Clara Barton, Professional Angel

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Elizabeth Brown Pryor. Clara Barton, Professional Angel

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Clara Bartonat eighty-five. This sympathetic portrait was taken in Washington, D.C. Library of Congress.

Professional Angel

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The strong personal relationship between Clara and Richard Stone seems to have been repeated with all of her teachers. They found in the serious young girl an eagerness to learn that was both touching and challenging. Another teacher, Lucien Burleigh, treated her “with consideration and kindness,” and developed a series of advanced studies—including astronomy, ancient history, and poetry—for her questing mind. Long after she left his school, Burleigh continued to show an affectionate interest in her affairs and concern for her spiritual and intellectual development.59 Clara next attended an Oxford school taught by Jonathan Dana, and once more the pupil-teacher relationship proved to be a close one. Barton wrote of this friendship that she had “no words to describe the value of his instruction, nor the pains he took with his eager pupil.” There again she was permitted to dabble in the higher branches of learning and was given special instruction outside of school hours. Thankful for any individual attention, Clara remembered her experiences at Jonathan Dana’s school with affection: “My grateful Homage for my inestimable teacher and his interest in his early pupil, became memories of a lifetime.”60

Clara’s family was proud of her scholarship, and she basked in their approbation. Her sisters helped her to expand her literary tastes, sharing poetry and their favorite books, while Stephen, she recalled, “inducted me into the mystery of figures.”61 The Barton's’ encouragement of Clara’s intellectual talents speaks of their liberalism, for many girls of her day were dissuaded from intellectual pursuits or actively barred from the more advanced fields of study. It also strongly shaped her perception of the skills needed to gain recognition and acceptance at home and in the world at large. While other girls were honing the traditional traits of womanhood—humility and nurturing—Clara found that achievement and “hard-thinking” won her the respect she so anxiously sought.62

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