Life
1792-? [née Hatch; occas. Mrs. Asenath Nicholson]; b. Vermont;
Quaker; named after the wife given to Joseph by the Pharoah; schoolteacher;
m. Norman Nicholson (d.1844); worked as Abolitionist; ran vegetarian boardinghouse
and progressive causes at home; responded to outbreak of Famine by setting
up soup kitchen and fundraising office in Dublin; rented a room above
a printer’s workshop in Dublin, January 1847; distributed Indian
corn to famine victims; Ireland’s Welcome to the Stranger (1847)
reflects her experience on mission promoting the Bible; spent almost four
years and four months in Ireland; travelled through the country in polka
coat and velvet bonnet, often in Bianconi coaches, sharing hardships with
peasants in their homes; ‘Annals of the Famine’, incorporated
in Lights and Shades of Ireland (1850); there is a portrait by
Anna Maria Howitt.
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Works
Excursions (1844-45); Ireland’s Welcome to the Stranger; or excursions through Ireland in 1844 & 1845 for the purpose of personally
investigating the condition of the poor (London: Charles Gilpin 1847),
422pp.; Do. (NY: Baker & Scribner 1847), 456pp.; and Do. [full
title; abridged edn.], ed. & intro. by A[lfred] Tresidder] Sheppard
(London: London, 1926); Treatise on Vegetable Diet, with practical
results: or, a leaf from Nature’s own book, illustrated by facts and experiments
of many years practice (Glasgow [1848]); Lights and Shades in Ireland,
3 pts. (London: Charles Gilpin 1850; another edn. London: Houlston, 1850),
xii, 444pp. [Pt. I: Early history; Pt. II: Saints, kings and poets of
the early ages; Pt. III: The famine of 1847, ’48, & ’49]; Do.
[rep.] (1850); Annals of the Famine in Ireland, in 1847, 1848, and
1849, ed. by J. L. (NY: 1851); and Do. [rep. edn.] ed. Maureen
Murphy (Dufour Edns.; Dublin: Lilliput Press 1998), 256pp.
Query, Home Rule: The Substance of a Speech in part delivered, in part intended to be delivered [...] at a public meeting in the Town Hall, Leamington, on Saturday, April 17th, 1886 (Birmingham: Cornish [1886]), 11pp. [pamph.]
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Criticism
Peter Somerville-Large, [chap. on Nicholson], The Grand Irish Tour (1982); Margaret Kelleher [essay on Asenath Nicholson], Chris Morash
and Richard Hayes, eds., Fearful Realities: New Perspectives on the
Famine (Blackrock: IAP 1996).
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Commentary
Times Literary Supplement review notice of Maureen Murphy,
ed., Annals of the Famine in Ireland (1998), calls the work meticulously
edited. (Times Lit. Supplement, 9 Oct. 1998, p.36.)
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References
Frank O’Connor, The Backward Look: A Survey of Irish Literature
(London: Macmillan 1967), quotes from Nicholson’s works; see also
O’Connor, The Book of Ireland (Collins 1959) for extracts.
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Quotations
Famine realities: ‘More like a dream than a reality, because
they appear out of common course, and out of the order of even nature
itself. But they are realities, and many of them are fearful ones - realities
which none but eye-witnesses can understand, and not but those who passsed
through them can feel.’ (Cited by Peter Gray, reviewing Chris Morash
and Richard Hayes, eds., Fearful Realities: New Perspectives on the
Famine, IAP, 1996; in Irish Literary Supplement, Fall 1996, p.16.)
Famine deaths: ‘The young woman had been sick for weeks, and was now only able to situp a little; but having neither food, fuel or covering, nothing but death stared them in the face; and the most affecting part of the whole to me was the simple statement of the widow who said, in the most resigned manner, “We have been talking, Mary and I, this morning, and counting off our days: we could not expect any relief, for I could not go out again, and she could not and the farthest that the good God will give us on earth cannot be more than fourteen days.”’ (Quoted in Bridget O’Toole, review of A. N. Jeffares & Peter Van der Kemp, ed., Irish Literature: The Eighteenth Century, in Books Ireland, April. 2006, p.78.)
Blackguard Raleigh: ‘The poor peasants men, women and children wre gathering seaweed, loading their horses, asses and backs with it to manure their wretch little patches of potatoes sown among the rocks. “Three hundred and sixty-two days a year we have the potato,’ said a young man to me bitterly, ‘the blackguard of a Raleigh who brought them here entailed a curse upon the labourer that has broke his heart. Because the landlord sees that we can live and work hard on them, he grinds us down in our ways and he despises us because we are ignorant and ragged.”’ (Asenath Nicholson, describing scene nr. Roundstone, Co. Galway; quoted in Kevin Whelan, ‘Pre- and Post-Famine Landscape changes’, in Cáthal Portéir, ed., The Great Irish Famine [Thomas Davis Lectures Series], RTÉ/Mercier, 1995, p.27.)
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