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"I do
not think there is anything in my private life that would be interesting to the public." from her letter to Dr. K Horst1
signature from 1911 U.K. census courtesy of Peter Whitaker
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For more than two decades the author (or "authoress"
as she was called in her day) of Miss Toosey's Mission, Laddie, and Tip Cat, "having discovered
her talent with the pen," kept "her name a strict secret." It seemed "to her that the only way for
her work to succeed, to be truly valuable" was "for her own self, her ego, not to shine but for her to stand modestly,
humbly, in the background." 1 She kept her identity secret despite her adoring readers: "The Women's Temple, Chicago, Octr. 29th, '95
Beloved Unknown Friend--I have just finished Don, given me by Lady Henry Somerset. My secretary, Miss
Gordon, has just read it aloud to me after the fatigue of our National Convention of Temperance Women at Baltimore.
It has made us better, tenderer, more aspiring towards worth and gentleness of soul.... I know how strictly you preserve
your incognito, but perhaps you will not mind receiving this loving word through your publishers. That you are a woman I
feel so sure that I dare to address you thus endearingly.--Your loyal subject Frances Williams"2
She kept her identity
secret despite the American presses not only issuing unathorized editions but also using "by the author of Miss Toosey's
Missions" as a marketing tool.
As late as December 1898, A. D. Porter published an issue of People's
 Magazine Monthly with such a pirated edition. The publication which is part of this collection has a paperback cover
which features an article provocatively entitled Miss Toosey's Lover by Bertha C. Clay. Inside
page headings indicate the title is Miss Toosey's Mission. Charolotte M. Braeme, a.k.a. Bertha C. Clay
, is cited as the author. Braeme/Clay pirated her own work from British publishers and sold them directly
to U.S. publishers although this instance may well be a publisher taking advantage of both Miss Toosey's appeal to one class
of reader and Bertha Clay's appeal to another. Little, Brown & Company who held the U.S. rights to works
by Evelyn Whitaker were pursuing such violations. It may have been such episodes that pushed Evelyn Whitaker to divulge
her identity. She kept her identity secret despite library catalogers who credited
her work to other authors:
"The publishers of Miss Toosey's Mission
and its successors have recently written to an inquiring librarian: 'While we can assure you that Mr. Allibone is
in error in stating that the author of Miss Toosey's Mission is Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas Meade Smith, we must also
state that it is the author's wish that the name be unknown, and we cannot, therefore, give you any information.
Yours truly Little Brown and Co."3
When her name was revealed in 1903, the public continued to demand
her life story:
The
name of the author of Miss Toosey's Mission has at last been disclosed. This book was published some years
ago and a number of books have followed from the same hand, but the anonymity of the author has been sedulously preserved.
On the title page of the new book however, Gay. A Story., we read as follows: "By Evelyn Whitaker,
author of Miss Toosey's Mission, Laddie, Faithful, Tom's Boy, etc. The publishers, Little Brown &
Co., are still unable, nevertheless, to supply further information, beyond the fact that this author is an English writer
who has always declined to furnish biographical matter for publication... But all this cannot save one from the awful suspicion
that after all these years of anonymity "Evelyn Whitaker" may be nothing more than a pen name."4
Readers had to be content
with very few details:
The authoress of Tip Cat comes from a very respected family.
Showing great godliness, she has spent her whole life in the service of the oppressed and the sick. In genuine piety she considers
herself only a humble tool of One Higher/The Highest/[i.e.God]. Therefore, having discovered her gift with the
pen, she decided to keep her name a strict secret... And so, we are obliged to honor the wish of the
authoress and it is denied to us to know her name on the title page.
As she so beautfully has year
after year, she relies on her pleasing (pleasant) storytelling to take root in young people. Her imagination, with its
appealing hero and heroine in trying circumstance, and her "spinning out" [of the story] as a wisewoman, is in the
position to follow (to obey) always a faithful love, seeing the worth of all people, little and great.
No wonder her stories are "on the fast track" especially since Tip Cat and Laddie have
appeared. Year after year, a crowd of eager readers greets her books with delight and appreciation." 1
Catalog entry at the British Library's 2011 Historical
Prints Edition of Don by Evelyn Whitaker notes:
The author has decided to remain anonymous because this was the only way she felt completely free to explore a woman's
secret life. As she writes in the afterword to the novel, "That doesn't mean this is a memoir; it's many things
to me, fiction and nonfiction, fantasy and fact, a quilt pieced together not just from my own stories but those of my friends."
She was also inspired to embrace anonymity by the book that inspired her own, an anonymous and very daring Elizabethan manuscript
entitled "A Woman's Worth."6
Readers of her books recognized this quality in the text
and thought they knew the author by what she had written. "The author writes with a pretty air of confidence
in the reader's friendliness"5 and that friendliness led readers to believe that recurring references
in her books offered clues to the author's life.
When I [kcp]began collecting and reading Miss Toosey
books , I made a list of such clues to help me produce a profile of this anonymous author that might aid in the search for
her identity:
- her mother died when she was very young
- she had a loving father but he was busy
- she
had older brother(s) of whom she was quite fond
- she had a sister(s) to whom she was very close
- she had strong
family connections to the Church of England: her father, husband, brother, uncle may have been a vicar. While she attended
Anglican services, she was familiar with Methodism and other "dissenters" and her view of them was generally
positive.
- she had ties to Home Missions in London's East End
- she might have family ties to Somerset
- she
had family connections to the practice of medicine: her father, husband, brother, uncle might be a physician
- she
is familiar with medicine and public health both in a country village and in London hospitals; she spent time in sick rooms;
she may have been a trained nurse
- she may have had a brother with the West India Company or one who left Britain to
live and work in the Americas or Australia
- she was disappointed in the educational opportunites available to women;
in her books women blotting letters is a repeated motif; poor women need to be taught letters; rich women need to be taught
"something useful"
- she liked dogs; dogs often appear in her books: Tipcat's large wolfhound helps
care for the little girls; Gay's Oliver treats Doris Mostyn's dachshund with kindness and feeds it bits of cake and
Judith's Bobs eases the transition of Gay to his new home with his grandfather; in My Honey, each young woman
has a dog that reflects his owner's character and background; in Faithful, the bulldog Pat is pivotal to the plot
and King Charles spaniels, pugs, or toy dogs (amusingly disparaged) relieve the lonliness of old widows
- she admires
men who are "awkward" or "peculiar" or otherwise unfitted for their societal position as gentlemen:
Don, Peter Armitage in Faithful, Sandy in Pen. She reverses this in TipCat when the wealthy young Oxonian Dick is forced
to support his family through his work and in Lil where Ken Wyatt must give up his pride and wealth for the sake of the woman
he loves.
- Men who do useful work and who care for children are celebrated
- she may have moved frequently
- she
love taking long walks in the rural countryside
- she was very familiar with plants; much taken with the Victorian language
of flowers; she visited London's Zoological Gardens and the flower markets of Covent Garden
- she made trips to
the seaside, mentions Bristol
- she may have traveled to Italy, Switzerland, or the south of France
- as an adult
she spent time in the nursery: as a governess or in caring for her own or a sibling's children, or she has an excellent
memory of her own childhood, or she was around many children whom she observed closely and fondly
- she travelled by
train (3rd class)
- she was very familiar with a working class housefhold; farmer and farm laborer, mill worker, grocer,
lodging house
- she may have been accomplished at needlework or dress-making
In fact, many of these speculations about the life of the author
of the Miss Toosey books would prove to be correct. Evelyn Whitaker's life story can now be written, at least in part.
Carolyn G. Heilbrun in her book, Life Beyond Sixty uses Samuel
Johnson's phrase, "the enduring elegance of female friendship" to "perfectly" describe "the relationship
of a woman reader with a woman writer whose work she has encompassed, reread, and delighted in."7
Such readers of Evelyn Whitaker would wish for the author and for themselves to be able to say:
"...if I were writing a chronicle of my own life I could fill my pages with many incidents
which to me at any rate were of deepest interest. There were meetings and partings, marriages and deaths, tragedies
and comedies, laughter and tears. I have had my share of sorrow—who has not? But, thank God! I have
had my share—sometimes I think more than my share of happiness, and I think that, perhaps with one or two exceptions,
I would live my life over again, and certainly would not exchange it for that of anyone else, though now its brightness comes
chiefly from the light of other days and from the "sure and certain hope" of the future."8
1 Introduction to Tip Cat by Dr. K Horst, Lektor de engl. Sprache and der Techniscen zu Darmstadt.
[December1907] translation by K Cummings Pipes.
2 Tribute to the Author of "Laddie,"
etc. from the W & R Chambers catalog at the back of this collections copy of Don.
3 Library Journal, November 1898, p. 644. digitized by Google.
4 New-York Tribune. (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, October 03, 1903, Image 10 Image
and text provided by Library of Congress, Washington, DC Persistent link: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1903-10-03/ed-1/seq-10/
5 American Ecclesiastical Review. A monthly
publication for the Clergy. By Catholic University of America. Vol. IX, 1898, p. 644. digitized by Google.
6 Whitaker, Evelyn: afterword to Gay. British Library, Historical Prints Editions.2011
7 Heilbrun, Carolyn G.: The Last Gift of Time. Life Beyond Sixty.
New York: Ballantine Books, 1997. p. 150
8 Whitaker, Evelyn:
Faithful. Boston: Little Brown & Company, 1902. p. 129. Unlike most other books by Evelyn
Whitaker, Faithful is written in the first person.
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The collection was developed & this
website is maintained by K Cummings
Pipes. I strive to comply with copyright law. I believe all the
quotations and illustrations on this website are either in the public domain or comply with standards of fair use.
My original materials, including my synopses, my notes on Victorian life, and articles bearing my byline, are copyrighted
(K Cummings Pipes, 2007.) Permission is hereby granted for non-profit use which should include a citation to this website. If you are in university and need a hard copy citation to this information please contact email address
below. If you make use of this material, I'd appreciate a note as a courtesy. |
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