Slender and delicate as Miss Whittier had always been, she had known in her own person somewhat of the lawlessness and violence invoked against the cause she championed. For she, then a girl of twenty, had been present as a member of the Women’s Anti-Slavery Society, in the October of 1835, when the Boston mob surrounded the building in which the meeting was held and attacked Garrison who was to address it.
She was one of the brave women who, two by two, arm in arm, one woman white, one black, the former to protect the latter as far as possible, marched through the mob to the house of Mrs. Chapman, where the adjourned meeting was held, and the officers duly elected.
Devoted, brave, indomitable, resolute in purpose, Elizabeth Whittier’s intense interest in all that concerned the freedom of the slave, as well as her great literary ability, made her her brother’s companion and coadjutor. For to Whittier himself this cause was dearest; it was the cause which to his latest day he was more glad and proud to have championed than he was of all the fame his writings had brought him.
Even when Whittier’s fame was still identified with a cause which for the time kept him from the wider knowledge of the public, many guests were attracted by his name and personality. Not a few of these came from homes of much greater elaboration than the poet’s. Elizabeth felt this; yet never in her inmost heart was she untrue to the cause for which the poet had chosen poverty—almost obloquy.
Elizabeth H. Whittier
Yet once when guests were coming who lived in a style far beyond the simplicity of the Whittier home, she spoke out her dread of the inward comments which she knew would be made by the strangers.
But her brother had his consolation ready—who ever saw him when he was not ready?
“Why, Elizabeth,” the poet made answer, “it’s all upholstery. What does thee care for upholstery?”