Masonic emblem
Another humorous incident involved one of Barton’s royal jewels. Many of the decorations were valuable in themselves, for they were fashioned from gold and silver and set with diamonds, sapphires, and exquisite enamel work. However, one brooch in particular was precious: a large smoky topaz set in gold, and surrounded by 24 perfectly matched pearls, the gift of the grand duchess of Baden. Once Barton took the brooch to Tiffany’s in New York for repair. She was dressed simply, as was her habit, and an efficient floorwalker suspected that perhaps she was not the rightful owner of the jewel. Eventually a manager was brought in who recognized Barton and cleared up the matter. He then expressed his admiration of the topaz brooch, especially the 24 pearls. Clara Barton liked to remember how astonished the suspicious floorwalker was that “such a shabby woman should own such remarkable jewels.”
Barton enjoyed wearing her decorations as much as talking about them and she nearly always pinned on several before addressing an audience, or attending a meeting. In her later years she was often seen weeding the garden or milking the cows with one or two medals attached to her cotton workdress. On one occasion she was nearly weighted down by simultaneously wearing the Iron Cross, the Red Cross of Geneva, the Masonic badge, the Silver Cross of Serbia, and the extremely heavy Empress Augusta Medal. Said Barton: “They do brighten up the old dress.”
The business of First Aid took up much of her time, but she continued her other interests. She attended and spoke at suffrage conventions and held a party for 400 feminists at her Glen Echo home. But she viewed with a jaundiced eye the arrival of the “suffragettes.” “Huge hats, dangerous hatpins, hobble and harem skirts,” she observed in her diary of 1911, “the conduct of the Suffragettes are [sic] hard to defend.” She mourned the death of Susan B. Anthony in 1906, and gave her final public remarks on behalf of women as a tribute to Anthony’s memory: “A few days ago someone said in my presence that every woman in the world should stand with bared head before Susan B. Anthony. Before I had time to think I said, ‘And every man as well.’ I would not retract the words. I believe her work is more for the welfare of man than for that of woman herself. Man is trying to carry the burdens of the world alone. When he had the efficient help of woman he should be glad, and he will be. Just now it is new and strange, and men cannot comprehend what it would mean. But when such help comes, and men are used to it, they will be grateful for it. The change is not far away. This country is to know woman suffrage, and it will be a glad and proud day when it comes.”
In the years that Clara Barton spent at Glen Echo, she came to love her house and yard. Here Dr. Hubbell, Mary Hines, the housekeeper, and Clara Barton relax at the dinner table.
Barton was also kept busy by the work of two households—the Glen Echo house and a summer home in North Oxford, Massachusetts. She worked in the gardens, put up fruit and vegetables, did her own laundry, and even milked the cows. She also continued her voluminous correspondence, and wrote a slim autobiographical volume, The Story of My Childhood. The book, published in 1907, was intended to be the first of a series. The work of writing was taxing, however, and she never finished the second volume. But she remained active. “I still work many hours, and walk many miles,” she proudly told friends in 1909. In her diary she wrote that she had had “a hard day’s work—but I am so thankful—so grateful that I can do it, and am not a helpless invalid to be waited on.”
Barton knew she was aging but fought it. Privately she conceded that “there is a lack of coordination between the brain and the limbs,” but publicly she resented any allusion to her age. She disliked giving away recent photographs of herself and wished people would accept pictures of her in “strong middle life.” She also fooled nature—and many people—by artistically covering her age. A young relative was amazed to find that Aunt Clara “was very particular about her make-up and in those days there were few people who dared use creams and rouge and powder, but Aunt Clara used them skillfully and the result was most amazingly good. She looked years younger when she had finished ... and her eyebrows were treated with a pencil, if you please.
“Next came the combing of her coal black hair which, by the way, had been dyed. Mother told me once when she was with Aunt Clara when she was sick for a long period and couldn’t have her hair attended to, it was lovely and white, but she would not have it so and wore it dyed black to the very last.
“After her face and hair were finished ... [she] put on her waist, but before buttoning it down the front, she stuffed tissue paper all across the front to make a nice rounded bust.”