USA > New York > Onondaga County > Syracuse > Sixty-odd, a personal history > Part 21
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"Tonight even; on the train." He sprang up, pulling out his watch. "The express leaves at eleven-twenty; I must be off."
The Bishop's fourth child was caught up suddenly and crushed by two arms. Speechless, indignant, rapturous, her eyes closed to shut out the blinding light.
Eleven portentous strokes sounded from the stern clock in the hall. The arms loosened, lingered, dropped.
"Now!" in the sturdy but shaken voice of a runner who has grasped the guerdon, "I think I can manage to be your affectionate cousin for six months more, possibly."
The heavy entrance-door was opened and closed gently, as be- fitted the place, the hour, and the proprieties.
The probation was not long, as things turned out. Six months' outpourings on paper deepened our knowledge of one another, and the sense of a pledge, implicit though unacknowledged, grew stronger as we came nearer to its fulfillment. When my father felt we had met his test, he himself was eager to have us announce our engagement. Neither family suspected anything, and at Hadley all but the observant Molly were duly amazed. She said that when a girl had been pocketing thick letters out of the mail all. summer without even a glance at the postmark, she needn't expect her friends to be surprised by anything. Molly had independent ideas on marriage, which had no attraction for her. But being a loyal sister she had told nobody of her suspicions. The family circle was pleased, and the engagement doubled our family connections.
We were betrothed with little hope of a speedy marriage, but like all lovers we considered true love immortal. We belonged to a romantic generation, and were believed to have been "made for each other." But we did not look realistically upon our prospects; I think we might have considered that kind of contemplation sordid. The difficulties of a young lawyer's carcer presented themselves vaguely as a romantic adventure. Trusting in talent and compro- mise, we undertook to solve life-problems with the cheerfulness of ignorance. I fancy the children of this generation would smile at the simplicity of their grandparents' expectations.
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Two successful years of teaching at Mrs. Piatt's Seminary at Utica, New York, had passed by that time. The school was of the old "finishing" type, an improvement on the boarding academies of an carlier date. Its principal combined common sense with pro- gressive methods. These provided social training, and good instruc- tion in English, mathematics, Latin, and modern languages. I can- not remember that the sciences were so well represented. In private schools there was still very little laboratory work. The curriculum was rather less comprehensive than that of a half-century before in the best Boston schools, which my mother and older sister had at- tended. Each year, however, Mrs. Piatt had added to her equip- ment, broadened her aims, and acquired more flexibility in meth- ods. Though the women's colleges were by that time requiring organized preparatory work, the finishing schools stuck to a so- called general culture which gave much leeway to teachers. Outside of the mathematical and classical courses there was no prescribed system. The young head of the German department was free to work out a plan of her own, based on the Leipzig courses, and for the first year was limited to classes of beginners.
Before the end of the year, however, the principal proposed that I take over the music department, with authority to reconstruct the system and chose my own assistants. My salary was to be raised from four hundred and fifty dollars, which Mrs. Piatt had offered as an experimental stipend, to the really dazzling sum of fifteen hundred. I left her warm study quite breathless. I was glad to be free of routine activities with the one exception of occasional chaperonage. The task seemed tremendous, but I wanted to widen my musical experience and to be able to train younger instructors on German lines, with classes for technique and individual studies in Vortrag.
The Seminary, as it was called by Uticans, was modelled to some extent after Miss Porter's well known school at Farmington, Con- necticut, where Mrs. Piatt had been assistant to the Principal. We teachers were expected to fall in with her policy, which implied friendly and confidential relations between teacher and pupil. She did not want informers or mediators on her staff, nor did she equip us for direct discipline except in our classes. We were to be com-
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panions of the girls, upholding the standards of the school, but re- porting mischief only when it threatened disaster. As a matter of fact we received a good many confessions, and were able to persuade offenders to own up voluntarily. Mrs. Piatt had an unusually sym- pathetic point of view toward the perpetrations of youngsters who came to her with the usual notions of boarding-school life, and who enjoyed midnight adventures and secret flirtations.
"It would be positively cruel," she maintained, "to cut them off entirely from mere pranks at first. Most of them are basically harm- less, and can be part of their development."
One night she came to my room to tell me she had heard from a maid that in one of the recitation rooms there was to be a twelve- o'clock supper, for which fifteen girls had made elaborate plans. She had a little fun herself, I imagine, hearing the whispering, the stealthy steps, the stifled giggles. By and by she went down with the intention of surprising them. She had waited till the banquet was well under way and there was noise enough for her to open the door just a crack without their hearing her.
"And I came away without a word," she added. "I let them carry the thing out, and go back to their rooms. For some of them it would have marred the whole year's experience to have been caught and disciplined, and it would have made martyrs of them. I'm going to let them have the triumph and enthusiasm before I let them know I was there. It was likely to be a useful bit of development if I wait, and let them grow out of it a bit before I speak."
After the vacation, which was then imminent, she had a talk with the whole group. What she said to them I don't know, but they became her warm supporters. Outside affairs were handled differ- ently, but with good results. It was a pleasant way of living, but all too absorbing. Perhaps a less smooth-running household would have let in more stimulating influences from without.
The girls took a wistful interest in the younger teachers' gaieties, acted as ladies' maids when we went to parties, and supplied us with flowers, which we wore on evening occasions in those days.
Dramaties interested them mightily, and they were allowed to go to some German plays which we gave in the winter season. There
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was in the school faculty one specially interesting woman, Emily Griffith, a Vassar graduate, with whom I had much in common, and whose courses in English literature were attended, as were some of the German classes, by town women. Mrs. Piatt welcomed the older students, whose presence was stimulating to the teachers, but they were obliged to follow school rules as to attendance, and to work at their tasks.
The Vassar girl and I did a good deal of reading, and discussed our common interests, one of which was English politics. President Cleveland's government was somehow not so interesting as Parlia- ment. Since we had no status and no responsibility as citizens, we had no reason to concern ourselves with internal affairs as we do today.
We subscribed for English journals, and exchanged them. Speeches like John Bright's bitter attack on the House of Lords, as "the spawn of the plunder and the wars" excited us. Being a pacifist by inheritance I always found Bright's impetuous utterances heart- ening, and shared his Free Trade principles. We followed Glad- stone's career with enthusiasm. With American history behind us we became Home Rulers ourselves. In 1885 the fall of Khartoum and General Gordon's death had aroused the world. While we our- selves could not sympathize with the military side of Gordon's cause, we admired his personal bravery and his religious faith, and felt that he had been wronged by his own government. At election times we took sides vigorously, and supported or opposed Lord Hartington, Chamberlain, Trevelyan and the rest, according to their activities in the Opposition.
Some of my old notebooks contain impetuous comments and quotations. When Bryce's American Commonwealth came out, it took a great hold on the American public and inspired us with new interest in our own country. We still had our argumentative sea- sons, however, and worked ourselves up over African, German and English protectorates and the might-makes-right assumptions of the great countries. My Yankee blood always revolted against colo- nial policies.
I have since felt that Emily Griffith, whose college-trained mind
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was far superior to mine, contributed most to my development dur- ing those years of teaching. But no one dreamed of keeping school- girls informed of contemporary history. They read and recited what was prescribed for them; fiction was their chief delight outside of classes. Now we were getting Turgenieff and a little of Tolstoi, and George Meredith had brought out Diana of the Crossways, which delighted us especially with its British political setting. I loved to reread it, along with Anna Karenina, A Princess of Thule, Sir Gib- bie and more of George McDonald's stories, and the later Trol- lope novels. There was no overwhelming annual influx of current literature such as that which floods the reading world of today. We had time to return to our standbys, our Dickens and Thackeray and Browning and Charlotte Brontë and Hawthorne and Miss Yonge and Miss Martineau, and later to the charming biographies and letters of great women like George Eliot and Jane Welsh Carlyle. These were only a few of the influences which pervaded the late- Victorian years, a few of the books which young teachers read and reread in the midst of their work. Much of my academic work I did in the early morning hours because of the lure of study-lamp and easy chair after the house was quiet at night.
I loved teaching more than ever by the end of my four years in Utica, and valued the friendships I had made; but I found myself glad to leave it for a freer existence. When Archie wrote that he was able to set a time for our wedding on the strength of some new legal openings, my joy counterbalanced a heartfelt regret. I hated to re- linquish a task which showed greater possibilities each year, but I realized that there would be opportunities for teaching, in one way or another, all through my life. I was not parting from my beloved profession altogether.
I do not think I matured during our engagement. With all that can be said of the boarding-school as a cultural institution, I believe its teachers and scholars need constant broadening to offset too-balanced schedules. I know I might have been a keener instruc- tor and a far more useful wife if I had had fuller experience with the outside world during the years before my marriage-happy years though they were, with long letters from the man I loved.
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It made no difference to those most intimately concerned that our wedding day in mid-November was dark and gloomy. The church was brilliantly lighted at eleven in the forenoon; its seats were packed with a representative assembly, as the papers had it. It was indeed representative of all classes, and the ushers had orders to seat all but the wedding party in order of arrival. We had sent out fifteen hundred invitations, and took the consequences.
Looking back on that congregation I feel like apologizing to it for the bigness of the affair. After all we were avowedly embracing poverty in marrying, and we might well have pledged our troth in quiet and modesty. But we were indifferent to any such implica- tions. We wanted all our friends to be with us, and my father's wide acquaintance called for many invitations. Anyway we felt that the sixteenth of November, 1887, was to be the greatest, holiest, and most joyous day of our lives, and nothing should be omitted from its celebration.
We carried the idea to its limit, and made our morning wedding as perfect as possible-and as conventional. There were six or eight vested clergy. The bride, in trailing white gown and voluminous veil, went up the aisle with her arm linked in the Bishop's full lawn sleeve; the groom followed with her mother. The ushers and bridesmaids preceded us, and the vested choir of men and boys sang Love Divine, All Love Excelling, while the congregation joined in. The boys had not been supposed to march, but begged for it so hard that I yielded at the last moment. My two brothers in their priestly vestments met us at the top of the chancel steps, and read the service; we made our pledges from memory instead of re-
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peating them at dictation. The Bishop passed on to the altar, and turned to give us the benediction, which the choir followed, as we knelt, with soft singing of an old English marriage hymn. Then we came proudly down the aisle to the echoes of
Treulich geführt, ziehet dahin Wo Euch der Segen der Liebe bewahr!
It was all perfect, except that my mother, having laid out a glossy new suit for the Bishop to wear that day, was horrified to find him smilingly receiving the guests at the wedding breakfast in his shabby old one. That was quite characteristic, however, and was relished accordingly.
The wedding was a typical affair of the time, and an auspicious beginning, said Society, for married life. We sped eastward in a Pullman compartment, and not until the shadows of late afternoon had gathered, and the porters were lighting dim lamps, did we begin to recognize the real meaning of the festivities. Not that we thought of anything but the immediate future, not of responsibilities or deprivations; those things were in pale distance. All we felt was the exciting present, our flawless joy after long waiting, and the union now expressed in every touch and glance. As I look back at my own wedding-day, I cannot bring myself to believe that any memories are quite as satisfying as the reminiscence of a marriage backed by friendly witnesses. With all that may be said for the efficacy of civil or secret ceremonies, consummated by the impromptu joining of hands by a chance justice or clergymen, I believe, nevertheless in weddings and consecration.
We spent the next two weeks in New England, first at a spot not far from Forty Acres, whither we were irresistibly drawn. The place was bare and brown, little frozen pools in the meadowland and round the tree-roots. The big white house with its long reach of sheds had still a welcoming aspect; the old Phelps mansion stood aloof, gray and lonely, under its tall pines. Cousin Ellen was away, at her Cambridge house; a good industrious German couple was caring for Cousin Charles and Thophy; sister Sarah had died and was buried in the North Hadley cemetery beside old Billy.
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We got out one of the farm vehicles, and drove about the coun- try lanes, in warm coats, the horse's willing hoofs clopping rapidly over hard road-beds, autumn air invigorating us after the more languorous moments of the honeymoon. We visited at the firesides of friends, real farmers who made us feel with pride our kinship by inheritance with tillers of the soil.
And as we drove, crowded together on a narrow seat, we came to a few resolutions and plans for our married life, rather vague it is true, but infused with sincere desire to make it worth something. I remember Archie's remark when one day a doubt was expressed as to whether we ourselves were big enough for the program we were suggesting.
"Well," he observed helpfully, "if we find we don't amount to much ourselves, let's make our contribution by having lots of worth-while children."
And I have no doubt I blushed, because in that day the highly protected maiden turned shy even during her wedding journey at any such hint.
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We began housekeeping in the expected attic. It was uptown, and up three flights-a tiny flat with a sitting-room fireplace (I men- tion the fireplace because it took up most of one wall), two diminu- tive bedrooms beyond it, then a dark dining-room beyond that, and a bathroom. The kitchen consisted of pantry shelves and a small coal range, with about a square yard of space between them and a dumbwaiter in the corner, which we shared, as we did the hall, with another family.
To tell the truth, we did not particularly notice this suite. Our attention was entirely taken up by the view from the front windows, and that was what we rented on sight. It looked out upon the wooded upper end of Central Park, from a corner in the neighbor- hood of Ninety-second Street, and on an October afternoon, when the oaks were like burnished copper and the young elms golden, with bright straight young evergreens standing among them, we had felt that nothing else really mattered if we could look forward to such a setting for the sunrise every morning, at the price of twenty-seven dollars a month. Had we not a thousand dollars-a vast sum it seemed-to start on? It did not occur to us that our treasured chest-sofa and our large armchairs and square tea-table would so fill the parlor that its door could never be closed save by moving something into the hall, nor that the sole furnishing of the second bedroom would consist of a folding bed which when let down filled the entire space between wall and window. What matter? We un- packed the barrels and barrels of wedding-presents, and blithely crowded their contents together, the better to see them, as the wolf said to Red-Riding-Hood. And then we knelt on our big sofa and
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gazed into the tree branches of the Park by daylight; at evening we lighted a pile of logs on our new andirons, and sat on a white fur rug before the fire, with knees drawn up.
We had an interesting prospect for spring; among our gifts had been a two-year lease of a house in Englewood, on the Palisades, given us by its owners, a friend of our childhood and her husband. They had just built a larger mansion at the top of a cliff on the road to Fort Lee, and were about to move into it; they were anxious for companionship. The two husbands planned to go back and forth to town together; Mrs. Allison was a little younger than I, and very congenial; the cottage on the edge of a wood was ideal. With this alluring prospect, we could enjoy a city winter all the more.
It was a glowing winter. Relatives and friends of the family en. tertained us, and I had my experience of the formal New York hos. pitality of the Four Hundred behind the brown-stone fronts. My years abroad and my teaching had prevented any actual society ad- venturing except in Syracuse, and this new life was awesome. Archie, a born and bred New Yorker, took it with modest ease, but I can remember how I shivered over our first invitation. The only way was to dramatize it, as I had done since childhood with every difficult undertaking, and that carried me through.
Formalities were tremendous in those days. I felt as if we were bound for one of Trollope's London dinner parties, as the door was opened to us by a man-servant with the face of the Archbishop of Greenwich on Bella Wilfer's wedding day. Entering the drawing- room, and being introduced to various magnificences, was an ordeal, but being apt at imitation we fell into line quite simply as a young couple who were living somewhere uptown outside the pale, in a top apartment; we were something of a curiosity.
The dining-table was impressive and formal, spread with ex- quisite china and lengths of fine damask. I thought with satisfaction that the cut glass, though sparkling and elegant, was no finer than that which stood among my own wedding gifts, and the napery was matched by grandmother's long tablecloths at Cedar Square. The cluster of wine-glasses beside each plate, however, outdid my pre- vious experiences.
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We admired the poise of our hostess and the patience with which she applauded her husband's well-worn jokes, but the most- dreaded feature of the evening came when the ladies filed out of the supper-room, leaving the gentlemen behind with their special drinks and cigars. We mounted to the drawing-room, which then was apt to be cluttered with small tables loaded with ornaments. To be left alone wtih those august matrons was terrifying. They asked polite, occasionally searching questions, some of which made me feel like a freak, although they did not really penetrate to the con- ditions of life in a fourth-floor flat. Being one's own housemaid was one of the things that was not done, and for the sake of one's rela- tives one let it alone. So we talked of the lovely view in the upper Park, and joined in mild society gossip, or acknowledged kindly references to the Bishop, for these were mostly Episcopal folk who had entertained him in their own houses.
After we reached home, we threw the dinner-gown and the dress suit into our tiny spare room, and betook ourselves to the fur rug before an open fire to talk it over. After that we had no terror of Old New York dinner-parties. At later ones there were sometimes liter- ary lights among the guests, but it was a little disappointing to be put next to them at dinner, for their conversational powers were seldom equal to their writings.
There were diversions more interesting than society. We used to meet downtown after office hours, quite as twentieth-century couples do, and have supper at queer little restaurants. One we particularly loved was on Seventeenth Street, I think, decorated with scenes from Scheffel's Trompeter, with Hiddigeigei, the black cat, frisking about in a frieze of grapevines. Then we would go to the theatre, the opera, or to a concert, sitting in the topmost gallery and sharing the score. We could see our former hostesses, bejeweled and low-necked, with marvelous coiffures, in boxes far below. The Sessions family numbered many musicians among its acquaintance, so we were apt to meet enthusiastic friends at the concerts, and sup with them afterwards.
We visited picture-galleries and exhibitions, or occasionally a museum, but we heard no lectures; our minds went unimproved
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during those exciting months. We made our little circle of friends, however. It turned out that Felix was living only a few blocks away from us; he was a practising physician, and had a pleasant house and a charming wife, the girl he had returned from Germany to marry. He and Archie took to one another, and Felix partially con- verted us to the Single-Tax theory of Henry George, who was a friend of his. We found that my brother James, who was then working on the East Side, living with a fellow-priest in a tenement house, was also converted to the Single Tax. He and Henry George had been in England together. When he came to supper with us, climbing our stairs now and then, we had our first realization of the appalling social contrasts of New York: the wretched poor, the reeking slums, the pawn-shops and saloons among which he was working day and night. To us it was only a vivid picture then, I am afraid, though we shuddered over it; but it was not completely buried after all, and we were destined to recall it poignantly before many years.
The great blizzard came on the twelfth of March, 1888. Archie had left for his office in Pine Street, that morning, by the elevated train. It was snowing and blowing, but after Syracuse the weather did not seem to me unusual. I was shut in at home all the forenoon, and never noticed the swirling snow.
I finished my luncheon without a thought of the whirlwind outside. But by afternoon snow had piled thick on the window-sills, and even sifted in here and there. It was hard to see the elevated railway through the swirling flakes. I suddenly became aware that there were no trains running, no vehicles, no moving figures in the streets, save an occasional man struggling through the drifts to a nearby house. No snow ploughs, no sleighs; no attempt at shoveling till late in the afternoon. I became anxious about my husband. How could he get home? Would he have to give it up, and spend the night down town, more than a hundred blocks away? But we had no telephone, and I knew he would make every effort he could to come back.
Finally, in a strange mixture of twilight and snow-darkness, after useless attempts to see through the clouded windows, I heard
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his step on the stair. He came in cheerful, but said he was chilled, and wanted a hot bath. The garments he had on were wringing with perspiration; his coat was stiff with ice. He had walked all the way from Pine Street to Ninety-second Street against the heavy freezing wind, and had kept straight on, not stopping, as other walkers did, to reinforce himself. He was, of course, spent, and did not go to his office for two days, but we never dreamed of permanent harm as a result. Thereafter he had always an abnormally slow pulse, and though he was told that this often went with longevity, we learned in time that his heart could not stand strain.
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