Before finding its current home, the book belonged to the family of one of Allen’s victims, John Fenno. When Allen had attempted to rob his wagon, Fenno tackled the surprised bandit, who shot him and ran away (fortunately, Fenno suffered only a flesh wound — his suspender buckle deflected the bullet). Impressed by Fenno’s gumption, Allen asked that his “body of work” go to the only man who ever offered him any resistance. The Fennos found an interesting use for the gift: they would tan their misbehaving children’s backsides with the skin off the scoundrel’s back. Fenno’s daughter finally donated the book after her kids found another use for it: terrifying their friends with its binding’s grisly back-story.
Let the bodies hit the (Senate) floor
We may think today’s red-state/blue-state divide is bad, but this artifact proves that modern partisanship can’t compare with the past’s, and far worse things than Cheney’s F-bombs have been let loose upon the US Senate floor. In 1856, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner delivered an impassioned abolitionist speech containing some memorable rhetorical flourishes: the Boston native compared slavery to a harlot and ridiculed South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, co-author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, for embracing her as his mistress. Butler wasn’t in attendance that day, but his nephew, South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks, was. Two days later, a vengeful Brooks waited until the Senate chamber was nearly empty before attacking Sumner at his desk, delivering a beating so brutal it broke the ebony cane he used for a weapon and kept Sumner’s seat empty for the next three years. The cane in question eventually ended up in the BOSTONIAN SOCIETY’s collection, but Brooks didn’t miss it — his admiring Southern constituents sent him dozens of brand new ones.
A shocker from Stowe
When Boston’s John P. Jewett and Company published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe became a national celebrity and moral exemplar in many minds, but few today recall that another local literary venture nearly made her a public pariah. The SCHLESINGER LIBRARY — part of Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study — has correspondence between Stowe and Oliver Wendell Holmes about edits to her forthcoming article in the Atlantic Monthly, “The True Story of Lady Byron’s Life.” The 1869 article was Stowe’s attempt to vindicate her friend Lady Byron (widow of the century’s favorite heartthrob poet, Lord Byron), who suffered ridicule after her late husband’s mistress published her memoirs. Stowe responded with a tabloid-worthy exposé about Lord Byron’s debauchery, which included allegations of incest — marrying your cousin may have been acceptable then, but siring a child with your half-sister? Not so much.
Holmes championed the piece over other editors’ objections, believing it would bring buzz to the magazine. He was right. But the public wasn’t ready to see the grandmotherly Stowe dishing about such sordid matters: 10,000 scandalized readers dropped their subscriptions, and Stowe became the target of attacks by cartoonists and columnists on both sides of the pond. The years have glossed over the controversy, and American Lit students who critique the sentimentality of Uncle Tom’s Cabin today might be surprised to learn its author was once accused of shocking vulgarity.
