March 22, 1861
Dearest Mother:
Did you ever hear of George Smalley [the newspaper
correspondent], a young lawyer who once lived here and was at one time engaged
to our pretty Susan Gray? He is now in Boston; never heard Wendell Phillips
speak till the time of Richard S. Fay's row, then fell desperately in love with
him and in all the dangers since was his bodyguard, never leaving him and
watching many nights in his house. This he enjoyed thoroughly, being a trained
athlete and a natural soldier. When I saw him at Wendell's planning with us to
mount guard, and then turning to pretty Phoebe to arrange little plans to keep
everybody still and spare Mrs. P.'s nerves, I thought to myself that the
adopted daughter might prove the next attraction, and now it turns out they are
engaged. He is tall, erect, strong, blond, Saxon, and she a brunette with
lovely eyes and a Welsh smile — you know her mother was Welsh; they will be a
picturesque couple, and it is quite a chivalrous little affair.
SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters
and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 82-3
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