She was, in many ways, an eccentric figure. Visitors were amused to see her weed the garden, her chest plastered with the decorations of foreign governments. She was always an individual in matters of dress, but her costumes became more unusual in her later years. Her favorite dress color was green and she enjoyed wearing a dash of red. One outfit had five ill-matching shades of green for skirt, sleeves, collar and bodice, two kinds of lace, red ribbon, “and about the bottom ... was a strip of the most awful old motheaten beaver fur, about six inches wide.” Financially, she was quite well off, but in the best New England tradition she practiced economy in all things.
When a part of her dress wore out, she apparently replaced it with whatever material was on hand.
Most of Clara Barton’s friends and family died before her, and in her last years she was often lonely. She sometimes thought her achievements were worthless beside the importance of friendship. “What matters the praise of the world?” Barton asked herself in her journal on February 6, 1907, “and what matter after we leave it especially? How hollow is that thing called fame.”
Barton’s loneliness heightened what had been a mild interest in spiritualism. She used faith healers and urged them on others. From 1903 on she was a champion of Christian Science and was an outspoken defender of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. She also dabbled in astrology and became a firm believer in spiritualistic seances. Much of her time after 1907 was spent in the company of a medium. With complete sincerity Barton recorded conversations with Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman, with her family, and with old friends Susan B. Anthony, President McKinley, and Empress Augusta of Germany. She relied on these “spirits” for advice and persuaded Dr. Hubbell to depend on them, too. This had unfortunate repercussions. After Barton’s death, Hubbell was taken in by a woman who claimed to have made contact with Barton’s spirit. Hubbell was so under the influence of this woman that he actually gave her the house at Glen Echo. It was several years and court cases later before he got the house back.
Clara Barton died on April 12, 1912, at the age of 90. She had endured double-pneumonia twice in one year and was too weak to recover fully. Her last words, recalled from a favorite poem, were “Let me go, let me go.”
She was a remarkable woman. She was neither the Christ-like figure Dr. Hubbell idolized, nor the grasping Red Cross potentate that others saw. She was an individual capable of firm action, strong beliefs, and an ability to see a need clearly and fulfill it. To everything she did—schoolteaching, Civil War aid, and Red Cross relief—she brought strong idealism and unfailing energy. She was truly exceptional.
In 1902 Clara Barton was asked to be commencement speaker for Philadelphia’s Blockley Hospital nursing class. Here she poses with the graduates for the camera. By her eighty-first year she had become a national figure despite the mounting criticism of her management of the American Red Cross.
Guide and Adviser
