Civil War Quilts: Petticoat Press #2: Sarah's Favorite for Fanny Fern

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Petticoat Press #2: Sarah's Favorite for Fanny Fern

2 Sarah's Favorite for Fanny Fern by Denniele Bohannon

Sarah Payson Willis Eldredge Farrington Parton (1811-1872)

Drawn from a commercial cabinet card dated 1864.

Sarah's Favorite remembers "Fanny Fern" a penname that became Sarah's favorite name. Intimates called her Fanny once she was a famous journalist. And famous journalist she was.

When in "reduced circumstances," several women took up the pen. Sarah's marital troubles and poverty mortified the Willis family who gave her little help. First widowed, then divorced after her second marriage, she determined to make a living in the newspapers.

The Willis men were journalists themselves editing periodicals about Calvinism, contemporary society and music. Her penname was so effective her brother did not know that his sister was Fanny Fern writing those popular columns for his own paper The Home Journal (a magazine of manners that evolved into Town & Country.). Once Nathaniel Willis found out he told assistant James Parton (eventually Fanny's third husband) to fire her.

James Parton (1822-1891)

Fanny's happiest marriage was to English-born James,

editor turned well-respected biographer.

Hearing of her firing, a competitor, editor of the New York Ledger, thought so much of her writing that he offered her $100 an installment for a serialized story---the format in which novels like Dickens's and Harriett Beecher Stowe's were often introduced. Fanny who'd begun writing for 5 cents a column was now the highest paid woman journalist in the United States in the 1850s.

Popular enough (thanks to Fanny) to post a circulation of 377,000

The New York Ledger is like Fanny quite obscure today---digitized copies not complete.

Sheet music riding on Sarah's novel Ruth Hall's popularity

Sarah's Favorite by Jeanne Arnieri

Fanny looked to her own experiences for her novels. Ruth Hall, which tells the story of her first marriage, her poverty-stricken widowhood and her success as a writer, sold more than 70,000 copies in a year after its 1854 publication. The basic premise was a cliche---woman without male help in financial straits---but the plot takes a dramatic turn. She succeeds on her own---new husband not required.

Curmudgeon Nathaniel Hawthorne was not a fan of female authors. In 1855 he wrote his editor that "America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women..." But he made an exception for Ruth Hall.

"In my last, I recollect, I bestowed some vituperation on female authors. I have since been reading 'Ruth Hall;' and I must say I enjoyed it a good deal. The woman writes as if the Devil was in her; and that is the only condition under which a woman ever writes anything worth reading."

Her novels sold well but not as well as the collected editions of her newspaper columns. Once a week the Ledger published her observations on culture, social mores and the irritating happenings she observed. Women did not write of irritation. She was unique and amusing, reminding one of the columns Calvin Trillin wrote for The Nation in the 1970s (I believe he earned the same amount that Fanny did 100 years later---low 3 figures.)

The status of women in all its complexities was her major interest handled with irony, satire and cynicism. Here is an imaginary letter from Hella seeking advice from an imaginary advice columnist.

"One bright afternoon I found myself in agreeable proximity to a young gentleman, to whom I resolved to make my wishes known; or in plain words, I asked the man if he would marry me, I wish you could have seen the look he gave me. ―Ah! Who shall paint that gaze? The largest, wildest pair of blue eyes I ever saw stared me in the face then. Poor fellow! Such a look of horror and amazement as his countenance wore, you never conceived of....I am getting old; what shall I do? "

The advice giver's reply (a bit insensitive to our ears:)

"The Editor responds: We would advise Hella to propose to a blind man this year."

This, of course, makes no sense but it is surprising and amusing---something no other female columnist at the time would attempt so successfully.

Sarah's Favorite by Becky Brown

One of the 1864 portraits. Fanny's hair is so

completely unfashionable for the times that one could

only guess she was inordinately proud of her curls

or making a personal stand against fashion.

Sarah's Favorite by Elsie Ridgley

Fanny continued the weekly column during the Civil War. Her first campaign was against shirkers who refused Lincoln's call to arms.

"We have no words to express our disgust...at the spectacle of a young man thus yawning away existence .... His well-knit limbs should be encased in a petticoat, and a subscription should be immediately raised to present him with a sewing-machine."

This threat to feminize and thus mortify malingerers seems inconsistent with her usual stands on equality. To quote friend Walt Whitman: