The only kind of rest my father ever knew was change of activity; he took his rare vacations strenuously. We went to East Boston to see the travelers off on the Asia, one of those small Cunarders of the sixties that took thirteen days to cross the ocean. Having never seen an ocean steamer, I examined minutely every part open to an inquisitive child.
I was left in the charge of Flossie, who having lately become engaged to David Prescott Hall, elected to stay at home, yielding to Laura the opportunity of going to Europe. Flossie’s task was no easy one, for I bitterly resented being left behind; her devotion was the beginning of a close bond between us.
The next seven months brought strange experiences. I had never been separated from my parents and supposed them indispensable to my very life. For the first few weeks I mourned passionately. Gradually there came a dawning sense of individuality; I found I could live without either parent and get through the days not too uncomfortably. I began to understand my mother’s dictum,
“We come into the world alone, we go out of the world alone; there is nothing to us but ourselves!”
When after seven months’ absence the travelers returned we went down the harbor to meet them. The passage had been a severe one; the red funnels of the Asia were caked with salt from the spray that had constantly dashed over them. I found my father on deck, warming his back against the smokestack, and remember his showing me the hole burnt in his new London overcoat by the heat. When they saw me, my father and mother exchanged a significant glance: they had left me a child, they found me a half-grown girl.
The unpacking of the trunks was attended with breathless interest. There was a pink silk dress made in Paris for Laura, a charming silk of a shade called Bismarck, with crystal trimming, for Julia, and a blue silk for Florence. There was no Paris dress for me. I was still growing rapidly, and outgrew my frocks every few months. In our family silk dresses must last a long time, and it would have been the height of folly to order one for me, but girls of thirteen are not always reasonable.
Laura, the “comforter”, soon consoled me, and also I was too happy to have the dear ones back to brood long over my disappointment.
Two large new trunks contained the spoils of the family’s pilgrimage,—photographs of Greece and Italy, ancient vases from Athens, a bronze lamp from the Roman catacombs. These things set my imagination rioting, were a part of my education, worth more than twenty silk dresses!
I remember something of my elders’ talk of affairs in Europe. They had seen the Paris Exposition of 1867, where William Hunt’s pictures were prominent, and works by Bierstadt, Church, and Kensett. Both parents loved France; my father had been the friend and helper of Lafayette in the Polish Relief Work of 1831; my mother from her childhood had been much in touch with the French. At her father’s house several French exiles were employed, a hairdresser, a teacher, a marquis who came to dress the salad for dinner parties. There was a sort of sorrowful apprehension for the future of France in all the travelers said. I heard of the follies of the beautiful Empress Eugénie, of the political crimes of Louis Napoleon, of the lowering of standards in taste and manners. People said, “Go to the theater, but do not take your daughters!” In writing of this period later my mother says:
“In Bismarck’s mind even then the despoiling of France was pre-determined.”