Homeland by Barbara Hambly Read Free Book Online

he has not ceased to be my husband, before the eyes of God.” This was when Elinor went to the melodeon and said, “Why don’t we all sing ‘May God Save the Union’?” The only person who spoke to me afterwards was Sukey Greenlaw. She said that her cousin is a lawyer in Portland and if I wished to divorce Emory for treason, her cousin would see to it at a quite nominal charge. When I crept to my bed that night, throbbing as if from a poisoned wound, I seemed to hear kindly Mr. Bennet say to his daughters, “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and to laugh at them in our turn?” I managed one rich laugh, and slept.
    I had been searching (vainly, alas) for another of Miss Austen’s books in the trunk when I came on a slender volume by Mr. Dickens entitled
A Christmas Carol
, which moved me to tears. Surely you have read it? But Papa remonstrated, “Do you truly think any work of man is fitter to read on Christmas, than the tale embodied in the second chapter of the Books of Matthew and Luke?” And he is right of course. Yet on Christmas Eve, Ollie and Peggie and I huddled together in my room all under the same quilts, long after our parents were in bed, and I read Mr. Dickens’s magical story to them. Knowing you were alone at the school that night, I pretended you were here with us, too. And I could just imagine how your eyes would sparkle when Bob Cratchit saw that Christmas turkey that was bigger than Tiny Tim!
    When I say, by the way, that Papa was here to “celebrate Christmas,” I must add that most of Deer Isle holds by the old New England habit. Here, Christmas
morning
is marked by church-going and prayer, but beyond that, it is a day like any other. We exchange little presents on New Year’s Day, but that is all.
F RIDAY , J ANUARY 3
M ORNING
    A quick word, to conclude. The weather has become threatening, and though we hoped that Papa might remain through Sunday, and return Monday to Yale when the students come back, it has been decided that he should leave today. There have been storms every week since I have been home, heavy snows followed by bitter “nor’-easters” as the fishermen call them. My fingers are always chapped and bleeding from the cold.
    I see you in your curtained house, the grief of mourning, as if it were still going on today, this minute. But I look at your sketches and know that somehow, you will find a way.
    I see Ollie bringing the sleigh around for Papa. I will write again very soon, Susie.
    Yours,
C
    Cora Poole, Southeast Harbor
Deer Isle, Maine
To
Susanna Ashford, Nashville Female
Academy
Nashville, Tennessee
T UESDAY , J ANUARY 14, 1862
    Dearest Susanna,
    Would I have gone on with my education, if women were allowed to go to college? I assume you mean a true college, with the same education as young men receive: in law, in medicine, in engineering, rather than the sterile piling-up of “accomplishments.” There are, goodness knows, Female Academies and Colleges where one can progress quite far in the disciplines of history, languages, and such sciences as botany and mathematics: the Hartford Female Seminary, which I attended for four years, was one of them.
    Yet at no time was there ever a discussion of what one
does
with one’s education, if one is a woman. We—women—have come far, in that it is even possible to attend a Female Seminary these days at all. Forty years ago, the great discussion was, Should girls be taught to read? (They would, after all, only consume foolish novels like
Pride and Prejudice
, poor silly things.) All a young woman may qualify herself to do is teach—if she can find a school. And then, only very young children. I wish there were a way to send you my copy of Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s astonishing book,
A Vindication of the Rights of Women
—since, rather to my surprise, a second copy of it lies in Mr. Poole’s trunk: well-thumbed, imagine that! Find a copy, Susie, if you can. Read it, I beg you. It will open your