[Letter to] Dear Mr. May
Contributors: May, Samuel, 1810-1899, recipient
Series: Maria Weston Chapman Correspondence (1835-1885)
Published: 1885
Place of publication: Weymouth, [Mass.]
Language: eng
Format: [manuscript]
Subjects: Correspondence; Women abolitionists; Antislavery movements; History
Notes: Holograph, signed with initials.

Maria Weston Chapman refers to a "Pierpont Sonnet" in connection with an anniversary program and a speech by Samuel May. Chapman does not object to the publication of the sonnet: "As to initials...why should I care? No reader of the Xn [Xian] Reporter is likely to know them except yourself." Mrs Miller, who is preparing to write a monograph of Harriet Martineau, asked Chapman for materials. Chapman wished her success, "as for the good of the world there could not be too many lives of so grand a character & so noble a woman." Some parts of Mrs. Miller's little book are very good and then, "when she interviewed James Martineau & Ellen Higginson (the dear sister of Harriet) [she] obtained a quantity of poison flies with which she has spoiled her pot of ointment." James Martineau "furnished her with hints, she says, for which she thanks him in the preface. Then, she becomes scandalous..." James Martineau and Mrs. Miller "together set themselves to deny to Harriet's autobiography any claim to credit or notice: -- but six editions of a 6 dollar book are proof enough of its goodness, ..." James Martineau was Harriet's idol too, "till he compelled her to know him as the bad man & family tyrant he is..." Mr. Thomas Martineau, the coexecutor with Maria Weston Chapman, must not be blamed for her exposure of James Martineau. Mrs. Miller did not know Harriet Martineau. She is James Martineau's tool and "women all see that she does not know enough to defend herself from being used to her own discredit."