Yearning for the New Age

Sarah Diane Sasson

Description

A southern lady and her spiritual quest

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This biography of an unconventional woman in late 19th-century America is a study of a search for individual autonomy and spiritual growth. Laura Holloway-Langford, a "rebel girl" from Tennessee, moved to New York City, where she supported her family as a journalist. She soon became famous as the author of Ladies of the White House, which secured her financial independence. Promoted to associate editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, she gave readings and lectures and became involved in progressive women's causes, the temperance movement, and theosophy—even traveling to Europe to meet Madame Blavatsky, the movement's leader, and writing for the theosophist newspaper The Word. In the early 1870s, she began a correspondence with Eldress Anna White of the Mount Lebanon, New York, Shaker community, with whom she shared belief in pacifism, feminism, vegetarianism, and cremation. Attracted by the simplicity of Shaker life, she eventually bought a farm from the Canaan Shakers, where she lived and continued to write until her death in 1930. In tracing the life of this spiritual seeker, Diane Sasson underscores the significant role played by cultural mediators like Holloway-Langford in bringing new religious ideas to the American public and contributing to a growing interest in eastern religions and alternative approaches to health and spirituality that would alter the cultural landscape of the nation.

Foreword
Acknowledgments
A Note on Names
Introduction
1. Sex, Suffrage, and Religious Seekers
2. "A Clairvoyant of the First Water"
3. "Better Come"
4. "The Bomb-shell from the Dugpa World"
5. Fantasizing the Occult
6. "Our Golden Word: Try"
7. The Lady Mrs. X
8. Disseminating New Ideas
9. Music of the Spheres
10. "Dear Friend and Sister"
11. Who Tells the Tale?
Epilogue: Seeking Laura
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Philosophie et théologie
• Women
• Religión
• Woman
• Theosophy
• Christianity
• The Women
• Shaker

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 07 mai 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253001870
• Langue: English

Extrait

YEARNING FOR THE NEW AGE

This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931
2012 by Sarah Diane Sasson
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sasson, Diane, [date]
Yearning for the new age : Laura Holloway-Langford and late Victorian spirituality / Diane Sasson.
p. cm. - (Religion in North America)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-00177-1 (cloth : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-00187-0 (electronic book) 1. Holloway, Laura C. (Laura Carter), b. 1848. 2. Religious biography-United States. 3. Spiritual biography-United States. 4. United States-Biography. 5. United States-History. I. Title.
BL73.H65S27 2012
204.092-dc23
[B]
2011042559
1 2 3 4 5 17 16 15 14 13 12
To Claudia J. Keenan, For her help and friendship
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant-Success in Circuit lies
Emily Dickinson
CONTENTS
Foreword
Acknowledgments
A Note on Names
Introduction
1. Sex, Suffrage, and Religious Seekers
2. A Clairvoyant of the First Water
3. Better Come
4. The First Bomb-shell from the Dugpa World
5. Fantasizing the Occult
6. Our Golden Word: Try
7. The Lady Mrs. X
8. Disseminating New Ideas
9. Music of the Spheres
10. Dear Friend and Sister
11. Who Tells the Tale?
Epilogue: Seeking Laura
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
FOREWORD
DIANE SASSON has crafted a riveting biography of Laura Holloway-Langford (1843-1930) that is also first-rate religious and intellectual history. Sasson s masterful account follows this gifted Southern woman who left the devastating circumstances of the defeated South following the Civil War and traveled across the nation and beyond, gradually gaining national and international attention and prominence. This is the tale of Laura Holloway-Langford s odyssey as a quintessential seeker, and of the excitement, the engagement, and at times the discontent she experienced as she moved through the new spiritual worlds of the late nineteenth century and of the opening decades of the twentieth century.
This account of Laura Holloway-Langford s journey documents her multiple diverse engagements with the religious and social movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Those decades were complex and transitional moments in American spiritual life and history; alternative religious movements as diverse as Theosophy and Spiritualism, Buddhism and Shakerism, appeared at times side by side on a national scene that was dominated by a diversity of Christian denominations. Holloway-Langford engaged these outsider groups in her own distinctive manner, providing in many instances critical input that influenced the subsequent paths of these movements in the United States.
Similarly, this biography tells of Holloway-Langford s engagement with the rapidly changing social world in America during the decades following the Civil War-the Victorian era. This is the story of a Southern lady and divorc e who successfully embraced a range of roles forbidden at that time, including journalist, feminist, alternative religionist, and social critic. She occupied a borderland position during much of her professional life. Sasson s account of Holloway-Langford s accomplishments in these diverse roles is highly instructive with respect to the challenges facing creative women of the era. The sociological implications of her activities and interests were radical in her time.
One of the unexpected developments in this story of the twice-married Holloway-Langford was her extended and deep personal relationships with the members of the celibate North Family of Shakers at Mount Lebanon, New York, a friendship extending for more than three decades, as documented in various ways including personal correspondence that was exchanged for many years. Holloway-Langford clearly shared the Shakers enthusiasm for spiritism. She was also a financial benefactor of sorts for the community, purchasing a Shaker farm in Upper Canaan, New York, in 1906 at a point when the members of the United Society of Believers in Christ s Second Appearing-the formal name of the Shakers-were experiencing very difficult times. Both sides of this unusual relationship valued it highly.
But Holloway-Langford s engagement with the Shakers was merely one aspect of her manifold religious interests, interests that were expressed in her personal relationships with diverse religious figures; in her insatiable appetite for the various expressions of the occult, the marginal, and Eastern religious traditions; and in her confidence regarding a post-death existence of some sort. This panoply of interests, for example, was responsible for her personal relationships with William Q. Judge and Helena Petrovna Blavatsky of the Theosophical Society, as well as for her extensive international travel to Europe, where she met with diverse parties who shared her concerns and curiosities regarding Buddhism and other Eastern religious traditions. Theosophy, or divine wisdom, featured a body of ancient teachings believed to have existed prior to any of the world s religions, the source of all spiritual insight and knowledge. The goal or task of Theosophists was to recover, revive, and represent this ancient wisdom. In many respects, Holloway-Langford was far ahead of the majority of her contemporaries in the United States in that her religious worldview was not confined principally to the Judeo-Christian tradition. She sought and found spiritual insight from diverse metaphysical and Asian religious sources. In that respect she anticipated spiritual and religious viewpoints that would not be widespread in American culture until the 1960s, and that are increasingly common in the twenty-first century.
One other valuable dimension of this study deserves mention and attention, namely, the personal reflections provided by Diane Sasson regarding her years of engagement with this research project. Sasson s account of the ways that she was drawn into the work for this historical monograph is a revealing look into the ways that highly diverse personal factors influence the choice of topics and the investment of time and thought by professional historians. The result of this effort is a highly readable and insightful work that casts light both on its subject and on the process of historical reconstruction.
Catherine L. Albanese Stephen J. Stein
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
LIBRARIANS are truly the unsung heroes of book projects that are based on obscure or archival material. I cannot name all those who helped me, but my gratitude goes to librarians at the American Society for Psychical Research; Brooklyn Public Library; Columbia University Library; the Library of Congress; Nashville Metropolitan Archives; the New York Historical Society; the New York Public Library; and the Tennessee State Library and Archives. My special thanks go to the Interlibrary Loan staff at Vanderbilt University Library.
Other librarians have become friends and partners in my research. In particular, I thank Christopher Benda and Anne Richardson at the Vanderbilt Divinity Library; Christian Goodwillie, Curator of Special Collections and Archives at Hamilton College, and formerly at the Hancock Shaker Village; Jerry Grant at the Emma B. King Library at the Shaker Museum and Library in Old Chatham, New York; Carol Kaplan at the Nashville Public Library; Janet Kerschner at the Theosophical Society in America; Joan Sutcliffe at the HPB Library, Toronto; and E. Richard McKinstry and Jeanne Solensky at the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum and Library.
There must be special acknowledgment, as well, of all who labor to make available primary resources on the web. This book could scarcely have taken shape without the ability to search online nineteenth-century newspapers and magazines. In particular, documents posted on the web made it possible for me to study the early years of the Theosophical movement without travel to distant libraries.
Many individuals stimulated me to expand my thinking about Laura. Joseph Horowitz insisted that I see the Metropolitan Opera s production of Parsifal . By doing so, I came to better understand Laura s absorption with Wagner. Michael Gomes, at the Emily Sellon Memorial Library of the New York Theosophical Society, suggested sources and brought occult novels to my attention. Kathy Stumph, owner of Welcome Home, an antique shop in Chatham, New York, gave my research a special impetus when she handed me a treasure trove of Laura material.
I am pleased that this book is part of the Religion in North America series edited by Catherine L. Albanese and Stephen J. Stein. Catherine Albanese s comments on the manuscript kept me on Laura s track, steeling me against the temptation to pursue other interesting paths. Stephen Stein has encouraged my work in Shaker studies, inspiring me to persist through the lean as well as the fruitful years. At Indiana University Press, Dee Mortensen, Senior Sponsoring Editor, her assistant Sarah Jacobi, Angela Burton, Managing Editor, and Marvin Keenan, Manuscript Editor, initiated me into the mysteries of book production. Thanks to my copy editor Emma Young for her attentive reading of t