Had Mrs. Sigourney continued her school it is not by any means preposterous to believe that her fame as an educator might have outlasted her reputation in literature, and that she might have shared with Miss Beecher of the old Hartford Female Seminary a certain degree of distinction in connection with the early education of women in this country.
IN the year 1822 there drifted into the friendly social life of the old town a short, odd looking young man who, it developed, had come to take editorial charge of "The Connecticut Mirror," a weekly newspaper, strongly federal in politics, which had been established in 1809 by Charles Hosmer and which, at this time, had just been bought by Messrs. Goodsell and Wells, whose place of business was at the corner of Main and Asylum streets.
The name of this young man was John Gardiner Calkins Brainard and he was twenty-six years old. Those who inquired about him learned that he was a native of New London and the son of Judge Jeremiah G. Brainard of the Superior Court. In 1815 he had been graduated at Yale--a classmate of that strange genius James Gates Percival, poet, physician, geologist. After studying law in his brother's office he had practiced for a time in Middletown, but it was rumored that his tastes were literary rather than legal, and that the law had not proved very successful.
In spite of his rather uncouth appearance this newcomer soon became a favorite among the young people. He was clever--any one could see that. His frequent witty and amusing sayings gathered an arresting emphasis from their contrast with intervals of quietness and even of apparent depression. Perhaps this hint of an underlying seriousness had its especial charm for the young ladies. Remember that in those days Byron was in fashion. But there was something about this young man that attracted also friends of his own sex. "The first time I ever saw him," says a writer in the "Boston Statesman," quoted by Whittier in his memoir of Brainard, "I met him in a gay and fashionable circle. He was pointed out to me as the poet Brainard--a plain, ordinary looking individual, careless in his dress, and apparently without the least claim to the attention of those who value such advantages(?). But there was no person there so much or so flatteringly attended to. . . . He was evidently the idol, not only of the poetry-loving and gentler sex--but also of the young men who were about him. . . ."