[Marie’s method in transforming this ward and consequently its reputation is evidently described in the “Introduction” written by Mrs. Dall for these earlier chapters.
In the autumn of 1856, Marie was addressing a physiological institute in Boston. Mrs. Dall says:
She spoke to them of her experience in the hospital at Berlin, and showed that the most sinning, suffering woman never passed beyond the reach of a woman’s sympathy and help.
Mrs. Dall then quotes from the address:
Soon after I entered the hospital [said Marie], the nurses called me to a ward where sixteen of the most forlorn objects had begun to fight with each other. The inspector and the young physician had been called to them, but dared not enter the mêlée. When I arrived, pillows, chairs, footstools and vessels had deserted their usual places; and one stout little woman, with rolling eyes and tangled hair, had lifted a vessel of slops which she threatened to throw all over me, as she exclaimed, “Don’t dare to come here, you green young thing!”
I went quietly towards her, saying gently, “Be ashamed, my dear woman, of your fury.”
Her hands dropped. Seizing me by the shoulder, she exclaimed, “You don’t mean that you look on me as a woman?”
“How else?” I answered. She retreated to her bed while all the rest stood in the attitudes into which passion had thrown them.
“Arrange your beds,” I said; “and in fifteen minutes, let me return and find everything right.” When I returned, all was as I had desired, every woman standing at her bedside. The short woman was missing, but bending on each a friendly glance I passed through the ward, which never gave me any more trouble.
When, late at night, I entered my room, it was fragrant with violets. A green wreath surrounded an old Bible and a little bouquet rested on it. I did not pause to speculate over this sentimentality, but threw myself weary upon the bed when a light tap at the door startled me. The short woman entered and humbling herself on the floor, since she would not sit in my presence, entreated to be heard.
“You called me a woman,” she said, “and you pity us. Others call us by the name the world gives us. You would help us, if help were possible. All the girls love you and are ashamed before you; and therefore I hated you—no: I will not hate you any longer. There was a time when I might have been saved—I, and Joanna, and Margaret, and Louise. We were not bad. Listen to me. If you say there is any hope, I will yet be an honest woman.”
She had had respectable parents; and, when twenty years old, was deserted by her lover who left her three months pregnant. Otherwise kind, her family perpetually reproached her with her disgrace and threatened to send her away. At last, she fled to Berlin, keeping herself from utter starvation by needlework. In the hospital to which she went for confinement, she took the smallpox. When she came out, with her baby in her arms, her face was covered with red blotches. Not even the lowest refuge was open to her, her appearance was so frightful. With her baby dragging at her empty breast, she wandered through the streets. An old hag took pity on both, and carefully nursed till health returned, her good humor and native wit made those about her forget her ugly face. She was in a brothel, where she soon took the lead. Her child died, and she once more attempted to earn her living as a seamstress. She was saved from starvation only by her employer, who received her as his mistress. Now her luck changed. She suffered all that a woman could, handled poison and the firebrand. “I thought of stealing,” she said, “only as an amusement; it was not exciting enough for a trade.” She found herself in prison, and was amused to be punished for a trifle, when nobody suspected her crime. It was horrible to listen to these details; more horrible to witness her first repentance.
When I thanked her for her violets, she kissed my hands, and promised to be good.
While she remained in the hospital, I took her as my servant and trusted everything to her, and when finally discharged she went out to service. She wished to come with me to America. I could not bring her, but she followed, and when I was in Cleveland, inquired for me in New York.]
The truth was that in my innocence of heart I had been striving to gain the respect and friendship of my enemies by doing my work better than any before me had done. To go to bed at night regularly was a thing unknown to me. Once, I was not undressed for twenty-one days and nights; superintending and giving instructions on six or eight confinement cases in every twenty-four hours; lecturing three hours every afternoon to the class of midwives; giving clinical lectures to them twice a week for an hour in the morning; superintending the case of some twenty infants who were epidemically attacked with purulent ophthalmia; and having, besides, the general supervision of the whole department.
But all this could not overcome the hostility of my enemies, the chief cause of which lay in the mortification at having been vanquished by my appointment.
On the other hand, I was happy in the thought that Mrs. Schmidt continued to take the same interest in me as before, and was glad to hear of my partial success. The students, both male and female, were devoted to me, and manifested their gratitude openly and frankly. This was the greatest compensation that I received for my work.
The women wished to show their appreciation by paying me for the extra labor that I performed in their instruction, not knowing the fact that I did it simply in order that they might pass an examination which should again convince the committee that I was in the right place. I forbade all payment as I had refused it to the male students when they wished to pay me for their extra instruction on the manikin. But in a true womanly way, they managed to learn the date of my birthday, when two or three, instead of attending the lecture, took possession of my room which they decorated with flowers, while on the table they displayed presents to the amount of some hundred and twenty dollars which the fifty-six women of the class had collected among themselves.