Letter from M. Carey Thomas to Mary Elizabeth Garrett, January 31, 1892

Well, my dear, here I am back in my deanery again having left everything in train for the Trustees election tomorrow. It looks as if Dixon and Laurie Riggs were going through. Father has worked like a Trojan and has done the whole thing, spoken to Stuart, Allan Smith, Eliot, McLane interviewed both candidates themselves. Mr. Gwinn has spoken to Frank White but then to one the whole thing will collapse like a house [of] cards. If we succeed I will cable you I think. It will have no immediate effect on our hopes, as they seem to think the med. sch. dead on account of lack of funds. The annual expenses of the College of Phys and Surgeons are $135,000.00, but of course that must be mismanaged. Still our duty is clear to try to get Trustees favourable elected. Before I leave the subject - I have been thinking deeply on it lately, and it seems to me now we must stop worrying about it. If we are to accomplish other things only a proportional amount of time must be given to this - esp - must you stop worrying. When one has done what one can the rest must be left. So, presto, let us shift our thoughts. I am truly sorry to have told you of EliotGÇÖs misconduct twice. I remembered as soon as my letter was mailed. Do you wish more gossip - Annie and Jim have bought the least nice of the white houses opposite and Bessie has decided to live with Tom and Mary, the large house of Mr. Kings [sic] is to be sold. Bessie is so full of the beauties of Florida and I hope it will do her good. I wonder if she is not making a mistake. Perhaps not if she is not to be ill again for then surely Mary would not make as tender a nurse as Annie; but, if not, babies are quite intolerable and Annie is, I think, a most shiftless housekeeper and Frances a most ill kept dirty baby and I am really too grimly narrow and dogmatic for human endurance. Nevertheless I much prefer visiting Bessie at AnnieGÇÖs - I cannot picture her at MaryGÇÖs. Do not speak of this until you hear it elsewhere for Bessie has not told me her reasons and they may be good. It was I fancy the discovering of this second baby Tom idiotic and dogmatic and beastly as he is is at least not narrow on religious questions and so is more bearable as a whole I suppose and then no babies. You see I am just fresh from Bonny and Mary Dorothy and Harold and Malcolm and really and truly a woman that spends her time in such companionship ought indeed to be more an Eliot - Turk - variety. What intelligent man could endure it and women that do it deteriorate rapidly. Zoe has been a different mental being since PhilipGÇÖs birth. Women that have never had children (married women) are so much cleverer than these others. How strange it is. Poor woman of Olive Schreiners Dreams with her patient eyes searching the desert dimly. I suppose the slave instinct of generations is too much for her in the presence of a baby and she reverts to savagery. Well our great excitement is TomGÇÖs paper and it is a new experience for my family and I am the only member of it that heartily approves. Anything for reform and free speech and originality. In a month the circulation has increased 3000 and the paper is really greatly changed. They are now attacking the gas co. and the bloated corrupt monopoly is beside itself, its president and directors are beseeching, entreating persuading, threatening with lawsuits and ruin, the 4 stock holders Tom Laurie Julian White and Douglas Gordon. But the attack is going on. They have also determined not to be muzzled and they have literally brought the town about their ears by publishing an article about Swan Latrobes [sic] infamous librarian - how he was fired out of the Maryland Club twice etc. The N.Y. Times even went so far as to say he drugged McCubbin who walked against Frank Howard to win a bet and they claim that when a man is so notorious as to be a matter of comment in N.Y. and when in Baltimore he has sent to the bad numberless young fellows that Baltimore papers should tell the truth, whence the article GÇ£The Pace that KillsGÇ¥. Grace says that if another such article appears she will leave Baltimore. She was attacked right and left and had on her warpaint for two weeks to defend it. In my opinion no personal articles are defensible but if they are to be I cannot see why there should be any discrimination. It looked as if Tom would have a duel on his hands and I very much fear someday GraceGÇÖs widowhood will be the price of reform, but this special scandal has all blown over now and Latrobe is in an asylum, I believe. Grasby the man they have called from Kansas City is, people in Philadelphia say, the ablest editor west of the Missippi [sic]. Tom has given if everything else. Julian White says life is worth living again and altogether they are 4 very new brooms very proud of their clean sweeping. I think I will subscribe for the paper for a month for you just for fun in case they do anything exciting. Monday evening Feb 1st I thought I would wait for the result of the meeting and as you see by the enclosed telegram it is postponed again, but the two candidates are regularly before them and as yet no opposition. I wonder why they postponed. No I do not think I was unjust to Mr. Gilman although as I wrote you my Ledger notice gave the statement as I gave it to you. For Boards of Trustees being as they are such a golden prospect prospect of buildings even although denied them is of course to inflame their hearts. Buildings should never be mentioned by the prudent president. The interesting document will appear on the 22nd of Feb. I believe I have never told you that the Carpaccio lady and dog arrived and is very fantastically admirable. Also your Holyer photos for which thanks. I still like the reading one much. I wonder why you do not comment upon My Boys Town and the Griffin story. Did you like them? Emily Dickinson is very extraordinary, is she not? And in some ways very drearily and solidarity impressive and poetical. But Verlaine - he is my last love. His verse has heavens of melody and the sombre rapture, the rythmic [sic] tread of his lines - the cumulative effect is very splendid. All his poems to hours Socratic love, the glorious boy who gave up home and parents to live with him and then after 3 years died in a hospital of some epidemic and especially beautiful with a Shakespeare sonnet beauty that men seldom - never I think - read in their love poems to women. You know he is a symbolist and everything means something else and for the esoteric interpretation I cannot vouch for I may not understand but the surface meaning is enough. I read 4 volumes of him aloud to Mamie at the Bellevue and so had the full benefit of his sound. By the way I read there also to her a volume of poor Maupassants Le Rosier de Madame Husson containing one story Enragee that seems to me the most indecent story I have read. And about French novels I have had a little experience that perhaps I will tell you some day. And I have read too one of the new reformed men Prevost and he seems to me worse than Maupassant piled on Zola, with his horrid religious sentimentality complicating and infinitely exaggerating his sensuousness. Now what else I wonder before I go to bed. No you did not tell me about your Cautery, at least I did not understand. I wonder if you ought not to go to stupid baths or something if Rome does not suit better and if I say little about it it is because I am afraid of boring you. When you write again say something affectionate. It is your turn now, is it now? Goodnight and a kiss and then another because you are so far and a third because you are not well. In short there does not seem to be any lack of reasons when I stop to think. [enclosed are several newsclippings]