really. Because the railroad doesn’t run straight from Nashville to the eastern counties, the Federals can’t push through to liberate us without taking Chattanooga first, and of course it’s massively defended.
Regal (finally!) came here Saturday, with the regular CSA Commander from Knoxville, your compatriot, of all things, from Maine. Regal ordered Julia and me back to Bayberry. Since Bayberry gets raided once or twice a month by the Lincolnites and since the only Secesh boarding-house in Greeneville charges five dollars a week, it was eventually agreed that we two women would continue under “that skunk traitor Johnson’s” unhallowed roof (only Regal didn’t say
skunk)
.
So here we are. For how long, no one knows. The rumor is that Senator Johnson will be named Military Governor of Tennessee, and I know it’s only a matter of time before the Confederate States of America sequesters the house. Julia’s baby is due in a few weeks. I asked Dolly (you remember Mrs. J’s Dolly?) to tell me exactly what happens when a baby comes: what it looks like, what has to be done, what can go wrong, in case Julia should go into labor when there’s nobody but me around. You’d have thought I’d asked her how to carve up and stew Baby Tommy (or Baby Aurora Victoria) (!) when little he-or-she arrives. It “wasn’t fittin’” that a young girl (meaning a virgin, I guess) should know things like that.
But why
shouldn’t
any girl who’s old enough to have her monthliesknow about babies, and how they’re born, and where they come from? She’s going to have to learn sometime!
S ATURDAY , M ARCH 8
It maddens me that a letter from you is probably lying in a Post Office in Nashville, undeliverable to the Academy or anywhere else. Or, worse, that
my
letters to
you
went to kindle some bush-whacker’s cigar.
Julia keeps to her room. Dolly has found a black midwife in town. I help Dolly and her girls with the housekeeping, or help Mrs. Johnson tutor little Frank. Of course he’s not able to go to school anymore, and Mrs. J is afraid that some Secesh in town is going to take out his politics on Senator Johnson’s son. There was a time when I would have said, “Nobody would do that to a nine-year-old child!” but I honestly don’t know anymore. In the evenings we lock the house up tight, and I read to Mrs. Johnson while she sews (or vice versa). Because of your letter, we’re re-reading
Pride and Prejudice
, and it helps very much to occupy oneself with the Bennet girls’ husband-hunt. But the threat that overhangs
them
, of being turned out of their home by Mr. Collins, cuts a little close to the bone—as does the realization of how helpless Julia and I would be, if that happened to our hostess.
I knew Pa hadn’t paid my board bill at the Academy since the beginning of December, but there were several of us there in the same circumstance. And I knew Pa hadn’t sent money to Mrs. Russell, either, one reason she treated Julia so shabbily. But going back to Bayberry, and trying to find out about the bank here in town, brings home to me that even tho’ Pa still owns a plantation, we’re poor. If someone were to come to me and say, “You can go to the Academy of Fine Art in Philadelphia tomorrow,” Pa wouldn’t be able to send me. Julia hasn’t the least idea that we’re now living on Mrs. J’s charity. She still keeps calling her “that traitor”! With the field hands runoff and the militia all over the property and the banks closed, there’s nothing else for us to live on
but
charity.
It makes me turn hot all over to think of it, because I know Mrs. J can’t afford two more mouths to feed. I don’t know what to do, and until they get this war over I don’t even know what I
can
do. I’ll write to Pa in Richmond, but I know already he’s just going to write back, “Of course you must leave That Traitor’s house immediately and I’ll take care of everything when I get back.” But I know, too, he’s
Regal (finally!) came here Saturday, with the regular CSA Commander from Knoxville, your compatriot, of all things, from Maine. Regal ordered Julia and me back to Bayberry. Since Bayberry gets raided once or twice a month by the Lincolnites and since the only Secesh boarding-house in Greeneville charges five dollars a week, it was eventually agreed that we two women would continue under “that skunk traitor Johnson’s” unhallowed roof (only Regal didn’t say
skunk)
.
So here we are. For how long, no one knows. The rumor is that Senator Johnson will be named Military Governor of Tennessee, and I know it’s only a matter of time before the Confederate States of America sequesters the house. Julia’s baby is due in a few weeks. I asked Dolly (you remember Mrs. J’s Dolly?) to tell me exactly what happens when a baby comes: what it looks like, what has to be done, what can go wrong, in case Julia should go into labor when there’s nobody but me around. You’d have thought I’d asked her how to carve up and stew Baby Tommy (or Baby Aurora Victoria) (!) when little he-or-she arrives. It “wasn’t fittin’” that a young girl (meaning a virgin, I guess) should know things like that.
But why
shouldn’t
any girl who’s old enough to have her monthliesknow about babies, and how they’re born, and where they come from? She’s going to have to learn sometime!
S ATURDAY , M ARCH 8
It maddens me that a letter from you is probably lying in a Post Office in Nashville, undeliverable to the Academy or anywhere else. Or, worse, that
my
letters to
you
went to kindle some bush-whacker’s cigar.
Julia keeps to her room. Dolly has found a black midwife in town. I help Dolly and her girls with the housekeeping, or help Mrs. Johnson tutor little Frank. Of course he’s not able to go to school anymore, and Mrs. J is afraid that some Secesh in town is going to take out his politics on Senator Johnson’s son. There was a time when I would have said, “Nobody would do that to a nine-year-old child!” but I honestly don’t know anymore. In the evenings we lock the house up tight, and I read to Mrs. Johnson while she sews (or vice versa). Because of your letter, we’re re-reading
Pride and Prejudice
, and it helps very much to occupy oneself with the Bennet girls’ husband-hunt. But the threat that overhangs
them
, of being turned out of their home by Mr. Collins, cuts a little close to the bone—as does the realization of how helpless Julia and I would be, if that happened to our hostess.
I knew Pa hadn’t paid my board bill at the Academy since the beginning of December, but there were several of us there in the same circumstance. And I knew Pa hadn’t sent money to Mrs. Russell, either, one reason she treated Julia so shabbily. But going back to Bayberry, and trying to find out about the bank here in town, brings home to me that even tho’ Pa still owns a plantation, we’re poor. If someone were to come to me and say, “You can go to the Academy of Fine Art in Philadelphia tomorrow,” Pa wouldn’t be able to send me. Julia hasn’t the least idea that we’re now living on Mrs. J’s charity. She still keeps calling her “that traitor”! With the field hands runoff and the militia all over the property and the banks closed, there’s nothing else for us to live on
but
charity.
It makes me turn hot all over to think of it, because I know Mrs. J can’t afford two more mouths to feed. I don’t know what to do, and until they get this war over I don’t even know what I
can
do. I’ll write to Pa in Richmond, but I know already he’s just going to write back, “Of course you must leave That Traitor’s house immediately and I’ll take care of everything when I get back.” But I know, too, he’s
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