Our Nig

by Harriet E. Wilson

  This second, lyceum-based rise to prominence by Wilson, if on a rather more localized Boston basis, was accompanied by one other, more daring foray. This occurred when Wilson attended a meeting called by Victoria Woodhull, the radical spiritualist reformer and free love proponent, in September 1874—a “National Mass Meeting of Radicals, Socialists, Infidels, Materialists, Free Religionists and Free Thinkers.” Woodhull could not attend, but her involvement meant the event attracted much controversy. Those who went were largely branded as “that clique who follow Victoria Woodhull in her efforts to attain notoriety by the enunciation of the most radical free love doctrine,” while the meeting itself was described as “the quintessence of nastiness.”28 Spiritualism, not free love, however, dominated the debates, as when a resolution was passed arguing that “the instincts of true womanhood are against bearing children for the State, and handing them over to its cares, whilst so stupidly ignoring the best modes of moral and spiritual culture”—a reference to a widespread feeling among the movement’s more radical members that a spiritualist lyceum education would be better than any education provided by the state. Wilson added her voice to these sentiments at the meeting, “express[ing] dissent from the doctrine of handing children over to the State, speaking from her own personal experience as one who / NEVER HAD A FATHER / never had a mother.” She also, in “an address of great vigor and enthusiasm” commented upon “the conduct of Spiritualists to each other,” speaking of her “grievances at the treatment she received from Boston Spiritualists.”29 It is difficult to be sure what these grievances were, though commonly at this time mediums were subjecting one another to accusations of chicanery in their performances. Possibly Wilson had been recently challenged at Temple Hall. However, she may have been complaining about a strain of racism in the spiritualist movement (a suggestion perhaps supported by the “eloquence” that she brought to her “plea for the recognition of her race [and] … philosophy of universal brotherhood” advanced at the Melrose meeting in September 1867).30 It is, however, in itself significant that she should turn up at and address such a radical and controversial event. Although she performed her lyceum functions, it seems she did not rest happily in mainstream spiritualism’s embrace, which may be why she is constantly shifting her location within the movement.

  For the time being, Wilson’s substantial contributions to the Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 1 continued and were further recognized when some Boston spiritualists launched an ambitious though unsuccessful attempt to expand their activities by reconfiguring the Boston Spiritualists’ Union as the “American Spiritual Institute” and appointed her as its “Director—Educational Department.” Reports in the Spiritual Scientist make it clear that this new body never took off, and that Wilson’s involvement was probably not substantial,31 but Wilson’s initial appointment does signal her good standing in the movement. More recognition followed, including a gathering at her residence to celebrate her birthday in 1875, graced by the presence of such prominent Boston spiritualists as Dr. A. H. Richardson and Dr. John H. Currier. She also addressed “the Twenty-Eighth Anniversary of the Advent of Modern Spiritualism; Commemorative Exercises at Paine Hall, Boston; … The 31st March, 1876.”

  Dr. Richardson next called upon Hattie Wilson to address the audience. The intelligence controlling her said it was the duty of the adherents of Spiritualism to endeavour so to live that on the passage of each year they might perceive with their spiritual senses that they had ascended another round in the ladder which led upward to the heavenly heights—that they occupied a position in advance of what they previously held; but it really seemed to the speaker that too many of the Spiritualists were halting just where they were twenty-eight years ago—they were “halting on the old camp ground,” where they had established themselves when the knowledge of the possibility of spirit communion first reached them.… The process of decease was but the gaining of a new tent in the camp ground of the Infinite, and the character of that tent and its location as to desirability or otherwise depended on the efforts made in this sphere of life to gain knowledge of higher things and to clothe it with deeds done for the good of humanity. The spirit controlling prophesied that great as had been the trials of the spiritual media in the past, there were still more serious ones in store for them and the cause they represented.

  Isaiah C. Ray of New Bedford referred in a highly complimentary manner to the work accomplished by the previous speaker [Wilson].32

  The sentiments expressed by Wilson were commonplace. Spiritualists were often questioning the movement’s ability to sustain its momentum at this time. Wilson also delivered her lecture through the “spirit controlling her,” and thus adhered to a wholly conventional, and for her typical, trance medium presentation. Even so, the high praise by the prominent speaker following her at such an important occasion would have added to Wilson’s reputation.

  But this second emergence into minor celebrity was again followed by a steady falling away, though this time the decline was slower. In 1876 Wilson is still to be found speaking at another event organized by the Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 1, a “Gathering at Highland Lake Grove,” that was “a great success.” There she delivered a “trance address mainly upon freedom of thought, showing how this had been upheld or violated in the events of American history, since the landing of the pilgrim fathers.”33 This must have drawn distantly on her reading of “deeds historic and names renowned” (this page) back in New Hampshire, and shows her continuing sense of how important it was to resist erosions of freedom. But after this speech, references to Wilson thin out to almost nothing until 1879, when the Banner names her as one of those involved in setting up a new lyceum, planned by J. B. Hatch, C. F. Rand, and others, including Mrs. Maggie Folsom and Mrs. C. Fannie Allyn—who had both long been closely associated with Wilson.

  This new lyceum decided to call itself the “Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 2 Charlestown District, Boston”—a name disconcertingly similar to that of the movement’s preeminent lyceum in Boston, the Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 1. Wilson, from the beginning, performed a prominent role, and her involvement saw her third, rather lesser rise to prominence. In the inaugural announcement of the lyceum in the Banner, April 26, 1879, “Mrs. Hattie E. Wilson” is named as the organizer of a “course of Sunday evening lectures and concerts” and the following week is identified as a member of the Lyceum’s “Standing Committee.” Soon the Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 2 was claiming success, stating on May 10 that “over 200 children” attended its “May Day Party” and the following week asserting that “two lyceums dedicated to the service of the angel-world … have become an absolute fact in Boston.” The following week (May 15), details were provided about “exercises” organized by Wilson and under her “direction,” specifically two “farces,” “Love of a Bonnet” and “Courtship under Difficulties,” in which Wilson also participated. At the end of the evening, “the exercises were closed with dancing.” By December, after the election of officers, she appears on the “roster” as the lyceum’s “Treasurer.”34

  This brash new lyceum, led by J. B. Hatch, the former conductor of Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 1, who possibly recruited Wilson to the new lyceum,35 invited members of the Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 1 to come to its “Decoration Sunday” event on June 8, 1879. Their polite refusal perhaps hints at a rivalry, which would have been exacerbated when Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 2 moved in the autumn from Charlestown to the center of Boston—to Amory Hall, which had only recently been vacated by the Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 1 (which had just moved to Paine Memorial Hall).36 Soon, Lyceum No. 2’s ambitions overreached those of its senior sibling: it forged relationships with the main spiritualist lyceums in Brooklyn and New York City and organized exchange visits, which were covered in the Banner. Wilson played a role on the organizing committee and probably visited New York.

  As it entered its second year of existence in April 1880, the C
hildren’s Progressive Lyceum No. 2 renamed itself (perhaps in an effort to ease rising tensions) the Shawmut Spiritual Lyceum—a name “handed down … from the spirit world, in commemoration of the coming of the Indian bands, who return to you from the upper hunting ground.”37 The Shawmut Spiritual Lyceum then took the lead in organizing the “Thirty Third Anniversary in Boston” of the advent of modern spiritualism—an anniversary celebration long overseen by Boston’s Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 1, so No. 2’s intervention into the annual event can only have caused further irritation. In the March 26, 1881, issue of the Banner, the Shawmut Lyceum announced that it had established a committee, including J. B. Hatch, C. Frank Rand, J. B. Hatch, Jr., and Hattie Wilson, to organize the celebration. The Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 1 persisted in organizing its own celebration, so the two ran (and were reported in the Banner) in parallel, but it was the Shawmut event that made the Banner’s front page, not least because it secured the services of the internationally prominent mediums W. J. Colville and J. Frank Baxter.38 The rivalry never surfaced openly in the Banner’s pages but can be inferred from the abrupt conclusion to a report by the Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 1 in May 1881: “We noticed with pleasure the face of the Conductor of Shawmut Lyceum among the visitors; also a number of his co-workers. This is as it should be.”39 By the summer of 1881, the Shawmut was so confident of its primacy that it hired Boston’s large Music Hall for its “Floral Sunday” celebrations of June 5, which, as reported in the Banner, opened with a “Banner March” of 140 people. Wilson was involved, as indicated in the August 20, 1881, issue of the Banner, which noted that “as [is] customary upon the opening Sunday [after the summer break], remarks were made by Conductor Hatch, Assistant Rand, Mrs. H. E. Wilson, [and] Mrs. Maggie Folsom.”40

  The Shawmut Lyceum seems to have been the more radical of these two big Boston lyceums. In particular, it proposed the controversial step, advocated by a “Mrs Carlisle Ireland” in October 1880, of “hold[ing] seances whereat the children can be present and can hold converse with the spirit world.” Since the spirits (according to spiritualist lore) controlled such events, not the mediums, they could become unpredictably rambunctious and even disruptive, so the Boston lyceums’ youngsters were almost never exposed to them.41 Wilson, however, as the Banner report noted, supported this change, along with Conductor Hatch. After a cautious delay, this step was enacted two years later by the Shawmut, as the Banner reported in January 1882: “The Spirit ‘LULU’ … addressed the children through the mediumship of Mrs. Brown.” Once the precedent had been set, it continued, mostly revolving around the work of the well-established medium Mrs. Maud E. Lord, who aimed her trance addresses chiefly at the general audience, though sometimes at the children.42

  By this time, however, it seems that Wilson’s role at the Shawmut Lyceum had begun to fade, coinciding with the emergence of dissension within the lyceum, marked by “earnest pleas” by its conductor, J. L. Hatch, “for harmony.”43 Wilson still appeared on occasion, for example when she was featured as the medium through which “Spirit Dr. Hammond [gave] one of his old-fashioned healing and developing circles” for the “Shawmut Sewing Circle” in January 1882. Attendees were charged ten cents—a detail that suggests that Wilson’s involvement with the lyceum system had a financial motive (though she certainly was also holding regular private sessions for clients in her chambers for which she would have charged). Generally, however, she became less evident in the Shawmut.44 Her occasional appearances were now minor, as when on May 6, 1882, she, along with Maggie Folsom, “made some impressive remarks” about the death of two of their lyceum co-workers, suggesting that “the noble work they had done on earth” was “small as in comparison with what they will do now that they have passed to the higher life.”45

  Once again Wilson’s presence fades away soon after achieving notable success in Boston’s spiritualist circles. We suspect that Wilson’s repeated failure to sustain her position may have had something to do with issues of race. For example, when the Banner carried a report in 1882 of a gathering “on the evening of Monday Jan. 2d.” of “a large delegation of the friends of Mr. and Mrs. J. A. Hatch— including among others representatives of the board of officers and the members of the Shawmut … at their residence … to observe the birthday of Mrs. Hatch,” “Hattie Wilson” was very noticeably the only individual not given a title before her name, even though she was one of those offering “brief remarks.”46 This omission is one of the repeated minor signs that she never fitted in very comfortably.

  Wilson’s Own Spiritual School

  Within the year another quite extraordinary development in Wilson’s spiritualist career occurs: Wilson now opens her own lyceum, or, as she called it, her school. It might be identified as her next rise in, and the high point of, her local Bostonian prominence, were it not for an underlying sense that it marks a deep-rooted departure from the spiritualist mainstream and a consequent marginalization. It seems to be a bold and quite sudden change from her past involvements—one announced in the Banner in February 1883, with no advance publicity:

  Notice. The first meeting of a Progressive School for children which is being formed in the Ladies’ Aid Parlors, met Sunday morning, February 4th, and will continue to meet there every Sunday morning. The children’s friend, Mrs. Hattie E. Wilson, with a few others, have undertaken to form a school that will aim to be both pleasing and instructive to the children, and hope to have the assistance of all liberal minded people to help them carry on the work. Children and friends of the children are cordially invited to meet with us next Sunday morning, and those who would like to take an active part or feel an interest in the undertaking, are invited to meet at the residence of Mrs. H. E. Wilson No. 15 Village street, next Friday evening, to offer any suggestions they may have to offer or express their views as regards the best mode of instructing the children that may favour us with their attendance. MRS. HATTIE E. WILSON47

  Wilson’s “liberal” school met in the parlors of the Ladies’ Aid Society, whose activities centered on spiritualist events. A typical “Ladies’ Aid” evening would involve a “conference on matters spiritual and progressive” during one of which, for example, “the subject was ‘Experiences,’ and some new people appeared interestingly in the rôle of speakers … changing ‘mute inglorious Miltons into active ones.’ ”48 Wilson’s school, however, does not seem to have been directly linked with these other activities, which it now ran alongside.

  For a short while Harriet Wilson wrote the reports of the meetings of the school she had established, known variously as the “First Spiritual Progressive School,” the “Spiritual Progressive School,” and the “Progressive School.” As these notices constitute almost all the writing known to be by Wilson outside the pages of Our Nig we quote them in full:

  LADIES’ AID PARLORS—The “First Spiritual Progressive School” met in this hall this morning and not withstanding the inclemency of the weather, we had quite an interesting meeting. We are not fully organized, but hope to be able next Sunday to begin our work in good earnest. The exercises this morning consisted of local and instrumental music, remarks by Mrs. H. E. Wilson and Mr. Street, and readings by the children. We shall endeavor to have a teacher of elocution, also one of music. After the readings of the children, remarks were made by Mrs. M. J. Folsom, which were heartily responded to by the audience. Mrs. Maud E. Lord favored us with some very pleasing remarks, which were enthusiastically received. In conclusion Mr. Cherrington gave us some very flattering predictions for our school, which we all hope will prove true.

  This week we shall issue the first number of a little paper, or lesson sheet called “The Temple Within,” to appear once a month. It is to be the property of the school, and no doubt will prove a benefit to it.

  In closing, the thanks of the school are tendered to those who favored us with their services on this occasion. Our sessions will be held every Sunday morning. Let our work show that we merit the confidence and
good will of our many friends. MRS. HATTIE E. WILSON.

  LADIES’ AID PARLORS—The First Spiritualist Progressive School met Sunday morning, Feb. 18th as usual. The first number of our newspaper, “The Temple Within,” made its appearance and met with a hearty welcome. It needs no recommendation from me; its golden lessons and bright thoughts will make friends for it wherever it goes. Besides our exercises for the children this morning we were favored with short speeches from Mr. J. C. Street, Mrs. A. M. H. Tyler, Mr. David Brown and Mrs. [M.] J. Folsom, after which a generous contribution was made to our funds by the audience, for which the donors will please accept our thanks. We shall always be pleased to meet the children’s friends and hear a kind word for them. MRS. HATTIE E. WILSON

  LADIES’ AID PARLORS—At the Spiritual Progressive School we are pleased to see many additions to our ranks. The time was occupied with lessons from “The Temple Within,” music lessons and a march. Our school aims to teach the children those spiritual truths that will be of lasting benefit to them, and we cordially invite all to pay us a visit, and lend us a helping hand in the work we have undertaken. We expect uphill work at first, as others have had before us; but if we are not successful it shall not be our fault. On this occasion we listened with pleasure to kind words from Mr. J. C. Street and Dr. Wyman, and hope to hear from them and many more of our friends often. MRS HATTIE WILSON Boston, Feb. 25th, 1883

  The announcements concerning the school continued in this vein: