FIRST SCHOOLS IN THE NEW WORLD
Mgr. Dubourg cordially welcomed them to his Episcopal city, but the best
he could do for them was to assign to them a log-house, which he had
leased for their use at St. Charles, a village on the Missouri River, at
a distance of thirty miles from St. Louis. Here they opened a boarding
school which at first was only very scantily attended. They also opened
a school for poor children, which immediately gathered in twenty-two
pupils. As the nuns could not afford to keep a servant, they themselves
had to cultivate the garden which, when they arrived, was a wilderness
of weeds and briars. They also had to care for their cow and milk it, to
chop wood for their fires, to bake their bread, to do the cooking and
washing, besides teaching the two schools. For their supply of water,
they were compelled to depend upon the muddy current of the Missouri
River, brought to them in small bucketfuls, for which they had to pay an
exorbitant price. The summer was very hot, and the cold of winter was so
intense, that the clothes, hung up to dry near the kitchen stove, froze
stiff. They had to be careful in handling the tin plates, etc., which
served for their meals, lest their hands should adhere to them. The
white fingers of Mesdames Aude and Berthold soon became hard and grimy.
As for Mother Duchesne her hands had become rugged and horny long ago,
from the hard, rough work to which she had devoted herself, especially
after her reentrance into Sainte Marie d'en Haut. Indeed, it had always
been her custom to reserve to herself, as much as possible, every kind
of work that might be most painful or fatiguing for others. These
particulars offer but a faint idea of the sufferings and privations
endured by these refined and accomplished ladies, during those hard
beginnings of the Society of the Sacred Heart in the New World.
During this trying time, Mother Duchesne's desolation of heart was
extreme, and her sense of loneliness indescribable. Whatever labors and
austerities she had imposed upon herself hitherto, she had always had a
circle of friends of the choicest kind and spiritual directors with whom
she felt at her ease, but now all this was a thing of the past. Neither
did she find any consolation in prayer. Her soul seemed dead within her,
and yet, besides keeping up her own courage, she had to sustain that of
her young companions, less inured to suffering and without her granite
endurance. Still they were very brave and Bishop Dubourg could not but
admire the valiant spirit and the cheerfulness of all.
But the establishment at St. Charles was only a temporary arrangement to
last for one year; and, as the house that was building at Florissant was
not yet ready when the lease expired, Bishop Dubourg gave them the use
of his farm near that village during the interval of waiting, with the
log house upon it built by the consecrated hands of the bishop himself
and of his heroic fellow missionaries. Toward the middle of September,
1819, followed by the intense regrets of the Abbe Richard, Cure of St.
Charles, and by the tears of the children of the free school, Mother
Duchesne moved to the farm which had been thus placed at her disposal.
The boarders, now increased to about twenty, accompanied them to their
new home. Here one room and a garret was all that the nuns had for
themselves and their pupils; but they had also a poor little chapel,
where they were able to keep Him, who was the source of all their
strength, and whose presence among them sweetened their life of toil and
privation.
Mother Duchesne's presence and supervision had hastened the work upon
the new home, that was going up on a piece of ground given to them by
the bishop; and by the end of December, it was sufficiently advanced to
be habitable. Before leaving the farm, a great consolation was granted
to the devoted nuns, in a retreat given by Father de Andreis, the
saintly Lazarist missionary, who in 1900 was placed on the list of
candidates for canonization. He cleared up Mother Duchesne's
perplexities on various points, and between those two kindred souls,
there sprung up a holy friendship, which was for her a consolation and a
support. Unfortunately, less than two years later, a malignant fever
carried away this great servant of God, in the midst of his fruitful
apostolic labors.
On Christmas Eve, the removal to the new house took place. Mother
Duchesne and Aude were the last to leave the farmhouse, and it was late
when they reached their destination, for they had made the entire way on
foot, through deep snow, and in the face of a freezing wind. The little
community set at once to the work of preparing their small and humble
chapel for Midnight Mass, at which nuns and pupils, and also the workmen
employed on the house, assisted and received Holy Communion. With regret
we find ourselves compelled to pass over many interesting and touching
particulars, such as the blessing and encouragement sent by the
Sovereign Pontiff then reigning, the saintly Pius VII, and the gift of
several relics and pictures from Bishop Dubourg, among the latter one
that Mother Duchesne had greatly longed for, that of St. Francis Regis,
her special patron, whose name is so intimately connected with her own.
At Florissant, a new field was opened to her charity. Bishop Dubourg's
farm was intended by him as a quiet and healthful retreat, where his
missionaries might, for a while, rest and refresh themselves after their
toilsome apostolic journeys, or when their health required particular
care. Madame Duchesne was a mother to them, furnishing them with their
meals at any hour of the day, as they dropped in, often three or four at
a time, washing and mending their clothes, and replacing them when
needful, giving them the best of everything she had in the house. This
occasioned a great deal of work and no small expense, and money was very
scarce with her, to say nothing of the debts which had been incurred for
the building of the house. But this valiant woman counted upon the
Providence of God which never failed her, though its gifts were usually
bestowed upon her so sparingly, as barely to keep her afloat. It was a
great joy to her to help and serve the missionaries, and she declared
that she would consider her life happy and well-spent, could she do
nothing more than cook their meals for them. This generous hospitality
was all the more heroic from the precarious condition of her own
finances. Besides the debts, very heavy for the time, which were
pressing upon her, and which she had been obliged to incur for the
building of her house, a great business depression throughout the
country reduced the number of her pupils, thus diminishing the small
returns from the school, and, in 1820, a prolonged drought dried up the
wells and compelled her to send to the river for all the water they
needed.
Toward the end of 1820, when matters began to improve, the community was
visited by sickness. Mother Duchesne's turn came last, and so serious
was her illness that it brought her to the verge of the grave. She
recovered, however, and was able to resume her work at the end of two
months.
It was just after this that vocations began to come in. The first were
Emilie Saint Cyr, one of her pupils, and the sisters Eulalie and
Mathilde Hamilton, of a very distinguished family related to the
Fenwicks of Maryland, and also two lay sisters, Mary Layton and Mary Ann
Summers. These five formed the nucleus of a novitiate whose numbers
increased by degrees.