Emily Tapscott Clark

I have sometimes mentioned Tapscotts who achieved notoriety owing to "skallawagery" (a noun I just invented). A good examples was dear old Samuel Tapscott.  But there were also Tapscotts who were prominent in a good way. One of those was Emily Tapscott Clark, daughter of Nannie Tapscott and William Clark. From the Encyclopedia Virginia:

From Encyclopedia Virginia.

Emily Tapscott Clark was a writer and the founding editor of The Reviewer, a Richmond-based literary magazine that helped spark the Southern Literary Renaissance—a movement in southern letters that turned away from glorifying the Old South in sentimental narratives (by such writers as Thomas Nelson Page) and instead moved toward writing about themes of race, gender, identity, and the burden of history in the South. While Clark caused some uproar in Richmond society with the publication of Stuffed Peacocks (1927), a set of thirteen satirical character sketches with a biting introduction about the city of Richmond itself, she is known primarily for her contributions to and nurturing of the evolution of southern literature in the 1920s and 1930s.

Emily’s father, William Meade Clark, was for many years the rector of St. James Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia. Her mother, Nannie Douglas Tapscott, was a descendant of Capt. Henry Tapscott, the wealthiest and most socially prominent of Henry the Immigrant’s three sons.

The Daily Star, Fredericksburg, Virginia, Fri 7 Nov 1924

In 1924 Emily married Edwin Balch, a prominent Philadelphian explorer, mountain climber, scientist, and author. Emily was around 33 at the time (her birthyear, which she varied, is uncertain) and had not been married before. Edwin, on the other hand, was a 68-year-old widower. A 1924 news article describes the wedding as being between two prominent families, though some of the claims are a little questionable.

When he died shortly afterwards in 1927 (the same year his wife wrote her most famous book, “Stuffed Peacocks”), Edwin Balch left $1.16 million, worth over $21 million today.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, Fri 3 Jul 1953.

When Emily died in 1953, having lived as a widow for over a quarter century, obituaries were published in twenty-three newspapers. One is shown here.