I wrote about Tillie Walden’s new graphic novel for the Seven Days Newspaper.

You can follow the link here to read the full article.

Here is an excerpt:

Illuminating the Archive

In the early 19th century, when same-sex relationships were widely forbidden, Charity Byrant and Sylvia Drake lived openly as a couple in Weybridge. From the scant record that exists of their relationship, Norwich cartoonist Tillie Walden has constructed a nuanced and rousing portrait of the two women in a new graphic biography, released this June by Drawn & Quarterly. 

Before Charity and Sylvia, the only surviving likenesses of Bryant and Drake were cutout silhouettes of the women on fading pink paper, decorated with a braided lock of hair that curls around their faces in the shape of a heart. It is a testament to Walden’s imagination and artistic skill that she was able to illuminate the romance, dedication and tenderness of their relationship using the few remaining letters, papers and objects that offer glimpses of their lives.

Besides resistance to their union, the two women faced economic hardship, illness and grief. Yet against all odds, Bryant and Drake carved out a life together and shared a humble home and tailoring business. They wrote poems to each other and even took turns rocking each other in a large cradle by the fire on winter evenings.

Walden, a two-time winner of the prestigious Eisner Award, wrote Charity and Sylvia with support from Vermont Humanities and the Henry Sheldon Museum in Middlebury during her 2023-26 term as state cartoonist laureate. The book begins with Bryant and Drake’s first meeting in Weybridge and follows their growing intimacy as Drake moves into Bryant’s rented room in Middlebury. After revisiting their respective childhoods in Massachusetts, the narrative eventually returns to their life together as they grow old. 

Walden has cleverly woven together excerpts of historical records, such as “A Letter to Sylvia Drake From Charity Bryant, July 2, 1807,” with imaginative threads that patch the holes in the archive. Bryant most likely destroyed her own diaries, leaving only letters and poems in her voice. But in the pages of this book, she expresses herself boldly, speaking openly about her views on spiritual matters and pursuing a career, advocating for her work and housing needs, and expressing affection for Drake. She is strong, sometimes volatile, with a dose of humor — as when she plays an April Fools’ Day trick on her beloved, walking out the door wearing her outfit backward. 

In contrast, Walden depicts Drake as more reserved and doubtful; she endeavors to keep their affections hidden from public view and has internalized fear of God’s judgment of their relationship. In one tense passage, after Bryant and Drake survive a harrowing boat voyage across a river in a storm, Drake rants to Bryant while they warm by the fire:

What have I done to anger God? It is a message. All of it. Your illness, our failing garden, those worms, all our brothers dropping dead … You close your eyes to all of this! This is the consequence of sin.

For a biography of two very religious 19th-century women, Charity and Sylvia has quite a few amusing, even sexy passages. In one scene, the women steal a kiss in a grove of trees; another shows them snuggled in the still-dark morning, face-to-face, exchanging only a few hushed words: “Must we wake?” “Not yet.” These panels, which emphasize their connection through intricate imagery and spare language, offer the strongest emotional moments in the book. 

Every page features a lyrical and often cryptic title: “Hold Fast, This Night Will Not Last Forever,” “The Room Smelled of Tallow, Sawdust, and Rain.” Walden refracts the social and political events of the time through the prism of the pair’s relationship, including the brutality of a nation in formation. Her protagonists also fight more personal battles, grappling with the illness and death of family members and the spiritual and religious turmoil of “living in sin” as two women. In one horrifying exchange, Drake brings hyssop to an ailing neighbor. He greets her with judgment: “You are that creature that tends home with a woman. Did no man ever show you the glory of his pleasure?”   

While all the characters and primary events are based on historical records, Walden shifted certain timelines and locations for the sake of narrative clarity. Her meticulous bibliography — shared in the book’s afterword and at more length on an accompanying website — reveals the historical architecture on which she built to tell this story. 

Walden’s artistry is stunning and innovative. Most pages feature a grid that resembles a quilt, divided into 12 neat squares. Other illustrations stretch across a whole page, with patterned borders that evoke stitching and varied textures of cloth — a nod to Bryant and Drake’s vocation as tailors. The entire book is rendered in sepia, with fine black hatching and soft, layered brown tones.

These sophisticated, accomplished pages build on Walden’s already rich trove of graphic novels, including On a Sunbeam, Spinning and her Clementine trilogy. Charity and Sylvia celebrates the anomaly of Bryant and Drake’s relationship in an unforgiving era and gives Vermont its due as their refuge. By conscientiously piecing together fragments from the archives, Walden has resurrected a story too long overlooked.