Nichols, Mary Sargeant Gove (1810-1884)

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Mary Sargeant Gove Nichols (pen name Mary Orme) was born on 10 August 1810 in Goffstown, New Hampshire and died on 30 May 1884 in Brompton, London, England. Karen Iacobbo describes Nichols as "a leading crusader for vegetarianism during the mid 19th century. She was a disciple of Sylvester Graham ... and as a 'Grahamite' her major form of activism was to teach physiology and anatomy to Americans" (Mary Gove Nichols: Uncommonly Victorian & Veg). In 1842 she became romantically involved with Henry Gardiner Wright, who had accompanied Charles Lane and Bronson Alcott from England to establish the community at Fruitlands. Gardiner introduced to her the water-cure and was one of the editors of The Health Journal and Independent Magazine (1843). In July 1844 he returned to England where he died of cancer. Nichols's lectures, fiction, and nonfiction texts advocate for the water-cure: to rise early, take a bath, and go for a walk before breakfast; meals should be simple, using whole foods and minimizing (or abstaining entirely) from spices, condiments, alcohol, wine, tea, and coffee, and meat. She is critical of those who claim to eat according to the Graham diet but are not eating whole foods. She argues, in her lectures, that humans should refrain from eating meat for both health and moral reasons. In her fiction, “good” characters, such as Agnes Morris in the eponymous novel, are marked by their temperate lifestyle; “bad” characters are intemperate and often in poor health due to their lifestyle choices.

PUBLICATIONS