When I told my father that we should name our boy for him, substituting Prescott for Gridley because the latter was such an ugly name, he replied very quietly that it belonged to a good old New England family. Boasting about one’s ancestry was so repugnant to him that he did not think proper to tell us that Richard Gridley had been a distinguished engineer during the Revolution, while Samuel, his grandfather and namesake, had served as captain in the former’s artillery regiment.
Many times have I regretted not giving my son his grandfather’s full name. He has atoned for my failure to do so by calling his son “Samuel Gridley.”
I had an excellent nurse to take care of the children, but the youngest always slept in our room. With Sam we had some terrible moments, owing to our extreme zeal in tucking him up. As he disliked the process, he often waked up and gave tongue. One night my husband grew so desperate that he proposed taking the baby down to the dining-room, two flights below, and allowing him to cry until he was tired! In reality, he was a most affectionate parent, but this wild utterance relieved his feelings!
I did groan sometimes about the loss of sleep. I remember with a blush that I foolishly made a complaint to a kinswoman of my husband’s, wife of the Mr. Grinnell who financed the Arctic Expedition. She was a calm, elderly lady who had borne nine children. It is to be feared that she thought David Hall’s wife was a grumbling young woman!
At the time of our marriage my husband and I were not aware of any relationship existing between us. Some years later old General Greene, a devoted genealogist, proved to us that a distant kinsmanship existed through the Greenes. People of Rhode Island descent almost inevitably have ancestors belonging to this family. Like the Legion of Honor, it is hard to escape from.
We had, also, a number of mutual relations, for two of his aunts, the Misses Eliza and Maria Hall, had married two of my greatuncles, Henry and William Ward. Evidently the families possessed mutual attraction. This did not prevent the two clans from taking a high attitude of impartial criticism each toward the other. I found, to my surprise, the traits which we had supposed to be Hall—and which we mildly criticized, were, on the contrary, Ward. They had been acquired by the Halls on their marriage with the latter family, so I was told!
These mutual relatives welcomed me very kindly to New York. Just across the way lived two cousins, Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Ward, to whom we were much attached. Cousin Mary was only related to us by marriage, but her husband’s relatives were delighted to adopt her as their own. To her joyous and generous soul it was a great pleasure to make other people happy. In her youth she had had so many admirers that it was jokingly said she had gone through the alphabet and stopped at “W” because that was as far as she could go! One young man fell so much in love with her that he disguised himself as a gardener and entered her father’s employ.
The most intimate friend of my girlhood, Louise Darling, had preceded me to New York. She had entered the Protestant Episcopal Sisterhood of Saint Mary, and was now Sister Constance. Her friends and parents had in vain remonstrated against this step. Yet we might have seen that it was in accord with her natural bent of mind. Brought up as a Unitarian, she had always been very devout, and while still very young had contemplated becoming a missionary. Not long after leaving school she became a convert to the Episcopal faith, devoting herself enthusiastically to church work.
When she entered the convent her heavy, beautiful blond hair was all cut off, for St. Mary’s is a High Church sisterhood. In her girdle of black rope were tied three knots, representing the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. The late Rev. Morgan Dix, at that time a single man, was the Father Confessor of the establishment. I never could understand by what process of logic he could reconcile his encouragement of celibacy in such a young, enthusiastic woman as my friend, with his own later entrance into matrimony. Perhaps he changed his mind—but Sister Constance had taken the vows!
The sisterhood did not spend all their time in devotional exercises, but engaged also in good works. Sister Constance painted religious pictures and taught in the school. She seemed entirely happy in her new life. I went to see her whenever I could, but she could not call upon us—or she thought she could not. She was one of those persons who carry out thoroughly whatever they had undertaken.