[In the following essay, Walser describes the New England atmosphere in which The Power of Sympathy was published, concluding that the sale of the novel was not suppressed, as has been argued by some scholars.]

In Boston on Friday, January 16, 1789, the semiweekly Herald of Freedom carried this provocative item:

AN AMERICAN NOVEL

We learn that there is now in the Press in this town a Novel, dedicated to the young ladies, which is intended to enforce attention to female education, and to represent the fatal consequences of Seduction. We are informed that one of the incidents upon which the Novel is founded, is drawn from a late unhappy suicide. We shall probably soon be enabled to lay before our readers some account of so truly Novel a work, upon such interesting subjects.

Additional information was provided on the following Wednesday, January 21, when the local Massachusetts Centinel contained an extensive advertisement announcing with patriotic pride the

FIRST AMERICAN NOVEL THIS DAY PUBLISHED, PRICE 9S. BOUND AND LETTERED, AND 6S. 8D. STICHED IN BLUE PAPER,

The Power of Sympathy: Or, the Triumph of Nature, a Novel founded in truth. In two volumes 12 mo. The first volume ornamented with a Copperplate Frontispiece. Dedicated to the Young Ladies of America. [Inserted here were a quatrain from the title page and all three paragraphs of the “Author's Preface.”] Printed at BOSTON, by I. Thomas and Co. and sold at their Bookstore, No. 45. Newburystreet.

This advertisement was repeated in the Herald of Freedom on January 23 and in the Massachusetts Spy (Worcester) on January 29.

Details of the “late unhappy suicide” which justified the statement that the anonymous novel was “founded in truth” were so well known in Boston that it is doubtful that any reader of the Herald could have been puzzled concerning the particular suicide referred to. Some years back, Frances (Fanny) Apthorp had begun a lengthy visit with her sister, Sarah Wentworth Apthorp (the poet Philenia), and her politically prominent husband, Perez Morton. An open love affair ensued between Fanny and Morton, and in 1787 she left Boston to give birth to his child. Upon her return the affair was renewed. Though Mrs. Morton seems to have suffered the scandal in her household with forbearance, not so the sisters' father, James Apthorp, who first learned of the disgraceful situation in the summer of 1788 and demanded a family convocation to condemn Morton. Before the gathering could take place, the brazen but now destitute Fanny wrote letters to Morton in which she proclaimed her love for him, her regret at the injury done her sister, and her determination to take her own life. On August 28 she died from a dose of poison. To stave off political censure, an inquiry in early October by influential friends of Morton sought to acquit him of wrongdoing.¹

The whole shocking episode was public knowledge. Fanny's letters appeared in the Herald of Freedom on September 15 and three days later in the Massachusetts Spy. “Disappointment,” a suicide poem by an earlier victim of seduction, was for a time passed off in the Herald and Spy as Fanny's own poetic agony.² On September 25 the Herald printed a four-stanza “Elegy on a late melancholy Event” expressing sympathy for the rather generally condemned girl, beginning

Ah, Fanny! shall no tear be shed for thee,
          No pitying sigh the pensive bosom heave:
Shall no kind pen present the candid plea,
          And generously thy injur'd fame retrieve?
Ah, no! the unfeeling crowd unmov'd relate—
          The unfeeling crowd unmov'd the story hear,
Forget each pang that urg'd thee to thy fate,
          Indignant smile, “and wink away a tear.”

Other such poems, though not addressed specifically to Fanny, were frequent. For example, in the Centinel on September 6 was “An Admonition to the Fair,” in which the poet hoped that “no virgin would incline her ear / To wild professions from inconstant youth”; on October 15, perhaps from the same anonymous poet, came “A Picture of Suicide.” Not to be outdone, the Herald on December 4 commented in handsome heroic couplets “On the Seduction of Virgins and Married Women.” A few months later the Massachusetts Spy on February 19, 1789, titillated its readers with “Seduction: An Elegy.” Prose writers jumped on the bandwagon. On the basis of what was appearing in the Boston press during 1788 and 1789, the city's writers, editors, and readers were downright neurotically fascinated by the themes of adultery, suicide, and seduction.

In such a climate as this William Hill Brown was writing both The Power of Sympathy and his short story “Harriot: Or, the Domestick Reconciliation,” the latter due to appear in the first issue of Isaiah Thomas's Massachusetts Magazine for January 1789. “Harriot” tells of a dissolute husband who accuses his innocent wife of infidelity while being unfaithful himself with Madame Thais. The principal plot of The Power of Sympathy concerns the betrothal of Harrington and Harriot who later are discovered to be half brother and sister. After Harriot expires from the shock of the revelation, Harrington commits suicide. A digression from the main action, confined to a mere three letters (XXI-XXIII) of the sixty-five in the epistolary novel, relates the story of Ophelia and Martin in Rhode Island. The narrative parallels almost exactly the events in the lives of Fanny Apthorp and Perez Morton. In the book, attention was disproportionately directed to this brief episode by the “Copperplate Frontispiece” showing Ophelia (Fanny) in her dying moment. One can almost see Brown, while composing his Harrington-Harriot narrative, pausing to introduce a fictional account of the recent scandal so familiar to every gossipmonger in Boston, an account which furthermore would support and reinforce his imaginary history of Harriot and Harrington. Knowledge of the Fanny-Perez affair was so widespread throughout Boston that Brown, in using events in the lives of his neighbors the Apthorps and the Mortons, could hardly have felt any betrayal of friendship.

Meanwhile, the Perez Morton family, after Fanny's suicide and the disturbances resulting from it in September and early October, had finally settled down to some sort of normality when in mid January two incidents once more brought the scandal to public attention. One was the arrival in Boston of Fanny's brother, Lieutenant Charles Apthorp of the British navy. His mission was to challenge Morton to a duel and thus avenge his sister's honor. Though a time and place were set for the confrontation, the two men avoided shooting it out and the affair ended with both in disgrace.³

The other incident occurred simultaneously with the dueling fiasco: the announcement on January 16 of the imminent publication of that “American Novel … drawn from a late unhappy suicide.” The best account of these eventful days in the Morton household is a strange little anonymous publication encompassing nineteen printed pages entitled Occurrences of the Times. Or, the Transactions of Four Day. Viz.—From Friday the 16th, to Monday the 19th January, 1789. A Farce in Two Acts … Printed [by Benjamin Russell] for the Purchasers.⁴ On the title page of this harsh lampoon on the Mortons were printed a few lines to make certain that no one mistake the contents of the satire:

—No longer by vain fear, or shame control'd
In guilty amours, grown securely bold,
Mocking rebuke, they brave it in our streets,
And * * * * * *, even at noon, his mistress meets.
So public in their crimes, so daring grown,
They almost take a pride to have them known.

The action begins on the very day of the duel. A Negro servant of Mr. Sidney, the name for Perez Morton,⁵ groans that “a Nobel … cal'd the Trumpets of Nature” (the subtitle of The Power of Sympathy was The Triumph of Nature) is soon to be published. The printers “have put a graf in de papers [January 16]; and so we shall see it nes week.” Though one of Sidney's friends thinks that “some measures must be adopted to suppress the publication,” his companion believes “we shall fall short there” unless “his Satannick Majesty” provides the money to buy up all the copies. Sidney says he is desperate to “suppress it, if possible,” and he plans to find out “the author of this infernal book, and try what can be done with him.” The reason he would prevent the novel from reaching the public is that he is tormented by a vision of his “son reading a book, where his father is branded with the opprobrious epithet of villain.” Is there anyone he suspects of having written the novel? “Yes, Sir, * * * * * [Brown]—I suspect him to be the author”; yet Sidney insists he must have proof of his suspicion before proceeding “to extremities.” He has been to the printers, he says, and “the scoundrels had the assurance to tell me, with the most provoking calmness, that when the books were ready, I should have a set as soon as any gentleman in town.” His wife Mrs. Sidney (Sarah Apthorp Morton, of course) declares that she is “less solicitous” about the appearance of the novel than “about the duel: To have had my brother, or my husband fallen by the sword of the other would have been insupportable.” As to the novel, she advises her husband: “You had better let it alone, I think, you will only render yourself more conspicuously infamous.” Among Sidney's friends, three agree with her that he should take no “more notice of the affair,” contending further that the necessary amount of money cannot be raised. Sidney's only ally in the proposal to quash the novel is Positive, in real life Y. James Lovell, Collector of Imports in Boston. On the morrow (Tuesday, January 20, one day before the publication of The Power of Sympathy), he intends to go to Planting Grove (Worcester) “to see what can be done with the head [Isaiah Thomas] of this dam'd company.” The farce ends before it is known whether Lovell made the trip and, if he did, what the results were.

Occurrences of the Times is fiction, not fact; yet one can trust the rather general accuracy of the sentiments expressed and the chronology of events, supported as they are by newspaper accounts.

And so the novel was published. One report has it that after the two little volumes were available for purchase at Isaiah Thomas's bookstore, proud Mrs. James Apthorp, Fanny's mother, called on loyal Mrs. Gawen Brown, mother of William Hill Brown. To her warm acquaintance and neighbor, Mrs. Apthorp said: “Oh, why did Willie do such a thing when we were such good friends?” Mrs. Brown protested that, after all, “The names are fictitious.” “But,” responded Mrs. Apthorp, “everybody knows whom he means.”⁶

And everybody did. In the literate and gossipy town of Boston, printer-publisher Isaiah Thomas must have anticipated big sales and much commotion in the press. Yet comment on the novel was not only tardy but unexciting. Two and a half weeks after publication, reviewer Civil Spy expressed “disappointment” that, after the frontispiece showing Ophelia's suicide leads the reader to expect the novel to be about her, “it is not until we arrive near the end of the work, that we find any thing to authorize the title.” Furthermore, Ophelia's story, whose “particulars” were “recent and local,” is set incorrectly in Rhode Island instead of Boston. As for the novel's being “founded in truth,” Civil Spy had never heard anything like certain other parts of the book in spite of the fact that “in so young a town as Boston, and so small … the most trivial circumstances will circulate through it in half a hour.”⁷

Three days later came a rejoinder by Antonia, pen name most certainly for Catharine Byles, daughter of the famous Mather Byles and half sister of Gawen Brown's second wife. She was confidante and literary adviser to her “nephew” William Hill Brown, who it is said had read her the manuscript of The Power of Sympathy “the day before it found its way to the hands of Mr. Isaiah Thomas, the printer.”⁸ Antonia wrote that, having been “agreeably entertained with the delicate and pathetic Novel,” she “hoped the deserved encomiums on this elegant composition, would e'er this have been inserted in some of our numerous papers,” for she felt that the “Author merits the most grateful acknowledgements from our Sex” in the “respect and tenderness he has shewn to youthful females.” Antonia declared that she would have ignored the criticisms of Civil Spy concerning this “chaste and moral performance” except that she feared his ill-natured comments “might retard the circulation of those little volumes.” She complained that Civil Spy had passed “over the many striking beauties” in the novel “in search of Blemishes, which not finding, he meanly objects to the names, and the title of the book, and would represent as an important error, the disguise of the scenes of those truly tragical catastrophes.” Unlike Civil Spy, Antonia would “honour and esteem the amiable youth, who is the reputed Author, of this original and admired publication, while I consider him as a champion of feminine innocence, a promoter of religion and chastity, and a pleasing moniter of inexperienced minds.”⁹

In tongue-in-cheek acceptance of Antonia's strictures of his criticisms of the “late novel,” Civil Spy countered that “he never did discover the numerous beauties in those little admired volumes until they were so particularly and elegantly represented by Madam Antonia.” He went on to exclaim: “Thrice blessed, reputed author of the Power of Sympathy!—admired—pathetick—delicate—elegant work!—Alpha and Omega of Novelty,” sarcastically concluding that he wished he too could be “worthy the honour and esteem of Madam Antonia.”¹⁰

Except for these observations by Civil Spy and Antonia, neither of whom expressed any objection to the author's use of the Apthorp-Morton scandal, Boston newspapers simply ignored The Power of Sympathy, apparently unimpressed that it was the “first American novel.”

Meanwhile Isaiah Thomas, doubtless to protect his financial investment in Brown's work, inserted in the first issue¹¹ of his Massachusetts Magazine eleven brief excerpts from the novel under the heading “Beauties of ‘The Power of Sympathy.’”¹² The excerpts, bearing such titles as “Female Study,” “Sensibility,” “Suicide,” and “Seduction,” had been submitted by Calista—or so it was said—who had written to the editors: “I do myself the pleasure to send you the following Extracts from the ‘First American Novel,’ which I hope you will insert in your first Magazine.” A month later came the last mention of the book in Thomas's periodical. An essayist calling himself “The Dreamer” wrote that he agreed with the novelist in believing “it is necessary, in the education of a young lady, to put into her hands, those books which will give her an idea of the characters of men.”¹³

After that jejune comment, no further reference to The Power of Sympathy appeared in the public press, and soon this first American novel dropped from the memory of readers.

Not dropped from readers' interests, to be sure, were the themes of gossip, suicide, and seduction. In February, the Massachusetts Magazine began a series of witty and sophisticated essays by Brown called “The Reformer.” The first of the series carried the title “On Scandal and the Wickedness of Newspapers,” wherein Brown opined that editors of periodicals think “that all their readers are very much delighted with seeing the reputations of their neighbours stamped with some odious opproprium.” Even if what editors report is “founded in truth, it certainly discovers a weak, if not a wicked mind in those who editorize these papers, to flatter such a vicious inclination in the publick.”¹⁴

“On Scandal.—An oblique Hint to Females, and the Accusations of Idlers,” the second Reformer essay, was signed with Brown's identifying “Q.S.” Here he proclaimed that “Nothing more effectually destroys the blessings of good neighbourhood, than Scandal.—Weak minds are generally most given to defamation.” The essay proceeds in this vein.¹⁵ Three months later, Reformer told the story of Codrus, seducer of Aspasia, who became pregnant and died. Codrus then married the virtuous Maria but continued his “early debauches.”¹⁶ Another story by Reformer concerned a widower who seduced his housekeeper, and, as if through divine retribution, his four children were drowned.¹⁷

In spite of William Hill Brown's occasional absorption in such matters as suicide, pregnancy, and seduction, which doubtless were reflections less of the young man himself than of his time and place,¹⁸ he was, from all available accounts, a quite admirable fellow. Catharine Byles spoke of him as a “truly amiable young man” who provided her with “friendly calls & chearful society.”¹⁹ A newspaper editor who knew Brown well called him “an uncommon genius” who possessed a “richness of fancy and copiousness of expression. … In his writings, he was concise but comprehensive—sublime and elegant—a little satyrical at times, yet always pleasing and entertaining—In conversation, he was affable and polite—witty and winning.”²⁰ His friend the poet Robert Treat Paine wrote of him:

To censure, modest—generous, to commend;
          To veteran bards he left of taste the van;
A keen ey'd Critic—still, a tender Friend;
          An idol'd Poet—but, a modest Man.(21)

If Brown was such a warm-hearted, exemplary young man, how then could he have put into his novel an indiscreet episode, no matter how well known, which would so discomfort his friends and neighbors, the Apthorps and Mortons, that its suppression was considered to be the only corrective measure? Over the years several versions of the supposed suppression have been circulated. Whatever success Perez Morton's emissary Y. James Lovell had, if indeed he rode off to Worcester to confer with Isaiah Thomas,²² is undocumented. A later account, not entirely trustworthy, reported that when Brown “saw the distress caused by the publication of the story he readily agreed to stop the sale of the book, and have the volumes destroyed.”²³ By the middle of the nineteenth century, the conviction was strong that no sooner was The Power of Sympathy “announced as published, than an attempt was made to suppress it, by purchasing and destroying all the copies that could be found.”²⁴ A similar statement was that the “work created quite a sensation, and was suppressed by interested parties. The names of Fanny Apthorp and Perez Morton are not yet forgotten as connected with the matter.”²⁵ An undated clipping from about this period went a step further in spreading the ridiculous rumor that, in spite of the “undoubted moral” of the novel, the Boston people “denounced it from the pulpit and the press.”²⁶ Strangely enough, scholars have not disputed the century-old belief that the novel was suppressed. The following report, basically implausible, was cited by an academician: “It was in the neighbouring town of Dorchester that a remarkable furore promptly arose. There prominent citizens, according to one account of the episode, persuaded the novelist to withdraw the book from circulation and destroy all remaining copies. According to a more probable version of the affair, these same individuals themselves bought and burned all copies of The Power of Sympathy on which they could lay hands. In any case, the novel became notorious; old prejudices against novelists were revived, and a precedent for suppressing their work was established.”²⁷ Another academician wrote that “Brown's novel was promptly suppressed, for Boston has always been a city of strict literary censorship.”²⁸ Milton Ellis, that proto-investigator into William Hill Brown and his novel, hedged somewhat on the matter, concurred in the notion of suppression, but concluded that the “attempt succeeded only partially.”²⁹ Ellis examined inventories which made it certain that the novel was obtainable from both the publishers and Boston bookshops during the 1790s.³⁰ As late as 1801 Thomas's shop in Worcester had the title in stock.³¹ Brown once had, it is said, as many as twenty-six copies,³² some of which he may have taken along to North Carolina when he moved there about 1792. In 1794 the novel was advertised for sale in Edenton by Henry Wills, and as late as 1813 by W. S. Hasell in Wilmington.³³

But the question remains as to whether the novel was suppressed, even partially. The answer seems to be no, not even partially. If Y. James Lovell actually journeyed to Worcester on the day before its publication, he faced a profit-minded Yankee publisher whose price tag, if indeed he had deigned to name a price tag, would have been so high that Morton and his friends simply abandoned any plans to buy up the copies. It seems more likely, still assuming Lovell's visit to Worcester, that no monetary discussion took place at all, but that Thomas, a publisher of strict integrity, simply declined forthright to participate in any scheme for book-banning. The indisputable facts are that he continued to advertise the novel,³⁴ to promote it in his Massachusetts Magazine, and to make it available in bookshops. In fine, until some still undiscovered document comes to light, there is no reliable contemporary evidence affirming suppression of any kind.

Though the narrative was concerned with the popular subject of the evils of seduction and though its serious intention was to contribute to the education of women, Brown's didactic novel, except for the ineffective outbursts of Perez Morton, caused but little stir.

Notes

1. Emily Pendleton and Milton Ellis, Philenia: The Life and Works of Sarah Wentworth Morton, 1759-1846, The Maine Bulletin, No. 4 (Orono: Dec. 1931), pp. 32-35.

2. See Herald of Freedom (Boston), Sept. 18, 1788, July 21, 1789; Massachusetts Centinel (Boston), Sept. 20, 23, 27, 1788; Massachusetts Spy (Worcester), Sept. 25, Oct. 2, 1788.

3. Pendleton and Ellis, pp. 37-38.

4. “Now in the Press, And on Monday next will be ready for sale … OCCURRENCES OF THE TIMES …,” Herald of Freedom, Feb. 13, 1789.

5. Richard Walser, “More about the First American Novel,” American Literature, 24 (1952), 353-54, where the fictional characters are identified.

6. Arthur W. Brayley, “The Real Author of ‘The Power of Sympathy,’” Bostonian, 1 (1894), 232.

7. Massachusetts Centinel, Feb. 7, 1789.

8. Brayley, p. 232.

9. Herald of Freedom, Feb. 10, 1789.

10. Massachusetts Centinel, Feb. 18, 1789. See also Herald of Freedom, Feb. 20, 1789, in which “Belinda,” without referring to the novel, ridicules good-naturedly the exchange between Civil Spy and Antonia.

11. “This day published, and ready to be delivered to subscribers and others … The Massachusetts Magazine, No. I, for January, 1789 …,” Massachusetts Centinel, Feb. 7, 1789.

12. Massachusetts Magazine, 1 (Jan. 1789), 50-53.

13. Massachusetts Magazine, 1 (Feb. 1789), 101.

14. Massachusetts Magazine, 1 (Feb. 1789), 79.

15. Massachusetts Magazine, 1 (Mar. 1789), 141-42. Another version of this essay, titled “Scandal,” appeared in the Boston Magazine, Feb. 8, 1806, pp. 61-62, and was signed “W.B.”

16. Massachusetts Magazine, 1 (June 1789), 380-81.

17. Massachusetts Magazine, 2 (June 1790), 366-67.

18. For example, see Richard Walser, “The Fatal Effects of Seduction (1789),” Modern Language Notes, 69 (1954), 374-76, concerning a play, written for and acted by students in Vermont on April 28, 1789. The short three-act drama, “Founded on the Story of an Unhappy Young Lady of Boston,” closely follows the Apthorp-Morton tragedy.

19. Catharine Byles, Letters to Mrs. Sarah Holmes, November 1793, and to William Hill Brown, August 5, 1793, typescripts, Byles Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.

20. North-Carolina Journal (Halifax), Sept. 11, 1793.

21. From “Pollio: A Monody, to the Memory of Mr. W. H. Brown,” signed Menander, Columbian Centinel, Oct. 2, 1793. Also in The Works, in Verse and Prose, of the Late Robert Treat Paine, Jun. (Boston, 1812), pp. 118-21.

22. Occurrences of the Times … ([Boston, 1789]), p. 23.

23. Brayley, p. 232.

24. Joseph T. Buckingham, Specimens of Newspaper Literature (Boston, 1852), II, 323.

25. Joseph Sabin, A Dictionary of Books Relating to America (New York, 1885), XV, 377, #64784.

26. Milton Ellis, handwritten 3×5 notecards, Raymond H. Folger Library, University of Maine at Orono; see also Milton Ellis, “The Author of the First American Novel,” American Literature, 4 (1933), 336 n. 18.

27. Tremaine McDowell, “The First American Novel,” American Review, 2 (1933), 74; see also McDowell, “Last Words of a Sentimental Heroine,” American Literature, 4 (1932), 175 n. 3.

28. Gregory Paine, “American Literature a Hundred and Fifty Years Ago,” Studies in Philology, 42 (1945), 388.

29. Pendleton and Ellis, p. 39; Ellis, “The Author of the First American Novel,” p. 365; Ellis, “Biographical Note,” Facsimile Text Society Publication No. 38, The Power of Sympathy by William Hill Brown (New York, 1937), p. [4].

30. Ellis, “The Author of the First American Novel,” p. 365.

31. Ellis, handwritten 3×5 notecards.

32. John R. Byers, Jr., “Further Verification of the Authorship of The Power of Sympathy,” American Literature, 43 (1971), 424.

33. State Gazette of North Carolina (Edenton), Nov. 21, 1794; Wilmington (N.C.) Gazette, Feb. 2, 1813.

34. Massachusetts Centinel, Jan. 28, 1789; Herald of Freedom, Feb. 3, 1789.