Mary by Janis Cooke Newman

Author:Janis Cooke Newman [Newman, Janis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: M P Publishing Limited
Published: 2010-02-23T00:00:00+00:00

(July 29th)

General Farnsworth has just been to see Mrs. Lincoln – Says she wrote him a note yesterday asking him to come – (This note she must have put in the office yesterday when she claimed to have written only to her sister.)

— Patient Progress Reports for Bellevue Place Sanitarium

The letters I posted in Batavia while the carriage driver Mr. Paddleford waited outside were more pleading than was proper. “I am being held very much against my will,” I wrote in them. “Come! Come and see that I am sane.”

Of the five important gentlemen to whom I had written, three sent back replies the following morning. These letters were penned in a style so simple, I suspected their authors had convinced themselves that my mind was not only deranged, but had also returned to childhood. “Those in charge of you at Bellevue Place know what it best,” they all advised. “You must listen to the doctor and do all that he says.” In none was there any mention of coming to see me.

I read these letters in my room, then tore them into pieces because I wished no one at Bellevue Place to know that I had written to any person who did not appear upon Robert’s list, and because it was so very gratifying to tear them. Two letters remained unaccounted for: one which had been written to General John Franklin Farnsworth, a hero of the War Between the States and a former congressman, and one sent to Judge James Bradwell. I had met the judge through his wife, Myra, with whom I had sat in the séance parlors of Chicago. Surely one of these gentlemen will come to me, I told myself. Today, I think. For I have made the situation so urgent they will not want to take the time for writing. I paced my room, imagining the carriage of my rescuer coming up the asylum drive. But the thought made me too restless to stay in that room, even to stay within the limestone walls of the building. And suddenly it seemed the best thing would be to wait outside and meet the gentleman’s carriage when it came.

I dressed in black linen of some lightness, for though it was still July, the day had already acquired an August mercilessness, then went to walk the dusty path which crossed the front of the asylum and gave a view onto the road. Mrs. Munger’s husband came at noon. Mrs. Johnston’s arrived at one. The day grew sweltering, and my blood became too heated for my veins. Beneath the dark-colored linen, my flesh was sopping. A heat headache throbbed at my temples, and I knew that if I did not go in, my rescuer would arrive and find me collapsed upon the drive like a woman too deranged to know to come in from the hotness. But I could not make myself give up the path for the cool of the asylum. If you go inside, I said to myself, that will be like giving up.

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