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Anna Cora Mowatt's Wedding June 7, 1854 was a beautiful day for a wedding. Even though the
groom was forty-one years old, the bride was thirty-five, and it was her
second marriage, it was obvious to all who were there that this was a very special ceremony. Attendees of
this event had to have realized that they were witnessing one of those rare occasions
that rise above the grimy realities of day-to-day American life like a
sparkling, effervescent bubble – fueled with fantasy and a great deal of hot
air. The celebration of the Mowatt-Ritchie nuptials on that day in early June of 1854, Dear
Reader, was a celebrity wedding. As I said, Anna Cora Mowatt’s marriage to William Foushee Ritchie was her second trip
to the altar. Victorian second marriages
were generally more reserved affairs not usually celebrated with all the
fanfare of first marriages. However, Anna Cora had eloped with James Mowatt at
age fifteen. Her wedding dress had been a garment she and one of her sisters
had managed to sew in secret at night.
The ceremony had been conducted by a French minister who, after being
refused by three other men of the cloth, James Mowatt had finally been able to
pressure into agreeing because his own marriage had been an elopement. The only witnesses to the ceremony had been
less than a dozen of James’ friends. There was a significant pause during the
proceedings when the priest tried to back out when he saw how young Anna Cora
actually was. All in all, not quite a
dream wedding. The above information may be news to you, but in 1854, Anna Cora Mowatt had
a fanbase who would already be apprised of these details of her life story. Her
autobiography had come out that year and was being snapped up eagerly by her
devotees all over the country. These events occurred in the days before Broadway stars were unknowns outside Lower Manhattan. Leading performers like Edwin Booth, Laura Keene
and their companies toured the Eastern seaboard rather than attaching
themselves to any single New York theater. Thus Mowatt could number fans not
only in New York, but in Boston, Washington, Philadelphia, Richmond,
Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, New Orleans, Memphis, Louisville, and Cincinnati
as well. They had packed her farewell
tour performances from pit to dome.
Nothing would please these devotees better than seeing the promise of a
“happily ever after” ending in the form of a fairytale wedding for their
American sweetheart. The mass media of the day did their best to deliver. Detailed accounts of Mowatt’s wedding
appeared in hundreds of newspapers all across the Eastern United States. Some mentions were only the sort of brief
notices in the society pages one might expect for a marriage. However, many of the articles were
full-blown, two-column spreads relaying the impressions of reporters sent to
witness the event. Several of the papers in the Northeast presented their reports
under the heading of “Miscellany” or “Talk of the Town” near the back of the
paper. A good number of news-hungry
publications in the South in Mid-West ran reprints of articles from the New York Times, Post, Herald, Express, and the Boston Evening Transcript on their front pages side-by-side with
discussions of the latest developments from the upcoming presidential race. Although both American media and the Idea of celebrity
itself were still in their infancy, the core elements of the coverage of the
celebrity wedding already seemed to be in place for the Mowatt-Ritchie wedding.
Implicit in the coverage are ideas familiar to all aficionados of modern
celebrity weddings -- First, that romance is symbolized by a The invitations are
given, of course, by the mother of the bride, Mrs. Samuel G. Ogden, enclosing
the cards of the bride and groom, and the following card of instructions passim: “Carriage route for Ravenswood by the Peck slip and Houston
street ferries by way of Williamsburgh, distance five miles. The steamer
Ravenswood leaves the pier below Peck slip at one o’clock, and returns at 5:12
pm. Extra trips on the 7th
June, will return to New York at 8 and 10 pm.
The ceremony will take place at 3 o’clock.” The notes bear the arms of the Ogden family, a lion rampant,
quarterings of oak branch and acorns, with the following motto: “Et si ostendo non jacto.” – Though I
shine I do not boast. 1 Virtual invitation in hand, the descriptions from these
newspaper accounts, like modern celebrity wedding coverage, continue to do all
they can to make the reader feel that they, too, are part of this exclusive
event by giving as many details little details as possible of the appearance of
the setting of the ceremony at Mowatt’s father’s home in Ravenswood, New York. Of course, the crown jewel of coverage of any
wedding – celebrity or no -- is a meticulous account of the wedding gown. As is usual for celebrity weddings, reports
of Anna Cora’s gown emphasized not only how beautiful, but how expensive it
was: It was the good fortune of the favored few to mark, with peculiar
interest – an interest that we are sure will be appreciated by our lady readers
– the appearance of the bride in a dress of superb white silk, inlaid with
lace, and deep flounced, and a long bridal veil of costly thread lace, secured
by a myrtle wreath; the toilette altogether exquisite, without sacrificing
simplicity to extravagance.2 The description from the Express
is loaded with terms so specific to Victorian times that it is almost
unintelligible today, except, again that it was a lovely dress made of highly
attractive and costly materials; The dress was of white silk, beautifully embroidered, lace
applique being also let in; the veil of Honiton, fastened by a wreath of white
rose-buds and myrtle leaves and would have swept the floor had it not been
looped up at the side; a pearl necklace, presented by the groom, graced her
neck, and the berthe of Brussels point was confined at the bosom by a broach belonging
to the same set.3 Most of the accounts proceed to a description of the six
bridesmaids and six groomsmen at this point.
She was attended by friends, sisters, nieces and relatives of her dear
friend Epes Sargent. Although this was not a part of the ceremony, mentioning
bridesmaids reminds me that a source of minor controversy was that many newspapers
also carried this list of gifts received by Anna Cora Mowatt complete with the
names of the givers: Among the pretty presents to Mrs. Mowatt upon the occasion
of her recent marriage to Mr. Ritchie was a group of statuary from Spencer’s
Fairy Queen (the subject being Britomartis unchaining Amoret) from her
publishers in Boston, Messers. Ticknor, Reed & Field, - a beautiful copy of
Miranda gazing at the shipwreck, from Miss Appleton, -- an elegant inkstand,
surrounded by cupids, from Mr. Peterson of Philadelphia – a parain vase from a
friend, -- a magnificent wrought silver vase from her brother Charles Ogden, --
a set of pearls from the groom, -- a beautifully embroidered chain from her
sister Mrs. Mecke, and worked by her own hands, beside silver, embroideries and
fancy work without limit.4 A few editorial writers debated whether or not it violated
the rules of decorum for someone to have revealed that Mowatt received these
expensive gifts and exactly who gave them.
Apparently such concerns didn’t stop the twenty or so papers who ran
this anonymously sourced item, though. To give their readers the feeling that they were actually
present at the festivities, the New York Post
not only covered the ceremony, but gave a word-for-word transcript of the somewhat
out of the ordinary wording of the Swedenborgian ceremony (which you may read in full here). The account from the New York Evening Post Mr. Wilkes, then addressing Mr. Ritchie, said, “William
Foushee, wilt thou have this woman for thy wife?” “I will,” was the prompt, though almost in audible reply. Then addressing the bride, he said, “Anna Cora, wilt thou
have this man for thy husband?” “I will,” was the response, in a clear but slightly
tremulous tone.5 The New York Express
(read in full) could not resist adding the following elaboration in the same sort of spirit: Our readers who so well know the loveliness and grace of the
bride need not be told that on an occasion so full of holiest and deepest
emotion her beauty shone out resplendent.6 When I say that the wedding was an exclusive event, I do not
mean to imply that only a very limited number of people were invited. There has been a good amount of debate
between Mowatt biographers as to how many of these invitations were sent. At the high end, there were press reports
that as many as four thousand guests were invited and two thousand turned up on
the day. More conservative (and probably realistic) estimates had the headcount
down as far as five hundred with as few as two hundred actually witnessing the
ceremony itself. This range of inflation
for the guest list should give you some idea of the amount of hype surrounding
this wedding in the press. As the Boston Courier (read in full) rather snarkily put it, Queen Victoria was not present, and the name of the Empress
Eugenia is not mentioned among the five or six hundred guests…7 There were, however, a great many names among the guest list
that will be recognizable to Civil War buffs as power players. By half-past two most of the guests had arrived. Among those
who lent distinction to the occasion were Robert J. Walker, Senator Douglas,
Messers. Orr and Aiken, members of Congress from South Carolina; Dr. Pulte, of
Cincinnati; George Wood, James W. Gerard, Judges Roosevelt and Woodward of this
city, and Messers White and Ingersoll, ex-members of Congress from
Pennsylvannia.8 Most accounts also mention that President Franklin Pierce
was an invited guest -- although for whatever reason he did not attend. Mowatt’s biographers usually mention that
ex-president John Tyler’s wife threw a banquet in honor of the couple while
they were on their honeymoon. The
Ogdens, Mowatt’s family, were long-time members of New York’s moneyed class,
the so-called “Upper Ten.” Anna Cora,
herself, was part of the up and coming theater world and in the process of
establishing a name for herself as author.
Why then, instead of guests from any of these realms do we have all
these politicians at her wedding? The
answer is – it’s because of the groom.
When I talk about Anna Cora Mowatt’s second husband, I tend
to use his middle name. This is not only
because it’s a funny name, but because that name represents a big part of who
he was. He was named after his
grandfather, William Foushee, who had been a surgeon in the Revolutionary War
and the first mayor of Richmond, Virginia. William F. Ritchie’s brother got his
father’s name. Thomas Ritchie, Sr. (often
called “Father Ritchie”) was the editor of the Richmond Enquirer, a paper of which Thomas Jefferson said, "I
read but a single newspaper, Ritchie's Enquirer,
the best that is published or ever has been published in America.”10 Thomas Ritchie, Sr. was a power player in the group known as
the “Richmond Junto” who controlled Virginia state government and was a force
to be reckoned with in national politics as well. Richie senior eventually
turned his paper over to Ritchie junior and William Foushee after he had gone
on to edit a Washington-based paper called “The Union.” Thomas Ritchie, Jr. died rather ignobly after
fighting a duel with John Hampden Pleasants, the editor of a rival paper, in
1846. Ritchie emerged the victor of the duel, having not only shot but also
stabbed Pleasants, but wound up sinking into a deep depression when it was
revealed that the other man had loaded his gun with blanks and had intended to
fire only into the air. After lingering
for many years, he rather inconveniently died on May 24th, 1854,
just weeks before the Mowatt-Ritchie marriage.
Contemporary accounts decorously gave his cause of his demise as
“hereditary gout.” However, most
historians bluntly conclude that Ritchie, Jr. drank himself to death. Thomas Ritchie, Jr.’s ill-timed passing spawned a series of
reports confusing him for his elder brother and erroneously announcing that
Anna Cora’s fiancé had expired just shy of the wedding day. After this misunderstanding was cleared up,
there was a certain amount of hand-wringing over whether or not the wedding
would have to be delayed… and then a bit of eye-brow lifting when it was not
(Victorians were very serious about their mourning.) Ritchie, Jr.’s death was only one of the dramatic supplemental
stories leading up to the Mowatt-Ritchie wedding. In the six months preceding
her wedding, Mowatt had released her well-promoted, thoroughly publicized and
glowingly reviewed autobiography, gone on a multi-city Farewell tour as she
officially ended her stage career that was also very well publicized,
indulgently lauded by critics, and attended by exceptionally emotional crowds;
broken or sprained her arm, gotten engaged, and performed her usual quota of
miscellaneous public appearances for charities and other organizations. Even by today’s standards, that’s a lot of
media attention for an individual who isn’t elected to a public office to
receive in a relatively short amount of time.
After the wedding, a bit of Mowatt-fatigue was starting to set in among
the press. The bitter aftertaste of
media oversaturation is apparent in the Charleston
Courier’s tone when they wearily concluded a week after the wedding, We are never to hear the last of Mrs. Mowatt’s wedding. The
newspaper guests could not waive their privilege of criticizing the
informalities and peculiarities of the ceremony. The Swedenborgian minister,
following the practice of the founder of his creed, pronounced the words “conjugal” and “nuptial” as they write it, as they are naturally derived from the Latin,
nuptial and conjugal. The minister and his faith reply and give us another
official account of the whole affair.
Dodsworth’s band played too when they should not play, and this too
affords another opportunity for explanation.
There is an old saying about soldiers fighting their battles over again;
I should think Mr. and Mrs. Ritchie might celebrate their wedding over and over
again, by referring to the newspapers.11 New Orleans’ Times-
Picayune, who tended to maintain an obstinately contrarian attitude towards
all things Mowatt, started a piece
titled “The Press Meddling With Private What must the emotions of a refined and delicate woman at
her marriage festival, asks the Advertiser, were she aware that the sharp eyes
of a newspaper reporter were fixe upon her – who while she was breathing the
holiest vows that mortal can utter to mortal, was very likely arranging a minute
report of the ceremonies, to be thrown off next day from the teeming press, and
to be read and talked about by ten thousand persons whom perhaps she never
knew, or of whom she never heard, can
better be imagined than described.12 The writer then wonders aloud how all those rude reporters
happened to be on the scene. They couldn’t be there unless they had gotten
invitations too, though, could they? (From the cynical perspective of the 21st
century, I dubiously shake my head and reply that I can imagine there were many
ways reporters could have gained entrée to a much-anticipated event that even
conservative estimates claimed had hundreds of invited guests. (And because
those crowd estimates ranged from four thousand to two hundred, I can even
imagine that some of those “eyewitnesses” weren’t really there at all.))
Perhaps, the author speculates, the ceremony that was relayed word-for-word was
released in advance instead of being taken down in shorthand. Everyone knows that there are folks who crave
the spotlight. That’s what made them
celebrities. Perhaps this was why this
was a celebrity wedding. So why blame the press? Or as the writer put it, The fact is, we judge, there is very little, probably not
any real offending in this way, on the part of the press. We doubt, if personal
accounts of private parties are ever given to the press, unless with the
permission, at least, the tacit permission, perhaps, of the givers of them. We
have known of instances – has not the Advertiser? – where no little anxiety has
been displayed on the part of the inviters, lost a mention of their bal masque or bal pare, or fete of
whatever kind, should not find its way into the columns of the press. And at
the fashionable watering places of the land we fancy there would be a great
dearth of such entertainments if it were understood that no publicity was to be
given to them.13 Nearly two centuries later, the spiritual great-great-great
grandchildren of the Times-Picayune
journalist are still using this same rational to cut off discussion or the need
for self-reflection or restraint on the part of the press when engaging in
hyperbolic and intrusive celebrity coverage. “Yes,” they always wind up
admitting in the end, “it’s all a dirty game where everybody’s out to cash in
on the publicity generated by the public’s curiosity and fantasies. And yes, sometime people do get hurt, but
can’t you see that the celebrities are playing the game too? Don’t blame us.” Modern journalists may be as open as the writer from the Times-Picayune about shifting blame for
the over-hyped nature of their coverage to the subjects of their reporting, but
I have seen few be so blunt as this commentator from the Charleston Courier about their plans for avoiding a similar fate, Mr. and Mrs. Ritchie, if they desire newspaper notoriety,
have had it to their hearts content. Not only has the wedding, the marriage
ceremony, and almost everything else been most minutely reported, but one of
the papers regales us with an account of the bride’s presents, with the names
of the givers. It may be all right and
proper, but when I get married, I’ll do like our Yacht Club, and not “allow
reporters on board.”14 1.
“The
Marriage Fete of Anna Cora Mowatt.” The
Evening Post: New York. June 6, 1854, col 2. 2.
“Marriage of Anna Cora Mowatt and Mr. Ritchie of
Virginia.“ Washington Sentinel. June 10, 1854. 3.
“Ravenswood Wedding.” Daily Dispatch. June 10, 1854. 4.
Buffalo
Morning Express. June 6, 1854. Page 3. 5.
“Marriage Fete at Ravenswood.” The Evening Post: New York. June 8,
1854. 6.
“The Ravenswood Marriage.” The Daily Dispatch.
June 10, 1854. 7.
“Things in General: Marriage of Mr. Ritchie.” Boston Courier. June 12, 1854. Page 8. 8.
“Marriage Fete at Ravenswood.” The Evening Post: New York. June 8,
1854. 9.
Blesis, Marius. Life and Letters of Anna Cora Mowatt. University of Virginia, 1938
Page 326 10.
"Thomas
Jefferson to William Short, September 8, 1823". 11.
“New York Correspondence,” Charleston Courier. June 14, 1854. 12.
“The Press Meddling With Private Matters.” Times-Picayune: New Orleans. June 16,
1854. Page 2, col. 2. 13.
Ibid. 14. “New York Correspondence,” Charleston Courier. June 16, 1854.
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In the role of Mowatt’s fairytale prince we have the
somewhat ill-cast, William Foushee Ritchie.
Affairs,” (
