[Partial letter to] Dear Mrs. Chapman
Contributors: Chapman, Maria Weston, 1806-1885. recipient
Series: Maria Weston Chapman Correspondence (1835-1885)
Published: 1847
Place of publication: [Cork?, Ireland]
Language: eng
Format: [manuscript]
Subjects: Correspondence; Anti-slavery fairs; Mesmerism; Women abolitionists; Antislavery movements; History
Notes: Holograph.

The beginning and the end of this letter are missing. This unsigned letter was presumably written by Isabel Jennings. Isabel Jennings asks Maria Weston Chapman if the names of contributors [to the Boston anti-slavery fair] could be inserted in the Anti-Slavery Standard, so that copies can be put on the table of "our Exhibition." She explains the case of the Belfast sympathizers: "some of the Anti-Slavery friends are warm advocates for the old organization," but the greater part merely wish for the downfall of slavery, and it is difficult to understand the opposition of one anti-slavery party to another. Isabel Jennings dwells on the prejudiced misunderstanding of William Lloyd Garrison in some quarters. Isabel Jennings' friend told her that "she would not ask Garrison to her house lest he might convert her to the error of his ways." She suggests that Maria Weston Chapman thank the Belfast contributors. Hannah Hincks(?), their secretary, said that Maria Weston Chapman had left Belfast out in her list of places from which anti-slavery gifts had been sent: "she supposed it was because a Box went to the Liberty Party A.S. [anti-slavery] people." Isabel Jennings expresses at some length her trust in the character of Frederick Douglass. She comments about Douglass: "I think I told you R.D.W. [Richard Davis Webb] and he would never get on pleasantly together." Isabel Jennings says: "We have been very much interested lately in a new novel by a new writer---'Jane Eyre' is the name of the book---the author evidently believes in mesmerism---we find every day fresh evidence of its curative powers." [Jane Eyre was published August 1847.] Jennings elaborates with specific cases of cures achieved through mesmerism, including cures performed by her sisters.