Letter from John Greenleaf Whittier to Mrs. Sarah J. Spalding

Whittier

Danvers Mass 9th mo. 18 1879

Dear frd

Harriet Livermore when I was a young boy was for some considerable time a resident of Rocks Village Haverhill. I think a visitor of Dr Weld's in that place & was often at our house, — a brilliant dark-eyed woman — striking in her personal appearance, & gifted in conversation. The tradition of her dissappertment

was current in our neighborhood, & the name of the gentleman was Dr. Elliott of the U.S. A. who I think died in [deletion] Florida or in some part of the extreme South. He was Haverhill-born.

After boy hood I never saw her until she came to see me at Philada. on her return from the East in 1829. I interated myself with J. R. Chandler & others to get an audien for two lectures by her.

She gave one, & declined to give the other, because the audience was smaller than at the first.

She spent some days at my boarding house, alternating from an agreeable and interesting guest to a violent terrified woman of indomitable will. She told us of her stay with Lady Hester Stanhope, & that Lady H.S. kept two white horses with a red mark on the back of each in the shape of a saddle, ready waiting for the coming of the Lord — one of them to be ridden by herself, to Jerusalem. It seems that H. L. insisted that [underline]she[/underline] was to accompany the Lord on the spare horse; & thereupon a quarrel arose which ended in their

seperation. Her lectures procured her I believe about $150. She said she must go back to Jerusalem to meet [underline]the coming[/underline] there. Even then she was a noble looking woman.

A friend of mine years afterward met her in Syria, with a fragment of a Bedouin tribe of which she was the head — its spiritual & temperal chief.

I do not think I have exaggerated her characteristic in [?]- [?]. I certainly did not intend to.

Thy friend John G. Whittier