My Mother’s Visits
A visit! What joy or what sorrow those words express in the outside world! But in prison—the pain of it is so great that it can hardly be borne.
Whenever my mother’s visit was announced, accompanied by a matron I passed into a small, oblong room. There a grilled screen confronted me; a yard or two beyond was a second barrier identical in structure, and behind it I could see the form of my mother, and sitting in the space between the grilles, thus additionally separating us, was a prison matron. No kiss; not even a clasp of the hand; no privacy sacred to mother and daughter; not a whisper could pass between us. Was not this the very depth of humiliation?
My mother crossed every two months from France to visit me. Neither heat nor cold deterred her from taking this fatiguing journey. Thus again and again she traveled a hundred miles for love of me, to cheer, comfort, and console; a hundred miles for thirty minutes!
At these visits she would tell me as best she could of the noble, unwearied efforts of my countrymen and countrywomen in my cause; of the sympathy and support of my own Government; of the earnest efforts of the different American ambassadors in my behalf. And though their efforts proved all in vain, the knowledge of their belief in my innocence, and of their sympathy comforted, cheered, and strengthened me to tread bravely the thorny path of my daily life.
Almost before we had time to compose ourselves there would come a silent sign from the mute matron in the chair—the thirty minutes had passed. “Good-by,” we say, with a lingering look, and then turn our backs upon each other, she to go one way, I another; one leading out into the broad, open day, the other into the stony gloom of the prison. Do you wonder that when I went back into my lonely cell the day had become darker? I went forth to meet a crown of joy and love, only to return with a cross of sorrow; for these visits always created passionate longings for freedom, with their vivid recollections of past joys that at times were almost unbearable. No one will ever know what my mother suffered.