First Girl Scout

by Ginger Wadsworth

  She spent several terms at the Virginia Female Institute (now called Stuart Hall School) and then went on to attend another boarding school, Edgehill, near Charlottesville, Virginia, followed by Miss Emmet's School in Morristown, New Jersey. Like most well-to-do young women of the time, she studied history, English literature, mathematics, natural sciences, Latin, and modern languages. Daisy and her classmates also had moral science classes, where they learned values such as the importance of not lying and how to be respectful toward adults.

  This 1873 advertisement is for one of the boarding schools Daisy attended. It was located in the mountains about five miles from the city of Charlottesville on the Edgehill (sometimes written as Edge Hill) plantation owned by the Randolphs, descendants of Thomas Jefferson. Virginia Historical Society. Used by permission from the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia.

  Daisy also continued studying art, took horseback riding lessons, and tried ice-skating in the winter. Over the years, she developed an interest in literature and a special fondness for the work of English poets, novelists, and playwrights, including Shakespeare. Her own poetry and prose grew more elegant, though her unpredictable spelling never changed. History, particularly British history, also caught her attention.

  While she was away, Daisy received many letters from her parents, especially Mamma, who tried to micromanage her unorganized daughter from Savannah. It seldom worked! Dealing with money was always a challenge for Daisy, and often, the sparks flew between mother and daughter. In one letter to Mamma, she wrote, "Please, don't try to manage everything within ten thousand miles of you!" But despite these disagreements, Daisy, like all school boarders, loved getting a box from home filled with candy, cookies, and other treasures.

  When Daisy was sixteen, she and Alice spent Christmas in Washington, D.C., with their great-uncle David Hunter and his family. Papa rarely granted his daughters permission to take such trips, so it was a great treat for the sisters. Daisy made all her Christmas presents, including a crayon drawing of a dog, and she stitched a blue fascinator, which was a kind of headpiece with ribbons, bows, and feathers, for a cousin. She wrote home about going to grown-up parties and about meeting cadets from the United States Military Academy at West Point, as well as students from Princeton and Harvard. "I wore my white French muslin overskirt and waist over a black velvit skirt, pink ribbins and my pink roman sash. We had everything good to eat and I ate all day." The friendships Daisy formed with her cousins during the visit would last her entire life.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  At the Cliffs

  THROUGHOUT DAISY'S CHILDHOOD, the Gordon family would often head "up-the-country," to Etowah Cliffs in the northern part of Georgia, where her Aunt Eliza and Uncle Henry lived. With them went lots and lots of trunks, a governess, and several servants. Eliza and Henry Stiles owned a large house that had been built above the gray cliffs that rose up from the Etowah River. There were long porches called piazzas that faced the water and the sandbars beyond. Behind the house were rose gardens, orchards, and miles and miles of tall pine trees—perfect spots to play and hide. Cartersville, the nearest town, was seven miles away. The surrounding sandy roads were the color of red Georgia soil, and wildflowers bloomed everywhere.

  There were several adjoining family properties, so as many as twenty cousins gathered each summer, often with their mothers while some of the fathers stayed behind in hot, muggy Savannah to work.

  Daisy loved staying at the Cliffs. There was so much to do!

  Daisy cherished her summer stays with her relatives at this big rambling house along the Etowah River in northern Georgia. Girl Scouts of the USA-JGLB

  The boys had goats that pulled a little cart around the property. Sometimes the girls and boys played together. They might reenact the Civil War, but always with the Confederate army defeating the Yankees. Once, the boys decided Daisy would pretend to be a Yankee spy. They tied her up and stuffed her into a hole in an oak tree. A cousin recalled that Daisy was so small, "only the tip of her sharp little nose could be seen as she tried to peer out from her uncomfortable prison ... [and] at last her prison-keepers relented and hauled her out."

  When the girls tired of playing with the boys, they opened what they called their "circus trunk," which was "filled with a collection of old finery." It was fun to play dress-up, especially on a rainy day.

  Their governess taught them in a little schoolhouse under the walnut trees. The children read books with titles like The History of Sanford and Merton and Rollo Learning to Read that had morals at the end. When she felt rebellious, Daisy would write something silly during their lessons, like this opening stanza from a poem called "The Piggy" that she penned when she was eight or nine years old:

  I was passing by a pig-sty

  When I heard a piggy say,

  "I would like to live in rubbish,

  Forever and a day."

  As she grew older, though, Daisy seemed to appreciate her summer schooling. When she was thirteen, she wrote in a letter to her mother, who had remained in Savannah,

  Dear [Mamma],

  We have such a nice time up here.... We have school till eleven o'clock in the morning and from half past three till half past four in the evening. I like the new governess pretty well (but she blew her nose on her dress one day and so she is not so nice as she was at first, don't tell any body that she did but she truly did).

  Another favorite pastime at the Cliffs was making taffy from corn syrup, sugar, butter, and molasses. Once the sweet brew had boiled, the cousins let it cool. Then, after coating their hands with butter, they pulled and pulled the taffy into long strands. One time, Daisy let a cousin braid some taffy strands into her hair. The candy hardened and stuck. The only solution was to cut it out!

  Daisy liked making paper dolls with her cousin Caroline Stiles. Drawn by Caroline and painted by Daisy, the dolls, which the entire family enjoyed, were copied from a children's magazine. In the years to come, Daisy's and Caroline's little sisters played with them at the Cliffs too.

  Left: This page is from the January 1875 issue of St. Nicholas, a popular children's magazine. Louisa May Alcott's story Eight Cousins was serialized in the magazine and became a constant source of inspiration for the cousins' summertime play. University of Florida Digital Collection

  Right: On rainy days, Daisy and Caroline made paper dolls, including this one, based on a character in Eight Cousins. Girl Scouts of the USA-JGLB

  On hot days, the cousins cooled off in the Etowah River. There were sandbars for the smallest children to play on, and farther out, the water was deep enough for swimming. As they waded through the shallows to get there, the older children would often sing loudly.

  Each year, Daisy's swimming improved, and over time all the outdoor exercise helped make her less frail. She liked to climb the cliffs beside the river and scale the highest point, Termination Rock, where she could sit and dream up poems or watch birds skim over the water. The children also frequented a site they called the Castle of Redclyffe. Caroline Stiles wrote that the spot "had ledges at various heights for rooms, natural stairways, even a beautiful little tower overlooking the water."

  The cousins acted out The Heir of Redclyffe, an 1853 novel by Charlotte Yonge, there. Daisy played the main character, Sir Guy Morville, who fell in love with the beautiful Amy but died tragically of a fever at the end of the book. Caroline recalled that everyone "adored acting, with Daisy by far the most gifted among us. She recited well, was a born mimic, and a perfect actress."

  The idea to create a literary magazine probably came on a rainy afternoon on one of the big covered porches. Of course, Daisy dove right into this new project. She provided the drawings and even some of her poetry. And with her cousins, she wrote plays, too.

  Their drama productions, which were usually held inside Aunt Eliza and Uncle Henry's house, grew more and more elaborate. They put up a sheet to partition off a changing room, where they quickly donned their costumes, all made from items like scarves, veils, and ha
ts found in the big house or taken from the circus trunk.

  Daisy's favorite role was Mary, Queen of Scots, which she played in front of a large audience of family members. Using a fake head, the "executioner" beheaded the queen and poured pokeberry juice "blood" all over a white sheet that hid Daisy's real head. It took days to wash the red juice from her hair.

  Daisy ended one letter from the Cliffs with a self-portrait and a hand-drawn kiss for everyone at home: Papa, Mamma, Mabel, and Arthur. Georgia Historical Society

  When she was about fourteen, Daisy had her first grown-up visitors at the Cliffs, two West Point cadets. Daisy was in a tree, engrossed in reading Uncle Silas, a suspense story by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, when they arrived. She was called back to the house to change into a dress, and her bobbed brown hair was slicked down. As she was ushered into the drawing room, Daisy turned speechless and shy in front of the two young men, and the meeting was disappointing. She later asked her brother Bill if she looked ugly. "Sister, you looked so nice that none of us recognized you," he replied.

  One year when she was back home in Savannah, Daisy founded her first club with her cousins and friends. It was called Helpful Hands, and according to Daisy, "its object was to help others." The members decided to sew clothing for needy children, and they picked a local Italian family who ran a fruit stand. They noticed that the children's clothes were nearly threadbare.

  Daisy as a young teenager. Girl Scouts of the USA-JGLB

  Nell later observed that her sister Daisy "did not know how to sew herself!" But that didn't stop her. As Daisy recalled, "Our first job was to make garments.... I arranged to give the club instructions in sewing, and collected the members in a circle about me, each one facing me. By mischance I forced them all to thread their needles with their left hands! So we got the name of 'Helpless Hands.'"

  The clothes fell apart almost immediately, and the Italian children did not like or wear their new shirts. Still, Daisy recalled how she and the other members "had great fun in [their] club, but it was broken up in the summer of 1876 when the yellow fever epidemic came to Savannah." In fact, later that summer, one member of the Helpful Hands died of the fever; so did one of the Italian children.

  Epidemics like yellow fever and malaria often struck Savannah during the hot, oppressive summers. Daisy and her siblings were not allowed to go out in the heat of the day or into the sun without a hat, for fear that they would become ill. Windows stayed closed after dark. Such epidemics were one reason the Gordons and many other well-to-do families fled the city during the summer months. They believed that it wasn't safe to return home until after the first fall frost.

  In the late 1800s, no one knew how yellow fever was transmitted. This advertisement for a preventative pill was published in an 1880 edition of the National Republican newspaper. In fact, a vaccine to prevent the disease wasn't developed until 1937, and there is no cure. Library of Congress

  Yellow fever often struck quickly and violently. Patients turned yellowish in color and had a deadly black vomit and a strong odor. No one realized then that yellow fever came from disease-carrying mosquitoes that lived and bred in the surrounding swamps.

  In 1876, the disease began to spread throughout Savannah, and Daisy's father decided to stay and help others. He ordered Mamma to take the children to Etowah Cliffs for the summer. And he wrote his will, in case he too caught the yellow fever and died.

  The city was divided into districts, and Papa was in charge of one of the largest. After breakfast each morning, he took a quinine pill and a drink of whiskey, a combination that was believed to protect against the illness. Then he set out to help the sick. He called doctors, arranged for food delivery, and visited hospitals. Mamma left her children at the Cliffs under the care of Daisy's Aunt Eliza and nursed friends and families in the nearby Georgia community of Guyton. Mamma had lost a brother, Frank, during Chicago's cholera epidemic of 1850–51 and had firsthand knowledge of how deadly such diseases could be.

  It was a long, steamy summer, typical for Savannah and the surrounding areas. Daisy's parents tended to neighbors, servants, friends, and even strangers. Many of them died. By the end of each long day, Willie and Nellie were both exhausted, but luckily, neither one of them came down with the fever.

  Meanwhile, Daisy enjoyed another summer at the Cliffs. As an adult, she would return frequently to reminisce about her carefree days spent with her beloved siblings and cousins. Her experiences there—swimming, being outdoors, climbing trees and cliffs, watching birds, gathering wildflowers, writing plays, acting, telling stories, and much more—would strongly influence her life and always stay with her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Finishing School

  AS EACH SUMMER at the Cliffs drew to an end, Daisy had mixed feelings about returning to Savannah and preparing for the start of school. Trading her relaxed outdoor life for the rigid rules of boarding school was challenging. Being so far away from Mamma and Papa and the rest of the family was also hard. But she liked making new friends, reuniting with old ones, and studying art.

  Each fall, Mamma flew into action, ordering the servants to air the trunks and to begin to mend, wash, and press her children's clothes. Before long, Daisy would head down to the train station and return to school.

  Instead of going to college, the four Gordon sisters, starting with Nell, would attend a finishing school that was designed to prepare them to be proper young women and wives. Their parents selected Mesdemoiselles Charbonnier's French Protestant Boarding and Day School for Young Ladies in the heart of New York City on East Thirty-sixth Street. All the students studied and spoke in French. Two French sisters, Fannie and Mathilde Charbonnier, ran the school, which was nicknamed "the Charbs" by the young women who attended it.

  The Gordon children in 1876 (from left to right): Mabel, Nell, Daisy, Arthur, Bill, and Alice. Girl Scouts of the USA-JGLB

  They dressed like French girls, wearing black aprons over their dresses. By the time they graduated, Daisy and her sisters would be fluent in French, literature, grammar, history, and other academic subjects. In addition, they would be well versed in the proper behavior expected of them as they moved into society as single young women.

  Daisy and her classmates faced a strict routine. They rose at six in the morning to dress and put their rooms in order. Then they were supposed to study before breakfast, between seven and eight. But Daisy couldn't concentrate; she was always hungry. Admitting that she was also homesick, she wrote, "You don't know how I love you, my dear little Mother! Neither did I until you left me."

  Mornings were filled with classes. Daisy couldn't wait for the afternoons, when she could study art. There, she excelled at everything she tried, from drawing with pencil, chalk, or crayon to painting with watercolors. She even painted animals and delicate flowers on dinner plates and teacups.

  Dinner was at five thirty. Afterward, the girls studied together in silence in a hall until bedtime. But despite the Charbs' strict schedule, Daisy made many lifelong friends. And she managed to enjoy herself. Whenever a package came, the girls sneaked into the school's only bathroom after the Charbonnier sisters were asleep to giggle and share homemade cookies and candy from home.

  Daisy's friend Abby Lippitt Hunter later recalled, "There were no games at our school, nor did our teachers think we needed them." Once, she and Daisy and some other girls rushed out into a winter storm to play and throw snowballs at one another. The punishment, staying inside for three entire days, was worth it!

  For exercise, their two teachers marched the girls along Madison Avenue in pairs, often en route to Mr. Dodsworth's dancing school at the corner of Twenty-sixth Street and Fifth Avenue. During these walks, they stared at handsome young men and received admiring looks in return. Daisy and her friends also peered into fancy store windows filled with the latest fashions. What she saw inspired her to sketch ideas for hats and gowns during classes and on the edges of letters home.

  At Mr. Dodsworth's, Daisy learned the minuet, the Germ
an, and the court quadrille. But the school provided more than just dance classes. She also learned to enter a ballroom gracefully, to curtsy, and to sit properly—all skills she would use later in life, much to her surprise.

  By 1880, Mamma and Papa had moved back into the big house in Savannah and again shared it with Grandmother Gordon. They stayed in touch with their children who were at boarding school by writing frequently, and they expected to hear back on a regular basis. Daisy wrote letters home in French to Arthur and Mabel, who had a French governess. No one was surprised to see that Daisy could not spell any better in French than in English. Yet she somehow managed to win first place for dictation, listening to her teacher speak in French and writing down everything she said, with no spelling errors. Sometimes, Arthur and Mabel's beloved and fun-loving big sister Crazy Daisy baffled them!

  From an early age, Daisy liked to design her own clothes. She sent sketches to Mamma, with guidelines on how the dress should fit and how many yards of material it would take. Girl Scouts of the USA-JGLB

  When Daisy became one of the older students, she was allowed to leave the Charbs on the weekends to visit cousins or attend the theater or opera, but only with a chaperone. Eventually Daisy earned the daily privilege of leaving school on her own to study oil painting with a famous artist at his studio. Walking back to school one afternoon, she ran into a childhood friend from Savannah, and he walked with her the rest of the way. Daisy said goodbye to him and rushed inside to report herself. Unfortunately, being alone with an unapproved escort, especially a young man, was against the rules. As her friend Abby recalled, "Boys were equally unwelcome either as callers or as escorts."