The Signature of All Things

by Elizabeth Gilbert

  * * *

  Then, in April of 1848, George Hawkes called upon Alma again. She was working at her desk—attacking with zeal the puzzle of a poorly preserved Dicranum consorbrinum recently sent to her by an amateur collector in Minnesota—when a thin young boy arrived on horseback, carrying an urgent message: Miss Whittaker’s immediate presence was please requested at the Hawkes home on Arch Street. There had been an accident.

  “What sort of accident?” Alma asked, rising from her work in alarm.

  “A fire!” the boy said. It was difficult for him to restrain his glee. Boys always loved fires.

  “Dear heavens! Has anyone been injured?”

  “No, ma’am,” said the boy, visibly disappointed.

  Retta, Alma soon learned, had set a fire in her bedroom. For some reason, she had decided that she needed to burn her bedclothes and curtains. Mercifully, the weather was damp, and the fabrics had only smoldered, not ignited. A good deal more smoke than flame had been produced, but the damage to the bedroom was considerable nonetheless. The damage to the morale of the household was even more severe. Two more maids had resigned. No one could be expected to live in this home. No one could bear this demented mistress.

  When Alma arrived, George was pale and overwhelmed. Retta had been sedated, and lay heavily asleep across a couch. The house smelled of a brush fire after rain.

  “Alma!” George said, rushing to her. He took her hand in his. He had done that only once before, more than three decades earlier. It was different this time. Alma felt ashamed of even remembering the last time. His eyes were wide with panic. “She cannot stay here any longer.”

  “She is your wife, George.”

  “I know what she is! I know what she is. But she cannot stay here, Alma. She is not safe, and nobody is safe around her. She could have killed us all, and ignited the print shop, as well. You must find a place for her to stay.”

  “A hospital?” Alma asked. But Retta had been to the hospital so many times, where, it always seemed, nobody could do much for her. She always returned home from the hospital even more agitated than when she had been admitted.

  “No, Alma. She needs a permanent place. A different sort of home. You know of what I speak! I cannot have her here for another night. She must live elsewhere. You must forgive me for this. You know more than anyone, and yet not even you know fully what she has become. I have not slept a night in this past week. Nobody in this household sleeps, for fear of what she will do. She requires two people with her at all times, to ensure that she does not harm herself or another. Do not force me to say more! I know that you understand what I am asking. You must attend to this for me.”

  Without questioning for a moment why it must be she who must attend to this, Alma attended to it. With a few well-placed letters, she was quickly able to secure admission for her friend at the Griffon Asylum in Trenton, New Jersey. The building had just been erected the year prior, and Dr. Victor Griffon—a respected Philadelphia figure who had once been a guest at White Acre—had designed the property himself, for optimum serenity to the disturbed mind. He was the foremost American advocate of moral care for the mentally disturbed, and his methods, it was said, were quite humane. His patients were never chained to the walls, for instance, as Retta had once been chained at the Philadelphia hospital. The asylum was said to be a serene and beautiful place, with fine gardens and, naturally, high walls. It was not unpleasant, people said. Nor was it inexpensive, as Alma had learned when she paid, in advance, for the first year of Retta’s stay. She had no wish to trouble George with the bill, and Retta’s own parents had long ago passed away, leaving only debts behind them.

  It was a sad business for Alma, making these arrangements, but everyone agreed it was for the best. Retta would have her own room at Griffon, such that she could not harm another patient, and she would also have a nurse with her at all hours. Knowing this brought Alma comfort. Moreover, the therapies at the asylum were modern and scientific. Retta’s madness would be treated with hydropathy, with a centrifugal spinning board, and with kind moral guidance. She would have no access to either fire or scissors. Alma had been assured of this last fact by Dr. Griffon himself, who had already diagnosed Retta with something he called “exhaustion of the nervous fountain.”

  So Alma made all the arrangements. George was required only to sign the certificate of insanity and accompany his wife, along with Alma, to Trenton. The three of them went by private carriage, because Retta could not be trusted on a train. They brought a strap with them, in case she needed restraining, but Retta bore herself along lightly, humming little songs.

  When they arrived at the asylum, George walked briskly ahead across the great lawn toward the front entrance, with Alma and Retta following just behind him, arm in arm, as though they were enjoying a stroll.

  “Such a pretty house this is!” Retta said, admiring the elegant brick building.

  “I agree,” Alma said, with a surge of relief. “I am happy that you like it, Retta, for this is where you will live now.” It was not clear how much Retta understood about what was happening, but she did not seem agitated.

  “These are lovely gardens,” Retta went on.

  “I agree,” said Alma.

  “I cannot bear to see flowers cut down, though.”

  “But, Retta, you are so silly to say such a thing! Nobody loves a bouquet of freshly cut flowers more than you!”

  “I am being punished for the most unspeakable offenses,” Retta replied, quite calmly.

  “You are not being punished, little bird.”

  “I am terrified of God, more than all.”

  “God has no complaint with you, Retta.”

  “I am plagued by the most mysterious pains in my chest. It feels sometimes as if my heart will be crushed. Not at the moment, you see, but it comes on so quickly.”

  “You will meet friends here who can help you.”

  “When I was a young girl,” Retta said in this same relaxed tone, “I used to go on compromising walks with men. Did you know that about me, Alma?”

  “Hush, Retta.”

  “There is no need to hush me. George knows. I’ve told him many times. I permitted those men to handle me however they liked, and I even allowed myself to take money from them—though you know I never needed the money.”

  “Hush, Retta. You are not speaking sensibly.”

  “Did you ever wish to go on compromising walks with men? When you were young, I mean?”

  “Retta, please . . .”

  “The ladies in the buttery at White Acre used to do it, too. They showed me how to do things to men, and taught me how much money to take for my services. I bought myself gloves and ribbons with the money. I once even bought a ribbon for you!”

  Alma slowed her pace, hoping George could not hear them speaking. But she knew he had already heard everything. “Retta, you are so weary, you must save your voice . . .”

  “But did you never, Alma? Did you never wish to commit compromising acts? Did you never feel a wicked hunger, inside the body?” Retta clutched her arm and gazed up at her friend quite piteously, searching Alma’s face. Then she slumped again, resigned. “No, of course you didn’t. For you are good. You and Prudence are both good. Whereas I am the very devil himself.”

  Now Alma felt that her own heart would break. She looked at the wide, hunched shoulders of George Hawkes as he walked ahead of them. She felt overcome with shame. Had she never wished to commit compromising acts with men? Oh, if Retta only knew! If anyone knew! Alma was a forty-eight-year-old spinster with a dried-up womb, and yet she still found her way to the binding closet several times a month. Many times a month, even! What’s more, all the illicit texts of her youth—Cum Grano Salis, and the rest of them—still pulsed in her memory. Sometimes she took those books out of their hidden trunk, in the hayloft of the carriage house, and read them again. What did Alma not know of wicked hungers?

  Alma felt that it would be immoral of her to say nothing of reassurance or all
egiance to this broken little creature. How could Alma let Retta believe she was the only wicked girl in the world? But George Hawkes was right there, walking only a few feet in front of them, and surely he could hear all. So Alma did not console, nor did she offer commiseration. All she said was this: “Once you settle into your new home here, my dear little Retta, you will be able to walk in these gardens every day. Then you will be at peace.”

  * * *

  On the carriage ride home from Trenton, Alma and George were mostly silent.

  “She will be well taken care of,” Alma said at last. “Dr. Griffon assured me of it himself.”

  “We are each of us born into trouble,” George said, by means of reply. “It is a sad fate to come into this world at all.”

  “That may be true,” Alma replied carefully, surprised at the vehemence of his words. “Yet we must find the patience and resignation to endure our challenges as they arise to meet us.”

  “Yes. So we are taught,” George said. “Do you know, Alma, there were times when I wished Retta would find relief in death, rather than suffer this continued torment, or bring such torment to myself and to others?”

  She could not imagine what to say in response. He stared at her, his face twisted by darkness and agony. After a few moments, she stumbled forth with this statement: “Where there is life, George, there is still hope. Death is so terribly final. It will come soon enough to us all. I would hesitate to wish it hastened upon anyone.”

  George shut his eyes and did not answer. This did not seem to have been a reassuring response.

  “I will make a practice of coming to Trenton to visit Retta once a month,” Alma said, in a lighter tone. “If you wish, you may join me. I will take her copies of Joy’s Lady’s Book. She will like that.”

  For the next two hours, George did not speak. For a while, it appeared that he was falling in and out of sleep. As they neared Philadelphia, though, he opened his eyes. He looked as unhappy as anyone Alma had ever seen. Alma, her heart going out to the man, elected to change the subject. A few weeks earlier, George had lent Alma a new book, just published out of London, on the subject of salamanders. Perhaps a mention of this would lift his spirits. So she thanked him now for the loan, and spoke of the book in some detail as the carriage moved slowly toward the city, concluding at last, “In general, I found it to be a volume of considerable thought and accurate analysis, though it was abominably written and terribly arranged—so I do have to ask you, George, do these people in England not have editors?”

  George looked up from his feet and said, quite abruptly, “Your sister’s husband has made some trouble for himself of late.”

  Clearly, he had not heard a word she’d spoken. Furthermore, the change of subject surprised Alma. George was not a gossip, and it struck her as odd that he would refer to Prudence’s husband at all. Perhaps, she supposed, he was so distraught by the day’s events that he was not quite himself. She did not wish to make him feel uncomfortable, however, so she took up the conversation, as though she and George always discussed such matters.

  “What has he done?” she asked.

  “Arthur Dixon has published a reckless pamphlet,” George explained wearily, “to which he was foolish enough to append his own name, expressing his opinion that the government of the United States of America is a beastly bit of moral fraudulence on account of its ongoing affiliation with human slavery.”

  There was nothing shocking in this news. Prudence and Arthur Dixon had been committed abolitionists for many years. They were well known across Philadelphia for antislavery views that leaned toward the radical. Prudence, in her spare hours, taught reading to free blacks at a local Quaker school. She also cared for children at the Colored Orphans’ Asylum, and often spoke at meetings of women’s abolition societies. Arthur Dixon produced pamphlets frequently—even incessantly—and had served on the editorial board of the Liberator. To be frank about it, many people in Philadelphia had grown rather weary of the Dixons, with their pamphlets and articles and speeches. (“For a man who fancies himself an agitator,” Henry always said of his son-in-law, “Arthur Dixon is an awful bore.”)

  “But what of it?” Alma asked George Hawkes. “We all know that my sister and her husband are active in such causes.”

  “Professor Dixon has gone further this time, Alma. He not only wishes for slavery to be abolished immediately, but he is also of the opinion we should neither pay taxes nor respect American law until that unlikely event occurs. He encourages us to take to the streets with flaming torches and the like, demanding the instant liberation of all black men.”

  “Arthur Dixon?” Alma could not help herself from saying the full name of her dull old tutor. “Flaming torches? That doesn’t sound like him.”

  “You may read it yourself and see. Everyone has been speaking of it. They say he is fortunate to still hold his position at the university. Your sister, it seems, has spoken in agreement with him.”

  Alma contemplated this news. “That is a bit alarming,” she agreed at last.

  “We are each of us born to trouble,” George repeated, rubbing his hand over his face in exhaustion.

  “Yet we must find the patience and resignation—” Alma began again lamely, but George cut her off.

  “Your poor sister,” he said. “And with young children in her house, besides. Please let me know, Alma, if there is anything I can ever do to help your family. You have always been so kind to us.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Her poor sister?

  Well, perhaps . . . but Alma wasn’t certain.

  Prudence Whittaker Dixon was a difficult woman to pity, and she had remained, over the years, a thoroughly impossible woman to comprehend. Alma pondered these facts the next day, as she examined her moss colonies back at White Acre.

  Such a riddle was the Dixon household! Here was another marriage that seemed not at all happy. Prudence and her old tutor had been married now for more than twenty-five years, and had produced six children, yet Alma had never witnessed a single sign of affection, pleasure, or rapport pass between the couple. She had never heard either of them laugh. She had scarcely ever seen them smile. Nor had she ever seen a flash of anger directed by one toward the other. She had never seen emotion of any variety pass between them, in fact. What sort of marriage was this, where people march through the years in diligent dullness?

  But there had always been questions surrounding her sister’s married life—beginning with the burning mystery that had consumed all of Philadelphia’s gossips so many years long ago, when Arthur and Prudence had first wed: What happened to the dowry? Henry Whittaker had blessed his adopted daughter with a tremendous sum of money upon the occasion of her marriage, but there was no sign that a penny of it was ever spent. Arthur and Prudence Dixon lived like paupers on his small university salary. They did not even own their home. Why, they barely heated their home! Arthur did not approve of luxuries, so he kept his household as cold and bloodless as his own dry self. He governed his family through a model of abstinence, modesty, scholarship, and prayer, and Prudence had fallen into obedience with it. From the very first day of her career as a wife, Prudence had renounced all finery, and had taken to dressing nearly like a Quaker: flannel and wool and dark colors, and with the most homely imaginable poke bonnets. She did not adorn herself with so much as a trinket or a watch chain, nor would she wear even a speck of lace.

  Prudence’s restrictions were not limited to her wardrobe, either. Her diet became as simple and restricted as her mode of dress—all cornbread and molasses, by the looks of things. She was never seen to take a glass of wine, or even tea or lemonade. As her children came along, Prudence had raised them in the same miserly manner. A pear plucked from a nearby tree constituted a treat for her boys and girls, whom she trained to turn their faces away from more alluring delicacies. Prudence dressed her children in the same manner in which she dressed herself: in humble clothing, neatly patched. It was as though she wanted her children to look poor
. Or perhaps they genuinely were poor, though they had no cause to be.

  “What in the deuce has she gone and done with all her gowns?” Henry would sputter, whenever Prudence came to visit White Acre adorned in rags. “Has she stuffed her mattresses with them?”

  But Alma had seen Prudence’s mattresses, and they were stuffed with straw.

  The wags of Philadelphia had a great sport speculating about what Prudence and her husband had done with the Whittaker dowry. Was Arthur Dixon a gambler, who had squandered the riches on horse races and dog fights? Did he keep another family in another city, who lived in luxury? Or was the couple sitting on a buried treasure of unspeakable wealth, hiding it behind a facade of poverty?

  Over time, the answer emerged: all the money had gone to abolitionist causes. Prudence had quietly turned over most of her dowry to the Philadelphia Abolitionist Society shortly after her marriage. The Dixons had also used the money to purchase slaves out of captivity, which could cost upwards of $1,300 per life. They had paid for the transport of several escaped slaves to safety in Canada. They had paid for the publication of innumerable agitating pamphlets and tracts. They had even funded black debating societies, which helped train Negroes to argue their own cause.

  All these details were revealed back in 1838, in a story that the Inquirer had published about Prudence Whittaker Dixon’s peculiar living habits. Spurred by a lynch mob’s burning of a local abolitionist meeting hall, the newspaper had been looking for interesting—even diverting—stories about the antislavery movement. A reporter had been pointed in the direction of Prudence Dixon when a prominent abolitionist made mention of the quiet generosity of the Whittaker heiress. The newspaperman had been immediately intrigued; the Whittaker name, hitherto, had not exactly been associated around Philadelphia with boundless acts of generosity. What’s more, of course, Prudence was vividly beautiful—a fact that always draws attention—and the contrast between her exquisite face and her plain mode of living only made her a more fascinating subject. With her elegant white wrists and delicate neck peeking from within those dreary clothes, she had every appearance of being a goddess in captivity—Aphrodite trapped in a convent. The reporter had been unable to resist her.