Letter from M. Carey Thomas to Mary Elizabeth Garrett, November 15, 1886

This is a little bit school and a little tail to our talk yesterday. My journey to Bryn Mawr quite GÇ£finishedGÇ¥ my cold so I am housed for today. I have also remembered how I caught it and am pleased to think that a repetition of the occasion can be avoided. I stood with Dr. Rhoads planning a road in the dampest clay, on the windiest day, clad in a summer gown, for an hour on last Thursday. I wonder if you would have any preference; this is the debatable point whether to make the turn in front of the hall or at the side. Mamie and Dr. Rhoads prefer the former, the architect and I the latter. Now school-- will not you and Julia think whether it might not be well, as soon as we hear from Miss Meyers, to write to several of the best classical teachers we heard of in the London asking if there be a vacancy next year they would consider the possibility of accepting a situation. I should be in favor of offering $1000 the first year, $1100 the second, and $1200 the 3rd year. Mamie approves. I say GÇ£severalGÇ¥ because we shall have to allow time to heart first from one and the from another and so on. We could get letters about their ability and could ask Mariechen to call on whoever had the best letters and the best will to come. She would report on personal appearance. Then we shall be free to let Miss Goddard go unless she is entirely satisfactory. If in the next few weeks you and Julia are satisfied with his teaching there might not be the same haste but only four letters can be exchanged before the middle of March. I will speak to Miss Chamberlain about a Mad. Lang Tripos-- French teacher as soon as I can go out. Mamie has nearly arranged for GÇ£Class OGÇ¥ and Miss OGÇÖGrady will receive a letter from me by this same mail. I think we ought to tailor with Miss Goddard before letting her go and we should give her plenty of time to try to improve. I am going to ask Julia for the general expenses of last year. I think if we had eighty girls, and if we dismissed Miss Goddard and told Miss Lecke the percent could not continue , we should just meet expenses next year; but the general expenses may be heavier than I think. There is one thing more I wish to say-- it is nothing disagreeable. I too think that any explanations about last spring are useless and when I came back from abroad I decided, as I think I wrote you, to try to forget utterly every thing in which I found it hard to understand you. As I think I said, humiliating as it would be, I should much prefer to be able to see that it was all my fault. As England rested me more and more I did see that (as you did not know all that had gone before, nor all that had been said, and as we none of us-- I am sure that I did not appreciate the strained state of things that exaggerated a natural difference) my letter may easily have seemed to you utterly unjustified. I feel sure that the expression may have been very far from what if ought to have been because the whole matter had made me ill I should like to say that I never thought you had done anything from the beginning to that time that was not nice about the school-- your position wholly understood. I think, and I thought then, that it was a generous one-- all that it lacked was the putting yourself in the place of the rest of us. I always saw that any change of the school bases was much harder for you and I am grieved that seeing all this I should have expressed it so badly. All that I personally have to get over came afterwards-- after you were-- as it is now possible for me to see-- perhaps naturally, very angry. This is all I shall ever have to say about it. I am sure from my own experience that what you said about the difficulty of forgetting it was time, although not in the exact connection in which you said it. I hope very much that the old feeling of entire confidence will come back. I am selfish enough to care almost more about this than that should forget whatever I did that you disliked or found it hard to forgive. I am sure that I am so far from what I wish to be that I might easily do wrong and especially say far more than I wished to be understood; but it is much harder to admit as much to myself about you. You must not however make it a more difficult task for me by saying what is not true and I will on the other hand try not to put temptation in your way. You understand that it is fully as hard for me as for you to be straightforward in our friendship and for the future I shall trust you to tell me if you decide to break your own rule. I will do the sa,e and otherwise I shall not mention the subject again. The brilliancy of my conversation on Sunday afternoon reminded me of the experience of a not very clever relative of mine who has determined to propose to a girl on a certain day. Circumstances forced him to take a twenty mile sleigh ride with her at the end of which he had to part from her. He thought it would be terrible to be refused at the beginning so calculated the time and left himself ten minutes but the consciousness of what was coming many any connected conversation conversation impossible during the proceeding hours. So I am very sorry to have subjected you to a similar display of stupidity. I was too wretched to go out in the morning and as I expected to see Bessie in the afternoon I told the carriage to stop at five and had intended to send you a note from BessieGÇÖs but I found her, poor child, too tired to be talked to. I wonder if you would mind dropping me a postal when you hear of her safe arrival. She promised to write at once but she may easily forget. You or Julia can of course hear through the Kings. I am simply inconsolable about GÇ£the Lanterns.GÇ¥ I wonder if Miss Knox would show it to me when I make my GÇ£bridalGÇ¥ call. You are a Spartan to have forgone daily companionship with her sweet green ladyship. Yours in hoarseness and general discomfort, Minnie C. Th. November 15 and November 16 1886