Susan Dupont Petigru King-Bowen (October 23, 1824 – December 11, 1875) was a 19th-century American socialite, realist, fiction writer and novelist. Her work, which included Busy Moments of an Idle Woman (1853), Lily: A Novel (1855), Sylvia’s World: Crimes Which the Law Does Not Reach (1859), and Gerald Gray’s Wife (1864), focused on subversive portrayals of South Carolina aristocracy, in which men toyed with women’s affections, women plotted against one another’s best interests, and mothers forced daughters to choose wealth over romance.
Biography
Childhood Susan Dupont Petigru, known as "Sue", was born on October 23, 1824, as the youngest of four children. She was raised in her family’s home on Broad Street, within the center of Charleston’s elite business and social district. Her father, James Petigru, was an attorney and politician, while her mother, Jane Amelia Petigru, was the daughter of a rich Charleston planter. Her father was gone at least four months of the year on business, and the rest of the time thoroughly preoccupied with work.
Her mother suffered an emotional breakdown when Sue was only two years old. Her oldest brother, eight-year-old Albert, died from a fall off their third-floor bannister. This event, coupled with caring for three young children and three of James’s adolescent sisters, left Jane Amelia a physical and emotional wreck. She began to develop a series of illnesses, some real and some feigned, which increased her social isolation and encouraged a lifelong addiction to morphine. James’s sister Harriette wrote that Jane Amelia was an “unnatural” woman who "lies in bed from morning till night with every luxury about her & complains of poverty", and furthermore “makes her husband's time at home wretched.”Lesesne, Harriette. Letter to Adèle Theresa Allston. 5 November 1842. Quoted in Pease 56. Another sister-in-law, Louise Porcher, stated Jane Amelia possessed “heartless selfishness” and an obsession with “flattery & adulation,” all traits that would later be ascribed to her daughters.Porcher, Louise. Letter to Adèle Theresa Allston. October 15, 1849. Quoted in Pease 73.
Sue attended school first at Madame Talvande’s French School for Young Ladies in Charleston, along with classmate Mary Boykin Chesnut, and later at Madame Binsse’s in Philadelphia. At Talvande’s in particular she focused on French, the required language for both instructional and social dialogues, but she also studied chemistry, botany, astronomy, literature, rhetoric, German, art, dancing and music. The young women also attended social gatherings amongst their Madame’s acquaintances, during which they were expected to learn and practice their grace and etiquette. Sue, expecting the urban North to contain a world of excitement and adventure, was frequently discouraged by the social restrictions created by her father’s unwillingness to produce appropriate financing. She frequently wrote back complaining of malaise and depression, which her father claimed was feigned. Years later, Sue wrote that “it is so long since I have left this part of the country nine years; and when I was at the North, I was too young to appreciate or know its advantages.”King, Susan Petigru. Letter to Adèle Theresa Allston. August 26, 1849. Quoted in Mace 59.
While he did not encourage her reckless spending, Sue’s father did encourage her love of reading and writing.Petigru, James L. Letter to Susan Petigru King. April 1, 1842. Quoted in Mace 46. He did, however, worry about her marriage prospects, having recognized that Sue bore both his own wit and temperament, without any ability or desire to control it.Petigru, James L. Letter to Jane Petigru North. May 21, 1839. Quoted in Mace 46.
Marriage to H.C. King Courtship The Panic of 1837 was a detrimental blow to James Petigru’s financial affairs. He had invested heavily in Mississippi’s speculated land market, and the new requirement of gold specie backing forced him to sell, among other items, his land holdings, his rice plantation, and most of his 137 slaves. Payments to creditors took almost the entirety of his wealth, and left him with only his home and his law office. Because of these dramatic losses Sue’s mother, Jane Amelia, pushed both daughters to marry for wealth. Eldest Caroline was the first daughter to cede, marrying William Carson, a man twice her age, in 1841. Sue followed two years later, marrying Henry Campbell King in 1843. The courtship between Henry and Sue was not an entirely romantic one. While not quite a catch, Henry King was considered the best Sue could hope for, considering her developing reputation as both saucy and outspoken. In terms of physical appearance, Sue was also less attractive than her fair-haired older sister.Pease 54.
Sue at first rejected Henry’s marriage proposal, much to the admonishment of her mother and sister. Her aunt Louise Porcher, on the other hand, considered it “safer & wise to refuse than accept,” for she could not “bear that so young a girl should be urged on that subject, as it is a step one cannot retrieve when once taken, & all the trials it may entail must be borne alone & in silence, as it is one of the few trial[s] that the sympathy of friends cannot alleviate but rather enhances.” Sue thought Henry “very short very broad & very round shouldered, & withal a little lame,” and Aunt Louise echoed that his looks presented a potential wife “substantial objection.”Porcher, Louise. Letter to Adèle Theresa Allston. June 18, 1842. Quoted in Pease 55. Aged 19, Sue did accept his second request, and a month later they married.Petigru, James L. Letter. February 26, 1842. Quoted in Mace 49.
The marriage worked out well for Sue’s father, as James Petigru partnered in law practice with Henry and his own successful father, fellow attorney Judge Mitchell King. While Henry was almost as disinterested in his professional career as Sue King was in her domestic career, James eventually put Henry in charge of their practice's many law students, a position in which he thrived.
Early marriage years The newlyweds spent their first two-and-a-half years of marriage living with Henry’s parents, during which their only child, Adele Allston King, was born. They didn’t leave the Kings’ home until Henry’s step-mother arranged for him to purchase an inherited house on Tradd Street through the funding of Henry’s father. Henry wrote frequently to his parents and extended family, often lamenting the lack of letters he received in turn. Despite the success of James, Mitchell and Henry’s law firm, Henry had few clients of his own, and his financial mismanagement, coupled with Sue’s lavish spending, forced him to borrow heavily from family members.
Their first years of marriage were amiable enough, with both partners humoring the other’s peculiar faults.North, Jane Petigru. Letter to Adèle Theresa Allston. July 29, 1843. Quoted in Mace 50. When Sue looked back fondly on her unmarried life, a time when “the hours did dance away right joyously", Henry responded that she was "'a great goose for talking so' with a side glance at little [Adele] to point his remark."King, Susan Petigru. Letter to Carey North. December 2, 1844. Quoted in Pease 57.
Six years into their marriage, what little warmth existed between Henry and Sue had declined precipitously, and she began a series of long, extended visits to the North with her sister Caroline. These trips were done under the auspices of Caroline's ailing health, but for both women the more pressing reason was an escape from their troubled marriages. Caroline’s husband William had become an abusive alcoholic, and Sue tired of her husband’s malaise at home, as well as his drinking and gambling while away. Sue had also become cynical of “the stupid, self-sufficient, wearisome styles of young ladies” in Charleston. She criticized Southern women “who have not three ideas, who spoil a little French, who play a little music, and have not a grain of agreeability,” and proclaimed that “it was a wise dispensation of Providence which places no loftier aspirations within them.”King, Susan Petigru. Letter to Adèle Theresa Allston. August 26, 1849. Quoted in Mace 62.
Literary career In 1853, the publication of Sue's first book, Busy Moments of an Idle Woman, provided her with favorable critical notices and yet another reason for Sue and Caroline to leave home and tour the Northeast. One critic, while concerned over Charleston society's potentially negative reaction, called her first work "decidedly a clever book ... The Authoress is a true woman – her eye never fails to take in at a glance the whole dress of every lady she meets, and she reports it with, perhaps, rather too much detail."Porcher, Frederick. "Art VIII – Busy Moments of an Idle Woman", Southern Quarterly Review (January 1854): 212-213. Quoted in Mace 57. In Washington, Sue wrote that they “seem to have been followed by 'the men', perfectly monopolized and idolized– even clergy-men followed in their train – they repeated that no women before had ever had such a successful career in Washington.”King, Susan Petigru. Letter to Adèle Theresa Allston. March 6, 1854. Quoted in Mace 60. Sue's father James was equally impressed with his daughter:
In 1855, Sue followed up Busy Moments with Lily: A Novel, and in 1959 a novel and short story collection under the shared title Sylvia’s World: Crimes Which the Law Does Not Reach. Her family members responded favorably to the quality of her writing, but far less so to its clearly biographical content. One cousin called her stories “the mere embodifications of what she has seen,”Pettigrew, James Johnston. Letter to James C. Johnston. November 20, 1855. Quoted in Pease 81. while another found her characters "extremely mortifying" since "every body recognizes them."Allston, Louise Gibert. Letter to Charles Lockhart Pettigrew. November 20, 1855. Quoted in Pease 81. A third was discomfited that she was able "to recognize so many of the anecdotes" in Sue's satirical depictions of troubled marriages and courtships.North, Carey. Letter to James Johnston Pettigrew. December 22, 1855. Quoted in Pease 81. King published her work anonymously, as encouraged by her father, who believed that "the interest would be better kept up by standing in the reserve and making the authorship a sort of secret … it can’t be more, considering how many are in the plot."
Sue’s literary success and subsequent travels were paired with the increasing deterioration of her marriage to Henry. In the summer of 1856, Mitchell King wrote in his journal that his son's "reference to Sue [was] very very unhappy", and that Henry had provided him “very briefly & unsatisfactorily … a very lame account of their relations.”Mitchell, King. Diary. June 30, 1856 & July 3, 1856. Quoted in Pease 80. Cousin Carey North saw blame on both sides, calling Sue a "nearly mad, unfortunate woman, but others are not blameless".North, Carey. Letter to Jane Gibert North. January 10, 1858. Quoted in Pease 81.
Henry's death By 1861, Sue and Henry had unofficially separated which, by the nature of South Carolina’s marriage laws, was the farthest apart the two could hope to become. After joining the Confederate Army at the outbreak of the Civil War, Henry was shot in the stomach during the Battle of Secessionville, and died in the summer of 1862. Sue donned mourning, but cousin Carey North believed Sue had to “act considerably” in doing so.North, Carey. Letter to Charles Lockhart Pettigrew. June 19, 1862. Quoted in Pease 163.