She put on her warm cotton bathrobe over a flannel nightgown and was brushing her hair in the dresser mirror when she heard the teakettle whistling through the empty house. Hurrying downstairs, she stepped around the puddles in the hallway, making a mental note to wipe them up as soon as she had something to eat. The nausea had gone, and she knew she needed something in her stomach to keep that pounding headache from coming back.
Suddenly she spied her pillbox hat. It was leaning against the far wall where she had flung it. As she picked it up to hang it on the nearby coatrack, the face of Barry Slavin flashed before her. She stood there frozen, her jaws clenched. Then, telling herself she didn’t have to deal with this anymore tonight, she turned and headed down the hall.
The wind was whipping the rain against the kitchen windows. Lois sat at the white cast-iron table bobbing the tea bag in her cup and staring down at the vegetable sandwich she had thrown together on whole wheat bread. If only Mother were here now, she thought. How much time there would be just to talk, to get things out, to listen to her pearls of wisdom cultured from years of experience and a deep faith in her God. Matilda Burnham was a kind, loving soul who had great and usually very practical insight. It was she who told her daughter that Bill was sick, that his craving for drink was the devil’s curse, and that God Himself must find a way to shake it from him. But in the meantime, if Lois truly loved her husband, she must do everything in her power to help him, to pray for him, to encourage him to seek the Lord.
Lois believed Bill truly loved her mother. At least he always said so and showed her great respect and consideration when he was sober. But then why wasn’t he there when she died? Why wasn’t he there for her funeral? Why didn’t he express much deeper regret and remorse four days later when Lois bailed him out of the drunk tank once again? She knew what her mother would have said. A man who does this kind of terrible thing to a wife and family he loves has to be a very sick man who needs a great deal of love and help himself.
But how far must one go? How far do you let a man drag you down, force you to wallow in the muck he brings home? Did her mother really understand what she had gone through? What she was still going through?3 Her father, on the other hand, would just as soon have Lois leave Bill. “You can’t help this man anymore,” he would half-shout at her each time Bill roared off on another spree. And now here they were, living with Dr. Burnham in his home, Lois witnessing the pain and confusion in her father’s eyes each time she returned from work, fearful of what the night would bring. And here was Dr. Burnham, with no idea how to comfort his own dear daughter.
Their only conversation topic now was his forthcoming wedding to a lady he had known and was seeing on occasion even while Matilda lay dying. This had upset Lois greatly, but how does the pot call the kettle black when the pot has no answers for herself and is currently sponging off the kettle? Soon, however, Dr. Burnham and his wife-to-be would be moving into their own place, and at least that source of household tension would come to an end. But then who would help her, she thought, when Bill made another of his feeble attempts to stop drinking on his own and began to shake and sweat? Who would inject him, as her father frequently did, with a strong sedative or give him a dose of that horrible smelling paraldehyde to calm his tremors?4
Then again, maybe she was worried for absolutely no reason. The way things were going, Lois felt almost certain she would get a call one night and learn that Bill had been found dead in the streets, hit by a car, beaten to death, or dead from an overdose of liquor. Such tragedies were in the newspapers every day. Every single day. She grabbed her forehead and wished her mind would stop racing like this.5 Lois glanced at the kitchen clock. It was almost quarter to eight. Perhaps she’d take a hot bath and then start that new Somerset Maugham novel that had been on her night table for weeks. Her bones actually ached when she cleaned the few dishes at the sink and put them back in the cupboard. She turned off the kitchen light, left the one on in the foyer, and went back upstairs to fill the tub.
It was well past midnight when Lois came to with a start. A loud noise from downstairs had awakened her. The bedside lamp was still on, and the novel she had been reading lay across her chest. She sat up and listened. Then she heard another noise, like something being pushed across a carpet, followed by those familiar grunts and groans and loud curse words. She didn’t have to hear anything more to know that her husband had finally arrived home, and in his usual condition.
Lois slipped out of bed, put her bathrobe back on, and walked slowly down the stairs to the entrance hall. Bill was lying halfway into the parlor. He had knocked over a lamp table, broken the shade and bulb, and was reaching for a nearby chair to pull himself erect. The trouble was, each time he clutched at it, he pushed the chair further away. His “goddams” and “Jesus Christs” were getting louder as his frustration grew. Lois switched on the hallway light to see better. What she saw was nothing worse than usual, but the brighter light stunned her husband momentarily and made him fall back down on his side.
He looked up at her. Bill, too, was soaking wet. There was a cut and several scrapes on his face, his nose was running, and saliva drooled from his mouth, across his chin. That terrible stench of cheap booze filled her nostrils. Suddenly she watched as her husband reached his arm up toward her, smiled that stupid drunken smile, and mumbled in a hoarse whisper: “There’s my lady. She’s always there. Come on, Pal. Give your boy a big kiss.”
The shame and revulsion from the incident at the pharmacy, the pounding headache she had suffered all day long, the ever-present pain of losing her mother, and now looking down and seeing the Bowery being dragged into her home once again—it all seemed to strike her at once. She couldn’t hold back. Lois later recalled slumping to her knees, leaning over her husband, and pounding him on the chest and arms, lightly at first, then harder and harder. She grew hysterical, saying, “I lie for you. I cover up for you. I can’t even look my own father in the face because of you. Every time you get drunk, I’m the one who feels guilty. Like it’s my fault. Because I couldn’t have children. That I’m not a good enough wife. But it’s not my fault! It’s not my fault! You can go to your bootleggers, your speakeasies. Where can I go? Tell me! Where can I go?”
The next thing she recalled saying haunted her for some time after that. In fact, Lois said, it haunted her right up until the day Bill finally found sobriety in Towns Hospital and began to get well.
“I thought tonight,” she recalled shouting through her tears, “that maybe I would never see you again. But you don’t even have the decency to die.”6
2
How It All Began
IT WAS A LITTLE PAST EIGHT O’CLOCK THAT CRISP OCTOBER MORNING in 1897 when the black brougham, an enclosed horse-drawn carriage from Pratt Institute’s new kindergarten school, pulled up in front of Dr. Clark Burnham’s spacious brownstone on Clinton Street in the well-to-do section of Brooklyn Heights, New York. The home’s impressive scalloped-glass front door opened, and out onto the porch stepped the good doctor’s housekeeper, Maggie Fay. She had a prettily dressed little girl in hand. As Maggie started to help her down the wide cement steps, the girl shook her tiny hand loose and climbed down the rest of the way by herself. The carriage driver assisted her into the coach already filled with a half dozen other boys and girls her age, all from “special” families like the Burnhams.
Watching the brougham drive off, the housekeeper smiled and shook her head, for she knew that even at “almost six,” the charming, tawny-haired Lois Burnham loved to feel older and somewhat independent, perhaps the result of already becoming “Mommy’s little helper.” For when Maggie was busy or off somewhere else, Lois was both pleased and proud to help her mother care for her younger brother, Rogers, and her newborn baby sister, Barbara.
Not only that, here she was one of the first children in her neighborhood to attend kindergarten, a new type of preschool education recently import
ed from Germany by the forward-thinking faculty at New York’s well-known Pratt Institute.
As the carriage bounced slowly down the bumpy street, one of the young boys stuck his head out the window. His hand accidentally leaned against the door handle. Suddenly the door flew open and the boy fell out into the road, injuring his arm and cutting his head open. The driver leapt down, tied his handkerchief around the youngster’s head, put him back inside next to Lois, and raced off for medical assistance. Lois never forgot that incident mainly because, as she shared it with others later on, “I remember feeling very grown-up mothering him as we drove to the hospital.”1 Perhaps that’s why the boy recovered so quickly, she would laughingly add.
While it remained a vivid childhood memory, it certainly was a sign that Lois Wilson’s loving and caring instincts and even perhaps her “need to nurture” began at a very early age. For as she grew in beauty and grace, and as the eldest of what were soon to be six siblings, it was simply understood that she was to mete out an extra measure of caretaking and responsibility. This further instilled in her, as she often said, the belief that her will and loving influence could change most things in her life for the better, including people themselves.
This strong will and self-confidence was quite obviously inherited from her father. Practically everyone who came to know Clark Burnham well described him as one of the most determined, disciplined, and courageous persons they had ever encountered. He stood only five feet eight, but his strong, chiseled countenance, his forceful personality, and his almost strut-like bearing gave the impression of a man of much larger stature.
Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Clark was in the middle of ten children. His father, Nathan Clark Burnham, practiced both law and medicine and was also a minister of the Swedenborgian Church, which had only recently planted its roots in America. It preached finding a wise balance between the spiritual and the natural life, and some of its more famous members would be Helen Keller and Robert Frost.
Perhaps Clark’s initial interest in medicine, aside from his father’s strong example, came when he tried to save his younger brother Charley’s life one day. Unbeknownst to Clark, the always-fractious sibling had found two sticks of phosphorus on their way home from school and put them in his pants pocket. When his older brother challenged him to their usual race across the neighbor’s meadow, Charley apparently had it in mind to win this time. He ran so hard that the friction ignited the phosphorus and set the boy’s clothes on fire. Shouting for his father, Clark rolled his brother over and over in the grass, trying at the same time to pull off his burning pants and heavy jacket. Their father did all he could, but Charley died of his burns a few days later.
Not in his wildest imagination could Clark Burnham ever conceive that some day he’d find himself in the very same situation—only this time with one of his own little daughters.
After recovering from his loss and the guilty sense that if he hadn’t raced Charley that day it never would have happened, the young man soon regained his “zest for life,” as Lois always called it.2 It began to take him down many paths, prodding him to explore many aspects of life, until once again he found himself considering a career in medicine. He soon came to realize the field of medicine offered him the opportunity to accomplish the three primary goals he had set for himself: to be challenged mentally and physically, to be of meaningful help to the world, and to achieve significant material success. In the ensuing years, Clark Burnham managed to accomplish all of these goals.3
Is it any wonder, then, why he later could not fathom a child of his—especially his oldest and dearest—allowing herself to be dragged down into such squalor and degradation after growing up in a house and in a world of such splendor? It was simply the antithesis of every virtue, of every desire, of every decent human emotion he had tried to instill in Lois. And, as in many families affected by the disease of alcoholism, his failure to change her way of life—he had long since given up on his drunken son-in-law—drove him to confusion, anger, and despair.
Upon graduating with honors from Franklin and Marshall College, Clark entered the Hahnemann School of Medicine in Philadelphia. During his last year of study, he visited an uncle and “benefactor” who owned a dry goods store in the Prospect Park section of Brooklyn, a bustling blue-collar neighborhood. Because of his dealings, the uncle knew and was close to many people in the area. He casually suggested this could be an excellent place for a young doctor to start a practice.
At that time, the sparsely settled region of Brooklyn was composed of a series of small towns and communities that were rapidly being annexed and merged into the already established and growing “City of Brooklyn,” where Prospect Park was located.
Originally settled in 1636 by Dutch farmers who found the burgh of New Amsterdam across the river—later New York City—unsuited to their rural way of life, the area soon began to sprout farmlands along Gowanus Bay, Jamaica Bay, and in the rich soil of the Flatlands. By 1645, the settlements were joined together into a township called Breuckelen, meaning “marshlands” and echoing the name of the low-lying district the settlers had emigrated from back in Breuckelen, Holland.
As more settlers came and the region began to grow, more towns sprang up—New Utrecht, Midwood, Flatbush, Bushwick, Gowanus, New Lots, Williamsburg, Prospect Park, Gravesend, and the Heights. By 1646, ferry systems were established across the East River, which spurred development and trade throughout Breuckelen. Over the years, the name of the region evolved into a number of forms, from Breuckelen to Breuckeleen to Brookline to Brucklyn. By the close of the eighteenth century, the commonly accepted name was Brooklyn.
By 1884, when Clark Burnham was ready to begin his medical practice as a specialist in gynecology, the population of Brooklyn, which had now become a city, was about 130,000. Fifteen years later, on January 1, 1898, when the city of Brooklyn officially became a borough of New York City, the population had grown to over 200,000 and was a vibrant and flourishing community.
After passing his medical boards in surgery and gynecology, Clark took his uncle’s suggestion and headed back to Brooklyn. With some additional help from his benefactor, he rented a furnished room, bought an old saddle horse for house calls, and was in business.
While word spread that a fine young doctor had moved into the neighborhood, many in the area couldn’t afford professional medical care, and those who could were not able to pay very much. So it wasn’t long before Clark realized he had settled in the wrong part of Brooklyn. He should be in “the Heights,” as people called the upscale section of Brooklyn Heights that bordered on the East River and overlooked the growing financial district of lower Manhattan.
It wasn’t that he had no empathy for the hoi polloi, but they had their charity clinics and their midwives. Besides, paying patients required his services just as much—and of course he would always make himself available to anyone who needed him. That was his oath, one the record shows he kept.
So, much to the dismay of his uncle, the goal-oriented physician packed up his few things and moved a few miles away to charm a wealthier clientele. Clark Burnham soon found he fit in quite well with the movers and shakers and the elite of Brooklyn Heights society.
Before long he was able to trade in his old saddle horse for a brand-new fringe-topped horse and carriage. As his practice grew, so did his social life. The gentlemen invited him to their clubs, and the ladies invited him to their parties. In fact, that’s how he met his bride-to-be, one Matilda Hoyt Spelman, when he was invited to her coming-out party.
He happened to be tending a sick patient in the neighborhood that evening, so he had his medical case with him when he arrived at the Spelmans’. He thought he’d just leave it with his hat and coat, as Lois would later tell the story, always laughing heartily at her father’s embarrassing predicament. Upon entering the house with his bag in hand, Dr. Burnham was mistaken for one of the musicians. He was immediat
ely directed upstairs to wait with the rest of the small orchestra until it was time for dancing. Matilda happened to be leaving her room nearby when she spied the young physician trying to catch the attention of one of the servants. She recognized him because she had once accompanied her mother to his office, and he apparently had made a strong impression on her. She rescued Clark from the confusion, and they were formally introduced by her father when they arrived downstairs for the party. A week later they were courting.
The oldest of four children and some seven years younger than her handsome escort, Matilda Spelman was both attractive and adventurous. She, like her also-adventurous beau, had watched the completion and dedication of the famous Brooklyn Bridge in 1883, just three years before they met. The bridge was a mighty and impressive span of 1,595 feet that crossed the river from the Heights to downtown Manhattan. Its huge cables and support towers were designed by the renowned bridge architect John A. Roebling and built by his son Washington Roebling over a fifteen-year period.
During their courtship, Clark loved to take Matilda hiking across the bridge whenever he had the time. There was no heavy vehicular traffic back then, although it was soon to come. One day as they were walking, Matilda stopped in the middle of the bridge and confessed that she had done a very foolish thing just before the structure was finished. She pointed to the sixteen-inch-wide walkway atop the steel encasements containing giant support cables that ran all the way up to the huge stone towers above—and back down the other side. According to Lois, her mother admitted to accepting a challenge from some friends and climbed up the cable walk to the towers and down the other side. She said with tongue in cheek that it was a very precarious way to get to Manhattan, even though quite exhilarating. Clark made her promise never to do such a dangerous thing again. She promised. Then he hugged her and admitted how much he admired her spunk.
The Lois Wilson Story Page 3