Clara Barton, Professional Angel

Chapter Two

Clara stood by the large stone fireplace in her family's house and trained frightened and questioning eyes on the assembled Barton family. "But what am I to do with only two little old waifish dresses?" she asked. Her cousin Julia recognized at once that Clara wasright—with her new occupation as teacher she needed an image that would inspire confidence and respect, especiallysince her appearance was so small and childlike. Convinced that clothes would indeed make the woman, the women of the house began lengthening skirts and putting up hair— a bustle of activity aimed at making the insecure schoolmarm look older and larger.' At least one new dress was forthcoming. It was a fashionable green outfit that Clara wore on her first day of teaching and sentimentally saved for the rest of her life.2 Barton was probably about eighteen when she first began teaching. In later years she often stated that she was fifteen at the start of this, her earliest career. A letter from a close friend, dated in the spring of 1838, however, indicates that if she taught before this date he knew nothing about it. Moreover, her millwork, which she admitted was finished before she began to teach school, took place in 1839 when she was seventeen. Elsewhere Clara mentions that she was sixteen when she undertook her first summer session, yet her earliest extant teaching certificate (won after "an examination of the learned committee of one clergyman , one lawyer and one justice of the peace") is dated 1839.3 Whatever her age, she felt the handicap of being but slightly older than her pupils. She had been treated as a child at home and had had little experience with the responsibilities of the working world, save two weeks at the looms of her brother's mill. "We had all been children together," Barton wrote of her first pupils.4 Barton taught her first classes in a barren stone building, "neither large nor new," she recalled. An ungraded school, it was filled with rows of shabby desks into which were crammed forty curious pupils, ranging in age from toddlers to 20 two four young men in their late teens. In summer schools such as these, the pupils were apt to be girls and little boys who were not needed at home to help with the farm work. (School boards thought the sessions easier for that reason and paid the youngwomen who taught them a salarysubstantiallybelow the going rate for winter schools.) Facing her pupilsfrom the teachers platform the first day, Clara felt no optimism about the ease of her task. She found the pupils distracted by the sweet smell of meadow grass and the warm breezes, and knew the boys stood ready to test her. With a rush of panic, she realized she had no idea how to open a school. Lighting on the first object at hand, she opened a Bible. Too shy to address the pupils, she directed them to read from the text of the Sermon on the Mount. She was pleased to find them responsive and amusing, and to discover that the four larger boys could be checked with a stinging glance.5 Elvira Stone recalled that her cousin Clara "took to teaching as natural as could be."6 Clara was, in fact, a gifted pedagogue who formed an immediate and strong rapport with her pupils. Her own interest in learning was infectious, and her agile mind kept the pupils continually challenged. Moreover, she knew instinctively that if she made her expectations known her pupils would rise to the mark and that this would be an effective disciplinary tool. She coupled this with an unerring ability to earn their respect. When Miss Barton found that the boys played too roughly at the noon recess she joined the game, winning them over with her admirable talent for throwing a ball. "My four lads soon perceived that I was no stranger to their sports or their tricks. . . . When they found . . . that if they won a game it was because I permitted it, their respect knew no bounds." Their admiration was carried over into the schoolhouse, and she found little need for the harsh punishments that characterized many common schools.7 A girl who sat in Barton's school attested to this when she wrote to her former teacher with fond memories. "I remember you walking about with your ruler in your hand. . . . I don't remember that you ever punished anyone, you...