Grace was in all her steps, heav’n in her eye,
In every gesture dignity and love. Milton.
OPEN HOUSE—COST OF FAME, SELF-SACRIFICE—BEST IN WOMAN
Clara Barton kept “open house.” She was “in” to everybody. One had but to knock and enter. Expressive of her welcome, on one occasion she says: “You will begin to feel the strings of welcome tugging at your footsteps when you leave the cars, and will know that it is fastened firmly to the knob of the door, pulling only the harder as the door swings wide open.” At one time her Glen Echo home was filled with indigent, homeless soldiers. About this time “Bessie Beech” was heard to say: “Clara Barton really needs a guardian; she gives away everything she has and almost starves herself. Recently she gave to her soldier friends in distress, $800.00—all the money she had and is “strapped.” A well known millionaire gave, fearing he might die rich; Clara Barton gave, knowing that she must die poor. Giving,—that was Clara Barton’s whole existence.” “All the world,” she says, “expects me to give something every time it can get through the door or get a letter to me.”
“To pay respects” is a convenient excuse for imposing on good nature. To pay respects to America’s humanitarian became a fad. She not only personally answered 3,700 letters annually, besides her foreign correspondence, but thousands of people every year called, on her “to pay their respects.” On one occasion it would be for her to entertain the First Lady of the Land, representatives of the Army, the Navy, the Military, the Members of the Cabinet, the Members of Congress, the Officers of the Bureau of Education—“Official Washington.” On another occasion it was for her to entertain 600 members of the American Woman Suffrage Association, headed by the President Susan B. Anthony. It was for her almost daily to receive delegation after delegation, titled men from Europe, “globe trotters,” “sight-seers,” “prominent officials”—and to receive the “people who want something” all the time. If “the greatest of all sacrifices is the sacrifice of time,” for others, Clara Barton made a sacrifice theretofore without precedent,—“the sacrifice of half a century.”
Fame is one’s misfortune. Clara Barton did not seek fame, she sought work; fame was thrust upon her. It may be enjoyable to achieve fame, but it is misery to be a slave to fame. Only when the possessor of fame is dead can there come compensation—that’s a monument. A famous English Cardinal moaned, “Would that I had served my God with half the zeal I served my king!” A world-famed French philosopher soliloquized, “What a heavy burden is a name that has become famous!” An immortal American President said: “I wish I had never been born—my position is anything but a bed of roses.” Again, in the nation’s darkest night, despairingly this same President said: “Oh, if there is a man out of hell that suffers more than I do I pity him.” Another, America’s most beloved President, advised a small boy: “Grow up to be a good man, a useful man, but don’t try to be President; it won’t pay you.” Responsive to an admirer, who said “I helped to nominate you,” a world-famed President in the afternoon of his release, with nerves shattered, from an invalid chair commented: “Yes, you helped me into a lot of trouble.”
Even more than a famous man does a famous woman “belong to history and self-sacrifice.” In the evening following an “afternoon at home” to a thousand people, in full dress, and while sitting on the floor entertaining her little children with their toys, America’s most famous society entertainer and wife of a multimillionaire U. S. Senator, was heard to say, “This is the only pleasure I get out of Washington society.” To reach the heights of mere social fame is an achievement of folly. To live in an atmosphere of social aristocracy is to live on a desert-waste; the only attraction, the mirage that deceives.
On the steamer, while in ill health on her way to Europe, in her diary, Clara Barton philosophizes: Is my life really worth while? I give all of my time and strength to the public that seems unappreciative. In obscurity I might have had health, at least personal comfort. I might have married and had a home, a family of children; I might have taken up painting or literature, in each of which my friends say I have ability. In either of such life’s work I might have achieved success. As it is, even while serving the public, I am alone in the world, buffeted about and nobody seems to care for me unless to use me for some purpose. I wonder whether or not any woman thinks her life a success? Oh, well, I guess it was intended that I should do the work I am doing, forget myself and live for others, so I might as well make the best of it and try to be happy.
All organization is difficult; Clara Barton organized. She brought into existence the machinery of the organization and her master mind, unerring, directed the movements of every part of the machinery, “in a way that the people knew what she had done and are more than satisfied.” Without a title she occupied such a position as now must be filled by the male executive of a great nation. In qualities feminine, in sympathy tender, shrinking from publicity as no other woman in history, she filled a public-service position as no man could fill it. To an audience of women in Boston, another self-sacrificing woman who would serve the human race, said: “Clara Barton is an epitome in her life and character of all that is best in woman; she is what we would all like to be.”