[ 46 ] JENNY LAWRENCE Within a month Miriam herself became the focus of a scandal that did not have a happy ending. In her letters, Miriam mentioned several times that William had advised her to give better disguises to the characters in her sketches. But Louis Godey, to whom she was sending material at this time, was so insistent upon Miriam's sketches for the Lady's Book, and the Whitchers so dependent on the income her writing provided, that she sent the sketches off anyway. Elmirans may have suspected a connection between the preacher's wife, whom they vaguely knew to write in her spare time for newspapers, and "Frank" who wrote of Widow Bedott and Aunt Maguire in Godey's Lady's Book. Any suspicions they had were confirmed when, in December 1848, the Elmira Gazette reprinted from the already published Lady's Book of January 1849 a sketch of Aunt Maguire's sewing society.49 It is in this piece that Mrs. Samson Savage's portrayal resembled a certain Mrs. Arnot in Elmira (see opening paragraph). The town was shocked. I cannot give you any idea of the terrible muss which "Mrs Samson Savage" has created here. About a week ago the town began to be ablaze with it. We do not know who first noticed the article, but it spread like fire, & for some days has been the theme of conversation in all places. High & low, rich & poor are all agog about it. There are two bookstores here at each of which the Lady's Book is taken. At one of them the demand for the book was such that the bookseller ordered & sold immediately forty extra copies, & the other one said he could have sold fifty in two hours. I suppose there never was as much reading done in Elmira before as there has been the past week.50 William Whitcher confirmed the rumors that it was his wife who was the author. He hoped the furor would diminish, but the damage was done. Miriam's chief concern, once she had been discovered, was for her husband's position. It is not very pleasant for me, who have hitherto been so retired & unnoticed here, to be thus hauled into notoriety, & subjected to all sorts of mean insults from Mrs Arnot & her clique, as I shall be.... I do not care for such people, 49 See "Aunt Maguire continues her account of the Sewing Society" by the Author of "The Widow Bedott Papers!' Godey's Lady's Book, XXXVIII (January, 1849), 25-29; and, "Aunt Maguire's Account of the Sewing Society" by the Author of "The Widow Bedott" Elmira Gazette, December 28, 1848. B0M. Whitcher to sister, December 28,1848.