Letter from M. Carey Thomas to Mary Elizabeth Garrett, July 19, 1892

Defence [sic] Your remark about GÇ£oneGÇÖs friendsGÇ¥ does not seem to me entirely just because you seem to regard your not having spoken of buying the sawmill as much more serious than I thought it. Remember hearing it in the way I did - which whether correct or incorrect seemed absolutely certain. I could not doubt that you had bought it so there seemed to me no reason for explanation as to the fact and I wanted to wait to see if I could not forgive you without speaking of it for I felt sure it would trouble you. There might have been reasons which kept you from mentioning it at the time - that you would conceal it without such reasons I never once imagined. But I felt I could not - as I hoped do without hearing them and of course really I do not think there could have been adequate reasons but I supposed they might have seemed to you at the time adequate and then not feeling well after explanation may have proved too much for you. But what I forget to take into account with you is that when one cares so much about the character of a person one loves business relations cannot help assuming a very different aspect. When Dr. Rhoads does anything I think not fair and square I care no more about it after I have counteracted its effects and forget it because his character is of no possible interest to me. I have gauged it long ago. Whereas with you the more important so completely swallows the less that and our business affairs may go to hell or heaven for all I care unless we have been on the square with each other. All of which is I know very slangy but is the result of 2 novels of Trolope yesterday Mamie and I read them all day long - they were the only food mild enough for a calm soothing influence. I know of nothing like him. One of HelenGÇÖs friends who went abroad with the McVeaghs last summer said Mr. McVeaghGÇÖs only amusement was reading Trolope all day long and his first anxiety as he reached each place to lay in a supply. To return then I do not think I deserve your reproach - for the matter did not seem to one so awfully serious, or I should have trusted you. I have, and do, in much more serious ones. I never meant to imply that there would be other serious matters. More than now - I hope and trust there will not be, but only to express my feeling that the B.M.S. was certainly bewitched, so wonderful is its power of causing mal entendre. And if after this you will hold to our bargain I will - never to judge each other even in little things unheard. I am satisfied it is always a mistake. No, no, no you have not been frank and a very great deal of unhappiness has been caused by it and on two very especially marked occasions you very nearly lost my friendship, which if you care for it would have been an additional unhappiness. In Rome through lack of frankness, to which I had every right, you sacrificed me absolutely. After Pontresina and our long talks there and my giving up all excursions to be with you and MamieGÇÖs consenting to give them up too to please me, it was beyond belief to have you without explanation refuse to see me alone except twice in 3 weeks and on one of these times you told me to my utter amazement that a secret I had told no one except Bessie and Mamie and at the time I told you no one for long afterwards had been made common talk of (even Mother never knew it), and on the second interview you told me you would no longer regard my letters as confidential - in other words wished us not to write. So utterly without explanation was this complete change of behavior, so absolutely without words (even my request that we might have one long talk some night never referred to again) that I drew the only possible conclusion - that I had entirely mistaken you, and that our friendship was entirely on my side. Do you suppose it would have been possible for me not to go to you at once when you were in such trouble trouble [sic] on our reaching home and I had really thought you cared to see me. Curiously enough this Naples Museum is closely connected with that time for you remember we came directly here - and it was my first visit to Naples. Julia was scarcely on speaking terms with us and Mamie and I were exhausted from Rome and we all 3 wandered gloomily and solitarily about. I recalled today as I left M for an hour or two and went there how I pondered before its reliefs and bronzes on the problem if your conduct - it took years for me to understand it even intellectually and this musing especially localised itself about 2 reliefs Bacchus in the house of Icarius (this was prob accidental) and the Orph. and Euryd - relief (which was apropos). There they were today unchanged and I how changed. And there is a tale of attached to the Orph and Euryd relief for when Gertrude left Leipzig after her first visit and returned to America what was my disgust when she sent me this very relief with appropriate remarks. I had had other associations with it and in consequence it was ruined for me and has been ever since. It is a misfortune to have as strong local associations as I have - things I care for become chains of association. No, whether you alone were concerned or not this was a case where your reasons, so long as you acted on them [illegible] an absolute necessity unless great injustice was to be alone. And Naples has recalled it, oh so vividly! Yet it is a glorious gallery and I wish I could see it often enough to substitute other memories. Then let me give you another instance - that year when without a word, without giving me a chance to defend myself, on the mere hasty words of a letter which you must have misunderstood as there was nothing of the sort in it, nothing worthy of more than a passing quarrel you changed your whole manner and refused any explanation giving this impossible one as adequate. I had done absolutely nothing except reply angrily to an angry letter which I prob. misunderstood. Here again whoever else was concerned you and I were concerned primarily and whatever reasons you acted on were due me. So you must not say again you have been frank in the past whatever you may be (and I hope will be) in the future. But all this is due to the reliefs of the Museum and you must forgive it as I have forgiven you long ago. I have fairly beaten Naples for your imitation bronze man. No one knows about him. Some of your orig. I found some not. The result and estimates I will send you. You can order them if you wish. Of course the books that went astray were the plays. How could you think I should send such valuable books so carelessly. I sent them through Vickers and Co. agents. Let me know how much they cost. They assure me they have now reached you. I will now answer a few questions you ask. Yes, Bessie bought the house before I left and it is charming - exactly the right size. Do you approve? Dr. OslerGÇÖs wife is a gay buxom widow, a great worker in charities, a manGÇÖs woman rather on the Orville Hermitz style whose 1st cousin she is. An intimate friend of the med. sch. Mrs. Hunt. Nellie has been much better this year, really climbing up hill all the time. She wrote the article on the GÇ£Union MeetingGÇ¥ in Sunday in the Lantern Lucy wrote the Plato dialogue and the tea drinking decidedly the best things in the magazine. They are as devoted as ever. Harry is beginning to make money, all in specialist practice and he and Zoe are going to house [illegible] next year. Ah if it were not for B.M. I should see that Helen wrote no more such articles, but of course my hands are tried and she reads too little to know what is thought in the world of science and art and letters. How wonderful it is this great generation of younger reading men growing up completely untouched by the religious struggles of the older generation of thinkers, wholly indifferent, but sceptical as a matter of course. Of all the younger profs and I meet of course many, have met many esp this year, not one is theoretically Xian. I know no reading man that is. Yes St. Theresa seems to me just what you say - she should have been a Pope or a Prime Minister. I do not believe any good lives of St. Francis or St. Cath. exist; they are of necessity full of pious lies of their disciples and I doubt whether sifting such as RomanGÇÖs would be possible even if worth the trouble. Of course they were themselves deceived - when fasting and scourging and lack of sleep furnish the proper conditions it is too easy. They both seem to me geniuses in their way (St. Francis in a lit way too) and good and sweet, but lives like theirs that assume falsehoods are so hideously wasted unless those falsehoods are true. They are so frightfully misleading and do such vast harm - do you not think so? I wish I could tell you some books but all the recent French books I have read are indecent and uninteresting - LotriGÇÖs Fantome d Orient and are charming. Maeterlink is almost a new sensation. He is like Webster: Hriysman I cannot get interested in. And all this and nothing about Syracuse and Girgenti. Well, I will try again next Sunday. What I meant about time was this I do not want us to arrange to meet at a time when you are sick because you will have a headache and we cannot talk besides of course the equally important fact that you ought not to travel. Now if this would be the case imm. after Baireuth. I said if you let me know now I could arrange prob. to meet you just before. It must either be just before Aug 15 or just after Aug 21st I suppose as we shall then come north and go south. Salzburg I know of course but I can tell nothing till my Henschel comes. The difficulty will be to find some place pleasant for Mamie to wait. I agree with you that it would be better than Baireuth. Our plans - I cannot tell for the next day or two whether you are to imagine us on the shores of the bay or in Sienna or Venice we cannot choose yet and it must be a choice as we delayed so long in Sicily. I am so glad about your ankle being better and that miserable tooth, and I feel as if this cure would do you good. Yes I do know of a Vienna dressmaker and will send it next time. Yours lovingly Minnie C Th I arranged with Fraser to send a man weekly for 1 day to see after flowers he and himself was to be responsible. Later M is well again today. Telegram: Both entirely well leave for Amalf today and neighborhood Naples Saturday