“And you’ve lived long enough to know that the world is a complicated place,” said George Jr. “You cannot solve its problems by waving a wand or a pen or a purse.”
“You wave
your
purse when you think it will benefit you,” said Lydia.
“You mean promising Harvard a library? I did that to benefit the family,” said George Jr. “What you did last week at Quincy’s levee was unforgivable.”
“So you told me that night, with the Yard all aglow and the sparks coming out your ears. You can’t be here to tell me again.” Lydia took Dorothy’s arm.
“I’m here to tell the both of you that Father is very unhappy with your participation in this abolitionism business. And so am I.”
“As you’ve said before,” answered Dorothy. “And as we’ve said before, we don’t care.”
“I’m here to make the point at the scene of the crime. Dorothy is to resign from this organization, or Father may disinherit her.”
“Good evening, ladies.” It was the sergeant-at-arms, Amos Warren, a polite young gentleman who wore a gray cutaway and waistcoat, plaid trousers, and a visored cap cocked at a jaunty angle. A beaver hat, easily knocked off, would not suit a man whose job was to scuffle. But Warren was no ruffian. He kept his club discreetly at his side and sometimes entertained the ladies by reciting the poems of Longfellow, under whom he had studied at Harvard. He peered at George Jr. and said, “Is this man bothering you, ladies?”
“
You
are bothering
me,
sir,” said George Jr., rising to his full height, which seemed all the grander under his beaver hat. “You abolitionists are bothering all of us.”
“He’s here to disinherit me,” said Dorothy to Mr. Warren.
“The kind of work I would expect,” answered Warren, tapping his club against the palm of his hand, “from a man who disinherits twenty percent of America’s humanity every time he goes to work.”
“We disinherit no one,” said George. “We provide the opportunity for honest labor. The Boston Associates control one-fifth of all cotton spindles in America. If they stop turning because of abolition, there will be hungry mouths to feed in New England.”
“Tell Father to keep his money,” said Dorothy. “I won’t be muzzled.”
“You can have my inheritance, dear,” said Lydia.
But Dorothy kept her eyes on her brother. “You Boston Associates, you broadcloth thugs, you’re a greater affront to humanity than southern cotton growers, because you’re Bostonians, Harvard men, and you should know better.”
George said, “I only hope that our father’s threat brings you to your senses.” And he walked off through a pool of yellow lamplight.
“I don’t believe that Father had anything to do with this, George,” Dorothy shouted after him. “You’re simply afraid for the world to see Wedge women with will.”
“There is nothing that I fear in any woman,” he called over his shoulder, “except misbegotten ambition.”
They watched him go; then Dorothy looked at Amos Warren. “Thank you, sir.”
“You’re welcome, Miss Wedge.” And he extended his arm. “It would be an honor if I might escort you back to your carriage.”
Dorothy looked at him . . . and looked at the elbow . . . and looked at him . . . and at the elbow . . . and Lydia cleared her throat loudly, just to speed this little pantomime along. So the young man offered an arm to her, too.
The old woman said, “Take me to my carriage, then walk Dorothy home.”
Young Mr. Warren and young Miss Wedge looked into each other’s eyes, and not for the first time, as Lydia had observed. In truth, the old woman thought that Dorothy’s interest in abolition had not sprouted until she had first heard Mr. Warren recite “Evangeline.” But however she came to the truth, it was good that she was arriving.
Later that night, as Lydia drifted to sleep in the house on Brattle Street, she rolled a term over in her mind:
Wedge women with will.
Rather too much alliteration, but boldly said. Perhaps she had finally found someone to whom she could pass her secret, someone who might not be there at the Tercentenary, but who would certainly be there for a long time to come and who might produce female offspring to carry the truth forward.
iii
In some families, a daughter born after two sons would bind her affections to the elder brother and engage in ceaseless rivalry with the younger. So it had been in the Wedge family when George Jr., Theodore, and Dorothy were children.
Some little girls might have been happy for a brother who liked to play with doll babies, but young Dorothy had always sensed that there was something different about Theodore. Even in her adolescence, she had noticed that he did not engage in rugged games with the boys on Boston Common but spent his afternoons reading instead. Nor did he evince any interest in the opposite sex, except as companions for conversation.
It was natural, then, that as a child Dorothy had looked up to George Jr., a masculine boy with an aggressive demeanor. It was also natural that as she grew toward adulthood, she had come to appreciate Theodore’s sensitivity and enthusiasm for the life of the mind, qualities that she believed George Jr. denied in himself or lacked altogether.
Shortly after the Bicentenary, Theodore told Dorothy that he might become a writer. He even showed her the journal he had begun to keep.
She suggested that he should be the Wedge to take up the mantle of Aunt Lydia.
“I would not write poetry,” he said. “Novels, perhaps . . . or sermons.”
And by the end of his senior year, he had chosen sermons. He announced himself at a dinner at Grandfather Caleb’s on the day before his commencement. He leaned across the roast pork, looked at his father, George Sr., and said, “I have decided to attend the Harvard Divinity School.”
“Divinity?” cried George Sr. “You’d be a minister?”
“We have a tradition of ministry, Father.”
“But why not assist your brother in business?” asked George Sr.
“I don’t think he’s made for such things,” said George Jr.
Theodore, almost as tall as his brother and even more elongated of feature, had also inherited the family skill for stretching himself to seem taller, even when seated. He pulled himself up, looked around the table, and said, “Lydia calls herself the conscience of the nation. I will be the conscience of the family, which has grown in devotion to nothing but Mammon.”
“Such offspring!” George Sr. turned to his own father, who was sipping his wine at the head of the table. “A daughter who tells southerners how to conduct their lives. Now a son who would tell the family.”
And Caleb, who seldom laughed, chuckled softly. “Another rebellious generation. Though not so rebellious as ours, eh, Lydia?”
Lydia was slicing her pork into tiny pieces and mixing the pieces into her mashed potato so that they would be easier to swallow. She glanced up briefly from her plate and said to George Sr., “Don’t forget that you have another son who is already breeding Wedge money and Cowgill wealth to produce many offspring.”
“Indeed,” said Caleb. “Business, politics, and religion—three children to form a three-legged stool upon which a family may sit comfortably.”
“But the politics of my daughter”—George Sr. looked across the table at Dorothy—“is typically female, driven by romantic notions for a young abolitionist.”
“Father!” said Dorothy. “That is not true.”
“I’ve seen you holding hands with Amos Warren. And I know that you’ve kissed him when he escorts you home on Tuesday nights.”
Dorothy forced herself to stay in her seat and remain calm. “I hate slavery, Father, whether I love Amos Warren or not.”
“Good,” said Caleb. “If my grandchildren remember nothing else, remember this: you must step forward. I encourage George Jr. in business. I tell Dorothy that if her father disinherits her for her opposition to slavery, I will disinherit her father.”
“What?” said George Sr.
“Quiet, Georgie.” Christine spoke for the first time, as if from a haze. “Your father is talking.” Then she turned to George Jr. and said, “You be quiet, too, Joseph.”
No one told her that it was not Joseph, that her younger son had died of scarlet fever at the age of twelve; all understood that her spells were coming more often of late.
Caleb simply went on with his speech. He looked at Theodore and said, “As for you, I have just one question: Unitarian or Congregational?”
“Unitarian.” That was what Theodore said, and what he wrote in the journal that he offered to Dorothy, so that she might read his narrative of his commencement.
If ever I wondered, my mind was made up at the Phi Beta Kappa lecture. There Reverend Emerson, ’21, minister from Concord, delivered a message of true inspiration. When he said: “The one thing in the world of value is the active soul,” I felt that he spoke to me, for the active soul of which he speaks is nourished by the active mind to which I seek.
The revolution that my grandfather helped to foment in our civic life has flowed into our religious and intellectual lives, too. We accept Christ as our teacher, but we revere God as the center of the universe, so that we remain Christian and yet find our own way, one no longer darkened by the Calvinists’ cold belief in predestination.
We live in a time when freedom of thought, rather than power of dogma, will lead to an understanding of our existence in this world and our passage to the next. As Emerson cried, “What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat; the glance of the eye; the form and the gait of the body . . . one design unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench.”
We must, each of us, explore the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench. To lose myself in Emerson’s lofty ideas takes me to a pinnacle. But sometimes my own feelings are worthy of the trench. And if I am to be true to myself, I must confront them:
During Class Day, when we danced and sang and rioted across the Common, there came a moment when we played snap-the-whip. It so happened that I gripped hands with my friend Henry Thoreau, and in that touch, something passed between us, a sense of knowledge, and for me, a feeling in the loins that was undeniable. As we began to run in our great circle, I quickly let go of his hand, and so went spinning away.
I do not know what Thoreau felt. I was glad that he disappeared after commencement, as I was saved from looking upon his gentle face and once more into the trench where my soul sometimes resides. But is not the body the seat of the mind? And is not the mind the soul? Do we not have a responsibility to hear the truths that our body speaks to us?
I hear the words of Emerson echo in my head. “If the single man plant himself indominably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.”
Theodore and Dorothy sat together as she read.
They were in their father’s home on Beacon Hill, which remained their home as well, despite their father’s disagreements with them. It was late afternoon. The tall case clock was ticking in the foyer, the servants were preparing the evening meal down in the kitchen, and Theodore’s foot was bouncing, causing the floor to creak beneath his shoe.
“Your writing is very . . .
philosophical,
” said Dorothy.
“Do you understand its meanings?”
“I believe that I do,” she said, trying to find a word that would not seem judgmental. “You are . . . different.”
“And?” Theodore’s foot continued to bounce.
“So am I,” she answered.
“You are?”
“Well . . . not
that
different. My attraction to Amos Warren—”
“The sergeant-at-arms?” Theodore leaned forward, face brightening.
“His arms are strong, but don’t change the subject. And stop bouncing your foot.”
Theodore sat back, placed his hands between his knees, and pulled his shoulders up tight, as if to keep his body from moving and his lips from flapping.
“I’ve heard of men who are drawn to members of the same gender,” she said. “I’ve even seen images of such men on Greek urns in museums.”
“What museums?” Theodore sat up again. “Where?”
Dorothy raised her finger for quiet.
Theodore slumped again and asked, “Do you think me . . . unnatural?”
“I don’t know what to think,” she said. “So I will dwell on things that make us
both
different, for those are the differences that make us more alike.”
“You confuse me, Dorothy.” Theodore’s foot began to bounce again.
She put her hand on his arm. “You and I are different because we refuse to accept old ways in a new world. We hear the words of Emerson . . . or Aunt Lydia. Words that others fear.”
“Do you fear my other . . . differences?”
“I shall try not to imagine how they are satisfied. I shall look at no more Greek urns. But remember, ’tis very hard for an unmarried man to find settlement as a minister.”
That summer, Dorothy Wedge spent much time with Great-Aunt Lydia. Grandmother Christine had suffered a stroke and could neither speak nor, it seemed, think. This sad fact reminded Dorothy of the importance of trying to see the world through the eyes of those who had been watching it the longest.
So she never missed a meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society and the opportunity to sit with Aunt Lydia.
One cool September night, as they left in company with Mr. Warren, Lydia said to them, “You’re not getting any younger, you know.”
“Now, Aunt Lydia,” said Dorothy, her face reddening.
“I’m old enough to know how fast life goes by. Why have you waited this long?”
Amos said, “I do not believe that Dorothy’s family would welcome an abolitionist son-in-law who makes his living writing for the
Liberator
and shooing Boston broadcloths away from the door.”
Lydia thought for a moment and said, “You are young people of conscience, doing right by the world. As for certain Wedges, to hell with them.”
“To hell with them,” said Dorothy later, after they had walked Lydia to her carriage and were crossing the dark of the Boston Common.