Читать книгу Clara Barton, Professional Angel - Elizabeth Brown Pryor - Страница 12

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On a blustery day at the end of December 1850, Clara Barton tucked herself under the lap robes in her brother Stephen's sleigh and set off for the Worcester train depot. Her heart felt as cold as the frozen ground, for she at last realized that if she was leaving scenes that worried and oppressed her, she was also leaving her family and all that had been familiar and comforting.¹ It was, moreover, a bad time to leave Oxford. Her mother had been sick, indeed “quite feeble,” for much of the year and did not sustain much hope of recovering.² That autumn tragedy had struck her brothers, too. The mill complex had burned again, this time leaving only one wall standing, and the loss was much heavier than the insurance would cover. The distress Clara felt over this incident was heightened by the belief that the fire had been intentionally set, possibly as a result of the Barton brothers’ slightly shady dealings. It was thus with sadness at leaving her distraught family, mingled with relief, that she boarded the train for New York.³

The trip was long and frustrating, delayed by closely missed connections and frozen rivers. Barton met no one along the way, and even late in life she could remember the slow, unsettling journey, which was “passed in silence.”⁴ The trip to New York City took twenty-five hours, and as she was too late for a morning boat up the Hudson River, she stayed at the Irving House until evening, when she boarded the Isaac Newton. The game little boat tried dutifully to help pull another vessel out of the ice; it finally succeeded, only to find itself stuck more firmly than the other boat had been. “She was thumped and heaved since,” Barton noted in her journal, “and Heaven only knows which way she will stray if she ever starts.”⁵ After much ado, and to the passengers’ great relief, the boat loosed itself and kept on its way toward Albany. From there Barton took the train for Utica and thence on to Clinton.

In Clinton she made her way to the Clinton House, “a typical old time tavern,” where Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Bertram rented rooms to students. She was disappointed to find school would not start on the first Monday in January as advertised.⁶ Although the institute had been established twenty years previously, in the year that Barton arrived it was undergoing vast structural and academic changes. A new building called the “White Seminary,” an imposing structure with a broad portico supported by Ionic columns, was being built to house the female portion of the school, and classes could not be resumed until it was finished.⁷ Meanwhile, the faculty was working to institute a program of studies that they believed would give the students an academic foundation “as good as can be obtained in most colleges of the country.”⁸ While these changes were taking place, the opening of school was delayed several weeks.

Clara spent the time exploring the town. The home of Hamilton College as well as the Clinton Liberal Institute, Clinton wore the traditional college air of youthful frivolousness and scholarly gravity. Over half of the population in 1850 were students, hailing chiefly from New England but occasionally coming from as far away as Canada or Alabama. They slept in plainly furnished rooms in the several lodging houses around town, living on a shoestring and socializing in the debating and Philomien societies, which were then popular.⁹ Yet Clara could not rejoice in the abundance of young people; she felt only the frigid atmosphere of the dark January days. Even the appealing buildings looked cold and hostile to her, and the “two plank walk with a two feet space between, leading up from the town was not suggestive of the warmest degree of sociability to say the least of it.”¹⁰ Wondering whether her decision to leave Oxford had been wise, she wandered alone through the town every day. At night she wrote cheerful letters home, crafted to reveal little of her anxiety.

Clara was much relieved when school began and life once more had a purpose. The newly finished schoolrooms still seemed cold and forbidding to her, but she found to her delight that the girls’ principal, Louise Barker, was a rare leader, with qualities that could truly inspire her pupils. “I found an unlooked-for activity, a cordiality, and an irresistible charm of manner that none could have foreseen—a winning indescribable grace which I have met in only a few persons in a whole lifetime,” recalled Barton. Louise Barker not only made the timid young woman feel at ease, she encouraged her to lead a balanced life at the institute. Barton, eager to gain the widest education possible in her year in Clinton, often tried to forego the pleasures and sociability of student life. It was Barker who unfailingly steered her toward a more active existence and instilled in her the importance of developing her confidence as well as her intellect.¹¹

Clara was probably in the third class at the institute, although the scanty documents related to her year at Clinton never state this precisely. The studies of this course were well beyond those of secondary school and included analytic geometry, French and German, ancient history, philosophy, calculus, astronomy, and religious studies. The male and female students were physically separated, but girls were encouraged to “pursue the Languages, the Mathematics, and the Natural Sciences, to any extent they may wish.”¹² This policy, rare for the time, had enormous appeal for Barton. Unfortunately, however, the institute limited the number of studies allowed each term. Barton, convinced of the necessity of utilizing every moment, begged and cajoled the faculty until they had stretched the limit to the utmost. “I recall with some amusement, the last evening I entered with my request,” wrote Barton. “The teachers were assembled in the parlor and, divining my errand, as I never had any other, Miss Barker broke into a merry laugh—with ‘Miss Barton, we have a few studies left; you had better take what there are, and we will say nothing about it.’” Thereafter Clara took what courses she liked, studying with “a burning anxiety to make the most of lost time.”¹³

For this privilege she paid, as did the other female students, a flat rate of thirty-five dollars per term, which included tuition, room and board, and laundry. She had moved from the old Clinton House into the dormitory rooms of the White Seminary. The accommodations were bare but adequate, and the building included, besides the sleeping compartments and classrooms, a parlor, sitting room, and library. But while Clara was comfortable in her living situation, socially she decidedly was not.¹⁴

Barton had purposely refrained from revealing her past teaching experiences, which she believed might cause discomfort to either the teachers or other students. She hoped instead to blend in without noticeable difference among the other pupils, and to glean what she could from the instructors without prejudice. “There was no reason why I should volunteer my history or step in among that crowd of eager pupils as a ‘school marm’, expected to know everything.”¹⁵ But the maturity of her experiences, as well as her years, kept her distinct from her fellow students. Most of Barton's classmates were ten or more years her junior, and she had trouble assimilating herself with the ‘frolicsome girls.”¹⁶ While they found her “a perfect mystery,” unassuming yet with a forbidding aloofness, she saw them as narrow in their prejudices and immature.¹⁷ One roommate noted “some peculiarities,” such as her habit of eating only two meals a day, but charitably announced that none of her oddities were “bad ones.”¹⁸ Barton was also self-conscious about her clothes. With characteristic thrift she had had two dresses cut from one length of material in her favorite shade of green. Though the garments had different trimmings, the other girls thought it odd that she should wear such similar clothes day after day and attached a mysterious significance to the color. Fortunately, among the 150 pupils at the institute she did find several kindred spirits. Barton long remembered “Gentle Clara Hurd” affectionately, but Abby Barker, from Connecticut, and Mary Norton, a Quaker from Hightstown, New Jersey, became her closest chums. These girls, whose jokes and secrets she shared, were to remain lifelong friends and supporters.¹⁹

“When at school, her photograph, would have shown you a rather thick-set girl, with head bent a little forward, looking up with small black eyes, through heavy, low eyebrows,” wrote a classmate. Despite this unflattering description, Barton seems to have attracted the attention of a number of men while at Clinton. Indeed, the same writer went on to admit that she “was much admired.”²⁰ One of her most ardent beaus was Charles Norton, her friend Mary's brother, who also attended the institute. He was a genial and intelligent fellow who appreciated Barton's sense of humor, but he was ten years younger than Clara, and she found it difficult to take him seriously. “While she esteemed him as friend,” wrote an acquaintance, “I don’t think she regarded him as a lover.”²¹ Another person who was intrigued by this dark, serious girl was Samuel Ramsey, a professor of mathematics at Hamilton College. He admired her fine horsemanship, and their long afternoons riding together aroused much speculation among the young women of the institute. Here, too, Clara seems to have drawn the line at friendship. Nonetheless, Ramsey, like Charles Norton, remained a devoted and lifelong friend to Clara Barton, and rumors about a possible romance between the two were whispered until well after the Civil War.²²

Other references to men crop up in Barton's writings at this time, but they are generally cryptic, identifying these friends only by their initials. Years later she was to share with Abby Barker happy memories of exchanging secrets about gentlemen friends. The two of them, she recalled, would stand giggling and talking at the top of the stairs before the gas was turned out at ten o’clock. “I have a letter in the pocket of this green dress,” Barton wrote, conjuring up the scene,

you may take it to your room, and tell me tomorrow night, as we stand here gain, what you think of it…. And while Louise Clap is fandangling around, and Sarah Stoddard is putting up the stray locks that won’t stay in place…Abby Barker and the strange girl in the green gown will exchange views over the letter and say how it seems to us, and you can give it back to me, & tell me how you would answer it if you were in my place, & must do it.²³

These good friends helped to break the intensity with which Clara pursued her work. Driven by her “habit of study,” she put in long hours at her desk and left an impressive record of scholarship at Clinton. Yet the discipline to study did not always come easily. “It is hard work to sit and study all day,” she commiserated with a nephew who was complaining of school. But she rationalized the effort on the grounds of “future benefit,” not “present happiness,” and so admonished him: “let us bear it cheerfully.” So dogged was she that even her vacations were spent in study. Concerned that Barton would overtax herself and thus lose all she had worked so hard to gain, Louise Barker encouraged her to ride in the countryside and even resorted to employing Samuel Ramsey to lure her out of the library.²⁴

It was an effective technique. Barton still relished outdoor exercise and enjoyed displaying her considerable equestrian skills. When a gentleman alighted from his horse she could, to the amazement of the other girls, “spring upon his horse and ride, to the astonishment of all, without change of saddle.”²⁵ She liked to explore the countryside, so very different from that of Hubbell s. Dashing across the broad, level acres, Barton wondered at the immensity of these western farms and sensed her own provinciality when she realized how narrow her expectations of even the physical world had been. Everything in New York, she told a favorite nephew, was on a larger scale than she had come to expect in Hubbell s. “What we are accustomed to call rivers become brooks and creeks in New York and what we call ponds they don’t think worth calling at all, but what they call lakes we cannot call for we have nothing like them.” She was intrigued, too, by the Erie Canal, with its long, flat boats, the chant of the boatmen, and its strings of mules.²⁶ As much as her studies broadened her intellectual world, so did this close examination of a different landscape broaden her outlook. She never again faced a journey to unknown parts with trepidation. Rather, she welcomed travel with its new vistas, its risk, and its element of surprise.

The kindness of Louise Barker, the close friendship of a few girls, and admiring glances of several young men eased Barton's stay in Clinton, but overall the year was a difficult one for her. She felt divorced from her family, on whom she had always relied for support, and longed, as she told a cousin, to “be situated near each other again so as to enable us to speak our thoughts and feelings to each other.”²⁷ She never completely relinquished the feeling that she did not quite belong with the younger students, but she masked it by a show of aloofness. Rather than attempt to be a part of the student community, she simply withdrew and followed her own inclinations in study, dress, and recreation. When a classmate fell sick she volunteered to nurse her and responsibly accompanied the girl home, much to the admiration of the younger girls.²⁸ But her classmates felt more awe than fellowship with her. As one recalled, “she was treated with…deference by her associates who always seemed to concede to her the right of doing just as she pleased.”²⁹

Barton also faced financial difficulties during the year. It was with a start that she realized that her carefully saved earnings were barely going to keep her through the three terms of school. Barton therefore eschewed many of the frivolities of the more affluent students, spending increasing amounts of her leisure time in study. Monetary considerations also prevented her from leaving Clinton during the school holidays in spring and summer, and she spent this time alone in a hotel in town.³⁰ Despite her economies, however, her worst fears materialized: before the final term had ended she was out of funds. Barton did not write to her immediate family—perhaps for reasons of pride—but instead called upon her old childhood playmate, Jerry Learned. He bailed her out, saw to it that she was comfortably situated for the remainder of the year, and paid her expenses home.³¹

Clara's reluctance to mingle too much with other students may also have been heightened by shocking news she received in May 1851. Her brother Stephen, whom she had always revered and even emulated, was indicted on charges of bank robbery in Otsego County, New York. The Learneds, who had been under surveillance for some time for less than honest business practices, were also implicated. An article in the Boston Courier stated that “the people of Oxford did not believe Barton had any connection” with the robbery, but a credit agent found that this was not really the case. Many Oxford citizens had long been suspicious of the ways in which the Barton brothers had found the funds to acquire such extensive real estate. Stephen Barton's immediate problem became the loss of faith by his creditors, who began calling in his debts. “His C^r has received a shock difficult to get over,” wrote an agent of R. G. Dun and Company, “his large R[eal] E[state] is under allocat[ion], & will not be enough in all prob. to pay his C^r's.” Not only was his financial position in peril, but his reputation of town leader, cherished for so long, was now irrevocably tarnished. As one observer wrote, “it will be extremely difficult for him to remove the unfavorable impression.”³²

Stephen Barton was not convicted of the robbery, though many circumstances connected him with it. Clara has left no impression of the event or of the grief it must have caused her to learn of it. Otsego County was a jurisdiction bordering on the county in which she was attending school, and her brother may have been in the vicinity in connection with a visit to her. Clara appears never to have chastised her brother; instead she showed her strong sense of loyalty by upholding him in her mind and continuing to rely on him as her principal advisor. During the long years of her fame, when biographers were anxious for any detail of her family life, she effectively shielded this and other questionable activities from the public view. The extent to which this outward loyalty was inwardly felt is difficult to tell. Surely her brother's indictment and trial shook the very roots of her admiration for the energy and honor of her family. It probably contributed to her shy and aloof manner, for in attracting attention to herself, she might possibly attract attention to her brother's troubles.

Clara had barely recovered from this tragedy when she received more news of family sorrows. In early July she opened a letter from her brother that began: “Our excelent [sic] mother is no more. She died this afternoon at a quarter after five o’clock her last end was without a struggle and apparently easy.”³³ Clara knew that Sarah Barton had been ill for several months and that she had not expected to live much longer, but like the indictment of her brother, this death flung her away from the anchors of the past, pressing her to rely more on herself. Helplessness overwhelmed her. She could not even attend the funeral, for her mother had already been buried in the new cemetery in Oxford by the time the news reached her. She locked herself in for nearly a week in order to be alone with her grief, telling no one of her sorrow.³⁴ Her brother, sensing her isolation, tried to comfort her as best he could. “Dear Clara how much I think of you and what your feelings must be when this sad news reaches you,” he wrote. “I think of you as far away from connections and acquaintances in a strange country and among strangers and none to comfort and sympathize with you in this stroke of affliction. Yet I trust and hope that you will bear it meekly and with fortitude.”³⁵ At last Louise Barker, hearing of the loss, sent for her; by pulling her out of her deep introspection she helped Clara to make the first small steps toward overcoming her loss.³⁶

At the end of her term at the Clinton Liberal Institute, Barton had accomplished her goal of increasing her academic expertise, yet she had no idea how to shape a career or what direction her life should now take. Teaching, factory work, and domestic service were the only respectable choices widely available to women. Of these, teaching was by far the most prestigious. But to return to Oxford, to the same round of one-room schools and unruly boys, to the thorough familiarity of countryside and citizens, seemed a backward step, lacking in either challenge or productivity. Determined that she should not dry up in the static atmosphere of Oxford schools, Barton elected to avoid her old home town altogether while she debated her future. She boarded a train for New England Village, a neighboring community and the home of her adventurous cousin Jerry Learned.³⁷