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Dearest Mary, I have been kept at Bryn Mawr all this week and Saturday evening I came down here to meet Frank for Sunday. The Bryn Mawr Hotel is one of the best kept, prettiest hotels I have ever been in and I am as comfortable as I can be away from my stock of books. Our three biological appointments are still to be made and we cannot find suitable people. Dr. Howell of Michigan after long hesitation which lost us three weeks of valuable time decided to stay at Ann Arbor, indeed I fancy they released him from a great deal of work to keep him. We are now sending for an interviewing different biologists, and so far I like no one. Also before I go back I must see just where we are with the laboratory. Yesterday Mr. John Converse gave us $5000, and three weeks ago Mr. Walter Wood, both of whom were on my list. This makes StudentGÇÖs Friends 5000; Trustees 5000; G. W. Childs 5000; Walter Wood $5000; Mr. Converse 5000 - and the last ninth and tenth are more or less assured; so it is no longer wholly scheme on paper as it was when college closed. So much for my business affairs and except when I am employed with them I try to abstract my mind and think of other things. Before I end business however as you perhaps saw Mr. Maser and Mr. Lee had got the measurement of the tennis courts wrong: they are 78 not 70 feet long and 36 wide. I never thought of this being mistaken and have just found it out. Your Bergen cable about Ohmstead came a few days ago and I am only delaying to find out whether there is any way of getting in three courts. In a day or two I shall know whether there is any firm in Philadelphia that will undertake to lay cement tennis courts for less than $500 a piece. Yes I am sure you will look at my handwriting as if it were Mr. Marshalls - a few paper kisses will not avert the catastrophe, only he is answered. All the B.M.S. accounts are in the hands of a bookkeeper - ditto the Gymnasium accounts. They have given me a great deal of trouble and I suppose the bookkeeper will have to have constant direction. Dr. Hurd has written me a note almost daily, ditto Mrs. Colvin. Thank Heaven you are out of it all for a little. Dr. Stevenson has subsided the list of Chicago subscribers was printed verbatim from their own list. Kate McLane is jingling her cap and bells again and has written to the Hospital, to Dr. Hurd, to know who makes the interns appointments. She wishes to force them to have Dr. Hall though married and declares her appointment concerns no one but Dr. Kelly. Characteristically her opinion is not altered by the fact that Dr. Hurd wrote her that all intern appointments passed before the officers of Hospital and were made by the Executive Committee of Trustees. She declares that none the more does Dr. HallGÇÖs appointment concern anyone but Dr. Kelly - nor GÇ£does it concern him indeed what secret compact Dr. Hall and Mr. Chaplin have madeGÇ¥ - She herself does not know of any such holy agreement, she is only certain that it must be so - GÇ£they went abroad simply to enjoy a summerGÇÖs travel togetherGÇ¥ etc etc. It is really too preposterous. She and Bessie had a pitch battle on the subject and I fancy for once the good cause did not languish in BessieGÇÖs hands; and lately Bessie has had several comforting talks with one of KateGÇÖs favorite aunts who tells her that GÇ£although Kate is a good woman, she is well known in her family for taking hold of everything by the wrong endGÇ¥. So it goes circle within circle, wheel within wheel, gossip and and discussion - women of no brain for ever impeding. This whole vast hypocritical relieving structure of superstition and survivals of savage myth would totter, if only these women who read nothing and think nothing were educated. As it is one might as well argue with a babe in arms - better for the baby may grow to comprehend and the women will comprehend if possible less as time goes on. Ah but books and things how nice they are, how they still oneGÇÖs curiosity about the world without and within! I have been reading with great approval LangGÇÖs GÇ£Myth Ritual and ReligionGÇ¥ and GÇ£MaineGÇÖs Early Law and CustomGÇ¥, and Robb Brownings [sic] life, which is in reality Mrs. BrowningGÇÖs life, for her golden Robert as she calls him shines only with light reflected from her. She is so much more than her poetry in her letters, he, so much less. How they satisfy ones [sic] longing for elevation and dignity and beauty! Take Plato and the ocean - Do you know I have been here but once and that in Winter since that July evening when sitting on that wreck looking at the sunset I received your telegram asking whether I could meet you in Philadelphia. If I had gone away thinking as I did that you had received a similar request from me and not even answered it perhaps we should not now be friends. The separation was to be for so long and I knew you so far off and I had never let myself care for you. I thought of it this evening, for the moon in the East and the sunset in the west and the GÇ£seaGÇÖs listless chimeGÇ¥ everywhere recalled it. Are you sorry, counting on your fingers all those intervening Summers, during which the two weeks at Deer Park are the only two weeks in which we have been together throughout all thirteen? Indeed if we let this count Atlantic City has many biographical memories: Mamie too I really got to know here during a two weeks visit she paid me, and here at 17 I first met Mr. G- on a sail, here he read and expounded the Princess and here he waited two weeks to propose to me after the time I decided to be rude, having come down for the purpose - so his untrustworthy bosom friend told his sweetheart who told me - and gradually losing courage until he thought I had purposely deceived him as to the time of my visit, and here I fought out my battle alone all the rest of the Summer; and here one July afternoon as I closed Herbert SpencerGÇÖs First Principles I finally and forever took my ride in the theological controversy and here a year before I had had lent me and devoured all M. Arnolds [sic] prose, the beginning of what the First Principles ended and here I received the first letter you ever wrote me - you were abroad - greatly to my surprise for I think I had never written to you. So this northern ocean - how like the North Sea it is - has many memories. How it embraces one - one is fairly afloat. No where in England or abroad, do I remember such an extent of gray sea - 2 miles of boardwalk faily out in the sea and at every point ocean parlours where in a lounging chair with a rug (for 15 cents) one can sit in solitude viz a viz with the breakers. And you are now off the sea - are you not? No letter from you but perhaps one will be forwarded from Baltimore. Please do as I ask - address me at Bryn Mawr Pa. There is no responsible person at home to forward the letters and in August no one at all will be there. I hope the remainder of the trip was pleasant. Yes I found Denmark and Sweden very charming and the air lovely. I felt well there for the first time; but emotionally and aesthetically I cannot afford such simple impressions on my only months for dramatic life. Now goodbye my dear. Be a little affectionate sometimes, if you care about getting affectionate letters and I should think you would like them even in London Yours I am so mortified at the way Js filled furnace. I do not see how it happened. [enclosed are newsclippings]
Letter from M. Carey Thomas to Mary Elizabeth Garrett, July 12, 1891
M. Carey Thomas writes to Mary Garrett about taking a break from visiting Atlantic City to deal with college business. She writes about the college's struggle to hire qualified biology professors and fundraising efforts for new laboratories. Thomas also updates Garrett on the Bryn Mawr School's schoolyard renovations and hiring teachers as well as on the progress of the medical school committee. Thomas then reminisces about her early summers Atlantic City, where she is now staying. Included with the letter is a newspaper clipping about an incoming Bryn Mawr School teacher.
Thomas, M. Carey (Martha Carey), 1857-1935 (author)
Garrett, Mary Elizabeth, 1854-1915 (addressee)
1891-07-12
16 pages
reformatted digital
North and Central America--United States--New Jersey--Atlantic--Atlantic City
Europe--England--Pennsylvania--Merseyside--Liverpool
BMC-CA-RG1-1DD2
M. Carey Thomas Papers, 1853-1935 --http://archives.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/repositories/6/archival_objects/98852
BMC_1DD2_ThomasMC_Outgoing_0357