Letter from M. Carey Thomas to Mary Elizabeth Garrett, May 03, 1884

Dearest Mary, If it were not counted a pleasure to write to you, you would perhaps receive more frequent letters, but on a trip when business is my meat and drink to imagine myself talking to you, as I often do while I am writing to you, is too pleasant to be frequently indulged in. Wellesley was happily too full to receive me as a guest, so tonight and last night and the night before I have spent in the solitude of a large hotel, two blessed miles from the college and this too far for evening calls. A table to myself morning and evening in the hotel dining room (I lunch with 14 professors in a room containing 350 girls) is a thing to be grateful for after my meals of the last two weeks. I have met more people than ever before in such a short time; certainly to more profit but to be in the world of teachers yet not exactly of it is somewhat strange. When, as now, out of the rush of passionate (because no less foolish word expressed it) interest in what is being done for girls, I wonder why I have gone into it, whether I can accomplish what I wish with this distrust of the stopping halfway, of the so far and no farther of the girlsGÇÖ colleges. Oh and mensGÇÖ too! But they do not concern us. To set, as I sat today, in chapel and look down upon a woman president, reading prayers to an audience of 500 women and 70 professors and teachers-- all women, not a manGÇÖs influence seen or felt; or to watch the girls in trousers swinging on rings, twirling on bars, a newer race of athletes-- usher in a new day. The devotion to study of these girls and women professors in this princess-like community of Wellesley is more devoted than elsewhere. Miss Freeman, the president, is very able yet talking to her, listening to her, driving with her in her phaeton I feel her ability and non ability in a breath. The things we care for rise up and make a barrier between me and all these men and women except one, one talk I have had of a kind that I never expected to have with a man again (the last such, also with a perfect stranger and with no further acquaintance than that was followed 6 months later by a proposal which did not seem to me as unjustifiable as it in reality was) Professor Niemeyer is, I am sure, married, but in order to have no alloy in any remembrance, I have not asked. We talked at the lunch table till everyone left, then he stood with his hand on the front door, opening it as the boarders went in and out, and talked for 1 -+ hours, as I afterward found, but it seemed to me a moment and to him also I hope, ibn his justification, as he returned to his haven without going near his students. He looks like a commonplace man; hey may be himself commonplace on other occasions, but that day some good luck had touched his lips and he made up for all the rest of Smith. English, French pictures, WhistlerGÇÖs etchings, may even to the waving mother of the ships in one little one of the Riva, his own work, Paris, America, his stagnation after he returned, his second visit to Europe, what he now found it worthwhile to live for, Boughton, Ingres, the Munich School, everything he hazarded in regard to me even to your Isabella and her pot of basil, everything was what I cared to hear. Among other things in answer to his question as to the owner of the Isabella when I told him Mr Garrett he said he thought his daughter and become an impressionist painter. No one had even told him he had imagined it (Is that the revenge Professor Marsh takes Mary?) But it is foolish to try to give any description of our conversation, because there was magic at work-- the unwanted charm of hearing oneGÇÖs own theories, and better than oneGÇÖs own theories, from the mouth of a man whose life had been spent on such things, the pleasure of having every thought understood almost before I expressed it! Curiously enough the men I have seen have been more pleasant to me than the women. In colleges they are more cultivated. Professor Drennan of Harvard, now at Vassar and today an old friends Mr. Byerly of Cornell, now of Harvard. He was at lunch with GÇ£H. H.GÇ¥ and several others and I was delighted to see again the man who by his lectures on Calculus and Analytical Geometry made me intellectually a mathematician. Practically I never was nor shall be one. He was equally charmed and of course I shall see him again in Boston and then ___. But I am ashamed to see into what personalities I have been led, which indeed would scarcely interest me at any other time, much less you. I am afraid you will believe this college work, these college men and women unduly important to me. The girls at Smith went into heroics over me and Bryn Mawr. I believe -+ will go there as postgrad students. They prepared themselves carefully for the recitations I was known to be about to attend and then sent me apologies afterwards for their confusion. It was a new sensation not to be in their places. I intended to go to bed at 9 and it is now 11. These letters, written after hours of conversation when I am, as you see too tired to choose either words or topics are worth very little. I am afraid my last letter closed with a somewhat bare statement of several facts which are axiomatic in friendship. You must pardon both letters and writer, dear Mary. Both have a common excuse to urge-- the one is writing, the others are writing to you and apart from the desire to talk to you I am really too tired GÇ£to do myself proudGÇ¥ as the funny New England would express it. Yours lovingly-- Take care of yourself and let me know that you are doing so. I will learn you some Shakespeare sonnets to rest myself. Minnie C.T.