Impatient With Desire (3 page)

W
henever a ship was spotted coming into Newburyport, my stepmother—and surely my mother before her, though I can’t remember—grabbed the long spyglass and we all rushed behind her up to the widow’s walk. All the ships had distinctive sails, and each captain his own flag, and what a happy day it was when she broke into a big smile. “It’s your father’s!” I was always the last to get the spyglass, and by then everyone was rushing downstairs to tidy the house, lay the fire, before we were off running to the wharf.

My brother John would lift me to the top of a barrel so I could better see the fishing boat rowing out to the incoming ship. When the rower drew close enough, he shouted, “What luck?” and we all held our breath until a sailor on the ship shouted back.

Oh, the relieved sighs, the whispered thanks of everyone when the shout was “All alive and well!”

Sometimes the shout was “Two men less.” Then the hearts dropped, and we all waited in the heavy silence for the ship to slowly come to deliver its sad news.

Men of all ages strode down the gangplank, even the small ones seeming tall, their tanned complexions a stark contrast to our pasty winter white faces, bringing us the sights and sounds and smells of the world beyond Newburyport. A monkey with a gaudy red jacket and gold buttons perched on one sailor’s shoul
der; another had a screeching green and blue parrot. Then Father, tallest of all, swooped me up into his arms and onto his shoulders, and from that perch I saw the ecstatic reunions, I shook the paw of the monkey, feeling its viselike grip on my finger, and more than once from that perch, I saw at the side women and children weeping for their lost ones and was happy I was where I was.

I was long past riding on shoulders the day Father came down the gangplank, his face grave, and went directly to my aunt, whose face had already begun to crumble, and we learned that my beloved uncle lay in a watery grave. He had caught fever in Suriname and, although Father nursed him with a brother’s tenderness for weeks, succumbed, and was buried at sea. For a long time, I never looked down at the ocean without thinking of those cold waters closing over Uncle.

In those early years at home before Uncle’s death, everyone clustered around Father’s leather sea trunk, peering at its exotic contents. On one homecoming, an orange was handed reverently from one to another to smell. Aromatic teas made the rounds. Then Father took out a beautiful opalescent shell and cupped it to my ear.

“Hear the trade winds, Tamsen.”

I wanted to listen to the trade winds blowing forever, but William demanded a turn.

“Give it to your brother now,” Father said.

William and I had a ferocious tug-of-war over the shell until he won.

Father looked at me with utmost sympathy. “If only you’d been a boy, you could be a sailor too.”

“I will be a sailor!” I shouted.

Everyone laughed, except Father and me.

“Let her have the shell, William,” Father said. “I have something else for you.”

Father reached into his trunk and took out a small compass in a leather case, its face so shiny and splendid as to immediately capture my attention. Spellbound, I watched the needle move north, east, south, west as Father turned slowly around the room.

“West of the West,” Father said, “lies a country of the mind.”

1846

I
n the front of my journal, I tucked a copy of the March 26th 1846 advertisement in the
Sangamo Journal,
Springfield, Illinois. Last night, when George couldn’t sleep, I unfolded it and read it to him, and we recalled the excitement we felt composing it at our kitchen table:

In Springfield, as every place else in the country, California fever was on the land. No more scrabbling for a living, out West the opportunities were unlimited, you could be your own boss. Good-bye forever to the hard winters and fevers and agues that sapped your strength before your time—you couldn’t help being robust in the California climate. George loved to pass on the tale of the 250-year-old man who wanted to die and had to leave California to do it. “But when they sent back his body for burial,” George said, his eyes twinkling, “what do you know? He was immediately restored to health!”

California was bigger than life!

My weekly reading group began discussing emigration as far back as 1844. We western folks prided ourselves on being as “up to date” as any Yankee, and as editor of the paper, Allen Francis had access to all the latest books as well as the letters sent back by those who had already emigrated. Gradually, as the months went by, our reading material became almost exclusively related to the pros and cons of emigration. Several of our more traditional members, who would have been content to read
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
until we had committed it to memory, found reasons to stop coming. I can’t say they were particularly missed.

There were those in Springfield, as there always are anyplace, who thought only young, single men should go overland, that it was absurd and reckless for family men to consider it. But restlessness, risk taking, and adventure seeking are not confined only to the young temperament. Nor confined to males either. Though it’s true that some women went only to keep their families intact, I was not the only wife and mother who thought emigration was the opportunity of a lifetime for the whole family.

The gentlemen got their eight young men, and a month later, we left Springfield, three family groups and our employees, in a little caravan of nine wagons.

George was a hale 60, I was 44. Elitha was 13, Leanna, 11, Frances, 5, Georgia, 4, and Eliza, 3.

George’s brother, Jacob, 58 and in poor health ever since I’ve known him, hoped to spend his last days in sunshine. His wife, Elizabeth, was 38, and although I thought she was willing to go, I have come to wonder since. They took seven children: Solomon Hook, 14, and William Hook, 12, Elizabeth’s children by her first husband, and George, 9, Mary, 7, Isaac, 5, Samuel, 4, and Lewis, 3.

Between us, we had six wagons and twenty people.

Our neighbors, the Reeds, had three wagons and twelve people. James Frazier Reed, 46, was a prosperous furniture maker; his wife, Margret, 32, suffered from migraines that James was certain California would cure. James claims to be descended from Polish nobility and more than a few people felt he was forever acting like it, but I always thought James knew his worth. (It’s true that he might have been less generous in sharing that knowledge with others.) They took their four children, Virginia Backenstoe Reed, 13, Margret’s daughter by her first husband and loved by James the same as Martha, 8, James, Jr., 5, and Thomas, 3, and Margret’s mother, Sarah Keyes, 70. Mrs. Keyes was in poor health but refused to be separated from her only daughter, and James had his furniture factory build a special two-story wagon to make her comfortable. “Who will take care of her?” the tongues clucked right up to the day we left. “Not Mrs. Reed in her darkened room with her sick headaches. Not the cook, Lizzie, or her brother Baylis, the handyman, they’re a fine pair,
she’s deaf and he’s half blind, who else but James Reed takes servants to California?”

Thirty-two of us left Springfield that fine day, April 16th 1846, seven and a half months ago. One of our drivers, Hiram Miller—who is now one of our hopes—left the party in July to pack-mule to California. Surely he is there and has heard of our plight from James Reed, our biggest hope.

In high spirits, our little caravan headed toward the “jumping off place,” Independence, Missouri, where we joined a large wagon train California bound. The expected time of arrival after leaving Independence was four months. We thought we would be in California before the leaves changed color back home. And now the leaves have changed and fallen, the winter wheat seeded, turned brown, and already dormant.

Two months after leaving Springfield, I wrote a letter to my good friend Allen Francis, the editor of the
Sangamo Journal
. Allen was publishing my letters for those contemplating the trip, and saving them for the book I am planning to write.

“I never could have believed we could have traveled so far with so little difficulty,” I wrote. “Indeed if I do not experience something far worse than I have yet done, I shall say the trouble is all in getting started.”

Dear Betsey,

Georgia Ann Donner turned 5 today.

George told her five stories, plus one to grow on, and each of her sisters and I gave her six kisses.

Elitha also gave her a doll. Frances has had a doll, Dolly, since she was a baby, and Georgia has never paid one speck of attention to it until last week. “I want a doll too,” she said and carried on about it until Elitha said, “Hush, Georgia. I’ll make you a doll.”

Had she had access to more varied material, I know Elitha’s nimble fingers would have produced a prizeworthy doll. She singed and then scraped the hairs off a little piece of oxen hide, wrinkling her nose in distaste through the whole process, and fashioned it into a doll. She inked in hair, but the leather took the ink unevenly, so the little features on the face are askew, which bothered Elitha, but there wasn’t time to start over. It is a queer little thing, but Georgia thought it was perfection, even if Elitha didn’t.

Georgia asked me for a raisin cake like the one I made Frances on her 6th birthday in July. “All for myself,” she said.

“I’ll make you a big one in California,” I said.

“All for myself just like Frances’s?” she asked.

“If you want,” I said.

She thought awhile, then said, “If it’s
very
big, I will share with Eliza.”

Of all my children, I worry about Georgia the most. At 5, she is no taller than Eliza, fifteen months younger. Because they’re both dark with black hair and brown eyes, they have sometimes been taken for twins by the careless observer. But Georgia is petite and there is a frailty about her, while Eliza is sturdy as a small oak.

Georgia began life as a fat, rollicking baby and, as far as I know, never knew a day of pain almost her entire first year.

Then, one beautiful spring day, I was hanging clothes to dry, and she toddled up behind the new pony, surprising it, and it kicked out.

We would forever be thankful that the kick that might have crushed her only grazed her tiny leg.

George carried her in on a plank. We set the poor little twisted limb. She was in agony for weeks. The leg festered, and had to be cupped many times. The fever damaged her heart. She had a long convalescence.

“Georgia’s just a spoiled little baby,” Leanna has said more than once, and it’s true that we all tend to fuss a little more over her. For her third birthday, George made her a special chair, a miniature of those in our house. It had a high, straight back, and for the seat, he wove light and dark leather strips into a patchwork pattern. Georgia jumped up and down, clapping her hands in delight, and George said, “You’re not one bit happier than I was making it for you, Georgia.”

Elitha fusses over her most of all. Age 10 at the time of the accident, she had been with Georgia just a moment before and blamed herself. For a time she was inconsolable. She seemed to finally accept that no one was at fault, but throughout Georgia’s long convalescence, Elitha was attentive to her every want and, to this day, remains solicitous.

After her painful accident and long illness, Georgia didn’t learn to walk steadily until the day her baby sister Eliza pulled her up and led her to the sandbox. Since that day, Eliza has been Georgia’s staff, Georgia Eliza’s shadow.

L
eanna Charity Blue Donner turned 12 today.

When I showed interest and skill in botany at a young age, people frequently remarked that I was my mother’s daughter, notwithstanding that Hannah Cogswell, whose herbarium and methods of specimen preservation were admired throughout the county, was actually my stepmother. And now I remark similarly about my stepdaughter Leanna. Of all my children she is most like me: intensely curious, adventurous, quick-tempered. Unlike me, she is tall and lean, can run a mile without stopping, and her handsome collection of marbles includes several glass beauties made in Germany that she won from overconfident boys.

There was a break in the weather, and we were able to go outside just long enough for a snowball fight, which invigorated everyone, and Leanna won fair and square.

George came up with the splendid idea of giving her a promissory note for a fine mare in California.

He had given her a feisty pony, Rouser, on her 9th birthday, and every morning on the plains, she and George jumped on their horses to ride ahead to pick a camping ground. One day he even took her on a buffalo hunt, “in the chase, Mother, close beside Father.” Though they were both exhilarated, I said, No more buffalo hunts for Leanna. I would have liked to say, No more buffalo hunts for you, George, but I would have been wasting my breath. The meat was delicious, especially the hump, and a wel
come addition to the monotonous baked beans and pickles, but not worth the danger to me.

Unlike her older sister, Elitha, who rides elegantly and is one with the horse, Leanna rides as she does everything: powerfully, pell-mell, full-out.

No one spoke of her beloved Rouser, whom we had to leave behind, Leanna sobbing at the back wagon cover as she watched her pony growing small, smaller, until it was gone.