CHAPTER VIII
LEAVES FROM HER UNPUBLISHED AUTOBIOGRAPHY
When Clara Barton began to teach school, she was only a little girl. To her family, she seemed even younger and more tiny than she was. But she had taken the words of Dr. Fowler to heart, and she determined to teach and to teach successfully. Mrs. Stafford, formerly Mamie Barton, remembers hearing her mother tell how seriously Clara took the edict of the phrenologist. To her it was nothing less than predestination and prophecy. In her own mind she was already a teacher, but she realized that in the mind of her household she was still a child. She stood beside the large stone fireplace, looking very slender and very small, and with dignity asked, “But what am I to do with only two little old waifish dresses?”
CLARA BARTON AT EIGHTEEN
Julia, David Barton’s young bride, was first to discern the pertinence of the question. If Clara was to teach school, she must have apparel suitable for her vocation. The “two little old waifish dresses,” which had been deemed adequate for her home and school life, were replaced by new frocks that fell below her shoe-tops, and Clara Barton began her work.
She was a quick-tempered little teacher, dignified and self-possessed. Little and young though she was, she was not to be trifled with. She flogged, and on occasion expelled, but she won respect at the outset and very soon affection. Then floggings ceased almost altogether.
At first she was teacher only of the spring and autumn school nearest her home; then she taught in districts in Oxford farther away; then came the incontrovertible certificate of success in her invitation to teach the winter school, which according to precedent must be managed by a man capable of whipping the entire group of big boys. And in all this experience of teaching she succeeded.
In 1908 she wrote the second installment of her autobiography, and in that she related how she finished her teaching in Oxford and went for further education to Clinton Institute:
Hard, tiresome years were these, with no advancement for me. Some, I hoped, for others. Little children grew to be large, and mainly “well behaved.” Boys grew to manhood, and continued faithfully in their work, or went out and entered into business, seeking other vocations. A few girls became teachers, but more continued at their looms or set up housekeeping for themselves, but whatever sphere opened to them, they were all mine, second only to the claims and interests of the real mother. And so they have remained. Scattered over the world, some near, some far, I have been their confidant, standing at their nuptials if possible, lent my name to their babies, followed their fortunes to war’s gory fields, staunched their blood, dressed their wounds, and closed their Northern eyes on the hard-fought fields of the Southland; and yet, all this I count as little in comparison with the faithful, grateful love I hold to-day of the few survivors of my Oxford schools.
I shall have neglected a great, I could almost say a holy, duty, if I fail to mention the name, and connect the presence, of the Reverend Horatio Bardwell with this school. Reverend Dr. Bardwell, an early India missionary, and for over twenty years pastor of the Congregational Church of Oxford, where his memory lovingly lingers to-day, as if he had passed from them but yesterday, or indeed had not passed at all.
Dr. Bardwell was continuously on the School Board of the town, and his custom was to drop in upon a school, familiarly, at a most unexpected moment. I recall the amusing scenes, when, by some unusual sound behind me, my attention would be called from the class I had before me, to see my entire school, which had risen unbidden, standing with hands resting on the desk before them, heads reverently bent, and Dr. Bardwell midway of the open door, with hands upraised in mute wonder and admiration. At length he would find voice, with, “What a sight, what a multitude!” The school reseated itself when bidden and prepared for the visit of a half-hour of pleasant conversation, anecdotes, and advice that even the smallest would not willingly have missed. It was the self-reliant, self-possessed, and unbidden courtesy of these promiscuous children that won the Doctor’s admiration. He saw in these something for a future to build upon.
It is to be remembered that I am not writing romance, nor yet ancient history, where I can create or vary my models to suit myself. It is, in fact, semi-present history, with most notable characters still existing, who can, at any moment, rise up and call me to order. To avoid such a contingency, I may sometimes be more explicit than I otherwise would be at the risk of prolixity. This possibility leads me to state that a few times in the years I was borrowed, for a part of a winter term, by some neighboring town, where it would be said there was trouble, and some school was “not getting on well.” I usually found that report to have been largely illusive, for they got on very well with me. Probably it was the old adage of a “new broom,” for I did nothing but teach them. I recall one of these experiences as transpiring in Millbury, the grand old town where the lamented and honored mother of our President-elect Judge Taft has just passed to a better land. That early and undeserved reputation for “discipline” always clung to me.
Most of this transpired during years in which I should have been in school myself, using time and opportunities for my own advancement which could not be replaced. This thought grew irresistibly upon me, until I decided that I must withdraw and find a school, the object of which should be to teach me something. The number of educational institutions for women was one to a thousand as compared with to-day. I knew I must place myself so far away that a “run of bad luck” in the home school could not persuade me to return—it would be sure to have one.
Religiously, I had been educated in the liberal thought of my family, and preferring to remain in that atmosphere, I decided upon the “Liberal Institute,” of Clinton, New York.
I recall with pain even now the regret with which my family, especially my brothers, heard my announcement. I had become literally a part, if not a partner, of them in school and office. My brother Stephen was school superintendent, thus there was no necessity for making my intentions public, and I would spare both my school and myself the pain of parting. I closed my autumn term, as usual, on Friday night. On Monday night the jingling cutter of my brothers (for it was early sleighing), took me to the station for New York. This was in reality going away from home. I had left the smothered sighs, the blessings, and the memories of a little life behind me. My journey was made in silence and safety, and the third day found me installed as a guest in the “Clinton House” of Clinton, Oneida County, New York—a typical old-time tavern. My hosts were Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Bertram—and again the hand rests, and memory pauses, to pay its tribute of grateful, loving respect to such as I shall never know again this side the Gates Eternal.
It was holiday season. The Institute was undergoing a transfer from old to new buildings. These changes caused a delay of some weeks, while I became a part and parcel of the family I had so incidentally and fortunately fallen among.
Clinton was also the seat of Hamilton College. The sisters and relatives of the students of Hamilton contributed largely to the personnel of the Institute. Reverend Dr. Sawyer presided over Hamilton, and Miss Louise Barker with a competent corps of assistants presided over the Institute.
It was a cold, blustering winter day that assembled us in the almost as cold schoolrooms of the newly finished and sparsely furnished building. Even its clean new brick walls on its stately eminence looked cold, and the two-plank walk with a two-foot space between, leading up from town, was not suggestive of the warmest degree of sociability, to say the least of it. My introduction to our Preceptress, or President, Miss Barker, was both a pleasure and a surprise to me. I found an unlooked-for activity, a cordiality, and an irresistible charm of manner that none could have foreseen—a winning, indescribable grace which I have met in only a few persons in a whole lifetime. Those who remember the eminent Dr. Lucy Hall Brown, of Brooklyn, who only a year ago passed out through California’s “Golden Gate,” will be able to catch something of what I mean, but cannot describe. Neither could they. To no one had I mentioned anything of myself, or my past. No “certificate of character” had been mentioned, and no recommendation from my “last place” been required of me. There was no reason why I should volunteer my history, or step in among that crowd of eager pupils as a “school-marm,” expected to know everything.
The easiest way for me was to keep silent, as I did, and so well kept that I left that Institute at the close without a mistrust on the part of any one that I had ever taught school a day.
The difficulty to be met lay mainly in the assignment of studies. The prescribed number was a cruel limit. I was there for study. I required no rudiments, and wanted no allowance for waste time; I would use it all; and diffidently I made this fact known at the head, asking one more and one more study until the limit was stretched out of all reasonable proportions. I recall, with amusement, the last evening when I entered with my request. The teachers were assembled in the parlor and, divining my errand, as I had never any other, Miss Barker broke into a merry laugh—with “Miss Barton, we have a few studies left; you had better take what there are, and we will say nothing about it.” This broke the ice, and the line. I could only join in the laugh, and after this studied what I would, and “nothing was said.”
I would by no means be understood as crediting myself with superior scholarship. There were doubtless far more advanced scholars there than I, but I had a drilled rudimentary knowledge which they had never had, and I had the habit of study, with a burning anxiety to make the most of lost time. So true it is that we value our privileges only when we have lost them.
Miss Barton spent her vacations at the Institute. A few teachers were there, and a small group of students; and she pursued her studies and gave her reading wider range. She wanted to go home, but the distance seemed great, and she was there to learn.