I am so glad to see you; I was afraid you wouldn’t get here in time. Clara Barton. From “Notes” at Oxford, Massachusetts, Oct. 2, 1911.
AUTHORIZED TO SPEAK FOR CLARA BARTON
Accompanying the letter under date of December 14, 1909, came data from Clara Barton to be used in her proposed biography, and which data the author had previously promised to make use of as soon as his private business would permit him to give the time necessary to do this literary work. Commenting on the author’s final acceptance of her commission, in her letter she said: “Your talent to writing a biography of me—of me! Your talent and time for such as this! ‘Why was this waste made’?” The object hoped for in her letter of September 21, 1911, wherein Clara Barton says “I must see you” and therein the “dispatch” referred to, was that she might consult the author on her biography and to make a final request that after her passing he would protect her good name which, continuously being assailed, she then thought to be in jeopardy.
Arriving at Oxford, Massachusetts, at the end of a special trip from California for the final consultation as to the facts and motives involved in her persecution, on October 3, 1911, in the sick room and at the time when she thought that she had but a few hours to live, the author made the promise. The further object of the visit at Oxford, on the part of the author, was to try to stimulate her health, through a possible sea voyage. That there had been in anticipation for several months previous such sea voyage was well known in her household, and is personally indicated by her in her Easter Greetings for 1911. In this letter she writes: “And we may expect you in the East!! That is more than I dared hope. It would surely be a luxury to visit the old old countries of the world. I should indeed be glad to see them with you.”
I may come to California this winter; will do so, if I am able.
Clara Barton.
From “Notes” of a visit in the sick room at
Glen Echo, Maryland, Oct. 20, 1911.
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.