Homeland

by Barbara Hambly

  I am glad and grateful that your sister-in-law in Boston could at least give you some accurate information.

  Your baby has to have been born by this time. That’s so strange to think about. I wait EAGERLY for your next letter!!

  THURSDAY, JUNE 26

  Woke this morning to the pounding of guns. Federal mortar-boats had come down-river overnight, and started shelling the shore batteries. I’m writing this in the cellar, which has a tiny window looking out the back where the hillside slopes away towards Adams Street. You can feel the impact through the ground every time a shell hits a few streets away. Julia is huddled in a corner, with Tommy wrapped in a quilt, Julia rocking and sobbing while the wet-nurse attempts to comfort her. Aunt Sally is upstairs doing the accounts. I should be helping her, except that Julia clings to my arm, screaming, “Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!” which sets Tommy off. It waxed pretty dramatic.

  Aunt Sally just sent down lunch.

  LATER. EVENING.

  The shelling quit when evening fell. The whole town smells of churned-up dirt, Cora, and smoke, tho’ the breeze off the river cleared most of the dust. Aunt Sally and I walked to the bluff’s edge, and in the very last of the evening light, we could see the dark shapes of the Federal boats, dozens of them on the shining water, both north and south of town. The sight made me feel queer, and very angry. I keep thinking there should be some better way of ending this Secession problem, without destroying the homes and lives of innocent people.

  Would women run the country any better, if we had the vote? Or would Julia just vote the way Pa tells her to? And that would give Pa two votes instead of one.

  On the way home we walked past Mrs. Bell’s house, and that of the Petrie Sisters (other “nice folks,” married to two brothers, both in the Army), to make sure they’re all right. Both are close enough to the river to be in peril. Shell fragments had torn huge holes in the street a few dozen yards from the Petrie house, and Mrs. Bell was just coming home, with her servants and her Persian cat Mithridates tucked into a picnic-basket with his tail hanging out the back (see sketch). She’d taken the whole household to visit friends at the back of town, above the ravines where the troops are digging rifle-pits.

  FRIDAY, JUNE 27

  Shelling all day. Aunt Sally asked Mrs. Bell and her household to visit, as if the house is merely being painted!

  SATURDAY, JUNE 28

  Shelling continued last night after dark. So of course Julia refused to leave the cellar, and refused to let me leave. About two a.m., after she fell asleep, I went upstairs. I found Aunt Sally in the parlor still, though Mrs. Bell and her servants had long gone to bed. We could hear other noises from the river, shots and explosions, and together we went up to the top of the house, and looked out the attic windows. The whole Yankee fleet was coming up-river in two columns—you could see the glow of their smokestacks.

  The boats traded shots—muzzle-flashes, like volcanoes in the dark—with the shore batteries for the rest of the night, until dawn. Aunt Sally sent me downstairs to wake Cook and get us some coffee; of course Cook and the others were all wide awake and at their work, like nothing was going on. The batteries sank three Union boats, but the rest got past.

  When we walked Mrs. Bell home we found a shell had torn clear through her house, punched a succession of holes through the parlor window, the dining-room door, the rear wall of the dining-room, and a corner of the pantry, lined up as if someone had hit the house with a ramrod. Mrs. Lillard’s house on the next street had the parlor chimney shot off, so that daylight and squirrels come right in. Nobody’s been hurt up here—yet.

  Seeing these things—knowing how little money the Petrie Sisters have—I’m angry all over again. Mrs. Lillard served us tea (or what was supposed to be tea) and the ladies all joked about it, as if all this stupid damage had been done by some malicious child. I think about what it will take to bring Bayberry back to production, even if we can get hands to work the land again, and I had to bite my tongue not to say, “The politicians who got us into this mess are idiots! This should never have happened!”

  I don’t tell Aunt Sally this. She’ll talk about things nobody else will, like babies, and who in town drinks, and how to run a plantation—not just the bookkeeping, the way I did, but marketing crops and getting loans from Northern banks. But she is a true daughter of the Rebellion. However, she is also my best hope to pay for me going to the Pennsylvania Academy of Art when this is all done, so I’m working extremely hard to stay on her good side.

  SUNDAY, JUNE 29

  Dressing for the Great Round of Calls after church and dinner with Dr. Driscoll, who is 70 years old and jokes that he means to marry me. Aunt Sally is resolved to “make a lady” of me and get me a husband, so her maid Nellie has the fire lit in here to heat irons to curl my hair, and the room is hot as a stove. I’ll mail this tomorrow, care of Mrs. Johnson. After the noise of the shelling and battle, the silence feels so ominous, dearest Cora. Everyone’s saying, “Whew, that’s over,” but it’s not. It will come again, and worse. They’re organizing hospital committees, as they had in Nashville.

  I wish there were some way to talk to you, face to face, even for five oh-so-precious minutes. I feel as if I’m in a trap, when I look down-river and see Yankee boats, but it’s considered almost treason to admit the Yankees are anything but a silly nuisance that will be swatted away very shortly.

  It’s got to be summer on your island by this time, so you—and your beautiful baby—can have milk and eggs. You can finally get your egg-custard! Tell me how you are, and who you would like me to kill in trade for your cake of sugar. How is your mother, and Ollie, and even Peggie? Your father will be home from Yale, to be with you all summer and get the harvest in. I envy you so much.

  Love,

  Susanna

  Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine

  To

  Susanna Ashford, Vicksburg, Mississippi

  c/o Mrs. Eliza Johnson, Elizabethton,

  Tennessee

  MONDAY, JUNE 23, 1862

  Dear Susanna,

  Little Mercy Susanna Poole asks me to send you her regards, and her abject apologies at not being able to take pen in hand herself! But, she says, she is feeling quite well. Needless to say, she is the most beautiful girl in the world. She is three days old, today.

  I, too, am feeling well. It is like falling in love a second time, differently. The world looked different, the morning after my wedding to Emory. It is more profoundly altered now, with my child in my arms. With his child in my arms. She was born Friday afternoon, at about three o’clock, after a very short travail. Mother and Aunt Hester were present, with Ollie, Peggie, Papa, and Uncle Mordacai exiled to the parlor. I’m sorry to say Peggie was deeply upset by the whole proceeding, and has clung all the more closely to her husband ever since. Her own child is expected in five or six weeks, and Mother and I are doing what we can to bolster her spirits.

  I cannot wait, to be up and helping Papa in the garden.

  Your “trial-balloon” arrived from Vicksburg only a few days before Mercy’s birth. I cannot express my relief and gladness, to hear from you. Only days before that, a letter reached me from Mr. Poole, now in camp in Jackson, Tennessee. I will write to him of the birth of his granddaughter, and give him the news of your whereabouts and safety.

  TUESDAY, JUNE 24

  Elinor called upon us yesterday. She said that Charles Grey’s things had arrived, sent back by his commander from New Bern, North Carolina. With them in the box was the bullet that killed him! Elinor showed it to me—a chunk of lead as big as a quince. They intend to display it to the Daughters of the Union at their meeting tomorrow night.

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25

  Papa is to go to Northwest Harbor in quest of another hired man, Isaiah having joined the fishing-fleet with his father. I will end this note, and send it on with him. I sat in the summer kitchen this morning, with Mercy in my arms, while Mother churned the butter and spoke at length of Herod’s slaugh
ter of the Innocents at Bethlehem, and what a good thing this was for those murdered babies. I should not laugh at her, not even within my secret heart, for she means well with her tales of Biblical horror. My little treasure I named for the sister who was born when I was seven, and lived barely two weeks. Of course Mother seeks to steel my heart against such a loss, in the only way she knew how to armor her own. For an encore she treated me to the tale of the Biblical hero Jephtha. He, it seems, slaughtered his little daughter in fulfilment of a vow too rashly made to God. Mother is nothing if not thorough.

  It is as if winter never existed, nor ever could again. On this June morning I love all the world.

  Love, C

  and M

  Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine

  To

  Susanna Ashford, Vicksburg, Mississippi

  c/o Mrs. Eliza Johnson, Elizabethton,

  Tennessee

  SATURDAY, JULY 5, 1862

  Dear Susanna,

  I am so angry, and so troubled in my heart, I do not even know if this letter will make sense. Yet I must tell someone of what happened yesterday. The Union is the only hope of true human freedom in this world: this I truly believe. And, I believe that its preservation takes precedence over—I know I should write the word “everything” and I can not. But I do not know what to write instead.

  Oliver has joined the Army. Recruiters came to the island’s Fourth of July Fair and Celebration yesterday, giving away free liquor and accompanied by a small company of soldiers doing very smart drill in their wool uniforms in spite of punishing heat. The Captain engaged Ollie in talk, saying, I’m sorry to hear you have a broken leg—or is it the consumption, that’s keeping you from joining up? Or is it only that your “wifey-ifey won’t wet her ‘ittle man go?” Will Kydd, who fetches the mail from Belfast every Monday, tried to answer back, but the Captain dismissed him as “one of those men who’d rather see himself walking around safe, and his nation crippled.” At length Oliver, in a burst of pride, signed the recruiting papers, before I could get to him.

  Elinor assures me that Peggie “would rather die in childbed” than be “married to a coward”—which, in fact, I don’t think is the case. She further assures me that it’s only a three-month enlistment—until apple-picking time—and pressed into my hand one of her Propaganda Society pamphlets, the verse enclosed. Yet, even if Ollie only goes to Virginia for that short while, it does not lessen the danger while he is there. Through the wall that separates my room from theirs I could hear Peggie crying, all night.

  I am still angry today. Should I be angry with myself, for feeling as I do? Is it evil to love my brother [more than—crossed out] [as much as—crossed out]? Is it wrong of me even to write these questions to you, who have lost two precious brothers and the home you loved?

  Remembering your letter, I went to the attic and searched out David Copperfield, which I knew I had seen in Mr. Poole’s trunk: seeking proof I suppose that I am not insane or wicked to feel, at the same time, genuine love and blinding rage. Bless you for not holding me to any of what I have said above.

  MONDAY, JULY 7

  EVENING

  Your letter came like an answer to the thoughts tearing at my heart. Everyone sounds the same. Hating the Yankees. Wishing every one of them would die. I cannot say the relief it brings me, to read that you don’t hate me, or wish my family impoverished or my house burned, in revenge for your brothers’ deaths. Sometimes I feel as if I were surrounded by strangers, who only look like the people I used to know … as if everyone who favored the Union had conspired to murder our brother. Like Mother, I suppose, telling me horrible tales of children’s deaths, to lessen the hurt she still carries for the little girl she lost.

  LATER

  I take back what I’ve said about Elinor. I suppose it just shows how mixed are the elements of the soul. That was she who came to the door of the summer kitchen just now, with the news from her father, a selectman of the island, that I’ve been offered the position as schoolmistress on Isle au Haut. Among the men who volunteered along with Ollie was Peletiah Small, the Isle au Haut schoolteacher. The town is now offering a bounty of a hundred dollars for enlistment, but hired men are dearly expensive now, if they can be found at all. I think this is Elinor’s way of making good this loss.

  TUESDAY, JULY 8

  Laundry; a task infinitely easier in summertime when it can be done every two weeks instead of every six or eight. I still feel as if I, rather than the sheets, had been boiled in a tub. Ironing tomorrow, nearly all day, and picking the first of the cucumbers and stoning cherries for Mother to put up. How I love the feel of garden-earth between my fingers! The sky holds light until ten or ten-thirty at night. We all live in the summer kitchen, as late into the evening as we can stand the mosquitoes, which seem to be insatiable. I am generally the last one left, and sometimes write with a pillow-slip draped over my head like a hood, in which ridiculous attitude I sit now, dear, dear Susie, aching shoulders and all.

  The cod-fleet has gone out again, and Papa has not found a man yet. I wanted solitude, and quiet, to re-read what you wrote of my father-in-law, and the death of my husband’s mother. I will admit that Mr. Poole’s letter surprised me, in both its erudition (for in person he makes a Spartan look like a chatterbox) and in its kindliness. Even as I write those words, I remember how difficult Elizabeth Bennet finds it, to reconcile Mr. Darcy’s cold haughtiness—or Mr. Wickham’s facile charm—with the truth, until more information is received. This gives me pause with regard to my father-in-law, and his estrangement from his son. As Miss Bennet did not do—to her sorrow—I will withhold my judgement, and wait upon events. I will say, things seem to be much simpler in the Bible, where men are good or bad, than in one of Miss Austen’s novels!

  WEDNESDAY, JULY 9

  Oliver has gone. It is the time of year when the girls go over to Isle au Haut “a-plummin’”—that is, gathering blackberries, a task with which I will not be able to help, nor with the making of the jam. Tomorrow I begin my career as a teacher. Isle au Haut stands six miles farther out to sea than Deer Isle, and is so primitive as to make Deer Isle appear cosmopolitan. I’ll cross back and forth every day with Will Kydd (“If you can stand the thought of sailing with a Copperhead,” sneers Elinor). Elinor, who is still nursing Columbia, promises she will look after sweet little Mercy Susanna, as well. I’ve always gotten on well with Will Kydd, and I would rather that arrangement, than board on the island five days a week, and only see my beloved treasure Saturday evenings and Sundays. Before last Friday, I have not been away from Mercy for more than a few minutes at a time. There is no pleasure on Earth comparable to holding her in my arms, to bathing her, changing her (now you know I have gone insane!), touching her tiny hands and feet. And yet, I find the thought of going off to work each day—of earning money to help my family—fills me with an unladylike relish that is almost savage.

  Thank you, dearest friend, for your kind thoughts, and your words of encouragement about my darling’s birth. Yes, I fully expect a portrait of her—in oils!—one day … if you can make time among your other commissions.

  I will refrain from writing to inform Mr. Poole of your new suitor. The prospect of a duel between two gentlemen of such venerable years can cause nothing but revulsion to ladies so refined as ourselves!!!

  Love,

  Cora

  [enclosure—clipping from propaganda pamphlet]

  “Don’t stop for a moment to think, John—

  Your country calls, then go;

  Don’t think of me or the children,

  I’ll care for them, you know.”

  Susanna Ashford, Vicksburg, Mississippi

  To

  Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine

  c/o Eliza Johnson, Elizabethton, Tennessee

  THURSDAY, JULY 17, 1862

  [lost]

  Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine

  To

  Susanna Ashford, Vicksburg, Mississippi

  c/o Mrs. Eliza Johnson, E
lizabethton,

  Tennessee

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 2, 1862

  My darling Susanna,

  A hundred times in the past three weeks I’ve thought —Susie needs to know about this! And by the time I finish cleaning the school-house, and step off the Lady Anne at Green’s Landing, and walk, through peaceful summer woods at twilight, the mile and a half to Elinor’s to get Mercy and then another mile and a half home, and feed Mercy, and help Mother with supper, and tell Papa about teaching (there are youngsters in my class under the impression that all United States Presidents are lineally descended from George Washington), and—and—and … it is ten o’clock, with dawn, breakfast, and the walk to Green’s Landing again all due at five.