Homeland (2 page)

I am profoundly glad to return to Boston. I sorely missed the variety of its newspapers, and the chance to read more than one view of a subject: here in Boston I read not only our own
Transcript
and
Harper’s
but several New York papers as well. Sorely, too, I missed the opportunity to hear lectures other than the Sunday sermon at church, or music beyond the level of the choir singing a hymn. How far I have come from that world!

We travelled up with my older brother Brock, his wife, and their children. Army recruiters were active on the island; fifteen of our men have enlisted, including four of my cousins, our hired man, Elinor’s husband Nathan, and my friend Deborah’s fiancé Charles. Most of those who signed up for the three-month enlistment were married men, many with children.

I send this in care of Eliza Johnson, who writes me that though postal service between the States of the Confederacy, and those of the Union, is now severed, men cross over the mountains in secret. I understand her husband made good his escape—surely the Confederates would not actually have
hanged
him? I pray this reaches you.

Emory bids me send his love to your beautiful sister.

Dear Cora,

Your letter at last! And, Saturday, the letter came that I am accepted at the Nashville Female Academy! Tho’ I don’t dare approach Pa on the subject until after the tobacco is harvested.

Men do indeed cross over the mountains all the time. Hundreds are fleeing to join the Union Army in Kentucky. Mr. Poole is widely rumored to be one of the “pilots” who guide them across, despite the guards the Confederate government has set on the border, to keep them in. I have instructed Mr. Poole to ask Pa for my hand a week before I show Pa the letter from the Academy: Pa would see me in Perdition, never mind a Female Academy “full of uppity Yankee women” (sorry), before he would risk an alliance with “that d—Lincolnite Poole.” If all goes well, I will leave for Nashville at the end of this month.

Thank you, thank you for your good wishes and prayers!

I read
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
because everyone was making such a fuss about it, but nobody I talked to had actually read it. I had to hide it behind the paneling in Payne’s bedroom. Much in it is so dreadfully inaccurate! My family has owned slaves all my life; I grew up playing in the quarters, and no black person I’ve ever met, slave or free, is as blindly trusting as poor old Uncle Tom. I know he’s supposed to be an honest Everyman, like Christian in
The Pilgrim’s Progress
, but to me he just seems like a simple-minded
child who should know better. And I wanted to drown Little Eva in the rain-barrel.

I don’t think the book is really about black people at all. I think it’s about the way white people
regard
black people: how whites talk and think about slavery.

I can’t say I agree with the Abolitionists, because I honestly don’t believe men and women who’ve been slaves all their lives would stand a chance of making a decent living if they were just all turned loose one day, without any schooling or anything. But I’ve met too many of Pa’s friends who, if you let them put off emancipating their hands til they were “ready,” would find some good reason, and then another, why they weren’t “ready” until Kingdom Come. So I guess that’s why it’s so hard to come up with a good solution to the problem.

Whenever anybody talks about how reading novels is bad for girls, I think about
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
. No sermon in the world could have done what that novel did, in opening people’s eyes. (Pa takes that as proof that novel-reading
is
bad for girls.)

What do they say in Boston about the battle?
^*
Pa and Regal talk as if the Federal Army was slaughtered to the last man at Manassas, except for the cowards who ran away.

Henriette and Julia and I have been putting up blackberries—what a horror! Of course it’s the hottest week of the year, and only Cook and Mammy Iris to help us. All the rest of the house servants are out in the fields. Six of the main gang are down sick, which always happens at harvest. I think there’s got to be something in the tobacco sap that makes them sick, especially the children, but Pa says they’re just lazy. I will be very glad to be gone to Nashville. Since Manassas, everybody’s saying, “The War will be over by Christmas.”
By next year, I should be able to apply to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art in Philadelphia.

You forgot the other thing they always say to girls: “You’ll forget all about that Art nonsense when you have your own darling little babies to raise.” Except nobody has ever expected me to get married. Why would they, with a nose like mine? I was just supposed to stay home and be Julia’s companion.

Enclosed is a sketch of Mr. Poole’s house at Crow Holler. The south side of the cabin has been nailed up shut as long as I can remember. That’s me when I was five years old, sitting reading on the dog-trot, which as you see is that breezeway between the two halves of a cabin.

Dearest Cora,

Though I have had no letter from you, I
must
write. Truly, no one else could understand how happy I am! Not even, strangely, the other girls here at the Academy; I think I’m the only one who actually
wants
to be here. You are the only other person I have met who has ever spoken of the pleasure of learning, not to have “accomplishments” or to “make Papa proud,” but for “the life of the mind,” as you call it, in itself. Mr. Cameron, who teaches drawing, is a marvel. He studied with Rembrant Peale, and knows everyone in Nashville who has paintings from Europe for me to study and copy. Nobody in America paints as they do in Italy and France! Except the people who
studied in
Italy and France. Mr. Cameron is only the third person I’ve ever met—after you and Mr. Poole—who doesn’t think I’m crazy and unwomanly to want to paint pictures for my living. He knows a
very
wealthy lady here—a Mrs. Acklen—who has an entire art gallery! He has promised me to introduce us. I can hardly wait!

The Academy is a squat brick building with all manner of corridors and wings, and backs onto the Nashville and Chattanooga Railway tracks. From the windows we girls can see troops coming and going from the depot at all hours. The streets are full of soldiers and Army wagons, and everyone here, without exception, is a Secessionist: teachers, girls, Dr. and Mrs. Elliott—the kindest people imaginable—their daughters, most of the servants, and even Mr. Cameron. Sunday Mrs. E takes us for calls on all the “nice folks” in town, and the talk is of nothing but Yankee perfidy and the Justice of Our Cause. They say girls shouldn’t talk about politics, but that actually means, “Girls can talk about politics all they choose so long as they favor the Rebellion.” I smile, nod, and pretend I am a Spy in Enemy Territory. And think of you there in Boston, studiously reading your newspapers. They frown heavily on novel-reading here, too. Really, I’ve never understood what’s wrong with it.

On Saturday evenings we write letters, and Mrs. Elliott reads them to make sure they’re grammatical, and that that stuck-up Nora Vandyke isn’t penning love-notes to her beaux. I’m writing this secretly in my room, after evening prayers—I bribed my room-mate not to tell. I write
her
letters to her Mama and sisters; I can copy anybody’s handwriting in the school, practically.

Julia writes to me (it has never been scientifically proven that
Pa
can
write) saying how desperately she misses me and that the plantation is a shambles without me there. I re-read your letter, how if I was a man they wouldn’t feel they had the right to demand I stay home, but I feel like a traitor. I suppose, legally, I
am
a traitor, but I don’t notice the Confederacy making
women
take their Loyalty Oath.

Dearest Cora,

I have done a wicked and terrible thing, and there is no one but yourself I dare tell; yet I feel I
must
tell someone. Here it is: Instead of going to tea yesterday evening with Mrs. Acklen, I dressed myself as a boy, and convinced Mr. Cameron to take me “down the line,” that is, down Spring Street to the landing, where all the soldiers’ taverns are. I promise you, this was not for purposes of dissipation (if it had been the stink would have cured me
forever
!). If I am to be an artist, I need to see as much of the world as I possibly can—even the parts “nice girls” aren’t supposed to know about.

We went early in the evening, and Mr. Cameron took very good care of his “nephew.” He understands why I need to see these things. Please, please, tell me you understand also! The men weren’t dashing or heroic, and the women weren’t beautiful, and this morning I found a
louse
in my hair! I paid one of the maids to fine-comb my hair four times and an extra twenty-five cents not to breathe a word to
anyone
. Please don’t think I’m bad.

Dearest Susanna,

Your letter leaves me troubled, and of two minds—or three, or four—as to what I ought to reply.

First, my heartiest congratulations on your acceptance to the Nashville Academy! They are saying here, too, that the fighting should be over by Christmas. President Lincoln has called for one million new troops, so I cannot imagine how this will not prove so. Whether Philadelphia is then in your native homeland once again or in a foreign country, you must be able to go there to study your Art. Though nothing could make me regret being Emory’s wife, there are times when I wish that I might also have been permitted by Fate to continue my own education. I do so
hunger
for new learning, and the life of the mind.

Second, thank you for your frank opinions on
Uncle Tom
. You are quite right, that it opens the eyes by winning the heart—unlike, I fear, the vast majority of novels. You are the sole person I have met who has both lived in the world Mrs. Stowe describes, and has read the book. Emory’s experience of growing up in Greene County was enlightening, but, as you know, his father held no slaves. The men and women of color whom I met in Hartford while at the Seminary, and when I visit Papa at Yale, were freedmen of several generations, not Southern-born or bred. Deeply as I revere the book and all that it has brought about, I suppose I am now enough a lawyer’s wife to ask,
Is this testimony correct?

Please forgive me if I trespass on the bounds of friendship, when
I say that after seeing your sketch of the house where he was born, Emory told me things about his father that disturbed me very much. I had heard some of them in Greeneville, as I know you must have as well; stories of Justin Poole’s madness, and wild rumors concerning the death of his wife. In the five years I have known Emory, he has spoken of his father exactly three times, and one of those was only to say, “Pa’s a strange man.” After his revelations, the estrangement between father and son no longer surprises me. And yet, you have known Justin Poole in the five years since Emory fled, and I know you to be a level-headed young woman.

Pontius Pilate asked, “What is truth?” and washed his hands. But I say only that what my husband told me of his father leaves me deeply concerned, that you have anything to do with this man.

There! Forgive me writing of this, and if you wish, tear this letter up and burn it. I swear I will not bring the matter up again.

Emory has just come home, with word that my brother Brock has quit the law firm, to join the Army.

Cora,

Awful news. Julia writes me that our brother Payne was wounded in a skirmish in Virginia, his right arm so badly broken by a minié ball as to have been amputated. It doesn’t seem real. It’s even more horrible because every person at the Academy feels they have to tell me about people they know who were wounded and had limbs cut off, and died of it. I just want to cover my ears and run away. Please don’t tell me you’ll pray for him, or how sorry you are, or about anybody else you know, or how lucky he is to be still alive, or it’s a small price to pay for the honor of defending his homeland … Nothing. Please.