Carlsruhe, Last Day of January, 1872
Dear Sister:
I believe I can write you a readable letter without looking on at all. I have used my eyes pretty much of late, and they complain so sadly of my bad treatment, that I have decided to give them a rest, and not write any more at present, but, as I don’t know how long the rest must continue, I don’t want you to wait without news of me for an indefinite period. I want to tell you that I did receive your good long letter, and was exceedingly glad of it. It had been a little age that I had not heard of you. I must write without a reference to your letter, for I could not read it to-day; my poor eyes ache too badly for that. It was long ago that I wrote you, I believe. I don’t know if I have written since the 25th of November, when I remember to have done so. If not since, I have never told you anything of my going to Montbéliard to give something to the poor people there who suffered so much by the war. I went from Carlsruhe about the middle of December in the coldest time we have had in all the winter. It was fearfully cold. Miss Margot went with me. It was a day and a half’s travel, and some of the way it was so cold in the train I dared not let Miss Margot fall asleep. I knew she was exceedingly cold, and I kept her awake through precaution. We spent the first night at Mülhausen with Mr. and Mrs. Dolphus, French people of literary note, whom I have known during all the war. Next day we went to Belfort and passed the night and Sunday with the Administrator, Monsieur Leblue, and arranged some trunks I had left there in October, and Monday morning we went to Montbéliard and called on the Prefect (a Jew), to whom I had previously made a donation of money, and informed him that I wanted to make the next donation in person. I wished to see, therefore, myself. He was very amiable and would arrange it, and I left him to do so while I went still on to Besançon to see the Prefect of Doubs. Here it was so cold and cheerless I could not sleep at night and returned next day. I was made the guest of the noble families of the town, for Montbéliard was an old Court town, and the grandmother of the Czar of Russia was a Princess of Montbéliard, so they have still relics of royalty there and a pretty old castle. I found excellent arrangements for taking care of the poor, the best I have seen in all France. They have committees of both gentlemen and ladies and the president of the ladies’ committee is a Mrs. Morell, a person so much like Mrs. Greffing that I feel as if I had really seen Mrs. Greffing and worked with her a few days this winter. They assembled in their hall and called their poor there, and they came in hundreds, and waited in a long line, or two long lines, reaching from the doors away through the yard and down the snowy street. At the suggestion of Mrs. Morell I gave them orders for wood and rent, so that the husbands could not compel the women to give up the money to them to get drunk on and abuse the family. We wrote hundreds of orders. I signed them, and then we went to the hall and received the women. They were my women then. I admitted them, and gave them the order and took in the next, and so day after day till all was done. The orders were drawn immediately, and when I left just before Christmas all the poor had wood for two months and rent paid until the first of April. They looked so poor, but were so happy at such an unexpected fortune and I was so glad to have been able to do it. It was Boston that did this good little thing—I have written the committee about it, a long letter. I thought they would be glad to know it while the fires were still burning.
Then I came back, and I wanted to go to Strassburg and give something to my old working-women there. They would not be so poor as the women of Montbéliard, for much had been done for them, but I wanted to see and remember them, and so I said I would go. I invited Miss Zimmermann to go with me, as she helped me to organize the Strassburg work last year. I said I would not give anything in charity to these women; I had not permitted them to beg—they had always worked for me and been paid. I would give them a Christmas fête and invite them like other people. So we bought two splendid pine trees fresh from the Black Forest, and I knew all my women, so I had only to count the heads and buy purses. I purchased three hundred good strong morocco purses with steel clasps, prettily lined, and pretty little things for the children, and to ornament the trees many dozens of little wax candles and holders to light the trees. I had stopped at Strassburg on my way back from Montbéliard and hired the best hall in town for Saturday night the 30th December. On Wednesday night we went to Strassburg, had our invitations printed and sent to the women by post; then I ordered at a good bakery twenty cakes, I cannot tell you how large and high. Each cake would cut from twenty to twenty-five slices, big slices; and five hundred rolls, and I took a caterer I knew there to arrange chocolate and coffee. The hall had a fine kitchen and dining-rooms, and I asked the banks to change my money into the last issue of French silver, never used, and they did. The best ladies of the city came to help us, and the trees were set, the purses filled, the hall arranged, the tables spread and set so white and clean, and, oh, the trees were so pretty, on a long platform across all one end of the hall in front of two enormous mirrors and all the floors spread with moss, all scattered full of fine-cut white paper and isinglass, which made perfect snow and ice, and brightened with handfuls of little scarlet berries; and the hall was so brilliant with chandeliers and mirrors that one could read the finest print in its most distant corner. I tell you all this so particularly because I think it was the prettiest thing I ever saw. Don’t say it was that that made my eyes sore; it wasn’t. The hour was seven; at six-thirty the women began to arrive. Mr. Kruger, Vice-Consul from America, received and seated them in the anteroom till it was time to light the trees. I had not seen them yet, and did not know that so many were there, but some one came to tell us that our little wounded children had come and we went to that room to see and welcome them. When we entered the doorway, all these hundreds of women rose up before us like an army—not a word, still like so many soldiers—and stood for us to pass. At seven, the trees were lighted and the doors opened, and all this regiment of women walked in and took seats. A fine parlor organ stood under the trees, a Christmas hymn was struck, and these poor women in the fullness of their hearts joined in a burst of song such as I never heard before. They sang as if they meant God should know how glad they were and how grateful they were to be there. Then there was prayer, an address of welcome (I wouldn’t have them instructed), and then Mr. Kruger and your sister went under the trees upon the platform where all the purses hung. There were elegant ladies to take them down from the trees and hand them to me while Mr. Kruger called each woman’s name and she came up and gave her hand to me, and I put in it a purse of silver with her name and a pretty buff card attached to it; then the ladies took her round to see the trees and to sign her name at a table presided over by the Misses Rausche, of Strassburg Boarding School. Afterward they were taken to the refreshment room and the daughters of the clergymen of the city, with Miss Zimmermann at the head, received and served them to chocolate and all the good things; and then they did talk and laugh and cry for joy, and such a time some hundreds of poor women almost beggars I think never had. “It was worth going a mile to see.”
All this time Mr. Kruger and I were giving the gifts, but when it was done I went and ate with them; then I came back and gave the gifts to my eleven cutters, ten pretty young girls and one tailor. I gave them workboxes and portfolios, etc., and then the Comité de Secours had arranged a little surprise for me, which the women enjoyed exceedingly. M. Bergmann, my old esteemed friend, the president of the syndicate of Alsace, addressed the women, and they all crowded up around the front of the platform like so many children, to listen to him. He told them, among other things, that Miss Barton had said she wished they would all keep the money in the little purses as a keepsake and make it the beginning of a sum for the savings bank, which would reopen next week. Having told them this, he said to them, so pleasantly and familiarly, “I think we ought to make her this promise, eh?” You should have heard the storm of, “Yes, yes, we will,” that filled the room. This finished the evening, only their good-bye to me, which each one insisted on making for herself. This occupied almost an hour, till the last one was gone, and then it was past eleven, almost twelve, and we went home to our hotel and to bed; but all the time I knew I had seen a very pretty thing.
There were about sixty women who did not get their invitations. It was no wonder; they never had a letter before in their lives and the letter carriers never heard of them, and they lived in such old alleys and garrets and cellars they could not be found. But the next day I made a list of all these and put it in all the papers of the city, and it was told to them and they came to our old workrooms a few days afterward and we gave them their purses. When it was all done, we came back to Carlsruhe, one of the first days of January, and I have been here ever since. I had a good deal of writing to do, and I suppose I have used my eyes a little too much. I was going over to London directly after leaving Strassburg to stay with Abby and Joseph Sheldon, who are continually writing for me to come to them. I meant to have been there now, but I received a letter on my return from Strassburg from the head of the Boston Committee saying that they had held a meeting after hearing something from me and decided to ask me to take charge of all their unfinished business in France. They see that it is going wrong and beg me to take it in hand, even if I cannot do anything personally, to take the oversight of it. I replied to them and will wait for their answers. I thought then it would be nonsense to cross the Channel if I must recross to France again in a few weeks, so I decided to remain here until I could finish up on the Continent and go to England free.
I do long to be free of work once more for a little while. I have been rather busy. I have a little home here in Carlsruhe. I got tired of the hotel and took some small rooms, a little apartment, and furnished it to suit me (rented) and have a little German girl. She was the private waiting maid of Madame de Mentzinger and I knew her, so I live as independently as I please. I can arrange my living to suit myself better. I can have a beefsteak and baked potato for breakfast and not be driven to a choice between a piece of dry bread and a gallon of coffee, and I can have my dinner at four and not be forced to eat at eight o’clock at night, as is done here.
I am sure you have had a great deal of trouble with my things and so has Lieutenant Westfall; I am sorry but can’t help it. I want to write the Lieutenant, but dare not send him one of my blind letters. I must wait till I can use my eyes again. I am glad you went and visited all the world of Massachusetts. I want to see our old brother Dave more than I can tell, and I think I shall sometime. I don’t understand if Ida has left the Treasury for all time or on a rest. Is she not well? I am sorry you wandered about waiting for some one to carry you from post to pillar. Wait a little, Sall, and we will have a coach and one and ride when we please. I will have it sent over to you every day to take a ride on condition that you will promise to come and take tea with me every time, and you shan’t wait to be carried somewhere—it was all vexatious and heart-aching. I know it all by experience, so old that it seems to me it must have been a part of another existence; but it wasn’t; it was only the first end of this old patched and tangled web. What a good soul-stirring time you had at the Convention, didn’t you? That was splendid; shall I ever see something like that, I wonder? What a meeting! How I want to see and know Mrs. Livermore. I don’t suppose I ever shall, but I knew her so long ago. What beautiful things she wrote when she must have been so young; no wonder she can speak well. I speak very much of these things with the Grand Duchess. She sent for me about a week ago to spend an evening and she spoke of little else than the progress of woman and schools for girls in America. She had evidently been reading something, I presume some German criticism upon the too liberal spirit of America, and wished to compare notes, I think. I told her all as it was, and I said I believed in special training for all kinds of life, but that I thought it possible to train too much till the original spirit was crushed out and ashes left in the place of coals, and there was danger of Germany’s doing this with her great respect for discipline; that I thought them too strict, and that they cramped their people by rules and regulations and hurt many good original minds. This was plain speech for a woman in a plain black gown without even a ring on her hands to address to a Princess and Sovereign, but when I am asked I answer, let it be where it will. I guess it didn’t offend, for she sent me a very pretty letter next morning.
I can’t think what the dress is that you speak of having made up and washed. I can just recall that I sent something by Dorr, but it couldn’t have been anything but a piece from my shelves where we cut for the women. I can’t think if it was calico or cotton gingham. I know I wanted to send something good, but he was afraid to take it lest he have trouble at the custom house, and they trouble him about his own things for it. I know we packed his boxes in terrible haste one night after midnight and I can’t think of anything more about them. This was the day but one before I cleared up in Strassburg and started for Paris. It wasn’t a quite sure thing if one would get there very safely, and so difficult was it that it took three days to do the traveling of one day in ordinary times. But it is better now.
This winter is easier than the last was. I have made some friends and I am not a stranger in Europe any longer, and I have warm friends in Strassburg, and, if I do say it, last week Mr. and Mrs. Bergmann came to Carlsruhe to visit us, i.e., Miss Zimmermann and me. I had them to tea with me twice (they were at hotel) in my house, and I arranged a visit for them at Court. This is, I expect, the first social exchange of visits between a leading French officer and a German Court since the war—a gentleman may have visited, but not the ladies, but Mrs. Bergmann and the Grand Duchess visited, and, better still, the poor women came over to Germany to visit me. I have made some peace between them if they won’t fight again and spoil it all. I will enclose in this one of my invitations to the Women’s Fête and Christmas Tree. Your German letter-carrier will read it to you. Now I think, in mercy to your eyes, I must stop. Don’t be troubled about me; my eyes will be well soon. I will be very careful. I know you can’t read near all of this, but some maybe.