One Glorious Ambition (41 page)

On July 6, a day so hot and still it brought on talk of an offshore storm, people hoping one might deluge the city to wash away the summer stench and refresh it at last, the Senate voted.

The president’s veto was sustained.

Dorothea’s bones felt cold despite the dense swelter of the city. Back in her boardinghouse, she read once again Pierce’s comments, trying to see where she had misread. Her heart fluttered when she reread a letter to the editor saying that her bill had become the vehicle for those disclaiming any federal role in charity or even the states. It made it likely that the ban on slavery in the territories and the new states would now be repealed “because of Dix’s bill.”

She sat down next to her partially packed trunk. Her northern abolitionist friends would be heartsick. She trembled at the thought that Anne might again rebuff her or that Julia Ward Howe and the other abolitionists would hold her and her bill as a
nail in the coffin of their cause. It had not been her intent. All she had ever wanted was to relieve the suffering of the mentally ill, not extend the suffering of slaves. Unlike Horace Mann, she could not yet see her efforts as a schooling that might later show results. “I am so sorry,” she said to no one. “So very sorry I have failed.”

The spinning top had stopped. No new bill would pass, however cleverly she might have worked with the southern states. A lifetime of effort had been overturned with one loud vote of nay.

Dorothea lay on the bed, her arms crossed over her chest. She wanted to scream “No, No, No!” and in her heart she did. So many years, so many hopes now dashed. If she was not meant to do this thing, then how had she come to succeed at the state level? How had she, a mere woman, been allowed into the halls of Congress? to have tea with the presidents and their wives? Yet God had said no to the very heart of her life’s work. And she didn’t know why. Anger, like the day she’d demanded heat in the freezing cells of East Cambridge, swelled inside of her, but it wasn’t the magistrates or even the congressmen to whom she sent her wrath. It was God.

She pulled herself up from the boardinghouse bed and made her way to St. Alban’s Episcopal, a newly established church. She sat. She prayed. And hours later, she surrendered. She had done what she could. She was not in control. How had she missed that simple truth?

She set about leaving Washington, not sure where she would go. She didn’t want to remain in a city laid out so orderly yet where nothing seemed orderly inside the houses of government. She
could stay and help implement the new hospital in Washington. Instead, she gave her inkstand and sandbox to the young superintendent she had recommended for the position. She would go to Trenton and walk the grounds, share conversations with the patients, write on her precious desk. She would find a way to serve and, in so doing, be relieved of this emptiness. She just didn’t know how.

Dorothea’s departure for Trenton was interrupted by a letter from Millard. “My dear Abby has died,” he wrote. “We worked together on a university to honor Abigail, and now she’s gone too. My heart is broken.”

She left immediately for Buffalo and threw her arms around Millard as he sat in the parlor, shoulders closed inward, arms clasped to protect his heart and soul.

“They’re gone.” He raised his head to hers, his eyes red, the lines beneath them deep as furrowed rows. “I’ve only my son left.”

“I know. I know.”

He leaned against her, silent, racking sobs shaking his shoulders, his eyes narrowed with tears. “I could do nothing. So helpless! Cholera. The dreaded cholera.”

She held him like she once held Charles when he had cut his knee and sobbed in pain. She held him as she had Marianna when her mother had died. Dorothea stroked his white hair. “We have no say in these things. We are simply left to grieve and let our
friends and loved ones help us through the sorrow. Remember the psalms. They will bring comfort.”

He wiped at his eyes, nodded, and pulled a handkerchief from his vest pocket. Then he stood, his back to her while he blew his nose.

“May I assist with the arrangements?”

“All …” He cleared his throat. “The burial is tomorrow.” He turned back to her. “I appreciate your coming. Thank you. I didn’t expect … You have your own grief to live with. I am so sorry Pierce vetoed our bill.”

“That you would claim it as your own soothes me. We mourn what might have been.”

“As with Abby. So young. Such promise.” His eyes filled with tears again. He turned to business, the rawness of his sorrow needing respite in work. “What will you do now? There are states awaiting help with asylum design, moral treatment questions. Prison reform?”

“I don’t know.” She pulled off her gloves and looked for a chair, though he had not invited her to sit. “The road I’ve been on has come to a cliff. I’ve yet to see the bridge God will build for me to cross it.”

Millard stepped toward her, clasped her hands in his, and looked into her eyes. “You are a dear friend who trusts there will be a bridge to more in life. It will remind me to trust likewise.”

His hands warmed hers, and for a moment she wondered if perhaps this would be her path now: to stand beside a good man as he worked in education to continue his wife’s legacy, help
mourn his daughter’s death. She could be a good helpmate. He would accept a strong woman. Abigail had been so. “I … could stay for a time. Assist you.” Her hands were damp inside his.

She saw in his eyes not love but fondness, kindness. “And you would do it well, my friend, I’m certain. But I must not interfere with what you have been called to do. Your great ambition is not over. I sense this.” He squeezed her hands and then released them. “You will find the next world to conquer, and those who adore you will bask in the glory of your star.”

She returned to Massachusetts for brief visits with Anne and spoke with George Emerson and his wife about their plans for a European trip. Horace Mann was busy with educational endeavors. She returned to the Trenton asylum, the place she now called home, and from there she wrote letters to Millard, begging him to understand that writing helped her grieve the loss of so lovely a young woman as Abby. She wrote daily. He did not respond. Grieving Abby’s death helped her lament her failure in Congress.

But now what? She checked the garden plots of the asylum, wandered the halls, spoke with the residents, helping one to use a stereopticon, assisting another to weave a basket for hair combs. Daily she walked to the farms and spoke with the patients working there. She didn’t ride but spoke softly to the workhorses, who dropped their big heads over the half doors of their stalls. Back inside the hospital she heard few shrieks and these were silenced quickly with a nurse’s kind gesture. She conferred daily with the
superintendent, who knocked on her apartment door to ask questions about storing food or changes that might enhance sunlight into the interior or ways to address issues involved with moral treatment. She felt useful but not uniquely so. Anyone could do what she was doing here.

In the morning she watched the Delaware River roll seamlessly to the sea, and at night she slept in her narrow bed and felt befuddled about her future. She was a top no longer spinning. What had helped her in the past move through the discouraging times? She remembered an old proverb Elizabeth Rathbone once shared: silence is the fence around wisdom. She would seek prayer in silence and perhaps wisdom would arrive.

She boarded the ship
Arctic
in September 1854, expecting an arrival within ten days as the steam line had advertised. Based on Dorothea’s notoriety, the steamship owner granted her a complimentary ticket and private stateroom. “How lovely,” she told the captain, at whose table she ate daily. And then, because she could not receive without reciprocating, she said, “And in return for your generosity, I have decided to take out a life insurance policy on myself, with the Trenton asylum the beneficiary.”

“You are a generous lady,” the captain noted, raising a toast to her. Her face grew warm. She had not intended for her announcement to bring praise; it was only a way of giving back.

In her diary, she wrote about what she might have done wrong in her campaign to help the mentally ill. Had she been too willful
with the bill’s passage? Should she have compromised earlier? Had she chosen the wrong men to be the sponsors of her bill? Perhaps, but she had done her best. What else could a woman do?

The rush of the hull against the water soothed her. She leaned at the railing, watching the water split by the ship. The vastness of the ocean in her view placed her where she was: a woman alone on the sea of life, and she had done her best but had failed. Was she still worthy? That was the question. The verse from Jeremiah that she loved suggested that God had an expected end for her and it was to find a place of peace. “For I know the thoughts I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” She must trust God’s intentions, not her own.

Elizabeth Rathbone herself greeted Dorothea when the ship arrived. “Goodness, you look wonderful! You haven’t aged a day.” Her voice and her head shook a little, and Dorothea recognized it as the palsy that comes with age.

Dorothea bent to kiss the woman on either cheek and waved good-bye to a few of the passengers with whom she had spent time on board ship. To Elizabeth she said, “It has been almost twenty years.”

“And, oh, how you’ve done so much in that time. We are all so proud of you.”

“But … I failed.”

Elizabeth patted her hand. “You have letters awaiting you
from a Dix family. And the American minister to London during the administration of your friend Mr. Fillmore has sent a letter of introduction to the Earl of Shaftesbury on your behalf.”

“The Earl of Shaftesbury? Isn’t he the head of the national Commission in Lunacy?”

“Every county in England and Wales has a mental hospital because of him. You’ll have things to talk about.” She laced her elbow through Dorothea’s. “Oh, I know you came to rest. And you shall, you shall. But it is also time you took in the celebration.”