One Glorious Ambition (10 page)

“He’s jealous because I know the names of plants he doesn’t.” Marianna adjusted her bow, lifted her chin with a note of defiance.

“Girls need to defer to boys,” a divinity student eating at the table said. He pointed with his fork. “It’s only proper.”

“I’m not certain I agree with you, Mr. Reynolds.” Dorothea looked directly at the boarder. “No one person should be asked to downplay her intelligence simply not to embarrass one of another gender.”

“Unless they do, they might never marry,” he countered. “A terrible tragedy indeed.”

Dorothea exchanged glances with a legislator’s wife with raised eyebrows. Neither said a word, deciding not to add fuel to the fire. She clarified the value though: young girls in her charge would be encouraged to pursue the length and depth of wisdom, even if it bristled a young man down the road—including her little brother, whom she would watch more closely when the girls went outside.

“Thomas Nuttall, the botanist, will be speaking this afternoon,” one of the boarders at Mrs. Hudson’s table announced a few days after Marianna and Grace had visited.

“And who is he?” asked one of the legislators.

“He made the trek into the Louisiana Purchase with John Jacob Astor’s party, going all the way to the Pacific in 1811. He recorded his observations and has dozens of drawings of various flora.”

“Can anyone attend?” Dorothea asked.

“Of course.”

That afternoon Dorothea donned her bonnet, gloves, and reticule and walked to the lecture hall. The summer day of 1822 was balmy, with sea gulls crying over the docks and a lingering scent of lilacs in the air. She took a seat next to a stately young woman dressed in fine fashion who nodded toward Dorothea as the lecture began. Lemon oil made the wooden seats shine and gave off a pleasant scent. Or perhaps it was the woman’s perfume. Dorothea had seen the woman at church, but they had not spoken.

Dorothea settled in to listen, loving the man’s stories. He spoke of places and plants she might never see. The idea of their existence pleased her. Perhaps it was the orderliness, how plants could be classified in such detail, created by a God who had so many larger things to contend with, and yet He remembered
Nymphaea odorata
, the lowly lily of the pond.

“Wasn’t that grand?” her seatmate expressed after the final applause for the lecture died down and people stood, gathered their belongings.

“It was.” Dorothea tugged on her gloves.

“I’m Anne Heath. I believe I’ve seen you at Mr. Channing’s sermons.” Her dark eyebrows lifted.

“Yes, Reverend Channing is quite brilliant.”

“I love information for its own sake,” Anne said. “Whether I
do
anything with the ideas and facts or not.” She leaned into Dorothea. “I hope it’s not a wasteful practice, listening to ideas, reading books on ancient civilizations or medical procedures or even the history of the making of paper, knowing those facts just rattle in my head until perhaps I can interject them into conversations. Nothing more.”

Dorothea grinned. “I’m Dorothea Lynde Dix,” she said. “My grandmother is Madam Dix.”

“Of course. We don’t see her much at Reverend Channing’s sermons. I hope she’s well?”

“She grows more feeble, I fear,” Dorothea said. “She finds her Puritan roots to be more … uplifting of late.”

“And you?”

“I attend Reverend Channing’s lectures twice a week,” Dorothea said. “He’s … charming and inspiring.”

“He’s so short,” Anne said.

“Or we’re quite tall.” They both laughed as they made their way to the back of the lecture hall and onto the street. They were of the same height, and Reverend Channing was barely five feet tall. Once outside, the smell of horse droppings overpowered any jasmine scent from the plants in the large pots beside the doors. A long line of carriages awaited the lecture’s guests.

“My carriage is at the front,” Anne said. “Would you care to come for tea? We can deliver you to Orange Court later if you’d like?”

“I’d be honored.”

“We have quite the gatherings after church on Sundays. Just chatting and playing games. Sometimes we take boats out on the lake. A few scholars. My lovely younger sisters. Perhaps you’ll join us?”

“I … yes. Perhaps in the future.” Dorothea did not want to get caught up in the suitor circle again. Still, she enjoyed the company of this woman. Maybe there were other young people she could spend time with without the weight of marriage on their minds. “My school takes up much of my time.”

“Even teachers need recess.” Anne Heath put her arm through Dorothea’s as they walked toward the waiting carriage.

Dorothea felt the warmth of another person’s touch and the possibility of a friendship. She did not shrink away.

Anne Heath had four younger sisters, a gregarious mother, a humorous father, and a home that others flocked to on Sunday afternoons like fox squirrels to bird feeders. Dorothea enjoyed the quiet tea with Anne, then found herself the next weekend with the Heath clan, as Mrs. Heath called her brood. The sweet aroma of kindness floated over the household, and Dorothea allowed herself to be wrapped within it.

Both Elizabeth and Mary, the youngest of the five Heath daughters, had leather-colored hair and blue eyes and were the instigators of the games they introduced before Dorothea had time to memorize the names of the other guests. They laughed over family stories. They primped each other’s clothing, commented on their hairpieces and the stitching capabilities of each.

Seventeen-year-old Mary giggled easily as her sisters fluffed her curls. She was the only one to have natural waves in her hair. They exchanged stories of beaus, although Anne had none. Their parents expressed compliments both at the ideas articulated by their daughters and at their actions in caring for others. They
sewed clothes for the poor and collected alms for those imprisoned. Like Dorothea, Anne deplored the practice of local jails charging for people to come and “view the imbeciles” often housed in debtors’ jails.

“I don’t think it at all Christian for people to gawk at others who are impaired through no means of their own,” Dorothea said, thinking of her mother.

“But some are there because of their foolish choices,” Anne said. “Consider the rum business and the sugar imports and what excesses do to families whose husbands grow crazy for drink.”

“But those with epilepsy, flight of mind, mongoloid features; these are not there for reason of rum.” Dorothea felt her skin prickle. She had not disagreed with Anne before.

“We need protection from them,” Susan Heath ventured.

“Do we? I’m not so sure they do not need protection from us who are supposed to be more civilized. We charge coins to view them? Hardly civilized.”

“No reason to argue, girls,” Mr. Heath interrupted.

Silence filled the room before Mary told a story of losing her hat on the lake and the rush of boys who splashed into the water to be the first to retrieve it. Dorothea’s heart steadied. Why was she so defensive of criticism for those relieved of their reason?

Meals with the Heaths were happy times with chatter and laughter. In each encounter with this family, Dorothea was brought inside, felt the warmth of the hearth fire not only on her skin but in her heart. She accepted compliments about the way she expressed an idea or how much Anne enjoyed reading the letters
Dorothea had begun sending each week just to share the vagaries of her teaching days. Dorothea heard herself making observations that she saw pleased the Heath family, and she reveled in their pleasure. Here was a safe place where suffering did not intrude. She waded into the water of trusting a relationship.

“You’re visiting with the Heaths I hear.” Dorothea’s grandmother spoke into the silence of a meal in the cottage house, where Dorothea occasionally ate with her family. Usually the quiet was broken only by the scrape of spoon against the soup bowl. Dorothea often stayed afterward to read to her grandmother, whose eyes appeared to fail her.

“Yes. They’re a fine family.” She buttered one of Cookie’s pan breads, handing it to her grandmother and asking Charles to pass the peas.

“You should keep their acquaintance. They will be able to bring you into Boston society. It won’t hurt them to have a beautiful, articulate young Dix to add to their parties either.”

A compliment from Grandmamma?

“I have been invited to a cotillion. Several legislators and artists and others will attend.”

“Tell me the guest list, and I’ll advise you who to ask to be seated beside.”

“Grandmother, if I go, it will be to spend time with Anne and her sisters. They’re much more interesting than the legislators. I
converse with them at Mrs. Hudson’s table, and I don’t always find the conversation stimulating.”

“You might if you knew of their ledger sheets.”

“You might,” Dorothea said. “It’s of no interest to me.”

Her brothers exchanged glances and poked at the salt pork slices.

“It must be!” Her grandmother nearly shouted each word. The spaniel Benji perked his ears at the thundered words, then cowered under the table. The two boys also jerked in their seats. “You are too much focused on the present without care for your future.” The older woman’s face held the expression that she had just stepped where the chickens pecked.

“I have the school,” Dorothea said. “I can teach for a lifetime.”

“Not all we do now will last.”

“Then I’ll trust that God has plans for me and will tend them better than I can … or even better than you can, Grandmamma.”

“Don’t be rude.” She frumped her napkin beside her plate. “You won’t teach your entire life. It’s too much, and it will never prove to support you and your brothers. You need a husband, Dorothea. That is that!”

Dinners with the Heath family were so much more pleasant than those at the cottage. Dorothea listened to the fast-moving conversations around the dining room table and occasionally offered an
opinion. The college students might be somber and professorial at times, but they always listened politely and did not seem to dismiss what she said simply because she was a female. The young men also nodded wisely to the offerings of the Heath girls, and their attention to Mrs. Heath’s point of view seemed more than mere politeness. This, Dorothea imagined, was how men and women ought to be together, speaking frankly and with respect. She vowed to model this with her students so they would see what respect of others looked like.

One afternoon at the Heaths’, plum pudding was being served in the garden overlooking the lake. The aroma made Dorothea salivate.

“We owe our fellow citizens ample opportunity to improve their lives,” one student said. “It is our Christian duty. Duty to our fellow man, service that grows out of the journey of purpose. We must all find our purpose.”

“I do believe Miss Dix has done so,” Anne interjected. “Though I am still searching. Her school is quite successful. She’s an observant and dedicated instructor.”

“Ah, but what of others, students who cannot afford to attend her fine establishment?” This came from the Reverend William Ellery Channing, who with his wife and sister-in-law had joined the Heath group on this day. Dorothea still reeled from the power of the man’s sermons and his persuasive voice. Hadn’t he been a classmate of her father’s at Harvard before her father dropped out? She’d have to ask her grandmother.