Lydia Maria Child, Letters of Lydia Maria Child
John Greenleaf Whittier, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Winslow Sewall, Ed.

[26]

To E. Carpenter.

I thought of you several times while Angelina was addressing the committee of the Legislature.¹ I knew you would have enjoyed it so much. I think it was a spectacle of the greatest moral sublimity I ever witnessed. The house was full to overflowing. For a moment a sense of the immense responsibility resting on her seemed almost to overwhelm her. She trembled and grew pale. But this passed quickly, and she went on to speak gloriously, strong in utter forgetfulness of herself, and in her own earnest faith in every word she uttered. “Whatsoever comes from the heart goes to the heart.” I believe she made a very powerful impression on the audience. Boston, like other cities, is very far behind the country towns on this subject; so much so that it is getting to be Boston versus Massachusetts, as the lawyers say. The Boston members of the legislature tried hard to prevent her having a hearing on the second day. Among other things, they said that such a crowd were attracted by curiosity the galleries were in danger of being broken down; though in fact they are constructed with remarkable strength. A member from Salem, perceiving their [27] drift, wittily proposed that a “committee be appointed to examine the foundations of the State House of Massachusetts, to see whether it will bear another lecture from Miss Grimke.”

One sign that her influence is felt is that the “sound part of the community” (as they consider themselves) seek to give vent to their vexation by calling her Devil-ina instead of Angel-ina, and Miss Grimalkin instead of Miss Grimke. Another sign is that we have succeeded in obtaining the Odeon, one of the largest and most central halls, for her to speak in; and it is the first time such a place has been obtained for anti-slavery in this city.

Angelina and Sarah have been spending the winter at the house of Mr. P--, about five miles from here. The family were formerly of the Society of Friends--are now, I believe, a little Swedenborgian, but more Quaker, and swinging loose from any regular society; just as I and so many hundred others are doing at the present day. I should like earnestly and truly to believe with some large sect, because religious sympathy is so delightful; but I now think that if I were to live my life over again I should not outwardly join any society, there is such a tendency to spiritual domination, such an interfering with individual freedom.

Have you read a little pamphlet called “George Fox and his first Disciples” ? I was charmed with it. Don't you remember I told you I was sure that the thou and thee of Friends originated in a principle of Christian equality? This pamphlet confirms my conjecture. In the English language of George Fox's time, and in most European languages now, thou was used only to familiars and equals. [28]

Kings say we, and nobles are addressed as you. The Germans carry this worshipful plurality to an absurd extent. The prince being missed by his companions on a hunting excursion, one of the noblemen asked a peasant, “Hast thou seen the prince pass this way?” “No, my lord,” replied the peasant, “but their dog have passed.” It was this distinction of language addressed to superiors, and to inferiors or equals, that the early Friends resisted. The custom had life in it then, for it was merely the outward expression or form of a vital principle. What is it now? An inherited formality, of which few stop to inquire the meaning. Thus have all human forms the seed of death within them ; but luckily when the body becomes dead, the inward soul or principle seeks a new form and lives again. The Friends as a society may become extinct; but not in vain did they cast forth their great principles into everlasting time. No truth they uttered shall ever die; neither shall any truth that you or I may speak, or express in our lives. Two centuries after William Penn brought indignation upon himself by saying “thou” to the Duke of York, the French revolutionists, in order to show that they were friends of equality, wrote in their windows, “In this house we ‘ thou ’ it.” And this idea, dug up by the friends from the ashes of early Christianity, has in fact given rise to the doctrine of “spiritual brotherhood,” echoed and reechoed from Priestley to Channing.