Trials of Intimacy: Love and Loss in the Beecher-Tilton Scandal - Hardcover

Fox, Richard Wightman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226259382 ISBN 13: 9780226259383

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1999

Synopsis

The nation's leading minister stands accused of adultery. He vehemently denies the charge but confesses to being on "the ragged edge of despair." His alleged lover is a woman of mystical faith, nearly "Catholic" in her piety. Her husband, a famous writer, sues the minister for damages. A six-month trial ends inconclusively, but it holds the nation in thrall. It produces gripping drama, scathing cartoons, and soul-searching editorials. Trials of Intimacy is the story of a scandal that shook American culture to the core in the 1870s because the key players were such vaunted moral leaders. In that respect there has never been another case like it—except The Scarlet Letter, to which it was constantly compared.

Henry Ward Beecher was pastor of Brooklyn's Plymouth Church and for many the "representative man" of mid-nineteenth century America. Elizabeth Tilton was the wife of Beecher's longtime intimate friend Theodore. His accusation of "criminal conversation" between Henry and Elizabeth confronted the American public with entirely new dilemmas about religion and intimacy, privacy and publicity, reputation and celebrity. The scandal spotlighted a series of comic and tragic loves and betrayals among these three figures, with a supporting cast that included Victoria Woodhull, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

To readers at the time, the Beecher-Tilton Scandal was an irresistible mystery. Richard Fox puts his readers into that same reverberating story, while offering it as a timeless tale of love, deception, faith, and the confounding indeterminacy of truth. Trials of Intimacy revises our conception of nineteenth-century morals and passions. And it is an American history richly resonant with present-day dramas.

About this title

Review

American Victorian culture is generally characterized by its domestic tranquility, religious piety, and social conformity. No wonder, then, that a love triangle between a seemingly devoted husband and wife and their trusted minister caused a scandal at the time and continues to intrigue scholars today.

In 1876, Theodore Tilton, a well known editor and lecturer, claimed that his wife, Elizabeth, to all appearances the model Christian matron, had confessed to adultery with Henry Ward Beecher, the leading American preacher of the day. Although a jury sided with Elizabeth Tilton, she later undermined efforts to determine what really happened. Frequently compared to the narrative of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, the Beecher-Tilton scandal confronted the American public with new dilemmas about religion and intimacy, privacy and publicity, reputation and celebrity.

In his examination of the scandal, Trials of Intimacy: Love and Loss in the Beecher-Tilton Scandal, Richard Wightman Fox does not attempt to reach a retrospective verdict. Instead, he uses the stories that surround the scandal to examine larger truths about morals and passion in one segment of late-19th-century middle-class America. Presenting his narrative in reverse chronological order foregrounds the process of story creation and revision that Wightman Fox considers central to the event. Period illustrations and photographs as well as reproductions of some of the most relevant correspondence presented as evidence in the Beecher-Tilton trial bring the scandal back to life and allow the reader to examine the information first-hand. --Bertina Loeffler Sedlack

From Kirkus Reviews

The 1875 civil trial of cleric Henry Ward Beecher for adultery and alienation of affection was to its era what the O.J. Simpson trial has been to oursa never-ending source of confusion, position taking, division, and even, occasionally, clarification of conviction and belief. Now, long awaiting the right historian, this 19th-century scandal has finally found him. Containing all the ingredients of a classic novel, this affair of heart and mind (though probably not of body) between one of the nation's most respected and influential preachers and his parishioner, Elizabeth Tilton, wife of Beecher's intimate friend Theodore Tilton, riveted the nation's attention during the high tide of American Victorianism. Fox (Boston Univ.), an accomplished student of American culture and religion (Reinhold Niebuhr, 1986, etc.), draws from the scandal every conceivable element of historical significance. And while remaining sympathetic to all its complex, accomplished, sometimes outsize characters and, to boot, telling a whopping good tale, he stands at a critic's due distance from his sources and from previous commentators on them. In Fox's hands, it is a story both of love exalted, tried, and betrayed and of how fiction, as well as religion, gave meaning to contemporary lives. While firmly a historian's book, it is, as a narrative of many narratives, also deeply marked by the postmodern approach that offers readers many views and many readings of each eventnot all of equal plausibility or validity (for here the historian steps in), but of equal historical interest, significance, and meaning. The scandal occurred at, and accelerated, the moment when Victorian culture was poised to dissolve into more recognizably modern, 20th-century mass culture. Scandal became entertainment, private acts became public possessions, and norms became ``values.'' At times Fox comes dangerously close to loading his tale with so many kinds of significance that it snaps, yet he skillfully holds it together until the end. A compelling analysis, written by a master hand, of a major event in American culture. (56 photos, not seen.) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0226259382
• ISBN 13: 9780226259383
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 426