Mary's New York Journal Entry

Friday, May 13th, 1853 — Manhattan

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It is already late into the night, but I am far too full of thoughts to sleep, so I shall pour them out onto this page instead, and perhaps then my mind will let me rest.

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What a trial this morning was! Monsieur Béchard came at nine o'clock, as he always does, smelling of snuff and looking over his spectacles at me like a disappointed owl, and he rapped my knuckles twice before I had so much as opened my grammar book. Twice. He says my accent is an offense to the French nation, and that I conjugate verbs the way a butcher carves a goose — without grace or mercy. I should like to see him recite anything pleasing, with that voice of his, raspy and dry as a December leaf. Clara says I must be patient with him because he is old and his knees pain him, and Susan says nothing at all; she only hides her smile behind her primer. But try as I might, I do not feel patient. I feel that a girl ought not to be scolded in two languages before her breakfast has properly settled in her stomach. I shall be glad when I am grown and no tutor on earth may rap my knuckles ever again.

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This afternoon was a balm for the morning's tribulations, at least. Mother let Susan and me walk down to Washington Square with Hannah to mind us, and Susan was happier than I have seen her in a fortnight. She does not care for parties or dresses or any of the things that set my own heart racing—but show my sister a brightly colored bird, and she becomes a different creature entirely. She stood beneath the elms for the longest while, perfectly still, watching a wren build her little nest, and she named every bird that came near as though they were old acquaintances. A robin. A pair of finches. A cardinal so red it looked almost gaudy. "Do hush, Mary," she scolded me, "you'll frighten them." And so, I hushed, and we watched together, and it was lovely in a way I cannot fully explain. Susan keeps a list of every bird she has ever seen, tucked inside her botany book. I think she loves them because they may go wherever they please and answer to no one.

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But here is the matter that puzzles me most, and the true reason I cannot sleep.

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Clara turns sixteen this very week. Sixteen! And next Saturday Mother is to hold a party for her—a proper one, with the good china and Cook's almond cakes, and Father's friends will come, and there will be dancing in the front parlor if the weather holds. It is all I have thought of for days. And yet Clara goes about the house as though she were sentenced to it rather than celebrated. This evening I found her at the window with that grave, faraway look she gets, and when I asked her why she did not feel like the luckiest girl in New York, she only said, "Everything changes after sixteen, Mary. You'll see." As if it were a sorrowful thing.

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I do not understand my sister at all, for I cannot wait to be sixteen. I lie awake imagining it—the callers who will leave their cards on the silver tray in the hall, the gentlemen who will ask to walk out with me, the carriage rides along Broadway with my parasol just so. I shall have a dance card with a little pencil on a ribbon, and it shall be filled before the music even begins. I shall wear my hair up and my skirts long, and I shall be a lady, and the whole shining world will open before me like a door. Why Clara should dread such a thing is beyond my understanding. When it is my turn, I mean to run at it with both arms outstretched.

Perhaps she is only nervous. Perhaps when Saturday comes, and she sees how grand it all is, she will feel as I do.

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Father was in high spirits at supper — that restless, glittering mood he falls into when his mind is busy with some new scheme. He kept turning his silver watch over and over in his hand, the way he does when he is thinking, and twice Mother asked him a question he did not hear. When I bid him goodnight, he caught my chin and said, "How would you like to go on an adventure, my Mary?" and laughed, and would not tell me what he meant.

I told him I would like it more than anything in the whole world.

I am sure it is nothing, though. Father is always full of grand ideas, and most of them come to nothing at all.

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Now I really must sleep, or I shall be no use to Monsieur Béchard tomorrow—though perhaps that would be no great loss.

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Good night, dear journal. Nine days until Clara's party. I can scarcely bear the wait.

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— M.D.