? Yes—from the first—ever since she married the whelp. Why, Walt, this letter is twenty years old. I know it: and her trouble is twenty years older. Is the situation up there the same now as it was when you wrote this letter? The same or worse if worse is possible. Then I asked him: Are you quite sure you want me to have this letter? He nodded: Yes: you see how it is: I want you to be in possession of data which will equip you after I am gone for making statements, that sort of thing, when necessary. I can’t sit down offhand and dictate the story to you but I can talk with you and give you the documentary evidence here and there, adding a little every day, so as finally to graduate you for your job! He was both grave and quietly jocular about all this. I then read him the letter.¹⁸

In providing Traubel with the letter of inquiry that Walt had written to Dr. Thayer (Hannah’s doctor) twenty years before, Walt was ensuring that evidence that would serve as a counternarrative to Charlie’s carefully constructed public persona would survive. Even now, the reputation Charlie curated prevails. We are confident that Heyde’s paintings will be cherished far into the future by Vermonters and those who love Vermont, because Heyde succeeded so well in depicting the breathtakingly beautiful and distinctive landscapes that give us our special ‘sense of place,’ Ann Porter, director of the Robert Hull Fleming Museum, writes (2001).¹⁹ As Hannah’s correspondence reveals, Charlie’s beautiful and distinctive landscape paintings were produced concurrently with the ongoing intimate partner violence he inflicted upon her for four decades.

HANNAH WHITMAN HEYDE: BIOGRAPHY

Hannah Louisa Whitman Heyde was born in King’s County, New York, on November 28, 1823, and died in Burlington, Vermont, on July 18, 1908. She was a gentle, cheerful child who resembled her mother and her brother Walt, with gray eyes and a mild countenance, as her daguerreotype suggests. Hannah was named for her paternal grandmother, Hannah Brush Whitman, and her mother, Louisa Van Velsor Whitman.²⁰ A bright, laughing girl with a tremendous zest for living,²¹ Hannah had a special talent for sewing; she sewed dresses for herself, shirts for her brothers, and later also made shirts for Charlie and sheets and pillowcases for their living quarters. Before she married Charlie there is evidence to suggest that Hannah may have taught school in Long Island for a short time. Katherine Molinoff reports that Hannah had what was considered in her day an excellent education, attending a ‘select’ school in Brooklyn and a ‘young ladies’ seminary’ in Hempstead, Long Island.²² Sandford Brown, who had known Walt Whitman when he was a young man, recalled that ‘he kept school for a year … and then his sister’—Fanny, he thought—‘succeeded him.’ ²³ Fanny is likely a reference to Hannah, who probably taught during the summer term, since male teachers usually taught during the fall and winter terms.²⁴ Molinoff reports that another bond with Walt was that she also taught school, as he did, and at least once took over his school on Long Island.²⁵ Unlike Mother Whitman, who probably taught herself to write, Hannah’s handwriting reveals that she (as well as some of her siblings) had received instruction in cursive. For instance, in figure 1 Hannah signs her name with a capital H that is fairly sophisticated in its execution; this same sophistication can be seen in the way she writes the capital W in figure 2. It could be that the Whitman children had learned penmanship from a series of copybooks popular at the time.²⁶ Students would copy phrases repeatedly until their handwriting mirrored the phrase placed at the top of each page.

Figure 1. Hannah’s H (Letter 14, March 1856). Hannah Louisa Whitman Heyde Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Figure 2. Hannah’s W (Letter 14, March 1856). Hannah Louisa Whitman Heyde Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Figure 3. Hannah’s teardrop (Letter 18, July 1856). Walt Whitman Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Figure 4. Richard Maurice Bucke’s handwritten date (Letter 48, March 4, 1873). Hannah Louisa Whitman Heyde Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Based upon the observations that she makes in her letters, it is clear that Hannah was interested in fashion, in clothing, and in how people dressed and presented themselves. Molinoff reports that Hannah was about five feet six inches, though she seemed taller owing to her thinness—her weight never going much over one hundred and ten pounds.²⁷ Self-possessed, Hannah shared with her brother Walt a keen awareness of the effect of dress on oneself and others. She often comments on what she is wearing, and what the latest fashions are in the boardinghouses and hotels where she is staying: furs are very much worn here, they are much worn and quite expensive, she writes to Mother Whitman (Letter 9). In many of her letters she mentions that she is sewing shirts for Charlie, or making dresses for herself: I have made a cheap delaine dress I have another to make, soon as I get the shirts done, she writes (Letter 17). In some letters she asks Mother Whitman to price items of clothing: if you should go down town wont you price some Stella shawls and what color is prettiest here light green ones are worn very much, I want one with palm leaf in one corner (Letter 17). Clearly Hannah had an eye for fashion, as the close details about what she is wearing in Letter 23 to Mother Whitman reveal:

The Lake House has become quite fashiounab[l]e the ladies dress prettily I do not dress as well nothing like them. shall I tell you what I have on now Mother.

A dark red and black plaid delaine made full back & front belted down. black velvet ribbon about an inch wide round the neck and down the waist front, sleeves tight at the wrist or rather fulled with elastic cord, pointed cap reaching the elbow, & trimed with velvet

I have a small gold chain & cross on my neck, new I dont know Mother why I write this way I have not said so much about dress all winter. my dress is not worth speaking of any time.

Hannah is not only describing what she wears: she is providing a reading of the clothes with the eye of a dressmaker—noting how the dress she wears has been made, down to the most minute detail. While her disclaimer at the end of the description expresses self-diminution about the way she dresses, Hannah’s attentiveness to fashion nevertheless remains clear. After her father’s death in 1855, Hannah writes that she dresses the way she feels, not because of the custom, but because of her own inner emotions:

I wish to have some black dresses and bonnet I do not feel like to wear such things as I have now, first I did not care, it made no difference but now I do not like to wear a pink or light dress and if one feels as I do, I think its right to do as you feel. I cannot tell any one how I feel about it. It is not for the looks, or for others its for myself for my own feelings. (Letter 6)

The only known image of Hannah is a daguerreotype probably taken in the mid- to late 1850s, shortly after her father’s death. Hannah is wearing black. This image of Hannah was included in Gay Wilson Allen’s short biography, Walt Whitman, published as an Evergreen Profile Book in 1961. Allen’s caption under Hannah’s portrait reads, Whitman’s favorite sister, Hannah, Mrs. Charles Heyde.²⁸ A revised edition of Allen’s biography was published in 1969; in this edition Hannah’s portrait is placed next to a Civil War daguerreotype of George Washington Whitman.²⁹ After this, Hannah’s image disappears entirely from ensuing Whitman biographies. In this edition of the Collected Letters, Hannah’s portrait is made available for the second time since 1969.³⁰

In this portrait, Hannah is wearing a black dress with white lace half sleeves and a black shawl draped across her shoulders. Her hair, in ringlets, is pulled back from her forehead. It is possible that she may have had Mother Whitman purchase the ringlets of hair for her; in January 1856, Hannah had asked Mother Whitman to purchase and send hair to her.³¹ Hannah’s hands are crossed in front of her, and it looks as if her fingers are entwined. On her wrists she wears what appear to be black cloth bands. Hannah gazes calmly at the viewer and seems at peace. In this, she resembles her mother: I cant think you have grown older (as you said in one of your letters), but Mother as I grow older I can see I look more like you, not that I look old, Oh no, but Mother often when I am fixing my hair I think how much I begin to look like you, Hannah writes (Letter 22). Later, in a letter to her brother Walt, Hannah claimed I dont make a good picture (Letter 54), yet her gaze in this portrait shows serenity and self-possession, qualities that would be tested during the decades of her marriage. She is not smiling. There is a hint of resolute sadness in her gaze. Hannah’s obituary published in the Vermont Bellows Falls Times (1908) reports that Hannah bore a strong resemblance to her brother, probably because of her gray eyes, the color of her hair, and the shape of her face.³²

Figure 5. Daguerreotype of Hannah Whitman Heyde, ca. 1855. Courtesy, Walt Whitman House, Camden, New Jersey.

It is likely that Walt was influenced by Hannah’s awareness of how she presented herself, not just to others, but as a reflection of who she was and how she was feeling. In numerous portraits throughout his life Walt continually presented different images of himself, offering to the reader a catalogue of different styles of dress and posture.³³ Although many of these are facial portraits, there are also a good number of full-body poses so that the reader can get a good sense of what Walt is wearing. Even the close-up facial portraits usually include a hat, variously tilted, and a carefully brushed and trimmed beard of varying lengths. In figure 6, an early portrait of Walt, Hannah and Walt’s resemblance to each other is striking.

Figure 6. Walt Whitman by John Plumbe Jr.?, ca. 1848–1854. Walt Whitman Archive.

Both Walt and Hannah share the gray eyes that they inherited from their mother, as well as a gentle, appealing gaze. Their posture is similar as they look toward the camera from their left shoulder. They may have been about the same age (between thirty and—thirty-five years of age) when these daguerreotypes were taken. Hannah’s expression is more serious because she is clearly dressed in mourning. Katherine Molinoff notes that a profound tenderness existed between Walt and Hannah, and that Hannah returned Walt’s affection for her is well known.³⁴ Their letters from the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s reveal a strong, enduring connectedness. Later, Hannah told an interviewer, In the suffering and the endurance of others Walt always found reason for hope.³⁵

MARRIAGE

Hannah married Charles Louis Heyde on March 16, 1852. It is possible that Walt introduced Charlie to Hannah, although if so Walt later came to regret that he had done so. It is not clear how Walt and Charlie met. Their common interest in art and poetry likely brought them together. In a letter to Walt dated November 1890, Charlie writes, I remember Bryant; You once brought him to my studio in Brooklyn—I can imagine or recall him now, as he sat on the extreme end of my lounge—High Priest of Nature! Thanatopsis—!³⁶ Charlie may have lived with the Whitman family before his marriage to Hannah; he lists his address as Myrtle A., Brooklyn NY in 1850.³⁷ Heyde was impressed with the beauty of Whitman’s slight, gray-eyed sister, Hannah, Alice Cooke Brown writes. She had attended a Brooklyn school and a Hempstead, Long Island, seminary and had been a teacher.³⁸ After their marriage Charlie and Hannah used Burlington, Vermont, as their home base. They placed their furniture in storage while they traveled, mostly following the railroad lines that had recently been completed in the state. From their lodgings, Charlie would often take the train for a day trip, hike to a vantage point, and sketch a scene for a painting. They paid for their room and board by selling or commissioning one of Charlie’s paintings.

In her first letter home from Vermont, Hannah writes, I dont believe I shall stay here a great while longer I want to see you all very much I have been away four weeks (that is longer than ever before … (Letter 1). Although this letter is addressed specifically to Mother Whitman, Hannah is writing to her whole family, asking her older brother Walt for the Sunday papers and inviting her siblings to come visit. Despite her wish to return home, for the next twelve years Hannah and Charlie lived an itinerant life, traveling mostly in Vermont. At times the Whitman family did not know Hannah’s exact location or address. Hannah writes to Mother Whitman that she was growing weary of the constant change: I am not childish or foolish but Mammy I don’t want to die in a Hotel, Hannah writes (Letter 12). In many letters, Hannah expresses her desire to return home and to see her family: sometimes I feel real homesick … I dont know how it is but Mother I always feel as if that was the only real home I have one dont have much of a home living in a Hotel (Letter 15). For Hannah, home was where her mother and siblings lived. I like to feel that I have a home, I often immagine I see you going about, making fire cleaning around the stove, like you did when I was home, she writes to Mother Whitman (Letter 22). After a year of marriage (1853) Hannah reports to Mother Whitman her surprise that Charlie would not allow her access to funds so that she could buy small items, such as ink. She compensates by writing letters in pencil: "Charlie is very very afraid of giving me money I have had or spent scarcely anything since I have been from home, he seems to think I do not need anything …" (Letter 3). This letter contains the first reference to Charlie’s controlling Hannah’s behavior by withholding funds from her. Placing limits on Hannah’s access to money was the first step in a relationship that became increasingly abusive. By refusing to allow Hannah access to the small funds she needed to purchase paper, ink, and postage, Charlie inhibited Hannah’s ability to communicate with her family. She was forced to rely on Charlie for everything she needed. Hannah’s lack of access to even small amounts of money placed her in an extremely vulnerable position. Her economic reliance on Charlie diminished her sense of self-respect and agency and underscored her dependence on