Shame the Devil , livre ebook

Shame the Devil

A Novel
Debra Brenegan

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
©2011 State University of New York Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Excelsior Editions is an imprint of State University of New York Press
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brenegan, Debra.
Shame the devil : a novel / Debra Brenegan.
    p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-4384-3587-9 (alk. paper)
1. Fern, Fanny, 1811-1872—Fiction. 2. Women novelists—Fiction. 3. Women journalists—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3602.R4486S53 2011 813'.6—dc22      2011003865
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Acknowledgments
Special thanks go to James Sappenfield for introducing me to Fanny Fern in graduate school. He was exactly right when he told me, “I have someone you need to read that you'll really like.” Thanks, too, to Kristie Hamilton and Genevieve McBride for nurturing my studies of Fern. My gratitude extends to Gwynne Kennedy, George Clark, Liam Callanan, Jane Nardin, John Goulet, and all of my professors who helped support my writing and critiqued drafts of this book. I appreciate receiving a Graduate School Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a Summer Research Stipend from Westminster College—both of which aided my research and revision.
Many thanks go to Rose Marie Kinder, Trudy Lewis, and Phong Nguyen, members of my Missouri writing group, who read every word of this novel and gave unfailing support. Other wonderfully helpful writing friends include: Rochelle Melander, Monica Rausch, and Lynn Wiese Sneyd. I've also been lucky to have the friendship of Karen Geschke, Maureen Schinner, and Betsy Stern, who have always stood by me.
I am grateful for the generous presence of everyone at Westminster College including Dave Collins, Wayne Zade, Maureen Tuthill, Theresa Adams, Heidi Levine, Carolyn Perry, Barney Forsythe, and my students, especially Sarah Blackmon, who designed the Willis family tree.
Special thanks to James Peltz, my editor, who took a chance on this book.
Thanks, too, to my brothers, Jim, Tom, Ken, and Ron, and to my stepdad, Dean, who “knew I could do it.” To all my extended family and great circle of friends—thank you for your support and love.
Thanks and love go to my mom, Mary DeMille Ludvigsen, who never tired of listening to me talk about Fanny; and to Sara and Joel Rozansky, who happily shared the excitement of this project with me. Much love and special thanks to Jordan and Chelsea Brenegan for losing bits and pieces of their mother to research and writing days. We always did make it to violin lessons!
I am thankful for the loving presence of Callie, my twenty-year-old cat, who warmed my lap through many a long computer session.
And, finally, I am enormously grateful to Steve Rozansky, my wonderful husband, who is my deepest love, my best friend, and my staunchest ally. I can't imagine a better life partner.

A Note about Sources
While Fanny Fern, Walt Whitman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Catharine Beecher, N. P. Willis, Harriet Jacobs, and other people who really lived appear in this book as fictional characters, I've tried to render their lives and times as accurately as possible. I also sought to preserve Fanny Fern's unique writing style and to present her work exactly as it first appeared in print, including intended or unintended irregularities in spelling, grammar, punctuation, and usage. I read widely about Fern and her contemporaries and am grateful to Joyce Warren, for her thoroughly researched and well-written biography, Fanny Fern: An Independent Woman . I also found Nancy A. Walker's book, Fanny Fern , very helpful. I am grateful for access to the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College and to those who helped me wade through the Fern archives. Thanks, also, to Josephine Kuo and her husband, Hon-Ming Eng, for allowing me access to their house, formerly Fanny Fern's dwelling in New York. In addition, I gained wonderful insight from visiting the Merchant's House Museum in New York and appreciate the information they provided about life in nineteenth-century New York.
I give credit to early Fern scholars, Elaine Gellis Breslaw and Florence Bannard Adams, and read their respective texts Popular Pundit: Fanny Fern and the Emergence of the American Newspaper Columnist , and Fanny Fern, or a Pair of Flaming Shoes , with great interest. Biographic works by James Parton and Ethel Parton were also enormously helpful, as was scholarly work by a host of authors, especially Nina Baym, Mary Kelley, Nicole Tonkovich, Jane Tompkins, and Ann Wood. I even managed to get through “Moulton's” unauthorized biography, The Life and Beauties of Fanny Fern .
My bottomless thanks to these people and to all of those who documented, researched, and wrote about Fanny Fern before me. Their efforts made mine possible.
Chapter One

Sarah Payson Willis, Outskirts of Boston, Saturday, June 29th, 1816
Who but God can comfort like a mother?
—Fanny Fern, A New Story Book for Children , 1864
Sarah would soon be five years old. Old enough, her father said, to start doing a few more chores and to learn that the world wasn't all whimsy and fun; it was work and effort and had to be taken seriously. It was a warm, sunny day. A few wispy clouds floated high in the bluebird sky and the yellow ball of sun warmed Sarah's back as she crouched among the waist-high plants in her mother's garden behind the house. Sarah's bonnet slipped down the back of her head, as it often did, and she knew she should take a moment to readjust it, yet she didn't. She broke off the tops of some daisies in the garden. There were so many daisies; surely a few wouldn't be missed. She looked around, and seeing that Louisa and Julia occupied little Mary, and Nat grubbed for fishing worms at the other end of the yard and seemed to pay her no attention, Sarah pinched the blooms off a few soft pink roses and one glorious blue hydrangea. She was making a little church, a church where all the good ants and crickets could come and worship. She stuck the hydrangea elegantly into a small puddle of mud. It would serve as the focal point—a lovely, soft statue surrounded by a shimmering moat. Sarah arranged the daisies in a circle around the hydrangea and imagined them to be cushions the insect worshippers could recline upon. She sprinkled a few bread crumbs from her pocket near the daisy lounge—to serve as both communion and lunch, she supposed. Sarah smelled each rose, then stuck the fragrant beauties at spaced intervals to provide shade for the more delicate bugs, or for the ones who might have forgotten their bonnets or hats.
A shadow fell upon her church scene, and looking up, Sarah saw the very pregnant form of her mother silhouetted against the dazzling sun. Sarah grinned broadly at the smile she knew would be on her mother's face, even though it took her several blinks in the new light to make it out.
“I see you're making good use of the flowers,” Hannah Willis said.
“Yes, Mother. It's a church,” Sarah said and proceeded to explain her composition.
Hannah wiped her forehead with a small lacy handkerchief. “It's certainly nothing like Park Street Church, is it?”
“No, Mother. And the Sexton won't find us here, either.” The Sexton had an eye out for Sarah, she knew. He and every other pastor that came near the family. Sarah's father adored pastors. He had spoken with all of them about his worries for her, about her wickedness. Sarah wiggled during prayers, interrupted conversations, asked too many questions for a girl growing so big. What could be done to inject modesty, humility, and piety into her—quickly, before her bad habits took root? Most of the pastors (except for Reverend Payson) eyed Sarah gravely and whispered gruff advice to her father, advice for punishment or deprivation sure to smooth her rough edges. Despite all the fuss, Sarah didn't feel wicked, and, so, avoided clergymen, and their lectures, as much as possible, running from the table as soon as dinner was over, if they were visiting, looking sheepishly at her shoes if Father stopped the family to talk to a minister after a sermon.
Hannah set the basket she was carrying (it smelled full of blueberry muffins) on the ground beside the flower church and gently straightened Sarah's bonnet. “How would you like to come with me this afternoon, my pet, and see a grown-up lady's flower church?”
With five siblings (the eldest, Lucy, was in the parlor learning sewing), Sarah never missed a chance to be alone with her mother, and so, the two walked for what seemed an eternity beneath a great many trees along a grassy path. They were mostly quiet as they walked, enjoying the dappling sunshine, listening to bird twitter, and watching the bushes as they passed to see if a rabbit might run out. Just as Sarah's legs grew tired, they came to a little wooden house almost engulfed by lilac bushes. The bushes weren't blooming, but in front of them, in great profusion, were hundreds of opened posies of every color and scent. Sarah wanted to pull the flower fragra