by Rachel May
And yet, also connected to cloth production, even as these parlors were developed, lower class “mill girls” occupied the textile mills in Lowell, in the midst of these middle-class women.
In encouraging women to stay at home, the cult was resisting the new industrial world, or positioning women as a bulwark against it. Meanwhile, that world was beckoning women to enter it, including some of the very ones the cult addressed. As their traditional work of spinning and weaving was transferred to the factories, young women who were being deprived of that work in the home yet who remained skilled in it followed it into the new mills, where they became the first industrial workers.
While the first mill girls were the (often educated) daughters of New England farmers, they soon ceded their role to immigrants—“French-Canadian and Irish immigrant women, men and children . . . Factory work had become exploited work, and native-born white women avoided it.” Even as the demographics in the mills changed, the cult of domesticity went on, until the early twentieth century.
This is the just-burgeoning New England that Susan left to join Hasell in Charleston, entering a world of strangers who seemed reluctant to accept her. She’d embroider and quilt her way into the “cult of domesticity” as a young wife and mother. However, she’d leave Charleston sooner than she expected and would have to support herself after all, as her brother had cautioned her to prepare herself to do by finishing high school. She’d come to know the fate of women who rejected modesty, though she had done everything to conform to a patriarchal society’s rules. The tragedy that befell her family would come to change the lives of Eliza, Minerva, and Juba and their children, too.
5
Medicine & Its Failures
Charleston, Dec 10, 1835
. . . I wish you could see little Hasell. He is as full of mischief as he can live. It is almost impossible to do anything where [he] is. He is quite fat, eats apples all day. . . . [Little] Hasell was very much pleased with the mug and plate. He is so full of mischief I can hardly write. I wish you could have him for a short time to pull about the things. He is more mischievous than Harriet ever was. I cannot keep anything in its place two minutes for him.
Did Sarah Cady go with the Capt.? Have you ever heard anything of Mrs. Cook? Capt Cook left her in Liverpool last winter. I must stop as it is time to send this. . . .
Susan
Imagine life before insulation, before plumbing, before indoor toilets, before vacuum cleaners and pesticides that instantly kill ants, fleas, termites, ticks, and spiders. Before sealants to keep out snakes and mice and rats. It’s the hot South, on a one-hundred-degree day. There are thermometers, but no washers and dryers. Nor deodorant nor toothpaste. No tampons, no showers, no easy bath for a child. Water is hauled from the well. In the winter cold, it is heated on the fire before a washtub-bath that leaves the shoulders exposed. One can only hope that the fire is close and hot. When it is hot, there are no screens on windows to keep out the moths and flies and mosquitoes that carry malaria. This is before layers of weather-proof glass in winter. Eliza must have heard the wail and creak of wind coming through the cracks, whipping around the corner of the house. On a plantation or in a cabin in the yard or in the basement quarters, there is dirt on the floor, and in the dirt live worms that invade the skin. In the dirt in the garden that the white and black children run in, there are more worms. Was Minerva subjected to the constant itch of ringworm? Did her babies suffer from intestinal worms, the way Little Hasell did? Did anyone treat her baby, as they treated Little Hasell with pink root and coffee?
There are dishes washed in twice-used water, clothes washed in washbasins or the rivers. There are outhouses and, in the “lower” parts of the city, areas for defecation too close to the houses. This is where the sailors and free blacks live, along with enslaved blacks who live on their own and are rented out to employers, by their masters or of their own accord. Down near the water is where the yellow fever runs thick come those hot summer days. Sailors from other cities stay in Charleston and are frequently taken by the “Stranger’s fever” in the summertime. Susan writes, in 1836, during yellow fever’s rampant spread in the decade of the ’30s, that it was “confined almost entirely to the negroes and low white people.” The poor. The “bad” neighborhood. Those of higher rank were also, they thought, of higher moral standing. One couldn’t get the lowly diseases if one’s morals were right. Except there is that “almost entirely,” acknowledging, passively, that the diseases couldn’t be contained to the lower classes and to people of color; wealthy whites were susceptible, too.
Susan and her family were safe out on Sullivan’s Island, where the wealthy escaped in the summertime. Did Hasell and Charles go to the North in the summertime, to Newport, Rhode Island, as their father Abraham had with his mother and brother? One couldn’t leave Charleston for too long a spell or immunity to yellow fever would be lost, locals warned. Had Hasell been away from Charleston too long when he went north to study at Brown?
Charleston, May 7, 1836
Dear Sister,
Your letter of Apr 16 came duly to hand and the perusal of it afforded us much pleasure. I have kept your letter in my hat, ever since expecting to answer it by every mail but I have had so much business to attend to that I scarcely have a leisure moment and now . . . I am counting there is a person waiting for me to get out some lumber.
Hasell and Susan went down to the Island this 22 April. They have taken the same house that they had last season. It is one of the pleasantest on the Island. They were up to the City yesterday and spent the day with [sister-in-law] Eliza [Crouch]. They are all in very good health. Little Hasell and [his infant sister] “Emily Harris” are in fine health and very good children. [Little] Hasell does not begin to talk yet. He is very backward.
Hasell purchased a house on the Island a short time since. He paid $1000 for it and will rent it out this season at $175. I am not boarding at Mrs. Fells in Broad St. The same place that I staid at last summer.
By your letter you mention that Emily is to be married the first or second week of this month which is about this time now. I would not be surprised if this letter came to hand on the day she is married. We have had much speculation and “guessing” to find out the House you have moved to, but we cannot make it out. You say it is near the Arcade but do not mention the street it is on. There are many houses near the Arcade. We have some curiosity to know the street it is on. We were under the impression that you were to give up taking Boarders, but your saying that you have 8 in the family and also that Mr. Foster is with you that you take some still. Do mention who is in the family. Your house must look very well if we take the parlour as a sample. I should like very much to be at Emily’s wedding. I would help to plague [tease] her a little. We shall expect a big cake sent on to us. . . . Susan has so much sewing to do and her children take up all her time. . . . Lumber is very good . . .
—Hilton
In December, he was full of mischief. By May, he was “very backward” and didn’t yet talk, at two years and ten months. Why didn’t he speak yet? The shift from mischievous and lively to “backward” and quiet perplexed and plagued Susan and her husband.
Two weeks after Hilton sent this letter home, Little Hasell died, on the same day that Susan’s sister Emily was married to William Jenkins Harris, stepson of Moses Brown, the brother of the famous John Brown, trader of enslaved people. Moses was the slaver-turned-abolitionist, after his Quaker conversion in 1774.
In 1833, Hasell graduated from the medical college. He was thinking of buying a plantation outside the city and becoming a planter so that he could make a living with his crops if the practice was at first slow. There was a glut of doctors in Charleston in 1833, Hilton wrote, so Hasell needed something else to help him along in the beginning. The plantation he was thinking of buying was profitable, he said.
He didn’t buy it. Would he regret this forever after, in the days he mourned Little Hasell’s death? Would he wonder, as we often do in th
e wake of tragedy, what if—what if—what if—? Would he gaze at his own signature on the death certificate, and see his son seizing in his arms over and over and over again in his mind? Maybe, in the days after Little Hasell died, the doctor began to forget what was real and what was not—that his son was not still seizing, that he was not still in the midst of making choices for his son that would lead to his death.
Instead of buying that plantation, Hasell decided they’d go to Sullivan’s Island in the summer. It was just outside the city and reachable by small packet boats. It would be expensive to get a house there, but Hasell believed it would be worth it to get some practice. And, he thought, it would be good for the family, keeping them safe from the summer diseases. So often, they urged their siblings and parents in the North to come visit, for Sullivan’s Island was as safe as in the North. Sullivan’s Island it was. And so Little Hasell’s fate was sealed in the hindsight of his father. And so, also, were the fates of Susan, and Minerva and Eliza and Jimmy and Jane and a boy named George. I likely wouldn’t have learned that Jane and George lived in this household, owned by Susan and Hasell, unless this change had come to pass—unless Little Hasell had died.
Charleston 1st June 1836
. . . We have been anxiously expecting a letter from you for the last two weeks but have not received one as yet. I should not write at this time but that Susan requested me to let you know of the death of little Hasell. He died on Thursday last the 26th of dropsy on the brain produced by injury in his head. Last summer he fell off from the bed on the back of his head, and this last winter he fell from a new crib that Susan had made, and struck the back of his head again, and since which time he has not been well although we did not anticipate any serious results from it, yet it affected him very much. He was not as lively as formerly, slept a great deal, and was not inclined to play as he did previous to the fall. Hasell had other Physicians to see him but the disease was so masked that they could not say with certainty what was the matter with him.
I was at the Island on Sunday. He was unwell and Susan gave him some medicine but they did not think he was dangerous [that anything serious was wrong] until the morning he died. He was brought up to the City and buried on Friday. Susan and Hasell are very much affected by his death. They miss him very much. I think he was the best child I ever saw. He was always pleasant and good natured. He was 2 yrs 9 months and 16 days old. The baby is in good health. Susan wishes very much that you could come on and make her a visit. She is alone so much that I think if you can come it would be a good plan as it would be perfectly healthy on the Island and it is very lonesome for Susan. Hasell and Susan went back to the Island on Saturday. I spent Sunday with them. Hasell cannot get reconciled to the loss as he has taken all the care of him ever since this child has been born.
. . .
If you can come on now I think it would be a good plan to do so as Susan will be alone so very much. Mrs. Thorne will leave for New York on the 11th of this month. She is not certain that she will visit Providence as she goes in company with Mr. and Mrs. Green. I do not know that Eliza will accompany her.
Do let us hear from you soon. I had a letter from Winthrop a short time since. He was very well. In haste yours EHW [Hilton]
Give my love to all the family.
He seemed all right. He fell from the crib and bumped his head six months ago. Susan had a new crib made, to safeguard Little Hasell. Probably, she asked a local carpenter, maybe Jimmy who was enslaved by them. The crib was high, Prof W. said, higher than our cribs today, so he would have sustained quite an injury from a fall off the top of the crib. I imagine Jimmy sawing wood in the yard, body shifting with the motion of his arm. He hammers in nails, a whapping sound that startles Little Hasell when he’s outside with Minerva and Cecilia. When Little Hasell cries, Minerva lifts him into her arms, and takes Cecilia by the hand to go inside.
Then Little Hasell fell again, and Hasell sawed off the legs this time—probably in frustration, in anger, in a sense of disbelief that their child should have fallen twice and bumped his head twice; the doctor would have known this wasn’t good, did not bode well for their beloved child.
Prof W. consulted her doctor-brother, who confirmed that Little Hasell’s symptoms were consistent with those of a head injury—he stopped speaking, was not as active, slept all the time. These days, you’d be asked to wake a child every few hours and check his pupils. He’d be given a CAT scan and then, perhaps, an MRI, to find the splotches of blood that could threaten his life. He wouldn’t be permitted to sleep that much. He would be given medicine to help clear the clots. If it was necessary, he’d have surgery to reduce the swelling or release the pooling blood so it couldn’t kill the brain tissue.
I can see Susan and Hasell in their home, Little Hasell asleep upstairs, finally giving them a little peace—they don’t think much of it—they’re making a pot of tea, the task Susan commands as lady of the house, and she pours it for her tired husband into a simple white teacup sent by her parents. Hasell touches her back with a gentle hand, and she turns up to look him in the eye, half grateful half resentful. Where have you been? she wants to ask him. She doesn’t want to hear the answer. She’s heard from all the women in her company and knows too well what men do here in the South, with all the enslaved women at their mercy. Is that what he’s been doing? Does she doubt his faithfulness to her, though she knows he’s busy with his practice? She asks him about his practice. Who did he treat tonight? Will he look over the letter she’s written home? Hasell is learning me to write. These letters were her opportunity to practice, supplementing the education she received in those high school years she completed. The doctor traces his hands over her letters, correcting her grammar, advising an introductory clause here, a more formal phrase there. And all the while, baby Hasell sleeps upstairs in the crib whose legs Hasell sawed off after the last fall. Little Hasell sleeps, unaware of the blood seeping across his brain, the slow death coming to his body. Downstairs, Susan and the doctor talk while she finishes working on her hexagons. Eliza and Minerva settle into bed in the rooms beyond the kitchen, talking about the money they’ve tucked away from the market day the weekend before, talking about what a fuss Little Hasell was today. Minerva tells Cecilia a story, sings her a hymn while she falls asleep. There is a balm in Gilead. Maybe she sang those words to her daughter, or in church on Sundays or Thursdays, if she, like Bishroom, was allowed to attend the meetings. I see Eliza roll onto her side to face the wall, so that Minerva has a few moments alone with Cecilia—as alone as they can be in this shared space. I imagine Juba lying beside her children, her arm on Sorenzo’s arm as she falls asleep. And upstairs, in the crib, Baby Hasell sleeps, dying.
Wake him up! I want to scream as I read the letters. Wake the baby! Wake the baby! Little Hasell is dying! This is going to change all of your lives!
I holler back into time, or forward—which way does time go, if it’s always circling, overlapping, palimpsesting? It furls off the spool and piles on the floor, or maybe it falls in folds like silk ribbon. See how the silk shines under the light? See how the fibers are woven so tightly that their sheen is almost like gold?
From Susan and Hasell,
Moultrieville June 6, 1836
Dear Sister,
We are quite anxious about you all as it is so long since we have heard from you even if you have a great deal to attend to. I should think either you or Abby might find time to write us a few lines. I am fearful that some of you are sick. Emily I suppose is married before this. It is near two months since we have heard a word from you.
I suppose you will receive Hilton’s letter today announcing little Hasell’s death. It was very sudden indeed. Two hours before his death we did not think him dangerous. He had not been well for near three months but we thought it was worms that troubled him but since his death I have thought about it and recollect that he has not been well since he fell out of the crib the first night he slept in it. After the nurse left me, the crib was standi
ng by our bed. There was a window at the head of the crib. The curtain projected out from the window so that it touched the crib. He was sitting on the banister of the crib and as he leaned back against the window lost his balance and fell over the top of the crib. It was very high indeed. After that Hasell sawed a foot from the bottom so that it is now the same height of our bedstead. He had been very sleepy for a week before his death but he did not have the least fever until the morning before he died and that did not last long. For several hours before his death he was in a profuse perspiration. He did not appear to lose his senses to the last, for whenever we called him he would open his eyes. Every one that saw him said the child was not much sick as he had no fever. He would not eat anything at all for several days before he died. All he wanted was to lay and sleep all the time.
Dr. Deas saw him the day before he died twice and told Hasell that he was not much sick, only a slight irritation of the stomach.
—from Susan
from Hasell: He had no alarming symptoms but his sleeping so constantly and headache. We gave him considerable medicine, which seemed to relieve him but slightly. The morning of his death he was sitting in his crib [word missing]. And afterwards played with the baby [his sister Emily]—laughing and smiling upon her and us. He soon laid down to sleep again and never rose again. He was taken with convulsions in about an hour after and died about one o’clock. His convulsions were not severe, nor long continued. He did not appear to suffer except from the Blisters &c which we applied at that time. He seemed conscious until a short time before his death.