Evening star., 1948-08-08
Reading and Writing

4
Hollister Noble to write Woman
With a Sword" his much-praised
novel about Anna Ella Carroll OF
Maryland, unoficial member OF
Lincoln's cabinet.
One Of them, he said the other
day during the course OF flying
visit to Washington, was his mother,
who made him understand what
narrow, frustrated lives women led
in the Victorian era. She lived IN
Auburn, N. Y, which is near the
birthplace of the woman's suffrage
movement, where he was born, too,
and was a great admirer OF Susan
B. Anthony.
That meant, he said, that he
didn't have the mere woman" at
titude which had prevailed for so
long toward Anne Carroll when he
came to investigate her claims OF
authorship of the Tennessee plan,
the military strategy credited with
saving the Union cause.
The other woman was with him
in Washington the other day. She
is his wife Iris, who believed in
him, the way he believed in Anne.
She kept the home fires burning so
that he could be free to plunge
into the research REQUIRED to bring
Anne's full contribution to light.
Not Jealous.
Mrs. Noble, a slim. dark-haired
free-lance writer, said she even
learned not to be jealous when her
husband absent -mindedly referred
to her as Anne.
Mr.. Mobiles long. wide-ranging
pursuit of Anne's great and little
publicized exploits began when he
first saw her name in Sandburg's
"Lincoln.v A visit to the William
Wyles Lincoln Library at Santa
Barbara acquainted him with an
authorized, feminist-sponsored biog-
raphy called "A Military Genius: A
Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Mary
land" by Sarah Ellen Blackwell,
which described at length her re-
markable achievements as political
writer, constitutional lawyer and
military tactician.
"Emotionally I believed her story
right away" he recalled, but I
spent many months trying to pull
lit apart it seemed so amazing"
Painstaking Research.
Three years of research, which
took him on a 12,000-mile coast-to-
coast trip. turned up further in
controvertible evidence of the truth
of her story and led him to write
the book, although he had often
been heard to say that he would
never read another novel OF the
Civil War, much less write one.
Following in Anne's footsteps, he
came here to investigate records in
the National Archives, the Library
of Congress and documents in Con-
gress. At one point he went out
to the Eastern Shore of Maryland
to see her nieces, who emphasized
the fact that Aunt Annie" was
charmer, even in her old age. They
told him, he said, that when she
was 70 and wearing an ear trumpet
she could still come downstairs to
a party and gather all the men
around her before the forsaken
young bellies knew what had hap F,
pened.
Kept in Background.
A brilliant constitutional lawyer
who could not take the bar, as well
as military genius who was never
acknowledged, and a War Depart
ment employe who was not reim-'
bursed for her services, Miss Car
roll was denied recognition, Mr..
Noble thinks, because after the war,
when Grant was being groomed for
the presidency, it was not consid-
cred feasible to publicize the fact
that his military triumphs were
based on the plans Of a woman.
She suffered a stroke after Con-
gress made her a humiliating offer
of a $50-a-month pension in 1881
and became a semi-invalid. Until
her death in 1893, she lived with
her sister in an apartment on New
Hampshire avenue. which became
a suffrage shrine. although she al
ways rather resented feminist ef-
forts in her behalf.
In Mr.. Mobiles fond eye, Miss Car
roll was primarily a newspaper
woman, with a dash of the young
Dorothy Thompson" In 1855, she
wrote a best -seller about interna-