goldfields

Marysville Daily Herald, 17 April 1851

Shirley is a common enough feminine name — we all know at least one Shirley. But before 1849 the name was rare as a masculine name, and unknown as a feminine one. It was originally a rather uncommon English surname, probably from “shire” and “ley” (clearing, meadow, enclosure.)

So where did Louise Clappe get the name?

Charlotte Brontë

I feel confident that she took the name from Charlotte Brontë’s novel Shirley, published in 1849. Jane Eyre, Brontë’s first novel, had been immensely popular. Shirley wasn’t quite the success that Jane Eyre was, but it was widely read and I can’t imagine that a well-educated woman with literary leanings, like Louise Clappe, would not have read the novel as soon as it was published in the United States.

The heroine of novel was given this unusual name by her parents, who were hoping for a boy.

. . . she had no Christian name but Shirley; her parents, who had wished to have a son, finding that, after eight years of marriage, Providence had granted them only a daughter, bestowed on her the same masculine family cognomen they would have bestowed on a boy, if with a boy they had been blessed…” Shirley , Chapter XI

And so the name Shirley came into the world.

Women writing for newspapers, and often men as well, chose a pseudonym to hide their identity or pique the reader’s interest. In the case of women, the fancier the better was the fashion of the day. Why be Mary or Sarah when you could be “Madeleine” or “Aurora Esmeralda”?

When Louise Clappe began writing for the Marysville Daily Herald in 1851 is it any surprise that the name Shirley popped into her head? Maybe she had read the book on the voyage from New York to San Francisco. And so Shirley she became, or Dame Shirley, as she sometimes referred to herself in the letters.

By the way, the name Shirley, although used occasionally for girls in the 19th and early 20th centuries,  did not become popular until Shirley Temple came along. Then it rocketed to the Top Ten of baby girl names in the 1930s. For a fun look at the waxing and waning popularity of names, take a look at the Name Voyager at Baby Name Wizard. So fun to play with!

Update: The Baby Name Wizard website is no more. Instead, try out the NameGrapher at Namerology.

July 28th marks another bicentennial, the 200th birthday of Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe, better know as “Dame Shirley,” author of The Shirley Letters.

She was born in 1819 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and was educated in Massachusetts. She attended Amherst Academy and taught there in 1840. In 1848 or 1849 she married Fayette Clappe, who was studying medicine. They set out for California in 1850 and spent their first year in San Francisco, then headed for the mines to make their fortune.

Shirley’s fortune and fame would come in a literary form. The marriage was not a success, and in the early 1850s Fayette returned East, while Shirley went back to San Francisco where she wrote and taught school.

Marysville Daily Herald July 15, 1851

Her first literary efforts were published in the Marysville Herald in 1851. These early writings are florid and over-wrought, in true Victorian style, and would not be remembered today if she had not learned how to imbue vivid life into her work. Here you can see an example of her early writing:

The Shirley Letters were first published in The Pioneer, or California Monthly Magazine, a short-lived literary periodical published in San Francisco. The letters had been written to her sister Molly in Massachusetts, in 1851 and 1852, when Dr. and Mrs. Clappe were living at Rich Bar, a mining camp on the Feather River. The Pioneer published the letters in 1854, and by that time Louise Clappe was teaching school in San Francisco.

We have to assume that Dame Shirley kept copies of the letters for future publication.  They have the feel of literary epistles, but they also are lively and full of  a love of nature as well as keen observations of the people of Rich Bar. When Shirley arrived in Rich Bar, she was only the second woman in the camp. The letters are an invaluable (and delightful) source of information about life in the goldfields from a woman’s point of view.

Here is an excerpt from her first letter, a comment on Bidwell’s Bar, where she almost spent her first night in the goldfields:

I arrived there at three o’clock in the evening where I found Fayette in much better health than when he left Marysville. As there was nothing to sleep in but a tent, and nothing to sleep on but the ground, and the air was black with fleas hopping about in every direction, we concluded to ride forward to the Berry Creek House, a ranch ten miles farther on our way, where we proposed to pass the night.

I wish I could show you a picture of Dame Shirley, but as far as I know, there isn’t one. If you google “Dame Shirley” you will see a picture of a nice lady on the right, but that turns out to be Kate Douglas Wiggin, another popular 19th century author.

Next: Where did she get the name “Shirley”?