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The AAS collection includes three miniature portraits of Lydia
Stiles
and one of her family by Eliza Goodridge. The miniatures of Stiles
alone
were taken at different points in her life: at the conclusion of
her schooling,
her engagement to Alfred Dwight Foster, ten years after their
marriage.
The family portrait was taken in 1838.
Stiles was born in Templeton, Massachusetts, and attended Miss
Fiske's
Young Ladies Seminary, a boarding school in Keene, New Hampshire,
graduating
after four years at the age of eighteen. She was sent to boarding
school
because her father thought the experience would be valuable. He
wrote,
'I prefer'd, painful as your long absence is to us, and I trust,
no less
so on some accounts, to yourself - to have you reside there and
pursue
your studies - the expense indeed is somewhat more, but I hope
this will
be more than compensated by your superior advantages in acquiring
knowledge.'(1)
In the engagement portrait, taken only three years later, Stiles
wears
the same hairstyle, tortoise-shell comb, and brooch. While the
subject
does not appear to have changed, the artist's style had matured.
Goodridge
had learned to moderate her backgrounds and to subtly blend skin
tones
for a more successful depiction of three dimensions.
Lydia Stiles married the Worcester lawyer Alfred Dwight Foster
(1800-52)
on February 14, 1828. She described her domestic life in a letter
to him
in 1833, 'I have very little leisure and scarcely a moment to
myself free
from some interruption or other. Dwight [their eldest child] will
not
stay in the chamber unless I am there and he is as full of
mischief as
you can imagine.'(2) Lydia Stiles Foster was an active member of
the Union
Congregational Church and supported her husband's interest in the
American
Antiquarian Society. After his death, she donated several volumes
of bound
newspapers, government documents, and annuals to the Society.(3)
This remarkable family miniature shows the children in 1838,
Dwight
(1828-84), Mary (1830-1900), and Rebecca (1832-1927). Dwight
Foster, who
graduated from Yale in 1848, was admitted to the bar in
Massachusetts
the following year. He rose to associate justice of the
Massachusetts
Supreme Judicial Court (1866-69). Elected to membership in the
American
Antiquarian Society in 1856, he served twice on the Council, from
1856
to 1863 and from 1880 to 1884. Mary married the Reverend Robinson
Dunn
in 1855 and lived in Worcester. A second miniature of Rebecca
depicts
her just before her 1853 marriage to Dr. Henry Clarke of
Worcester.(4)
Eliza Goodridge, the artist, was eight years older than Lydia
Stiles
Foster, but both women had grown up in Templeton and were friends
for
many years. It is likely that Foster helped Goodridge secure
commissions
in Worcester. Goodridge stayed in the Foster home in the 1830s and
1840s
both to take care of the children while the parents traveled and
to accept
commissions in Worcester. These two 1838 images offer abundant
details
of the family home: the mantelpiece, Argand lamp, sewing box, and
paneled
door provide a glimpse of the Fosters' parlor, while three other
pieces
of furniture and the staircase may be seen in the portrait of the
children.
Goodridge evidently used this parlor for her sittings, sometimes
to Foster's
dismay. In a letter to a sister, Lydia wrote: 'Miss Goodridge is
still
with us and has just dispatched the miniatures of Col. Dey and his
wife
of Webster, to my great joy, as I was tired of having them come to
sit.'(5)
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1) John William Stiles to Lydia Stiles, June 1, 1820, John
William
Stiles Papers 1792-1838, American Antiquarian Society Manuscript
Collection;
for more on Miss Fiske's school, see Laurence Thompson,
"Schools,"
in Upper Ashuelot: A History of Keene, New Hampshire, ed. Keene
History
Committee (Keene: City of Keene, 1986), 446.
2) Lydia Stiles Foster to Alfred Dwight Foster, February
1833, Foster
Family Papers.
3) Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society (October
1863):21;
and (April 1868):32.
4) The Foster Family Papers 1740-1884, and Robinson Potter
Dunn Papers
1825-1897, include their adult correspondence and personal papers.
American
Antiquarian Society Manuscript Collection.
5) Lydia Stiles Foster to Mary Stiles Newcomb, March 21,
1838, Foster
Family Papers.
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