Woolson decided to end her life when she was fifty-three, almost fifty-four, years of age. Her last year was full of pain and worry about how she would financially and physically manage to maintain her independence. It is easy to see that there was a complex set of reasons she chose to end her life. But was it a “choice”? I have been…
Today I wrote the words that brought Woolson’s life to an end. There is still much to say about her death and its aftermath, as well as her legacy. But to type the following sentences today was deeply moving: “When the nurse returned a second time, the window was wide open. (It had been tightly closed with curtains drawn when Miss Holas had…
One of Woolson’s close friends was John Hay, a famous man in his day who has been largely forgotten in ours. A new biography of him has just been published by Simon & Shuster. The author, John Taliaferro, contacted me a while looking for a good portrait of Woolson, and he was kind enough to have an advance copy of the book sent…
Henry James was born today in 1843. He was, arguably, Constance’s closest friend during her fourteen years in Europe. Henry in the 1880s, when Constance knew him After they lived under the same roof in the Villa Brichieri on the hill of Bellosguardo outside Florence, Constance started calling him “Harry.” That was a family name, just as she was called “Connie.” Although no…
I just watched a fascinating video of a recent discussion between the biographers Hermione Lee of the Oxford Centre for Life Writing and Gary Giddins of the Levy Center for Biography in New York. I was glued to every 1 hour and 5 minutes of it. Hermione Lee was so engaging and absolutely thrilling in her wide-ranging discussion of what she called the…
My class finished our discussion of East Angels last night. I was afraid they wouldn’t like the ending and would find the heroine rather contrived, but they did not. Having read The Portrait of a Lady first and understanding how Woolson was responding to and revising James in East Angels made it so much more meaningful and gave us a useful frame for…
Today I have been writing about Constance’s and Henry James’s visit to Stonehenge, in the autumn of 1884. It was so cold and blustery that they could barely speak to each other. On the way back to her lodgings in Salisbury, their carriage had to pull off the road and cower in a ditch for a half hour while the wind roared overhead.…
Today is Connie’s birthday. She was born in 1840, one-hundred and seventy-three years ago. My great-great-great grandfather was born in 1838. So that would put Connie back only five generations from me. Hard to believe! Shortly after Connie was born, scarlet fever struck the Woolson household, in Claremont, NH, and three of her older sisters died. Two survived the epidemic. The baby Connie…
Yesterday was Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Woolson never visited New Orleans, which is a shame. She wrote such amazing stories about post-Reconstruction Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. I would love to see what her keen, sympathetic eye would have seen in 1870s New Orleans. She noted many times how foreign Florida, in particular, seemed. How foreign would New Orleans have been! Woolson…
Most photographs of Woolson were taken with her turned away from the camera. She was exceptionally self-conscious about her appearance. But she was no George Eliot. No one ever reported that she was unattractive. All images of her indicate that she had a pleasant appearance. That she didn’t like her own looks is understandable, though. How many women have felt the same way? What…