Mother Katharine Drexel

by Cheryl C. D. Hughes

  She did not overlook the spiritual side of their development. Her idea was brilliant — and practical. Because to teach is to learn, she proposed that her daughters conduct a Sunday school for the children of the servants from their household and from the neighboring households. There was no Catholic church in the immediate neighborhood of St. Michel, but there were many Catholics on the Drexel staff and other staffs nearby. Eventually, fifty children came regularly to the St. Michel Sunday school. Later, Louise would write of their little school:

  St. Michael’s was first occupied in 1870. Shortly thereafter our own dear mother proposed to her two eldest daughters, one being about 14 and the other 11 years of age, to establish a Sunday School for the children of the men who worked on the place. The Sunday School was held with the greatest regularity. The older children were taught by Elizabeth, the youngest by Katharine. After the lessons were recited, the children were assembled around the piano in the parlor and hymns were sung. After a few years the number of children increased, so that fifty or more came every Sunday. Just before St. Michael’s was closed for the winter, prizes were given out for the best lessons and best attendance, and on Christmas Day the children assembled for a celebration when they received useful gifts (such as dresses, knitted jackets, etc.) also cake, candy, etc. This Sunday school was held until 1888.31

  In a letter to Miss Cassidy written on December 21, 1872, Katharine elaborated on the gifts for the closing of the school and for Christmas.

  We have bought all the presents for our Sunday School children. [For Christmas,] we are to give each girl a dress, or as Johanna would say, the makin’s of a dress. The boys are to have scarfs and mittens. . . . [For the end of the Sunday school there are] . . . match safes, Blessed Virgins, Infant Jesus, holy water fonts, & various ornaments — china mandarins, little girls with golden hair and pink dresses, besides a large play tea set & a china menagerie for the children. . . . The “holy” statues are intended for Lise’s catechism prizes which are usually distributed in the fall.32

  Katharine wrote of her own class: “I have a class of 16 young gentlemen, hardly one of which has reached the mature age of seven or eight. It is delightful to listen to them whilst they say ‘Hail Mary, full of grace,’ we expect however, to go to Holy Communion once a week, and I only hope that the grace received in the wonderful sacrament will impart to me a little of its love.”33 Like the Dorcas charity, the Sunday school had a profound influence on Katharine and her sisters. The school was racially mixed, with white and a handful of African American children. From their experience with the school, the girls learned the essence of charity, the giving of self out of love in a manner that enhances the humanity of both the giver and the receiver, and humility — it was a way of seeing oneself in proper perspective within the divine economy. The gifts they gave to the children indicate a good mix of the practical and the whimsical. They provided the makings of dresses so that the girls would learn how to sew and clothe themselves, and they also gave them dolls. And they passed out religious articles and pictures to reinforce their lessons, the main reason for the entire enterprise. The St. Michel Sunday school also balanced out the Sunday school they held exclusively for black children during the winter at old St. Joseph’s in Philadelphia. Between helping their mother with her Dorcas charity, their Sunday schools, their studies, their household duties, and keeping up with the activities of their larger extended family, the Drexel girls were very busy young women. In 1873, Katharine would describe herself as “a hurely-burley [sic] girl of about 16, whom everyone loves; always ready for good humored mischief, teasing everyone, even Mamma.”34 This view of herself as good humored and fun-loving was echoed by a letter from Miss Cassidy to Louise Drexel Morrell, shortly before Miss Cassidy’s death. “[Katharine’s] great delight in your joint childhood was to convulse you with laughter by all sorts of antics; tumbling about, falling down, etc. etc. I can see you now weak with laughing and the tears in your eyes after some performance on the lawn at St. Michel’s & hear your ‘Oh, Kate . . . you are a funny girl.’ ”35

  On the other hand, there was a very serious side to this “hurley-burley,” mischievous girl, especially when it came to religion. She complained to Miss Cassidy: “Lou [Louise] calls me scrupulous, etc. . . . Mamma asked me to teach the child for ten minutes daily how to follow the Mass. Well, because the little rogue would insist upon putting Mamma’s watch in the middle of the table while I was instructing her and because I wished to keep her about three minutes longer than the allotted time, she immediately bestows upon me the name of scrupulous, pious, praying, etc. etc. and every other religious insult she can think of.”36 It is interesting that she would take umbrage at being called “pious” and “praying,” which ought to be religious compliments, even if “scrupulous” is more negative. It is also interesting that her younger sister rebelled at being taught about the Mass. Clearly, while a certain religiosity pervaded the Drexel household, not everyone was always as eager as the next, or at least not everyone at the same time. Naturally, there was also some sibling rivalry going on in this little scene, and while Louise might not have minded being taught how to follow the Mass by her mother, she could understandably object to her older sister as her religious tutor. Yet it is also typical of Katharine to take a directive from her mother very seriously, especially in a religious matter, the protests of her younger sibling notwithstanding.

  Louise had clearly touched a nerve in Katharine by calling her scrupulous. Her reaction strikes one as a guilty response. Even as a child in her early adolescence, Katharine wrote what she called her accounts. Perhaps it was the banker’s daughter in her, but she kept track of all kinds of thoughts, ideas, prayers, and actions. She was extremely conscientious in her attention to detail. In an entry dated November 1873, fifteen-year-old Katharine wrote: “What a long time it has been since I have made my ‘accounts,’ so long in fact that it has now been four months and I almost forgot how I advanced in virtue. However, I will put down my ‘accounts’ as far as I am able. I am getting quite scrupulous, and really every scruple as Father Faber says, is mixed up with sin and vanity.”37 Clearly she was including devotional works in her youthful reading. Fr. Frederick William Faber was a Victorian English writer of popular Catholic devotional literature, who was also widely read in the United States. Katharine mentioned him several times in her journals. Together with John Henry Newman, he founded the London Oratory. His books are doctrinally orthodox, only occasionally humorous, and always practical. Katharine took his advice to heart on a certain level, while at the same time remaining a fairly ordinary teenager who loved fun and travel. She would forget for months on end her intentions to take account of her virtues more regularly.

  Early Travels

  A grand tour of Europe with their parents was a youthful highlight for the Drexel girls, even those who suffered from sin and vanity. They were abroad from September 1874 until May 1875. Katharine was still in her “hurley-burley” stage, but on the cusp of important changes in her life. After visiting a Carthusian monastery outside of Florence, Italy, she wrote to Miss Cassidy: “To see these venerable old monks pacing the cloisters with their white cowls drawn over their heads, or to hear them chanting office in the old walnut choir, just as they did 500 years ago, seemed more like something to be read and wondered about, than to be actually witnessed.”38 She was so inspired by the pervasive peacefulness of the monastery that she announced that, were she a man, she would join the order to spend the rest of her days in the serenity of the cloister. Her family laughed at her at the time. In Vienna, Katharine and Elizabeth spent the better part of a day on a religious escapade to locate an English-speaking confessor. After crisscrossing the city, they finally found a confessor who spoke French, the language with which Katharine had struggled so hard. In Bologna a guide told the family that the patron saint of Katharine was on display at the Church of St. Catherine. He took them into a side chapel where the saint’s unembalmed, blackened body s
at in a chair ready to receive pilgrims. The saint’s lips were still red, according to legend, because there she had been kissed by Christ. The guide told the girls that pilgrims customarily kiss the feet of the saint. Although quite repulsed, the girls did as they were told. In her letter to Miss Cassidy about the affair, Katharine wrote, “The effect of the whole shrine was awful.”39 To make matters worse for her, the shrine turned out to be that of St. Catherine of Bologna, not St. Catherine of Siena, her patron saint. In Rome, the girls enjoyed seeing firsthand the places about which they had studied with Miss Cassidy. And, while they loved the churches, shrines, and museums, their personal audience with Pope Pius IX was undoubtedly the high point of the Drexels’ European tour. Louise exchanged a small white cap with the Holy Father, who took off the one he was wearing and gave it to her. Johanna Ryan provided years of family lore and mirth by throwing herself at the pope’s feet and exclaiming, “Holy Father, praise God and His Blessed Mother. My eyes have seen the Lord Himself this day.”40 When it was explained that Johanna Ryan was Irish from the “auld sod,” the pope understood perfectly her extreme reaction, and the Drexels had a story to tell and retell through the years. The trip home to Philadelphia took the family through Lourdes, where they prayed at the grotto and partook of the waters. Kate wrote to Miss Cassidy: “I attribute to no superstition the spiritual refreshment that I drank from the clear fountain which she herself caused to flow and which has been the channel of so many wonderful blessings.”41 For Katharine, there was superstition, and there was faith. Her negative reaction to the shrine of St. Catherine of Bologna was against the trappings and lore that surrounded the physical body of the saint with its blackened limbs and red lips, all illuminated by hundreds of candles, by which she remained unmoved despite her obedient kiss. Her positive affirmation of the water of Lourdes was one of faith, based on its effect on her.

  Coming of Age

  Katharine Drexel returned home from Europe on the brink of adulthood. On the exterior, she was still the fun-loving sister and dutiful daughter, but on the inside, within her mind, she was wrestling with questions and problems of great import for her future life. She was not alone in her struggle, though, for she turned for help to her parish priest, Fr. James O’Connor.

  In 1872, Fr. O’Connor became the pastor of St. Dominic Church, the parish church for St. Michel in Torresdale. When St. Michel was renovated, the bishop of Philadelphia, James F. Wood, a close family friend, came to say Mass for the Drexels in their new oratory. He granted them permission to have Mass said there four times a year, a favor he later expanded to include any occasion when a priest came to call. Fr. O’Connor visited frequently and became a close friend to all the Drexels, but especially to Katharine. He was one of those adults who can enter the life of a young person and have a tremendous influence. He treated her seriously and sensed in her a person of tremendous spiritual possibilities. He did not condescend to her as some adults do when trying to befriend a young person. He became her spiritual director and friend until his death in 1890. Indeed, he was her spiritual father during that time, helping to shape and develop her life’s vocation. He was the pastor at St. Dominic for only four more years, but they were four very formative years in the life of a teenaged Katharine Drexel. In 1876, Fr. O’Connor left St. Dominic to become a bishop and the vicar apostolic of the Nebraska Territory, which included parts of the future states of South Dakota, North Dakota, Colorado, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Later, he became the first bishop of Omaha. During the years of his bishopric, the Catholic population of the former Nebraska Territory grew from 30,000 to 300,000.42 Even the great distance between Philadelphia and Omaha and the great burdens of looking after the spiritual and ecclesiastical needs of a far-flung and fast-growing flock did not lessen the influence of Bishop O’Connor in the life of Katharine Drexel. They maintained a voluminous epistolary friendship. She consulted with him regularly and in depth about her thoughts and spiritual concerns and filled him in on the Drexel family happenings. He wrote fatherly advice, sometimes sternly and sometimes lightheartedly, but always affectionately.

  Because the Drexel family had a certain standing in Philadelphia society, some of the formalities of society had to be observed, and when they were, they were entered into with great gusto. Elizabeth’s debut party in January 1876 was one such affair. This coming-out party for her daughter had been on the mind of Emma Drexel during their trip to Europe. In Paris, she dragged Elizabeth from the corsetiers to the cordonniers, from the modistes to the couturiers. The girls grew bored with the various delays of the designers and tradesmen, but their mother was on a mission. Elizabeth’s debut gown was from the famous Parisian House of Worth in the required debutante white. The fact that Catholic families, no matter how wealthy, were not at the top of the social ladder in Philadelphia did not undermine the festivities of the hour. Philadelphia had experienced the 1844 anti-Catholic riots, the worst in the country. Almost thirty-five years later, although overt anti-Catholicism was well behind those of serious social standing in Philadelphia, still, there would be no invitations to the Catholic Miss Drexels to make their curtsies at the Assembly Ball, the most prestigious of Philadelphia’s debutante balls. However, each daughter in her turn had a beautiful, memorable party to mark her official transition into adulthood and, perhaps most importantly, her marital eligibility. Katharine and Louise observed the preparations for Elizabeth’s party:

  Louise and I amused ourselves in looking at the men who were draping chandeliers with green smilax vines and pinks. Then after taking one proud look at the table elegantly set with large India dishes and handsome gilt candelabra at each end, we departed to dress ourselves for an afternoon ride. On our return all were edified by the spectacle of two swallow-tailed waiters flying around in search of tumblers and plates. The India dishes were now filled with fancy cakes, meringues, jellied chicken, chicken salad and various other dainties. How I should have liked to take a sly nibble at some of these friandises, but the swallow-tails were always sure to appear just as I was taking an innocent walk around the table, intending at their departure from the room to make a grab at some of the goodies.43

  Katharine had not lost her sensuous desire for foods, but her tastes had become more sophisticated, as becomes a young woman with a European tour under her belt. These were a pleasure for her, and, at this point in her life, not even a guilty pleasure. She was a young woman enjoying her family and her place in the world.

  Katharine ended her formal education in the summer of 1878. She found it to be a bit of an anticlimax. “This will be a perpetual vacation for me, and yet strange to say, I do not feel particularly hilarious at the prospect. One looks forward so many years to finishing school, and when at last the time comes, a kind of sadness steals over one whose cause is hard to analyze. Perhaps it comes from this — there was a definite future to look to, up to this time of leaving school. Then the future suddenly looks all vague and uncertain.”44 When asked by Elizabeth what her emotions were on finishing school, Katharine’s only response was “I feel very hot.” Elizabeth noted that the temperature was in the nineties, and went on to add, “It takes only a very small physical inconvenience to make us callous to momentous events.”45 It is easy to sense the late adolescent ennui and languor in Katharine’s “I feel very hot,” but soon she would have other things on her mind and other activities to keep her busy.

  Katharine made her own debut in 1879, also in a white Worth gown. Thereafter, she and Elizabeth received many invitations for parties and visits. If her future was vague and uncertain, the present proved to be pleasant and amusing. Immediately after her debut party, she wrote a chatty letter to Bishop O’Connor about the plays she had seen with her sisters and her father. “To this list of dissipations can be added dutiful evening calls on aunts and cousins, besides attending a little party the other night where I made my debut.”46 He wrote back a charming letter:

  Perhaps I ought not to “Katie” you any longer. . . . Y
ou are no longer a child but a young lady. . . . “My dear child” or “My dear friend” or “My dear Miss Katie” or what? It is better to have a clear understanding on this matter. I only hope it may never be “My dear Condessa” or “My dear Marchesa” or even “My dear Princepessa.” God protect you from the fate that would involve such a title! I have known of two and heard of several other young American ladies to whom such titles fell, but hope and pray that you may never be as unfortunate as they.47

  The bishop had no doubt that the Drexel women would each marry well, raise families in the Church, and carry on the philanthropic and social traditions established by their parents. He encouraged Katharine’s social nature, only warning against a certain kind of frivolous society, which might tempt her into worldliness. One such possible misalliance would be with an impoverished European nobleman looking for an American heiress.

  The Drexel sisters received many invitations to spend lengthy visits at the seaside estates of family and friends during the spring and summer social seasons. There, eligible young men and women would meet and woo within the prescribed social set. Against the explicit directions from their mother not to write home too often, both girls were in constant touch.

  On their return home from a brief visit to Cape May, New Jersey, the summer before Kate’s debut, Elizabeth made an entry into the St. Michel summer journal that indicates Kate’s sociability and also reflects the mother-daughter relationship enjoyed by Emma and her daughters.