Page 122 of Two Wars and a Wedding

Dear Kit,

Don’t think I’ve forgiven you for that nauseating article; I mean to make you pay for that for the next decade at least and possibly longer. You can start by being my bridesmaid. Yes, Holt and I are engaged! I followed your advice and made an honest man of him before he had the sense to reconsider.

I’m not entirely sure who proposed to whom. Let us just say it was a matter of mutual agreement.

Lavinia is planning an elaborate wedding in Boston next June with herself as matron of honor and her favorite Daughters of the American Revolution in tulle with orange flowers as bridesmaids. I’m not entirely sure for whom she thinks she’s planning this wedding as neither Holt nor I intend to participate. We plan to be married very simply in May in Northampton, which is near enough to Springfield that Holt’s older sisters and their numerous offspring can attend. I appear to have acquired three sisters and a substantial quantity of nieces and nephews.

Holt’s father will not be in attendance. He suffered an apoplexy, although it’s unclear whether it was a result of hearing that his son had been masquerading as a desperado—and a rather famous one!—for the past four years or the shock of acquiring a college woman as a daughter-in-law.

I want only you and Ava as my bridesmaids. I promise not to make you wear anything too dreadful—unless you write a mawkish article about romance upon the Seneca, in which case expect sackcloth and ashes, or at least a particularly unbecoming shade of puce. As for the children, Dorothy can come along and pelt people with rose petals or whatever it is flower girls do and Oscar can carry the ring on a little cushion.

I intend this to be the simplest sort of family affair. We’re inviting only family, close friends, some of our fellow sufferers from the Seneca, and the entire faculty of Smith College. Oh, and Ava’s doctor, of course. And perhaps some of the nicer undergraduates. I was thinking it might be nice to have something rather similar to an Ivy Day procession. . . . Wouldn’t it be charming if someone gave an oration in Greek? Or possibly a Greek play, with strophes and antistrophes and a chorus of fifty or so undergraduates. They could be charmingly draped in white chitons and carry flowers.

Holt refuses to wear a toga. I pointed out to him that togas were Roman, not Greek, and it would be a chiton, or, if he’d rather, an exomis.

He modified his response to encompass any kind of skirted garment. This, I suppose, is to be expected when one finds oneself engaged to a lawyer-in-training.

The good thing is that he seems to enjoy it—the training in the law, that is—and he’s far happier parsing contracts and wrangling about precedent than he ever was back when he was chasing bandits, or whatever it was he actually did out on the range. (Apparently the bandits were a brief aberration. Or so he claims.)

My brother is delighted by the match for all the wrong reasons—but it means he was willing to release a number of funds to me without asking too many questions. He believes they’re for my trousseau. I can’t imagine where he got that notion. In fact, they’re for the hiring of workmen and the bribing of officials.

I mean to return to Greece directly after the wedding. (With Holt, of course. I don’t mean to marry him and then desert him before the bubbles have gone flat in the nuptial champagne. He says he can study for the bar exam just as well from a dig in Greece as he can from rooms in Cambridge.) I have an idea of where I might like to excavate, if only I can arrange the correct permits. . . .

I would have liked to have gone this year, but the president has decided to set up a commission to investigate the conduct of the army and their administration, and I’m to be interviewed. They haven’t told me when they intend to call me, but I don’t mean to miss it for the world.

Holt insists I browbeat the president into creating the commission. I did nothing of the kind. I simply, clearly laid out the mistakes that were made and the abuses that needed to be corrected and then allowed him to reach his own conclusions.

You’ll be happy to hear that the president assured me that there will be no recurrence of the sorry affair of the Seneca and the Concho. Official protocols for converting troopships into hospital ships have been sent to those in charge in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.

And no, I did not dictate those protocols to him. I may have made some gentle suggestions and those suggestions may have been incorporated into the final document, but that is not at all the same thing.

I have found the president to be a very reasonable man and am entirely satisfied to leave the matter in his hands—especially now that he has been told exactly what needs doing.

Any reports that I made the president cry are highly exaggerated. He assured me it was only dust in his eye.

Warmest regards,

Betsy

* * *

Report of the Commission Appointed by the President to Investigate the Conduct of the War Department in the War with Spain

February 1899

. . . To two transports in particular, the Seneca and the Concho, general attention was strongly drawn by reports published soon after the arrival of the vessels at New York. The facts were as stated—the ships had too many sick, and the sick had not enough nurses and doctors; medicines and supplies were in insufficient amounts; beds and bedding neither in quantity nor quality such as the sick should have had; the water supply was not pure and fresh. . . .

. . . In the last twenty years the value, the efficiency, and the availability of well-trained women nurses has been demonstrated, and it is much to be regretted that this fact was not fully realized by the medical officers of the army when the war commenced. It is to be remembered though that in military hospitals in the field, women had been employed as nurses, if at all, only to a very limited extent, and there was good reason for questioning whether a field hospital, with a moving army, was any place for a woman. Our recent experience may justly be held to have shown that female nurses, properly trained and properly selected, can be duly cared for and are of the greatest value.

What is needed by the medical department in future is—

1. A larger force of commissioned medical officers.

2. Authority to establish in time of war a proper volunteer hospital corps.

3. A reserve corps of selected, trained woman nurses.

[Excerpts, underlined as shown, found in Mrs. Rutherford’s files. Comments in margin omitted for the sake of public decency.]