Clara Barton came back from Europe wearing the jewel of the Red Cross presented to her by Queen Natalie of Serbia. She was the only person in America who then, or for nine years thereafter, wore the Red Cross. She was the sole person in the United States who, by service or any form of official recognition, was entitled to that decoration. She wore also the Iron Cross of Merit, presented to her by the Emperor and Empress of Germany. She wore a Gold Cross of Remembrance, presented to her by the Grand Duke and Duchess of Baden; and from Louise, the Grand Duchess, she wore, and prized beyond all wealth, a magnificent amethyst, said to have been the finest amethyst in this country. From poor, defeated France she wore no official decoration, but she brought the love and gratitude of innumerable people there to whom she had ministered.
On her return to America, she went to her old home in Washington, on Pennsylvania Avenue and Capitol Hill, the home she had purchased before leaving, but occupied so short a time before her nervous breakdown. But she was not permitted to live there very long, because the corner was too noisy. Her physician, Dr. Thompson, commanded her to live elsewhere. The doctor assigned her her limits, “jail-limits” she called them; she might live somewhere between Seventh and Sixteenth Streets, and on the farther side of New York Avenue.
She established herself at the corner of Fourteenth and F. Her letters to her nieces in this period are cheerful, but written under the burden of physical pain and nerve fatigue.
On May 23 she received word that her sister Sarah, Mrs. Vester Vassall, was fatally ill. Though far from well, she hastened to Massachusetts, arriving in the evening to find that her sister had died that morning. The shock of her sister’s death, coming as it did when her own health was so precarious, brought back her old trouble with full force. For several months she remained in Oxford and Worcester, and then went to North Grafton—New England Village it was called—where her relatives, the Learned family, had a country home. There she took a house, and remained for a considerable time attended by Minnie Kupfer, who had served with her in the Franco-Prussian War, and, like Antoinette Margot, had followed her to this country. Her health varied with the season and with other conditions not all of them easy to determine. There were times when she had hard chills, followed by dripping sweats. There were weeks when she had no strength even to lift her head. There were bright days also, when she moved about with some approach to health.
What was the real nature of Clara Barton’s illness during this long period of suffering? Material is not lacking for a fairly accurate diagnosis. Having exhausted the resources of local physicians, she entered into correspondence with a series of doctors, each of whom professed to be able to bring her permanent relief. Some of these called for very little information about her condition. Their remedies were supposed to cure almost anything. But others sent long lists of questions calling for full and minute replies. Copies of these questions and of her answers, she preserved.
From her replies it would appear that there was hardly a bodily function which was not disturbed. She was subject to hard colds, to severe headaches, a weak back, digestive trouble, and to periodic attacks of camp diarrhœa from which so many soldiers suffered for so many years after the war, this condition alternating with stubborn constipation.
But it is evident, as one reads critically these pathetic catechisms, that she had after all a basis of sound physical health. Her careful answers to these questions do not appear to indicate a single organic disease. She had yet to learn that her back, which she thought so weak, was really remarkably strong, and that her head had little need to ache when her eyes were not overstrained. And her digestion need not be seriously disturbed if her nerves were not worn and shattered.
The most serious symptom that Clara Barton had, through all these years, was a temperament abnormally sensitive. She was capable of enduring almost any possible physical or nervous strain, and of standing up under it well, but when the strain was over and she met some trivial exhibition of ingratitude, some captious and wholly negligible criticism, some petulant and despicable bit of opposition, her nervous energy gave way with a sudden collapse. Her voice failed; her eyes failed; whatever organ was weakest gave way first, and she went to pieces like the deacon’s “one-hoss shay.”
To one who reads those letters at this distance, it seems a thousand pities that some one, whose scientific judgment she could trust, did not say to her: “You are organically sound. There is no good reason why you should be sick. You are tired, and that is not surprising. And you have magnified innumerable foolish little matters of irritation. Forget them. Believe that you are well. Half your years are yet before you,—the better and happier and far the more useful half of your life. Get out in the fresh air. Live simply. Throw medicine away, and you can be strong again.”
In an undated letter written in the early spring of 1876, she gives to Mr. Dwight an account of her experience since her return to America: