Louisa on the Front Lines

by Samantha Seiple

  Sometimes the doctor would prescribe “blistering” an area of skin on the patient with an irritant, such as powdered Spanish fly. The pus that was formed in the blister was believed to carry away the infection. Spanish fly was also taken internally to treat paralysis, tetanus, and diabetes. For many doctors, like Dr. Stipp, the head surgeon in charge who took Clark’s place at the Union Hotel Hospital, the poisonous mercury-based calomel was prescribed if all else failed. There was no agreement among the doctors as to whether calomel was an effective treatment.

  When Lu assisted Dr. John on his rounds, she noticed that he treated his patients very differently than Dr. Fitzpatrick did. “Dr. John… goes purring about among the men very friendly, painstakingly & fearfully slow,” Lu wrote. He also seemed to feel every patient’s pain, often asking, “Do I hurt you?” Most of the patients would say no even if they were clearly in pain. Lu knew this and so, whenever she assisted Dr. John, she would try to take the patient’s mind off the pain with witty conversation, so that soon “all three laughed and talked, as if anywhere but in a hospital ward.”

  When Lu was off duty, Dr. John would stop by her room to drop off books for her. He also invited her back to his room, but she refused. Lu wasn’t always a rule follower, and she liked to push the oppressive boundaries placed on women, but she clearly subscribed to the belief that it was not proper for a woman to visit a man’s bedroom alone. She did, however, go with him to the capital one night to hear a sermon. Afterward, they went to dinner. She had found the sermon dull and the dinner even duller. “Quotes Browning copiously,” Lu described the doctor in her journal. “Is given to confidences in the twilight, and altogether is amiably amusing, and exceedingly young.”

  Lu wasn’t interested in a hospital romance (and Dragon Dix wouldn’t approve). So the budding romance fizzled, and, soon after their date, Lu was assigned to the night shift, for which she was grateful. “I like it, as it leaves me time for a morning run, which is what I need to keep well; for bad air, food, and water, work and watching are getting to be too much for me,” she detailed in her journal. “I trot up & down the streets in all directions, some times to the Heights, then half way to Washington, again to the hill over which the long trains of army wagons are constantly vanishing & ambulances appearing. That way the fighting lies, & I long to follow.”

  Her new assignment put her in charge of three rooms, which she dubbed “my duty room,” “my pleasure room,” and “my pathetic room” and sorted her patients accordingly. “One, I visited armed with a dressing tray, full of rollers, plasters, and pins; another, with books, flowers, games, and gossip; a third, with teapots, lullabies, consolation, and, sometimes, a shroud,” she wrote.

  One of Lu’s favorite patients in the “pleasure room” was her “Little Sergeant,” Robert Bain. He was one of the luckier amputees, having beaten the odds of further infection, and Lu enjoyed his companionship and good nature. “Many a jovial chat have I enjoyed with the merry-hearted lad, who had a fancy for fun, when his poor arm was dressed,” she recalled of their time together. Even when Dr. Fitzpatrick poked and prodded Robert’s amputated arm, he told Lu that he’d rather laugh than cry. Lu would read to him from her cherished copy of Charles Dickens’s first novel, The Pickwick Papers, to help him brave the pain. “So just say that bit from Dickens again, please, and I’ll stand it like a man,” he said to her. Robert also had a penchant for calling his fellow wounded soldiers by their afflictions rather than by their names. There was “Rheumatiz,” “Typus,” “No Toes,” and “Ribs.” At first, Lu was taken aback by his “bandy remarks,” but his comrades appreciated his humor, and so did Lu. So, she called him by his nickname, “Baby B., because he tended his arm on a little pillow, and called it his infant,” Lu explained.

  One night Lu went into the “pathetic room” and noticed a new patient there who was so tall his bed had to be lengthened. She learned his name was John Suhre. His reputation had preceded him.

  One of his fellow soldiers had told Lu he was very worried about John, who had volunteered to stay behind at Fredericksburg. Even though he was also wounded, John had set his own needs aside to help his fellow wounded soldiers. His friend was deeply touched by John’s “courage, sobriety, self-denial, and unfailing kindliness of heart.” When John finally arrived at the hospital a few days after his comrade, Lu watched John from a distance for two nights before she approached him. “To tell the truth, I was a little afraid of the stately looking man… who seldom spoke, uttered no complaint, asked no sympathy, but tranquilly observed what went on about him,” she wrote. When Lu finally found the courage to speak to him, she would unknowingly see her own reflection—a soldier with the qualities she admired and possessed herself. She would also discover the hero in her stories.

  IT DIDN’T feel like Christmastime. The weather outside was mild, and the ice on the Potomac River had melted. There wasn’t a snowflake in sight.

  Inside the dingy and foul-smelling hospital, Lu didn’t feel in a particularly festive mood either. Although there were brief moments of cheerfulness and she was settling into her responsibilities, she was still adjusting to her new life as an “embryo nurse” at the hospital. “I [have] never [been]… in a stranger place than this, five hundred miles from home, alone among strangers, doing painful duties all day long, & leading a life of constant excitement in this greathouse surrounded by 3 or 4 hundred men in all stages of suffering, disease & death,” Lu detailed in her journal.

  News from home was a lifeline, and Lu looked forward to receiving letters from her family and friends. One such letter arrived with the exciting news that her “blood and thunder” story, “Pauline’s Passion,” won a short-story contest. Although she hadn’t received the one-hundred-dollar prize yet, she would once it was published in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.

  Even though Lu didn’t have much time to think about it or to write, she grabbed any opportunity she could to reply to her family’s letters: “[The] topsey turvey letters [were] written on inverted tin kettles, in my pantry, while waiting for gruel to warm or poultices to cool, for boys to wake, and be tormented, on stairs, in window seats & other sequestered spots favorable to literary inspiration.” Lu’s mother would read the letters out loud, sometimes with her voice trembling and other times laughing or crying, while Julian Hawthorne and their other neighbors crowded around to listen.

  One night Lu was sitting at the bedside of a young soldier whose leg had been amputated when literary inspiration struck. While she patiently watched over him, a rhyme “jingled into [her] sleepy brain”: “We sighing said, ‘Our Pan is dead.’”

  Lu was thinking about the death of Henry David Thoreau, her friend who had taught her botany as a child on nature walks around Walden Pond. She wrote down some lines that expressed her grief and belief that although Thoreau was dead, his spirit lived on. She called the poem “Thoreau’s Flute.” Later, she put it among her papers. She didn’t have time to finish it but thought she would put it in her scrapbook when she returned home.

  Lu wasn’t planning on going home anytime soon. She was needed at the hospital. So she wouldn’t be able to join her mother, father, and sister May at the Hawthorne’s home for Christmas tea. Lu would also miss seeing Sophia Hawthorne’s glittering Christmas tree, which was topped with an angel that held a shiny gold globe and a scroll that read, “Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men.”

  But all was not dismal. Hannah Ropes, who had strived to make Thanksgiving special for the sick and wounded soldiers, planned on doing the same for Christmas. At Thanksgiving, which many considered the holiday of the year, she hadn’t been sure how she was going to manage it. “What is to be done? The good Doctor says we must make the men happy on that day! As though that were possible with a ration of bread and meat! No turkeys and no pies!” she exclaimed in disbelief.

  Fortunately, Hannah was friends with Mary Boyce, who was the maternal head of “the family of Georgetown.” A strong supporter of the Union, Mary told Hannah not to
worry. She would make sure there were enough apple, mince, peach, and pumpkin pies for the two hundred and fifty wounded patients.

  For Christmas dinner, however, Hannah wouldn’t have to ask her friend for help. Mary Todd Lincoln and Elizabeth Smith, the wife of the secretary of the interior, had raised $10,000 to provide Christmas dinner for all the wounded soldiers in the twenty hospitals. President Lincoln himself had donated “a handsome sum” of $650 out of his own pocket.

  Mary Lincoln, who had quietly started daily visits to the hospitals not long after the death of her beloved son, wasn’t going to receive much recognition for her efforts. The public still hadn’t forgotten her shopping spree and decorating expenses. Instead, credit and praise were showered on the “energetic” and “kindly” Elizabeth Smith.

  “Large quantities of provisions have been received from the Northern cities to the Christmas dinner, to be given under the auspices of Mrs. Caleb B. Smith to the soldiers in hospitals in this vicinity. Heavy invoices of turkeys, chickens, apples, cranberries, oranges and such other good things as will be required, have been received,” the Alexandria Gazette reported, without mentioning Mrs. Lincoln’s part in it.

  Since Hannah didn’t have to worry about a shortage of food for the Christmas dinner, she, along with Lu and the staff, tried to make the hospital more cheery and festive. They hung evergreen wreaths and laced garlands throughout the crooked and drafty hallways, in the dining room, and over the doorways and beds. “We trimmed up the rooms & tried to make it pleasant for the poor fellows & they seemed to enjoy it after a fashion,” Lu noted.

  While helping with the Christmas preparations, Lu was now overseeing forty patients, one of whom was John Suhre, who had at first frightened her. But, after watching him for a night or two, Lu finally found the courage to speak to him, and they became instant friends. “Though what we call a common man, in education & condition, to me is all that I could expect or ask from the first gentleman in the land,” Lu wrote in her journal. “Under his plain speech & unpolished manner I seem to see a noble character, a heart as warm & tender as a woman’s, a nature fresh & frank as any child’s… tall & handsome.… Mrs. Ropes and myself love him.”

  Because of his injury, John was propped up on a stack of pillows in his extra-long bed. There were a dozen other patients in the “stony sort of room, close into the street, without one pleasant, attractive quality.” A man with an amputated arm was in the bed next to him, and a man with a “fearful wound through the thigh” was on the other side. John quietly and serenely observed everything that was happening around him. “Thoughtful and often beautifully mild while watching the afflictions of others, as if entirely forgetful of his own… [h]e seemed to cling to life, as if it were rich in duties and delights, and he had learned the secret of content,” Lu wrote. She would come to refer to him as the “prince of patients.”

  There was only one instance that Lu saw a dark shadow cloud his placid expression. While two doctors were examining his wounds, Lu noticed he was anxiously trying to read the expressions on their faces. “Do you think I shall pull through, sir?” he asked one of the doctors.

  “I hope so, my man.”

  When the doctors walked away, his look of consternation was quickly replaced with serenity.

  John was one of Lu’s easier patients and never once complained. On her way to help a more demanding patient, she might give him a quick nod or stop briefly by his bedside. When she hurried off, she noticed a wistful look on his face as he watched her leave. One night, she asked Dr. Fitzpatrick which patient was suffering the most. The doctor glanced over at John Suhre. “Every breath he draws is like a stab,” Dr. Fitzpatrick said. “For the ball pierced the left lung, broke a rib, and did no end of damage here and there; so the poor lad can find neither forgetfulness nor ease, because he must lie on his wounded back or suffocate.”

  Lu was shocked. “You don’t mean he must die?”

  “Bless you, there’s not the slightest hope for him,” Dr. Fitzpatrick answered. “And you’d better tell him so before long; women have a way of doing such things comfortably, so I leave it to you.”

  Lu wanted to sit down and cry. “It was an easy thing for Dr. P. [Fitzpatrick] to say: ‘Tell him he must die,’ but a cruelly hard thing to do, and by no means as ‘comfortable’ as he politely suggested. I had not the heart to do it then, and privately indulged the hope that some change for the better might take place.”

  Lu looked over at John and saw him sitting up without the aid of an attendant or nurse for support while the doctor dressed the wounds on his back. Because they were so severe, she thought it better for someone with more experience and physical strength to tend to them. John’s head was down, and his hands were clasped around his bent knees. At first, Lu thought he was fine, until she saw his tears fall onto the floor. “I had seen many suffer,” Lu wrote. “Some swore, some groaned, most endured silently, but none wept. Yet it did not seem weak, only very touching.”

  Lu felt her heart open wide, and, brimming with empathy, she reached for him, taking his hand. “Let me help you bear it, John.”

  John smiled with a look of gratitude and surprise on his face. “Thank you, ma’am, this is right good! This is what I wanted!”

  “Why didn’t you ask for it before?” Lu wondered.

  “I didn’t like to be a trouble,” John replied. “You seemed so busy; and I could manage to get on alone.”

  At that instant, Lu realized her empathy was her highest good, a gift to help quell his pain and suffering. In that shared moment, she also felt his courage and dignity, which was his gift to her. This exchange would inspire and transform her.

  “You shall not want it any more, John,” she said.

  Lu also understood the meaning behind his wistful look. “Now I knew that to him, as to so many, I was the poor substitute for mother, wife, or sister, and in his eyes no stranger but a friend who hitherto had seemed neglectful; for, in his modesty, he had never guessed the truth [that he would die],” Lu wrote. While the doctor continued to probe, bathe, and dress his wound, John leaned into Lu and squeezed her hand. No one saw his tears but Lu.

  WHEN CHRISTMAS finally arrived, Hannah received bad news. There weren’t enough turkeys and pies for the Christmas dinner after all. She wasn’t sure if it was either a mistake on the list sent in, an oversight, or if someone had stolen the food.

  Nevertheless, despite the shortage of food, they made the best of it, cutting smaller slices of pies and portions of turkey, making sure there was enough to go around. “Our Christmas dinner was a funny scramble,” Lu reported. The patients didn’t express any complaints, at least not to the newspaper reporter from the Evening Star, who wrote that the “patients partook of a bounteous repast.” The same couldn’t be said for the patients at the Armory Square Hospital, which was surprising because it was considered the best hospital in Washington.

  According to the reporter, the hospital staff at the Armory Square Hospital had laid out china plates and a big banquet at the usual dinner hour. But, instead of the patients sitting down to eat, the hospital staff enjoyed the feast. The patients had to wait hours for their Christmas dinner, and, when it was finally served, it was given to them on tin plates. “The turkeys and chickens were cut up in a careless manner and the pieces thrown in confusion into a tin dish.… Many of the men complained, and said they would sooner have an ordinary dinner, and have it on time.… The dinner was provided for the patients, not for hospital nurses or attendants, and it was the former who should have been first served, and not been obliged to wait… like beggars,” read the article on December 26.

  The Armory Square Hospital staff strongly denied the story, but the newspaper stood by its report.

  Christmas at the Armory Square Hospital wasn’t a complete failure though. President Lincoln and his wife, Mary, did make a surprise visit, boosting the wounded and sick soldiers’ morale.

  “While at the Armory Hospital to-day the President shook hands with nearly all
the invalids, and spoke words of kindness and encouragement to each.… His visit was productive of much pleasurable excitement to the wounded soldiers as well as gratification to himself.”

  All things considered, Hannah remained optimistic about their holiday dinner. “The Christmas celebration was a great success, and the men had plenty of poultry and oysters,” she wrote.

  It was sometime on Christmas Day that Edward Schrock, the captain of John Suhre’s regiment, sat down to write a letter. He had been by the hospital to see John. He would have been there sooner, but he hadn’t known at first which hospital John had been sent to. For some unknown reason, John’s name wasn’t on the list.

  This wasn’t the first letter he’d had to write to anxious families back home. At the battle at Fredericksburg four of his men were killed and twenty-two injured, including his brother Amos, who was shot in the arm. With pen and paper in hand, he began his letter to John’s mother:

  Your son is at the Union Hotel Hospital in Georgetown.… He was in the fight at Fredericksburg where so many brave men lost their lives for their Country’s liberty. He fought bravely.… He received 2 wounds, the one ball is lodged in his breast. And one passed through his Lungs. I think he cannot live.… It would have been very pleasant to have stayed with him during his last hours of suffering on this earth but I can do no more than visit the wounded. He thinks he is getting well but does not know his condition—I gave him some money and left him with a heavy heart expecting never to see the young man again in this world.

  LU STILL hadn’t found the words to tell John that he was dying. She and Hannah watched over him, anxiously looking for signs that he was getting better. “He is… mortally wounded & dying royally, without reproach, repining, or remorse,” Lu wrote in her journal. “Mrs. Ropes & myself… feel indignant that such a man should be so early lost, for though he might never distinguish himself before the world, his influence & example cannot be without effect, for real goodness is never wasted.”