The Dead Bride

Vallée's likeness of Harriet Mackie was taken from her corpse, dressed in a white empire bridal gown, with a veil and garland of white roses crowning her head. Painting the dead cannot be easy. Vallée might have secured Harriet's slack jaw with a strap and continued to work as decomposition set in. It was rare for a miniaturist to depict the dead with closed eyes, as Vallée did. Usually the eyes were open, so that the memory of the living person could be preserved. The decision to leave Harriet's long-lashed lids closed and record her pallor reveals a need to remember not only the features of a living person, but to fix them in death.
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That passionate need to break through the barrier between the living and the dead to keep the body of a beloved is symbolically expressed on the locket's verso, where a lock of Harriet's plaited hair--a residue of her identity--is preserved under glass . . .
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The factual story of Harriet Mackie's life and death has been cloaked in legend. We now know that her body was buried in St. Michael's churchyard, Charleston, under a gravestone bearing the inscription: "Departed /this life on the 4th./ day of June Anno Domini/ 1804/ MISS HARRIET MACKIE/ In the seventeenth year of her age./ Beloved by all her acquaintance. An obituary in the Charleston Courrier focused on the suddenness of her passing:

Died, on Tuesday morning of an indisposition taken on Monday night, Miss Harriet Mackey, daughter of the late Doctor [James] Mackey, formerly of Georgetown.--She had been in perfect health and high spirits all Monday, and at night complained of an indisposition, which carried her off the succeeding morning.

. . . [F]ew that have died had more cause to wish to live, than this excellent young lady. Possessed of wealth, youth, beauty, and blooming health, and surrounded by a large circle of tender and admiring friends, she was just within a few days of being united to a young gentleman of qualities fitted to her own, to ensure connubial happiness, and endear them both to society. The feelings of such a man for such a lady must be far beyond the reach of description.

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Harriet's apparent "blooming health" and the unexplained rapidity of its decline has created a mysterious local legend about a "poisoned bride." Although no evidence of foul play exists, a motive for murder can be found in the will left by Harriet's father, Dr. James Mackie, who died when she was seven . . . his will made his daughter a rare phenomenon in early-nineteenth-century Charleston society, a rich woman in her own right:

I will and devise all the rest and residue of my Estate both real and personal consisting of negroes, horses, cattle, &c. to my daughter, Harriet Mackie when she attains the age of 21 years or at the day of her marriage which ever shall happen first. But if my said daughter should die before the above mentioned periods, then I give that part of my Estate which I have given to my said daughter, to Captain Wm. Alston's two sons, John Alston and Wm. Alston.