Emma Juliette Juhan: 1880
I was born, I was told, in the town of Milledgeville, Georgia soon after it became the capital of the state. Before that time it had rejoiced in the name Dogsboro, but before my arrival it had dropped that title as not in keeping with its new and honorable position.
They tell me I was a very weak, sickly, tiny, little babe, expected to pass away any day. But from the time I can first remember, I was as broad as I was long, with a face like a full moon.
One of my earliest recollections is of being awakened by my father in the middle of the night, wrapped up and, along with my sisters, taken out on the front piazza, to see something pretty, he said — "the Falling Stars" of October 1833, a most brilliant display of fireworks. Many were terrified, thinking everything would soon be in a blaze, and some were screaming, some on their knees praying, some singing hallelujahs. The Negros were wild with terror. I was 3 years old that month.
I remember the looks and the internal arrangement of our house and the bed in which I slept with my father. It was very large with immense posts, especially the head posts, of solid mahogany and very high from the floor. A set of carpeted steps was at its side by which to get into the bed. It was surrounded by [chintz] curtains, which were tied to the four posts in the day and at night drawn around the bed in winter... a thin material, like mosquito netting. I recall too, the care my father took of me how he would take me in his lap and feel my shoes to see if they were dry and if not, would take them off and put them before the fire to dry, take off my stockings and hang them to dry, then undress me and tell me stories till I went to sleep. Often in the night, I would wake up and couldn't get my eyes open, because they were stuck together. This would frighten me and I would call him, and he would light the candle and bathe my eyes with hot water from the little kettle he always kept setting in the chimney near the fire. Or I would waken so croupy I couldn't speak, and he would get up and work with me by the hour till I was relieved. I had no mother for she was in the Infirmary under treatment, so my father had to be mother too.
Another early recollection is the partial burning of the state houses in Milledgeville. This was during the exciting times of Nullification... We children and the servants were at the fence looking at it or rather we were on the fence, the housekeeper was holding me on the gate. Our father held a position in the state government and his office was in the capital building, and my sisters were greatly alarmed about him. I was too young to [worry], but was excited about the fire, because the whole town was: all the bells were ringing and everyone seemed to be rushing to and fro. Just then a gentleman approached and stopped to admire us, three little curly-headed girls. Several boys passed by and cried out "Hurrah for Nullification!" Others yelled "Hurrah for the Union," to which the gentleman responded with a "Hurrah for Jackson!" Then, patting the eldest of us on the head, he asked Mary, "What are you my little girl?" "I am a Union Man," she responded. "That is right," said he, "and you shall have this apple for that, and goodbye," putting it in her hand as he walked off. We thought it the biggest and the reddest apple we had ever seen. My sisters said they would keep it till Father came, at which I began to cry, but Mary hugged me and said I should give it to Father my own self, which at once satisfied me. She could always quiet me when no one else could. She had taught me by letters by the time I was three years old, and at four, I could read as well as most children of seven, and was very fond of reading. There were no nice reading books then for children as there are now, and the lessons were dry and difficult.
When Mary was ten years old and my sister Ann seven and I four, Mrs. Fitzgerald, an old lady who was a particular friend of my mother and had known my grandmother before her, came to see my father and proposed to take my two sisters into her school at Scottsboro, four miles out from town. She offered to take me as well, free of charge, and care for me as her own child, and thus we would not have to be separated. Father hated to give us up, but felt it was best, and consented provided he could bring us home on Friday afternoons. Mary and Ann had been attending a primary school and were bright children. Mary had also begun to study music. It was arranged that Mrs. Fitzgerald would come for us in her carriage the next Monday.
Mrs. Fitzgerald was from Augusta, Georgia, and had been an intimate friend of my grandfather's family and a pupil of Aunt Eleanor Hornby when she first opened her school there. A lady of refinement, Mrs. Fitzgerald had moved in the best society of Augusta, where her father was a prominent and wealthy citizen. She had been twice married, though both her husbands turned out to be worthless spendthrifts, running through all of their property and hers too. She did not teach herself, but employed the teachers, who were mostly from the North.
I recall distinctly the house and grounds as I first saw them. It was a long building, a story and a half high, to which rooms had been added on at different times, with no regard to architectural symmetry, but it was nevertheless very comfortable and quite roomy. The grounds were large and covered with velvety grace, and shaded with grand old trees of different kinds. Flowers and vines were abundant around the house. While we were there, Mrs. Fitzgerald had another large, two-storied building erected for recitation and music rooms. Her school was considered the best in that section of the country and flourished.
We had been there about four months when the winter examination was held. I was in a large spelling class of about thirty. Some of the girls were over fifteen, I was a little over four. A word was given to the scholar at the head, who missed it, it was passed on and on till it came to me and I gave it correctly. I remember the burst of applause. My sister Mary later brought down the house with her performance on the piano.
Two painful experiences of that period I have never forgotten.
The principal the first year was a Mr. Palmer, a tall, slab-sided down-easter from Maine, very exacting and cross, and the terror of the entire school. My sister Mary was a bright child and very studious, but she had an example in arithmetic one afternoon that she could not work out. Mr. Palmer kept her in until she did so. Mrs. Fitzgerald intervened, saying that Mary should be allowed to come to supper. Mr. Palmer yielded with a very bad grace, saying she must return immediately afterward and remain until she worked out the example. I had never been separated from her at night so I went into the school room with her and lay down on the bench by her.
The servant girl came to get me to put me to bed but I kicked and screamed and Mr. Palmer told her to let me alone. Nine o'clock came and Mary had still not worked out the example. Mr. Palmer scolded her, saying he knew it was stubbornness on her part, and took up the ruler to whip her with it when Mrs. Fitzgerald entered the room, asking what the matter was. Mr. Palmer told her that he had a stubborn scholar he was about to punish. Mrs. Fitzgerald asked a few questions and determined that he had not explained the example, nor tried to find out where Mary's trouble was, and that he was angry simply because he had to stay later than he wanted that day. I never did get over the animosity toward arithmetic I developed that night.
Another experience I recall quite vividly came during that winter examination. Father had sent all three of us new winter dresses to wear on the occasion, but was ill and would not be able to be there with us. When the parcels were opened, I was heartbroken because I could see that mine was not at all as nice as the others. Mary was also distressed for me. I cried myself to sleep and was two-thirds sick the next day. After breakfast we went to dress for the exercises. When the dresses were taken out to be put on, mine was found to be cut up in slits all around the hem and could not be worn. No one knew who had done it.
We slept in a small room adjoining Mrs. Fitzgerald's so that she could have charge of me at night. In a small room on the back piazza that also opened into Mrs. Fitzgerald's room, her waiting maid, a Negro girl of about fifteen, slept. This girl was my bugbear, I had a perfect horror of her, and she delighted in getting me into trouble. She came into the room while Mrs. Fitzgerald was examining the dress. Asked if she knew anything about it, the girl told her mistress that she had passed the window in the afternoon while all of the older children were in school and saw me with the dress with a pair of scissors in my hand. I was very angry. Mrs. Fitzgerald gave me a switching and would not let me go into the schoolroom all day.
A few weeks afterwards, one of the girls — who the night before had been called home suddenly on account of the extreme illness of her mother — told Mrs. Fitzgerald after she returned that she saw the maid in our room with the dress and a pair of scissors and asked her what she was doing with it. The maid told her that she had been asked to take the bastings out of my dress. Mrs. Fitzgerald sent the girl out to do farm work after that, and took a better disposed one in her place. I was glad to get rid of my persecutor. My nice dress arrived a few days later. It turned out that it was not ready at the time the package was sent to us, so the new everyday one had been sent in its place.
After the examination, Mr. Palmer left and a new teacher, Dr. Longfellow, arrived and took charge. He was somewhat older than Mr. Palmer and entirely different. He was not near so tall, in fact all the girls said he ought to be named Shortfellow. I remember that he had dark hair and eyes, a pale face, and a broad and high forehead. He was very dignified, but his manners were pleasant and there was something very attractive about him. He was a perfect gentleman and the school was very much improved under his management.
Because I was the youngest child in the school, he took a great deal of notice of me and in fact made quite a pet of me, saying that I reminded him of his own little curly-headed girl at home. People thought it strange that he would come so far to stay several months and not bring his family with him, but found out that this was a very common thing among Northern people. He required the strictest obedience to the rules of the school, but was very kind in assisting his scholars when they found their studies difficult to understand.
I recollect a rather amusing incident, in which I first learned to mind my manners during prayer. School opened each day with the reading of the Bible and prayer. I was only five years old, and it was hard for me to keep still so long. Another little girl, a year or two older than I, was as great a fidget as I was, so during the prayer we amused ourselves by crawling on our knees backwards and forwards across the room. I suppose we made more noise than we thought.
Mr. Longfellow certainly found out what we were doing, and when prayers were over called us up and told us we were naughty little girls for behaving as we had during prayer. He would have to punish us, he explained, so that we would not do so again. There was a large fireplace in the room over which was a high broad mantelpiece, in the center of which stood the clock. We thought he would whip us, but he lifted me up and set me on one corner of the mantelpiece and then put the other little culprit on the other corner, telling us to sit there until we could learn to sit still. Neither of us cried, though there was smothered laughter all over the room at our expense. It was a pretty high seat and you may be sure we sat very straight and still. We did try to peep at one another around the clock, but were so afraid of falling we had to give it up. I suppose it was not over half an hour that he kept us there but it seemed a much longer time to us. We were thoroughly cured of misbehaving during prayers, but remainded as fond of our teacher as ever, for he was as fond of us.
Not long after this Father removed us from Mrs. Fitzgerald's house, putting us with another family to board, though we continued in the school, that is my two sisters did; I was too young to walk so far. I think Mary must have brought about the change, for she never forgave Mrs. Fitzgerald for punishing me on account of the cutting up of that dress; she never liked Mrs. Fitzgerald again. I was unhappy and cried to go back to Grandma's, of whom I was very fond and who was very kind to me. This change was, it turned out, in the providence of God and overruled for good, because it led Mrs. Fitzgerald to write to my Aunt Emma and tell her that we were greatly needing a mother's care, and urging her to come and take us at once. I learned this afterwards. All I knew was that Father had us to go back to Mrs. Fitzgerald and remain there till our aunt came for us in April of 1835.
At last the day of our departure came and Father brought a carriage to take us into town, where we were to take the stage for Augusta. I have an indistinct recollection of our parting with Father, of his shedding tears over us, and of how Mary clung to him refusing to get into the stage and had to be put in while Father went into the house, to bring the sad scene to a close. My sister Ann wept quietly, but Mary was frantic. I was so excited and elated at being in the stage with four horses, and two drivers, and the long bright horn which one of them blew while the other cracked his whip, and we rattled away out of town, that I soon forgot to cry, but gave myself up to the enjoyment of the change. And thus we left our father, nor did Ann or I ever see him again.
My recollection of him is very dim, nor have I ever seen any one that looked like him. He was strikingly handsome, but with a shade of melancholy, an abstracted air, as though something was wanting, as if he could not rest in the present. Lord Byron's portraits have always suggested my Father to my mind, and indeed they were strangely alike. And thus our old life closed and a new one, entirely different, opened up. ¤
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