_The Art and Loan Dress Exhibit recalls a story of my early association
with Calliope Marsh in Friendship Village, when yet she was not well
known to me--her humanity, her habit of self-giving, her joy in life
other than her own._
_Afterward I knew that I had never seen a woman more keenly and
constantly a participant in the lives of others. She was hardly
individuated at all. She suffered and joyed with others, literally, more
than she did in her "own" affairs. I now feel certain that before we can
reach the individualism which we crave--and have tried to claim too
soon--we must first know such participation as hers in all conscious
life--in all life, conscious or unconscious._
_This is that early story, as I then wrote it down:_
Calliope Marsh had been having a "small company." Though nominally she
was hostess to twenty of us, invited there for six o'clock supper, yet
we did not see Calliope until supper was done. Mis' Postmaster Sykes had
opened the door for us, had told us to "walk up-stairs to the right an'
lay aside your things," and had marshaled us to the dining-room and so
to chairs outlining the room. And there the daughters of most of the
guests had served us while Calliope stayed in the kitchen, with Hannah
Hager to help her, seasoning and stirring and "getting it onto the
plates." Afterward, flushed and, I thought, lovably nervous, Calliope
came in to receive our congratulations and presently to hear
good-nights. But I, who should have hurried home to Madame Josephine,
the modiste from town who that week called my soul her own, waited for a
little to talk it over--partly, I confess, because a fine, driving rain
had begun to fall.
We sat in the kitchen while Calliope ate her own belated supper on a
corner of the kitchen table; and on another corner, thin, tired little
Hannah Hager ate hers. And, as is our way in Friendship, Hannah talked
it over, too--that little maid-of-all-work, who was nowhere attached in
service, but lived in a corner of Grandma Hawley's cottage and went
tirelessly about the village ministering to the needs of us all.
"Everything you hed was lovely, Miss Marsh," Hannah said with shining
content and a tired sigh. "You didn't hev a single set-back, did you?"
"Well, I dunno," Calliope doubted; "it all tastes like so much chips to
me, even now. I was kind o' nervous over my pressed ham, too. I noticed
two o' the plates didn't eat all theirs, but the girls couldn't rec'lect
whose they was. Did you notice?"
"No, sir, I didn't," Hannah confessed with a shake of the head at
herself. "I did notice," she amended brightly, "that Mis' Postmaster
Sykes didn't make way with all her cream, but I guess ice-cream don't
agree with her. She's got a kind o' peculiar stomach."
"Well-a, anybody hev on anything new?" Calliope asked with interest. "I
couldn't tell a stitch anybody hed on. I don't seem to sense things when
I hev company."
There was no need for me to give evidence.
"Oh!" Hannah said, as we say when we mean a thing very much, "didn't you
see Lyddy Eider?"
"Seems to me I did take it in she hed on something pink," Calliope
remembered.
Little Hannah stood up in her excitement.
"Pink, Miss Marsh!" she said. "I should say it was. Pink with cloth,
w'ite. The w'ite," Hannah illustrated it, "went here an' so, in points.
In between was lace an' little ribbon, pink too. An' all up so was
buttons. An' it all rustled w'en she stirred 'round. An' it laid smooth
down, like it was starched an' ironed, an' then all to once it'd slimpse
into folds, soft as soft. An' every way she stood it looked nice--it
didn't pucker nor skew nor hang wrong. It was dressmaker-made, ma'am,"
Hannah concluded impressively. "An' it looked like the pictures in
libr'ry books. My! You'd ought 'a' seen Gramma Hawley. She fair et Lydia
up with lookin' at her."
I, who was not yet acquainted with every one in Friendship, had already
observed the two that day--brown, bent Grandma Hawley and the
elaborately self-possessed Miss Eider, with a conspicuously high-pitched
voice, who lived in the city and was occasionally a guest in the
village. The girl, who I gathered had once lived in Friendship, was like
a living proof that all village maids may become princesses; and the
brooding tenderness of the old woman had impressed me as might a
mourning dove mothering some sprightly tanager.
"Gramma Hawley brought her up from a little thing," Calliope explained
to me now, "and a rich Mis' Eider, from the city, she adopted her, and
Gramma let her go. I guess it near killed Gramma to do it--but she'd
always been one to like nice things herself, and she couldn't get them,
so she see what it'd mean to Lyddy. Lyddy's got pretty proud, she's hed
so much to do with, but she comes back to see Gramma sometimes, I'll say
that for her. Didn't anybody else hev on anything new?"
"No," Hannah knew positively, "they all come out in the same old togs.
When the finger-bowl started I run up in the hall an' peeked down the
register, so's to see 'em pass out o' the room. Comp'ny clo'es don't
change much here in Friendship. Mis' Postmaster Sykes says yest'day,
when we was ironin': 'Folks,' she says, 'don't dress as much here in
Friendship as I wish't we did. Land knows,' Mis' Sykes says, '_I_ don't
dress, neither. But I like to see it done.'"
Calliope, who is sixty and has a rosy, wrinkled face, looked sidewise
down the long vista of the cooking-stove coals.
"Like to see it done!" she repeated. "Why, I get so raving hungry to see
some colored dress-goods on somebody seem's though I'd fly. Black and
brown and gray--gray and brown and black hung on to every woman in
Friendship. Every one of us has our clo'es picked out so everlastin'
_durable_."