THE PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE—CLARA BARTON’S PROPOSED SELF-EXPATRIATION
Occurring in October, 1911, in the sick room at Oxford, was the following interview:
Mr. Young: Miss Barton, you once requested me to do a certain thing for you. I did not do it then and I won’t do it now, so please don’t ask it.
Miss Barton: What’s that? I don’t understand.
Mr. Young: You requested me to destroy a certain letter. I did not do it.
Miss Barton: Was that the letter in which I asked you to take me to Mexico? And why did you not destroy it as I requested?
Mr. Young: That’s the letter. It is now in a safe deposit box in Los Angeles. I did not destroy it because, in my opinion, that letter would do more in your defense than any argument that could be put up by the greatest lawyers in America. What you wrote at the time of your persecution, in confidence to a friend with a request that the letter be destroyed, the American people would believe. No slander would stand for a moment against your heart’s secrets, thus told to a friend. In case I should die before you do, I have arrangements with a mutual personal friend that in any event the letter will be published after you shall have passed.
Miss Barton: (Hesitatingly, then very frankly): Mr. Young, you are a very wise man; possibly you are right. Anyway, do what you please with that letter when I am gone. Now, Mr. Young, I meant it. For several months I was getting together my belongings and adjusting my affairs so that I could go. There were but two countries where the Red Cross did not exist; one was China, and the other Mexico. I did not want to go to China, but I did want to go to Mexico. Oh! Well, it’s probably best that I did not go; if I had gone I might not be alive now.
Freedom lives hence, and banishment is here. Shakespeare.
Have stooped my neck under your injuries, eating the bitter bread of banishment. Shakespeare.
The letter referred to and similar correspondence follow: