Letter from M. Carey Thomas to Mary Elizabeth Garrett, January 19, 1889

Same rule to be observed as in former letter. Nothing important. Ah dearest Mary I wonder if you want to hear from me enough to accept oh, such a blue, cross letter! - and yet I rather dislike to let this evening pass - for do you know it is three weeks since I have seen you (not quite be nearly) and your little note last Monday was only better than no note at all for I was sure horrid business letters had made your hand hurt and that I did without my letter simply because you have no slave of all work - if I do not struggle through some sort of a communication tonight you will not hear from me for another week. Yes there it is - my grievance! I have been submerged fathoms deep since I last wrote - yesterday I gave to my college work 14 hours by the clock, for 14 days I have only had two -+ hours walks except - there is one glowing exception. That Bryn Mawr matter that loomed up before I left Baltimore occupied every spare moment up to 10 oGÇÖclock Thursday week. By that time my last Trustee had been seen and I was so desperately tired that without any warning (having previously given it up completely) Mamie and I went to New York by the 7:30 A.M. train Friday. I had had no time to write to the Brierty (?) headmaster and besides I should have been unable to extract any information in my dead alive state - so I did nothing, royally nothing, but look at pictures and the Meistersinger and Rheingold, like a god. Seriously I did not wish to go to the Brierty school without making an appointment. It seemed to me that I had never liked anything so much as the Wagner. You see it is over two years since I have heard any music and except one wretched performance of Seigfried six years since I had heard Wagner or Leipzig. In those six years the music and I have grown nearer together, seldom as it happens when friends are parted. I feel the motives as I had never felt them before; and immeasurably more than ever before the love music - the song of Walter and even more the [illegible] motive through the Rheingold - seemed to me to say its last word. Does it not seem strange to think that this same glorious music has been played for these six years over and over, affecting others as it affected me; and yet the same emotions were lying somewhere in my heart waiting to be again called forth after all these years. And pictures too - before Mr. MarguandGÇÖs Rembrandt I felt somewhat the same sensations as in Holland, and before his inadequate yet charming Van der Meer if Delft with its old remembered harmony of blue and grey tones likewise I felt as I had not for these two years. I am very glad his pictures now belong to the Metropolitan; they are far nicer than four Miss WolfeGÇÖs. One grows to hate her through her pictures, poor taste-bereft woman; her pictures, most of them GÇ£painted to orderGÇ¥, are miserably insufficient examples of great names. I was immensely disappointed and perhaps this makes me unjust. I suppose she got a half-twilight like pleasure out of her travesties, and from them one can at least study the mannerisms of greatness. So between Corots and Hans Sachses the two days went by triumphantly. I felt as if they saved me an attack of illness - ah but the Katzenjammer of the day after! To find oneself after flights in the empyrean. Why should we Americans bring to ourselves music and pictures of more fortunate places - gather together for ourselves little spots of homesickness for the whole Hesperian garden. I knew that after seeing Sara Bernhardt the sunlight was darkened for days; but music and pictures have never had quite the same effect before. I suppose it was being starved out. Will you not when you are in New York go to see the pictures - there I must hasten to tell you for of course you will discover it and our agreement has never been wholly cordial in regard to Walts - not as cordial as usual for it seems to me we should agree excellently will if we ever had a chance to try. How many pictures have we seen? Mr. WalterGÇÖs gallery once, Holman HuntGÇÖs pictures once for -+ of an hour under most unpicturelike overture and - what is the corresponding musical term to epilogue? Doxology is all I can think of - and then in Rome where, so contrary were the Fates, that the only three associations with you that I have in statue or picture gallery are of course Moses, then at the long end of the Bacchio Nueva as you walked out of it for the last time (and it has so far been the last time has it not?) and your regretful look made me divine your liking for the hall of silent beauty you left behind you, then third curiously enough I remember you in front of DomenichinoGÇÖs Diana and the nymphs. And that literally is all I can recall how my great debt to Watts has always been those Adam and Even pictures in the [illegible] gallery in Paris - but how shall I confess to you my dissolution before DelacroixGÇÖs sketch of Adam and Even in the Marguard collection. There it is all that so seduced me - passionate colouring, design, landscape, angel composition all. Watts is indeed half a charletan [sic]. I expect to go to Boston, if I go, Thursday January 31st to spend there in making inquiries February 1, 2, 3, and 4 - to go to the evening of Monday February 4th to Smith College and spend there Tuesday February 5th and Wednesday morning, joining Mamie in New York late Wednesday evening February 6th. Then in New York I will do what I can for a day or two. There seems to me a decided chance of hearing of someone at Smith College. This is spending every moment of my vacation in hunting for a secretary - time which ought to be spent on my own work, but my letters have satisfied me that personal interviews will do better than any other means. This trip will simply beat the ground for candidates - we can then ask any that may prove possible to come to Baltimore to meet the Committee. It is so important that such candidates should see the whole lay of the land. That I shall see any genuine candidates I doubt but after this we shall at least have exhausted possibilities. Now do you think you can go with me. Two would be a great deal better than one and it will only take a week in all. I have thought over it a great deal because I hate to go, but as I have such a strong personal objection to Miss Schroeder it seemed fairer for me to take a little of the trouble; then too I thought perhaps - although this may not be true - that the first inquiries might be more fruitful if made by someone whom the people we shall have to ask might talk to as a professional. I confess it would seem to me more worth the effort if you went too because we could accomplish more and then of course it would be a pleasure to go with you even although I fear it would be literally only that - for I should expect to do all the dirty work so as to let you rest as much as possible. I fear I cannot get home next week that is the 25th and 26th, if there is the least chance of my going even to Smith College, because I shall be too busy. Please tell me what you think - or whether you think it necessary for me to go at all. Tell me whether you can go - in short, dear Sphinx, do answer categorically for once. I shall have to begin to write letters and make preparations at once. The newspaper articles - the only one I have been able to cut out duplicates one of yours. I shall try to get the others next week. I will not tell you how disgusted I was - they said everything I most disliked about the school - that its tuition fees could not support it and yet you ask me GÇ£not to leave them lying aroundGÇ¥! They do not sound to me as if a foreman could have given all the information. What between them and the Rheingold I had a dream about you that was the up top of fantastic absurdity - what will you think when I tell you it involved the nudity of all the Committee? When we see each other I will tell it to you. Will you pardon the great haste of this letter and remember in your own great haste not to forget to say how you are. The Philadelphia doctors are not yet seen but letters are passing. In earnest, I will try not to send you such a [sic] looking letter again. Yours in haste Minnie C. Th Such a nice letter from Bessie about the Medical School!