It now became her task to learn the language which she must make her own, but she was an apt scholar, and bravely and speedily fought her way through its intricate words and phrases. As she became acquainted with Plymouth people she was surprised that the pupils in school were not taught to paint and embroider, and as two sisters of her husband were teaching a private school she engaged in the instruction of their pupils in those accomplishments. She also formed classes of girls, and taught them music, besides painting and needlework. In her visits among the sick she came to realize the needy condition of many families suffering from the effects of the embargo, which were added to the sad conditions of the revolution from which they had not yet recovered. Throughout the early years of her life in Plymouth, she worked with zeal in enlisting the aid and sympathy of those in comfortable circumstances in charitable work, and while engaged personally in visits among the poor she conceived the idea of associated work in aid of the sick and destitute.
Her husband died in Havana, April 28, 1824, and she was left with little means of support, except that derived from her own labors. Friends in Boston offered her aid which she refused, believing it inconsistent with the character of a true American to accept assistance while able to support herself.
She opened a school in the house of a friend on Fort Hill in Boston, but after a short time felt a longing to return to her native land, and sailed for Sweden in a vessel owned by Capt. John Russell. She found, however, her country not as she had left it, rich and moral, but a decaying monarchy, its people intemperate, and without the political freedom enjoyed in America. She lived for a time in Stockholm as a friend of Countess Ferson, and there received an advantageous offer of marriage, which she declined, saying, “I have been the wife of a free citizen, I will not lower myself by marrying a subject.” One day while riding with the Countess, she saw a ship flying an American flag, and exclaiming—“See the stars—see the stars,” told the Countess that she must return in that ship to her adopted country. And this she did, declaring that she preferred a home of poverty in a free country to an abode of luxury under a monarchy.
Arriving in Boston in delicate health, with symptoms of pulmonary disease, after a season of suffering, she removed to New York, hearing of a place there where she could teach. Her disease, however, increasing, she went south, where she spent two years with friends, engaged in finishing a translation of “Waldermar, the Victorious,” from the Danish of Ingerman, which she had begun while on her last voyage.
She had previously published with great success a work on “Drawing and Shadowing Flowers,” with lithographic plates, executed by herself, and “The Young Ladies’ Assistant in Drawing and Painting,” and several stories for magazines. She returned to Boston in 1837, with the hope of continuing literary work, but her disease increasing, she was obliged to abandon the publication of her book, and told her friends that if it should be published after her death, she hoped that a sketch of her life might be prefixed, for she “believed that it would make the women of America more sensible of the inestimable value of their free institutions; more thankful for their religious privileges, and more American, when they read her story. I would do something for the country where I have found a Saviour for my soul, where I have had a home, and where I shall have a grave.” She died at the Massachusetts General Hospital, March 15, 1838, and her body was removed to Plymouth and buried in Oak Grove cemetery. Her life and work should be remembered by something more enduring than an occasional allusion, and I suggest that a stone be erected over her grave with something like the following inscription:
This stone is erected by the Plymouth
Fragment Society in memory of its
founder, Marie de Verdier Turner, a native
of Sweden, who was born in Malmo,
in 1789, and died in Boston, March 15, 1838.