# Heroines of Freethought/Frances Wright D’Arusmont

FRANCES WRIGHT D'ARUSMONT.
AS pure-hearted and true a philanthropist as any whose name has ever adorned the pages of history, or glorified humanity, was Frances Wright, a woman who independently stepped forth from the quiet of a peaceful, happy life to dare the sneers, reproaches, and calumnies of those for whose advancement and enlightenment she sacrificed wealth, friends, and reputation. Her name should shine on that bright scroll where we have placed the names of a Howard, a Dix, a Fry, and a Nightingale. They gave up everything to minister to the physical needs of their fellow-beings; she sacrificed all to the needs of the mind and heart of humanity. ​She came of good stock. The gifted Mrs. Montague was the grand aunt of her mother. Baron Rokeby, Primate of all Ireland, and the most liberal Protestant prelate of that island, was her mother’s uncle. General William Campbell, a man deeply versed in the Oriental languages, and the companion of Malcolm in his embassy to Persia, was her mother’s brother. James Mylne, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow, was her father's uncle. Her father, although scarcely twenty-nine years old at his death, had been a correspondent of Adam Smith, Dr. Cullen, and other distinguished men of science and letters both in England and Scotland. He was a member of many literary and scientific associations. The British Museum in London was indebted to his antiquarian researches for donations of rare and valuable coins and medals. He was regarded and consulted as authority in these matters by Dr. Pinkerton, and Mr. Planta, Keeper of the Medals in the British Museum, and others. ​He took a lively and deeply sympathetic interest in the great events which agitated Europe during the French Revolution, and was instrumental in spreading through his own neighborhood popular ‘translations of French treatises, political and historical. He circulated also the works of Thomas Paine; and, having promoted a cheap publication of his “Rights of Man,” became, in 1794, an object of Governmental espionage. I mention these facts as tending to throw some light on the pre-natal influences which may have had their effect upon Frances Wright's life and character.
She was born in Miln’s Buildings, Nethergate, Dundee, Scotland, on the 6th of September, 1795. By the death of both parents, she, together with an older brother and a younger sister, was left an orphan at the age of two and a half years. The brother, some two years older, was sent to reside with his grand uncle, Professor James Mylne. When only fifteen years old, he started for India as a cadet in the ser​vice of the East India Company, and was killed on the passage in an encounter with a French vessel. Her sister Camilla, with herself, were placed under the care of a maternal aunt.
In giving an account of the earlier years of her life, I cannot do better than to quote her own words as given in her autobiography, written in 1844:
“To the circumstances of her early life, to the heart-solitude of orphanship, to the absence of all sympathy with the views and characters of those among whom her childhood was thrown, to the presence of a sister who looked to her for guidance, and leaned upon her for support, Madame D'Arusmont is disposed to attribute the chosen severity of her early studies, and prematurity of her views.”
“Surrounded at all times by rare and extensive libraries, and commanding whatever masters she desired, she applied herself by turns to various branches of science, and to the study of ancient and modern ​letters and the arts. She was at an early age surprised at the inability of masters to answer her questions, which usually turned upon the nature, origin, and object of the subject submitted to her attention. Being checked on one occasion by a deep and shrewd mathematician and physician, who observed that her questions were dangerous, she replied, ‘Can truth be dangerous?’ ‘It is thought so,’ was the answer. She learned on the occasion two things: the one, that truth had still to be found; the other, that men were afraid of it.”
"But the attention of her early years was not altogether confined to the study and speculations of the closet. Her sympathies were powerfully drawn toward the sufferings of humanity, and thus her curiosity was vividly excited to discover their causes. She was, perhaps, fifteen when this question was suggested, to her mind, upon witnessing the painful labor of the aged among the English peasantry, and, again, when she saw that peasantry ejected, under ​various pretexts, from the estates of the wealthy proprietors of the soil among whom she moved: ‘Has man, then, no home upon the earth, and are age and infirmity entitled to no care or consideration?’ Upon one occasion, peculiarly distressing to her feelings, her soliloquy was to the effect that some strange secret, some extraordinary vice, lay at the foundation of the whole of human practice. What! should she devote her whole energies to its discovery? At the close she pronounced to herself a solemn oath to wear ever in her heart the cause of the poor and the helpless, and to aid all that she could in redressing the grievous wrongs which seemed to prevail in society. She not unfrequently recalls the engagement then taken, and feels that she has done her best to fulfil it.”
“Tt was while engrossed, perplexed, and often depressed with silent and unsuccessful efforts to arrive at a satisfactory view of truth in anything, that she first accidentally opened the page of America’s national his​tory, as portrayed by the Italian Bocca. From that moment she woke to a new existence. Life was full of promise; the world a theater of interesting observation and useful exertion. There existed a country consecrated to Freedom, and in which man might awake to the full knowledge and full exercise of his powers.”
Henceforth, America became her ideal land, a new Utopia in which all wrong would be righted, and all truth triumphant, and she devoured eagerly everything she could learn of its history, heroes, and institutions. To this land, to her so fair in promise, she embarked in 1818, to pursuance of a long-cherished but secret determination, making all her arrangements in regard to her property, etc., unknown to any relative save the sister who accompanied her, and to whom she was devotedly attached. She remained in the United States two years, studying faithfully the institutions, the laws, and the workings of the avowed principles of the young republic. ​In 1820 she returned to England, and soon after published her first book, entitled “Views of Society and Manners in America.” This was something new, and met a public need, as was evinced by its rapid sale, while it brought its author for the first time in her life prominently before the public.
Desiring to study the theory of a republican form of government from every possible point of view, she went in the following year to Trance, where she remained during three years, Although, as a woman, young, handsome, talented, wealthy, and her own mistress, she was exposed to every possible temptation, she yet maintained, even in this mad whirlpool of folly and dissipation, her studious habits, and her unsullied purity of character and principles. "Experience had taught me,” she says, “in very childhood, how little was to be learned in drawing-rooms, and inspired me with a disgust for frivolous reading, conversation, and occupation.” ​Her wealth, family connections, and literary reputation gave her the entree to the best society of the gay city. Among others, General Lafayette distinguished by his special and marked friendship this girlish authoress, whose enthusiastic admiration of the new republic was only equaled by his own. Enthusiastic in the cause of republicanism as she was, she yet conducted herself with such rare moderation and good sense as to win and retain the warm friendship of many distinguished French Royalists, whose views upon all topics were diametrically opposed to her own.
It was part of the programme she had marked out for herself in life to make America the chief field of her labors for humanity, and she returned here in 1824. The strange anomaly of negro slavery being advocated, as well as merely allowed, in a country ostensibly sworn to cherish and protect the true liberty of mankind, surprised and shocked this woman, who believed sincerely that “all men are born free and ​equal, with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” With her usual energy and desire to reduce theory to practice, she resolved on making an experiment which should demonstrate the superiority of free to slave labor, and test the capability of the negro, when properly educated, for self-dependence. She purchased 2,000 acres of land in Tennessee, together with several families of negroes, and for several years, in company with her sister and Mr. Whitby, her sister's husband, devoted herself to educating them for freedom. She was too ardent and impetuous, however; she feared neither hardship nor danger in her self-imposed tasks. R. D. Owen, who was one of ten trustees of her property at Nashoba, says she rashly exposed herself to the hot, broiling sun in July and August weather, riding long distances on horseback, and sometimes sleeping all night in the forest, when it was more convenient to do so. These imprudences, and her own eagerness ​to accomplish her end, injured her health so that she was obliged to return to England to recruit.
She revisited America in 1827, at which time she was accompanied by a friend in every way her opposite, save in her love for literature; that friend was Mrs. Trollope, whose book, “Manners of the Americans,” written on her return to England, is not yet forgotten, nor quite forgiven. In that book mention is made of her visit to Frances Wright’s plantation. She says:
“Miss Wright was the companion of our voyage from England, and it was my purpose to have passed some months with her and her sister at the estate purchased by them in Tennessee.
“This lady was at this time dedicated to a pursuit widely different from her subsequent occupation. She was about to seclude herself for life in the deepest forests of the New World, and devote her time, talents, and fortune to aid the cause of suffering African slaves.” ​Mrs. Trollope stayed only ten days at Nashoba (the name of Miss Wright's place then). Possessing none of that true, daring heroism of character which distinguished her friend, and enabled her to rise superior to the petty discomforts of her chosen life, she left, disgusted and homesick, because she found none of the luxuries to which she had been accustomed, nor any society in which to shine as the “bright particular star.” Of her stay there she wrote as follows: "Desolate was the only word, the only feeling that presented itself. I think Miss Wright was aware of the painful impression the sight of her forest home produced on me, and I doubt not that the conviction reached us both at the same moment that we had erred in thinking that a few months passed together at this spot could be productive of pleasure to either. But to do her justice, I believe her mind was so exclusively occupied by the object she had in view, that all things else were worthless or indifferent to her. I never ​heard or read of any enthusiasm approaching hers, except in some few instances, in ages past, of religious fanaticism. The only white persons we found at Nashoba, besides Miss Wright, were her sister, Mrs. Whitby, and that sister’s husband. There were thirty or forty slaves there, but no schools yet established, although books and other materials were collected, and two teachers engaged.”
But in spite of Frances Wright's devotion and perseverance, her Nashoba experiment proved a failure, from causes beyond her control, and we find her, one year later, giving her slaves their freedom, sending them by safe hands to Hayti, where they were placed under the protection of the President, while her thoughtful liberality provided each one a small capital with which to begin a life of freedom.
She had previous to this several times visited Mr. Owen’s colony at New Harmony, Indiana, with a view to gain hints and ideas by which to guide her own little ​colony. She had thus become acquainted with the spirit and design of the New Harmony colonists, and so, when reluctantly compelled to give up her pet project, she gladly hastened, at the suggestion of the elder Owen, to take editorial charge of the New Harmony Gazette, changed afterward to the Free Enquirer.
She had been for years a Freethinker. To a mind constituted like hers, which sought only for truth and freedom, at whatever cost, and which acknowledged no fealty to the dead past, such a result was inevitable. That fragment of the thoughts of her earlier years, "A Few Days in Athens,” composed in great part during her nineteenth year, gives abundant evidence of-the daring views she held on religious matters, even when but a girl in years. These views had “grown with her growth, and strengthened with her strength”; and so loyal was she to her anti-theologic convictions, that for the sake of the truths she held so dear, when she saw what she considered a pre​concerted attack upon them, she did a daring thing for a woman in those days to do: She decided on taking the platform to defend those truths, and, in so far as she might, to counteract the threatened attack on Freethought. "It was in 1828,” she says in her autobiography, “that the standard of the Christian party in politics was openly unfurled. Of this party, which had been long secretly at work, Frances Wright had previously detected the maneuvers, in all sections of the country. This was an evident attempt, through the influence of the clergy over the female mind, to effect a union of Church and State, and with it a lasting union of Bank and State, and thus effectually to prostrate the independence of the people and the institutions of the country. Clearly distinguishing the nature of the move, she determined to arouse the whole American people to meet it at whatever cost to herself.”
She delivered her first lecture in Cincinnati, then made a tour as far west as ​St. Louis, lecturing at all the principal towns and cities. From St. Louis, she returned eastward to Baltimore and New York. Her advent as a lecturer created quite a furore, She was often bitterly opposed, and met with many difficulties, but, with indomitable energy and perseverance, she conquered them all. Mrs. Trollope attended one of her first lectures in Cincinnati, and speaks thus of the sensation her appearance on the platform created: “That a lady of fortune, family, and education, whose youth had been passed in the most refined circles of private life, should present herself as a public lecturer, would naturally create surprise anywhere. But in America, where women are guarded by a sevenfold shield of habitual insignificance, it caused an effect that can hardly be described. I shared the surprise, but not the wonder. I knew her extraordinary gift of eloquence, her almost unequaled command of words, and the wonderful power of her rich and thrilling voice. My expectations fell short of the splendor, ​the brilliancy, the eloquence, of this extraordinary orator. It is impossible to imagine anything more striking than her appearance. The tall, majestic form; the deep, almost solemn expression of her eyes; the shapely contour of the finely formed head, unadorned excepting by its own natural ringlets; her garment of plain white muslin, which hung in folds that recalled the drapery of a Grecian statue—all contributed to produce an effect unlike anything I had ever seen before, or ever expect to see again.”
Colonel John W. Forney, in his "Recollections,” says: "Writing about public men, I am not willing to exclude myself from the opportunity of saying something about the celebrated women who have figured in American history. Prominent among my own recollections, was the versatile and original Frances Wright. She excited much comment by her leveling doctrines and extravagant language. I shall always remember the effect produced by the lectures of this indefatigable and really gifted woman as ​she traveled through Pennsylvania many years ago. Controverted and attacked by the clergy and the press, she maintained an undaunted front, and persevered to the last. That she was a woman of great mind is established by the number of her followers, including some of the best intellects of the country, and by the repeated publication and very general reading of her tracts and essays.”
Elizabeth Oakes Smith, in an article published in the Revolution in 1868, speaks of her thus: "I arrived in the city of New York near the close of the year 1839, and the great topic of conversation was this remarkable woman, who was most certainly the pioneer woman in the field of the lecture-room.”
“Fanny Wright was most grievously aspersed on every side, and she must have felt to the core her innate worthiness, to bear it as she did. They said she was an “Infidel,” using the word precisely as a Turk might have applied it to a Christian, ​omitting the expletive “dog.” This was made the basis of the hue and cry against her, though the truce meaning of it was, that simple-minded men were seared out of their wits lest their wives should learn from her example something that would induce them to question masculine supremacy. It was a cold winter's night when I prevailed upon my honored husband to go with me and hear the famous woman. There might have been fifty persons—not more—present, and these began to shuffle and call for the speaker. It was all so much more gross and noisy than anything I had ever encountered where a woman was concerned, that I grew quite distressed. At length, the door in the rear of the desk opened, and a neat foot was placed upon the platform. She was a full-sized woman, with well-developed muscle, and handsomely shaped, dressed in black silk, with plain linen collar and cuffs; her head was large, but not handsome, comparatively low, but broad, indicating force and executive ability. ​She wore her hair short, waving slightly. Her features were all good, and the smile sweet, with a touch of feminine sadness; eyes well set under the broad brows. She was pale, but not sallow, and there was an earnestness and wholesomeness about Fanny Wright that made their way to the mind and heart. The lecture was entirely political, and very democratic. She was at intervals applauded, but did not seem to expect or care for it. Her self-poise was very fine. She was at home on her subject, and did not beat the air with vain efforts to say what was but half-digested in her own mind.”
Mrs. Trollope heard her lecture in Philadelphia in 1830, when she was accompanied on to the platform of the Arch-street Theater by a body-guard of Quaker ladies dressed in the peculiar costume of that sect. Her strong anti-slavery proclivities and labors, doubtless, won for her this singular honor.
From 1828 until 1838, her record is one of unceasing arduous public work. Even ​while absent on her lecturing tours, she constantly forwarded spicy, thoughtful, editorial articles for her paper, the New Harmony Gazette. Robert Dale Owen was her faithful coadjutor in editing this and other papers. These two were co-laborers for years, first on the New Harmony Gazette, then on the Free Exguirer, published at first in New Harmony, afterward in New York city, and Colonel Forney says: "She was also the author, in company with Robert Dale Owen, of certain popular tracts.” John Humphrey Noyes, in his "History of American Socialisms," calls her “the spiritual helpmate and better half of Owen,” and adds: “Our impression is that not only was she the leading woman of the communistic movement of that period, but that she had a very important agency in starting two other movements, which have had far greater suceess, and are at this moment strong in public favor — viz., Anti-Slavery and Woman's Rights. She was, indeed, the pioneer of the strong-minded women.” ​On her first lecturing tour, her lectures were mainly of an anti-religious character, and to this fact is probably due much of the opposition she received at that time. When afterward she lectured on political subjects, she met with a somewhat better reception.
When not in the lecturing field she kept her pen constantly busy. I am not sure that I have anything like a complete list of her literary labors, but I may mention as among them, besides the cditing of the Free Enguirer, the conducting of a political magazine, The Manual of American Principles. She was at one time the assistant of Abner Kneeland on the Boston Investigator, and besides a large volume of her published lectures she has written and published at various times the following works:
“Views of Society and Manners in America.”
“A Few Days in Athens.”
"Altorf.” (A tragedy, which appeared on the stage, James Wallack enacting the principal part.) ​“England the Civilizer.” (Published in 1847.)
In 1831, the sister who had so long been her companion died in Paris, and she was left bereft of all near family ties. It was seven years later that she took what seems to have proved a most disastrous step for her happiness, in marrying her old-time friend, M. Phiquepal D’Arusmont, whose acquaintance she first formed at New Harmony, where he was a teacher of some new system of education, and of whom in her fragmentary autobiography she speaks in the most enthusiastic and laudatory manner. How long they lived happily together I do not know, but they did so at least until 1844, when that autobiography was first written, and published in the Dundee Northern Star. She was then on a visit to Scotland for the purpose of settling the accounts of some property to which she had fallen heir by the death of a cousin of her father. I think that they must have separated soon after their return to America from that ​visit. Elizabeth Oakes Smith says: "Her husband certainly treated her in a most ungenerous and unmanly way, and I fear her daughter was not without blame. I had these particulars from a highly reliable source, namely, her lawyer. M. D'Arusmont had been penniless but for her, and he meanly endeavored to wrest her property from her, under the statutes that make a woman's person, goods, and chattels all pass to the ownership of the man who marries her. Madame D'Arusmont desired to educate her daughter for a public speaker; and to prevent this, asserting that the girl was disinclined thereto, he took her away from her mother till she, the mother, died. It is most likely that the young lady inherited neither the talents nor aspirations of her nobly-endowed mother, and was deficient, perhaps, in the more tender emotions, as we do not hear of her making any effort to see, or minister to the comfort of, the being to whom she owed life, property, and fame.”
Of a fall on the ice, Mrs. Smith relates ​this incident: "There was one curious coincidence that occurred shortly before her death, which would do the heart of an astrologer good, as going to show, ‘There is a Divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we may,' and that certain persons are brought into juxtaposition by an irresistible destiny. Madame D’Arusmont was walking through one of the streets of Cincinnati when a slight layer of ice rendered the footing precarious. It afterward appeared that M. D’Arusmont was also at the same moment making his way through a parallel street, and on a line with herself. Both fell at the same moment—she broke her thigh, and he broke his wrist.”
In “Half-hours with Freethinkers” I find this succinct account of her death:
“Madame D'Arusmont died suddenly in Cincinnati, on Tuesday, December 14, 1852. She had been for some time unwell, in consequence of a fall upon the ice, the previous winter, which broke her thigh, and probably hastened her decease, but the im​mediate cause of her death was the rupture of a blood-vessel. She was aware of her situation, knew when she was dying, and met her last hour with perfect composure.”
She was buried in the Cincinnati Spring Grove Cemetery, said to be the finest west of the Alleghenies. Over her remains an elegant marble monument has been erected, and, it is said, at the expense of her daughter, Frances Sylvia D’Arusmont. A bas-relief portrait of Frances Wright ornaments it, and it bears the following inscription:
Born in Dundee, Scotland, Sept. 1795. Passed to Spirit life from Cincinnati, Dec. 1852.
“I have wedded the cause of human improvement; staked on it my fortune, my reputation, and my life.
“Human kind is but one family; the education of its youth should be equal and
She experienced the fate of all reformers, in that after she had given all that was best of herself, her time, her talents, her wealth, her toil, to the interests of mankind, she was at the last neglected as she had been previously calumniated. Time, the Restorer, as well as the Destroyer, will give to her, as to so many others like her, the glory which is rightfully her due, for——
Truth shall conquer at the last, As round and round we run; And ever the right comes uppermost,
Although it must be confessed that too often, as in Frances Wright’s case, "justice is done” too late to avail aught but to vindicate the memory of the wronged one. That the storms and tempests of the life she voluntarily took upon herself left their impress upon her, we know. One who held ​in his possession two portraits of Frances Wright, one taken when she was about twenty, and the other taken toward the close of her life, writes thus of the difference between the two pictures:
“The young face is oval-shaped; graceful curls shade the forehead and neck; the eyes are soft; and the mouth and chin feminine. The second face bears a resemblance to the first, but it is the resemblance of a father to his daughter. She wears no cap; her hair still curls, but it is short, and does not cover the frowning wisdom of her large forehead. The lower part of her face is broad and firm, and all the expression is that of a woman of stern experience. Well, there is history written in that face. She was the rough pioneer of the Woman's Rights reform, that is so respected and so well supported at present. Never woman had to brazen herself as she did to initiate that movement. If there is any good in that movement, the world owes something to the courage of Frances Wright.” ​That she had her faults no one who understands human nature can doubt. Great public virtues have sometimes been allied to great private vices. Of Frances Wright’s private life I know nothing. I judge her only by her public acts. Those were noble, brave, and philanthropic. With no private wrongs to right, nor personal injustice to defeat, she, with rare courage, took up the cause of a common humanity, and proved true at least a part of Mrs. Browning's couplet:
She had wealth, leisure, friends, character: these she offered up a willing sacrifice to the interests of humanity. There stand the records; there is no gainsaying, no denying them. Nor will the idea of overweening vanity, or desire for popularity, cancel any part of her just praise. Had that been her aim, she took a strange and devious course to gain it. Nay, further, her ​own eloquent words carry conviction of her heartfelt earnestness. I believe in Frances Wright, as a true, self-sacrificing soul, of whom the Freethinkers of all countries should be proud.