Clara Barton: A Centenary Tribute to the World's Greatest Humanitarian / Founder of the American Red Cross Society, Author of the American Amendment to the International Red Cross Convention of Geneva, Founder of the National First Aid Association of America

by Charles Sumner Young

PROPOSED HOME IN CALIFORNIA

A few days after the consultation at Oxford she rallied, and on a Pullman was taken to her Glen Echo home. Seriously ill and thinking this would be her last ride, she expressed the wish to have for the party of three, consisting of her physician, her nephew and herself, the Pullman exclusively. The cost for the use of the car would be three hundred dollars. This having been made known to her she protested the seeming extravagance whereupon a friend, after having been refused such tender by the Pullman office in New York, himself made the tender of the car, without cost to her. Characteristic of her, she declined to accept the courtesy, but said she would have accepted such courtesy from the Pullman Company. She accepted, instead, a drawing room—to save the proposed expense, even by another. Early on the way to Glen Echo, she is reported to have said to those accompanying her: If he were here now I would not leave the car until I shall have reached California, where I would make my home with my friend as long as I live, thereby accepting his invitation to become his guest permanently—in his home nearby and overlooking the Pacific ocean.

She stood the journey so well, says her physician, that again she said to us just before reaching Washington that she would be glad to remain on the train and continue on to California, emphasizing “That’s what I’d like to do.” The physician further comments: “Her faith in her friend’s loyalty would have been sufficient tonic to make the journey easy and a delight, and I feel sure now that had she taken the journey then, as she expressed the wish, the end of the journey would have found her in an improved condition, with constant-increasing physical strength.”

In the author’s diary for October 20, 1911, is found the following:

At ten A.M. visited Calumet Place. Mrs. John A. Logan and I then went to Glen Echo on the street car. Visited Miss Clara Barton, who was in a chair awaiting our presence. Spent an hour or so with her. She was in good spirits, happy and much improved in health. Mrs. Logan and she talked over personal matters. She received me most cordially, and said she was most happy to see me; also said she would like to go to California with me. Mrs. Logan, Dr. Hubbell, Stephen E. Barton and I had a talk in the room downstairs on matters of personal interest to Miss Barton, formulating a plan for her vindication.