by Judy Alter
While he and Father talked, the President would sit in his rocker, with me on a stool beside him, and stroke my hair. Sometimes he would get so involved in what he was saying that he would twist my hair, hard, but I learned to squinch my eyes—he couldn't see my face—and bear it.
"Father," I asked one day as we walked the dirt streets of the city, heading home, "why is Mr. Jackson so sad?"
"His wife died, just before he was elected President," Father said, "and he's lonely. That's why he likes you to sit by him."
"I think he should come live at our house," I declared, swinging my parasol. "That old White House is cold." Even though it was a warm spring day, I shivered.
Papa chuckled. "Yes, it is cold," he said. "But you bring the sunshine into it. Maybe one day you'll live there."
"Yes," I said confidently, "I will." And it became a goal of mine.
Father often took me when he went to the Senate for its regular sessions. I would be deposited in the Congressional Library where the librarian, a Mr. Meehan, would bring one book after another for my delight. I was too young to read them, of course, but he always brought books with lovely illustrations, and I studied everything from the birds of Mr. Audubon to French engravings and reproductions of works from the Louvre. The French works were somehow my favorites, and it was a joke later that I was an unofficial member of the Senate's Library Purchasing Committee. They consulted me whenever they were considering a French work.
I loved growing up in Washington, though Liza always complained about dirt and smells—she would have, given her choice, lived at Cherry Grove, with Mother's family. And I, given my choice, would have remained free to wander the streets of Washington with Father, rather than be cooped up in a seminary.
* * *
For one who had been tutored at home with her sisters, one cousin, and one brother, Miss English's was a shock. There were nearly 150 pupils, if you counted the day students, who twice outnumbered the boarders. Unfortunately, I was to be a boarder.
"It will do you good, Jessie," Father said, "to be around other girls your age. You are too much with adults."
"I like adults," I protested.
There was no budging Father. "You might like the other girls, too."
I was to room with Liza, which was small comfort, since she instantly thought Miss English's the most wonderful place she had been in all her life and rushed about making friends with girls who giggled and talked a lot about how important their fathers were—this one was a senator and that one an ambassador and so it went. At least Liza could keep up on that score, for her father was the famous Senator Thomas Hart Benton from Missouri. I told her to repeat it often and loudly.
The studies were no problem for me—I was already fluent in Spanish, because Father worked with documents of Spanish explorers in the Southwest. If any subject gave me pause, it was mathematics—I never liked figures and never wanted to bother with them, a malady that would haunt me all my life. But mostly I found the studies boring—geography, for instance, dealt with the lands of Asia, which had no immediate meaning for me. I was thoroughly versed in the geography of the American West, and I knew why it was important. And I knew, from Father, the history of the major European countries and the British Isles—and what that history meant to us in America. I saw no sense in looking at maps and memorizing the location of countries and capital cities, if no one told me why they mattered.
In our free time—recess periods, they were called—we were to benefit from the outdoor air when the weather was at all cooperative. That meant that groups of girls stood around on the lawn surrounding the school, gathered into tight little knots of gossip and shrill laughter. I ignored them, preferring to walk rapidly around the perimeter of the lawn. Father's lessons on healthy living had not been lost on me.
Once in one of my walks I came upon a classmate sitting alone on a bench. Where I might have expected her to look lonely, she looked somehow content and self-contained. She was one of the prettiest girls in the school—I'd seen her before and noticed that she was taller than most of us. Her hair was very blond, and her light complexion matched it. But the thing that really made you look twice at Harriet Wilson was the look of laughter in her eyes. She enjoyed life.
"Why are you here?" I asked. "Don't you want to join the others?" My head nodded vaguely toward a group of five or six girls, with Liza at the center. They were busily engaged in talk, though frequently one could see a hand move to smooth a hairdo, adjust a sash. They were not indifferent to their appearance.
"Not really," said this girl, who was far prettier than the other hundred and more girls in the school. "I never feel really a part of things," she said.
Curiously, I asked, "Why ever not?"
"My father is not anybody important," she said. "He's a government clerk. It makes the teachers... and sometimes the girls... look at me differently." The words sounded as though she bore a stigma, but her voice was light with laughter. It didn't bother her terribly.
I laughed with her. "My father is a senator, but it doesn't mean that I'm any smarter... or as smart as you... in class."
She flashed me a smile. "That's not the point, at least not to Miss English. Your father is important. I know he is Senator Benton from Missouri. The teachers know it too—they are anxious to call on you."
I thought a minute. It was true that if my hand was raised, I was likely to be called upon, no matter how many other hands waved in the air. I had to admit I often raised my hand, just to relieve the boredom of the classroom.
"And they don't call on you?" I was curious, incredulous.
"Not very often," she said. "I'm here on charity... and there's not much of it here."
It was the beginning of a friendship, one that blossomed strangely enough in the branches of a mulberry tree outside my room. It was the only place where Harriet and I could go and talk with privacy, away from the prying eyes and sharply tuned ears of Liza and her gaggle of friends. We talked of our dreams, but they weren't dreams of the other girls—I spoke passionately of my father's work and my desire to be part of all that happened in government, my belief—absorbed from my father—that America's destiny lay westward.
"I have no such lofty ambitions." Harriet laughed, with a deep-toned laugh much more genuine than the high-pitched giggles of Liza and her friends. "I plan to marry a very rich man, make him happy... and thereby make myself happy."
I was scandalized. "You do?"
"Of course. Why not?"
"What if you don't fall in love with a rich man?"
"What is love?" she asked. "I will make myself love a rich man, but never a poor one."
I was so startled I nearly fell out of the tree.
We were discovered one night, very late, sitting up there, by Miss Fredericks—a flighty French teacher—who heard Harriet's laughter pealing down from the tree. Looking up from her window, she must have spotted my white muslin gown—it was late spring by then, and we wore the coolest nightclothes possible.
"It's a ghost!" Miss Fredericks shrieked, bringing three other teachers running to her bedroom window.
"It's no ghost," Miss James, the math teacher, said dryly. "It's two misbehaving girls, and we shall change their ways immediately."
It was the end of our sessions in the mulberry tree. Harriet and I were called before Miss English and strongly reprimanded, with a warning that we had neither one paid enough attention to our studies.
Miss English was a severe lady who took herself very seriously and dressed always in black, which matched her very black hair—I suspected she used some sort of dye on it to keep it from having any streak of gray, though she must have been forty at least. But there was never the hint of a smile about her face or, more telling, about her eyes, and she tended to peer at us as though she were nearsighted. Usually she used a lorgnette, which gave her a decidedly haughty appearance... and made me dislike her even more.
"If this situation continues," Miss English intoned, looking at us through the lo
rgnette, so solemn that I wanted to burst into laughter, "we shall have to inform your parents. You, Miss Wilson, are perilously close to being expelled."
"And me?" I asked. If Harriet was in trouble, why was I not in equal peril for the same offense?
"We would, of course, talk to the senator," Miss English said, firmly closing the discussion.
Later Harriet laughed, but I was indignant. "It would not be fair to expel Harriet and merely scold me," I said to Father later, having told him the whole story the first chance I got.
"But it hasn't happened, Jessie," he said. "Fight only the battles in front of you... don't look for new ones. And, Jessie, stay out of trees." His voice was stern, but his eyes danced.
"I can't believe you told him," Liza said. "Weren't you afraid?"
"Of what?" I asked scornfully. "I wanted Miss English to expel me!"
Liza gasped in horror.
* * *
The matter of the May Queen brought my discontent with Miss English—and my friendship with Harriet—to a head. Long before time for the election—every girl in the school voted—I began an impassioned campaign to win that honor for Harriet. She was, I reasoned, the prettiest girl in the school, and she should therefore be the queen. She was also, I was convinced, the friendliest and most pleasant.
It was not hard for me to convince the other girls to vote for Harriet. I was, after all, Senator Benton's daughter. I went from girl to girl in the school, using all the tact and cleverness I could muster to convince them that Harriet must be the Queen of the May.
"You really think Harriet ought to be the May Queen, Jessie?" asked Genevieve Appleby, a plain girl, with hair neither blond nor brown.
"Yes," I said firmly, "I really do. She's the prettiest girl in the school." With what I thought was great cleverness, I added, "She's far prettier than me... and sometimes I'm jealous. But she's so nice."
"Oh, yes, she is," breathed my willing victim.
"Can we be in the court?" asked Virginia Drew, another of our classmates, a passingly pretty girl with red hair but without the innate charm that Harriet possessed.
"Of course we can," I assured her, my fingers crossed behind my back.
At long last the day arrived when the election results would be announced. The entire school was called together—all the students and the teachers. I had personally canvassed enough of the girls to be sure that Harriet was the winner, so as we sat in the assembly, I reached out to clasp her hand in a sign of victory.
She smiled at me, pleased at the prospect of her honor. "Jessie, I'm... well, I'm grateful. And my father... he's your slave for life, he's so excited about this."
I nodded wisely and turned my attention to the podium, where Miss English was announcing,
"The Queen of the May this year will be... Faith Bywaters!"
Faith Bywaters! Instinctively I leaped from my seat, crying, "Miss English, I'd like a recount of the votes. I'm almost certain that Harriet Wilson had the majority."
Miss English turned that supercilious lorgnette on me. "Miss Benton," she said very formally, "you are out of order."
"But, Miss English, I protest the results of this election." Being in order was not something Father had taught me about. "I demand an explanation."
Miss Susanna Bigelow, the history teacher, rose from her seat and in a tremulous voice suggested, "Miss English, I don't believe Miss Benton is feeling well."
"I'm perfectly fine," I said, whirling on her.
"Miss Benton," came the command from the podium, "you will accompany Miss Bigelow to the nurse's office. I'm quite sure you will benefit from a dose of senna."
Senna! That hateful, bitter purgative that made you sick when you weren't! I looked at Miss Bigelow and then down at Harriet, whose eyes for the first time since I'd known her had lost their laughter, and then finally up to Miss English. She stood ramrod straight, staring directly at me as though daring me to challenge her authority. My only source of justice was Father... and he was nowhere near. I was beaten. Resentfully, I followed Miss Bigelow.
The senna made me so sick that I stayed in my room for two days, with Harriet hovering over me and wringing her hands. "Jessie," she kept repeating, "I am so sorry. It was all my fault."
"Nonsense," I said weakly, "it was my own fault. But Miss English is wrong."
"She said," Harriet told me, "that I had sufficient votes to win but that the faculty disqualified me because I was not attentive enough to my studies."
"Balderdash!" I exploded and then had to hold my aching head. When the spasm passed, I said more calmly, "The faculty disqualified you because your father is a clerk."
Her familiar laughter came back. "I think you're right. But I'm sorry that you had to suffer for it."
"No," I said, "I suffered from my own stubborn nature. Father says I remind him of Don Quixote, charging at windmills."
What Father actually said, when he heard about the incident, was that I must learn to be philosophical about my defeats. It was not a lesson I learned quickly or easily, just as I did not learn to limit my battles to those right in front of me.
* * *
The immediate result of the May Queen fiasco, as Father called it, was that Harriet's parents withdrew her from school, and I was left without the confidante who had become so important to my survival in an alien atmosphere.
"It's not fair!" I stormed to Father, who simply replied, "You should have thought ahead to the consequences of your action."
I ignored that, claiming loudly, "I will not go back to that school!"
Father simply returned to his work. I, of course, went back to the school.
School dragged on another month after Harriet left, and I managed to pass my courses but without distinction. I, who could discuss the known geography of the American West without looking at a map, was found deficient in geography of the world and only passable in math. The faculty agreed—grudgingly, I thought—that I excelled in written expression.
"Who," I wanted to demand of them, "do you think has been writing Senator Benton's speeches... well, at least transcribing them... for the last five years?" Of course I excelled at written expression. I had been taught by a master.
At commencement exercises Liza bemoaned the end of the school year. "Summer," she said dramatically, "will be so dull! What shall we do?"
"Probably go to Cherry Grove, just as we do every other summer," I said impatiently, wishing we could, instead, stay in Washington.
"Oh," she said with relief, "that's right. It's a Cherry Grove summer."
We watched the girls in the final form parade across the stage in their white gowns, and we listened to the valedictorian—a strange, passive girl with poor eyesight but lots of family money—deliver a stilted and unintelligible talk on moral responsibility. I vowed I would never be one of that simpering group of girls who called themselves "Miss English graduates."
* * *
This was, indeed, one of our summers at Cherry Grove. We alternated. Some summers we went to St. Louis—Father's legislative and legal home—and every other summer we went to Cherry Grove, Mother's spiritual home. For me the summer dragged by. Father made only two trips to Virginia, claiming that legislative business kept him tied to Washington, though I thought he simply preferred the hectic pace of the capital to the bucolic life of the plantation.
My southern cousins—all ten of them—were the only bright spots in the whole summer. My special favorite among them was Sally McDowell from Lexington, Kentucky, a few years older but a close friend since she had boarded with us and studied with our tutor, some four or five years earlier. I'd found in her a girl with the spirit that Liza seemed to lack. Sally was far from sharing my passion for government, but she was active, daring, and certainly not above an adventure. But this summer Sally was, as she put it, "fixing to be married," though the wedding would not take place for another year. His name was Francis Thomas.
"He's from Maryland," she breathed to me in barely concealed excitement. "He
plans to enter government."
"A politician?" I asked archly.
Sally's tone betrayed slight indignation. "Yes," she said deliberately, "he means to run for office. He feels it is his duty to serve the country which has been so good to him."
"Do your parents like him?" I asked, wondering why I seemed determined to anger my favorite cousin. I knew without asking that Francis Thomas was old—at least forty. Too old to marry Sally!
"Oh, yes," she said enthusiastically, politics forgotten for the time being. "They like him because he loves me. He can't bear for me to go anywhere without him."
That sounded bothersome to me, but then, I knew little of love and did not expect to for some time. Still, I was interested, even intrigued, by Sally's absorption in this man. She had nothing else on her mind, if her talk was any indication, and she counted the days until their December wedding.
"I am only sorry I can't be here in December," I said politely.
Her face registered a kind of instant regret, as though that were what she thought she ought to feel. "Oh, can't you come from Washington?"
"I will ask Father," I promised, "but I doubt he can get away. And you know how hard the trip is on Mother."
"Poor Aunt Elizabeth," she said sympathetically.
I never met Francis Thomas the whole long summer, and I wondered that Sally could be so in love with a man so distant that he couldn't come once from Maryland to Virginia to see his betrothed in a three-month period. I was beginning to develop definite ideas on the nature of romance.
"Trifling poor fellow, that he be," I heard Aunt Jasmine, the family cook, mutter one day, and I believed she must be right. Sally was fixing to marry a trifling poor fellow.
* * *
Marriage was on my mind, for when I returned to Washington in time for the fall opening of school, it was to the news that Miss Harriet Wilson would marry Count Bodisco, the Russian ambassador, in the spring.
Count Bodisco was well known to me, though he would never have recognized me should we have met. Still, I had seen him riding through town in his barouche, which glittered with brass and varnish and was pulled by four prancing long-tailed black horses. In his huge Georgetown house, he had once given a children's Christmas party so showy that it was yet the talk of the city. Liza and I, being young then and the ages of his visiting nephews, had been privileged to attend.