“Soon it’s gonna rain, I can feel it. Soon it’s gonna rain, I can tell. Soon it’s gonna rain…….”

They say the rain will start tonight, maybe about 11, and continue without let up for about 36 hours until sometime Sunday afternoon. We need it, for sure, but our four tickets for tomorrow’s Nats-Braves game will certainly go to waste.

But it’s not raining now, so…..

Let’s jump right into it. The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher (the brother, not the father, of Harriet Beecher Stowe of Uncle Tom’s Cabin fame), was an extremely well known and well respected Congregationalist minister, who had prominent positions first in Indianapolis and then at Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, in the years leading up to and immediately following the Civil War. He was an unabashed abolitionist and social progressive. He was a religious reformer in that he replaced the old Calvinist notion of predestination with a new theology based on God’s love. He was a supporter of Charles Darwin and his theories of evolution, which Beecher proclaimed to be fully in accordance with Christianity. He was a supporter of any and all women’s movements. He was extraordinarily charismatic.

But guess what? His life was not perfect. He had married young and his marriage has been described as quite unhappy. He had eight children, four of whom died. And, perhaps because of this (perhaps not), he apparently became quite a womanizer, having affairs with members of his congregations and others, many professed by the women involved, others assumed through innuendo. This although he apparently preached often about the sanctity of family values.

One of his friends in abolitionist circles was a journalist named Theodore Tilton. At some point, Tilton’s wife Elizabeth told her husband that she had had an ongoing affair with Beecher, which of course outraged Tilton, but Tilton, his wife and Beecher vowed to keep it quiet, so as not to create an uncontrollable fire storm. Eventually, the storm broke, a committee at Plymouth Church was formed to investigate their beloved pastor, an article was published and widely distributed by suffragist Victoria Woodhull, a free love advocate who wanted to call out hypocrisy in the suffragette movement, and Elizabeth Tilton publicly left her husband.

Believing he had no choice, Tilton filed a civil suit against Beecher alleging alienation of affection and seeking $100,000 damages.

At the time, the ins and outs of this litigation was first page news in American newspapers. Beecher became known as the “most famous man in America” and at least one journalist lamented that the trial had wiped Reconstruction off the front page.

What became of this litigation? The jury was out for six days. They came back with a hung verdict. The truth is still open for discussion.

I want to end this with an anecdote: apparently, Tilton left the country and moved to France, where he lived the rest of his life. While in France, he made a good friend, a man with whom he played chess on a regular basis. This man was former Confederate Secretary of State Judah Benjamin, the highest ranking Jew in the government of the Confederacy, and the former U.S. Senator from Louisiana. Yes, you heard this right. The former abolitionist and the former Confederate cabinet officer, whiling away their final years together, in exile (voluntary and not) in Paris. Such is life.

Fascinating story. But why do I even mention it? Many of you know that Edie and have an on-line used book business (www.abebooks.com/bookseller/arichard). We have the books that are listed in pretty good order – if someone orders a book, I generally know exactly where it is. But as to the thousands of books that I have that are not listed for sale – their location is more hit and miss and I have decided to make them easier to find, as well. This will be a slow task, but winter is coming.

So yesterday, I started my long task. And this is where Beecher comes in. The first book I picked up, published in 1874, is a 600 page book entitled The History of the Brooklyn Scandal, published in a limited edition, available by subscription only, and not to be sold in book stores. The cover of the book is quite deteriorated, but the book itself is whole and clean and tight. It is not a book you can walk down to Politics and Prose or to Second Story and put in your shopping bag. Spending a little time on the internet, I can only locate three other copies of the book – one at the Library of Congress, one in the Wellesley College library, and one (whose cover looks to be as worn torn as mine) which sold in 2018 at auction in San Francisco for $100 (about half the anticipated sales price).

This book is indicative of my entire collection. It is old, it is not necessarily pristine, it is uncommon, and – most important to me – it holds a high degree of fascination, and I can learn something. I love having books like this around me – why I am not so sure.

So stick with me and we will look at more like this over the colder months.

Next? The original report of the House of Representatives covering hearings undertaken in 1856 of the investigation of the caning of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner by Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina in the Senate chambers on May 22, 1856. 142 pages of hearing transcripts plus exhibits. Bound later (by whom, I do not know), in a nice, block hard cover, whose spine neatly says “Assault on Sen. Sumner, Wash. 1856.

The report includes the recommendation that the House expel Brooks, a dissent not arguing against Brooks’ guilt but concluding that Congress had not been granted authority by the constitution to expel or otherwise punish members, interviews with witnesses, physicians and Sumner himself, an analysis of previous instances where members of Congress had been published and, of course, Senator Sumner’s long speech (which involved the admission of Kansas as a free state) itself.

COVID status? Still coughing, still fatigued, but I am told not contagious. I need to be patient. But I also need some exercise. COVID and 80, not the best combination, I guess.