CHAPTER IX
THE HEART OF CLARA BARTON
When Clara Barton left the schoolroom for the life of a clerk in Washington, she was well past thirty years of age. When the war broke out, and she left the Patent Office for the battle-field, she was forty. Why was not she already married? Her mother married at seventeen; her sister married early: why was she single and teaching school at thirty, or available for hospital service at forty? And why did she not marry some soldier whom she tended? Did any romance lie behind her devotion to what became her life-work? Had she suffered any disappointment in love before she entered upon her career?
The question whether Clara Barton was ever in love has been asked by every one who has attempted anything approaching a sketch of her career. Mr. Epler’s biography contained a chapter on this subject, but later it was found so incomplete and unsatisfactory it was thought best to omit it and to await the opening of her personal and official papers. These now are available, as well as the personal recollections of those of her relatives whose knowledge of her life includes any possibility of affairs of the heart.
On the subject of her personal affections, Clara Barton was very reticent. To the present writer she said that she chose, somewhat early in life, the course which seemed to her more fruitful of good for her than matrimony. In her girlhood she was shy, and, when she found her life vocation, as she then esteemed it, as a teacher, she was so much interested in her school that she gave little thought to matrimony, and was satisfied that on the whole it would be better in her case if she lived unmarried. She had little patience, however, with women who affect to despise men. Always loyal to her own sex, and proud of every woman who accomplished anything notable, she was no man-hater, but, on the contrary, enjoyed the society of men, trusted their judgment, and liked their companionship.
Her nephew, Stephen E. Barton, furnishes me this paragraph:
My aunt said to me at one time that I must not think she had never known any experience of love. She said that she had had her romances and love affairs like other girls; but that in her young womanhood, though she thought of different men as possible lovers, no one of them measured up to her ideal of a husband. She said to me that she could think of herself with satisfaction as a wife and mother, but that on the whole she felt that she had been more useful to the world by being free from matrimonial ties.
So far as her diaries and letters show, she remained heart-whole through the entire period of her girlhood in Oxford. There was, however, a young man of about her own age, born in Oxford, and a very distant relative between whom and herself there existed something approaching affection. The families were long-time friends, and the young people had interests in common. A lady who remembers him well says: “She was fond of him and he of her. He was a handsome young fellow, and Clara once said to me that she should not want the man to have all the good looks in the family.”
This friendship continued for many years, and developed on the part of the young man a very deep affection, and on Clara’s part sincere respect. He visited her when she was a student in Clinton Institute, and was of real service to her there, making fine proof of his faithful friendship, but she could not be sure that she loved him.
She had another ardent admirer in Oxford, who followed her to Bordentown and there pressed his suit. Clara had long corresponded with him, and for a time was uncertain how much she cared for him. This young man had come to know her while she was a teacher in Oxford and she was boarding in the family where he lived. In 1849 he went to California in search of gold, and on his return was eager to take her out of the schoolroom and establish her in a home. For this purpose he visited her in Bordentown. She welcomed him, and sincerely wished that she could love him, but, while she held him in thorough respect, she did not see in him the possibilities of a husband, such as she would have chosen. He pressed his suit, and she sorrowfully declined. They remained firm friends as long as he lived.
A third young man is known to have made love to her while she was at Clinton Institute. He was the brother of one of the young women in the school whom she cherished as a dear friend. He was a young man of fine character, but her heart did not respond to him.
Two or more of these affairs lay heavy on her heart and conscience about the time of her leaving Clinton Institute and of her teaching in Bordentown. She was then in correspondence with three young men who loved her, and in a state of some mental uncertainty. If letters were delayed she missed them, and recorded in her diary:
Rather melancholy. Don’t know why, I received no intelligence from certain quarters.
In the spring of 1852 she had a brief period of depression, growing, in part at least, out of her uncertainty in these matters. On Tuesday, March 2, 1852, she wrote in her diary:
Morning cold and icy. Walked to school. Dull day and unpleasant, cheerless indoors and out. Cannot see much in these days worth living for; cannot but think it will be a quiet resting-place when all these cares and vexations and anxieties are over, and I no longer give or take offense. I am badly organized to live in the world, or among society; I have participated in too many of its unpleasant scenes; have always looked on its most unhappy features and have grown weary of life at an age when other people are enjoying it most.
On Thursday, March 13, she wrote:
I have found it extremely hard to restrain the tears to-day, and would have given almost anything to have been alone and undisturbed. I have seldom felt more friendless, and I believe I ever feel enough so. I see less and less in the world to live for, and in spite of all my resolution and reason and moral courage and every thing else, I grow weary and impatient. I know it is wicked and perhaps foolish, but I cannot help it. There is not a living thing but would be just as well off without me. I contribute to the happiness of not a single object; and often to the unhappiness of many and always of my own, for I am never happy. True, I laugh and joke, but could weep that very moment, and be the happier for it.
“There’s many a grief lies hid, not lost,
And smiles the least befit who wear them most.”
How long I can endure such a life I do not know, but often wish that more of its future path lay on the other side of the present. I am grateful when so many of the days pass away. But this repining is of no use, and I would not say or write it for any ear or eye but my own. I cannot help thinking it, and it is a relief to say it to myself; but I will indulge in such useless complaints no more, but commence once more my allotted task.
The mood did not last long. Its immediate occasion had been a not very cheerful letter from friends in Oxford, and a discussion with the mother of a dull pupil who was troubled because her daughter was not learning faster. Three days later she was seeking to account for her depression by some possible telepathic influence from home; for she had word of the burning of Stephen’s factory. Far from being the more depressed by this really bad news, she was much relieved to know that he had not rushed into the burning building, as would have been just like him, and have been killed or injured in trying to save the property or to help some one else.
On Friday night she had finished a reasonably good week, and had a longer letter than usual from the lover whom she had known longest. It “of course pleased me in proportion to its length.” She adds, “I am puzzled to know how I can manage one affair, and fear I cannot do it properly.”
The reader of these yellow pages, after seventy years and more, knows better than she knew then what was troubling her most, and can smile at what caused her so much concern.
By the following Tuesday she resolved to “begin to think earnestly of immediate future. Have not made any definite plans.”
This necessity of planning for the immediate future brought back her bad feelings. She wrote on Wednesday, March 24:
Think I shall not write as much in future. Grow dull and I fear selfish in my feelings and care less what is going on. Not that I think less of others, but less of myself, and am more and more certain every day that there is no such thing as true friendship, at least for me; and I will not dupe and fool myself with the idle, vain hobby any longer. It is all false; in fact, the whole world is false. This brings me to my old inquiry again, what is the use of living in it? I can see no possible satisfaction or benefit arising from my life; others may from theirs.
A week later she wrote that she had no letters, but had “grown indifferent and did not care either to write or to receive letters.”
She had resolved not to write so much, but she went on:
I am thinking to-night of the future, and what my next move must be. Wish I had some one to advise me, or that I could speak to some one of it. Had ever one poor girl so many strange, wild thoughts, and no one to listen or share one of them, or even to realize that my head contains one idea beyond the present foolish moment?
But she resolves to stop this vain and moody introspection:
I will not allow myself any more such grumbling! I know it is wicked. But how can I make myself happy and contented under such circumstances as I am ever placed in?
Her diary then grew irregular, with no entries between April 20 and May 25. Within that time she solved a part of her love-problem:
Have kept no journal for a month or more. Had nothing to note, but some things are registered where they will never be effaced in my lifetime.
But she finished her school successfully; went to Trenton and bought a silk dress. She filled the back of this book with a list of the English poets with the dates of their birth and death, and a sentence or two descriptive of each of the more prominent. She had this habit of writing, in the back of her journal, things that belonged to no one day. The volume previous contained a sentimental poem of a tragic parting of lovers, and a lachrymose effusion entitled “A Prayer for Death.”
These entries and incidents are cited because they are wholly exceptional. While she was ever morbidly sensitive, to the day of her death, and under strain of criticism or lack of appreciation given to great and wholly disproportionate depression of spirits, these entries, made when she had no less than three possible matrimonial entanglements in prospect, and was not sure whether she wanted any, must be the sole documentary evidence of a strain from which both she and the men concerned wholly recovered. All of the men are known by name, and they married and left families, and were little if any the worse, and quite possibly were the better, for having loved Clara Barton. Nor, though the perplexities of having too many lovers, mingled as these perplexities were with the daily problems of the schoolroom and a long absence from home, during which her home letters made her homesick, did the experience do her any permanent harm. Not long did she wish to die.
Indeed, her mood was soon a very different one. The entries that have been cited were made at Hightstown. Next year she was at Bordentown, and there she throve so well she had to send back to her home town for an assistant. She still had one love affair, already referred to, but it had ceased to depress her seriously.
A young woman of thirty is not to be blamed for stopping to consider that she may not always be bothered by three simultaneous offers of marriage. On the other hand, while all of these were worthy men, there was not one of them so manifestly stronger than she that she felt she was safe in giving her heart to him. The vexations of the schoolroom suggested the quiet of a home as a pleasant contrast, but which should she choose, and were there any of the men to whom she could forever look up with affection and sustained regard?
For each one of these three young men she appears to have had a genuine regard. She liked them, all of them, and it was not easy for her to see them go out of her life. The time came when each of them demanded to know where he stood in her affections; and each time this occurred she had a period of heart-searching, and thought herself the most miserable young woman alive. In each case, however, she came to the sane and commendable decision, not to bestow her hand where her heart could not go utterly.
From one who knew her intimately in those days I have this statement:
Clara Barton had many admirers, and they were all men whom she admired and some whom she almost loved. More men were interested in her than she was ever interested in; some of them certainly interested her, yet not profoundly. I do not think she ever had a love affair that stirred the depths of her being. The truth is, Clara Barton was herself so much stronger a character than any of the men who made love to her that I do not think she was ever seriously tempted to marry any of them. She was so pronounced in her opinions that a man who wanted a submissive wife would have stood somewhat in awe of her. However good a wife she might have made to a man whom she knew to be her equal, and for whom she felt real admiration, she would not have been an ideal wife for a man to whom she could not look up, not only in regard to moral character, which in every case was above reproach, but also as to intellect, education, and ambition.
Clara Barton’s diaries did not ordinarily indulge in self-analysis. She recorded the events of the day briefly, methodically, and without much comment. She indicated by initials the young men to whom she wrote and from whom she received letters, relatives being spoken of by their first names. The passages quoted from her diaries are exceptional. While she was highly sensitive, and morbidly conscientious, her usual moods were those of quiet and sensible performance of her day’s work.
For ten years after she began to teach, she was shut out from any real opportunity for love. Her elevation to the teacher’s platform, while still a child, shut out her normal opportunity for innocent flirtation. Love hardly peeped in at her during her teens, or in her early twenties. By the time it came to her, other interests had gained a long start. She was ambitious, she was determined to find out what she was good for, and to do something worth while in life. Had some young man come into her life as worthy as those who made love to her, and who was her equal or superior in ability and education, she might have learned to love him. As it was, she decided wisely both for herself and for the men who sought her hand.
Having thus chosen, she did not mourn her fate. She enjoyed her friendships with men and with women, and lived her busy, successful, and happy life. She did not talk of these affairs, nor did she write of them. She retained the personal friendship of the men whom she refused; and two of them, who lived not far from her in New England, made their friendship manifest in later years. Few people knew that they had ever been rejected lovers of hers; they were esteemed and lifelong friends.
There were times when her heart cried out for something more than this. From the day of her birth she was too isolated. Her public career began before her shy childhood had ended. She was too solitary; she had “strange, wild thoughts,” and no one to whom to confide them. She could have welcomed the love of a strong, true man. She was always over-sensitive. She was cut to the very heart by experiences which she ought to have treated as almost negligible. She met opposition, criticism, injustice with calm demeanor, but she bled within her armor, and covered herself with undeserved reproaches and unhappy reflections that she seemed doomed to give and to suffer pain. In some respects she was peculiarly unfitted to meet the world alone. But she met it and conquered it. She turned her loneliness into a rich companionship of friendships; she forgot her solitude in unselfish ministry. Spite of her shrinking nature, her natural timidity, her over-sensitiveness, she lived a full and happy life. Those who knew her remember few laments and fewer tears, but many a constant smile, a quick and unfailing sense of humor, a healthy and hearty laugh, a ready sympathy and a generous spirit. The love which she was forbidden to bestow upon any one man, she gave to the world at large, and the world loved her in return.
The most direct reference to affairs of the heart which Clara Barton appears to have made in her letters is in a letter written by her to her cousin, Judge Robert Hale, on August 16, 1876.
When Clara Barton went abroad in search of health in 1869, she hardly expected to return. She took two thousand dollars’ worth of bonds which belonged to her and deposited them with a friend, with instructions that if she died, the money was to be used for the improvement of the Barton lot in the Oxford cemetery. It was a large lot on the brow of a hill, and had been heavily washed by the rains. She wished it properly graded and cared for, and this was likely to be, and proved to be, an expensive undertaking.
This friend did not keep the bonds separate from his own property, and in time of financial stress he sold them and applied the money to his own needs. When she returned and learned of this, she was displeased. To her it seemed hardly less than a criminal action. She had no purpose of prosecuting him, but, on the other hand, she wished him to realize that this was something more than an ordinary debt. She put the matter in the hands of her cousin, Judge Hale, who accepted a note in lieu of the bonds. This did not please her, and she wrote her cousin a letter which caused him to chide her as being a rather importunate creditor.
She replied that this was not true, but that she herself had kept all her money for French relief separate from her own money, and she always kept trust funds separate from her own money, and she expected people dealing with her to do the same. She said:
I am not, as I seem to you, a “relentless creditor.” On the contrary, I would give him that debt rather than break him down in his business, or if the gift would keep him from going down. I am less grieved about the loss than I am about the manner of his treating my trust. I was his teacher and he was one of my boys. I have always dealt straight and plain with my boys. I am not a lawyeress, nor a diplomat, only a woman artless to simplicity; but I am as square as a brick, and I expect my boys to be square.
In some way Judge Hale had gotten the idea that this former pupil of hers had been a youthful lover, and that that fact had influenced her in the loan of the money. It is in reply to this suggestion that she said:
It seems very ludicrous to me, the idea which has fastened itself upon you, relative to my supposed love affair. I, poor I, who never had a love affair in all my born days, and really don’t much expect one after this date! My dear cousin, I trust this letter will show you clearly that my pecuniary affairs and my heart affairs are not at all mixed; and I beg you to believe that, if in the future I should be stricken by the tender malady, I shall never attempt to facilitate or perpetuate the matter by the loaning of money. My observation has not been favorable to such a course of procedure.
Whether she ultimately recovered the two thousand dollars or not, her biographer does not know, but she lived to put the cemetery lot in good order, and in her will she left a fund of sixteen hundred dollars for its perpetual maintenance. She also kept her financial transactions free from any heart complications. Her letter is a pretty certain indication that no love affair had ever taken very strong hold of her in the first fifty years of her life.
The war might easily have brought to Clara Barton a husband if she had inclined toward one, but she found other interests, and was happy in them. Later in life she had on more than one occasion to consider the possibility of a home; and we shall have occasion to make brief mention of one or two of these incidents. What is essential now is to know that Clara Barton did not enter upon her life-work by reason of a broken heart. Her relations with men were wholesome and enjoyable, but none of them brought her such complete assurance of a happy home as to win her from what she came to feel was her life-work. Some possibilities of matrimony gave her deep concern at the time; but she was able to tell Judge Hale in 1876, when she was fifty-five years of age, that she had never had a love affair, and did not expect to have one; but that if she had, she would keep it wholly separate from her financial interests; which was a very sensible resolution, and one to which she lived up faithfully.