Mary Agnes Tincker (July 18, 1833 – December 4, 1907) was an American novelist. She published about a dozen novels and many short stories. She was made a member of the Ancient Academy of Arcadia of Rome, and of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Philadelphia.
Life and works Tincker was born in Ellsworth, Maine, daughter of Richard Tinker and Mehitable Jellison; descendant of Thomas Tinker, of the Mayflower, and of Benjamin Jellison, a Presbyterian, of Scots, Irish and English extraction, who was an extensive land-owner in Maine and Canada, but, having adhered to the Loyalist cause during the revolution, his estate was confiscated. He then settled on a grant of land in New Brunswick, where he began life anew. Mary Tincker's father was deputy sheriff and subsequently high sheriff of Hancock County, and at the time of his death was warden of the Maine state prison.The National Cyclopedia of American Biography (1898) J. T. White & C., New YorkHistorical Records and Studies, Volume 15 (1921) United States Catholic Historical Society She was educated at the high-school in Ellsworth, and at the academy in Blue Hill, Maine.Lamb's Biographical Dictionary of the United States (1903) James H. Lamb Co.Appletons Encyclopedia (1898) At the age of thirteen she began teaching in the public schools. At fifteen her first literary work was printed. Her father was a prosperous Congregational farmer but his daughter was so shocked by an incident in which a Roman Catholic priest was tarred-and-feathered by a mob of Know-Nothing agitators, that she converted to Roman Catholicism in protest at the age of twenty.Mary Warner Blanchard (1998) Oscar Wilde's America, Yale University Press
Civil War
In 1863, she procured a recommendation from Governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts as a volunteer nurse for the wounded of the Civil War, and served in ward 6, Judiciary Square Hospital, at Washington, D. C., until she herself fell ill. On her recovery, making her residence in Boston, she was there wholly engrossed in journalistic and literary work. Short stories from her pen appeared in the early numbers of The Catholic World. During this period she wrote her earliest novels, "The House of Yorke" and " Grapes and Thorns," both of which were in the fourth edition in 1872, and "A Winged World, and other Sketches" (1873).
Europe
In 1873 she went to Europe, where she remained fourteen years visiting France, England and Spain. She resided in Italy many years, and immersed herself in the language and customs. She had many expatriate American friends, whom she used as inspiration in some of her novels, a practice of which they did not always approve.From The Literary World, Vol 12 (1881):"— No book published in Boston, this long time, has made more talk than Miss Tincker's By the Tiber, which we review elsewhere. That it is a personal matter has been taken for granted in some quarters, and a long communication in the Boston Advertiser, severely censuring the author for showing up real people under thin disguises, must have made the publishers chuckle. In particular, this writer associates the "Miss Cromo" of the book with Miss Anne Hampton Brewster, an American lady resident in Rome, whose letters to the Advertiser have long been a feature of that paper." Much time was spent in Assisi and Palestrina.Immortelles of Catholic Columbian Literature (1897) D.H. McBride & Co. It was followed by Grapes and Thorns (1873–74) and Six Sunny Months (1876–77). The latter was the first fruit of her sojourn in Italy (1873–1887).Jenkins, Regina Randolph. "Mary Agnes Tincker." The Catholic Encyclopedia] Vol. 14. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. 8 March 2019
Rise to prominence
"Six Sunny Months" was written in Italy in 1878, and " Signor Monaldini's Niece " in 1879.The following appeared in The Literary World, Vol. 10 (1879):. . . The Author of “Signor Monaldini's Niece." Her name is not "Harriet," but Mary Agnes; and not "Tinker," but Tincker. That she went to Rome to live about six years ago, is true; but that "she was there converted to the Roman Catholic Church," is hardly correct. The change in her religious views took place more than twenty years ago, about the time of the Know-Nothing excitement, while she was living in Ellsworth, Maine. For a little while after that, until a permanent teacher could lie found, she taught a school of Catholic children whom their parents thought the politico-religious excitement of the time had caused to be ill-used in the public schools. Upon the death of her father, her mother being already dead, Miss Tincker fell to writing for a livelihood, and some of her early stories were published in Harper's and Putnam's Magazines. Much of her work appeared under a pseudonym. During the war, she was sent to Washington by Gov. Andrew of Massachusetts, and there she nursed the soldiers in the Columbia Hospital and at the Barracks in Judiciary Square. Several of her works which preceded Signor Monaldini's Niece have appeared in book form, among which are The House of Yorke, Grapes and Thorns, and Six Sunny Months. Referring to her literary work, the following extract is of interest. It is from a letter written by Miss Tincker at Assisi, Italy, July 18, 1879, to a friend in this city:
“My chief encouragement to write came from an editor of the Atlantic when it was published by Phillips, Sampson & Co. I do not know who he was, but I can yet repeat almost all his letter by heart. He rejected the article I sent — it was intended as the initial one of a series — telling me that I was on the wrong track, but he encouraged me to write. "You cannot fail to win success," he said. I have often wished that I might be able to thank him for that note, for I was young, poor, helpless, and discouraged, when it came to me, and it helped me then and afterward. Through all the trash that I have had to write for bread, and which I repudiate as my real work, I have always had a vision of something worthier to be done if ever the time should come when I could stop to do it. The time has never come. Signor Monaldini's Niece was written under the same desperate pressure, and half of it was not copied at all. As for the criticisms of it, I almost agree with them; the praises astonish me. The episode of Miss Conroy is unpleasant, but I am not sure that I did wrong in writing it, though perhaps I did. I have always thought that poor ladies who have neither husbands nor homes are cruelly treated by the world. My experience as a member of that society is full of examples of coarseness, reaching almost to brutality, in people calling themselves "ladies," "gentlemen," and "Christians," examples which I shall never forget, and which I recall with an almost incredulous astonishment. Of course I have had beautiful examples of opposite characteristics, but they have been as rare as carbone bianco. My idea in Miss Conroy was to show what such circumstances might lead to with some persons, and those not the worst in the world, and I wanted her to speak for herself. Of course she will be condemned by most. I only pity her. As to the ending of the story — that the majority of readers are responsible for. I knew that Camilla should die. She was and is dead in my mind. In my first sketch of the last chapter, she was carried down to the Duomo at midnight, and she never came back. But, as my pen in copying reached that point, I recollected—people like a story to end well, they don't like to be made sad—the publishers, if I find any, will say, etc., etc. My clamorous rent came in, all my needs of money found voice and threatened mc: “You will fail if you leave the readers with tears in their eyes." Well, I sighed, and submitted. I galvanized an image of my poor, pretty Camilla and sat a company of shadowy monks saying a Te Deum for her, and a shadowy lover embracing her; while, slipping out into the moonlight, my real Cappucini went bearing their burden down between the olive trees and murmuring a De profundis, which no one heard but Don Filippo and me. It was the mournfulness of that true ending that made me call the story "The Hall of Cypresses," which the publishers changed to its present title."
Miss Tincker, never of robust health, went to Assisi last spring, after a severe illness of several months, in the hope, which has been fulfilled, of regaining something of her usual strength. Even while writing Signer Monaldini’s Niece, she was an invalid and obliged to lie in bed for a considerable part of each day. Norman C. Perkins, The literary world, Vol. 10 (1879) The latter was published both in England and America, and immediately called forth such universal approbation from the critics and the reading world that she found herself famous overnight. By the Tiber (1881),From The Literary World, Vol 12 (1881) By the Tiber, (1881) Roberts Brothers, $1.50. "Our readers generally are familiar with the history of the "No Name Novels," that series of anonymous stories which Roberts Brothers, of Boston, have been publishing at intervals during the past two or three years. One of the ablest and best of the series was Signor Monaldini's Niece, a picture of Roman life, which appeared in 1879. Its author proved to be a Miss Mary Agnes Tincker, formerly of Ellsworth, Me., who had become a Roman Catholic and taken up her abode in Rome. A sketch of her appeared in the Literary World of Sept. 27> 1879. Miss Tincker has now published through the same hands, but outside of the "No Name" series, another novel called By the Tiber.
By the Tiber is a dramatic and powerful work detailing the experiences of a Penobscot girl, Valeria Ellsworth, in Rome. Miss Ellsworth is represented as an author and a Roman Catholic, who has established herself in the Eternal City because of its varied fascinations for her religious and aesthetic nature. She quickly becomes a prominent figure in a group of Italians, and of foreigners resident in Rome, among whom are several strongly drawn types of manhood and womanhood, agreeable and disagreeable — counts, countesses, and cardinals; a Miss Cromo, who is a most unpleasant American, a Miss Pendleton, a Miss Chaplin, a Mr. Willis, and so on. Miss Ellsworth has an individuality of her own, and friction is soon excited between her and her surroundings, the dire results of which are precipitated by a domestic tragedy of which she becomes the unintentional witness.
For, tired of the jealousies and bickerings of the circle with which she is at first connected, Miss Ellsworth has taken an apartment in a dwelling overlooking the gardens of the Count and Countess Belvedere. The Countess Belvedere, a seductive and unprincipled woman, has a guilty intrigue with her bright-faced gardener, Vittorio, himself an illegitimate son of an Italian noble; and of their secret meetings in the garden Valeria finds herself a hidden spectator. The revelation of such perfidy under her very windows is a severe shock to her nervous system. By-and-by there is a mysterious midnight encounter in the garden, an indistinguishable figure is stabbed to death, and the bleeding body is hustled into a hasty grave at the foot of the wall. All this, too, Valeria sees, and the effect of it is to throw her into a violent fever.