TWO BRIDALS—A BIRTH AND A PASSING—“MY LITTLE LOVE”—“DRIFTING OUT”—A
NONPAREIL PARISH
IN October, 1867, I had the great happiness of seeing my favorite
brother married to the woman he had loved so long and so faithfully
that the marriage was the fitting and only sequel the romance of the
Civil War could have. From the day of our coming to Newark, she,
who was now my sister, then a school-girl, had established herself
in our hearts. She was my sister Alice’s most intimate friend, and,
after Alice left us, glided into the vacant place naturally. With the
delicacy and discretion characteristic of a fine and noble nature,
she never, during those dreary years of separation and silence,
alluded, in her talks with me, to the tacit “understanding” existing
between herself and my brother. When he visited us immediately upon
his liberation from Fort Delaware, it was evident that both of the
unacknowledged lovers took up the association where it had been severed
four years ago.
They were wedded on October 5th. The next day Mr. (now “Doctor”)
Terhune, the three little girls, and myself, with their nurse, took the
train for Richmond to assist in the preparations for the marriage of
Myrtle and “Will” Robertson. The newly wedded pair returned from their
bridal tour in season to witness the second marriage, on October 17th.
On February 4, 1869, my little Myrtle opened her beautiful eyes upon
the world in which she was to have an abiding-place for so short a
time that the fast, bright months of her sojourn are as a dream to
me at this distance from that spring and summer. She was a splendid
baby, finely developed, perfect in feature, as in form, and grew so
rapidly in size and strength that my fashionable friends pointed to
her as a lively refutation of my theory that “bottle babies” were
never so strong as those who had their natural nourishment. A tedious
spell of intermittent fever that laid hold of me, when she was but two
months old, deprived her of her rightful nutriment. When she was four
months old, we removed for the summer to Sunnybank, and set aside one
cow expressly for her use. She throve gloriously until, in September,
dentition sapped her vitality, and, as I had dreaded might ensue upon
the system of artificial feeding, none of the various substitutes
for nature’s own provision for the young of the human race, were
assimilated by the digestive organs. On the last day of the month she
passed into safer hands than ours.
* * * * *
I have told the story of our Alice’s wonderful life in _My Little
Love_. Now that my mind and nerves have regained a more healthful tone
than they could claim during the months when I found a sad solace in
the portraiture of our lost darling, I cannot trust myself to dwell
at length upon the rich endowments of mind and heart that made the
ten-year-old girl the idol of her home, and a favorite with playmates
and acquaintances. Although thirty-five years have set that beautiful
life among the things of a former generation, I still meet those who
recollect and speak of her as one might of a round and perfect star.
We, her parents, knew her for what she was, while she was spared to
glorify our home. Once and again, we congratulated ourselves that we
comprehended the value of our treasure while we held it—did not wait
for the brightening of the fleeting blessing. When He who bestowed the
good and perfect gift recalled her to Himself, we thanked Him, from the
sincere depths of broken hearts, that He had deemed us worthy to keep
it for Him for almost eleven years.
She went from us January 1, 1874.
By the time the spring opened, repeated hemorrhages from lungs I had
been vain enough to believe were exceptionally strong, had reduced me
to a pitiable state of weakness.
If I have not spoken, at every stage of the narrative of these late
years, of the unutterable goodness of Newark friends and parishioners,
it is not that this had abated in degree, or weakened in quality.
In all our afflictions they bore the part of comforters to whom our
losses were theirs. Strong arms and hearts in our hours of weakness
were ever at our call. When it became apparent that my health was
seriously impaired, the “people,” with one voice, insisted that Doctor
Terhune should take a vacation of uncertain length, and go with me to
the Adirondacks for as long a time as might be needed to restore me to
health and vigor.
I had worked hard for the past five or six years. Besides my literary
engagements, which were many, including the arrangement of material
for, and publication of, _Common Sense in the Household_, I was deep
in church and charitable work, and had a large visiting-list. Little
account was made, at that date, of nervous prostration. I should have
laughed that little to scorn had it been intimated by physician or
friend that I was a victim to the disorder. I know now, to a certainty,
that I was so near the “verge” that a touch would have toppled me over.
My very ignorance of the peril may have saved me from the fall.
We were four months in the Adirondacks. Except that the sore lungs
drew in the resinous airs more freely than they had taken in the
fog-laden salt air of the lowlands, and that I slept better, I could
not discern any improvement in my condition when the shortening and
cooling days called us southward.
In July, a telegram from Richmond had informed me of my mother’s death.
So battered and worn was I that the full import of the tidings did
not reach my mind and heart, until my brother Herbert sought in the
balsam forests relief from the cares of home and parish, and we talked
together of our common loss in the quiet woods fringing the lake. I
shall never forget the strange chill that froze my heart during one
of these talks, when I bethought myself that I now belonged to the
“passing generation.” My mother’s going had struck down a barrier which
kept off the cold blast from the boundless Sea of Eternity. I could
not shake off the fancy for many weeks. It recurred to me in wakeful
midnights, and in the enforced rest succeeding toilful days, until it
threatened to become an obsession. Instead of accepting this and other,
to me, novel and distressing sensations, as features of confirmed
invalidism, I fought them with all the might of a will that was not
used to submission.
The next winter was one of ceaseless conflict. I grew insanely
sensitive on the subject of my failing health. When, after walking
quickly up the stairs, or climbing the hill from the lower town to our
home, a fit of coughing brought the blood to my lips, I stanched it
with my handkerchief and kept the incident to myself. I went into a
shop, or turned a corner, to avoid meeting any one who would be likely
to question me as to my health, or remark upon my pallor. At home, the
routine of work knew no break; I attended and presided at charitable
and parish meetings, as if nervous prostration were a figment of the
hypochondriacal imagination.
So well did I play the part to the members of my own household, that
my husband himself believed me to be on the low, if not the high, road
to recovery. He was as busy in his line as I pretended to be in mine,
and certain projects affecting the future welfare of his parish were
on foot, enlisting his lively interest. How far the pious deception
may have gone, was not to be tested. The active intervention of one
plain-spoken woman was the pivotal point of our two lives.
I mentioned, some chapters back, the call of one of my best friends
and the best neighbor I ever had, on the day of Mr. Lincoln’s death.
Although we had removed, by medical advice, to the higher part of
the city, and a full mile away from her home, she never relaxed her
neighborly kindness. I had not been aware of her close surveillance of
myself; still less did I suspect at what conclusion she had arrived.
She had reasons, cogent and sad, for surveillance and conclusions.
Several members of her own family had died of consumption, and she
was familiar with the indications of the Great White Plague. When she
came, day after day, to take me to drive at noon, when, as she phrased
it, “the world was properly aired,” and, when she could not come, sent
carriage and coachman with the request that I would use the conveyance
at pleasure—I was touched and a little amused at what was, I conceived,
exaggerated solicitude for me, whose indisposition was only temporary.
Meanwhile, her quick eyes and keen wits were busy. Not a change of
color, not a flutter of the breath escaped her, and in the fulness of
time she opened her mouth and spoke.
My husband had a habit, of many years’ standing, of winding up a busy,
harassing day by dropping into the home of our whilom neighbors, and
having a tranquillizing cigar with the husband. I never expected
him home before midnight when he did this, and on one particular
evening, knowing that he was at the B.’s, and feeling more than usually
fatigued, I went to bed at ten. Awakened, by-and-by, by the glare of a
gas-burner full in my face, I unclosed my eyes upon a visage so full of
anxiety, so haggard with emotion, that I started up in alarm.
“Don’t be frightened!” he said, soothingly. “Nothing has happened. But,
is it true that you are so ill as Mrs. B. would have me believe? And
have I been blind?”
The energetic little lady had, as she confessed to me when I charged
her with it, freed her burdened mind without reserve or fear:
“It was time somebody opened his eyes, and I felt myself called to do
it.”
Within twenty-four hours a consultation of physicians was held.
They, too, made no secret of their verdict. The apex of the right lung
was gone, and it was doubtful whether anything could prevent the rapid
waste of both. When Doctor Terhune, ever a stanch believer in the
efficacy of change of air and place, declared his determination to take
me abroad, without the delay of a month, two of the Galens affirmed
that it would be of no use. I “had not three months of life left to me,
under the most favorable circumstances.”
The ghastly truth was withheld from me at the time. I was told that
I must not spend another winter in Newark, and that we would, if
possible, go to the south of Europe for the winter. “To go abroad” had
been the dream of my life. Yet, under the anticipation of the labor and
bustle of closing the house, perhaps breaking up our home for good,
and going forth into a new world, my strength failed utterly. Now
that my husband knew the worst, there was no more need of keeping up
appearances. I became aware that I had, all along, been holding on to
life with will-power that had no physical underpinning. Each day found
me weaker and more spiritless. The idea that I was clinging to a shred
of existence by a thinning thread, seized upon me like a nightmare. And
I was tired! _tired!_ TIRED!
There came a day when I resolved to let go and drift out.
That was the way I put it to my husband when he approached my bed, from
which I never arose until nine or ten o’clock, and inquired how I felt.
“I am worn out, holding on!” I informed him. “I shall not get up
to-day. All that is needed to end the useless fight is to let go and
drift out. I shall drift!”
He sat down on the side of the bed and looked at me. Not gloomily, but
thoughtfully. There was not a suspicion of sentimentality in the gaze,
or in the tone in which he remarked, reflectively:
“I appreciate fully what you mean, and how hard it is for you to keep
on living. And I say nothing of the inconvenience it would cause your
girls and myself were you to die. It is asking a great deal of you—”
(bringing out the words slowly and with seeming reluctance). “But if
you _could_ bring yourself to live until Bert is through college, it
would be a great kindness all around. The boy will go to the devil
without his mother. Think of it—won’t you? Just hold on until your boy
is safely launched in life.”
With that he left me to “think of it.”
My boy! My baby! Just four years old, on my last birthday! The
man-child, of whom I was wont to say proudly that he was the handsomest
birthday gift I ever had, and that no young man could ever pay his
mother a more delicate and gracious compliment than he had paid me
in timing his advent upon December 21st. The baby that had Alice’s
eyes and brunette coloring! I lay still, staring up at the ceiling,
and doing the fastest thinking I had ever accomplished. I saw the
motherless boy, sensitive and high-spirited, affectionate and clever,
the butt of rude lads, and misinterpreted by brutish teachers; exposed
to fiery temptations at school and in college, and yielding to them for
the lack of a mother’s training and the ægis of a mother’s love.
“The boy will go to the devil without his mother!”
Hard words those, and curtly uttered, but they struck home as coaxings
and arguments and pettings could not have done.
In half an hour my husband looked in upon me again. I intercepted
remark or query by saying:
“Will you ring the bell for Rose to help me dress? I have made up my
mind to hold on for a while longer.”
The tactful ruse had given me a new lease of life.
One more circumstance connected with our first foreign trip may be
worth mentioning here.
During the summer of 1855, which I spent in Boston and the vicinity,
I consulted Ossian Ashley with regard to a project that had engaged
my mind for some months—_viz._, indulging my long-cherished desire to
visit Europe, and to spend a year there. There was no reason, that I
could see, why I should wait longer to put the plan into execution.
My parents were living, and were in the prime of healthy maturity;
I had plenty of money of my own, and, if I had not, my father would
cheerfully defray the expenses of the trip. We discussed the scheme at
length, and with growing zest. Then he made the proposition that his
wife should accompany me, taking her boy and girl along (she had but
two children then), and that he would join us in time to journey with
us for a few months, and bring us home.
With this well-digested scheme in my mind, I returned to Richmond.
There I met with strenuous opposition from an unexpected quarter:
“If you will stay at home and marry me, I guarantee to take you abroad
within seven years,” was one of the few promises the speaker ever broke
to me.
Just twenty-one years from the day in which Ossian Ashley and I
blocked out the route his wife and I would take on the other side, I
looked into his New York office to say that we had engaged passage for
Liverpool for October 15th, and that we expected to be absent for two
years at the least.
His look was something to be remembered. His son was in a Berlin
University, and Mrs. Ashley and her two young daughters would sail on
September 15th for Liverpool, intending to go thence to Germany. They
would remain there for two years.
On the morrow, we had a letter from him, notifying us that they had
exchanged the date of sailing for October 15th, and the boat for the
_City of Berlin_, in which we were to sail.
“A trifling delay of twenty-one years!” observed my husband,
philosophically. “If all human projects came as near prompt fulfilment
as that, there would be fewer grumblers.”
We took with us our three children and my maid, who had been the boy’s
nurse. In _Loiterings in Pleasant Paths_, written in part while we
sojourned abroad, she figures as “The Invaluable.” Never was title
more justly earned. In that book the events of the next two years are
recorded at greater length than they could be set down here.
I made no note there of the pain that seemed to pluck out our
heartstrings, consequent upon our parting with our Newark parish and
fellow-citizens. We had grown with the place, which was a mere village,
eighteen years ago, by comparison with the large city we left. Her
interests were ours. Doctor Terhune was identified with her public and
private enterprises, and known by sight and by reputation throughout
the town and its environs. His church stubbornly refused to consider
his resignation as final. He might have an indefinite leave of
absence—two, four, six years—provided he would engage to come to them
when he could bring me back well. He wisely refused to listen to the
proposal. The business quarter of the thriving city was encroaching
upon the neighborhood of the church. It was likely to be abandoned
as “a residential locality” within a few years. In which event, the
removal of building and congregation would be a necessity. The history
of such changes in the character of sections of fast-enlarging cities
is familiar to all urbanites. It was essential, in the opinion of
the retiring incumbent, that the church should select another pastor
speedily, if it would retain its integrity and identity.
The love and loyalty that had enveloped us, like a vitalizing
atmosphere, for almost a score of winters and summers, wrapped
us warmly to the last. There were public receptions and private
house-parties, by the dozen, and
“Partings such as press
The life from out the heart,”—
and a gathering on the steamer on sailing-day that made us homesick in
anticipation of the actual rending of ties that were living flesh and
blood—and we were afloat.
As one of the leading men in the church shook my husband’s hand, in
leaving the deck, he pressed into it an envelope. We were well down the
bay when it was opened. It contained a supplementary letter of credit
of three thousand dollars—the farewell gift of a few men whose names
accompanied the token.
“Faithful to the end!” murmured the recipient, reading the short list
through mists that thickened between his eyes and the paper. “Had ever
another man such a parish?”