I have forgotten if I really did send a line in Annie’s letter or not. I know I wanted to, but since that I have received that precious “gingerbread” letter from all the family, and I have read and re-read, and spied into little corners to see some other welcome face peeping out. It was so good of Willis and Ber to set their hands and seals. Yes, I know all about receiving letters that call directly upon my heart, and my desire to answer that hour, and a thousand times I have said that those were the very letters which were to lie longest in neglect and likely enough never get answered at all. The fact is I am over-anxious about them, and wait for a few moments of better opportunity, feeling that I have much to say, and so I wait and wait, and these letters are the sore spot, the worrying sin of my existence, that little package which I cannot put by, but which lies around, and looks me in the face on the most impossible of occasions, and reproaches in silence, and comes late at night and early in the morning to haunt, it may be to taunt, me a little; that little package is the plague of my life, and yet I prize it most of all and couldn’t have done without it, but I can never quite dispose of it. Oh, yes, yes, I do understand all you try so patiently to explain to me, ONLY that I don’t think my poor scrap could ever have been one of the class of letter which burden me, for I have no recollection whatever of it, and seriously suspect it was only a little pile of trash. It has been brave of you not to get sick in all summer with all your work, and company and sickness besides, but I am so glad that Sally was with you, and I suppose Vester was also, but it is not mentioned where he was during his illness.
I am spending some fine days in Paris, just what I most desired. I wanted to see some American people; it had been so long since I had seen them—and indeed there is no lack of them here. All Paris swarms with them, as I suppose it always does, and all grades. Some I am proud of, and some I am ashamed of; some speak remarkably well, and some cannot utter a proper sentence. Generally they are “well dressed,” as the world goes, but to my eye “over-rigged,” as a sailor would say, but always much better than the English, who are the most fearful dressers in all Christendom. English women are solid and sensible, learned and self-possessed, and all the world respects them; but the art of selecting and putting clothes onto themselves is something quite beyond their line of vision. Not that they do not wear enough,—oh, Heavens, no, not that,—there is always enough and to spare, but there is no calculation what portion or member of the body corporate it will be found dangling from, and Joseph’s coat bore no comparison. Still they are splendid women, and handsome, fifty per cent more beautiful than the French. The French declare that the Germans cannot dress in decent manner, but I have seen much good, comfortable-looking dressing in Germany, and I rather liked it. I don’t know what has induced me to write so much upon the silly matter of dress, unless that some of my “sisterin” abroad annoy me a little with theirs.
I can see how busy Ber must be with his large family and congratulate both him and his children upon the relationship. I imagine him to be the most sensible and paternal of parents. I shall be only too glad when you can really take your legitimate place in the work. I can see an equal call for your services. Go and look after the little girls. They may not like to tell all their troubles to their State Papa, but would rejoice to reveal some things to a mamma. Go with Ber. I think that is one of your “rights”—it is at least your privilege, and you know it is very well said that “until women get their rights, they must keep their privileges.” I also have something of a family in Europe, some hundreds of state children, but of my own immediate family I have two delightful girls. They are as fully grown and developed as my two boys in America were, rather more, and about as near alike, but charming girls, both good as they can be, and be human, live girls. One is all gentleness, the other all strength, but both are so loving, so obedient, so true. The elder is Miss Antoinette Margot. She is a thorough artist, and is with me at present, painting and visiting the Louvre and the Luxembourg and comparing notes with the Parisian painters. She is at this moment painting an American flag, and looking back over her shoulder to ask me, “How many of the red stripes must commence at the field?” and ends with “Mais il est très joli.” Miss Anna Zimmermann is at her home in Carlsruhe looking after the thousand wants of a clergyman’s house, keeping the big brothers in order for the Universities they are plodding through; obeying her papa and mamma, who tell her she is too “independent and ambitious,” writing at odd moments as she can pick them, reading Carlyle, Dickens, Goethe, Schiller, as she can steal the minutes, pining that she must be held in just such bondage of body and soul, praying for the day when she may come and live with me a little more, and beginning a long, strong, logical letter once in a while with “To the Devil with the housework! Why must I fritter away all the best years of my own life and starve my brain to cram my brothers who already have been taught twenty times more than they can apply?” And she is right.
But my sheet will be full and I shall have said nothing at all. I have just written your “Marm” and I think, perhaps, that will find its way to you, and you must just have had a surfeit through Annie. I am glad she went for a vacation. I wonder what they do at Falmouth. When I am home, can’t we go? I am not at all certain where I shall pass the winter; it may be I shall think I must work in France. I cannot tell how they will present themselves by winter, or I may think it well to quarter myself here in Paris and wait; and I have half a mind to go to Spain. This is perhaps the most sensible use I could make of the time. I must wait a little the turning of events. I can tell better after a month more in the east of France. I am glad you have had a visit from Georgie. It was nice of her to send me a line. Is not Alice with you now? Has she turned to ashes?—very possible—human nature can as well as wood or coal. Write me when you have time and don’t let Ber abuse you.
YoursClara
To Ber—
I am first-rate, how are you? Clara
For particulars see within.
After the terror and bloodshed of the Paris Commune, Miss Barton spent some time in northern France, laboring as she had labored in Paris and in Lyons; at Belfort, where she finished her work on October 27, and went for a little time of rest to Carlsruhe, where she was the guest of the Reverend Mr. Zimmermann, whose daughter had labored with her at Strassburg. Antoinette Margot was there also, glad to turn from scenes of desolation to her work of painting.
The middle of December she went forth again in bitter cold weather, accompanied by Antoinette Margot, distributing relief to the poor at Mülhausen, Belfort, and Montbéliard. She spent Christmas at Strassburg, where she served a great Christmas dinner to some five hundred of her old acquaintances, and then returned to Carlsruhe.
Activity agreed with Clara Barton. She rose to meet great emergencies. When the crisis was passed, she felt the effect of so long a strain. Again and again during her lifetime she carried an enterprise completely through to the triumphant close, and when it was done collapsed from nervous overstrain. Twice in America that collapse had been indicated by the total failure of her voice. At the close of the Franco-Prussian War she collapsed again. This time it was not her voice, but her eyesight. Her eyes were inflamed by the strain and smoke of the battle-fields. The nervous tension aggravated the discomfort of which the inflamed eyes were, after all, only a symptom. For several months in the winter and spring of 1872 she was at Carlsruhe in a state of semi-blindness.
