Mother Katharine Drexel

by Cheryl C. D. Hughes

  Mother darling came skipping over the fence as lithe as a girl, glad to see us back again, and not too proud to show it. . . .

  We met two old friends down there, but much to Kate’s chagrin made no new ones — (this I think is the one regret in the mind of my dear sociable little sister).48

  Because Kate and Elizabeth were of marriageable age, the expectations for each visit ran very high for both the daughters and their parents. It was this expectation that made the Worth gowns de rigueur.

  Kate wrote her mother from Cape May while on a visit there two years later:

  My own darling Mamma: —

  Now if you were not too impatient and did not skip the above line of address . . . you will call your poor old daughter sentimental. But don’t do so, because you can well imagine if you don’t close that big heart of yours against all sympathy how very dear you are when, when — I was going to say far away — but here again, were we not the gens qui s’aiment a demi-mots [people who love one another without having to say it], you will think that we only loved you when you were far away. But you won’t misunderstand me and force me to become a d most unpleasant body, will you?

  I am glad you made those little visits, for you are now able to understand how one can enjoy oneself to the utmost and yet feel that dear Papa and dear Mamma grow dearer for the separation, and their darling virtues which perhaps we might have been fools enough to take as a matter of course when enjoying this sweetness, to present themselves vividly and specially before us, now that we miss them.

  It is time to dress for tea. How I wish I could ask you now that oft repeated question, “Mamma, what dress shall I wear?”

  So goodbye, Mother darling, and excuse this very poor letter from your own

  KMD

  How is Prince [her horse]? Information of all kinds gratefully received.49

  Emma Drexel responded with a lightly chastising letter addressed to both Katharine and Elizabeth:

  Remember one principle my children, never be a humbug toward your mother, you are on a visit, you can commit no unfilial act in extracting pure enjoyment from it, do not therefore imagine that you gratify me or flatter me when you pretend to be homesick. . . . Be content with green turtle soup served in a gold spoon, and avoid too much greed of happiness. You cannot possibly enjoy two pleasures at once, put vigor and duty into the visit and on Saturday week return to your usual life with wholesale zest. The real philosopher’s stone is the knowledge of how, and the power, to improve the moment.50

  Katharine immediately responded with a letter to her mother emphasizing the activities of which she and Elizabeth had been a part. In addition to telling her mother about going to the steeplechases and flat races at Monmouth Park the day before, she talked of her dress:

  Mother Darling: —

  Behold your blooming daughter in a high state of morning dress — the white linen lawn flounced with an abundance of torchon [lace], enlivened on this occasion with violet satin streamers & bows. The effect is “stunning” & was produced by agonizing efforts on the part of Lise and me before the looking glass upstairs.51

  This gay letter undoubtedly crossed in the mail one written by Emma to her daughters the day before, the day of their outing to the horse races. Emma’s letter perhaps foreshadowed more somber events that were to follow in the fullness of time.

  My own darlings:

  Last night I had a dream, in which I saw the painting of a door such as we have often remarked in walls of church sanctuaries abroad, the opening of the reliquaries and tabernacles all bedecked and be-jewelled, and it was locked. I inquired for the key and Kate informed me, that the meaning of the painting was, that Jesus held the key, as this was the door of His heart, which He only opened to those who knocked and asked. You, Lizzie, smiled at Kate’s pious interpretation, which you denounced a gammon and spinach, and I became alarmed at the thought of your incredulity. At this juncture, I awakened with the entire scene impressed upon my mind, but its meaning and origin I have not yet been able to solve except it is that you both are much in my thoughts either sleeping or waking.52

  Even Mr. Drexel wrote his daughters and visited them while they were away. Those who were away from home and those who remained behind continued to share their strong familial bonds. Mr. Drexel wrote fatherly advice on August 18, 1880: “I hope you are careful not to get into deep water either with the beaux or the surf. . . . It seems lonely at St. Michael’s without you, but life is made up of sacrifices and we willingly bear your absence when we know you are enjoying yourselves.”53 A year later, Mr. Drexel again wrote similar advice to his daughters: “Don’t let that blue shirted Englishman steal away your hearts and above all be careful not to go into danger in bathing.”54 For his daughters, Francis Drexel appears to have had an equal fear of men and the ocean. He need not have worried, at least for the time being. Even though their parents encouraged Elizabeth and Katharine to lead fully social lives, which they did within the parameters of their family and social set, both young women were very close to their parents and Louise. Katharine countered an implied criticism of her mother on this account in a letter to Bishop O’Connor:

  She plainly saw the vanitas vanitatis [alludes to the saying, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”], and did not hide the fact from us. She never prevented us from entering society, in fact, she encouraged it, provided us with the means to go into the world abundantly so that our friends marveled at the variety and elegance of our toilets. We loved her dearly, as well we might, and our family union was complete in every respect. Yet we found that if we gave our lives or even a part of them to the world, we could not be in entire accord with her, for she was not “of the world.” It was because we appreciated close intimacy with her that we left others for her. I do not wish you to think for a moment that Mama ever advised us to keep from society. Indeed, often I have heard her reproach herself because she had not gone more into the world for our sakes. If, however, she were to devote even a part of her time to visiting, the duties which she must perform at that time must go unfulfilled.55

  The Deaths of Her Parents

  This family circle was not to endure much longer. Emma Drexel had been fatigued and in pain as early as the late autumn of 1879. Her doctor prescribed an operation to which Emma naively and foolishly submitted herself, as long as the doctor would perform the operation at the family home on Walnut Street in Philadelphia, while her husband and daughters were out at Torresdale enjoying St. Michel. Needless to say, neither her husband nor her daughters knew anything about the planned operation. Emma’s surgery confirmed a diagnosis of incurable cancer. It is partially her illness that accounts for the particularly loving and solicitous letters she received from her daughters away at the seashore, and Emma’s insistence on their going into society. Elizabeth and Katharine were not completely aware of the nature of their mother’s disease at first, and Emma hoped to see them married and settled before her death. Had they known of the seriousness of their mother’s illness and her impending death, the chances are good that none of the Drexel daughters would have left her side for a minute.

  When Emma eventually became bedridden, Elizabeth and Katharine were her nurses. They witnessed their mother suffering the worst sort of pain. Her primary doctor was a homeopathic physician who did not believe in painkilling medicines, but only in “natural” medicines, so she was treated with diet and tonics of various sorts. Emma did not receive narcotic pain medication until very late in her illness, near the end of her life. She told her husband and her daughters that she was offering her pain to Christ that her suffering might take the place of theirs, that they might be spared a painful death since she would have experienced pain enough for all of them. Emma saw her illness as the will of God. She wrote abstrusely to her daughters away at the seashore, “Remember that Obedience is better than Sacrifice.”56 One wonders what Katharine was thinking of, obedience or sacrifice, when she told her
sisters during their mother’s illness, “If anything happens to Mama I’m going to enter a convent.”57

  Emma Bouvier Drexel died at her home on January 29, 1883. The Public Ledger published an editorial praising her:

  The poor, the sick, the unemployed, the dying were the constant objects of her cheering visits. Few women ever secured so many situations for needy but industrious and worthy persons — men, women, boys and girls. The families she has aided can be numbered by the hundreds, some of them supported entirely by her in time of need. And one of the most touching scenes of her funeral was that hundreds who passed through her home for two hours yesterday morning for a mournful farewell were largely composed of those to whom she had been a benefactress in every way in which distress can be alleviated or relieved. Their sorrow was unmistakable.58

  That of her husband and daughters was similarly evident. The daughters attempted to care for their father. By this time, they were expert at running the household and looking after practical matters. Katharine turned down a marriage proposal from an unnamed suitor. Her biographer, Sr. Consuela Duffy, has suggested in an interview that the young man might have been Walter Smith, whose family’s summer estate was in the neighborhood of St. Michel. He was a friend of the family and frequent visitor over the years, who later married Elizabeth Drexel.59 To Bishop O’Connor, Katharine wrote about the proposal: “I have refused the offered heart. I have every reason to believe that it was not a very ardent one.”60 As a dutiful daughter, Katharine told her father about the proposal and her response. Mr. Drexel for his part was concerned for his daughters and desired their happiness above all. After several months of grieving deeply the inconsolable loss of his wife, Francis Drexel decided to take his family to Europe again.

  In the piazza of San Marco in Venice, Kate knelt down facing a statue of the Madonna. In the bright Italian sunlight the face of the Madonna appeared to Katharine to be that of her mother, so she moved closer to the statue to see it more clearly. The statue seemed to address her. In some mysterious manner, the Madonna of San Marco said to her, “Freely have you received; freely give.”61 Katharine kept a holy card of the Madonna of San Marco on which she had written the date of this strange occurrence, November 18, 1883, and she kept it her entire life. “Freely give” was part of the rule of St. Francis of Assisi, and Katharine would vow to make it her own rule. “My mother and His — will help me to find the way” — the way to live the rule is to give.62 Aspects of her future were beginning to take shape in Katharine’s mind, even if she did not yet know the exact direction her life would take her in order to fulfill her vow to “freely give.” More insights were yet to come, and they would come from the most unlikely sources.

  In Rome, the Drexel family again enjoyed the sights and a meeting with the pope, Leo XIII. While in Rome, they also made the acquaintance of a Belgian missionary to the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest, Fr. Peter Hylebos. They did some sightseeing with him in the Eternal City, and when parting, received an invitation to visit him at his mission should they ever be “in the neighborhood.” While genuine, it was also a somewhat offhand social gesture that no one could have predicted would change the face of the Catholic Church in the United States and positively and inalterably change the lives of hundreds of thousands of African Americans and Native Americans.

  The Drexels were not long home from Europe when Francis Drexel needed to go to the Pacific Northwest on business. In addition to his business associates, he invited his daughters and his newly motherless niece, their Bouvier cousin, Mary Dixon, to accompany him. They traveled luxuriously in The Yellowstone, a private railcar lent to him by the Northern Pacific Railway Company. Along the way they visited Yellowstone National Park. The men were arrested for removing some rocks from their natural sites in the park, a deed actually perpetrated by the young women, who wanted some pretty rocks as mementos. A trial was even held before a justice of the peace who presided over the law from his chair in the local country store. The case ended amicably, if a little humorously, and the group continued detouring here and there on its way to Portland, Oregon.

  As was their family practice when traveling, they stopped daily for Mass. The Yellowstone would be put off on a sidetrack to be picked up by the next engine going in the right direction. In this way the party had a leisurely trip across the country. One detour for Mass possibly saved their lives and certainly their pocketbooks. They stopped off in Bismarck, North Dakota, to attend church and missed the next train that came through. When they got to their next stop in Gardiner, Wyoming, they were more than twelve hours late. They learned that a gang of robbers had heard of the Drexels’ trip and had come into town to relieve the rich folks from the east of their cash and valuables, only to be thwarted by a Mass, a long sermon, and a missed train.

  Continuing on the way, The Yellowstone stopped in Tacoma, Washington, for the party to attend daily Mass. The young women saw a Catholic chapel and went to inquire about the schedule for services. To the surprise and delight of everyone, they were greeted by Fr. Hylebos, their friend from Rome. He took them to his mission church deep in the forest where he was ministering to the Puyallup Indian tribe. It was a lovely but spare church dedicated to Our Lady of Grace. Kate noticed that there was no statue of the church’s patroness and promised to send one to Fr. Hylebos. Francis Drexel wanted his daughters to be modern and independent young women, and one way he facilitated this was by opening a checking account for each with a deposit of $200. The statue that Katharine picked out of the Benziger Brothers’ catalogue for the Puyallup chapel in the woods cost $100. She worried about what her banker father would think of her spending half of her allowance on a statue, but she need not have done so. His response was, “I’m glad you did it, Kitty.”63 When the magnificent statue arrived, Fr. Hylebos feared it was too large for the small reservation chapel, but the Puyallup chief told him: “No, this big statue will speak better to our hearts than a little statue, and now we can think better of Our Mother in Heaven. We never before knew how to think of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Now we learn to think. Now we can think that she had a crown and that the little Jesus has the world in His hands with His cross to save us all. We want to pray now.”64 Fr. Hylebos wanted to move the impressive statue to a larger church and replace it with a smaller one, more appropriate to the small reservation chapel, but the chief would not let him. Katharine Drexel had known intuitively what was needed by the mission.

  This $100 statue was her first gift to the Native Americans, and her first venture into the mission field. It would not be long before she would support a school for the Puyallup mission of Fr. Hylebos. The picture of Katharine’s future was coming more into focus, yet she could still not make it out. The bonds of family affection and duty prevented her from the necessary deep introspection and discernment.

  These bonds would be all but sundered by the abrupt death of Francis Drexel on February 15, 1885, of a heart attack brought on by complications of a pleurisy that grew out of a bad cold he had caught a week or two before. His death came two years and two weeks after that of his wife, and her prayer that he be spared a painful death was answered. Kate was with her father when he succumbed. Her sisters may or may not have been home at the time; the records are a little unclear. It is possible that Elizabeth and Louise were on a brief trip to New York when their father passed away.65

  Archbishop Patrick J. Ryan celebrated the funeral Mass for Francis Drexel. In his homily, the archbishop noted: “Every man may be more or less a philanthropist, but only the religious man can have charity, for charity is the love of neighbor for God’s sake. . . . The loss of such a Christian philanthropist to any community is a serious one and no legacies that he may leave can compensate for it, for the daily life of such a man, his personal example to a whole community cannot be estimated by the standard of money.”66 While the loss to the community of the daily example of Francis Drexel as he went about his business as a banker, family man, and Christian phi
lanthropist was incalculable, the conditions of his will and the disposition of his estate were exact. He left an immense estate of $15,500,000, the largest until that time of any probated in Philadelphia.67 His will immediately distributed $1,500,000 to twenty-nine charities; all but one, a Lutheran hospital, were Catholic institutions, and all were within the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The remainder of his estate was put into a trust for the benefit of his daughters. The annual trust income only, not its principal, was to be distributed equally among his three daughters, then aged twenty-nine, twenty-six, and twenty-one. The principal was to remain untouched in the trust and could not be encumbered in any way by the beneficiaries.68 Neither, should they marry, would their husbands have any control over the trust; nor could a widowed husband inherit his wife’s annual share of the trust income. If one of the trust beneficiaries were to die, her share of the trust income would be equally divided among her surviving children. Should she die childless, her surviving sisters would divide her portion of the trust income equally. Should two sisters die childless, the remaining sister would enjoy the total income of the trust until her death. Upon the death of the last surviving daughter of Francis Drexel, the trust income would devolve onto her children. Should she die childless, the entire trust would be dissolved, and its funds distributed to the original twenty-nine charities specified by Drexel in his will.

  Francis Drexel’s will was a well-drawn legal document that took into account all the possible contingencies for a father trying to reach beyond the grave to care for three orphaned daughters. They were three attractive and extremely wealthy young women, possibly America’s most eligible young women. While they had seen a great deal of the world, they were not worldly women. Their lives had been circumscribed by their close family circle, now unalterably shattered by the deaths of both parents within a fairly short time. They might marry. Francis Drexel had known of the marriage proposal to Katharine, which she rejected. Any one of them might remain single. One or more might enter a convent. Their father had written to a friend: “My daughters are all good practical Catholics — whether any of them will have the vocation to become a religious I cannot say — If they should, I will not oppose it.”69 Emma Drexel preferred that her daughters marry; she believed that they would do more good in the world as pious women of wealth and status than as cloistered nuns. Emma, who had considered the religious life for herself and whose sister had entered a convent, told her daughters, “I do hope God will not give you, my children, a religious vocation. If He does, I must submit; but I shall never permit you to enter a convent until you are at least 25 years of age.”70 Their father’s will would accommodate any of these possible vocations. His daughters’ decisions concerning marriage, the single life, or the convent were still in the future when Francis Drexel wrote his will.