Rebecca Harding Davis: Preserving History through the Art of Literary Journalism

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Notes

¹ Published in the January 1863 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, “The Promise of the Dawn” features a prostitute, Lot, as the main character. Rose says of her, “Lot is a victim, but not a sentimental one” (42). Davis writes that “‘Lot’ is from life,” continuing, “You know, here, in a town like this [Philadelphia] it is easy to come into direct contact with every class and the longer I live – the more practical my observation is” (Letter to Annie Fields, 6 Dec. 1882). See Harris, A Life Among Writers, for Davis’s concern that the realistic treatment of her subject matter – prostitution – would cause Fields to reject her manuscript (57–58). Instead, Harris notes, it “received the coveted position in the Atlantic of lead story” (57).

² See Harris, Rebecca Harding Davis and American Realism (24–26) and Rebecca Harding Davis: A Life Among Writers, for more on the early work Davis did for, as well as her relationship with, Archibald Campbell, editor of the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, and her later work with The New-York Tribune. In A Life Among Writers, Harris looks at the influence Davis’s journalism had on her children, particularly Richard.

³ While scholars continue to reference Davis’s earliest writings as having been published in the Wheeling Intelligencer, there is little evidence of her involvement with the paper and much work still needs to be done in this area of Davis scholarship. Connery, Journalism and Realism (especially, “Rebecca Harding Davis,” 72–83), and Canada provide the only current scholarship I could find on Davis as a literary journalist.

⁴ See Fishkin’s Introduction for more on the intersections of fact and fiction in literary journalism (1–10). Her complete study covers the work of five American authors – all male – who began their careers as journalists and then became better known for their poetry and/or fiction: Whitman, Twain, Dreiser, Hemingway, and Dos Passos.

⁵ See Hartsock for a valuable historical overview of this fascinating but complex genre. Also see Connery, A Sourcebook and Journalism and Realism, as well as Forde.

⁶ Sims defines “immersion reporting” as “narrative techniques that free the voice of the writer”; it also has “high standards of accuracy” (“Art” 3). “Standard reporting,” he continues, “hides the voice of the writer, but literary journalism gives that voice an opportunity to enter the story, sometimes with dramatic irony” (“Art” 3).

⁷ Rebecca Harding’s first publications appeared without attribution. Following her marriage and throughout her long personal and professional life, she chose to be known as Rebecca Harding Davis. I refer to her as Davis in this essay, and all works by her are cited under Davis.

⁸ Mayhew (1812–1887), cofounder of the British satirical journal Punch, was a British journalist, humorist, playwright, and social reformer of the Victorian Era (1837–1901).

⁹ The descriptions of Mayhew’s and London’s work are Kerrane’s; the comparison to Davis is mine.

¹⁰ Perhaps following nineteenth-century reactions to the story, which may have been based on the anonymous nature of the text’s author or conventions of the time, scholars have often referred to the narrator of “Life” as male. Knowing Davis’s personal history, though, we can surmise that the narrator is Davis herself. However, an equal case can be made for the narrator being a general observer, specifically not identified as either male or female but meant to be androgynous, to represent both. Regardless, the narrator should not be referred to with the default (male) pronoun. I use the female pronoun here to refer to the narrator, assuming the character to be Davis, anonymous both within the story and as its creator.

¹¹ Davis was an avid walker all of her life (Harris, Life 22).

¹² Connery insists that in “cultural reporting” it is important to “see people in their environment and hear them speak in their own voices” (Journalism xvii).

¹³ Other Romantics were using dialect to some degree at the time “Life” was published, but Davis’s attempt to accurately reflect the speech of the workers predates that of the best-known writers of literary journalism (Twain and Crane) by more than a decade and deserves further consideration by scholars within this context.

¹⁴ Wheeling was a strategic Civil War border town, and the two meetings convened in Wheeling to resolve the issue of secession were held near the Harding home.

¹⁵ See “Arrested for Treason” and “The Case of Richard Harding” for more on this episode in Richard’s life.

¹⁶ I take this phrase from Phelps’s essay by the same name. In “Stories that Stay,” she writes of Davis’s “Life in the Iron-Mills,” “I am not indeed sure that this could strictly be called a short story” (20). Although she cannot “strictly” identify define the genre to which “Life” belongs, Phelps argues that “Life” is one of only eight short stories she believes to be worthy of “permanence” (see page 123 for Phelps’s definition of “permanence”). Permanence is a marker of literary journalism, according to Kerrane, who concludes that “the best characterization of literary journalism may ultimately be the definition that Ezra Pound gave for literature itself: ‘news that stays news’” (20).

¹⁷ I see Davis’s double vision and place in society as a benefit that adds depth and greater complexity to her writing. Rose reads it as a weakness, suggesting, “It is not surprising that Davis’s inclination to see both sides of every situation and her ambivalence about her own place in society sometimes blurs her images, diffusing her impact” (xi).

¹⁸ Union headquarters were established across the street from the Harding home in downtown Wheeling, but there was still much Confederate activity in the city, particularly what Davis describes as young men “secretly and at night” leaving “to join General Lee” (Bits of Gossip 78), which may be a reference to her brother’s nocturnal departure from Wheeling.

¹⁹ The First Wheeling Convention met in mid-May 1861, just one month after “Life in the Iron-Mills” was published. A second convention was held a month later. In late October 1861, residents of the thirty-nine counties in western Virginia, with Union troops overseeing the voting process, approved secession from Virginia and the formation of a new Union state. Following more than a year of discussions and political restructuring, West Virginia became a state in April 1863. See Barksdale for more on the formation of West Virginia.

²⁰ Carey uses this phrase to contemplate one of the problems of journalism; the connection to Davis is mine.

²¹ Sims proposes that “[l]iterary journalists share a goal of bearing witness” and calls attention to Ted Conover’s argument that “the participant/observer gains a privileged knowledge available to neither the participant nor the observer” alone (“Art” 13).

²² Kerrane credits Gellhorn with this phrase, but in July of 1899, almost a hundred years before Gellhorn’s use of this language, Davis had published an article in The Independent titled “The Mean Face of War.” In this article, she reflects on the changes brought about by the Civil War in her hometown of Wheeling, Virginia, detailing “the destruction and moral decline brought on by all wars” (Steinroetter 699).

²³ Alexander the Great wanted to be buried with his hands above the ground so that the world would know he took nothing with him into the hereafter. Davis is using this imagery to show that nothing was left to the grandfather in death, but she is also using it, as she does numerous other historical references, to display her level of education and breadth of knowledge, unusual for a woman of her time and place.

²⁴ In Bits of Gossip, Davis provides some biographical background on an Ellen Carroll (83–84), whose name she changed to Ellen Carter for the story published in Peterson’s and Ellen Carrol for that found in the Atlantic. In the Atlantic publication, she writes that the “family [was] named Carrol, or Carryl” (23). Although she is not clear on the spelling of Ellen’s last name, Davis asserts in Bits of Gossip that Ellen’s journey is “true in every detail” (83). In fact, the untimely death of an Ellen Carroll was reported in the Wheeling Register just one year after Davis‘s story appeared in the Atlantic. See “Suicide of a Woman by Drowning” for more on the death of the real-life Ellen Carroll.

²⁵ I use the quotation marks here because “Blind Tom” was the name used to advertise Thomas when he performed. His actual name was Thomas Wiggins Bethune (Wiggins representing the surname of his enslaved father), but he was also known as Thomas Greene Bethune (Greene being the surname of his enslaved mother). Bethune was the surname of Thomas’s enslaver.

²⁶ Davis inaccurately identifies Thomas’s enslaver at the time his musical ability became apparent as Perry H. Oliver. Oliver was actually Thomas’s stage manager, hired by James Neil Bethune, a Georgian lawyer and Thomas’s “owner,” to exhibit “Blind Tom” in public venues, a lucrative proposition for both men. We should not condemn her for this error, however, for future scholars Rose and Pfaelzer make their own mistakes in the biographical information they give for Thomas: Rose identifies the man who bought Thomas and his parents as Cauthen (46), and Pfaelzer writes that “‘Blind Tom’ … [was] displayed by his master,” who “took him on a tour that is said to have earned $100,000 in the first year” (76, 100). Bethune, and later his son John, did exhibit “Blind Tom” at various points in time, but it was Oliver who first took him on tour. Pfaelzer also says that “Blind Tom” was never exhibited in Europe, but we now know that Bethune took Thomas on a European concert tour in 1866. Unfortunately, because of the celebrity status of “Blind Tom,” quite a bit of confusing information has been made available to those interested in knowing about the real Thomas. Today, we have two biographies of his life that may help to correct and eradicate the misinformation; see O’Connell and Southall.

²⁷ Pfaelzer criticizes Davis for “presum[ing]” to know the suffering of and to speak for the enslaved Ben and Thomas, writing that “[i]n ‘John Lamar’ and ‘Blind Tom,’ Davis … put[s] presumably unspoken assumptions and histories into words, to interpret through representation” (105). Although as a white woman she could not truly feel the horror of the young musician’s circumstance, Davis does try to honor his struggle through the representation of “something that took all the pain and pathos of the world into its weak, pitiful cry” (“Blind Tom” 94).

²⁸ Joe is her “twin” brother in this version of the story (214); in the Atlantic, he is the “nearest to Ellen in age” of the Carrol children (23).

²⁹ In Peterson’s (1863), Ellen tells one of the women in the house with her, “I’ve packed some of my own clothes, and Joe’s shirts as he left behind, an’ his gold sleeve buttons” (215). Ellen carries “her Testament, their two or three silver spoons, Joe’s box of Sunday collars, and what little money was left” in the Atlantic story (1865) (25). Davis recalls in Bits of Gossip (1904) that Ellen “had but a few dollars, and soon lost them in the cars. She carried nothing with her but a little bag filled with Joe’s neckties and bits of finery which she thought he would need” (84). The discrepancies in the three accounts, written over a period of more than forty years, are relevant in that they prove Ellen remained important in Davis’s life between the first telling of her story and the last. Though a “commoner,” Ellen was a woman Davis never forgot. Albeit every time she told the story the small details changed, the essence of “Ellen” remained the same, somehow making Ellen’s journey more real, perhaps even legendary.

³⁰ “Paul Blecker,” published in the Atlantic in 1863, is one of Davis’s Civil War stories.

³¹ Much later, in “Stories that Stay,” Phelps acknowledges “a sense of personal indebtedness” to the author of “Life in the Iron-Mills” (see pages 119–20). Rose identifies two other nineteenth-century authors who were inspired by Davis, “Louisa May Alcott and Helen Hunt Jackson” (168).