FRANCES MIRIAM WHITCHER.
THE “WIDOW BEDOTT” AND “WIDOW SPRIGGINS.”
T was back in the early forties in “Neal’s Gazette” that the “Widow Bedott Table Talk” series of articles began to attract attention, and the question arose, Who is the Widow Bedott? for no one knew at that time that Mrs. Whitcher was the real author behind this nom-de-plume. James Neal himself—the well-known author of “Charcoal Sketches” and publisher of the magazine above referred to—was so struck with the originality and clearness of the first of the series when submitted that he sought a correspondence with the author, thinking it was a man, and addressed her as “My dear Bedott.” Mrs. Whitcher often insisted that she must cease to write, as her humorous sketches were not relished by some of her neighbors whom they touched, but Mr. Neal would not hear to it. In a letter of September 10, 1846, he wrote: “It is a theory of mine that those gifted with truly humorous genius like yourself are more useful as moralists, philosophers and teachers than whole legions of the gravest preachers. They speak more effectually to the general ear and heart, even though they who hear are not aware of the fact that they are imbibing wisdom.” Further on he adds: ‘I would add that Mr. Godey called on me to inquire as to the authorship of the “Bedott Papers,” wishing evidently to obtain you for a correspondent to the “Ladies’ Book.”’
For richness of humor and masterly handling of the Yankee dialect, certainly, the “Widow Bedott” and the “Widow Spriggins” occupy a unique space in humorous literature, and the influence she has exercised on modern humorists is more in evidence than most readers are aware of. Her husband, “Hezekiah Bedott,” is a character who will live alongside of “Josiah Allen” as one of the prominent heroes of the humorous literature of our country. In fact, no reader of both these authors will fail to suspect that Miss Marietta Holley used “Hezekiah” as a model for her “Josiah;” while the redoubtable widow herself was enough [♦]similar to “Samantha Allen” to have been her natural, as she, perhaps, was her literary, grandmother. Nor was Miss Holley alone in following her lead. Ever since the invention of “Hezekiah Bedott” by Mrs. Whitcher, an imaginary person of some sort, behind whom the author might conceal his own identity, has seemed to be a necessity to our humorists, as witness the noms-de-plume of “Artemus Ward,” “Josh Billings,” “Mark Twain,” etc., under which our greatest American humorists have written.
[♦] ‘similiar’ replaced with ‘similar’
Mrs. Whitcher was the daughter of Mr. Lewis Berry, and was born at Whitesboro, New York, 1811, and died there in 1852. As a child she was unusually precocious. Before she learned her letters, even before she was four years old, she was making little rhymes and funny stories, some of which are preserved by her relatives. Her education was obtained in the village school of Whitesboro, and she began to contribute at an early age stories and little poems to the papers. After she had won considerable literary fame she was married, in 1847, to the Rev. Benjamin W. Whitcher, pastor of the Protestant Episcopal Church at Elmira, New York, where she resided with her husband for a period of three years, continuing to contribute her humorous papers to the magazine, and taking as her models her acquaintances at Elmira, as she had been accustomed to do at Whitesboro. The people of Elmira, however, were not so ready to be victimized, and turned against her such shafts of persecution and even insult for her ludicrous pictures of them as to destroy her happiness and her husband’s usefulness as a minister to an extent that they were compelled to leave Elmira, and they removed to Whitesboro in 1850, where, as stated above, she died two years later.
Mrs. Whitcher was something of an artist as well as a writer and illustrated certain of her sketches with her own hands. During her life none of her works were published except in magazines and periodicals, but after her death these contributions were collected and published in book form; the first entitled “The Widow Bedott Papers,” appearing in 1855, with an introduction by Alice B. Neal. In 1857 came “The Widow Spriggins, Mary Allen and Other Sketches,” edited by Mrs. M. L. Ward Whitcher with a memoir of the author. We publish in connection with this sketch the poem “Widow Bedott to Elder Sniffles” and also her own humorous comments on some of her poetry, about her husband Hezekiah, which she wrote to a friend, pausing as the various stanzas suggest, to throw in amusing side lights on neighborhood character and gossip.
WIDOW BEDOTT TO ELDER SNIFFLES.