November 1996 Blazer

Poet Hannah Tapfield King

THE HISTORY BLAZER II ArE1' E115O F UTAH'S PAST FROM THE I Utah State Historical Society 300 Rio Gra~ lde Salt Lake City. lTT 84101 ($ 01) 533- 3500 FAX ( 801) 533- 3303 Poet Hannah Tapfield King HANNATH. KING MAY NOT HAVE BEEN THE MOST GIETED of Salt Lake City's early women poets- some have credited Sarah Elizabeth " Lizzie" Cannichael with producing poems of genuine literary merit- or as well known as Eliza R. Snow, but Hannah did have two books published while she was still living in Cambridgeshire, England, and she had long corresponded with Eliza Cook, a voguish British poet of the mid- 19th century. In addition to writing poetry King kept journals- sometimes more than one. At some point, she or her granddaughter synthesized the various diaries into one chronological typescript. Besides her journals, Hannah was an avid letter writer, producing effusive epistles to family and friends whom she considered kindred spirits in the love of Christian literature. In 1856, three years after arriving in Utah, King wrote, ' The Californian mail came in [ today]. How delightful a letter is to me, penned by sincere and congenial spirits. Such have been my panacea through life.. . . " Hannah was born in 1807 at Gogmagog Hills in Cambridgeshire, where her father sewed for over 60 years as land and house steward to the Earl of Godsplin. She received the typical schooling ( two years) for a Victorian female ( or " village girl" as she called herself). But Hannah had a predilection for culture that was enhanced by her friendship with the earl's daughter ( Charlotte Goldolphin Osborne), marriage to a member of the minor gentry, and self- education through reading and associating with other book lovers. At age 17 Hannah wed Thomas King, the 24- year- old son of a neighboring landowner. Thomas had courted her faithfully every Thursday and Sunday since she was 14. But her father did not really like the young man, and Hannah herself was unenthusiastic. Then at age 16 she and her mother enjoyed a whirlwind visit to London parties at the invitation of an aunt and uncle who " lived in good style and their circle was tonish!" During this time, a city gentleman fell in love with her. Although she refused him, the experience made her appreciate Thomas's devotion, despite her feeling that they were intellectually and spiritually mismatched. She admitted that his being an only son and sure to inherit the eight- room King cottage and fields influend her thinking. For six years after her marriage to Thomas King, Hannah gave birth almost annually. Two babies apparently died shortly after birth and one child at 14 months of " an affection of the brain." By the time a robust little daughter they named Georgiana came along, Hannah and Thomas were jubilant. They eventually had 11 children, but only four lived to maturity. Hannah commented, " I had lost so many that the remnant were doubly dear to me.. . . " ( more) Hannah matured into an upper- middle- class English matron. Despite the responsibilities of housekeeping, supervising two servants and a governess, helping her mother, and taking in a widowed daughter with five children, she maintained a circle of friends with whom she exchanged letters, books, and Bible verses. They included the local bookstore owner, the popular poet Eliza Cook, and a bachelor mysteriously referred to in Hannah's journal as R. L. D. ( R. L. Dowton) whose death in 1849 left her bereft. Hannah often found solace for her grief in writing, but faced with many tragedies she began to feel as if her world were collapsing around her. In 1849, when a dressmaker told her about Mormonism, Hannah converted within a few weeks. By 1853 she and her four surviving children, along with a very reluctant Thomas, left England for Utah. Settling in Salt Lake City, the Kings spent most of their remaining money on a house. Everything cost more than they had expected, and they were soon broke. Thomas, a fiftyish gentleman farmer, knew nothing about making a living, so Hannah opened a school in their home and persuaded Brigham Young to give son Thomas Owen a job. Life in Utah brought its frustrations: neighbors who considered Hannah uppity for her highbrow English manner and 1856 Reformation preaching that offended her for its low- church, hellfire- and- damnation tenor. But on the whole, Hannah was satisfied with her new life. She replaced her old circle of literati with the Mormon Polysophical Society, whose members read and discussed their own and others' essays and poems. She continued to write and saw her works occasionally published in the Deseret News and Woman's Ekponent. Thomas was baptized in 1857, which greatly relieved Hannah's fears for their mutual salvation. He died in 1875, she in 1886. Sources: Journals of Hannah Tapfield King with foreword by Bertha Earnes Loosli, typescript, Utah State Historical Society Library, Salt Lake City; Maureen Ursenbach, " Three Women and the Life of the Utah Historical Quarterly 43 ( 1975); Ancestral File ( computerized records) on individual King family members, LDS Church Family History Library, Salt Lake City. THEH ISTORYB LAZER is produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone [phone] ( BB)