THURSDAY, FEB. 27
It would help if I could believe spring would come soon. When I was at school, if there were no milk and no fresh vegetables—and we girls had been living on salt meat and salt fish and bread and corn mush for close to a month with no end in sight—at least we didn’t have to go down to the cellar and see how low the supplies were getting. Such things could be readily bought. The Reach that separates Deer Isle from the mainland is frozen solid, the roads on the island impassable. There has been much sickness hereabouts, and many children have died. Few of Mother’s friends can visit. I feel more isolated than ever.
Yet before dawn this morning, crossing to the barn in a luminous world of silence and starlight, I saw a fox making his way over deep snow smooth and white as marble, homeward bound to his den in the woods. God’s creation, and innocent of human malice.
You will rejoice to hear that I have at last made the acquaintance of your friend Quasimodo the Hunchback, and Esmeralda the Gypsy, and all the others in that astonishing tale. They have helped me through many an endless night. Mother is right, when she says that in reading the Bible, one touches God’s hand, and so cannot ever be lonely or afraid. But sometimes one needs to touch the hands of one’s fellow humans. Since reading Mr. Dickens, and Miss Austen—and, I blush to report, Mrs. Radcliffe—now you know the depth of my depravity!—I have realized this about novels: they are like conversations, or acquaintanceships, that change us deeply by widening our experience. They are like friends. Naturally my father would warn me against unwholesome conversations, or against the sort of fascinating friends who would lead one into foolish acts by making them seem right and justified. Yet, to limit one’s friendships to the narrowest of like-minded circles is to become provincial, perhaps self-righteous … like too many people on this island!
I will send this to Mrs. Johnson in the hopes that she will know where to send it on to you. But, as I read that her husband was so vociferous in his demands for the invasion of Tennessee, I fear that some retaliation may force her from her home.
I pray that it finds you safe.
Your friend,
C
Susanna Ashford,
c/o Eliza Johnson, Greeneville, Tennessee
To
Cora Poole, Southeast Harbor
Deer Isle, Maine
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1862
Dear Cora,
Charley Johnson brought news that the Federal Army entered Nashville yesterday. What this will mean I haven’t the least idea. Nor does anyone, really. Because the railroad doesn’t run straight from Nashville to the eastern counties, the Federals can’t push through to liberate us without taking Chattanooga first, and of course it’s massively defended.
Regal (finally!) came here Saturday, with the regular CSA Commander from Knoxville, your compatriot, of all things, from Maine. Regal ordered Julia and me back to Bayberry. Since Bayberry gets raided once or twice a month by the Lincolnites and since the only Secesh boarding-house in Greeneville charges five dollars a week, it was eventually agreed that we two women would continue under “that skunk traitor Johnson’s” unhallowed roof (only Regal didn’t say skunk).
So here we are. For how long, no one knows. The rumor is that Senator Johnson will be named Military Governor of Tennessee, and I know it’s only a matter of time before the Confederate States of America sequesters the house. Julia’s baby is due in a few weeks. I asked Dolly (you remember Mrs. J’s Dolly?) to tell me exactly what happens when a baby comes: what it looks like, what has to be done, what can go wrong, in case Julia should go into labor when there’s nobody but me around. You’d have thought I’d asked her how to carve up and stew Baby Tommy (or Baby Aurora Victoria) (!) when little he-or-she arrives. It “wasn’t fittin’” that a young girl (meaning a virgin, I guess) should know things like that.
But why shouldn’t any girl who’s old enough to have her monthlies know about babies, and how they’re born, and where they come from? She’s going to have to learn sometime!
SATURDAY, MARCH 8
It maddens me that a letter from you is probably lying in a Post Office in Nashville, undeliverable to the Academy or anywhere else. Or, worse, that my letters to you went to kindle some bush-whacker’s cigar.
Julia keeps to her room. Dolly has found a black midwife in town. I help Dolly and her girls with the housekeeping, or help Mrs. Johnson tutor little Frank. Of course he’s not able to go to school anymore, and Mrs. J is afraid that some Secesh in town is going to take out his politics on Senator Johnson’s son. There was a time when I would have said, “Nobody would do that to a nine-year-old child!” but I honestly don’t know anymore. In the evenings we lock the house up tight, and I read to Mrs. Johnson while she sews (or vice versa). Because of your letter, we’re re-reading Pride and Prejudice, and it helps very much to occupy oneself with the Bennet girls’ husband-hunt. But the threat that overhangs them, of being turned out of their home by Mr. Collins, cuts a little close to the bone—as does the realization of how helpless Julia and I would be, if that happened to our hostess.
I knew Pa hadn’t paid my board bill at the Academy since the beginning of December, but there were several of us there in the same circumstance. And I knew Pa hadn’t sent money to Mrs. Russell, either, one reason she treated Julia so shabbily. But going back to Bayberry, and trying to find out about the bank here in town, brings home to me that even tho’ Pa still owns a plantation, we’re poor. If someone were to come to me and say, “You can go to the Academy of Fine Art in Philadelphia tomorrow,” Pa wouldn’t be able to send me. Julia hasn’t the least idea that we’re now living on Mrs. J’s charity. She still keeps calling her “that traitor”! With the field hands run off and the militia all over the property and the banks closed, there’s nothing else for us to live on but charity.
It makes me turn hot all over to think of it, because I know Mrs. J can’t afford two more mouths to feed. I don’t know what to do, and until they get this war over I don’t even know what I can do. I’ll write to Pa in Richmond, but I know already he’s just going to write back, “Of course you must leave That Traitor’s house immediately and I’ll take care of everything when I get back.” But I know, too, he’s not even going to write that, because Pa always finds some reason that he’s too busy to write. I can just see him when he returns, pinching my chin and grinning, “I knew my Babygirl would take care of everything!” And giving me a new handkerchief that he bought for me in Richmond, and Julia a diamond necklace!
It makes me feel better to write this to you (and to draw the enclosed picture of Pa’s triumphant return).
MONDAY, MARCH 10
Having just re-read the above, I want to ask you, or tell you … I know you love your parents, and your home, and Elinor and Emory. I love Julia and Pa, and Tennessee. But sometimes I feel two things at once—like sincerely loving Justin with all my heart, and sincerely not wanting to marry him because it would mean not going to the Academy of Art. All my life, Julia’s been telling me, “You can’t be angry at Pa if you truly love him.” Well, I truly love him, and I’m furious at him, Cora. And I’m furious that I’m not allowed to say so; that most people will say there’s something wrong with me even for thinking, He’s acting like an irresponsible blackguard.
Can we make an agreement, you and I, that whatever I write, you know that I’m not mad to love Pa, and Julia, and Justin, even though I may decide that I love Art even more?
I think that’s one reason I love David Copperfield so much. Mr. Dickens touches it so exactly. It truly helps to know that I’m not insane for feeling two contradictory things with equal force. Is there a copy of it, by the way, in Mr. P’s trunk? Mr. Dickens also talks, in DC, about what I do with books—put myself in those places, make up other adventures for those people. Mrs. Elliott would say, like your Father, that we should only read what improves the mind, but I don’t think that’s so. Sometimes we just need to rest our minds, to let our hearts sit quietly next to a warming fire until th
e chill abates. With dear friends, if our friends are near-by. But if they aren’t, then with those other friends—Quasimodo and Eliza Bennet and Mr. Micawber, and all the rest.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12
Julia had her baby, a little boy. Thomas Jefferson Ramsay Balfour.
WEDNESDAY NIGHT
Charley Johnson just brought word that his father has reached Nashville, to take over as Military Governor of the Union-held part of Tennessee.
Love,
S
Susanna Ashford,
c/o Eliza Johnson, Greeneville, Tennessee
To
Cora Poole, Southeast Harbor
Deer Isle, Maine
SATURDAY, MARCH 15, 1862
Cora,
Your letter came yesterday, but I daren’t pass your good wishes along to Julia. She hates the Yankees with a virulence equalled only by the Daughters of the Union for the South. I keep your letters hidden, and only read them when she’s asleep.
Aunt Sally Bodmin came today. Ordinarily you couldn’t get Aunt Sally into Senator Johnson’s house at gunpoint. Since Mrs. J is supposed to be at death’s door I went downstairs, to tell her we’d had to give Mrs. J Extreme Unction last night (even though she’s a Methodist). But the minute I came into the parlor Aunt Sally demanded, “Has Julia had her baby yet?” which makes me laugh, Cora, because she’ll slap my hands if I even hint that women have babies. So I said, Wednesday, and I couldn’t help noticing that in spite of the Union blockade, Aunt Sally’s hoopskirt, silk dress, bonnet-feathers, and lace all looked new. So did the coloring of her hair. She asked, “Can Eliza travel?” Meaning Mrs. J. When I shook my head she glared at me and asked, “If the house were burning down, could she flee?” With that she brushed past me and went upstairs to Mrs. J’s room with the news that within a week Mrs. Johnson and Charley were going to be on their way to Libby Prison (and poor little Frank on his way to God knows where!) because Senator Johnson has arrested the entire city government of Nashville (and poor Dr. Elliott!) for refusing to swear the Loyalty Oath to the Union.
“And no more than that husband of yours deserves,” snapped Aunt Sally. “But I pay my debts, Eliza. And I owe you this, for getting my nieces out of Bayberry when that cretin brother of mine lets militia white-trash camp in the house because they haven’t the red blood in them to join the real Army and actually do some good against the Yankees.” She’d talked to Pa in Richmond and didn’t have a good word to say about him or President Davis or anybody on either side. “I’ll send my coachman over on Thursday,” she told Mrs. J, “and he’ll escort you up to your daughter’s place in the mountains. That part of the state is crawling with Tories like an old dog with fleas. You should be safe enough there.”
I asked, What about us? and she looked down her nose at me, even though I’m seven inches taller than she is, and Julia who’d crept in very quietly, with tiny Baby Tommy in her arms. “Pa didn’t say we have to go back to Bayberry, did he?”
“He did,” Aunt Sally replied. “And I told him not to be stupid. You girls are coming with me to Vicksburg.”
So that’s where we’ll be, Cora. It’s far down the river enough to be out of the way of the Yankees, and so heavily fortified that even the Confederate High Command (Aunt Sally says) can’t be idiots enough to let the Yankees take it.
WEDNESDAY MARCH 19
We leave in the morning. For days we’ve been smuggling things from the house to be stored all over Greeneville with other Unionists. Of course Julia thinks we should go back to Bayberry. I packed up my sketchbooks and pencils (which are all down to stubs), and all the remaining paper in Senator J’s desk, and the precious pen nibs Mrs. E gave me for Christmas only three months ago. The Academy seems years in my past now. I just re-read your letter, the one that you wrote when Emory left: about pretending that it’s years and years in the future. I pretend that I’m a little old white-haired lady, writing to you (from where? to where?) and saying, “Remember how scared I was, when there were bush-whackers and militia fighting all over Greene County, and Julia and I had to go live with dreadful Aunt Sally in Vicksburg?” And you’ll write back, “And you see, honey, it all turned out all right.” I want to reach into the future tonight and hold that letter from you in my hand.
I’ll say special prayers for you the whole month of June, when Baby-Cora is going to be born. It’s nearly midnight, and I’m downstairs in the parlor, where you and I first met, and the house is freezing. I feel like I’m sitting on a stage after the play is done, waiting for the stage-hands to come and strike the scenery. All the things that took place here—you and Mrs. J coaching me so I could go to the Academy; Mrs. J teaching Emory back when he was a boy—all those things are going to vanish when we walk out of this house tomorrow. After that, they’ll only exist in our hearts.
Enclosed is a sketch of the room.
Love,
S
P.S. Write me care of Mrs. J care of her daughter Mary Stover in Elizabethton, Carter County, Tennessee. I guess the mountain folks have a regular service across the lines to Kentucky, which drives the Confederates just about crazy.
Cora Poole, Southeast Harbor
Deer Isle, Maine
To
Susanna Ashford, c/o Eliza Johnson
Greeneville, Tennessee
TUESDAY, APRIL I, 1862
Dearest Susanna,
Thank God you are safe!
The stories I read of conditions in Nashville during the evacuation were dreadful, and I had great fear for Julia, knowing how far advanced her condition must be. The Portland Transcript speaks of a Federal Army of over fifty thousand men encamped in and around Nashville, and of more approaching it; of Rebel sympathizers jailed and sent to prison camps on the Michigan border for “aiding” an “enemy” which consists of their brothers and sons.
I received your letter with a sensation of reprieve as well as delight. At the same time I try to push from my mind the knowledge that by the time this reaches you, you and I may both be living in, as you say, “another world”—if they have not altered beyond recognition by the time your letter reaches me.
My mind pictures you and Julia clinging to your metaphorical plank in the ocean, and I marvel at your matter-of-fact courage. I marvel, too, at the fact that in retrospect, you can laugh. Marvel, and hope that by your example I’ll one day be able to do the same.
I cannot help comparing this approach to life with the Gothic heroines whose lurid adventures I have lately begun to explore. For Emily St. Aubert and her spiritual sisters, terrible events have the character of falling over a bottomless precipice in the dark. But in truth—and in Miss Austen’s tales—the cliff is not bottomless, however deep the chasm may be. One does not fall, but is only obliged to climb down, one painful but possible hand-hold at a time, until one reaches the bottom. One gropes one’s way across the bottom, and climbs—one painful but possible hand-hold at a time—up the other side. Which is another way of saying, I suppose, Where there’s Life, there’s Hope.
I feel as if I am slightly less than half-way down, my friend. When I call out in the darkness, it is your voice that calls back to me. Though I cannot see you, I know we are both carefully descending the same cliff, and will meet on the other side.
I pray for your safety.
Elinor is the only one of the Reading Circle—the Daughters of the Union—who visits me now. Last week word came that Charles Grey—my friend Deborah’s fiancé—was killed in battle at New Bern, North Carolina. At church Sunday Pastor Wainwright spoke of it as a “crime,” as if men had broken into Charles’s house and shot him. After services I heard many denounce his “murderers.” No one did so to my face. Even Mother’s friends turned from me.
Charles and I played together as children. I feel that I should be angry at the men who killed him. When I realize that he is dead—and this realization returns to me many times a day, as fresh as if I had not heard it before—I am ill with anger. But I do not feel their personal rage. Is this beca
use Emory is fighting on the Rebel side, not because he believes in slavery or States’ Rights, but out of duty to his homeland? The same duty that moved Charles to fight? Or is it only because no lover, no husband, no brother of mine has been killed … That I know of? Yet? Whatever the reason, coming down the church steps, Charles’s mother, and sisters, and Deborah looked at me as if they suspected I had myself loaded Emory’s gun, to personally shoot the young man we all so loved.
LATER. EVENING
After bringing in wood, helping Mother take down the stiff-frozen laundry, and as you see by my writing I have burnt my finger in the stove again. Oliver, Isaiah, and Uncle Mordacai’s hired man are tapping the maples tomorrow—we begin to boil the sap for sugar. I do little enough these days, being slow and clumsy now, and it irks me, to tire so easily. The world is a sodden morass of muddy snow that freezes hard each night, weakens to slush only for an hour mid-day. I dreamed last night about egg-custard, which I have not tasted in six months.
THURSDAY, APRIL 3
Sugared all day yesterday, and again this morning. Icicles as long as my arm bar the eaves. Snow patches only in the woods, inviting Oliver most reprehensibly to smack me with a snowball! I responded in kind—far beneath the dignity of people who shall both be parents one day soon!
Elinor visited this afternoon, to help sugar off. Elinor has borne two children, has walked the path on which my feet are irrevocably set, and has passed through that gate of pain that I myself face in less than ninety days. Peggie, looking to her own confinement only weeks beyond my own, will talk of nothing, as she and I sew in the evenings, but of how two of her aunts died in childbed, one of them in lingering agony which she does not hesitate to describe repeatedly and at length. To this, Mother invariably contributes, “If it is God’s will that you give your life bringing forth a child into this world, remember that it was so ordained since the beginning of Time.”
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