One Glorious Ambition Read online

  He eyed her. “Sounds like my soul is in pretty good shape then.”

  “But you buy and build larger, working to have yet more profit, and you hoard your cash. Cash that could serve the least of these.” Reverend Hall had been sitting quietly and now fidgeted in his chair. “I know you know who else you serve when the indigent insane are comforted.” She nodded toward the open Bible. “Unless that book is just for decor.”

  She thought she might have gone too far when he cast a quick glance toward the illustrated Bible on the sideboard. A back mirror reflected the colorful artwork on the page, a depiction of Jesus giving the Sermon on the Mount.

  “ ‘One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.’ ” He quoted a verse in Mark. “Are you suggesting this is what I should do, my good woman?”

  “I, sir, do not suggest it. I only offer you a way to relieve your suffering.” Then with the quiet voice she knew could still a room, she added, “I know you suffer.”

  He said nothing as the clock ticked a few seconds in silence. “Do you now? You know I suffer.” No laughter this time.

  “I do.” Dorothea noticed Hall’s eyes grow wide with her boldness. “I see it in the darkness below your eyes. I see it in the tremor of your hands. I feel it in the drapes blocking out the sun that might shine upon your face. I hear it in the quiet ticking of your Thompson clock. There are no other sounds of living happening here. For all your wealth, you are a lonely man, Cyrus Butler. I recognize this as I was lonely too, until I found my true ambition: to be the voice of those who cannot speak for themselves. I invite you to help give them a voice. Let your money talk, and may it speak for the Abram Simmonses of this world.” She softened even more. “May it speak to your good heart, Mr. Butler.” She reached out to touch his hand and he allowed the comfort. “We are all on the same journey to discover why we’re here, to find meaning. I offer a path to that end.”

  She considered rising and walking to the windows and thrusting open the drapes to let the sunshine in, but something told her to wait. This was not her work now. She recognized this. It was her work now to get out of the way.

  “How much would you need?” he said finally. “And for what specific purpose?”

  “Eighty thousand would build a hospital.” She heard Hall choke on the cookie he had just taken a bite of. “And it could bear your name,” Dorothea said. “It would serve the indigent insane, those needing care for whatever reason, regardless of whether their insanity arrived at birth or from some disease or some disaster or of their own sin. The hospital would serve without judgment. If you gave fifty thousand dollars now, it would be an enormous start.”

  Butler gazed past Dorothea, then looked straight at her. “I need time to consider,” he said. “Will you come back? In two days?”

  “I will.” Dorothea stood. “I’m grateful for your careful consideration.”

  “Well, best you pray for my soul,” he said. “Use your polishing rag.”

  “It will be my pleasure.”

  Dorothea did hold Cyrus Butler in her morning prayers and in her evening prayers too. Abram Simmons had touched her deeply with his tenacity, and she hoped she had brought his needs before the industrialist in such a way that the misery of both men might be relieved. If Cyrus Butler could relieve the suffering of many, he would relieve his own. She was becoming more and more certain of that.

  “I will give you forty thousand dollars, but only then if it can be matched by others who, as you say, are like me in needing a bit of polishing.”

  “I believe that can be arranged. Wouldn’t you say so, Reverend Hall?”

  Hall could not speak, but he nodded his head. Dorothea could barely keep herself from reaching out and embracing the man.

  “Fine then. We have an arrangement. I will have the bank transfer forty thousand dollars to an account set up to be drawn upon only when the figure reaches eighty thousand dollars. Agreed?”

  “Excellent,” Dorothea said. “We’ll call it the Butler Hospital for the Insane account.”

  “If you insist.”

  “I do.” She reached out to take his hand in hers. “Abram Simmons thanks you. And so will hundreds like him. You are a good man, Cyrus Butler.”

  “Well … I thank Mr. Simmons for his part in”—he cleared his throat—“getting my soul to its proper sheen.” His eyes glistened. “Is there … Are there things I can do before the money is matched?”

  “Invite your friends to do likewise,” Reverend Hall said.

  “That and, yes, if you are willing, there is always need for books, for people to be read to in the jails. And your business eyes will be valued for the design and operation of the hospital as we prepare. That is, if you are willing to serve on such a committee.”

  He nodded. “Please let my secretary know so he can schedule such a visit. I do have books.”

  Dorothea thanked him. She wanted to swirl around the room, but she kept her composure. It had not been her doing, after all. She had only been the messenger. She and Reverend Hall left, but not before she noticed that Cyrus Butler turned to pull open the curtains and let sunlight flood the darkened room.

  Twenty-Five

  Thwarted Ambition

  In the fall of 1843, with the leaves just beginning to turn, Dorothea made her way to New York. Another campaign called to her. Despite the fact that she was now forty-one years old, she felt invigorated. She had raised funds for the Butler Hospital, met with countless dignitaries and jailers about conditions, and swept her skirts into dank cells, bringing quiet and peace to those devoid of their reason. She crisscrossed the state, visiting sites of concern, traveling day and night, covering sixty counties in ten weeks with nary a cough or momentary weakness to remind her of when she had once avoided the Bible study meetings with Reverend Channing because of the cold night air. She lamented her avoidance of the senseless parties her cousin had dragged her to when she was younger. She might have made more contacts so she could see future industrialists whom she might all these years later win to her cause. But Dorothea did not linger at the dock of regret, for that boat had long ago sailed. Now, she was in deeper waters. She must find new ways to push her ship forward.

  A family member of an insane person in New York called her to do for New York what she had done for Massachusetts and New England. The book royalties that had once gone for her mother’s care now came to her again, and she used them to fund her travel and her work, setting aside small portions for the occasional music box she left at an almshouse or a complete set of Reverend Channing’s books, which she gave to a jail or an asylum.

  In New York the challenge was not in building a new asylum. The state had authorized one at Utica some years before, but it had never been completed. It served only two hundred fifty of the insane while the census of 1840 recorded twenty-three hundred patients needing care. The Utica hospital also took people who had become insane within the past two years, leaving those who had been suffering the longest writhing in almshouses and jails. Dorothea’s tour of the many counties confirmed the great need. Institutions choosing to treat the most recently impaired worked to show that they cured people, thus demonstrating that the investment had showed progress. But that left others to linger longer in the abyss of mental desperation. Dorothea mentioned this observation in her New York memorial, expressing concern over the practice.

  She submitted her report and wrote as convincingly as she could that it was the incurable insane whom she spoke for most fervently. She added a note of challenge in her report to the legislature: “Insanity is the result of imperfect or vicious social institutions and observances. Revolutions, party strife, unwise and capricious legislation, brought on by the United States government in part, causes mental illness. The lack of order and structure presses people into insanity.”

  She had written that last late into the night, finishing as she checked her lapel watch. S
tructure and order, those were the hallmarks of sanity, of good health. Discipline of the mind was what was needed, by first disciplining the body. She kept her own disciplined order by rising early, wearing the same simple black dress, eating sparingly of sugars, contemplating Scripture, mending, sewing new undergarments as needed, and drinking ample amounts of water (or beer, if fresh water wasn’t available).

  Two things she accepted as interruptions of her daily order: travel exertions such as muddy roads or frightening waterway crossings, and the time it might take her to wind up a music box and set it before a half-dressed woman hunched in a cold cell corner. Such interactions were necessities for the polishing of her own soul. The slightest change in the size of the woman’s iris or the slowing of her breathing as the music plinked inside those barren walls or the calming of shrieks might keep Dorothea from her appointed schedule for an hour or more, but she would be rested by the belief that, if only for a moment, one person suffered less. Dorothea would move on only when the woman calmed. Later, Dorothea set aside the knowledge that she saw within the crazed woman’s eyes her mother. At other times, she saw herself. Order and structure, a passion and a goal, those would keep her sane.

  Dorothea’s New York memorial to the legislature was again excerpted in the newspapers. As a result of her experiences, she changed her approach, staying with the facts and using fewer personal stories. The latter, she realized, might appeal too much to sympathy. Dealing with legislators, she found, required a delicate balance between appeals to emotion and appeals by facts. She presented as fact the causes of mental illness, suggesting that government and society were major causes. But even this less emotional appeal drew criticism.

  “Only physicians have the understanding and ability to know the cause or to treat the insane,” wrote a superintendent at Utica. “Perhaps, dear lady, you should return to your feminine role as teacher or writer of children’s stories rather than acting as reformer of things beyond your knowledge.”

  Dorothea grabbed her quill and with a hard press began a retort she finished but did not seal. She would send the letter not to the editor but to the superintendent personally. If she responded in kind publicly to his rebuke, he might escalate the criticism and make matters worse. She wrote instead that she agreed physicians ought always to be in charge of the treatment of the insane. Her only intention was to give them the most recent information so they might proceed on behalf of those who suffered, especially those long-term patients who were neglected and forgotten in the far-distant almshouses or village jails. She said nothing about the superintendent’s suggestion she return to a proper place for a woman.

  The superintendent did not respond to her letter, but she learned later that he had expressed his opinions to legislators, diminishing her work. He saw her as a threat. Imagine. Her, a woman, a threat.

  The New York legislature voted no funds for a new hospital nor even to finishing the existing one. “The legislature even failed to pass a vote of thanks a good Whig had offered for my effort and expense,” Dorothea wrote to Sarah Gibbs.

  Despite the cool day, she found a stable and rode. Astride she could think. Her New York work had resulted in nothing, no changes for the suffering. She took in the woods, bent beneath a hanging branch, sat firm when the horse shied at a rabbit. “But I’m gaining perspective and skill,” she told the gelding she rode. “So I suppose all is not lost.”

  The coal stove worked against the February wind in Albany, attempting to warm Dorothea’s room. She prepared a small bag and readied her traveling writing desk—an indulgence she felt necessary. She wasn’t certain where she would go next, perhaps to visit Marianna or stay a few days with Anne Heath at Brookline. One of her former students lived in the Oregon Territory, the wife of a missionary there. Shelley Mason had invited her to visit. But she wasn’t ready for the long ship ride around the horn that would be necessary to arrive in the Oregon Territory. What would she do on the Willamette River where her former student labored? There were so few people in the wilderness that mental illness must be absent.

  A knock at the door interrupted her packing and planning. She opened the door and lifted an envelope from a woman’s fingers. The seal bore an official emblem, but not of the state. Rather the merchant marines.

  “It is with deep regret that we inform you that Charles Wesley Dix has died off the coast of Africa. He was buried at sea. We extend our deep remorse for your loss.” It was dated some months previous.

  Dorothea sank onto the chair. She hadn’t seen Charles in years. His letters had trouble finding her, as did hers finding him. He was her closest relative, the one to whom she had given her heart as an older sister, the one she had mothered as best she could, defending him against an abusive father and an absent mother. Now he was gone. She had been without his physical presence for years, but with his death she felt anew the sharp knife of separation and the heavy cut of abandonment.

  She became aware of the room cooling. She had let the fire go out. If she knew such anguish without a loving family to mourn with, what must it be like for the forgotten insane who were separated from those they loved? She must never find out.

  Twenty-Six

  To Be Miss-Dixed

  “Pennsylvania is interested in having me,” Dorothea told Sarah Gibbs. Her old friend had come to Philadelphia to visit friends and invited Dorothea to join her. Dorothea had not reached out to anyone since the news of Charles’s death. She had grieved alone.

  She had written to Joseph, who still lived at Orange Court with the Harrises, but only to inform him. She did not suggest an invitation where they might hold a memorial for their brother. Neither did Joseph suggest one. Joseph did report that he was doing well with his export business and that he hoped she would continue to permit him loans with no interest as “you’ll now have Charles’s share free and clear.” Joseph did not ask for money then, but he alerted her to that possibility soon, as he hoped to marry in the following year and planned to purchase a home. “Everyone needs a home of their own,” he had written. He did not suggest there would be a guest room for her.

  The same Philadelphia boardinghouse where Dorothea had stayed before welcomed her back. Dorothea and Sarah strolled the street not far from the house; the sun shining through the scalloped lace edges of Sarah’s parasol formed busy patterns on her face. They spoke of Oakland and their trips to Newport and the sea, and then Dorothea told her of Pennsylvania’s request.

  “Pennsylvania legislators actually want to build an asylum there, and supporters believe I can lend credibility to the need if I commit to a survey for them. They passed a bill in 1840, but the governor vetoed it.”

  “Will you go?”

  “How can I not? I get restless without a task in front of me.”

  “Mr. Channing called you a spinning top, if I remember,” Sarah said. “A spinning top that would fall over if it stopped.”

  “I think if I stopped I should go mad.”

  Sarah placed a gloved hand on Dorothea’s arm. “You wouldn’t.”

  They walked the cobblestones and stopped at a café with wrought-iron tables painted red, and took tea.

  “I will do one thing differently in Pennsylvania, though,” Dorothea told her. “This time, the superintendents and physicians will be on my side before I begin. I’ll not have them undermining the work because they think I am out to ruin them.”

  “Learning from experience. This is wisdom,” Sarah said.

  Pennsylvania in the spring and summer was a balm to Dorothea’s grieving soul. She was welcomed in the state and given free rein to visit most everywhere she liked for as long as she liked. She saw individual efforts to make the lives of the insane more humane with coal in the stoves and food served on trays with plates, where one could tell what was being served rather than a hodgepodge of meat and who knew what else mashed into one patty and shoved beneath the cell door. She also visited a few prisons and interviewed wardens about proper ventilation, keeping food supplies safe, and having a
dequate physician assistance. She made copious notes.

  At one point she learned that more than thirty-five Pennsylvania counties did not send their mentally ill indigent to almshouses but rather put them up for auction. Impaired men and women and older children would find themselves slopping hogs on a distant farm or following a mule behind a plow, and then end their day with the mule in the barn and barely a bread crust for supper. Those that were not confined were often too frightened to run away with nowhere to go. She could not visit private homes to see how such “auction items” fared, but she knew. She saw the faces of those suffering mongoloid souls as she passed the farms on her way to the next almshouse. Sometimes those sent to the prisons were better off.

  “At least,” she urged more than one warden, “separate those who are mad. Don’t let them be the bones that the larger, stronger dogs salivate over, chew on, and bury.”

  To publicize her efforts, she gave speeches at women’s events and carefully described her presentations as education lectures and not harangues that some might think beneath a proper lady’s role. She thought of Julia Ward Howe still speaking out for abolition, although less now that she was married. She did not want to be associated with society’s radical elements. Her words were even, studied, and she made sure she smiled often to the crowd that they would find her efforts worthy of a natural feminine role. She wrote articles about treatment at the request of the physicians of some private mental hospitals. She was often asked to settle discussions about how a hospital might be organized or what strategies were best suited to the moral treatment model.