Sherborn, Mass.
Sept. 2, '17.Dear Miss Turner,
I hope you are in Maine, but I fear you are in So. Hadley. I'm sending this letter there any way knowing it will reach you sometime. I received your card from N.H. No, I purposely left out any reference to visiting you at So. H. because it was impossible to know what my vacation plans would be till I reached home. I had hoped that father & I could go up to N.Y. state for a week or two, but now this has been abandoned owing to conditions I am about to describe.
Mother's mental unbalance has become more & more obvious except to the bond of old women who foster her delusions, & either thro' malice as a short cut to her cheque book or thro' some half-baked passion for reform, insist she is perfectly sane. I have begged father to put her in some quiet retreat where she would be well cared for without wear & tear on him. Father is the greatest person I have ever known, but in spite of all his virtues he is tremendously set in his way in regard to certain matters. He has insisted on caring for mother himself during such times and she has been at home. He has done this because he believes that all mother needs is reeducation in self-control. He has bought her books on nerve control & tried to create a helpful atmosphere around her, refusing to believe that she has real mental disease. I have been absolutely powerless to do anything, & have sat by and watched as one looking at a boat drifting towards the edge of a damn [sic] - its occupants entirely oblivious to the impending danger.
When I got home the 20th I saw a profound change in both "occupants." Mother's paranoid delusions were stronger than ever; an old woman was here defending her, and I heard that several good church dames had constituted themselves as a relief committee to monogram affairs. Augustus came on with me to get Robert, & we had a good housecleaning. The old woman by virtue of my particular brand of "damning out" has settled silently into her place below the salt & waits on mother entirely. By 3 or 4 judicious calls the Relief Committee had its illusions blasted by my brother's best court address.
Dr. Stevens of Malden (near Boston) who has attended mother for the last 45 years came out to see her. He found a blood pressure of 200 mm., & a dilated heart. I have not verified his findings because of mother's attitude towards me. But I did tell him she had got to be put into a sanitorium at once using the physical condition as an opening wedge. (There is little one can do for a vascular condition like hers.) So this Wednesday mother goes down to Melrose Highlands where we have a place for her. I went down to see it, & am delighted with its possibilities. The place is run by two trained nurses who take only three patients. I like their looks, & they appear to know their business.
Father looks very badly, - or did when I came home. I have put him on a tonic, & I think when mother gets out of the house he'll bound up again. Of course he feels some that we are making a great mistake to send mother away, & that he could have done something with her in time. There is no use arguing, so I try to pass along. His business is going nicely here. He does no hard wkr, but enjoys light work he does about the barn, & planning affairs. Perhaps I told you he has a left-sided tumor that is more marked than when I saw him last. It is not typical of any disease I know of, but undoubtedly has an organic basis of some sort in the C. H. S. All his family have had it from 65 yrs. on, so I don't worry about it as much as others do.
Augustus returns from a business trip to Detroit on Tues. & will stay around here with his car till it is time for me to go. I expect to leave Sunday the 16th & motor to Greenwich with Augustus, going down to Balt. Monday A.M. In view of the things I have described above & the opportunity for the three of us to be here for ten days together, I'm afraid I can't make So. Hadley this trip, much as I should like to. I know you will understand.
I am very grateful that I could come home at this time and really do something - or think I have. I have spent a great many hours in trying to come to an understanding of how to adjust my professional interests & duties with my filial responsibilities & desires. The dictates of my heart are to stay at home enjoying & contributing to that peculiar relationship wich is more vital than usual between parent & child. For with father's passing I lose the greatest love I have ever known. And yet the world never needed what little service I can give it more than it does at the present time. I am not much of a doctor and never shall be, but every little counts so much at this time. What are my inclinations and even father's happiness when weighted against even a small contribution to the great cause for which the world is dying today? And so I am going back to Balt. though with not so light a heart as I could wish.
This long letter about myself you must be so used to by this time that there is no need of apology. And yet let me say I am not writing this as an appeal for commiseration. My own burdens are not a circumstance to those of others with whom I come in contact everyday [sic], and of still others whom I have the privilege of calling friends. Chief among the latter is your own rare self whose life of self denial and quiet courage shines as a beacon to my own. I hope that the N.H. trip brought you some rest and refreshment. Tell me do you feel well in every day? You must not let a single unnatural symptom go unnoticed.
My kind regards to your mother.
Your loving,
EstherP.S. My brother is too old for the draft but is fighting with his pen. The enclosed is one of his daily letters to the N.Y. Globe. [no longer enclosed with the letter]