Letter from M. Carey Thomas to Mary Elizabeth Garrett, July 14, 1885

Dearest Mary, Only a strong desire to know how you are gives me courage to write to you this evening when I am so tired and melancholy; but tomorrow night I may feel like work so you must be lenient. Since the summer Frank died when I was 16 I have not lived in the country and the association is so strong that I have been - very much to my surprise and displeasure - rebaptised into a little of the Weltschmertz which I revelled in at that time. Surroundings make a great deal of difference when one is alone for many hours and until my view becomes familiar it will obtrude itself and tinge everything with a far off echo of Sturm und Dreng. It is cool, I have not been warm since I came and my study holds two lounging chairs and immense study table with shelves and pigeon holes and myself and lets in the view and keeps out the household so I am fully equipped. The house is full of company, that is it seems full with four persons in addition to ourselves but I take advantage of my deanship and sit in my study all the time. No one calls, it is a little wilderness of our own and I think I shall like it when this first effect has passed off. Mamie has had adventures, owing perhaps to her leaving on Friday, for she was nicely settled at Millers with an attractive room and most beautiful view from her two windows, rugs bureau tables and chairs unpacked, no visible or sensible uncleanliness when yesterday afternoon Father who was attending a patient there was called in by another doctor to see a sick child under his care and found this child dying of the most frightful form of diphtheria. He at once brought Mamie over to our house and the next morning every person had left the hotel the panic was so great. It is the second child who has had diphtheria there, so Mamie cannot return. She and Jane have moved to the other hotel which is a few minutes nearer our house but with no view save an old tumble down sunny orchard into which MamieGÇÖs windows looks. I canGÇÖt help being anxious but as Mamie ate in her room there was little danger of infection. Bessie seems well but Kate Riddle and Kitty Taylor pervade Gladestone so I shall not expect to see her satisfactorily until they leave. She is absorbed in Mr. NewellGÇÖs sketching class which begins on Wednesday. I trust she will be strong enough for it. She came over here Friday night and on Monday we retired from the rest and talked, today we were to drive but could not. I think you are now conversant with the news except that Mother seems very much better and sleeps very well. School I will write the word to jog my memory and I will look in the pigeon hole under the fatal heading to send you what it contains - list of English books and a few translations. I have marked what I should think necessary for the reference library - Hodgson, Agnes, WhiteGÇÖs books, Head and De Vere would be most useful for Miss Andrews I suppose. Any books you and Julia also agree upon I can order at once from Scritners and have forwarded to the school house or to no. 77. I saw the man myself about the sign; it will be up on Friday between 10 and 12. I wrote on Friday to have all the doors in the school house unlocked and left open. The key was left as arranged. Please write me just what the plumber says and I think I can arrange the plumbing although Bessie is not impressed with its importance. If necessary I will make Father, who is chairman, call the Committee together and present the report of Col. WaringGÇÖs assistant; but this would be an extreme measure. A note from Professor Wilder of Cornell saying that he will do his best to find us a scientific teacher is a GÇ£strawGÇ¥. If necessary I will come down when Mlle Lafoids comes to see us. There were many things I wished to tell you that afternoon you drove in, Wednesday was it not? among others that Costello is deeply interested in the disclosures of the Pall Mall Gazette. He told Bay beforehand that every word of it was not only true but far less than the whole truth. I hope Aunt Hannah will send me the papers. Also I wished to ask you whether you remember telling me at Deer Park last summer that you would like to know or rather would like me to tell you when I heard of any poor girl who needed assistance. Accordingly I think I told you in the winter that there might be a chance of Miss Clements studying abroad another year. Those of the Cornell students who are friends of hers raised as I told you $900 last year to which I added $75 thus paying Mrs. Clements and Miss Clements passage money and their expenses for one year in Paris. I then told them if they would raise $700 for two successive years I would contribute $100 each year as as to give her three years abroad. They write now that $600 has been raised or rather promised and that the first half should be sent her as soon as possible. Although there are twelve or more interested in it, they are all poor and it seemed ot me that they have already done their utmost. I do not know whether this case comes under one of those you referred to, but if so I think it would be very nice if you felt like contributing the lacking $100. It may be only fifty as Miss Clements health may force them to return at the end of the first half year. Although Miss ClementsGÇÖ talent is not of the kind I most care for, I believe that it is decided talent, and I know that her struggle to study Art and to support her mother has been brave and successful. Her talent has seemed to me at least worth half the price of keeping a horse at Bryn Mawr. I should not have spoken to you about it at all as she is such a special protege of mine (although I do not think I even like her now apart from her abilities. What a pity we have lost this plural!) but about five months ago I had to promise to lend another girl $200 next year on such worthless security that I could not ask anyone else to lend it for me - Father or Mother or anyone. So I must be a little careful not to come out bankrupt - in my first fiscal year. If you do not feel like giving the fifty dollars, or it may be the hundred, please do not do it. I think, little as we see each other, we know one another well enough for that. My boy Harry is going abroad in October to study nervous diseases in German Paris and London. Having decided with Bond that he is to be a humdrum merchant and marry Edith next summer Harry and I have made up our minds that he is to make name and fame as a specialist so Father gave his consent just before I came up to Coombe Edge. I found Harry a German teacher and he is working away in the city. He has ability I think but his popularity and his engagement are such time traps. Still he is very much of a boy and has an enthusiastic boyGÇÖs interest in his profession. A most intimate twelve page German letter from Dr. Haupt completed my discomfiture this afternoon, still if Bryn Mawr succeeds it will be worth even that. You see I am too cross to write you a nice letter but it is a pleasure to write to you even of such ordinary gossip and in return please send me a little diary - tell me what you do and whether you have any appetite, whether you sleep, whether your cramp has quite disappeared and how your sitting room looks now the walls are done. You know that I cannot help being anxious about you; it is a great nuisance but I suppose it is one of the penalties friendship has to pay whereby somewhat to balance its great gains. Goodbye yours lovingly Minnie C. Thomas July 14th 1885