-The Arts Fuse
Tillie Walden’s Charity & Sylvia transforms archival fragments into a resonant portrait of devotion in early 19th-century Vermont.
Charity and Sylvia by Tillie Walden. Drawn & Quarterly, 266 pages, $30.
Tillie Walden’s Charity and Sylvia (Drawn & Quarterly) is a beautifully rendered and engaging historical graphic novel that illuminates the lives of a lesbian couple in early 19th-century Vermont. Walden’s work serves as a potent reminder that openly LGBTQ people have always existed, despite their erasure by families, historians, and politicians.
The source material was researched in the archives of the Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History, which houses a rich collection of Charity Bryant’s and Sylvia Drake’s acrostic poems, diaries, correspondence, wills, home and business ledgers, and records of charitable contributions. Fortuitously, a niece preserved this trove and donated it in 1897.
The two women lived openly as a same-sex couple from 1807 to 1851 in Weybridge, VT, where they ran a successful tailoring business. Despite some local misgivings, they were largely accepted. Neighborhood children apprenticed with them, and Sylvia served as a deacon in the local Congregational Church.
The partners share a single tombstone in the town cemetery—a remarkable statement in early America. Today, it is well maintained, adorned with pride flags and small visitation stones. In 2025, the state erected a nearby roadside marker recognizing their contributions to the community.
Adapting their story into a graphic format might have posed challenges, given that the only extant image of the couple is a framed silhouette of the two women in profile. However, Walden, the former cartoonist laureate of Vermont, brings considerable skill to the task. Her draftsmanship imbues the twelve panels per page with striking, brown-hued detail, depicting the women caring for one another, as well as their backstories, struggles, family gatherings, and the harshness of New England winters.
Between chapters, Walden illustrates the accelerating pace of the world during their lifetimes: fourteen presidents, rebellions, plagues, the arrival of the railroad, and other technological innovations. These interludes effectively situate the couple’s intimate story within a broader historical sweep.
Walden also renders, with lyrical precision, lists of what the partners loved about each other, alongside the qualities they found maddening. This attention to the emotional texture of their daily lives deepens the resonance of this inventive biography.
In the foreword, Walden writes, “I have also accentuated and changed certain details in the spirit of drama and understanding.” Among the most affecting sequences are her depictions of Charity’s death, with “Sylvia’s hand on her arm as her heart ceases to be,” and, sixteen years later, Sylvia’s final moments, in which she is reunited with her beloved, who reassures her: “They are welcome in his kingdom. They always have been.”
Rather than include footnotes, Walden has created an engaging bibliographic website with extensive annotations, along with notes and sketches documenting her creative process. This companion resource offers deeper access to the couple’s lives, supplemented by historical paintings of the region and examples of period clothing, furniture, and literature.
Upcoming events with the author include Harvard Book Store (MA) on June 10 and The Norwich Bookstore (VT) on June 17. In September, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra will premiere a commissioned work by composer Clarice Assad for orchestra and two vocalists, inspired by the couple’s lives. As Assad notes, the piece explores “how Charity and Sylvia’s courage echoes across centuries—their letters revealing how love persists despite societal constraints in an era where hard-won rights face renewed threats.”