The Buckley School's founder believed all public speakers should hone their presentation skills by reading poetry out loud. We keep that worthwhile practice alive by including a poem in our magazine each month for you to read aloud. Above, a photograph of Frances Miriam Berry Whitcher.
Often considered the first woman in the United States to find a successful and significant role as a humorist, Frances Miriam Berry Whitcher created characters and wrote poems that captured their ridiculousness, satirizing the pretentiousness of her time.
Born in 1811, Frances Miriam Berry is said to have started reciting poetry at the age of two, well before she knew the alphabet or could read. She showed a talent for writing and drawing at a young age, as well.
By her early thirties, Berry was contributing poems to the Saturday Gazette and Godey's Lady's Book. Her poems about Widow Bedott were particularly popular.
In 1835, she married a reverend, Benjamin Williams Whitcher and the couple moved to Elmira, New York, where he was Rector of Trinity Church. She continued writing and publishing her satirical poems, with a new wrinkle: Members of her husband's congregation began speculating who among them were the butts of her jokes.
Title page of Whitcher's collected papers, published in book form after her death.
Miriam Whitcher died in 1852, but her work continued to attract many readers. In 1855, a collection of her writings were published in book form as The Widow Bedott Papers. The Widow Bedott also inspired a play based on her character.
Below, find a Whitcher poem that lets you try on the voice of Widow Bedott for size and see how it influences your tone, cadence, and inflection
Widow Bedott To Elder Sniffles
O reverend sir, I do declare
It drives me most to frenzy,
To think of you a-lying there
Down sick with influenzy.
A body'd thought it was enough
To mourn your wife's departer,
Without sich trouble as this ere
To come a-follerin' arter.
But sickness and affliction
Are sent by a wise creation,
And always ought to be underwent
By patience and resignation.
O, I could to your bedside fly,
And wipe your weeping eyes,
And do my best to cure you up,
If 'twouldn't create surprise.
It's a world of trouble we tarry in,
But, Elder, don't despair;
That you may soon be movin' again
Is constantly my prayer.
Both sick and well, you may depend
You'll never be forgot
By your faithful and affectionate friend,
Priscilla Pool Bedott.
