Sarah's Ground (9781439115855) (2 page)

Of course, when I applied for this position, my sister, Fanny, didn't help my situation any. She's forever buzzing in my parents' ears about me. “You're going to allow her to be alone? In that place? I hear it's falling down around the superintendent's ears! And do you know who the superintendent is? They say he's the most eligible bachelor in Fairfax County. Mother, you're not going to let her go there!”

Fanny really took on about it. Which I don't understand. Miss Cunningham will be there with me. And for two years, since I graduated from Mrs. Mercier's Academy for
Young Ladies in New Orleans, after I completed Troy Female Seminary, my family has been shipping me about like a Christmas fruitcake to find a husband. And now that I pursue a position where there is a young man present, they are all ready to have me put in a lunatic asylum.

I have not yet met the most eligible bachelor in Fairfax County, but he is safe from me. I must remember to tell him. The last thing I want right now, with war coming, is a husband. There are too many things to be done, not the least of them is to write a book. I really want to do that someday. I intend to do all of the things I want.

But I started to tell how I've been shipped around. And if I'm going to keep a journal about my experience, I must be coherent. It was, of course, to find a husband. After all, what do you do with a young lady recently graduated from two of the nations best schools, and possibly overeducated to boot? You ship her out.

First there was six months at No. 1 Washington Square with the Grahams, friends of Father s, where I was touted as an excellent dinner companion and conversationalist. Three months with the Maxwells on Savage Mountain in Maryland in the summer—not an official governess, no, but somehow I was always reading to, and looking after, the children. Another six months with the Goodriches in Philadelphia. Mrs. Goodrich is some sort of kin to Mother. And very wealthy.

If I never go to another dinner party in my life, I shall be
happy. If I never have to sit through another play in the theater, I shall be ecstatic. As for teas, soirees, hearing professors talk about Robert Burns or Sir Walter Scott, chaperoned walks in the park with insipid young men, I am sick to the teeth of all of it.

“Mrs. Lincoln found her husband that way,” Mother told me. “She was visiting her sister in Springfield, Illinois, when they met.”

“She was shipped there by her father and stepmother,” I said. But I mustn't be saucy to Mother. Brother George would not tolerate it. I sighed. They might as well put a tag on my ear and ship me to Kentucky to a horse auction. Let my husband look for me, is what I say.

Oh dear, I wonder what Miss Cunningham will be like.

I know she wants someone educated, bright, agreeable, and ready with her pen and her tongue. Well, I'm all that. Most times Fanny says I'm too ready with my tongue. I must watch myself. When Miss Cunningham wrote back setting up this appointment, she sounded so befuddled, poor lady, worrying about the war that was warming up on the horizon, worrying about getting home to South Carolina, worrying about her eyes, which give her no end of trouble, and her sister's boy, who was going to join up.

Let's hope, Lord forgive me, that her eyes are not that good, so she won't see my youth. I'm counting on that.

“We need someone of stout purpose and solid values,” she wrote.

Heavens! I'm not applying to be secretary to President Lincoln! I told her she had that person. She would soon be looking at her. Though my purpose in life has never been stout, between Troy Female Seminary and the academy in New Orleans I learned enough life values to choke a hungry mule.

What I need is a place to put them to work. I need not to be shuffled around anymore, from family friend to family member, like one of Professor Thaddeus Lowe's balloons. I saw one the other day. Near the White House. Was he demonstrating it? Some people say he is mad, others say he is heaven sent. His wife runs around with a wagon and meets him and helps him cart it off.

As it is, the only man I ever felt an attraction for was Charles Mercier. His mother ran the school in New Orleans. He was quite the most handsome young man I ever met, and if I ever intended to marry, I had decided that I would marry him.

He never talked about Robert Burns or Sir Walter Scott. He didn't like plays. His open, friendly face was always ruddy because he was always outdoors. He wanted to raise horses. He was crazy about his horses.

And he was sent to a military academy because of me.

Because we walked the streets of New Orleans unchaperoned one evening.

There was talk. And talk is the worst thing a proper
young woman from a proper family can afford to let happen to her.

The whole school and all Mrs. Mercier's high-toned friends and the parents of her students were gossiping.

And then it all came out that we'd been sneaking out to meet. And it was then that I decided to leave. To spare her the censure of her high-toned friends. To allow her to keep her students.

Charles and I scarce knew each other, now that I think of it. We hadn't even kissed. All I knew was that he was tall and that his face held all I wanted to know of the world at the time. His eyes were on speaking terms with the stars. His mouth, oh, and how dear and gentle of manner he was, with just enough sadness in him to bring out a girl's mothering instincts. Was it puppy love? I don't know, but I have lived through it, and I don't wish ever to be in love again, thank you. And I shall always remember him as being dear and good.

Oh, it is almost time to go down and meet with Miss Cunningham. I must straighten my hair and look of stout purpose. I must stare my problem in the eye.

I
have the job! I have the job!

Miss Cunningham is a dear. A small, nervous lady who wears hoops and a shawl and spectacles, yet still can't see well enough. She desperately needs someone to keep records when she takes over Mount Vernon, to write letters to the Association, and to do other correspondence. I suspect she needs someone to read her mail to her too.

She is just so glad that I come well recommended. Besides the letters from the Maxwells and the Goodriches (who have influence), she had a letter about me from a Mr. Gould (who has means) stating my qualifications. “Lovely to look at,” the letter said, “knows French as well as English, dresses with a French influence, schooled in New Orleans.”
That can't all be me,
I told myself. And I felt guilty for being an impostor. But then, I suppose most people are, when you get down to it. And I suppose, too, that living with all these high-toned people for the past two years has done something for me after all.

And I discovered that Miss Cunningham herself holds sway over many people.

She is the head of the Association that purchased
Mount Vernon. She is the regent, the high-muck-a-muck, the queen bee. There is a vice-regent in every state, she told me, who is a lady of great esteem. Without getting boring about it, under Miss Cunningham's influence they purchased Mount Vernon from Mr. John Augustine Washington only after much persuasion. They paid $200,000!

The place was falling down around everybody's ears, for heaven's sake. Lord knows why Mr. John Augustine neglected it so. Mayhap he didn't have the money, what with six children to support. Imagine that! A Washington not having the money. Isn't life sad sometimes?

Anyway, she knows everybody, this lady. And to raise money she and the Association got Currier and Ives, printmakers, to issue a series of Mount Vernon pictures. They have gotten
Harper's Monthly
magazine to run an illustrated article. And Mr. Godey's
Lady's Book
to endorse the plan to preserve Washington's home and grave, and to solicit subscriptions for donations. Miss Cunningham even knows old Colonel Seaton, who has been running the
National Intelligencer
since 1812.

This is a serious undertaking. Important people are involved. There is nothing frivolous about it, and now I am rather frightened.

Suppose they find out I am only eighteen? Will they think me dishonest? Will they put me in jail? What rule have I broken this time?

Oh, I mustn't think of that. Miss Cunningham says I remind her of her daughter. We had a high tea in Willard's ladies' tearoom. The waitress whispered that a colored woman came to the hotel this morning who is named Elizabeth Keckley. And she is to be a dressmaker for Mrs. Lincoln. She came at the behest of a Miss Whitney from New York, to take that lady's measurements.

Oh, it's exciting being here.

Miss Cunningham asked me what I think of Mr. Lincoln. It was part of the interview. What do I think of him? Why, I hadn't really given him much thought yet, though I think he will be a good man. He seems honest enough, I told her. And humble. And then I gave her the proper answer, the one I knew she wanted to hear.

“I have no feelings one way or the other,” I told her. “I have vowed to remain neutral in the coming fray.”

She was pleased.
Don't forget,
I told myself,
she is a Southerner
. For the moment, of course, I knew I was violating one of Miss Semple's commandments, which is never to give an opinion just to please somebody. But oh, I did want the job. But right or wrong, I really do not have an opinion of Mr. Lincoln. How could I? He came to us from the wild middle states and nobody knows him. He is a stranger amongst us.

Then she said she had one more question and we would be finished. But I never found out what that question was. Because at that moment there was a commotion in the
room. Whisperings, which quickly became an excited buzz.

All started by the waitress. “Oh dear,” said one young woman, who let her cup clatter into her saucer. She looked at us and said loudly, “The waitress says Virginia has seceded! Oh, we are from Virginia. We must go home! Where is my husband? Oh, I am in a foreign country!”

And she knocked her teacup off the table in her rush to stand.

I went to help her. She looked about to faint. I succeeded in quieting her. There were tears in her eyes. “I no longer belong here now,” she said sadly. “Oh, I have never been to a foreign country!”

When I got back to our table, Miss Cunningham looked at me. “I suppose I don't belong here either,” she said. “We will leave first thing tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” I asked.

“We must shop first. So many things are needed for the house. Why, it doesn't even have kitchen utensils! And we need curtains for the parlor and library. I was thinking red. What do you think, dear?”

“Curtains?” I was starting to sound like the village idiot. Shop? Virginia had just seceded and people would be wild on the streets outside, and this lady wanted to shop for red curtains!

And then I pulled myself together and looked the problem in the eye. Miss Semple would have been proud of me. “Of course,” I said, “I think red will be fine.”

You could see the flowering Judas trees along the riverbanks from the street outside, and because it was spring, there were vendors selling fresh shad from wagons. Everywhere you looked there were soldiers and people scurrying to and fro. Newspaper boys shouted the headlines about Virginia seceding, so the papers must have printed extra editions. There seemed to be a buzz of excitement on the street. The militia was drilling in open spaces. A man in ragged clothes was playing “Listen to the Mockingbird” on a flute. Everything had about it a sense of unreality.

I wondered if people would take Miss Cunningham for a South Carolinian because of her accent. I worried for her. Then I saw two baggage wagons, piled high with trunks and boxes, rumbling through the street. “Virginians are already leaving,” Miss Cunningham said. But she was not worried.

With a hand wearing a white kid glove she hailed a hack and we got in. She knew where to go. Our trip took us past the Capitol park, where the horse chestnut blossoms gave out a fragrance, where more militia drilled and regiments of soldiers lounged around on the grass as if no one had ever heard the word
secession
. Another regiment, whose banner said
RHODE ISLAND
, was watching a wedding.

“The
Star
wrote about it,” our driver said, slowing down
to get a good look. “Says the bride refused to be left at home and came along with the regiment, so they're getting hitched.”

The girl wore a cherry-colored satin blouse, blue pants like the rest of the regiment, and a felt hat turned up on one side with a white plume.

“The world has gone mad,” Miss Cunningham said. “Driver, take the next left. The shop I want is right down that street.”

The shop had a lot of wares on the walk outside. Some people were buying with a haste that bespoke panic, as if there would be no more goods left when this day was over. We found the red curtains we wanted, and the kitchen utensils, and then Miss Cunningham got some worsted fabric, and the owner told us the store down the street was selling Brussels carpets for a dollar a yard and ingrain carpeting at seventy-five cents. So we went down the street, and she ordered the carpets and had them shipped to Mount Vernon.