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CHAPTER "Unless Somebody Cares & Loves Me All the Time" I n 1854, as Fanny began her second year in Georgia, it seems that both she and Lawrence were fast coming to the realization that being away from one another for another two years would be intolerable. Fanny was leading a rather spartan existence, her days and evenings filled with responsibilities, and her earnings swallowed up by her living expenses and her efforts to pay off her debt to her father as quickly as possible. But she was full of hope that some plan would be devised to allow them to be together before the year was out. Though Lawrence seemed willing to discuss alternatives to the ministry, he clung tenaciously to the seminary, and continued to try to find a way to bring Fanny back to Maine. It was never intended that Fanny would live permanently with the Orme family when she went to Milledgeville. But Fanny's illness on her arrival in Georgia, and the affectionate friendship that sprang up between these distant cousins, caused her to remain with Abby Orme and her family longer than anticipated. In early 1854, Fanny moved into the home of Dr. Samuel Gore White, a prominent Milledgeville physician who had served as a naval surgeon during the Mexican War. A pillar of the Presbyterian Church, where Fanny played the organ and directed the choir, Dr. White and his wife Caroline invited Fanny into their home, where she would instruct the eldest of their two young daughters in piano. 63 Though Dr. White was known for his hospitality, when Fanny left the stately Orme home and the bustle of their large family, it is likely that she finally gained much longed-for time to herself. Fanny, who insisted she could not compose a letter to Lawrence unless she was alone, wrote frequently during this year, though the slowness of the mails, as well as lost and delayed letters, continued to plague their correspondence.1 Fanny was absorbed in her teaching in Milledgeville, but her letters to Cousin Deborah reveal that her thoughts often turned northward. When she confided in Deborah that she longed to come north, Deborah, who was boarding in Hoboken, N.J., responded with the wish that she could provide a home for her. But when Fanny told Deborah that Lawrence was pressing her to come and stay with his family in Brewer, Deborah advised her to work on in Georgia "till there is an unmistakable call...," and she added, "Never until you are married would I go there to abide." Whether Fanny agreed with Deborah or not, she still faced the necessity of earning her own income and completing the repayment of her debts.2 In late February 1854, Fanny wrote a long letter to Lawrence. The first few pages were dedicated to her continuing distress that her letters were shown to others: There are many, many things that I would say to you, my dearest Lawrence...but I cannot write freely because I am afraid that what I may say will not be sacred to you alone. In truth I never write you without a secret, hardly acknowledgedfeeling that your mother and Cousin Deborah at least will perhaps know every word that I may say. It is not well for either of us that I should write so constrainedly is it dear Lawrence ? it is so different with usfrom what I used so fondly to imagine it would be with my ideal love; I mean in this respect dear, and I would give the world to feel that every word between us was sacred to us alone; then I could tell you every thought and feeling in my letters, just as freely as I would whisper them into your ear, ifI were resting in your bosom as ofold.3 Fanny responded to a theme in Lawrence's sentiments, that she keep herself "fresh & fair & cheerful," and also to his suggestion that the time that remained until his graduation was growing short: "...When you speak of a year and a half, does it dear? Ah! I am much afraid that if your poor little girl stays here toiling on for all that long, long time (as it seems to her) she will indeed have no youth left for you. I cannot bear to say this, lest it trouble you, dear one, but then it grieves me so that I cannot keep it from you." Fanny also assailed Lawrence for his opinion that a...

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