CHAPTER II
Begins school life—Her conduct already guided by habits of reasoning and self-government—Conflict between such guidance and the school rule of unquestioning obedience to authority—First friendship with a girl—First contact with an insane person; changes an intractable patient to a docile one—Allowed to assist nurse in hospital in care of blind cousin—Observation of defects in hospital care arouses desire to be some day a head nurse, so as to prevent such defects and have patients treated more kindly. (Five to nine years of age: 1834-1838.)
When five years old, I was sent to a primary school. Here I became a favorite of the teacher of arithmetic, for which study I had quite a fancy. The rest of the teachers disliked me. They called me unruly because I would not obey arbitrary demands without being given some reason, and obstinate because I insisted on following my own will when I knew I was in the right.
I was told that I was not worthy to be with my playmates; and when I reached the highest class in the school, in which alone the boys and the girls were taught separately, I was separated from the latter and placed with the boys by way of punishment, receiving instructions with them from men, while the girls in the other class were taught by women.
Here I found many friends. I joined the boys in all their sports, sliding and snowballing with them in winter, and running and playing ball in summer. With them I was merry, frank and self-possessed, while with the girls I was quiet, shy and awkward. I never made friends with the girls or felt like approaching them.
Once only, when I was eleven years old, a girl in the young ladies’ seminary in which I had been placed when eight years of age won my affection. This was Elizabeth Hohenhorst, a child of twelve, remarkably quiet and disposed to melancholy.
She was a devout Catholic, and knowing that she was fated to become a nun, was fitting herself for that dreary destiny, which rendered her very sentimental. She was full of fanciful visions, but extremely sweet and gentle in her manners. My love for her was unbounded. I went to church in her company, was present at all the religious festivals, and accompanied her to receive religious instruction: in short, I made up my mind to become a Catholic and, if possible, a nun like herself. My parents, who were Rationalists, belonging to no church, gave me full scope to follow out my own inclinations, leaving it to my nature to choose for me a fitting path.
This lasted until Elizabeth went for the first time to the confessional. And when the poor innocent child could find no other sin of which to speak than the friendship which she cherished for a Protestant, the priest forbade her to continue this, until I too had become a Catholic, reminding her of the holiness of her future career. The poor girl conscientiously promised to obey.
When I came the next morning and spoke to her as usual, she turned away from me and burst into tears. Surprised and anxious, I asked what was the matter. In a voice broken with sobs, she told me the whole story and begged me to become a Catholic as soon as I was fourteen years old.
Never in my whole life shall I forget that morning. For a moment, I gazed on her with the deepest emotion, pitying her almost more than myself; then suddenly turned coldly and calmly away without answering a single word. My mind had awakened to the despotism of theology and the church had lost its expected convert. I never went near her again and never exchanged another word with her. This was the only friend I had during eight and a half years of uninterrupted attendance at school.
A visit that I paid to my maternal grandfather when seven or eight years old made a strong impression on my mind.
My grandfather, on his return from the war of 1813-1815 in which he had served, had received from the authorities of Prenzlau (the city in which he lived) a grant of a half-ruined cloister with about a hundred acres of uncultivated land attached, by way of acknowledgment of his services. He removed thither with his family, and, shortly after, invited the widows of some soldiers who lived in the city to occupy the apartments which he did not need. The habitable rooms were soon filled to overflowing with widows and orphans, who went to work with him to cultivate the ground.
It was not long before crippled and invalid soldiers arrived, begging to be allowed to repair the cloister and to find a shelter also within its walls. They were set to work making brick, the material for which my grandfather had discovered on his land: and in about five years an institution was built, the more valuable from the fact that none lived there on charity but all earned what they needed by cultivating the ground; having first built their own dwelling which at this time looked like a palace surrounded by trees, grass and flowers. Here, in the evening, the old soldiers sang martial songs or told stories of the wars to the orphans gathered about them, while resting from the labors of the day.
I tell you of this institution so minutely to prove to you how wrong it is to provide charitable homes for the poor as we provide them, homes in which the charity always humiliates and degrades the individual. Here you have an instance in which poor crippled invalids and destitute women and children established and supported themselves under the guidance of a clear-headed, benevolent man, who said, “Do what you like, but work for what you need.” He succeeded admirably, though he died a very poor man, his younger children becoming inmates of the establishment until they were adopted by their relatives.
When I visited my grandfather, the “convent,” as he insisted on calling it—rejecting any name that would have indicated a charitable institution—contained about a hundred invalid soldiers, a hundred old women and two hundred and fifty orphans. One of the wings of the building was fitted up as a hospital and a few of the rooms were occupied by lunatics.
It was my greatest delight to take my grandfather’s hand at noon as he walked up and down the dining room between the long tables around which were grouped so many cheerful, hearty faces; and I stood before him with an admiration that it is impossible to describe as he prayed, with his black velvet cap in his hand, before and after dinner. Though I could not comprehend why he should thank another person for what had been done, when every one there told me that all that they had they owed to my grandfather.
One afternoon, on returning from the dining room to his study, I spied on his desk a neatly written manuscript. I took it up and began to read. It was a dissertation on immortality, attempting by scientific arguments to prove its impossibility. I became greatly interested, and read on without noticing that my grandfather had left the room or that the large bell had rung to call the family to dinner.
My grandfather, a very punctual man who would never allow lingering, came back to call and to reprimand me; he suddenly started on seeing the paper in my hands and snatching it from me tore it in pieces, exclaiming, “That man is insane, and will make this child so too!” A little frightened, I went to the dinner table, thinking as much about my grandfather’s words as about what I had read, without daring, however, to ask who this man was.
The next day, curiosity mastered fear. I asked my grandfather who had written that paper, and was told in reply that it was poor crazy Jacob. I then begged to see him, but this request my grandfather decidedly refused, saying that he was like a wild beast and lay without clothes upon the straw. I knew nothing of lunatics, and the idea of a wild man stimulated my curiosity to such an extent that from that time I teased my grandfather incessantly to let me see Jacob. He finally yielded to be rid of my importunity and led me to the cell in which he was confined. What a spectacle presented itself in the house that I had looked on as the abode of so much comfort! On a bundle of straw in a corner of the room, with no furniture save its bare walls, sat a man clad only in a shirt, with the left hand chained to the wall and the right foot to the floor. An inkstand stood on the floor by his side, and on his knee was some paper on which he was writing. His hair and beard were uncombed, and his fine eyes glared with fury as we approached him. He tried to rise, ground his teeth, made grimaces, and shook his fist at my grandfather, who tried in vain to draw me out of the room.
But, escaping from his grasp, I stepped towards the lunatic who grew more quiet when he saw me approach, and I tried to lift the chain which had attracted my attention. Then, finding it too heavy for me, I turned to my grandfather and asked, “Does not this hurt the poor man?” I had hardly spoken the words when his fury returned, and he shrieked:
“Have I not always told you that you were cruel to me? Must this child come to convince you of your barbarity? Yes, you have no heart.”
I looked at my grandfather: all my admiration of him was gone, and I said, almost commandingly:
“Take off these chains! It is bad of you to tie this man!”
The man grew calm at once and asked imploringly to be set free, promising to be quiet and tractable if my grandfather would give him a trial. His chains were removed the same day, and Jacob was ever after not only harmless and obedient but a very useful man in the house.
I never afterwards accompanied my grandfather. I had discovered a side in his nature which repelled me. I spent the remainder of my visit in the work rooms and the sick room, always secretly fearing that I should meet with some new cruelty, but no such instance ever came to my view.
On my return from my grandfather’s I found that a cousin had suddenly become blind. She was soon after sent to the ophthalmic hospital, where she remained for more than a year, and, during this time, I was her constant companion after school hours. I was anxious to be useful to her; and being gentler than the nurse, she liked to have me wash out the issues that were made in her back and arms. The nurse, who was very willing to be relieved of this duty, allowed me also to cleanse the eyes of the girl next my cousin; and thus these cares were soon made to depend on my daily visit.
Child as I was, I could not help observing the carelessness of the nurses and their great neglect of cleanliness. One day, when the head nurse had washed the floor and left pools of water standing under the beds, the under nurse found fault with it, and said, “I shall tell the doctor when he comes why it is that the patients always have colds.” “Do,” said the head nurse. “What do men understand of such matters? If they knew anything about them, they would long ago have taken care that the mattress upon which one patient dies should always be changed before another comes in.”
This quarrel impressed itself upon my memory, and the wish rose in my mind that some day I might be a head nurse to prevent such wrongs and to show kindness to poor lunatics.