Quote #32
In those days I frequented the anti-slavery halls, in New York - heard many of their speakers - people of all qualities, styles - always interesting, always suggestive. It was there I heard Fanny Wright ... a woman of the noblest make-up whose orbit was a great deal larger than theirs - too large to be tolerated for long by them: a most maligned, lied-about character - one of the best in history though also one of the least understood. She had a varied career here and in France - married a damned scoundrel, lost her fortune, faced the world with her usual courage. Her crowning sorrow was when the infernal whelp who had been her husband tried in France, through the aid of a priest, to take from her her daughter, charging that the child needed to be protected from the danger of her mother's infidelistic teachings. Think of it! ... The scoundrel, through the aid of the French law, which is of all law probably the least favorable to women, got nearly her whole fortune, perhaps the whole of it, so that at the last, when she needed five thousand dollars or so, she had to beg it of him, he even then making the concession reluctantly. But my remembrance of her all centers about New York. She spoke in the old Tammany Hall there, every Sunday, about all sorts of reforms. Her views were very broad - she touched the widest range of themes - spoke informally, colloquially. She published while there the Free Inquirer, which my daddy took and I often read. She has always been to me one of the sweetest of sweet memories: we all loved her: fell down before her: her very appearance seemed to enthrall us. I had a picture of her about here - it is probably somewhere in the house still: a sitting figure - graceful, deer-like: and her countenance! oh! it was very serene.