Name |
Wright, Laura M. (1845–1932) |
Short Biography |
Laura Wright, a native of Warsaw, Missouri, was the niece of a pilot friend of SLC’s. She was fourteen years old when SLC met and courted her in New Orleans (May 1858). Despite SLC’s repeated claim that he met and parted from Laura only once, it is clear that the two corresponded over an unknown period of time, and that SLC made at least one trip to Warsaw. By 1864 she had married Charles T. Dake. SLC’s memory of Laura proved remarkably persistent. She was his model for the young Laura Hawkins in The Gilded Age; it is she who appears and reappears as his “dream-sweetheart” in “My Platonic Sweetheart” (1898); and he recalled her in autobiographical dictations from 1906–7. |