2010 | Jessica Jewett

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>Setting the record straight about Fanny Chamberlain

Posted by Jessica Jewett 5 Comments »

>I am going to have to write this blog in the third person and detach myself emotionally from it, otherwise the things that need to be said will get jumbled and sound like I’m lashing out. I will, however, say that it took me years to get to a point where “the Fanny backlash” no longer causes me serious pain. That life ended in 1905 and even though I’m very public about my past life, including writing this book telling my story, part of my journey has been to teach myself to let go of the lingering anger and sorrow from that life. I was well aware of what people thought of me back then and I’m well aware of what people think of me now. I will never fit in with the status quo and I have accepted that.

All that being said, from a historical perspective, there seems to have been a poisonous myth grown up around Fanny Chamberlain that needs to be eradicated. As long as I am here and breathing, I cannot let the myth stand untested. This is where I will turn to third person in speaking about her to address the myths.

Up until the publication of Diane Monroe Smith’s book, Fanny & Joshua, in 1999, historians left Fanny as an unpleasant footnote in Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain’s biographies. Pictures were painted of her as being cold, unfeeling, self-serving, flighty, vain and a spinster desperate to marry the first available man whether she loved him or not. I have seen some people go as far as to say she was a lesbian and spent more time with her lesbian lovers than her own husband. We have to ask ourselves as historians and history enthusiasts today, where did these ideas originate? Certainly they did not originate from primary sources and that is the most frustrating aspect of the entire subject. The opinions about Fanny cannot come from primary sources because the bulk of Fanny’s written material has either been destroyed over the years or is in private collections inaccessible to the public.

Also, much of the Fanny myth was spun by her granddaughter, Rosamond Allen, who only knew Fanny for the last twelve years of her life. By that point, Fanny was dealing with the depression that came with the total loss of her eyesight. Rosamond only knew a woman suffering from illness, disability and depression. She cannot be relied upon to paint an accurate picture of a life that spanned 80 years. In the 1930s, Rosamond sold the Chamberlain house and almost everything in it. I have heard things about how she got rid of papers and letters that I cannot repeat, but it points to a granddaughter born so late that she had little to no attachment to her grandparents’ possessions. This is not as reliable of a source as people think.

Another part of the general Chamberlain myth was spun by Ellis Spear. He served under Lawrence in the 20th Maine and took over after Lawrence was promoted out of the regiment. They began as friends but by the late nineteenth century into the early twentieth century, Spear became bitter and argued with Lawrence about things that happened forty or fifty years before. Spear was not truthful in all of his accounts, yet one of the biographies about Lawrence drew heavily from his writings. That particular biography was very critical of Fanny when it mentioned her at all and many of the conclusions drawn were by the modern author who skewed his own opinion into the documentation. Biographies are dangerous when the author takes too much liberty with interpretation and preconceived notions.

So, who do we believe about Fanny? We could begin by addressing the biggest myth about her – that she never loved her husband, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Since there isn’t a lot of her written material left in comparison to the volumes of his written material, people seem to draw the conclusion that there was no love for him, or that she was even incapable of love altogether. I have a few very telling pieces of her letters that I have found deeply buried online and in the Smith book. Let’s look:

I am sitting now at the same window where we sat together all that night. How could you think that I would shrink from you ever! You who seem so holy, so pure and noble to me! — how could I even if you did press my finger to your dear lips? O! there was nothing even then, that you could have done that would not have seemed beautiful and right to me. Ah! those nights! so full of terrible beauty; will they never come again?…O! dear Lawrence I would know you more, and I would have you know me as you never have known me. My soul longs to speak to yours as it never has spoken…I rest in you as I never have rested before; — you know it, do you not? and I would be everything to you; I would nestle closely in your arms forever, and love you and cling to you and be your ‘bird’: dear, precious heart! -January 1852

She’s a cold hearted snake, right? That certainly sounds like a woman deeply in love to me, especially when you take into account her other letters that she wrote expressing the fact that she had a difficult time expressing her feelings. That really gets to the heart of the matter. Lawrence had a habit, in his excitement over having a lady love, of showing her letters to his mother, his sister, his brothers, their friends, etc. He thought she hung the moon and he wanted other people to think she hung the moon too, so he showed people her thoughts and feelings. Fanny was very private about what she thought and felt, however. When she found out what he was doing, she begged him to stop showing people her letters and she stopped expressing her deepest feelings in future letters, instead choosing to make their face-to-face encounters that much sweeter and more private. She explained her position:

You know dear Lawrence that I may breathe to you, even as to my own heart, in all innocence and perfect trustfulness, those things which would ever sink me in the estimation and respect of any third person; for no other being can know what we are to each other. -ca. 1850s

Neither Fanny nor Lawrence were without their faults. Lawrence had a terrible jealous streak, he could be very insecure, he came on very strong with his feelings and wore his heart on his sleeve. He had not endured abandonment and loss as Fanny had in her youth. Fanny’s private nature and difficulty expressing her feelings was rooted in the fact that she was sent away from the only home she ever knew at the age of four to be shipped around to various relatives until she was finally adopted by her biological first cousin, Reverend George Adams. We know now the damage that an unstable early childhood and adoption can do to a person when the matter is not handled carefully. She grew up in a good home but her behavior suggested that she feared abandonment and chose to rely on her own independence than rely on people who might disappear someday.

People also seem to assume that Fanny’s early desire for a platonic marriage was a sign of her distaste for Lawrence. We have to look outside of the bubble of their relationship to understand why Fanny might have felt that way. In the nineteenth century, childbirth was the biggest threat to a woman’s life. As a girl, Fanny heard of a local woman who lost her husband at sea and she developed a fear of ships and water that lasted the rest of her life. If one takes that into consideration, then hearing of another local woman who died in childbirth would certainly inspire fears for her own life in the bloody mess of having children.

Perhaps the biggest reason why Fanny wanted to delay motherhood was because of how she lived her life before she was married. The majority of women at that time never had any real independence. They went from their father’s household to their husband’s household, ultimately ruled by both men in different phases of her life. Fanny, on the other hand, didn’t even get married until she was 30, although she did want to be married earlier. There was a gap in her adult life without a husband to rule her. She moved to Portland from Brunswick in the late 1840s and lived in a studio in a part of the city populated by artists, sculptors and musicians. She led an independent life there, which was very unique for women of her time. Only the illness and death of her adoptive mother brought her back home to Brunswick and falling in love with Lawrence kept her from going back to that life in Portland.

Fanny was also more educated than her peers. She went to a music school in New York City where she learned to become a music teacher herself. She then moved a thousand miles away to Georgia and became a music teacher at a ladies school. Her decision to go was not her lack of love for her fiance but because she refused to enter into a marriage with debts. Upon marriage in those days, everything belonging to a woman became the legal property and responsibility of her husband, including any debts she incurred as a single woman. She refused to do that to Lawrence, so while he finished his education, she worked to improve their future. She resisted the idea of becoming a housewife bound to home and hearth because it was, frankly, a waste of her education and talents, and she knew it. Also, she knew they were not a wealthy couple and she did not want Lawrence to shoulder the responsibility of providing for the family alone. If she had an education and work skills, in her mind, two incomes were better for their future than one. Having children too soon would force her to stay home.

Lawrence suggested that they delay conceiving a child for a few years by using contraceptives. He knew her better than the historians do today and he knew that her idea for a platonic marriage was not due to her lack of desire for him. On the contrary, his letters from that period of discussion show that they were well aware of their mutual desire, or “that measure of humanity,” as he called it. Birth control was illegal in those days, so the fact that they discussed the future of their sexual relationship at length shows that they were trying to compromise on Fanny’s fear of childbirth and her desire to contribute to the family. The fact that Fanny conceived within four weeks of their wedding day and the rapid births of children clearly shows that their physical relationship was intense and a natural extension of their mutual love.

This is just a small piece of the myth of Fanny Chamberlain. There is a lot more to it but I don’t want to make the blog too long.

As a somewhat altered, maybe wiser, no less emotional development of a soul that once bore the name Fanny, I can tell you unequivocally that my heart loved his. Part of my soul will never stop loving his. I understand the curiosity about our lives at that time and I understand there are a lot of Lawrence’s female fans who loathe me because my name was once Fanny Chamberlain. Some of his fans can be rather hardcore and unwilling to see the other side of the coin. I was basically spat on and unfairly judged just last night by someone who deemed herself “crazy about Lawrence.”

Please remember when you study anybody famous in history that they are not just words on a page or grainy black and white pictures to be judged, picked apart, adored, hated, objectified, and so forth. The soul is deathless. Just because the life concluded does not mean those souls are gone forever. We are out there amongst you feeling the shadows of our old identities. Don’t judge us without knowing the whole story. Whether you believe it or not, I did love him and I devoted as much of my life to him as I could, though neither of us were perfect.

To learn the rest of my story, please click the book below.

>Dressgasm of the Day: 1850s summer dress

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I haven’t done a dressgasm in a while, so I thought it was high time I got back into it. I found this dress on eBay, where I find most of my dressgasm examples.

Today I bring you a dress from the 1850s, as in pre-Civil War. In the nineteenth century, it was common for young women to wear gauzy see-through fabrics in the summer when the weather was too hot for heavy wool or other fabrics they used in the winter. Of course the bodice sufficiently covered the lady so she was as modest as expected, but the thinness of the fabric allowed for a breeze to keep her cool. This fabric is beautiful and luxurious because of the size and irregularity of the print. As a rule of thumb, the larger and more complicated the print, the more the lady had to buy so everything would match in the pattern. That means the lady had some money to spend on her wardrobe. I have not seen a flower print like this before so it is quite unique in my experience of studying nineteenth century clothing.

The lady who owned this dress was most likely in her late teens or early twenties. Once a woman was established in her marriage and having children, she probably wouldn’t wear dresses like these anymore. It would have been like Mariah Carey being in her 40s and still dressing like she’s 20.

This lady would have worn undersleeves under the pagoda sleeves of the dress and the skirt would have had her petticoat visible underneath as well. She would probably have worn a necklace and a light bonnet with flowers to match the dress as best as she could, but since she probably had money, she may have had a bonnet or hat specifically made to match such a lovely dress.

>Titanic exhibit in Atlanta

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>Today, in honor of the 98th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, I’m lifting a blog from my old website about my visit to the Georgia Aquarium in 2009. There was a special exhibition that summer of artifacts from the Titanic wreck site. Here is what I experienced.

Saturday was one of those amazing days that teaches you what’s really important as far as being around people who really understand you and accept you unconditionally. Michael and I spent the day with our friend from high school, Lindsey, and her husband, Paul, who I hadn’t met before but turned out to be exceptionally awesome.

Our plan was to go to Gladys Knight Chicken and Waffles to eat lunch and then go to the Georgia Aquarium for the afternoon, but when we got to downtown Atlanta, we realized the parking garage was too far of a walk from the chicken and waffles place. Lindsey is seven months pregnant, so I kind of eye her like a ticking time bomb. We ended up cutting through the park by the CNN building to go to Ted Turner’s restaurant. I think it’s called Montana or something. They serve bison instead of beef there and apparently bison is supposed to be healthier for you. I ate bison pot roast, which was shockingly good. It only tasted a tiny bit different than beef.

After lunch, we cut back through the park and walked to the Georgia Aquarium, slower since we were full from eating so much. I was pretty surprised at how crowded the aquarium was because I had read in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that attendance had dropped by 37% since it opened in 2005. You would never know it by the lines on Saturday to get tickets. Most of the tickets for the Titanic exhibit were sold out so we had to wait an hour and a half just to get into it. We were going to do the Titanic exhibit first and the regular aquarium afterward but we didn’t count on the Titanic exhibit being so popular. I do love this aquarium with or without special exhibits. It’s the biggest one in the world with animals like four whale sharks (which average at about 30 feet each) and three beluga whales (about 15 feet each). I have a special attachment to Nico (pronounced like Jon Knight’s Nikko), which is the male beluga whale, because he plays with us at the window the most. I had very high aspirations of being a marine biologist throughout my childhood and the first book I ever wrote was a guide to whales and dolphins. I’ve been to this aquarium enough now that I could probably give a tour on my own.

The Titanic exhibit itself was stunning, by every meaning of the word. The only fault I found with it was how crowded it was. They had us crammed in there like sardines so I didn’t get to have a close look at every display. I understand how popular it is and how they have to try to get to everyone but cramming so many people into it might be a little dangerous for the artifacts if somebody bumps into a display too hard or whatever.

Before we went into the exhibit, aquarium workers handed out faux tickets for the ship. We were each given a different passenger with a little biographical information and at the end of the tour, we were to find out if our passenger was a survivor or victim. I was given a second class passenger by the name of Mrs. Irene Corbett and this is what I found about her on the internet:

Mrs Walter H. Corbett (Irene Colvin) was born in 1881/1882, the daughter of Bishop and Mrs Levi A. Colvin of Provo, Utah. Irene was married to Walter Corbett and had three children. She had travelled to London in the winter of 1911-1912 to study nursing while her children stayed with her parents.

Irene’s parents received a letter from her on April 15th in which she said she would take passage on the Titanic. She said several Mormon elders were taking passage on the ship, however it was later uncertain as to whether these elders had actually travelled on the ship. Irene Corbett boarded the Titanic in Southampton.

After the sinking, Bishop Colvin telegraphed New York to find out what had happened to his daughter. He received in answer two telegrams on the afternoon of April 19th. The first stated: “New York, April 19, Levi Colvin, Provo, Utah. Neither the name of Mrs Irene Corbett nor anything like it appears on the Titanic’s second cabin list of passengers as having sailed from Southampton. WHITE STAR LINE.” Minutes later the second telegram arrived: “New York, April 19, Levi Colvin, Provo, Utah. Now find name of Mrs Irene C. Corbett is on the list of passengers having sailed from Southampton, but regret is not a survivor on Carpathia. WHITE STAR LINE.”

Irene Corbett was one of 14 second class women who perished in the sinking.

The exhibit took you through the conception of Titanic, into building it, through the journey to New York, the sinking and the rediscovery of the wreckage by Robert Ballard in the 1980s. There were replica cabins set up with some real artifacts in them to show you what first class and third class were like. I read that the cost of a first class suite would be the equivalent of something like $40,000+ today and a third class cabin that you shared with four other people would be the equivalent of something like $400 today. It was especially interesting to enter the corridor built to replicate the third class corridor because you could feel how cramped it was and how starkly bare it was compared to first class. The replicated third class had ambient noise like what you would have heard and felt being so close to the ship engines and it was loud enough that children on the tour were getting scared and asking what the noise was. It was an absolute eye opener to be amongst the finery in first class and then, boom, thrown into the bareness of third class. Interestingly enough, the accommodations we had on the NKOTB cruise with Carnival were much closer to third class on the Titanic than first class and that was a little shocking to me, considering we are supposed to live in this advanced modern society.

A lot of people were asking me what I felt in the exhibit as far as spirits go because my Ghost Hunters guys investigated there earlier this year (or was it last year?). Nothing in particular struck me about the reconstructed cabins themselves and that tells me there were not many things in them pulled from the actual wreckage. There were a few things in them but no real energy attached to them. It was mostly the pieces of clothing that had the most energy attached to them. Before I got to the clothing, though, I do remember a display with items of a lady’s toilette (like beauty stuff) and it was the hairbrush that grabbed me. It was too crowded for me to feel out anything specific about the residual energy from the owners of these things though.

The last room was what grabbed me the most. There were a lot of things in one room that had been excavated from the wreckage and it was like coming into a space with a lot of different confused energies. There were two shirts in separate display cases in the middle of the room. One was mostly white (it might have been another color but faded to white) and the other was a blue and white striped shirt. I never got close enough to read the plaques because it was so crowded so I don’t know to whom the shirts belonged, but the closer I got, the more I felt that brick in my stomach before my panic attacks hit. Both of the men who owned those shirts, or maybe it was just one man, did not survive and he knew long before he died that he was going to die. Excuse my language but you’ll never experience a mind-fuck like that unless you are empathic or spiritually sensitive in similar ways. Feeling the lingering affects of fear that intense was actually far worse than the feelings I’ve picked up from Civil War uniforms. The difference between a soldier and a passenger on a ship is the soldier lives every minute of his life knowing he might die but dying never enters the passenger’s mind. A disaster and facing death is much more of a shock for the passenger and there is absolutely a distinct difference in energy between a soldier and anyone else.

All in all, the Titanic exhibit was well-worth the money. I just wish tourists would learn to heed the “no photography” rule at these things. There was a lady in front of me taking a million pictures with a camera that had a huge bright flash and I wanted to pummel her. Not only was her flash, flash, flash distracting for me and others around her, but the flash of a camera is actually damaging to artifacts. There is a reason why the “no photography” rule exists at historical exhibits. Artifacts – especially paper and fabric – are extremely sensitive to light, temperature and humidity. Too much exposure to any of those things will cause fading and disintegration, the same as touching any artifacts with bare hands. We all have oils in our bodies that will destroy artifacts, no matter how often or how well you wash your hands before you touch anything. So next time you’re at a historical exhibit, please remember that the “no photography” rule does exist for a reason and you should never, ever use a flash with artifacts.

I did not get any pictures, obviously, but I found some pictures from some media outlets online of what I saw. There are objects in these pictures that I talked about already. Enjoy.