Louise
Amelia Knapp Clappe
(née Smith) was born on
July 28, 1819 in New Jersey. She spent most of her youth and young adult life
in Massachusetts. Her father Moses Smith, graduated from Williams College in
Massachusetts in the year of 1811, and he once had the responsibility of being
in charge of a local academy. Both Moses and his wife came from Amherst,
Massachusetts. There is some speculation that her parents might have been
cousins, for both Moses' mother and wife shared the same maiden name (Lee).
Both of Louise's parents died before she turned 20, with her father dying in
1832 and her mother in 1837.
Louise
was one of seven children, with three brothers and three other sisters. In 1838
she attended a female seminary in Charlestown, Massachusetts. The following two
years she continued her education at Amherst Academy. She was a good student,
whose interests included metaphysics. Following in her father's footsteps, Louise
also got involved with education, teaching in Amherst in 1840.
Around
the same time, she was introduced to Alexander Hill Everett who happened to be
at least twice of Louise's age. Everett was a distinguished author, and Louise’s
relationship with him was mostly an intellectual one. Between the years 1839 to
1847 they had exchanged forty-six letters. During this time Louise also met her
future husband, Fayette Clappe. When Louise told Everett about her new relationship,
he was not pleased and things ended poorly.
Born in June 1824 in Chesterfield,
Massachusetts, Fayette Clappe was five years younger than Louise. Fayette's
family also had a different spelling of Clappe, and instead spelled it as
Clapp. He started his college education at Princeton, but finished up at Brown
University, graduating in 1848. He briefly continued his education, studying
medicine at Castleton in Vermont. Similar to Louise's mother, Fayette's mother
also bore the maiden name Lee. The exact date of their wedding is unknown;
however, some believe it occurred in either 1848 or 1849. Louise and Fayette
never had any children together.
Louise had always wanted to go to
the West, first mentioning her desire to do so in one of her letters to
Everett. While Fayette was studying medicine in Vermont, the couple caught gold
rush fever. Louise
and Fayette later moved out West to California where she took on the pen name
of Dame Shirley and wrote her widely known Dame Shirley letters.
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| 1851 California gold miners |
Upon arrival in California, both
Louise and Fayette were ill. Louise had suffered from chronic illnesses
throughout the 1830s and 1840s. Her first year in California living in San
Francisco and Plumas (near Marysville) was spent taking care of Fayette who had
been sick for their whole first year. During this time, Fayette was able to
obtain an absentee degree from Castleton, making him a doctor. He was elected
as a delegate to a political nominating convention and was also chosen to serve
on a committee protesting the tactics of agents hired to help the incoming
immigrant wagon trains from across the Plains.
Known as “Dame Shirley,” she famously
captured the spirit of California Gold
Rush society in a series of 23 letters to her sister in the East.
Adopting for these the persona of a self-consciously whimsical “Dame Shirley,”
she wrote the Shirley Letters in 1851 and 1852 from the gold mines at
Rich Bar and Indian Bar on the Feather River, where she had ventured in company
with her physician husband. In these
letters she wrote of life in San Francisco and the Feather River mining
communities. She focuses on the experiences of women and children, the perils
of miners' work, crime and punishment, and relations with native Hispanic
residents and Native Americans.
Throughout the years there have been
multiple editions of her letters in print. Her letters have been described as
being both witty and disturbing, while giving insight into California mining
life.
In her earlier letters, Shirley
never uses a full name and instead uses just a first initial. The Shirley
letters were all carefully written, and they showed off Louise's education and
writing skills, for all of the letters were unique and extremely rich in
detail. In the sixth letter written back to her sister Molly, Shirley discusses
her shock at how vulgar the men in California are, and the wider tolerance for
such vulgarity. The
same letter also indicates that her marriage with Fayette was failing,
describing his business transactions with some bitterness. In her twelfth
letter, Louise claims that she wants to give the true picture of mining life,
and she did so from a distinctly female perspective. Some later authors and
publishers believe her letters were never meant to be made public at the time
she wrote them; others believe that was her intent all along.
Her marriage with Clapp started to
falter around 1852. While the two separated around that time and Fayette headed
back East, their marriage did not officially end until some years later.
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| San Francisco - 1851 |
While Louise was staying in San
Francisco, she made the acquaintance of Ferdinand C. Ewer, who printed her
Shirley letters in his new periodical, "The Pioneer" in 1854-1855. Her
writings influenced the later writing of gold rush chronicler Bret Harte.
Not only did Louise submit her
letters, but she also wrote two other articles for the Pioneer. The two
articles "Superstition" and "Equality of the Sexes" once
again did not show off her writing gifts. In both articles she still identifies
herself as Mrs. Louisa Clapp, even thought she and Fayette had split at this
point.
 |
| Photo ctsy of The Philadelphia Rare Books and
Manuscripts Company https://www.prbm.com/FeaturedBooks/_Clappe_Archive.php |
Louise later wrote for the Marysville
Herald in the spring and summer of 1857. The Herald was not much of a
newspaper, but more of a vehicle for advertisements.
Louise
began teaching in San Francisco in 1854. In 1856 she officially filed for
divorce from Fayette. While living in San Francisco, she was well liked and
became well known for her teaching and writing. She taught for two different
all-girls schools, Denman Grammar School, and Broadway Grammar school. She also
taught well-attended
evening classes in both art and literature. In 1857 she most likely made nine-hundred
dollars for the year. Between 1868 and 1869 she switched the spelling of her
last name to Clappe. Throughout the next decade she went back and forth between
the two different spellings.
While in
San Francisco, she adopted and raised a niece, Genevieve Stebbins. In 1878 she
retired from teaching. The Denman School raised a farewell gift of two thousand
dollars. Louise lived out the remains of her life in New York City for the next
twenty eight years. She resumed her writing in 1881 when a periodical at
Hellmuth Ladies' College at London, Ontario published a series of her articles
under her Shirley name.
She
returned to her native New Jersey in 1878. She lived on to the age of 87 and
died from chronic diarrhea and senility on 11 February 1906. Her headstone
reads that she was the wife of Dr. Fayette Clappe.
Sources:
Wikipedia
Google Books; The Shirley
Letters from California Mines in 1851-52: Being a Series of Twenty-three
Letters from Dame Shirley (Mtrs. Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe) to Her
Sister in Massachusetts and Now Reprinted from the Pioneer Magazine of 1854-55,
with Synopses of the Letters, a Foreword, and Many Typographical and Other
Corrections and Emendations by Thomas C. Russell; Together with "An Appreciation"
by Mrs. M. V. T. Lawrence
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