On Agate Hill (26 page)

If Strength comes through Suffering, why then I should be the strongest of all women, yet I am the weakest, God help me. Help me.

Mariah Rutherford Snow
Headmistress, Gatewood Academy
Hopewell, Virginia

F
OR
N
O
O
NE’S
E
YES

February 9, 1874

Today I attended to the Housekeeping as usual, went in school & heard three classes, but by that time the Pork came. I changed my dress, went out & with my own hands trimmed seventy-four pieces of meat, then came in, washed & dressed up in my best & walked up the Cedar Walk to call upon Mrs. Joseph Devereaux in the Village, Miss Pleasants that was. Then I went to Dr. Barney’s, to Dr. Greene’s, to Mr. Vogelsong’s Pharmacy, & thence home, thank goodness at least Dr. Greene is sympathetic to a lady’s Plight, for a lady must finally sleep, must she not? Rather than lying awake with awful thoughts in her head that even her old friend John Milton cannot keep at bay.

I presided at supper & the day was finished with a lecture on Eastern Religions by Professor Theodore Grumly retired from the University of Virginia, during which some of our girls Dozed Off, unfortunately. I have made a list, I shall speak to them. I am rethinking my rule of not allowing them to do handwork during lectures, at least it might keep them awake. And in the end they shall all have more to do with mending & tatting than with Philosophy. I noticed Molly Petree listening quite intently, however; who knows what she is thinking, the little Heathen.

Mariah Rutherford Snow
Headmistress, Gatewood Academy
Hopewell, Virginia

F
OR
N
O
O
NE’S
E
YES

April 25, 1874

Gave birth.

Mariah Rutherford Snow
Headmistress, Gatewood Academy
Hopewell, Virginia

F
OR
N
O
O
NE’S
E
YES

April 27, 1874

Dear Lord, I shall try to love this Child as I try to love all my Children, yet I confess my Sorrow at having a girl, for I know how she will struggle in this world. The burdens of our sex are heavy. Yet I believe I will name her Susannah in hopes that she will have a happier Spirit & a Lighter Heart than her mother.

Mariah Rutherford Snow
Headmistress, Gatewood Academy
Hopewell, Virginia

F
OR
N
O
O
NE’S
E
YES

May 3, 1874

At last Dr. Snow has come in to see the child, he has named her Frances Theodosia, for his Mother, whom I Hated with all my being. Yet I suppose it does not matter, after all. For what’s in a name? as the Bard asks. We lose our names as we lose our Youth, our Beauty, & our Lives.

Mariah Rutherford Snow
Headmistress, Gatewood Academy
Hopewell, Virginia

F
OR
N
O
O
NE’S
E
YES

August 11, 1874

Have visited Dr. Greene, with no good results.

“Abstinence, Mariah,” he counseled. Which is not possible, as all depends upon the whim of Dr. Snow who is a perfect Demon. Of course I could not tell Dr. Greene this—nor can I tell any one. Once I heard of negro
girls using marbles for the purpose. Since I am entirely at my Wit’s End, perhaps I shall give this dire remedy a try if necessary.

Mariah Rutherford Snow
Headmistress, Gatewood Academy
Hopewell, Virginia

T
HE
R
USKIN
H
OSPITAL
10 Mimosa Street
Montgomery, Alabama

October 23, 1875

Dear Molly,

It is me your old true friend Mary White Worthington writing to you after so long a time. Here is how it happened. The Brown girls, Adeline and Ida, complained to their mother that you are at school with them, and Mrs. Brown eventually mentioned this in a letter to Grandmother who has forbade me to get in touch with you but could not resist telling me anyway. You know she never quits talking. So Jane Joyner, the nurse, will sneak out to mail this letter for me, and watch for your reply. Can you read this, Molly? And will you write back to me? For now I am forced to lie with my back on a board and weights on my shoulders to straighten out my spine. It is the newest treatment for my illness which is more severe now though I believe I am finally getting better, I hope so. Doctor Ruskin a famous doctor has recommended the board. I am his favorite patient! Now I am in his special clinic where he sees me every day and I do breathing exercises with Jane, and many other exercises as well. They have rigged up a kind of wooden frame and a board for me so I can write and draw though not much as it tires me so, I hope you can even read this. You know how I love to draw. See, this is me,
in my bed with the frame and the board and my little writing desk above my special bed, and here is Jane with her long pigtail, and here is Grandmother who has gotten a job now running the Confederate Widows Home. She dearly loves this for now she can boss everybody around! They all hate her too. See how fat she has gotten, swelled up like a tick! See out the window there is my own private maple tree all aflame, and the busy street, and the square. But Montgomery is the opposite of Agate Hill which I think of so often, how we played dolls and collected our phenomena and ran through the woods like the wind. I can not do this now, nor even walk. (Nor write, it looks like!) So Molly if you get this letter, write me back quick, tell me everything. Write me a love story.

Your best friend forever, signed in blood,

Mary White Worthington

Molly Petree
Gatewood Academy
Hopewell, Virginia

November 12, 1875

Dear Mary White,

Your letter has thrown me into fits for I am so happy to hear from you, it
almost
makes me forgive the Brown girls who are my sworn enemies forever. But Mary White I cannot stand it that you have to stay in that bed, it makes me want to run and swing and do everything even harder, for you. I want you to think of this letter as another window so you can look out of your room.

Peep in here, through the French doors with the little wavy panes, into the big classroom. This is me on the very first day of school a year ago, walking down the long aisle with all eyes fastened upon me, wishing myself back
in my cubbyhole at Agate Hill where none could see me, or even know where I was.

Though I am dressed like the others in my Normandy apron and my new blue calico dress, I am sure they all know that I am a bad girl, and an impostor among them. In fact, I can not really see the other girls at all. My eyes blur, I stumble and almost fall. Sister Agnes is holding my hand. But then there is a desk of my
own!
with a space for a row of books in front of me, and a red dictionary already placed there, and an ink bottle on its tiny shelf, and below the sloping top, a drawer where I find a brand new slate and pencil and a little notebook with my name written in Sister Agnes’s beautiful penmanship on the front of it,
Mary Margaret Petree, Gatewood Academy.

I take my seat.

“Good morning, girls,” says Mrs. Frances Tuttle, skinny as a rail, with her great bun of black hair held up on top of her head by a knitting needle. Or it looks like a knitting needle, Mary White, you ought to see it. And she looks like a stick doll!

“Good morning,” say the girls.

“Cat got your tongue, Molly Petree?” She smiles straight at me.