Ohio History Journal

The OHIO HISTORICAL Quarterly

VOLUME 70 ?? NUMBER 4 ?? OCTOBER 1961

 

 

From Free-Love to Catholicism:

Dr. and Mrs. Thomas L. Nichols

At Yellow Springs

 

By PHILIP GLEASON*

 

 

 

AS THE SLAVERY controversy grew more intense in the mid-

1850's, many of the reform movements which had preoccupied

large numbers of Americans in the previous decade were sub-

merged in the mainstream of the antislavery movement. Yet

currents of reform not connected with antislavery did persist;

and one of the most bizarre episodes in the history of

declining communitarian socialism took place in the small

southwestern Ohio town of Yellow Springs. Here a utopian

colony championing free-love was established in 1856; just

one year later it came to an abrupt end when its founders and

several inmates entered the Roman Catholic Church. The fact

that the famous educator Horace Mann was the most vehe-

ment critic of "Memnonia," as it was called, added to the

drama of the affair. The founders of Memnonia, Dr. Thomas

L. Nichols and his wife, Mary S. Gove Nichols, were also well

known in their own day, but have since been almost completely

forgotten.

Both Dr. and Mrs. Nichols were born in New Hampshire,

he in 1815, she in 1810; by the time they were married in

1848, they had dabbled in practically every reform and intel-

* Philip Gleason is a member of the department of history at the University of

Notre Dame.

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284     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

lectual fad then current: vegetarianism, hydropathy, phren-

ology, mesmerism, Swedenborgianism, spiritualism, Fourier-

istic socialism, women's rights, and free-love.¹ In 1851 the

Nicholses opened the American Hydropathic Institute in New

York, the nation's first academy for teaching the water-cure.

They hoped to develop the Hydropathic Institute into a

"School for Life" and to make it the nucleus of a movement

for the reconstruction of society along communitarian lines,

but the unfavorable publicity given to their activities, added

to the notoriety which their free-love writings won for them,

frustrated the undertaking in New York. Hence they decided

to move to another locality; the fall of 1855 found the couple

in Cincinnati, where they tried to mobilize reform sentiment

behind an organization called the "Progressive Union," which

they had probably founded.

In Cincinnati they published Nichols' Monthly, from the

pages of which we learn that Thomas L. Nichols gave a series

of lectures on "Free-Love, A Doctrine of Spiritualism" in

the winter of 1855. By January 1856 Dr. Nichols had

attained sufficient stature in the city to be selected one of the

speakers at the Thomas Paine Festival, where three thousand

"Spiritualists, Liberals, and Socialists of various nationali-

ties" heard him declare that the author of The Age of Reason

would be called a spiritualist if he were alive in 1856--in fact,

said Nichols, "he would be claimed as a MEDIUM."² But while

the Nicholses were getting more deeply involved in spiritual-

ism, they had not forgotten their other reform interests, nor

had they given up the hope of establishing a "School for Life."

 

1 For the early lives and activities of Dr. and Mrs. Nichols, see Bertha-Monica

Stearns, "Two Forgotten New England Reformers," New England Quarterly, VI

(1933), 59-84, and Stearns, "Memnonia: The Launching of a Utopia," ibid., XV

(1942), 280-295. There are interesting comments on Nichols in John Humphrey

Noyes, History of American Socialisms (Philadelphia, 1870), 93, 566. Grace

Adams and Edward Hutter, The Mad Forties (New York, 1942), a fictionalized

and tendentious but highly knowledgeable and amusing account of the more bizarre

movements of the 1840's, uses Mrs. Nichols as its central figure. Thomas L.

Nichols, Forty Years of American Life, 1821-1861, was republished in 1937 by

Stackpole Sons (New York); it appeared originally in 1864 in England.

² Nichols' Monthly, II (January 1856), 5-6, II (February 1856), 97, 162.

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FROM FREE-LOVE TO CATHOLICISM              285

The golden opportunity presented itself early in 1856, when

they were offered a lease on the Yellow Springs Water Cure,

seventy miles northeast of Cincinnati.

The village of Yellow Springs combined a number of

advantages for the work the Nicholses hoped to undertake.

It was an established health resort; the waters of the mineral

springs which gave the community its name had been adver-

tised for years as a potent curative for everything from

chronic constipation to "bilious affections." About 1850 a

water-cure establishment had been erected near the stream

flowing from the springs and at times it had been filled beyond

its normal capacity of one hundred persons.³ The town was

served by both a railroad and a stage line; Dr. Nichols and

his wife could hardly be blamed for optimism if they antici-

pated a flourishing hydropathic business.

Furthermore, Yellow Springs was a community with a

reputation for liberalism and progressive views. It had har-

bored briefly in the 1820's a contingent of Owenite socialists

--an offshoot of the New Harmony settlement in Indiana--

and in 1853 Horace Mann, the great educational reformer,

had come to Yellow Springs to take charge of the newly

opened Antioch College, a school excluding sectarianism and

discrimination on account of sex or color, which was ambitious

to become the Harvard of the West.⁴ Here in Yellow Springs,

surely thought the Nicholses, they would find broad-minded

neighbors receptive to their message of health, reform, and

"harmony."

Thus it was that in February 1856 a circular reached the

desk of Horace Mann explaining the Nicholses' plans. The

Yellow Springs Water Cure was to become Memnonia Insti-

tute. Just as the fabled statue of Memnon on the banks of the

 

3 William Albert Galloway, The History of Glen Helen (Columbus, 1932), 32,

57-60.

4 Arthur E. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias: The Sectarian and Owenite Phases of

Communitarian Socialism in America, 1663-1829 (Philadelphia, 1950), 210-213,

215, 237; Mary Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann (Washington, D.C., 1937),

402 ff.; Louise Hall Tharp, Until Victory: Horace Mann and Mary Peabody

(Boston, 1953), 259 ff.

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286     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Nile poured forth song when touched by the first rays of the

rising sun, so would the "Social Harmony" produced by Mem-

nonia signal "the dawn of a New Era for Humanity."

April 1 was set as the opening day, and a formal dedication

was to be staged on April 7, the birthday of Charles Fourier.

Thereafter the Memnonian colony would pursue health and

harmony under its white and gold ensign inscribed: "FREE-

DOM, FRATERNITY, CHASTITY."⁵

But Horace Mann did not respond, as the Nicholses had

hoped, in the "blithe tones of brotherhood."⁶ Mann was al-

ready troubled about Antioch's tottering finances,⁷ and he had

no desire to see a free-love colony camped only a stone's throw

away. Already a few Antioch students were showing an un-

healthy interest in the books of Dr. and Mrs. Nichols and had

begun to offer them for sale. By March 1, 1856, one such

student voluntarily withdrew from school because he refused

to stop selling the Nicholses' works, but still others were res-

tive.⁸ Most of the townspeople, however, were scandalized at

the prospect of having such depraved neighbors, and supported

Mann's drive to prevent the Nicholses from coming. Wild

rumors and stories in the local press added to the confusion

and strengthened the anti-Nichols feeling.⁹

Mann's counteroffensive opened with a protest rally held in

Yellow Springs on February 28, 1856. He and two other

 

5 Galloway, Glen Helen, 63; Nichols' Monthly, II (March 1856), 170, 218-219.

6 Nathaniel Hawthorne uses this phrase in The Blithedale Romance (New York,

1958), 40.

7 For Antioch's financial difficulties, see Tharp, Until Victory, Chap. 27.

8 Nichols' Monthly, III (September [issue mislabeled; read October] 1856),

234 ff.; Horace Mann to W. N. Hambleton, March 4, 1856. A transcript of this

letter is in the Antiochiana Collection, Antioch College. I wish to express my

appreciation to Miss Bessie L. Totten, curator of this collection, for assistance in

gathering material for this article.

9 Galloway, Glen Helen, 62; Daily Dayton Journal, March 17, 1856. An article

in the Daily Springfield Nonpareil, March 18, 1856, reviewed Nichols' activities

and doctrines and asked: "Did ever the cloven foot expose itself more openly or

did ever the stench of the pit offend more grievously the nostrils of the people?"

Transcripts from the Nonpareil were very generously furnished me by Mr. George

Lohnes, curator of the Clark County Historical Society, Springfield, Ohio.

• 4
 

FROM FREE-LOVE TO CATHOLICISM               287

prominent citizens were delegated to go to Cincinnati to per-

suade a certain Dr. Ehrmann, the owner of the water cure,

not to lease it to the Nicholses, or to prevail upon the latter to

abandon the idea of establishing their school in Yellow

Springs. This effort failed miserably: both Ehrmann and the

Nicholses firmly insisted that they would carry out their

plans.10

About ten days later another meeting was held in the Yellow

Springs Methodist church, and this time Dr. Nichols "had

the impudence" to appear and defend his views. He was

allowed to speak only when Horace Mann warned that "it

will not do for the story to go out that we dare not hear him,"

and the temper of the meeting was decidedly unfavorable to

his message. Nichols' Monthly placed all the blame for the

opposition squarely upon "the Honorable (?) Horace Mann,"

and accused him of threatening to leave Antioch if the free-

lovers were permitted into the neighborhood. A witness

friendly to the Nicholses quoted Mann as saying that he would

rather "see the whole place sunk" than allow the establishment

of Memnonia; he would, in that case, remove himself to

Sodom, where the atmosphere would be less impure.11 Al-

though he was a liberal Unitarian in religion, and seemed to

place more faith in phrenology than in supernatural aids to

character formation, Mann was of Puritan background, and

it was perhaps his Puritanism that spoke when he called

Nichols' theories "the superfoetation of diabolism upon polyg-

amy."12 But, more immediately, he feared that Memnonia

would frighten women students away from Antioch, and he

predicted -- with some injustice to his own charges -- that its

 

10 Nichols' Monthly, III (September [October] 1856), 233 ff.; Xenia Torch-

Light, April 2, 1856; Daily Springfield Nonpareil, March 7, 10, 1856.

11 Xenia Torch-Light, April 2, 1856; Nichols' Monthly, III (September

[October] 1856), 236-237, II (May 1856), 313-314.

12 For Mann's views on phrenology, see Merle Curti, The Social Ideas of

American Educators (New York, 1935), 110-111, 122, 123. The quotation is from

Moncure D. Conway, Autobiography, Memories and Experiences (Boston and

New York, 1904), I, 263.

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288    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

establishment would cause the student body to "rush into

licentiousness" within a year.¹³

It was the opponents of the Nicholses, however, who be-

haved in a most unruly fashion in the next episode.¹⁴ A few

days passed quietly, but on March 19, 1856, Dr. Ehrmann

came with a friend to survey his property and tried to dis-

possess the tenants of the water cure, a Dr. and Mrs. Hoyt,

who claimed that their lease still had several months to run.

Dr. Hoyt happened to be away, but his wife proved quite

capable of defending the premises. Mrs. Hoyt held an incon-

clusive interview with Ehrmann, who then went into Yellow

Springs to announce that the Nicholses were taking possession

of the water cure immediately with his blessing. While Ehr-

mann was gone, Mrs. Hoyt contrived to lock his confederate

in an empty room and began boarding up the doors to the

water cure, at the same time sending word into Yellow Springs

that she was under siege. When Ehrmann returned to find his

property barricaded he attempted to force entry, and was in

the act of battering down a door when he perceived Mrs.

Hoyt's reinforcements on their way from the village. The

menacing attitude of this crowed of some forty men com-

pletely unnerved the distracted proprietor; dropping his use-

less keys to the water cure, the doctor "sloped, taking the rail-

road track to Xenia," according to the report of the Torch-

Light of that city.¹5

The doctor was evidently in good condition from his homeo-

pathic practice, for he outdistanced all pursuit in the eight-

mile flight to Xenia. His escape was in vain, however; he was

picked up by a constable that evening and returned to Yellow

Springs on a charge of housebreaking. The Nonpareil of

 

13 Mann, Horace Mann, 498; Nichols' Monthly, II (May 1856), 313-314.

14 On March 24, 1856, apparently before hearing of the incident narrated below,

the Daily Springfield Nonpareil noted that "the Yellow Springs folks are getting

quite spunky on the Free Love question. A correspondent of the [Cincinnati] Com-

mercial says Dr. Nichols will meet with a warm reception. Eggs and coffee will

no doubt be served on his appearance."

15 Xenia Torch-Light, April 2, 1856. See also Daily Springfield Nonpareil,

March 26, April 9, 1856, and Mary Mann to Horace Mann, March 20, 1856,

transcript, Antiochiana Collection.

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FROM FREE-LOVE TO CATHOLICISM             289

Springfield interpreted the incident as an expression of the

"vox populi," which it said would be "apt to prevail."¹⁶ Nichols

was highly indignant at what he described as an example of

"mob law, or border ruffianism," which reduced his lease on

the water cure to "so much waste paper"; he solemnly warned

that Horace Mann--"the Calvin of that Modern Geneva,

Yellow Springs"--would be the murderer of any who died

because they were denied the health-giving waters of Mem-

nonia.¹⁷ Indeed, it must have seemed to readers of Nichols'

Monthly that many would die of old age before Memnonia

could be opened up.

But, as the Monthly observed, the excitement at Yellow

Springs had attracted more attention to the Progressive

Union's principles than years of unassisted agitation could

have won. And in June the situation took a spectacular turn

for the better as a result of the visit to Yellow Springs of J. B.

Conklin, a medium whose "Spiritualistic Experiences" had

been chronicled in Nichols' Monthly. The manifestations pro-

duced by Conklin must have been very convincing; Robert M.

Davis, elder of the First Presbyterian Church, became a spir-

itualist at about this time (an action which cost him his posi-

tion), and, according to the Monthly, "a large number of the

most respectable citizens of Yellow Springs, and many of the

professors and students of Antioch College" were also con-

verted. "Even Mr. Mann," crowed Nichols, "thinks the sub-

ject worthy of serious investigation."¹⁸ But since Mann had

previously ridiculed the Nicholses' belief in spiritualism, the

advance of spiritualistic sentiment in the community re-

dounded to the advantage of their Memnonian project.

The best evidence of the changed climate of opinion was the

fact that the Nicholses were able to occupy the water cure in

the first week of July. Mann left for a vacation trip to the

Great Lakes that month, but wrote bitterly to his wife after

 

16 Daily Springfield Nonpareil, March 26, 1856. See also Xenia Torch-Light,

April 2, 1856.

17 Nichols' Monthly, II (May 1856), 313-314, II (June 1856), 385-386.

18 R. S. Dills, History of Greene County (Dayton, Ohio, 1881), 668; Nichols'

Monthly, III (July 1856), 6.

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290    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

his return: "Nichols is here, boasts that he has overcome all

opposition, and is fluttering his wings proudly. I still retain

my opinion that if he is not induced to leave, Antioch will re-

ceive a greater wound than ever before." By September,

Mann had so few supporters that a friend asked incredulously

if it were true that he was the only person in Yellow Springs

who still opposed the Nicholses.¹⁹ The event showed, within a

few weeks, that Mann had ample reason to be anxious over the

proximity of Memnonia to Antioch. No sooner had the re-

formers arrived in Yellow Springs than they began to suggest

reforms for the college. They criticized particularly the strin-

gency of the regulations governing the relations between the

men and women students. Furthermore, they encouraged in-

subordination in the students and gave full publicity to the

case of one Jared G. Gage, who was expelled from Antioch

because he took lodging at Memnonia, offered the Nicholses'

books for sale, and flaunted his friendship for them.²⁰

Nichols had hoped to cooperate with Antioch College and

thereby to secure to the fellowship of Memnonia the advantage

of this "liberal institution." When this "reasonable expecta-

tion" was frustrated by "the intolerance of Mr. Mann and his

associates," Nichols promised to "establish, by the side of

Antioch, a better, more thorough, and more comprehensive

school than it is, or is likely to be." Memnonia would outshine

Antioch as a seat of learning. But Memnonia would be much

more--a School of Life accepting only those who wished "to

prepare for the great work of Reform, and the true life of an

integral or harmonic society."²¹

It is not easy to say precisely what the Nicholses meant by

all their talk of "Harmony," "Laws of Progression in Har-

mony," and so on. Their doctrines--an amalgam of socialism,

spiritualism, free-love, phrenology, hydropathy, and other

 

19 Horace Mann to Mary Mann, August 22, 1856; W. Pryer to Horace Mann,

September 10, 1856. Transcripts, Antiochiana Collection.

20 Nichols' Monthly, III (August 1856), 117 ff., III (September 1856), 180-182,

III (September [October] 1856), 233-244.

21 Ibid., III (November 1856), 251-252, III (September [October] 1856), 199.

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FROM FREE-LOVE TO CATHOLICISM             291

health and dietary notions--were a distinctly unsystematic

system. At the basis of all their thinking was the staggeringly

optimistic conviction that man and human society could be

made perfect. "We demand, we seek, we hope to find," they

stated in a confession of faith, "a social state, in which there

shall be the conditions of universal health and longevity; of

universal intelligence and wisdom; of universal freedom and

individuality; of universal equity in all relations; of universal

purity and life; of universal riches, peace, harmony, and

happiness." 22

The broad outlines of their plan for perfecting society

were derived from Charles Fourier, the source of most Ameri-

can socialistic thought in the 1840's and 50's. The Nicholses

took from Fourier the idea that the contemporary social state

known as "civilization," with its individualism, monogamous

marriage, and "isolate household," was a vicious arrange-

ment, which should be replaced by the "associative" state

called "Harmony." In this state all humanity would eventually

be organized into communities where property would be held

in common and where a division of labor would be combined

with the frequent rotation of jobs. The mainspring of the

associative communities of the Harmonic state were the "pas-

sions," or natural impulses. According to Fourier, these im-

pulses tended to produce evil if they acted upon single indi-

viduals, but acting upon an associated group of about sixteen

hundred persons, the passions balanced and countered each

other, and in this balance and counterpoint produced "attrac-

tive industry" and "Harmony."23

The distinctive contribution of the Nicholses to Harmonic

theorizing was the notion that a preparatory stage of educa-

tion and self-discipline was an indispensable prerequisite to

the Harmonic society. Fourier had asserted that the balanc-

ing and contrapuntal action of the passions would auto-

 

22 Ibid., III (September 1856), 173.

23 For a convenient presentation of Fourier's leading ideas, see Selections from

the Works of Fourier, translated by Julia Franklin; introduction by Charles Gide

(London, 1901).

• 9
 

292    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

matically produce Harmony when the correct number of in-

dividuals were brought together in the associative community.

This the Nicholses could not accept. Had not the "isolate

savageism" of "civilization" disordered all the faculties of

man, and especially the faculties of "alimentiveness and

amativeness"? "No civilizee," they wrote, "is fit for harmony

until he has passed through a thorough preparation."²⁴ And

this was to be the function of Memnonia: it was not the ideal

community itself, but was rather the disciplinary academy

where the body, the mind, and the spirit of the civilizee could

be purged and purified for the future Eden.

That future state was in truth an Eden--the "On-coming

Eden of Glory" a poem in Nichols' Monthly called it.25 The

details were presented to the readers of the Monthly in a

serialized novel entitled Esperanza, written by Dr. Nichols

with obvious assistance from his wife. Professor Bertha-

Monica Stearns, the leading authority on the Nicholses, calls

Esperanza a turgid book,26 and the reasons for its failure to

become a classic in utopian literature are evident to any reader;

yet it offers a unique insight into what the Nicholses were

striving for.

The land of Esperanza is described by a civilizee, Frank

Wilson, who is led there by a beautiful woman whom he meets

on a journey to the West, and for whom he feels an immediate

affinity. It lies far up a tributary to the Mississippi and con-

sists of a wide but indeterminate expanse of fertile acreage,

at whose center is a gem-like sylvan lake. On the glistening

sward encircling the lake cluster "the noble towers, the grace-

ful arches, the embowered porticos, the varied and beautiful

architecture of a Unitary Home."27 Music, fireworks, flights

of song, and hospitality which blends exuberance with dignity

greet Frank and his escort, and he becomes an observer of.

 

24 Nichols' Monthly, III (December 1856), 337.

25 Ibid., III (September 1856), 195-196.

26 Stearns, "Memnonia," 288. Installments of Esperanza appeared in all the

issues of Nichols' Monthly for 1856, which is the only year of the magazine that

could be located. Esperansa was published separately in Cincinnati in 1860.

²⁷ Nichols' Monthly, II (May 1856), 370.

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FROM FREE-LOVE TO CATHOLICISM            293

and candidate for, the "sweet passional life" of "the sphere

of this harmony."28

The central constellation of Esperanza includes a Banquet-

ing Hall, a Festive Hall, a Hall of Science, a library, studios

of art and music, theaters, and numerous more utilitarian

structures: dormitories, "unitary kitchen," bakery, nurseries,

laundry, storehouses, shops, and so on. The daily activities

begin with the reading of the Orders of the Day by the admir-

able Vincent, the leader whose life and opinions are remark-

ably congruent with those of Thomas L. Nichols. The Order

of Industry assigns tasks for the day, and the various labor

squadrons, all wearing badges appropriate to their work, de-

part light-heartedly to their "festival of industry," knowing

that drudgery will not be their portion, for, after brief stints

on one job, all will merrily interchange and flutter off to new

employment (in accordance with Fourier's "papillonic," or

butterfly, principle, which satisfies the craving for variety).

In the meantime, the Order of Recreation prepares a regatta

for the relaxation of all, or rehearses a masque or opera to

be performed in the evening. Those who find time on their

hands may regale each other with chaste stories ("a new and

purer Decameron"),29 or they may prefer to attend Vincent's

lecture on the harmonies, analogies, and affinities of the

"Unity o Nature."

At on thirty a signal gun is fired which brings all the

workers astening from field and workshop to bathe and par-

take of dinner--five-sevenths of which consists of bread or

"farinaceous food"--a "delicate repast," perhaps of "rice

and southern hominy, bananas and oranges, with guava jelly,

lemonade reddened with claret," and "some light warm

biscuits."³⁰ The "labors of necessity" being now concluded,

each chooses for the afternoon the employment he most enjoys;

gardening, water coloring, cabinet-making, and sculpturing

all find their devotees, while the venerable elders take their ease

 

28 Ibid., 365, 366.

29 Ibid., 372.

30 Ibid., 358.

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294    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

in the lengthening shadows, attended and entertained by

Esperanza's perfect children. Supper is but a light collation

(boiled rice with banana syrup, quince jelly, and little crisp

cakes) and is soon dispatched. Evening finds the blissful

harmonists promenading by the lake, or quietly conversing in

interlaced spheres of love while they await the masque pre-

pared by the Order of Recreation. The performance is in-

variably superlative and reveals in the actors unsuspected

virtuosity; the audience, transported by ethereal delights, dis-

perses and--save for the chamber where Vincent ponders--

night encloses Esperanza.

What is the secret of Esperanza's perfect harmony? Frank

Wilson gradually divines it by observing the "passional

phenomena" around him, by questioning the ever-patient Vin-

cent, and from the explanations of Melodia, his beautiful

preceptress. But most of all, Frank learns the secret of

Esperanza from his love for Melodia. For love is the secret:

unselfish, spiritual, universal love; love circulating among all

the brotherhood; free-love.31 This free-love is not, of course,

what those of "partial development" imagine it to be--un-

bridled sensualism or the unrestricted "excitement of the

amative passion." It is, rather, "the sum total of our spiritual

affinities for other beings."32 It resembles perfect Christian

charity in its universality, its forgetfulness of self, and its

focusing on the good of its object. But Esperanza's free-love

is also free to seek physical consummation without legal or

moral hindrance, and with no restriction to a single partner.

There can be no possessiveness, no "property in persons,"

under this love, and its physical expression must be free to

follow where the tug of supreme affinity directs. Neither can

there be coercion in love, or in its consummation; therefore, it

is the woman who is regent of love at Esperanza, she who

disposes of herself and rules sovereign over her own "freedom,

self-hood, and spontaneity." And at Esperanza the woman

guards the purity of her love, and prevents the "wasting of

31 On love at Esperanza, see especially Nichols' Monthly, III (September

[October] 1856), 211 ff.

32 Ibid., II (April 1856), 306.

• 12
 

FROM FREE-LOVE TO CATHOLICISM            295

energy in sensual expenditure," by giving her body in love

only when her "highest duty to humanity" demands the birth

of a child.

This doctrine of free-love clearly bears the impress of Mrs.

Nichols' mind. It reflects her insistence on the primacy of the

woman's role in the proper amative order, her loathing of

male "despotism" in marriage, and her conviction that too-

frequent physical union wasted the body's "vital energies,"

resulted in a multiplicity of sickly children, and depleted the

woman's health, vigor, and beauty.33 The linking of this

free-love with spiritualism is likewise traceable in large part

to Mrs. Nichols. She was obviously the model for "Har-

monia" in Esperanza, a medium and the center of the "heart-

life" of the community, who acted as the prism through which

the universal love of the spirit world was diffused among all

those in Esperanza who were "still in the form," that is, still

on earth.34

Dr. Nichols shared these opinions fully, but some readers

of Nichols' Monthly found certain of Mrs. Nichols' doctrines

extremely hard sayings. In particular, the Law of Progres-

sion in Harmony--namely, that there shall be no sexual inter-

course among free-lovers except when the good of humanity

requires the birth of a child--was attacked by some readers as

retrograde Shakerite celibacy, which made a mockery of the

assertion of free-love. Mrs. Nichols defended her opinions

vigorously and complained of being under attack from two

opposing camps: from the world which called her licentious

and depraved, and from brothers in the movement who called

her an ascetic despot.35 Nothing daunted by the outcry, she

proceeded to elaborate the Law of Progression in Harmony

to include a ninety-day period of total continence before even

limited sexual union was permitted. The resistance to these

teachings only confirmed her and Dr. Nichols' conviction that

a period of preparation was needed before the Harmonic

33 See, for example, Mrs. Nichols' discussion in Nichols' Monthly, II (April

1856), 306-309, II (May 1856), 375-378.

34 Ibid., II (June 1856), 431, III (December 1856), 321.

35 Ibid., II (April 1856), 306-309, II (May 1856), 375-378.

• 13
 

296   THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

society could be achieved. They did not know ten persons,

they declared, who were ready for the Harmonic life without

special preparation; and during that "sacred vestalate" of

continent free-loveism, a directive supervision was clearly

necessary.36 Thus Memnonia, established as the novitiate

to Harmony, was no sink of lust and sensualism, but was a

"provisional despotism," a closely regulated community, whose

members were dedicated to purging themselves by austerity

and self-discipline for an Esperanzan future.

Memnonia really began to get into operation in September

of 1856, but because of their financial need the Nicholses seem

to have accepted hydropathic patients as well as candidates

for the School of Life. The latter paid a tuition fee of $150

for the first year, and the group remained quite small, number-

ing no more than twenty, perhaps, at most. According to

Moncure Conway, who visited Yellow Springs and gathered

some information about Memnonia a year after its dissolu-

tion, the inmates were mostly easterners or Englishmen and

"were persons who had met with disappointments and grief

in the life of the affections--the unrequited or the divorced."37

The candidates for the full Memnonian discipline under-

went a brief period of trial, then a longer probationary period,

during which the "Pledges and Canons of the Circle of Con-

secration," formulated by Mrs. Nichols, were their rule of

life. The novice had to pledge himself to be "chaste in thought,

word, and deed" and to promote his own perfection and the

perfection of all the other members of "this harmony." Daily

bathing was required, and water was the sole permissible

drink; the diet was vegetarian, but dairy products and eggs

were tolerated, except on Fridays and Sundays, when a strict

bread and fruit fast was prescribed. The Memnonian also

pledged himself to "careful industry" and "conscientious rest,"

and took the vow of absolute continence for ninety days. The

dissatisfied could withdraw at any time, but so long as one

36 Ibid., III (September 1856), 151 ff., III (December 1856), 337, II (May

1856), 379.

37 Ibid., III (September [October] 1856), 199 ff.; Conway, Autobiography, I,

263.

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FROM FREE-LOVE TO CATHOLICISM                     297

remained at Memnonia he must submit to the rule of the "pro-

visional despots," Dr. and Mrs. Nichols.38

The discipline appearently included a variation of the

monastic "chapter of faults." For not only did each individual

try to identify and eliminate his own failings and vices in a

systematic way, but these were also pointed out to him by

others, and there were penances assigned. In this fashion

the individual was "oned with the circle," and "balanced in

Life," in preparation for the Harmonic existence, in which

discipline and supervision would be unnecessary.39 Intellectual

and aesthetic nurture were likewise provided at Memnonia:

one could secure instruction in a wide range of classical and

modern languages, as well as in mathematics, natural science,

logic, rhetoric, art, and music. On Sunday afternoons an open

discussion was held, attended by the Memnonians and by

"inquirers after truth" from      Yellow   Springs and the area.

During October the Sunday afternoon seminars were devoted

to a "section by section" examination of one of Albert Bris-

bane's studies of Fourieristic socialism, and the Esperanzan

goal was compared to the visions of Fourier, Owen, and

Cabet.40

Also integral to the Memnonian program were the "circles"

--that is, spiritualistic seances--held on Friday and Sunday

evenings and daily at the surprising hour of 7:30 A.M. Mrs.

Nichols, described by her spiritualistic ally J. B. Conklin as a

medium of "high and varied capacity," had such remarkable

clairvoyant powers that she was able to diagnose one of her ill-

lesses by looking into her own lungs and describing "the size,

³8 Nichols' Monthly, III (September 1856), 151 ff.

39 Conway, Autobiography, I, 263; Nichols' Monthly, III (September [October]

856), 203 ff., III (November 1856), 289 ff., III (September 1856), 154.

40 Ibid., III (August 1856), 123 ff., III (September 1856), 125-126, 178-179,

II (November 1856), 283. As Memnonia progressed along its quiet way, all

opposition in the neighborhood seems to have disappeared. The Daily Springfield

Nonpareil, January 16, 1857, remarked: "Dr. Nichols of the Yellow Springs

Water Cure is a great deal worse in theory than in practice. The prospective evil

effects of his doctrines find no fulfillment in his practice. The opposition seems

to have died out and if the Doctor will keep his impracticable and rather out-

rageous notions to himself, he will succeed well enough .... Any attempt, how-

ever, to carry out certain principles promulgated in that quarter would doubtless

be attended by unpleasant results."

• 15
 

298    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

position, and condition of the abscesses" forming there.⁴1 She

often received guidance from the spirit world in practical

matters of social reconstruction; it was in this manner, for

example, that she was given the Law of Progression in

Harmony. Spiritualism was for the Nicholses the comple-

ment, in fact the consummation, of the Harmonic philosophy,

for it taught the communion of spirits in love, and led to the

recognition that the spirit of man is part of the spirit of God.

God was, according to this doctrine, man's "in-dwelling life,"

and progression in Harmony was simply a description of the

manner by which the individual conformed himself more

closely to the divine--in himself, in human society, and in the

universe.⁴²

In the Nicholses' case, however, spiritualism worked against

itself. It was spiritualism that led the Nicholses to the Catholic

Church, thereby replacing this cloudy transcendental meta-

physic with the systematic doctrine of Catholicism. The story

of this conversion forms the most fantastic chapter in the

whole bizarre record of the Nicholses' career.

It all began, Dr. Nichols later reported, early in 1856.43

Mrs. Nichols was "in a circle" when a spirit unknown to her

appeared and announced that he was a Jesuit. This strange

apparition informed the Nicholses that they were seeking the

same ends as those sought by the Society of Jesus, and asked

them to study the history of the Jesuits. This intelligence

seemed curious indeed to the self-styled "Infidel Socialists,'

and since the departed Jesuit had not been properly introduced

to Mrs. Nichols by her "guardian spirit," she paid no heed to

his information or his request. Dr. Nichols, however, pro

cured a Protestant history of the Jesuits, which he read "with

some interest."

 

41 Nichols' Monthly, III (September 1856), 179, III (August 1856), 115-116.

42 See the supposed "spirit message," ibid., II (May 1856), 353.

43 Unless otherwise indicated, the following account of the conversion is base

upon the "Letter to Our Friends and Co-Workers," written by Dr. and Mr

Nichols, and dated April 20, 1857, which appeared in the Catholic Telegraph an

Advocate (Cincinnati), May 23, 1857. The letter was also published as a pamphle??

See Herbert Thurston, S.J., The Church and Spiritualism (Milwaukee, 1933), 52

• 16
 

FROM FREE-LOVE TO CATHOLICISM           299

Nothing further happened immediately, but some six

months later "a venerable shade," dressed in what they later

learned was the Jesuit garb, appeared to Mrs. Nichols and

exclaimed melodramatically: "Justice! justice to the Society

of Jesus!" He rebuked Mrs. Nichols bitterly for not having

"examined Jesuitism," and announced that his name was

Gonzales. This experience moved Mrs. Nichols into action:

she wrote to Archbishop John B. Purcell of Cincinnati, telling

her story and asking for information. Purcell, evidently feel-

ing the Jesuits could best deal with her, referred Mrs. Nichols

to the rector of St. Xavier College in Cincinnati, which was

operated by that order.

In the meantime, according to Nichols' account, the founder

of the Jesuits personally took a hand in the matter. None

other than the spirit of St. Ignatius Loyola appeared to Mrs.

Nichols and gave her "what he called 'a method of reduction'

...directions for an order of life"--presumably St. Ignatius'

famed Spiritual Exercises. Although they hastened to read a

life of the great Spanish saint, the Nicholses still neglected to

acquaint themselves with the doctrines of the Catholic Church.

This deficiency was remedied in a most remarkable manner.

Not long after St. Ignatius' visit, another spirit "calling him-

self Francis Xavier" appeared to Mrs. Nichols and undertook

a course of instructions in Catholic dogma. St. Francis began

by explaining the sacrament of baptism, which the Nicholses

were predisposed to accept because it conformed to their belief

as spiritualists that "a healing circle, properly formed, of pure

members rightly affiliated to each other, had the power to

magnetize water, and give to it that life which restores physi-

cal health."

The shade of St. Francis Xavier also imparted to Mrs.

Nichols the Catholic teaching on the incarnation and redemp-

tive sacrifice of Christ, His formation of the church, the

mystical body of Christ, the sacraments, miracles, the com-

nunion of saints, and the apostolic succession. The recently

promulgated doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the

Blessed Virgin Mary impressed the Nicholses tremendously

• 17
 

300    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

(although they seem to have grasped it imperfectly), and they

gave some thought to establishing "a religious order of chaste

birth, in honor of the Immaculate Conception." Surprisingly,

they offered no new glosses to the teaching of the church on

marriage; on the contrary, Nichols spoke with reverence of

"the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, in which the Church

blesses the union of two souls in the Divine Life, from which

souls may be born for life and happiness instead of death

and misery."

Even while St. Francis Xavier was giving this extraordi-

nary course of instructions, the Nicholses still had not, accord-

ing to their solemn testimony, read any books of Catholic doc-

trine. They were enchanted by the religious message of their

spiritual guide, but they could not believe that what they were

hearing was really the faith of the Catholic Church. To verify

the matter, Dr. Nichols transcribed all that had been com-

municated to his wife and sent it to the only Catholic they

knew personally, a layman living in Virginia. He in turn sub-

mitted it to a priest, who vouched for its authenticity, while

reserving comment about the mode in which the Nicholses

had learned it.⁴⁴ At the same time, St. Francis directed them

to present themselves for the "oral instruction of the Church,"

and ultimate baptism. Accordingly, they sought out the rector

of St. Xavier College, who received them into the Catholic

Church on March 29, 1857. Also baptized at the same time

were Mrs. Nichols' daughter by a former marriage and a cer-

tain Miss Hopkins, who was, according to Moncure Conway,

the model for Melodia in Esperanza and, by 1860, a nun in

Cuba.⁴⁵ Three other Memnonians had been baptized on Febru-

ary 2, 1857, by Archbishop Purcell: they were Mr. and Mrs

Gardiner Waters and their son, described by Purcell as

"'Spiritualists' and 'Free Lovers', although very intelligent

and perfectly sincere!^"46

44 Thurston, The Church and Spiritualism, 57.

45 Conway, Autobiography, I, 263.

46 Catholic Telegraph and Advocate, April 4, 1857; John B. Purcell to Francis

P. Kenrick, February 5, 1857. The letter is in the Archives of the Archdiocese

of Baltimore. A transcript was very kindly furnished me by the Rev. Anthor

H. Deye of Villa Madonna College, Covington, Kentucky.

• 18
 

FROM FREE-LOVE TO CATHOLICISM           301

It is not for a mere historian to attempt a full evaluation of

this fantastic tale. Herbert Thurston, S.J., the noted English

authority on psychic phenomena, whose knowledge extends

even to the case of the Nicholses, reports the story in detail

and seems more inclined to accept it than to reject it. He also

observes, however, that the story suggests a remarkable talent

for self-delusion.⁴⁷ Thurston's caution would no doubt have

been even greater had he been more fully acquainted with the

erratic career of the Nicholses before their conversion. Yet it

seems certain that the story contains some element of truth.

It surely cannot be dismissed as a pure fabrication: Dr. and

Mrs. Nichols suffered much for truth as they understood it,

and they would not have deliberately falsified the account of so

important an action as their abandonment of the project to

which they had wholeheartedly dedicated themselves. The fact

that seven persons from Memnonia were converted to Catholi-

cism indicates that some very powerful stimulus was operating

to direct the attention of the colony to the Catholic faith; since

the Yellow Springs neighborhood was predominantly Protes-

tant, and since Catholicism was anything but popular in the

1850's, it is difficult to account for this interest in Catholicism

on natural grounds. Although all the picturesque details of the

visions need not be accepted, we can perhaps conclude, on the

basis of the available evidence, that some suggestion received

by Mrs. Nichols in a spiritualistic trance precipitated the

interest in Catholicism which ended with the wholesale con-

versions.

The account of the apparitions and subsequent conversion

was published in the Catholic Telegraph of Cincinnati, the

official organ of Archbishop Purcell, so he evidently accepted

at least part of the story. Purcell was an intelligent and quite

realistic man; he would never have received the Nicholses into

the church if he believed they were charlatans, and he no doubt

made every effort to find out the truth of the case. He, of

course, insisted on a public retraction of the Nicholses' previous

errors, and consulted with his fellow prelates on the proper

 

^{47 T}hurston, The Church and Spiritualism, 52-58.

• 19
 

302    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

course of action before admitting them to baptism, particu-

larly in view of their free-love deviations. His letter to Bishop

Peter Paul Lefevre of Detroit on the Nichols case is his long-

est and most interesting discussion:

What do you think, Monsigneur, of my receiving into the Church the

Mother Abbess of the Free Lovers? She and her husband and a young

lady, all residing at 'Yellow Springs' near Xenia in this state, wish to

join the Church. I have already received a family of that droll way of

perfecting human nature into the Church. They belonged for a time to

the community of Yellow Springs. You know they hold that, under

the old dispensation, a woman had not the possession of herself, her

individuality. And that one of her sacred rights is that of choosing the

father of her child. Surely God can have, or make, his elect everywhere.

And His holy grace is never more triumphant than when he subdues

such souls.⁴⁸

The brothers Francis P. and Peter R. Kenrick, archbishops

of Baltimore and St. Louis, respectively, could see no objection

to receiving the Nicholses into the church. After Nichols'

account of the spiritualistic background of the conversion

appeared, however, Peter Richard Kenrick of St. Louis had

some misgivings. He attributed Mrs. Nichols' apparitions to

"diabolic agency" and lamented their failure to make an

"explicit disavowal of all future communications with such

suspicious guides."⁴⁹ Archbishop Purcell forged ahead, how-

ever, confident of his converts: Dr. and Mrs. Nichols received

their first Holy Communion in July 1857, and the Catholic

Telegraph added rather testily in reporting this fact that "they

who have the best opportunity of judging their dispositions

have no doubt of their sincerity and penitence and good resolu-

tions for the future."⁵⁰

The story of the conversion naturally received considerable

 

48 Purcell to Lefevre, February 22, 1857. Detroit Papers, Archives of the Uni-

versity of Notre Dame. See also Purcell to Anthony Blanc (archbishop of New

Orleans), March 6, 1857. New Orleans Papers, Archives of the University of

Notre Dame.

49 Francis P. Kenrick to Purcell, February 20, 1857; Peter R. Kenrick to

Purcell, April 15, 1857; Peter R. Kenrick to Purcell, June 3, 1857. Purce??

Papers, Archives of the University of Notre Dame.

50 Catholic Telegraph and Advocate, July 11, 1857.

• 20
 

FROM FREE-LOVE TO CATHOLICISM              303

attention in the Catholic press. In Cincinnati, the Catholic

Telegraph departed from its usual policy of not publicizing

conversions, since the Nichols case was bound to be discussed

anyhow. But the Telegraph offered little editorial comment,

except to remark on the similarity between the Nicholses'

conversion and that of the famous medium Daniel D. Home,

who had recently become a Catholic in Italy.⁵¹ (Home, unlike

the Nicholses, remained a Catholic only about a year.) The

New Orleans Catholic Standard linked the Nicholses' conver-

sion, not with that of Home, but with the movement to the

Catholic Church of "learned and distinguished" American

converts like Orestes A. Brownson, Isaac Hecker, and Dr.

Levi Silliman Ives. The writer of the Standard's account was

especially gratified by Mrs. Nichols' conversion, since she was

one of "the fair spirits under whose gentle hands the indig-

enous flowers of literature have bloomed with such profusion

and beauty."⁵²

The most interesting Catholic discussion came from the

New York Freeman's Journal. The editor evidently retained

vivid memories of the Nicholses' activities in New York, for

he said that "both of them [were] too widely known for the

scandalous doctrines and practices of Fourierism." The Free-

man's Journal also lambasted the "Anglo Catholic" Church-

man of New York for heading its discussion of the Nichols

case "Romish Perversion." The Journal could not understand

how responsible men of any religion could call it a perversion

for the Nicholses to have been "stopped short in a most un-

bridled career of Fourierism, Free-Loveism, and devil-worship

generally."⁵³

Spiritualistic journals were also moved to reflection and

comment by the outcome of the Memnonian experiment. The

Christian Spiritualist of New York discussed the case in the

51 Ibid., April 4, 1857. On May 13, 1857, the Xenia Torch-Light broke the

silence it had maintained about Memnonia for more than a year to report disdain-

fully, "The 'Free Lovers' Vamosed." In New York, Horace Greeley's reform-

minded Tribune, April 7, 1857, ran a short notice headed, "Free Lovers Converted

Catholicism."

52 Quoted in Catholic Telegraph and Advocate, May 9, 1857.

⁵³ New York Freeman's Journal, April 11, 25, 1857.

• 21
 

304    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

accents of 1857's lingering Know-Nothingism. Expressions

like "old Roman harlot," "besotted Irish," and "libidinous

Priesthood" were tossed about freely, and the editor summed

up his feelings in the following litany: "Popery, infallibility,

celibacy, conscience-keeping, Bible-burning -- bah!^"54 The

New York Spiritual Telegraph managed to preserve a saner

temper in discussing the case. It explained the Nicholses'

action by saying that they were "authoritarians, believers in

power and duty, command and obedience," and therefore be-

longed in the Catholic Church.55

The New England Spiritualist provided the most interesting

reflections on spiritualism and Catholicism. It too referred to

the case of the medium Home, but noted that, unlike Home's,

the Nicholses' conversion had occurred in "an unusually liberal

Protestant community," where there was no external pressure.

The action of the Nicholses furnished a "curious spectacle

(though by no means a solitary one) of intelligent and strong

minded people of both sexes stepping from the very extreme"

of individualistic Protestantism to the Catholic Church; the

conclusion drawn was that Catholicism met the spiritual needs

of the soul "to a far deeper and higher extent" than any

Protestant system. Unless spiritualism developed a new dis-

pensation having all the excellences of Catholicism without its

defects, warned the New England Spiritualist, the Catholic

Church "may be expected to absorb the truly spiritual among

us, just so fast as they become sufficiently advanced in spiritu-

ality to be conscious of the deeper wants of their souls." If

spiritualism did not soon develop a system superior to both

Protestantism and Catholicism, concluded the journal, "the??

perhaps we may as well all go over to Rome, together."⁵⁶

It is doubtful that Catholic authorities would have been

overjoyed at a wholesale inundation of spiritualists, but Arch??

bishop Purcell did find employment for Dr. Nichols' talents

 

 

54 Quoted in ibid., May 9, 1857.

55 Quoted in Catholic Telegraph and Advocate, May 9, 1857.

56 Quoted in ibid., May 9, 1857, and in New York Freeman's Journal, May

1857.

• 22
 

FROM FREE-LOVE TO CATHOLICISM                  305

Memnonia, which had already gotten into desperate financial

straits, of course collapsed when its founders entered the

Catholic Church, leaving, as Dr. Nichols put it, "a discord in

which we were vainly trying to make a harmony, for a Great

Harmony already established."57 After their baptism the

Nicholses spent several weeks in study and meditation at the

convent-school of the Brown County Ursulines in the rolling

countryside of southern Ohio. While there Dr. Nichols wrote

articles for the Catholic Telegraph describing the celebration

of religious feasts by the school children and nuns, and spoke

with great reverence of the sisters as "mourning brides of a

Crucified Spouse, who walk in widowed sanctity through this

valley of tears."⁵⁸

Dr. Nichols also wrote a series of articles on doctrinal and

apologetical topics for the Catholic Telegraph, some of which

were reprinted by other Catholic papers in different parts of

the country. The distance he had traveled from free-love is

indicated by the fact that in one of these discussions he re-

proved the tendency to look upon flirtation as innocent.⁵⁹ In

September 1857 Nichols announced his availability as a lec-

turer on Catholicism, and his speaking career began two

months later with five talks given in the cathedral in Cincin-

nati.⁶⁰ For the next two years the couple traveled through the

Midwest, with the doctor giving his lectures on religion and,

according to one report, Mrs. Nichols giving courses in hy-

giene to Catholic institutions.61 Some of Nichols' lectures indi-

cated that if he had transcended his reformist background he

had not forgotten it: in an address to the St. Aloysius Liter-

ary Society of the University of Notre Dame he compared the

failure of socialistic colonies projected by Owen and others

 

 

57 Catholic Telegraph and Advocate, May 23, 1857.

58 Ibid., June 13, 20, 1857. See also Thomas L. Nichols, Forty Years of Ameri-

can Life, 1821-1861 (New York, 1937), 270-273, for Nichols' description of his

stay at the Brown County convent.

59 Catholic Telegraph and Advocate, June 6, 13, 20, July 11, August 29, 1857.

The July 11, 1857, number carries Nichols' remarks on flirting. See also Catholic

Mirror (Baltimore), June 13, 1857.

60 Catholic Telegraph and Advocate, September 19, November 21, 1857.

61 Stearns, "Two Forgotten Reformers," 79.

• 23
 

306    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

with the success of the religious establishment and school

founded by the French priest Edward Sorin.⁶²

When the Civil War broke out the Nicholses were back in

New York.⁶³ They had never been ardent antislavery reform-

ers and, being northern Democrats, were unhappy at the elec-

tion of Lincoln. Furthermore, Dr. Nichols had earlier tangled

with William H. Seward and detested the thought of living

under an administration in which he was an influential mem-

ber. The couple therefore determined to leave the country and

in 1861 set sail for England, never to return to their homeland.

During the Civil War, Nichols capitalized on English interest

in the United States by writing a description of the nation as

he had known it in his very full lifetime. His book, Forty

Years of American Life (republished as recently as 1937), is

comprehensive, entertaining, urbane, and, considering that

Nichols was a participant in many of the phenomena he de-

scribes, surprisingly detached. But, aside from an idyllic

account of a New Hampshire boyhood, it contains little of his

personal history.

The Nicholses maintained in England many of the same

interests and activities that had occupied them at home. They

continued to write prolifically--Dr. Nichols advising the

English, among other things, How to Live on Sixpence a Day

--consorted with health and food faddists, and dabbled

further in spiritualism. In spite of their spiritualistic adven-

tures, however, they remained faithful Catholics: Mrs.

Nichols died a Catholic in 1885, and there is no evidence that

Dr. Nichols left the church before his death, which occurred

about 1901.

But it is their American career which makes the story of the

Nicholses so fascinating. It illustrates as few other stories do

the interrelationship of important intellectual movements with

fantastic aberrations; it clarifies the easy transitions between

concern for medical progress, women's rights, marriage re-

 

62 Catholic Telegraph and Advocate, July 31, 1858. Nichols discusses his visit

to Notre Dame in Forty Years of American Life, 273-277.

63 For the conclusion of the Nicholses' careers, see Stearns, "Two Forgotten

Reformers," 80-84.

• 24
 

FROM FREE-LOVE TO CATHOLICISM           307

forms, and communitarian socialism; and it suggests that

spiritualism was, to some devotees at least, but a vulgarized

and too-literal interpretation of Emersonian trancendentalism.

Finally, the Nicholses' career offers a striking example of two

ardent apostles for "the Newness" who found their home in

the ancient and "outmoded" Catholic Church.

• 25