For February 21
Dear Miss Turner
Since there seems to be no slightest use of waiting for an uninterrupted hour, I'll seize the moments as they float by and put down a thought or two of the hundreds I've been collecting since I wrote to you last. Anyhow, it's a better record of accomplishment than some of mine .... for example, I have been seriously considering writing a letter to Miss Morgan every year since I left college. I think this year, and very soon, I'll be ready to do it. Especially because of Dr. Clapp. I can imagine a little bit how strange it must seem to you ... knowing my own sense of bewilderment. Somehow it seems incredible that Dr. Clapp could cease to be a human personality, she having such an abundance of the qualities that are inherent in those therms - vitality - zest for living - keen thinking, far seeing wisdom, endearing humanity which made all of us - even those who like myself felt a wholesome respect for her knowledge and wisdom and a profound sense of their own disciplehood - cherish her as an understanding fellow-human over and above the admirable scientist. How emmensily [sic] relieved was I - as doubtless many and many another - when she put into the hands of her Bible class Dumonds "The Greatest Thing in the World." For how valiantly some of us had striven to free ourselves from such traditional theories - chiefly theological - as we felt unworthy of those who earnestly bought truth - and were uncertain to what lengths we must go to be consistent. How cheering to be reassured by a Dr. Clapp. Many generations call her blessed!
I have been delving in my treasure in an old box and found what I hunted - this little picture taken in 1913. I think it was a birth day party we gave Gertrude. I have found the film also, so if you like it I can get more. I always loved it of her, and you, with the shadow of her upon you - even as you seem to many of us to have caught her light and carry it on (if you'll forgive a commonplace metaphor which nevertheless hears its humble stamp of integrity) and then there is this other one - of which you may have a copy - and which you may not like anyway - in which case, wont you please return it as it happens to be dear to me? Taken on her birthday, in 1914 (I think) when we had a dress up Irish party in the "plant house." If you haven't one, you will accept it, won't you please if you care for it. I have a little set of verses she wrote when she chanced to draw my name for Christmas at Cowles Lodge - in which she poked gentle fun at my habit of questioning but characteristically add a heartening reassurance as to a "cheerful spirit that makes us like her." I wonder if you have any idea what a bolstering effect such chance words have on a person who like myself was unwholesomely lacking in self-esteem - whose sole asset seemed to be a capacity for recognizing admirable qualities in others and loving those in possession of these qualities with a tenacious affection combined with a hero-worship which more than once resulted in occasional "pain" ?
What a funny way to try to tell you a little of what you have meant to one rather turbulent person. For, I have thus come suddenly to knowing that people like you and Dr. Clapp do care that you have given so liberally to individuals as well as to science. I'm not afraid any longer that you'll consider my tribute "fulsome" or unseemly, for the years are proof enough that my gratitude to you and to her is a permanent part of my being, and that the esteem with which I think of you both is inextricably bonded to a sliding affectation. Why wait to tell someone else this - and why did I never feel it was important enough to tell Dr. Clapp. It is important - and I am discharging that neglected debt of expressed gratitude and love toward her - now - to you. Knowing you will understand and accept it for her.
And my timidity of years' standing is overcome to this extent, that I feel assured you will accept all I have - to offer you in "return" for all I have received from you (Knowing well there is no "return" in this sense). You see, Miss Turner, every time I have come back to college, and wandered through the laboratories. I have felt a certain nostalgia and myself something of an exile - or deserter. For I truly loved the days of Williston - the excursions I made which to me seemed momentous and now appear so elementary, so unscholarly, so barely an approach to all I hungered to understand and investigate. And you and Miss Morgan and Dr. Clapp had that peculiar gift of leadership which kept us from realizing we were merely learning - as children learn - what hundreds had learned in just the same way, with probably just the same exhilarating feeling of discovery - of new fields to conquer, of the birth of the scientific spirit in our very youthful breasts, of endlessly interesting problems beckoning. And as I returned from time to time I found you and the others marching on, yet having for the beginner still that infinite patience and respect, actually, for the budding intelligence on whatever it may be.
Not only that, but I found that you could take time and thought to remember former students - even those who never covered themselves with even a film of scientific glory - and send them greetings at Christmas season (I am talking for all these years, but even so, perhaps too much.) and reading of Osler and others, I knew that humanitarian, and friendly attributes went with keen intellect and kept the truly worth while teacher ever renewed, saved her or him for pedanticism and a sort of mental snobbishness and in-growing interests. And since I have no achievements to lay at your feet (!!- but please strip that of all save its simpler meaning) and since it no longer seems inappropriate to offer you only love and esteem - I proudly offer you that, and need not add that it bears interest with the years and does not diminish no matter how much is "given."
I'd like to have you visit us some time on our farm, Miss Turner. It is pretty typical of the really rural. It's rather a lovable place. And if you could come with Margaret some vacation time there are small mountains for your climbing, and many savors and flavors of farm life for your deledation! [sic] I'd love it. And I'd like to share my children with my friends - and have them know those who have been of great help to me. David is a winsome child, thoughtful, sensitive, gay, sweet-natured, intense. He is to me the most precious thing in the world. Mimi seems scarcely mine - a fairy child - an elf - adorable and provocative - yet untamed, free and merely adapting herself for a moment to our ways yet not comprehending them. You'd be much entertained, I promise, between the two. I'm thinking of adopting a fourth - as Laurie may not always be our third - if his father finds another wife and better job.
I have written this in snatches with interuptions [sic] which would be amusing to recount - - Mimi bites David - Mimi must have small scissors removed from mouth, - David's cuttings to be admired - - wood on fires - Laurie's feeding, bed etc - and now I must get dinner.
Do you remember a letter you wrote - it was summer of 1915 to me at Silver Bay, in answer to my perplexed cry - "must we go through life distrustful"? And you advised using feet to run away from threatening danger as well as using the spirit of faith in our fellow men which we cannot bear to relinquish. I have learned a little of that combination at last. Thank you again for your assistance. I still choose to have faith, but no longer loathe the seeming compromise of caution! I could write you a book on the way rural folk help one learn bewareness!
Ever affectionately
Madeleine
Inscription on back: "January, 1935 / Sunnyhill Farm, Lempster, N.H."