January 14, 1894

Dearest Morris,

It seems a long time since you wrote me. Will you not tell me on what day I may expect a letter with some degree of certainty? It is provoking to find a letter from Ruth N instead of one from you.

By the way Charlie wrote me last week. Part of the letter looks as if it had been copied from “Correct guide to letter-writing.” What a very funny boy he is!

I am so sleepy today. Two of the girls are writing their letters in my room and I have asked them to wake me up if I fall asleep over my letters. As usual I have a dozen to answer. Every night except one last week I was up until twelve. Was I not a naughty girl?

One night Mabel and I made candy over the gas. The butter scotch much resembled that that you made on New Year’s over a year ago. The caramels were rather better. We only had a glass of milk and half a cup of sugar with butter, to make both kinds so did not have too much of either. A very good thing considering that absence from breakfast would have made Mrs. Lee suspicious.

I have decided that there is a difference between a company of Milwaukee people and a company of Cambridge people. My aunt entertained a club of professors and their wives and I poured cocoa and really had a good time. Last night I saw Jefferson in Rip Van Winkle and liked him immensely. In fact I enjoyed myself more than any night in Cambridge, more than any night since I left Milwaukee with the exception of the evenings you spent in Somerville.

Such times as some of the girls have been having here! All day yesterday they did nothing but weep and scold because the world and particularly Cambridge was not made as they desired it.

This morning I heard Edward Everett Hale in Boston. Everything in the service pleased me. I like the Unitarian church. If Mamma and Papa heard me say so they would think I had been influenced by “Cambridge atmosphere.” But it is not the influence of Cambridge but only that I began to outgrow fairy tales a year ago. Then came Fay Mill’s revivals. I do not like them. If one attends them in a gentle mood he can be influenced to almost anything. I think I remarked before how strange it was that I am continually reminded of those lines from the Inner House. “Oh love is worth the whole wide world, give that, you give all.” Every sermon that I hear, every time I wander off toward infinity, every day’s experience at the Hall, every book that I read, and every time I think of you, I puzzle over the wherefore and I am no nearer solving it than I was in July.

I told you I was sleepy and that accounts for the queer way I have been writing. Ike M says “letters are the only true heart talkers.” I do not think so and should feel ashamed of my soul if it were “measuring itself” in my letters to you.

Is there any possibility of seeing you in Milwaukee at Easter?

My visitors have finished their letters and one is reading. The other studying – and reminding me that I have some work to do in that line, aside from the dozen letters, so

Good-bye,

Ethel.

Editor’s Note

Something is waking up in Ethel.

Her last two letters were light and warm; this one, after its sleepy opening, is searching. She hears Edward Everett Hale preach, decides she likes the Unitarian church, and heads off the objection before her parents can raise it: this isn’t “Cambridge atmosphere,” it’s that she “began to outgrow fairy tales a year ago.” She distrusts Fay Mills’s revivals precisely because they work — because a person “in a gentle mood” can be moved to almost anything. At sixteen, she is already suspicious of being persuaded against her own reason.

And then the letter gathers all of her inner musings into a single sentence. She has told Morris before how often a line from The Inner House returns to her — “Oh love is worth the whole wide world, give that, you give all” — and now she sets it beside everything else: every sermon, every time her mind wanders “off toward infinity,” every day at the Hall, every book, every thought of Morris, all flowing into one question she has been turning to since July, and is “no nearer solving.” Religion, reading, her own restless mind, and her feeling for Morris are not separate subjects to her. They are facets of the same “wherefore.”

In this letter, Ethel’s inner life — which she will revisit throughout 1894 — announces itself. We’ll come back to two of these threads in upcoming Wednesday posts: One about Ethel’s continuing spiritual journey, and the other about what she was reading in 1894 and how it shaped her. Both threads begin with this letter.

And then, one quieter line, easy to miss: “Is there any possibility of seeing you in Milwaukee at Easter?” She has already begun to plan toward the next time she can see him.

—

Images:

Left — Joseph Jefferson as Rip Van Winkle, photographed by B. J. Falk, 1894. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Public domain.

Right — Edward Everett Hale, photographed by George G. Rockwood, c. 1900. Boston Public Library, Cabinet Card Collection. No known copyright restrictions.

New to The Long Conversation? Start Here.

[TLC-1894-03]

Jan 9, 1894

Dearest Morris,

I had no sooner decided that I must not expect a letter from you till Friday, when the postman brought the wished for letter. Two letters a week is not “too often,” is it? I found a rather large mail waiting for me today, four letters and the “Sunday Sentinal.” Nala told of such a funny time at Gina’s party. How she opened four doors before finding the ladies dressing room, and in fact explored the whole second story. How there was a large number of dancers and very little room to dance. After all you and I had a better time in Somerville. Mabel has come back at last – and everything is just the same as it was last September. I do not like to think of my mind but hope it is lighter than it was when I came here. There is no doubt about it. I have a great deal of luck. Mabel is the nicest girl at the Hall and the girl with whom I sit at school you would like better than Mabel. Since I have stopped expecting the girls to be as nice as you they suit me better. It was mean of me to expect to much of them, you know.

Gina and Bess have arranged a circulating library by which each of the ▲ write one letter for the others and pass it around. It is a great plan but we shall see how it works. Absentmindedness is a hard thing to cure. At least that has been my experience. Miss Downing still wakes me up at the table but everyone seems to be getting accustomed to the “wandering.” I try to be a “little woman” as Papa always says but I only succeed in being a “peculiar school girl.” If only there could be more accomplished with less trying. But is not life the trying – and the hereafter accomplishment? It has just occurred to me that I always am saying what I think about things – and you say you once thought the same but what you think now you never say. I do not mean to be “school girlish.” When will I outgrow the decease? [sic] It is worse than measles.

Mabel has just come downstairs and found me writing with the gas turned very low. I did not know it. Pretty bad was it not? Must study,

Ethel.

Editor’s Note

What changes in this letter is not what Ethel sees when she looks at herself, but how she sees it.

The peculiarities are the same ones 1893 catalogued. She still wanders off mid-meal; Miss Downing still has to “wake” her at the table; she is still, by her own account, a “peculiar school girl” rather than the “little woman” her father hoped for. A year ago, these were failings she berated herself for. Here, she finds them almost funny. The whole Hall, she notes, “seems to be getting accustomed to the ‘wandering.’” She ponders when she will outgrow it: “It is worse than measles.”

This is new. Something in the correspondence has opened a space where Ethel can examine herself without the old severity — where the daydreaming becomes a quirk to be wry about rather than a sin to confess. She does not say what has changed. Perhaps she does not have to say it to this particular fond correspondent.

And yet the letter opens on a darker note, in a single sentence that holds the whole of where she is: “I do not like to think of my mind but hope it is lighter than it was when I came here.” The wish not to look inward, and the hope that there is less there to fear — both at once. She has begun, quietly, to try not to dwell. It is the first sign of something that will continue to absorb her: Ethel learning to manage her own weather.

For now, the lightness wins. The day’s mail brings four letters and the Sunday Sentinel from Milwaukee — a piece of home on her desk, likely sent by parents who knew it would comfort her, and a quiet reminder that the speed and independence the Hall means to smooth away are her hometown’s, and hers. She writes with the gas turned low, gets caught at it by Mabel, and signs off to study. The peculiar school girl, at least tonight, is at ease with herself.

—

Image: Regulation mail wagon, Boston, circa 1895. © United States Postal Service. All rights reserved.

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Jan 6, 1894

Dear Morris,

You evidently did not write me on Wednesday. Somehow I rather thought that you would.

The past week has seemed very long. The girls have come back one by one telling of gay times throughout the holidays, but I am not envious and do not wish that I had gone home. Gina wrote me a long letter about Milwaukee people how Rawlins was high and mighty how Charlie called several times and always found her “out.” I heard some choice news of J. Green. He failed in the Madison examinations but intends to become a lawyer. Good luck to him!

There is a very curious girl at the Hall. Do you remember that I spoke of a girl who was said to flirt. I wondered if the rumor was true – as nine or ten girls said it was. So I asked her. She denied it flatly and made several girls promise not to tell me that she did or rather tried to make them promise. Now why should she not want me to know? She jokes with all the other girls about the unknown students. I have found this a new speciman [sic] of girl and am rather interested in her. Only she would be very nice if entirely ladylike. The worst part of it is that the night that she flirted most, according to the testimony of eleven girls, I sat next her – and noticed nothing. But then it was at a Symphony Concert and my thoughts were far away while I heard the cries of souls. That is what almost all music seems to me. This afternoon I saw John Drew in the “Butterflies.” At the time I liked it better than the “Masked Ball” but there is so much more silliness in the Butterflies. I can be silly (Can I not) but to see a lot of sentimental stuff on the stage – always wearies me.

By the way do not be surprised at the amount of slang which will slip into my letters. It is all the fault of the Ohio girls. These four are the gayest at the Hall. One of them, and it is Ms. Gilman’s chief delight to tell of it, is the grand niece of General Sherman. We have all been feasting on her candy tonight. I, who never wanted to see candy again, about December twenty-eighth, have managed to eat the greater part of a five pound box also my share of tonight’s spoil. Just before I started for a Concert I found the spoon in my room. It is a beauty. Ninety four is much nicer than ninety three so far. Do you not think so?

I have been very good this evening. The gas was turned out at only a little past the prescribed time, but a very small lamp is burning rather late. However I suppose I had better say

Good night,

Ethel.

Editor’s Note

This is the last letter in the archive that opens “Dear Morris.” In her next letter it becomes “Dearest” — a change Ethel never remarks on.

Something seems to have warmed over the holidays, and there may be a reason. Morris told Ethel in December that he’d be at the Park Avenue Hotel in New York — the same hotel his family used in August — and asked, more than once, where she’d be after Christmas. He finished his exams and left Ithaca for New York on December 12th. New York and Boston are a few hours’ train apart.

Then, in an undated letter from late December or early January, written from her Cambridge relatives' home on Gorham Street, Ethel called a relative-filled vacation pleasant for one reason: "the only nice part was your visit." Here, in the next dated letter, she relays the regret of her Somerville aunt Sarah at not seeing Morris “before you left.” None of it is dated precisely enough to pin down — but together, it suggests a second visit beyond the one already recorded at Thanksgiving, one the letters never mention again.

—

Image: The Boston Symphony Orchestra at Boston Music Hall in 1891. By Nathaniel Stebbins, Public Domain, Wikipedia.

New to The Long Conversation? Start Here.

[TLC-1894-01]

Gorham Street

Cambridge Mass

Dear Morris,

This morning I came over to Cambridge and found your letter at the Hall. Of course the first thing I did was to read it. I want to see you so much. The nursery maid is rather absent minded because she will think of nothing but you.

The children are playing games on the dining room table — and jump around so that I expect the ink will spill. I am so tired that I am glad school begins tomorrow. My numerous relatives have tried to make my vacation pleasant but the only nice part was your visit. None of the girls had come back to the Hall this morning. They will be there for dinner tonight. Mable is not coming back for a week.

My small cousins have finished their game or rather tired of it and are writing letters. More work for the nursery maid for I am supposed to be a dictionary for one and an audience for the other. Is it very good for one to do what she does not want to do? I did not want to stay with the children this afternoon. There were dozens of things that I did want to do at the Hall. The girls say how very nice it is for me that I have relatives to visit. I suppose it is true but when one has small cousins who prefer that one and weep if one does not go to see them every Sunday afternoon and when one has two aunts who want one to come and see them every two weeks and several other relatives very sensitive who have invited one to see them, then relatives are a little of a nuisance.

I am such an old grumbler and you are such a patient boy. My aunt has come home and I must go over to the Hall so with love,

Yours,

Ethel.

Editor’s Note

This letter — the final letter of the holiday break — is unguarded, and more revealing for it.

She wants to see Morris. She says so plainly. The “nursery maid” is absent-minded because she thinks only of him.

But beneath the affection is fatigue.

Vacation has not restored her. It has obligated her.

Small cousins weep if she misses a Sunday. Two aunts expect biweekly visits. Other relatives, “very sensitive,” extend invitations that cannot easily be declined. In theory, relatives provide warmth and continuity. In practice, they make demands.

Then comes a question that feels larger than the moment:

Is it very good for one to do what she does not want to do?

Throughout 1893, Ethel has insisted on independence. She bicycled through Cambridge, attended concerts, built friendships, and held her own opinions. Now she confronts another truth of adulthood: independence does not erase obligation.

She calls herself “an old grumbler.” She calls Morris “such a patient boy.”

The self-critique is affectionate — but also honest.

The winter holiday — and 1893 — closes not with drama, but with clarity. She is loved. She is needed. She is tired.

And she is still writing.

Historical Note

Ethel’s 1893 winter holiday letters are filled with references to aunts, cousins, and the overlapping households of Somerville and Cambridge that shaped her first holiday season away from Milwaukee. In the months ahead, two portrait posts will introduce these families more fully — the houses, the faces, and the expectations that surrounded her during her first full year away from home.

—

Image: Library of Congress, Popular Graphic Arts Collection. Popular Domain.

New here? Start with the Welcome, or navigate the correspondence through the Letters Index.

[TLC-1893-50]

Scott Street, Cambridge, 1892. Outside: ice and silence. Inside: mending, popcorn, and a young woman learning discernment by the fire.

December 17, 1893

Dear Morris,

The weather in Ithaca can be no worse than weather in Cambridge. It is cold – although it snows and rains alternately. To make matters worse the boiler in Miss Gilman’s heating apparatus cracked and for the last three days the halls have been icy. However there are glorious open fires in all the bedrooms and I had just as soon be cold half the time if I may toast before an open fire the other half.

Yesterday some of the brave girls went into Boston while the rest sat around a morning fire in our room mending, popping corn and reading aloud. Tonight Mable and I are arranging for a lunch. We asked the maid for some crackers, cookies and apples, pretending that we were so hungry we could not wait until suppertime. All these now lie under an innocent red pillow. We want some butter and salt for our popcorn but hardly like to ask. Mrs. Lee’s room is next to ours but she will think the noise of the corn popper is the fire in the grate, besides she probably would not care if she knew.

This morning the trees were all covered with ice, and when the sun came out from the clouds the ice melted, and as the Cambridge people are too economical to have sidewalks, most of us decided not to go to church. We were not to get out of a sermon thus easily. Mrs. Lee read a sermon to us and finished off not with hymns as I half expected but with the opening chapters of her book. The first chapter was rather interesting, the second endurable but the third a bore. Did I ever give a school-girlish opinion of Mrs. Lee? Let us pretend that I never have.

Christmas and the preceding week I have promised to spend in Cambridge, the following week in Somerville. Although I have these numerous relatives to visit the most homelike place is as Mable and I both agree, this room in which I am writing.

There is the worst noise downstairs, someone must be signing hymns.

Yours sincerely,

Ethel.

Editor’s Note

By mid-December, Ethel has chosen to stay.

She could have gone home to Milwaukee. Her parents gave her permission. Instead, she remains in Cambridge — cracked boiler, icy halls, treacherous sidewalks and all. She frames it cheerfully: “I had just as soon be cold half the time if I may toast before an open fire the other half.” But beneath the humor is resolve.

And here, quietly, something shifts.

Earlier in the year, Mrs. Lee had seemed almost heroic to Ethel — a woman who had written a book, who spoke of knowing one of Ethel’s favored “New Woman” authors. There was a shimmer of admiration in those early descriptions.

Now, listening to three chapters read aloud from Mrs. Lee’s book, the shimmer fades.

The first chapter is “rather interesting.” The second “endurable.” The third — “a bore.”

The remark is not cruel, exactly. It’s more a moment of maturity. The admired author becomes a working writer. The intellectual idol becomes human. And Ethel, amused at her own earlier enthusiasm, checks herself:

Did I ever give a school-girlish opinion of Mrs. Lee? Let us pretend that I never have.

It is one of the first moments in the correspondence when she gently corrects her own former awe.

As 1893 closes, Ethel is not losing her appetite for brilliance. She is gaining discernment.

Why did she stay in Cambridge? The letters don’t say directly, but the likely answers are practical ones. The journey from Boston to Milwaukee in December 1893 was not a simple matter. It required multiple train connections, considerable time, and — for a sixteen-year-old girl traveling alone — an escort. Ethel’s mother had already made several round trips between Milwaukee and Cambridge that year, and there are hints in family letters that Kit’s health was sometimes uncertain. Ethel’s father, a corporate attorney with a demanding practice, appears rarely in the family letters as a traveler except on business. The logistics, in short, raised real barriers.

There is also the matter of Thanksgiving. Morris had just made the journey east specifically to see her, arriving in Somerville for what appears to have been several days. Had Ethel left Cambridge immediately afterward for Milwaukee, that time together could have been sharply curtailed — or foregone entirely.

The truth is probably somewhere in this blended set of winter realities: a mother who could not easily travel again so soon, a father who could not leave his practice, a journey that was genuinely difficult, and — perhaps — a young woman who had reasons of her own for staying close to Cambridge a little longer.

She calls her dormitory room “the most homelike place.” She may mean it more than she lets on.

She is not home. But she is building one.

—

Image Courtesy of the Cambridge Historical Commission, Charles N. Cogswell Collection. Public Domain.

New here? Start with the Welcome, or navigate the correspondence through the Letters Index.

[TLC-1893-49]

Dear Ethel:

Received your letter about five minutes ago, I have just come down from “the hill” where I have been taking a very trying exam in mathematics. I also have another this after-noon at three. How is that? Two math exams in one day, finals too. My head is all swimming now, and I am in fine condition to take another exam or even write a letter for that matter, so you will please excuse anything in this letter. I have only three exams to take; the two today, and then none till Tuesday. The worst part of it is that I have to hang around this Godforsaken town for four days (!)

It is nice and sloppy here now, the slush is about four inches deep on most of the sidewalks. The average number of falls per block is three. As I look out of the window now I see that it has begun to rain, verily Ithaca weather is a great and wondrous thing.

When a person sits down and fills up writing paper with a weather report, it usually means that he has not much to write about. That is my case. If I should give you some of the news of the week it would read like the little boy’s diary: Got up, got washed, went to school, came home, ate supper, went to bed, etc. I have several things to be thankful for though one is that I get out of this town on Tues, at 12:05 PM. You can direct the answer to this to Park Ave Hotel, N.Y. In this answer it might be as well to state where you are going to be for a few days after Xmas. You ignore my questions to this effect, in your letter just received.

I must do some studying for that exam so,

Good bye

Morris Benton

Editor’s Note

This letter finds Morris back in Ithaca, deep in final examinations. Two math exams in one day. Slush four inches deep. Four more days in a Godforsaken town before he can leave.

Between this letter and the one before it lies a brief silence in the record. Morris traveled east for the holiday. For a few days, there was no need to write.

When the correspondence resumes, something has shifted. The restless edge has softened. Whatever passed during those December days, it appears to have steadied them both.

—

Image: Archives Picture Collection, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

New here? Start with the Welcome, or navigate the correspondence through the Letters Index.

[TLC-1893-47]

Nov 24, ‘93

Dear Ethel:

Received your letter containing the directions for finding you last evening also the letter I ought to have got Tuesday at the same time. One of the boys in the house went down to the post office Tuesday eve, and got the mail. He had been carrying your letter around in his pocket until last night he happened to think of it and gave it to me. You have been so prompt in answering this year that I thought you must be sick or something terrible had happened. I am much obliged for the information you sent me. You say to get off at Lincoln St., and walk along it one block to Perkins. I suppose a little thing like direction is taken but little account of in Boston.

The good people of Somerville must retire very early. I infer this from your last letter, as perhaps you remember, your remark at the end of it that it is much past your bed time, then you say good night. Well, this letter is dated Nov. 22 on the inside, and the postmark says as follows

The old maxim: early to bed and early to rise etc, is all very well in its place but don’t you think there is such a thing as carrying it too far?

If I have the good luck to reach Somerville, it will probably be on the day following Thanksgiving day or possibly the day after that.

Sad as it happens to be, there was a tragedy here a few days ago. A young professor and one of the Co-eds disappeared one day, and as was found out afterwards, they went out rowing on the lake. The boat was found bottom upwards next day, floating out in the middle of the lake a mile from shore, and nothing more is known of its occupants to this day. The whole university is quite stirred up about it.

Well, I have to go down town so will go now and get this in before the last mail goes out,

Till next Fri, then (probably)

good bye Morris Benton

Editor’s Note

Written just days before Thanksgiving, this letter captures the restless anticipation of a meeting now close at hand. Morris analyzes postmarks, worries over delayed mail, and reviews directions with exaggerated care. He is a young man from Milwaukee who has never been to Boston, trying to find a house on a street whose direction Ethel forgot to specify.

This 1852 map of Boston and its surrounding towns shows the terrain he was navigating from afar — Cambridge and Somerville visible at the northern edge, the city spreading between them.

He expects to see her “next Fri, then (probably).”

Travel plans and tragedy arrive in the same letter. News of a rowing accident at Cornell — a young professor and a student, a boat found overturned a mile from shore — unsettles the campus briefly, then the letter moves on.

The letters fall silent after this, and resume in early December.

Historical Note

The drowning on Cayuga Lake. On November 18, 1893, Lucius S. Merriam, an instructor in political economy, and Mary L. Yeargin, a graduate student, drowned while rowing on Cayuga Lake. She was a South Carolina schoolteacher who had paid her own way through college and come north to advance her studies and her profession. At twenty-six, Yeargin was the kind of student Cornell's coeducation made possible. The university had admitted women since 1870 — decades ahead of most of its peers — and drew them from far beyond New York.

—

Image: Courtesy of Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center Collection. Public Domain.

New here? Start with the Welcome, or navigate the correspondence through the Letters Index.

[TLC-1893-46]

Margaret Winthrop Hall.

...that I have “blues” or more properly “crossness” after I have talked with her. Given the problem “What to do that the result may be happiness?” This I can not solve because it involves another problem. “What to do that the result may be loss of egotistical traits,” and as long as people say I am “queer,” “odd,” “funny,” “Chinese puzzle” and so forth I shall be introspective.

I think my writing is ever so funny. Miss Warren, the English teacher in the Cambridge School said there was no character in my writing and so since I am in Cambridge to improve, I am trying my best to change it.

The photograph which you sent pleases me immensely but I do not know why. I know very little concerning ways and means of reaching Somerville from Boston. It is one of Boston’s many suburbs and about as far as Cambridge. Shall go over to S sometime this week and write you there.

Please do not think any the less of me for being so cross and queer,

Ethel Bottum.

Editor’s Note

The first page of this letter is missing. From context, it appears to follow a conversation with Mrs. Lee — one that left Ethel unsettled.

What remains is unusually self-revealing.

At sixteen, newly installed at Margaret Winthrop Hall and attempting to “improve” herself in every respect, Ethel writes as though her own disposition were a problem to be solved. She quotes others’ descriptions of her — “queer,” “odd,” even a “Chinese puzzle” — and wonders what must be altered in order to secure happiness and shed what she calls “egotistical traits.”

The accumulation of labels suggests that Ethel feels herself observed, assessed, and corrected.

There is an echo here that recurs. Morris has just teased her about her handwriting. Now she reports that a teacher has told her there is “no character” in it — and she is trying to change. Handwriting, personality, temperament: all seem open to revision.

If Morris’s previous letter allowed a glimpse of dissatisfaction beneath cheerfulness, this one reveals something equally fragile beneath Ethel’s brightness: the strain of being young, perceptive, and alone in a setting not merely educational, but reformative — a place where identity itself is expected to be shaped.

She closes with a plea not to be thought less of.

New here? Start with the Welcome, or navigate the correspondence through the Letters Index.

[TLC-1893-44]

Dear Ethel:

When I came down from “the hill” on Tuesday, I looked on the little table in the corner, expecting to see a certain letter there. At first I was disappointed, I saw a letter there but it did not seem to be the right one. After opening it though I discovered that it was. What have you been doing to your handwriting anyway? Are you putting it through a course of sprouts?

You say you expect to spend your Thanksgiving at Somerville. Now where on earth is this town. Remember I have only been in Mass once and that was way down in the south-western part. I have never been in Boston or anywheres near it. If you will answer the following questions I will have a great deal better show of seeing you at the gay Thanksgiving time,

(1) How far and in what direction is Somerville from Boston, and what state is it in?

(2) What railroad is it on?

(3) How long does it take to get there?

(4) Will I have to go through Boston?

Any little directions as to R.R. stations time of trains etc, etc, will be gladly received. If I had taken a large tag and tied it around my neck, with the address on you gave me and a two cent stamp, I never would have “ariv” because you forgot to mention the state that this town of Somerville is in.

You make a great mistake if you think I am always cheerful and happy; cheerful maybe—on the surface—but usually not happy, although I suppose “people” would say that I ought to be, as I am a spoiled child and have had about everything I want. That is probably just the trouble. I want something now that is completely out of the power of my parents to give, and which I never expect to get. I may explain what I mean some time. It is mean to arouse ones curiosity and then not satisfy it, isn’t it? This has been troubling me for about two years so far. Do you remember asking me last year if all Freshmen always looked as glum as I did?

It is time to dress for drill so must close, I send you a picture taken by a friend, representing the way I appeared last Sunday afternoon. There was a large bonfire about three feet from where I was sitting.

Your friend,

Morris Benton

Editor’s Note

Up to this point, Morris’s letters have leaned toward the practical and the playful, and this one seems no different in its opening — teasing about handwriting, mock-complaints about incomplete addresses, cheerful interrogations about railroad routes.

Then, almost mid-sentence, the tone shifts.

In a few unadorned lines, he admits to something he has carried quietly: a dissatisfaction that has troubled him “for about two years.” He anticipates how others might view him — fortunate, perhaps even spoiled — and then confesses that what he wants now lies beyond the reach of his parents’ generosity.

He does not name the thing he wants. Yet his careful questions about Somerville — rail lines, stations, directions — suggest that the answer may not be abstract.

The photograph he encloses presents a composed young man seated outdoors near a bonfire. The letter that accompanies it reveals a more unsettled interior life. It is one of the earliest moments in their correspondence when Morris allows that interior weather to show.

New here? Start with the Welcome, or navigate the correspondence through the Letters Index.

[TLC-1893-43]

Nov 12, 1893.

Dear Morris,

There are so many ifs in your letter that I am afraid I shall not see you after all. I expect to spend Thanksgiving — and very likely the following week — in Somerville, 34 Pinckney Street. I shall be ever so glad to see you. The next three weeks will seem very long.

During the time that I have been in Cambridge I have seen but one person who has ever even visited Milwaukee.

It would be better had you applied your reasoning to the material from which I am to compose a letter. Granted that I have both time and inclination to write you a long letter, where is the news to come from? The lack of news which you speak of is followed by the best possible news that perhaps you will run up to Boston, but when I say there is no news, there never is.

I did not go to church this morning, but read Emerson instead. It is cold and wintry, just the kind of a day to have the blues. Everything goes wrong and I am provoked at myself for caring. How do you always manage to be cheerful and happy?

I had a rather funny time Friday. Mrs. Lee is so sure that I am studying too hard that she spoke to Mr. Gilman about me and he talked to me. Everything that I do to please myself is sure to displease someone. I suppose this state of affairs is very good discipline for a spoilt and only child, and that she does not like it stands to reason. If I might only be another person for a little while.

Do excuse my crossness. I am afraid Emerson’s Essays are not good for me or perhaps I feel the effects of the cider which we had last evening. Owing to an accident at dinner the maid brought Mable and I a lunch of bread, jam and cider at about half past eight last evening.

I hope you have recovered from the horrible cold.

Yours sincerely,

Ethel Bottum.

Editor’s Note

This letter introduces a new strain into the Boston correspondence. Ethel has always been spirited, but rarely at odds with her circumstances. In her childhood letters home, described in the portrait of her family, she appears as a small negotiator — thoughtful, articulate, quietly maintaining her own perspective while smoothing the emotional edges of family life. She has been accustomed to conversation.

Cambridge offers something different.

When Mrs. Lee expresses concern that Ethel is studying too hard and carries that concern to Mr. Gilman, the exchange is not part of a dialog. It is corrective. Ethel finds herself observed, assessed, and gently disciplined. “Everything that I do to please myself is sure to displease someone,” she writes. Her self-description as a “spoilt and only child” seems to express a willingness to submit outwardly, and an inward ache at being misunderstood.

She has skipped church and read Emerson instead. That she reads him on a “cold and wintry” day and then finds herself cross and unsettled suggests not rebellion, but friction. His essays, with their insistence on individual conscience, may have appealed to exactly the temperament Cambridge is now working to correct.

The affection in her closing lines remains steady. But beneath the apology for “crossness” is something new: the first clear sign that Ethel’s independence, so comfortably accommodated at home, will not pass unnoticed in Cambridge.

—

Image: William Munroe Special Collections, Concord Free Public Library. Public domain.

New here? Start with the Welcome, or navigate the correspondence through the Letters Index.

[TLC-1893-41]

Nov 8, 93,

Dear Ethel:

When you write to me Sunday I get the letter Tuesday, and in order that you may get an answer Friday, I must write Wednesday. Consequently I have only one day in which to compile and compose your letter, while you have two days for mine. According to the foregoing principles and also those of differential and integral calculus, you ought to write me twice as long a letter as I do you. What do you think; is not this reasoning all right?

Nothing of any account has happened this week so I warn you not to read the rest of this letter unless you feel that your constitution is strong enough. You notice that I give this warning in the beginning, not at the end as you did once upon a time —where it could not possibly be of any use.

I have got the same kind of cold that I had a few days before you left Milwaukee, consequently am feeling very gay. It was a very lucky thing that we had our telephone taken out otherwise our friends the Gs would have worn a hole through our hall floor by this time. I have not heard anything about Ellen being sick. The only correspondent I have in Milwaukee now is Henry West and we don’t exchange very often. You say you were sorry it rained Saturday so you couldn’t go to the ball game; what ball game?

I am not having a much better time this year than last. I am getting completely sick and tired of the whole business here, taken all together it is nothing but one continual grind, and what’s worse I am not interested in a single study I am taking this year. If nothing prevents, I will be in New York Thursday – Thanksgiving day – and stay ‘till Tuesday, if you would like to have me, and if there is no danger of my getting lost in that large city, and if I can possibly arrange it, and if you will let me know the most auspicious time for seeing you (and not a dozen of your school mates at the same time) I will run up from New York for a few minutes and pay my respects. If there is any reason why you would rather I wouldn’t come don’t hesitate for a moment to tell me it. I won’t feel hurt in the least.

Ich bin treulich dein.

Morris Benton

Editor’s Note

The tone of this letter carries a new note of caution. Morris opens with humor — calculus and playful logic — but beneath it is weariness. His studies feel like “one continual grind.” And the invitation for Thanksgiving is layered with careful ifs, each one leaving room for retreat.

Until this autumn, Morris and Ethel met within a shared hometown world. Holidays meant returning to Milwaukee, where family structures and familiar streets framed their time together. A visit to Cambridge carried different implications. A young man traveling specifically to see a young woman was no longer incidental. It required permission, coordination, and tact.

Later letters confirm that Morris did make the Thanksgiving journey, joining Ethel at her relatives’ home in Somerville. The gathering appears to have been large and multi-generational — a setting that would have provided both sanction and ease. And yet it marked a turning point: Morris had crossed from shared hometown familiarity into Ethel’s new geography, and into the orbit of a branch of her family she was still getting to know.

—

New here? Start with the Welcome, or navigate the correspondence through the Letters Index.

[TLC-1893-39]

Nov. 5, 1893.

Dear Morris,

Taken all together Friday is the most pleasant day of the week. There is the tennis all afternoon and, when you are so good as to write me on Wednesday, the postman brings me an interesting letter just before dinner.

Do you get any Milwaukee news? Mamma tells me all the news of the neighborhood; how Ellen has been sick and your house filled with a regiment of people, so that people ask to whom the house is rented; how Thornton and Emma G are slowly but surely wearing out the hall carpet near the telephone in our house & co. Papa writes that he went to Wauwatosa on the dummy and walked through Stonewood. He said the place looked deserted. No doubt. “Froshburg” misses you and I.

I have had the best time this week. Halloween, we danced and had games and refreshments. On Thursday evening we went to the second Boston Symphony concert. Of course it poured all day Saturday so that we could not go to the ball game.

I wish to take back all that I said about Mrs. Lee in regard to chaperoning. As usual she was right, and I was wrong. Last evening Mrs. Lee told me about her psychological novel which is now in the hands of a printer. I am so anxious to read it. She knows Mrs. Mart or Smart, whatever her name is, who wrote several books on social questions under the name of Helen Gardner. I have always had a great curiosity to see Helen Gardner and Mrs. Lee says that she will write her to come out to the Hall next time she visits Boston. Is not that fine? But she may not come. This is not the least bit interesting to you, but I am so pleased that I could not help writing it.

Did you know that Stuart Markham’s mother was dead? Remember me to Charlie, when you write him. I shall not have any Thanksgiving vacation, and envy you your gay time. Do you not have jollier times in Ithaca this year than you did last year? I thought of the “Easy Chair Club” last evening, while studying.

Yours Sincerely

Ethel Bottum

Editor’s Note

After weeks of strain and self-scrutiny, this letter releases the pressure. The cadence is social rather than inward — tennis, dancing, concerts, news from home about Ellen’s illness and the carpet worn thin by the telephone.

What’s especially striking is Ethel’s reassessment of Mrs. Lee. Only days earlier, chaperoning and guidance felt constraining. Here, Ethel revises her judgment with characteristic frankness: “As usual she was right, and I was wrong.” The shift is not capitulation so much as recalibration. Authority, once tested, is now selectively trusted — particularly when it opens doors rather than closes them.

That opening comes in the form of literature. Mrs. Lee’s own “psychological novel,” and her acquaintance with Helen Gardener, offer Ethel the prospect of intellectual companionship that bridges generations. Ethel’s excitement is unmistakable. The possibility of meeting a woman whose writing she admires feels less like celebrity and more like access — an expansion of what a woman’s life of the mind might look like.

The letter ends by meeting Morris in his own lighter register. She thinks of the Easy Chair Club while studying. The joke brings their two worlds a little closer.

Historical Notes

Telephones and Neighborhood Life
Ethel’s references to telephone traffic reflect an encroaching modernity. In 1890, there were fewer than three telephones per thousand people in Wisconsin, making households with telephones notable within their neighborhoods. The Bottum and Benton homes appear to have been among these early adopters, turning domestic space into a small hub of local communication.

Helen Hamilton Gardener
Helen Gardener (1853–1925), born Alice Chenoweth, was an American author, public intellectual, and political activist associated with freethought and women’s suffrage. Writing under the name Helen Gardener, she published widely during the 1880s and 1890s on social and philosophical questions. Gardener would become one of Ethel’s favorite authors during her Cambridge years, admired not only for her ideas but for the public life she modeled—intellectual, independent, and unapologetically visible.

__

Image via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

New here? Start with the Welcome, or navigate the correspondence through the Letters Index.

[TLC-1893-38]

Dear Ethel:

If you had not been so impatient about my answering your letter soon, you might have received a more interesting letter than this, see what you have missed. You have only yourself to blame though.

Do you have any Thanksgiving vacation? We have a few days, Mother wrote me today that a gay time was in store for me when I come down to New York at that time.

About a hundred and fifty loyal Cornellians went on a “cider raid” last night (31st) —I suppose you know what night that was – we turned out about eleven o’clock and marched to a little village about two miles from here where a cider mill is, and – got some – in fact two or three somes of cider, got home about one A.M. There was a small rush between ‘96 and ‘97 on the way home in which ‘96 conquered. We mailed the remainder of the class of ‘97 to their friends this morning.

There is no more news, but you are at my mercy and I am going to write some more.

Our “gang” has organized itself into a club called “The easy-chair club.” I will give you extracts from the constitution – also one or two of the “Rules”:

The Easy Chair Club Organized at Cornell Oct 14, 1893.

Preamble:

We, the students of Cornell, recognizing the necessity of the promotion of rest and social enjoyment, do here-by organize ourselves by the following constitution into the aforementioned club.

Art 1. . .

Art 2. Object: The object of this club shall be to expend the least amount of energy in the greatest amount of time, and loaf in the most artistic manner. (Ruled out)

Art 3. To promote good feeling, there shall be no permanent officers. The presiding officer at any meeting of this club, shall be that member who shall be in the most restful position at the time of meeting (I was unanimously elected at the last meeting).

Art 4. Membership . . . (As it takes a good deal of energy to complete these articles; in compliance with Rule 1 (as the club has only been in existence about two weeks) we will leave the rest for awhile.

Rules.

1. Never do today that which can be put off until week after next or the week after that.

2. Do unto others as others do unto you.

3. …

4. Any member who is found studying after 10:30 P.M. (or Sat Eve) will be suspended, the time of suspension to be determined by viva voce vote, it being too much work to rise or to prepare ballots. . . . . . . and so on for several pages, I guess I have given you enough, so that you have a general idea of the workings (?) of the club.

Don’t tell anybody that I have joined this club as it might stain my hitherto spotless reputation (for hard work). It is almost time to go to Drill. I will have to tell you a take off that our class has on the “class yell” of 97.

The correct one is: Zip-a-la zip-a-la Boom-ha-ha Cornell ‘97 Rah-rah-rah

our version of it goes as follows:

I want Ma, I want Pa, Cornell 97 ha-ha-ha.

So hoping you do not feel as some of the poor unfortunates of this class do in regard to Ma and Pa,

I remain,

Yours as ever,

Morris Benton

Editor’s Note

The letter moves from mock reproach (”you have only yourself to blame”) to campus exploits, parody, and extended quotation. Ethel’s recent letters register pressure and negotiation. Morris offers play.

The “cider raid,” the class rivalries, and the consequences imposed on the defeated class all belong to a well-established culture of late nineteenth-century collegiate ritual — rowdy, competitive, and self-consciously theatrical. Morris recounts them with relish, and with affectionate distance from their absurdity.

The Easy Chair Club’s constitution rewards not leadership but comfort. Its rules parody academic discipline and moral seriousness in equal measure. Morris’s claim to a “spotless reputation (for hard work)” is the note the whole letter has been building toward.

Read alongside Ethel’s letters from the same weeks, the contrast is sharp. While she navigates lectures about propriety and supervised social choreography, Morris’s world spills outward — into raids, clubs, collective jokes. The correspondence holds both at once.

Historical Note

Student Clubs and Collegiate Humor
Informal clubs, mock constitutions, and parody rules were common features of nineteenth-century college life. These offered students a way to build camaraderie and assert independence through humor rather than open defiance. The Easy Chair Club fits squarely within this tradition, using exaggerated idleness to poke fun at the demands of academic seriousness.

New here? Start with the Welcome, or navigate the correspondence through the Letters Index.

[TLC-1893-36]

October 29, 1893.

Dear Morris,

I suppose I shall have a lecture on “everyone’s duty in attending church” from Mrs. Lee sometime today. All the rest of the girls are almost ready for church but I do not intend to go.

Is he your cousin who is so good a character reader? My room-mate was told before she met me that I was spoilt and would have to be petted to be kept in a pleasant mood.

I have been to church after all, having decided to go at the last moment. My lecture will be saved for future Sundays.

Yesterday afternoon we were chaperoned into Boston to see Robson in the “Comedy of Errors.” As there were eight girls with two chaperones we could giggle as much as we liked and still be proper. It is the funniest thing to walk along the street two by two. The chaperone bringing up the rear.

I have at last received a letter from Bess. The “Hastings Gang” seems to be flourishing. What a lot of teasing it will take next vacation to undo the evil effects of the Circle Club this winter! Genevieve writes that she is very busy and very happy. At dinner today the girls were counting the weeks before Christmas. It is soon to begin to count the weeks but there isn’t anything to talk about here. We have had no small conflagrations in our rooms and no interesting rushes. The postman is our only excitement. The only way to make a person answer letters promptly is to send her off to school. Do you not think I have improved in this one particular? On second thought I do not think you are so good a judge of my improvement as some other people for I answered you last winter sooner than I did them. Well I shall get a letter from you next Saturday morning. Shall I not? Perhaps there will be some news by next Sunday.

Yours sincerely,

Ethel Bottum

Editor’s Note

Mrs. Lee’s guidance — so often framed as suggestion rather than command — has begun to sharpen, particularly around church attendance. Ethel anticipates a lecture, resists it internally, and then, at the last moment, complies. The reversal is not framed as surrender, but as choice. “My lecture will be saved for future Sundays,” she notes dryly.

Across recent letters, Ethel has repeatedly tested the limits of collective religious practice — staying home, leaving early, weighing compliance against conviction. The pattern continues here, with a new layer of self-awareness.

The letter also reveals how closely she is being read by others. Her roommate's report — that she was warned Ethel was "spoilt" and would need to be "petted" — is telling. Character is assessed in advance; mood treated as something to be managed. That Mabel repeated the warning to Ethel rather than acting on it says something about where her loyalty already lies. Ethel repeats the story to Morris without protest, but not without irony.

The afternoon in Boston lightens the tone. Eight girls, two chaperones, walking two by two down the street. Laughter made permissible by numbers. Ethel finds it funny. She is allowed to.

The letter closes with a sideways compliment to Morris: going away to school, she observes, is the only reliable way to make a person answer letters promptly — though he is perhaps not the best judge of her improvement, since she answered him more quickly even last winter. The needle, lightly deployed.

Historical Notes

Church Attendance and Moral Guidance
At Margaret Winthrop Hall, religious practice was shaped as much by the preferences of the matron as by formal school policy. While the school was not officially church-affiliated, Mrs. Lee’s attendance at the nearby Episcopal Church made participation the default expectation. Ethel’s letters repeatedly register how “suggestion” operates in practice—guidance that is technically optional, but socially difficult to refuse.

—

Image: Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Historic American Buildings Survey, public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

New here? Start with the Welcome, or navigate the correspondence through the Letters Index.

[TLC-1893-35]

October 19, 1893.

Dear Morris, Alas, I can no longer say I have not been homesick. I had a very severe attack yesterday afternoon – and all because of the wretched Virgil. I couldn’t get a sentence of sense in thirty lines. This morning I ought to be digging away at it, I suppose. Mamma is going home this afternoon. Am going over to Somerville to see her this morning. I wonder if it is worth while to work hard all this year just to go to Wellesley. I hate to study when everyone else in the house is having a good time. It is very foolish in me to groan over my work when a little while ago I was disappointed because I thought I had not enough to do. Please I am sorry that I have said all this egotistical stuff. Now as to your questions.

If I take the N examinations I will leave Cambridge about the twelfth of June. If I do not take them shall leave later, about a week later. Excuse my pen. It, as well as its owner, is in a sputtering mood.

I hardly ever write with a gold pen and do not like to. Did you think my penmanship would be improved by change of pen? I will try and see.

Do you know I haven’t had a word from Bess since I have been here. I think she must write less to Madison and more to Cambridge. Ruth N. sends me lots of advice about not studying too hard. Kind, is she not?

Three evenings a week we twelve girls make curtesies to Mrs. Lee. This school seems to be “finishing school” as well as everything else. The colors, gold and white, are suited to the school in every way. One must study some but one must be ornamental, that is, dressed for dinner. So much time is wasted at meals. Mrs. Lee eats awfully slow and we can’t fold our napkins before she folds hers. There is a marked difference between the writing on the first and last pages, isn’t there?

Yours sincerely,

Ethel Bottum

Editor’s Note

Ethel’s acknowledgment of homesickness arrives just after Morris reflects, in his previous letter, on how students rarely admit to it during their first year away. Having returned to Cornell for his sophomore year, he may be drawing on his own experience. His observation was not directed at Ethel — but it may have felt like permission.

For both of them, this represents a departure. Earlier in the correspondence, each resisted allowing low spirits to assert themselves. In February, when Morris had waited weeks for a letter to arrive, he joked that repeated trips to the post office might have made him mad, but immediately dismissed the idea as "against my principles." Ethel, in turn, in her subsequent letter praised him as "that sensible person who would scorn to have the blues." Between them, composure had become a shared value — part temperament, part courtesy, part care for the other.

But now, something loosens. Ethel allows herself to identify what she has likely been absorbing in smaller increments: the cumulative weight of a new city, a new institution, new expectations, and the sudden absence of family. The letter suggests not a sudden collapse, but a reckoning with pressure she has been carrying quietly.

Historical Notes

Family in Somerville
When Ethel writes of going to Somerville with her mother, she is referring to visits with members of her mother’s family who live nearby. These relatives—her mother’s aunts and uncle—form a small but steady circle of kin in the Boston area. During Ethel’s years in Cambridge, they will provide continuity, hospitality, and a sense of familial ground beyond school. Ethel will come to know this household well, visiting often and eventually riding her bicycle there; individual members of the family will surface repeatedly in the correspondence.

Curtesies
Ethel’s reference to making “curtesies” (now typically spelled curtseys) describes a formal bow or bending of the knees performed as a gesture of respect. By the late nineteenth century, such rituals were commonly incorporated into girls’ schooling as part of social training. Ethel’s offhand mention—three evenings a week, performed collectively—underscores how regimented and time-consuming these expectations could be.

—

New here? Start with the Welcome, or navigate the correspondence through the Letters Index.

[TLC-1893-34]

Oct. 13, ‘93.

Dear Ethel:

It is eight o’clock in the evening and my room mate, being in a “snap course,” has gone to the theatre, while I have to stay home and study. Before doing so though I thought I would not let such a good opportunity to write to you pass.

I asked you in my last letter if you didn’t get out of school ‘till July 1st. You did not give me any answer to this. Is your Mother with you yet? If she is please remember me to her. You echo my sentiments exactly in your last letter, in that you consider a letter only as legal tender for one in return. Now, I have always considered mine in the same light. I always feel that I am buying a letter in return when I write, but in the case of writing to you have always thought that I was getting a good deal the best of the bargain. The worst of it is if we both have this idea, there won’t be found much high art in the letters from either end.

I am glad the box got there O.K. By the way was it all right or was the candy all “squished” into a homogeneous mass of pulp? This is usually the result when anything is “sent.” I hope you did not have to pay any express charges. If you did it was robbery as they were paid at other end.

Do you write with a gold pen? If not, do you like to? That makes the fourth question don’t it? You kindly answer these and I won’t ask any more for a long time.

It is funny, don’t you think, that people going away to school will not own up to being homesick during the first year, but after that, will acknowledge that they were a little so.

We have had a little fire in our room for a little excitement you know. Burnt a big hole in the carpet, two lace curtains, a waste basket, a spring shade, an umbrella and scorched the end of the desk I am writing at. Also burnt the window frame a little. And all this from a tiny little match thrown into the waste basket. We have it cleaned up now, but you have no idea what a lot of dirt a little blaze can make.

I will not repeat the usual formula about there not being any news, but will simply say Good night from

your most sincere friend,

Morris Benton.

Editor’s Note:

Morris's letters often lean more into humor than Ethel's, but they are equally attentive. Here, he reflects directly on the economy of correspondence, describing letters as “legal tender” — something given in exchange, something earned. His playful worry that this mutual accounting might result in “not much high art” is telling: for Morris, writing is both transaction and craft, affection and discipline.

This letter also quietly responds to Ethel’s concerns. He asks after her school calendar, her mother’s arrival, and even her writing instrument — questions that register both care and curiosity. His observation about homesickness — unacknowledged at first, admitted only later — echoes Ethel’s own careful calibrations of feeling, even as neither of them names the emotion directly.

The letter closes, characteristically, by resisting convention. Rather than claiming a lack of news, Morris substitutes a small domestic drama: a fire caused by a single match, catalogued with precision and a perfectly straight face. The gesture feels emblematic — attention paid not to grand events, but to the texture of daily life, each scorched curtain and ruined umbrella counted and set down.

New here? Start with the Welcome, or navigate the correspondence through the Letters Index.

[TLC-1893-32]

Cambridge, Mass.

Oct 1, 1893.

Dear Morris,

I was ever so glad to get your letter. I wasn’t feeling homesick: but Milwaukee seemed so nice, and the first of July so far off, before the post-man came. This is the first letter I have written in my room. My roommate, Mable Conover whom I like very much, and I have made our room very homelike. Your photograph stands on my desk and the girls are very inquisitive. First they say, “To whom does it (The antecedent of “it” is sixteen words back) belong?” then “Is he your brother or friend?”

Everything is very nice here. It isn’t boarding-school like a bit. Mrs. Lee, the matron, is motherly and very kind and gentle. The parlors – downstairs – are pretty; the table in the hall is covered with the latest magazines, and meals are served well. There are maids to do all the work, except the studying. It is just as nice as home with two exceptions, it isn’t “home” and it isn’t in Milwaukee. Every Fri night is Reception Evening. Last Friday was awfully stupid. Why isn’t Cornell Harvard so that you could have called instead of a Harvard student. There is a very good tennis court in the yard. The net is a very poor one and there aren’t any balls, but it is a very simple matter to get balls.

We have not had any lessons to prepare so far, except in English. There are about a hundred in the school if one counts the kindergarten. Here in the Hall, there are eleven girls, the chaperon and Mrs. Lee. The eleventh girl has not yet arrived. I am not superstitious about sitting thirteen at the table and I wonder if anyone here is. The girls have gone to church to the Episcopal Church – This is not supposed to be a church school, but, as Mrs. Lee attends the Episcopal Church, she suggests that we do the same. In fact, Mrs. Lee never commands she merely suggests. Mabel said her conscience would not permit her to stay at home with me and she has left her rings for me to guard, as she could not get them on with her gloves. I feel quite big with them (the diamonds) on.

I have obeyed you and have written soon. Now you must practice what you preach and write me soon.

Yours sincerely,

Ethel B

Editor’s Note

This letter survives with Morris’s handwritten notations visible on the page. In most letters his markings simply underline words or phrases he intends to answer. Here, in a rare instance, he corrects Ethel’s phrasing — transposing her wistful “Cornell Harvard” to “Harvard Cornell.” The joke beneath the correction is clear: Ethel wishes Cornell were Harvard, so Morris might have called on Reception Evening rather than a Harvard student. It is a small editorial moment, and a glimpse of a relationship in which writing itself is shared terrain.

Ethel’s roommate, Mabel Conover, appears here for the first time. She will become one of Ethel’s closest friends during the boarding-school years and beyond — the two visit each other’s homes, and a portrait photograph of them together survives in the family archive. For now, Ethel is guarding her rings while she attends church, wearing the diamonds and feeling, as she puts it, quite big with them.

New here? Start with the Welcome, or navigate the correspondence through the Letters Index.

[TLC-1893-28]

Sept. 24, 1893

Dear Morris,

I am sitting in the middle of a feather bed, an old-fashioned bed made out of long cork screwy pieces of wood, in a white house with green blinds, in the small town of Bradford, about thirty miles from Boston. Doesn’t that first sentence remind you of the house that Jack built.

This morning, after the breakfast of baked beans which I detest, I took a long walk past the pretty new houses, the pride of the town, and into the country. I wish that Dolly, you and I could explore that road. It was just beginning to be interesting, when I stopped to rest before turning back. I picked a few of some farmer’s grapes but they were not quite ripe. The low stone wall, which is the most common fence here, made a very comfortable seat and I, halfway up a hill, had a very pretty view. The green meadows sloping gradually down to the Merrimack River, across the River the shoes-factories and houses of Haverhill, the round hills between Bradford and me. And then when I turned directly around the trees growing all the way up to the top of the hill. Everything was summer like except the clumps of ferns, the woodbine and poison ivy. The ferns are beautiful I think, shading from a brilliant yellow to a dark brown. While I “wool-gathered” in the warm sun, I heard snatches of a song and discovered that a man was whistling at work in the fields below me. He was really at work on Sunday, committing a most unpardonable sin in the minds of the good people of Bradford and I was committing a worse sin in being glad to see him work. It seemed a little of Milwaukee somehow to see the man working. I don’t know why.

Do you know, I hate Boston. My reasons are not very clearly defined but I hate the City. They name the streets in the most idiotic manner. I look at a sign. It reads “Broadway.” I am anxious to learn the names of the streets. I say Broadway over and over and study the houses. I have now walked a block or two, perhaps three. I cross a very wide street. I continue on Broadway – as I suppose. I glance at a sign. It reads “Main St.” and I become a little discouraged in acquiring the names of the streets. The suburbs of Boston name their streets in the same way.

Yesterday morning I drove over to Cambridge. I saw the matron of Margaret Winthrop Hall and went through the house. It is very pretty and homelike. I received more information concerning my roommate. Her name is Miss Colover, no, Conover. A brother of my Grandfather visited here today. He is a great character. He was accustomed, when younger, to jump over chairs in prayer meeting “while very happy” as he said. He said such funny things. I do wish you could talk to him, or rather hear him talk. His face is perfectly flat, his eyes are very small and twinkling and his voice is indescribable. He says “spile” for “spoil” and uses mixed metaphors very often, for his speech is extremely flowery. He got into trouble once because he said in a church meeting “the two brethren just departing are two rotten spokes of the gospel wheel.” And when the parson remonstrated with him he said he considered he got that light (about the brethren) straight from God. The parson then said nothing more.

I have counted seven men on wheels riding by while I have been writing to you. If my fairy god mother should appear my first wish would be a wheel ride out to Stonewood, but she won’t appear. This is a very long letter for a busy person like you to read through. But you may skip parts, if you choose, and I won’t be vexed.

Yours Sincerely

Ethel Bottum.

Editor’s Note

Ethel’s maternal grandparents, Augustus Franklin Bailey and Melinda Dam Tewksbury, had recently returned to Bradford, near where both had grown up. Augustus had spent his career as an itinerant Methodist minister — a life of frequent moves that shaped Caroline’s upbringing in lasting ways.

Ethel writes this letter from their home, thirty miles from Boston, a few days before she begins the school term at the Gilman School in Cambridge. She is sixteen. She has never lived away from home.

The archive from this period is uneven. Many of Morris’s letters no longer survive, but his presence is felt in Ethel’s responses — in the questions she answers, the jokes she extends, the shared longings she assumes without explanation. Reading this section of the correspondence requires listening not only to what is said, but to what is answered.

This is a letter of freedom written just before her freedom narrows.

Historical Note

Ethel’s Great Uncle: The "brother of my grandfather" Ethel describes is Horace Newton Bailey (1833–1915), Augustus Bailey's only surviving brother. A Civil War veteran, he was in his sixties in 1893. Ethel's portrait preserves him in a way official records cannot.

—

Image: An 1850 lithograph of Haverhill, Massachusetts from Silver Hill. Engraving by Gustavus Pfau via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

New here? Start with the Welcome, or navigate the correspondence through the Letters Index.

[TLC-1893-27]

The following letters form a small August set: three notes exchanged after a summer of shared time, but before the more serious separations of the fall semester. After weeks spent in one another’s company, Morris and Ethel return to letter writing again — now with an unapologetic familiarity.

LETTER 1 — Morris, August 9: In Transit

Park Avenue Hotel / New York

Aug 9, 1893

Dear Ethel:

Nothing of particular interest has happened since we arrived here, but I thought I would send this to give you my address so you could – if it should please you to do so – write and tell me how everything is getting along there. We are staying at the hotel that you see at the top of this page (I mean the picture of it) now but will probably leave for the sea-shore to-morrow or next day. I would have sent you my address sooner if I had had one to send, but we have been in an uncertain state and could not tell where we would be the next day. As I said we are going to try a certain seaside hotel and if all is salubrious will stay there but alas – it may not be in the aforementioned condition of salubritiousness, if such be the case I suppose we will come back here and again make it a starting point for various cruises after summer board; the like of which we have been doing, yea even up to the present moment. Come to think of it although I am writing this with the express purpose of giving you my address, the best I can do is to give you my “down-town” address viz: namely: to wit:

% L.B. Benton

28 Centre St.

New York N.Y.

for reasons mentioned before.

It is lonely here so far. I miss especially our rides and drives, wouldn’t half mind being at “Froschburg” at the present moment if the person who helped give the place this name was also there. When you write – and don’t be too long about it either – (you see I am not so humble as I was at the beginning of this) tell me all about “corruptions,” the Hastings “Gang,” etc. also how much that Columbia is exercised. We have dinner at six, and as it is now 6:15 I think I had better stop. It sometimes causes trouble in families if certain members are late to meals (?).

Yours most sincerely,

Morris Benton

LETTER 2—Ethel, August 12: At Ease

Milwaukee, Wis.

August 12, 1893.

Dear Morris,

For this afternoon, at least, Corruption is safe. She is playing tennis with Genevieve, Charlie and B. Wardsworth. This morning I won a set from Bess, Kenneth and the wind 13-11. In my wild joy over the victory I jumped over the net, or started to, when Bessie’s shocked face recalled my dignity. Charlie K looked rather queerly for a moment. I have been oblidged to tell you this in self defense for Charlie K’s yarns are to be dreaded. He will make it much worse than it was.

Just think! Bess rode out to Stonewood (Froschburg is a place that only you and I can go to) yesterday morning. We were very thirsty and couldn’t get a drink. The grass has been cut which accounts for the discovery and robbery of our tin pail. Today has been a perfect day for cycling, just right as to temperature and owing to a recent rain the roads are fine. Bess and I intended to ride this morning but her handle bar which has been cracked for a long time became apart. She tried to use Ray’s handle-bar but then found there wasn’t space enough left to mount. I am awfully sorry that Bess can’t ride her wheel for we were going to ride a little farther every day until she could ride as far as I could. Since Gina has been home I have not read much but have finished The Mill on the Floss and The Inner House and begun Romola.

Most of the “Hastings Gang” must be away on vacations for I haven’t heard them mentioned for a long time. Charlie is trying to convert our Corruption, I think. He is interested in a good cause and I think should be encouraged. All your plans to guard against Genevieve’s corruption were not necessary for Gina considers the boys of the “Gang” as “Spoys”. Spoy is equivalent to chump and is derived from s-boy. S stands for salt, sugar and sawdust, of which the boy in general is supposed to be composed. Gina and I play tennis at the 23^rd St. court quite often. It is lots of fun. “It” is ambiguous but it is better so, for I don’t know what I meant was fun. Surely not the effect of a quarter of an hour spent there. On leaving, Gena and I shut our teeth together, look at the sidewalk and stride along fiercely. This is a guard against gossip or scandal. The end of both afternoon and paper approaches. Please give my love to your father and mother.

Yours sincerely,

Ethel Bottum

LETTER 3—Morris, August 18: By the Water

Larchmont Manor

Aug 18, ‘93.

Dear Ethel:

I received your letter dated Aug 12 and postmarked the 14^th, last evening, looks as though somebody had carried it around in their pocket for a while don’t it?

We are settled down here on Long Island Sound for a week or two with nothing to do but swim and loaf, the latter of which, notwithstanding my great and extensive experience (you know how well I am qualified) is a rather hard job sometimes. I sit and watch the wild waves and at times – when there is nothing else to do – wonder what they are saying. The principal trouble with these meditations lately is that owing to there being very little wind the waves are not over robust. We have been having elegant weather for cycling here also. I suppose it will get hot as soon as I get home. As things stand now I guess we will be home on the 1^st of Sept, or maybe a day or two sooner. I haven’t had a game of tennis since I left. There is a court here but nobody seems to play on it, probably don’t know how.

I am very sorry to hear of the loss of our pail, what will we do about it? What did you think of The Inner House? You only mentioned having finished it in your letter. I am surprised to hear of your hilarity on winning that tennis set because you are so painfully dignified (usually) when you are with me, glad to see this improvement. When did you feel the first symptoms?

I was given the job of hunting up our rooms, and my brain has been in such a state of conglomeration, deciding that I don’t consider myself responsible for anything any more, so excusing everything believe dass ich treulich dein bin

Morris Benton

Editorial Note

Across these August letters we can sense a shift in tone. After weeks spent together in Milwaukee, riding bicycles, playing tennis and enjoying their mutual friends, Ethel and Morris have arrived at a new level of comfort with each other.

Morris writes to provide an address — but his letter resists simplicity. Plans remain provisional. Locations change. The address he ultimately offers — his father’s downtown office — is a stable point of contact rather than a reflection of where he himself will be. Despite this logistical uncertainty, Morris’s emotional tone is no longer tentative. He allows himself to say that he is lonely. He names what he misses — shared rides, private places, familiar rhythms — without apology or self-correction. He asks Ethel to write plainly and even insistently, noting with humor that he is “not so humble as [he] was at the beginning.”

Ethel’s reply confirms that this shift is mutual. As always, her letter moves with ease through tennis matches, cycling mishaps, gossip, and neighborhood theater — but now she echoes back to Morris the language they have begun to share. She writes as if she no longer feels the need to manage how she appears within her personal world. Bodily movement, exuberance, and pleasure are described without defensiveness. Even moments of restraint — the fierce walk home, the guarding against gossip — are rendered knowingly, as shared understandings rather than looming threats.

The language between them is now fully established. Nicknames, invented terms, and private geographies appear without preface. Losses become “ours.” Places are renamed and claimed together. Intimacy is no longer tested or performed; it is assumed.

By the time Morris writes again from the water, his tone has loosened further. He loafs, watches the waves, wonders idly what they might be saying. He teases Ethel and writes as though the connection between them can now bear lightness as well as feeling. Even his closing line — “believe that I am faithfully yours,” offered in German — arrives lightly, almost offhandedly, a statement of fidelity placed on the page without ceremony or demand.

Read together, these letters mark a transition. The careful calibrations of earlier months give way to a mutually inhabited space, settled enough to carry honest feelings with trust and confidence.

Less than a week later, on August 25, 1893, Ethel Bottum turns sixteen.

Historical Notes

Morris to Ethel — August 9, 1893

The Park Avenue Hotel, near Grand Central Depot, was a large, modern hotel designed for travelers in transit rather than long-term residence — an appropriate backdrop for a letter shaped by provisional plans and shifting locations.

Linn Boyd Benton, Morris’s father, maintained a downtown business office at 28 Centre Street, near New York’s civic and legal district. Providing this address gave Morris a reliable mail point while the family moved between hotels and seaside resorts.

Ethel to Morris — August 12, 1893

Stonewood — which Ethel and Morris privately call Froschburg — lay roughly 10 to 12 miles northwest of downtown Milwaukee, near the Menomonee River valley. By bicycle, the ride would have taken about an hour each way on late-19th-century roads: long enough to feel adventurous, private, and physically demanding.

Morris to Ethel — August 18, 1893

Larchmont Manor, on Long Island Sound, was a fashionable seaside community offering swimming, boating, and summer leisure to upper- and upper-middle-class families.

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Image: Wikimedia Commons, Westchester, Double Page Plate No. 16 (1893), from the New York Public Library Digital Collections.

New here? Start with the Welcome, or navigate the correspondence through the Letters Index.

[TLC-1893-25]

May 23, 1893.

Dear Morris,

There isn’t anything half so nice as a Columbia Pneumatic. I am glad you are coming home soon, for I do want to take a big ride. My vacation began two days ago. Everyone thinks me very lazy to stop school when there are only two weeks of the school term remaining. Do you know I can’t decide which of the two saddles. I have been trying the newer one I want. Which do I? In my endeavors to settle this all important question I am growing thin. Perhaps before I become a living skeleton I will toss up a penny.

The Sigma Delta of Mil. Col., which I was foolish enough to join, gives a dancing party this week at the Athenium. The sad fact is that I don’t want to go, and have really got to go. Hence I am as cross as two sticks. Besides we are housecleaning. The commotion is very slight, however, compared to all last summer. Old Mr. MacDonald is going too far with his possessive case. It used to be “our house.” Now it is “our girl has gone out on her safety.” There is consolation even in this for he might say “our safety” and the beautiful glistening Columbia in “our safety house” must be entirely mine. The new wheel goes so very easily.

There are two awfully bad girls in Mil. Col. The Faculty say they are the worst in the school. Last week they made a dummy and dressed it in Hattie B’s coat and hat. It was made during school hours and placed in the study hall while the teacher in charge was not there. They were not punished for this but for their next actions, at least, so the teacher said. You never thought I was so bad as to get unsatisfactory in deportment and all for making and remaking a dummy. Did you?

The Circle Club tennis-court, to which I still belong (ambiguous, I know) is on the corner of 23rd and Grand Ave. I am going over to the 29th St. court now, so

Good-bye

Ethel Bottum.

Editor’s Note

This letter is deceptively casual. Ethel moves quickly from bicycles to social duties to school discipline, but a steady throughline runs beneath it: choice, ownership, and resistance to being managed—by institutions, by expectations, or by language itself.

The bicycle dominates the letter not as novelty but as certainty. The question of saddles is framed as absurdly consequential, and the joke lands because it is only half a joke. The “beautiful glistening Columbia” is not symbolic so much as claimed. When Ethel pushes back against Mr. MacDonald’s possessive grammar—“our girl,” “our house,” “our safety”—she does so with precision and humor, correcting the record without argument. The wheel, the “safety house,” and the ease of motion all belong to her.

Her account of school discipline is similarly telling. The dummy incident is narrated with mischief rather than defensiveness, and her mock appeal—You never thought I was so bad…did you?—invites Morris into the role of sympathetic witness rather than judge. Deportment, like possession, is treated as something to be negotiated rather than accepted outright.

The letter ends abruptly, in motion, on her way to another tennis court. There is no postscript here—no need for one. Where Morris uses the P.S. to extend the conversation past its formal close, Ethel simply leaves the page. Summer is about to begin, and the correspondence pauses not with reflection, but with forward momentum.

With this letter, the school year ends and the correspondence pauses for summer. When Morris and Ethel resume writing in the autumn, they will be doing so after a season spent in one another’s physical presence, carrying with them the quiet but consequential shifts already underway in these letters. They have been testing language, humor, confidence, and intimacy on the page; over the summer, the letters fall silent, and those experiments will meet lived experience. Next week, The Long Conversation will pause the letters as well, for a closer look at the household Morris is returning to. Before the changes wrought by the summer take hold, it feels worth taking a week’s break to turn our attention to Morris’s parents, who provided the space within which his ingenuity and humor could thrive.

Historical Note:

Pneumatic: “A Pneumatic” is shorthand for a bicycle fitted with pneumatic (air-filled) rubber tires. First appearing in the late 1880s, these tires marked a major improvement over earlier solid (hard rubber) wheels. Pneumatics made riding dramatically smoother, faster, and far less punishing on the body. Before their adoption, cyclists rode on essentially unpadded wheels—an experience often described as jarring and exhausting. The arrival of pneumatic tires helped transform bicycling from a test of endurance into a practical and popular form of transportation, especially for long rides.

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Image: From Cycling History, “Women on the Move: Cycling and the Rational Dress Movement.”

New here? Start with the Welcome, or navigate the correspondence through the Letters Index.

[TLC-1893-22]