Don't judge this book by its cover!   

Who would have thought this woman could carry on an illicit relationship with a man for 25 years?

Well, she did. And then she wrote about it.

It's a collection of poetry by Violet Witherspoon, a previously unpublished writer from the Victorian South.

And it's a story of a relationship that -- in finest Southern tradition -- was somewhat illicit and was kept secret for more than 25 years. The poems give the picture of the ups, downs, and passions of it all.

Lest You Forget is a visit to the South, to the past century, and in both the poetry and the book itself, to the quality of years past.

It is a book of beautiful binding with gold embossing, fine paper, and superb production. It is hard-bound in deep forest green with a wide burgundy pure silk ribbon as a marker.

It is also a sort of old-fashioned picture album. On the inside front and back covers, photographs of Violet Witherspoon and John Chambers have been placed by hand in black photo album corners. The pictures can be lifted out.

Lamar Witherspoon
whom Violet married in 1894

Agatha Shepherd
shortly after her marriage to
John Chambers

Violet as an old woman.
Taken in Macon in the 1940s.

For both its literary content and its appearance, Lest You Forget needs to be included in your library. It is a book for those who love traditional poetry, Victorian times, and the South.

Violet Witherspoon

John Chambers

The Author's Story

Violet Witherspoon was born in 1873 in the middle part of Georgia. She left behind little evidence of her life other than her poetry plus a not-well-kept journal and correspondence with John Chambers, a newspaperman in Macon.

Apparently, Violet and John were sweethearts in the late 1880s, but for whatever reason, she chose to marry an attorney named Lamar Witherspoon, and shortly thereafter, John married a woman named Agatha Shepherd who lived in Sandersville, Georgia, about 60 miles east of Macon.

Violet was widowed in 1900, and the following year, John and Agatha's two children died of scarlet fever, prompting Agatha to return to her family home in Sandersville where she remained a recluse until her death in 1912.

After Agatha left Macon, Violet and John resumed their relationship, though they were forced to maintain a facade of friendship, which they continued even after Agatha's death -- not surprising for the very proper Victorian South. John died in 1929, and Violet remained in Macon until her death in 1954.

The Poems in Lest You Forget are dated from 1902 to 1939, and they illustrate the ups and downs of the clandestine relationship and the feelings and emotions of a woman of the South.

The Poems

Lest You Forget carries only 33 poems. They are brief, lyric, and Victorian and include both rhymed and unrhymed verse as well as sonnets.

The poems are dated and show the beginning as well as the aging of the relationship between the author and John Chambers. The first one, written in 1902, talks of their reunion after the close of Violet's marriage and the virtual close of John's. Another written that same year questions the growth of the relationship. It begins "when I speak of love, this will it mean:"

By 1905, Violet and John had apparently passed the threshold into an admitted affair, and Violet explains in a sonnet what caused her to do so.

As the years pass, the poems show low points in their relationship and even indicate split-ups, with one entry beginning "When you go/ make the leaving swift. Cut the ties cleanly/ as if you would forget the past." There is also a sense of sadness over what never was. In 1924, for example, Violet wrote "August 1892" where she rues the loss of the earlier relationship she had with John. Later she writes about her "private sadness." And in a poem titled "Remembrance," she reminisces what "died by my hand."

Violet continued writing until her death at age 81, and often pondered the sadness she and John experienced because of their separate lives. A 1933 poem, written after John's death, says, "In our dreams and near dreams, we shall grieve the blindness/ that hid from our vision love's old chairs, / low fires in little parlors,/ reposeful foreheads,/ and death."

Toward the end of the book, there is a sense of reunion after death. The final poem speaks to two people of the future reading the gravestones of Violet and John and asks the onlookers if they might be Violet and John. The last lines are "Look closely at the stones./ They count our unlived moments;/ they chronicle your days now gone."