[Letter to] Dear Mrs. Chapman
Contributors: Chapman, Maria Weston, 1806-1885, recipient
Series: Maria Weston Chapman Correspondence (1835-1885)
Published: 1857
Place of publication: Drimnaugh Cottage, Dublin, [Ireland]
Language: eng
Format: [manuscript]
Subjects: Correspondence; Women abolitionists; Antislavery movements; Abolitionists; History
Notes: Holograph, signed.

Parker Pillsbury asks if his coming over here as an agent would be useful. Richard D. Webb emphasizes the "feebleness and timidity of the anti-slavery spirit" in the United Kingdom. He recalls a conversation about Edmund Quincy's free application of Bible language. Webb writes: "Well, British touchiness on this point is amazingly sensitive. Formalism is powerful, and those who are not formal care little for anti-slavery." Webb explains that he is almost isolated. The fact that a man stopped at his house would "make him suspected by the 'religious' people." Parker Pillsbury's "high flown, somewhat hyperbolical style" would frighten the timid, religious class and shock the taste of the upper class of educated people. Some who express "a warm personal regard for our friend" thought that his coming as an agent would "hardly be of substantial benefit." Since Richard D. Webb parted from Maria Weston Chapman's sisters Caroline, Anne, and Emma in Rome, he has not heard from any of them.