ABSTRACT
In July 1817, Eliza Fletcher, a Yorkshirewoman married to an Edinburgh lawyer, a literary hostess and later an autobiographer, wrote a short memoir of her daughter Grace, three months after Grace’s entirely unexpected death from typhus at the age of 20. The memoir begins with an account of Grace’s extensive education and early years, including her political interests and the ‘intrepid humanity’ she showed in confronting parish officers mistreating a poor pregnant woman. 1 In the final pages, Fletcher recalls in detail the last week of her daughter’s active life before catching typhus. Grace was anxious, she wrote, to ‘avoid crowds and enjoy the real pleasures of society’. That is, she chose to engage with ‘the duties of humanity’ as well as ‘the duties of home’. 2 The ‘duties of humanity’ were considerable, for in her last week of life Grace and her sister attended either the House of Industry or the Lancastrian School in Edinburgh three or four days a week, as well as visiting friends for dinner, going to the theatre and spending time with her family. Eliza Fletcher’s portrait of her daughter is also very relevant to her own life in these years, for she played a leading role in the growth of women’s associational life in early nineteenth-century Edinburgh. Her ideal of female sociability went far beyond the informal networks of women’s relationships and the life of the literary salon to include a commitment to civic duty and social improvement, in alliance with the inspiration of evangelical religion.
