Watson, Sukey Vickery

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WATSON, Sukey Vickery

Born 12 June 1779, Leicester, Massachusetts; died 17 June 1821, Leicester, Massachusetts

Wrote under: "Fidelia," "A Young Lady of Worcester County"

Daughter of Benjamin and Susannah Barter Vickery; married Samuel Watson, 1804

Sukey Vickery Watson was educated at Leicester Academy and wrote poetry for the Massachusetts Spy, under the pseudonym "Fidelia" during 1801 and 1802. She also produced the first novel to be published in Worcester County, Emily Hamilton (1803). In 1804 she married Samuel Watson, a successful manufacturer and representative to the Massachusetts legislature.

Dr. Charles L. Nichols in his bibliography of Worcester attributed the novel Emily Hamilton to "Eliza Vicery," an error which was copied by other scholars and by the Library of Congress, by means of which the error has been perpetuated. Sukey Vickery Watson had a daughter Eliza, which may have been the reason for the confusion of names.

In the introduction to Emily Hamilton, Watson explains the function of a novel is to delight and to instruct the reader, but not to arouse false romantic expectations that could lead to "ruin." Emily Hamilton is an epistolary novel, consisting of some 70 letters spanning over four years. The principal plot concerns Emily, who is courted by one man, conceives a "guilty passion" for another, and becomes promised to a third. The first of these, Lambert, proves a villain and flees to Canada under sentence of death. The second, the miserably married Belmont, becomes a widower at a most opportune time. The third, Devas, is tragically lost at sea, thereby freeing Emily to marry Belmont.

Because events described in the letters have already taken place, the story lacks the immediacy of a present-tense narrative. Other handicaps are correspondents' lengthy reflections on the moral consequences of actions and Watson's overly elegant language: when Belmont attempts to convince Emily that they should be married quickly, "the pearly drop of sensibility gave additional lustre to his beamy eyes." Watson includes numerous poems in a variety of styles, almost all lengthy and undistinguished.

Emily Hamilton 's chief virtue—and Watson's chief claim to fame—is as a sociological document rich in detail about upper-class life after the Revolution. Watson's "real life" novel shows that American men and women of large landed estates and ritualistic courtesies still bore a striking resemblance to their English counterparts, from whom they had so violently severed themselves only 20 years before.

Other Works:

The papers of Sukey Vickery Watson (poems, letters, and a fragment of her diary) are in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts.