Book manuscript- (c) 2009 by William Sims Bainbridge

Will demanded much of his sons, and was very critical of Billy, hounding him to achieve academically. At first Lucy's grandchildren attended very fine New York schools, Friend’s Seminary and the Lawrence Smith School. A surge of meningitis in the city in 1924 prompted Will to move June and the children to Glenheim for a year, where Billy and John attended Public School 16 on North Broadway in Yonkers, while Barbara went to a private school. The next year, Will made disastrous decisions, in his usual decisive manner. Based on acquaintanceship with a doctor who was married to the head of the Foxwood School in Flushing, Long Island, he sent John and Barbara to this rather mediocre institution for four years, which was a stressfully long commute from Gramercy. Will sent Billy to Mohegan, the military academy he himself had attended nearly forty years before, where the marching drill was far higher quality than the intellectual schooling, not realizing that Mohegan was on its last legs and about to fold.⁸⁷⁸

Billy excelled at sports, and with his father’s prodding became an officer.

Sometimes the boys would fence with their dress swords; the scabbards could become dented if they left them on, but the sport was especially dangerous if they took them off. Tall and destined to grow taller than his father, Billy starred in basketball and was able to leap over barrels while ice skating. In the days before electric refrigerators became common, ice cutting on Lake Mohegan was profitable. The men would dig a canal in the ice, then begin cutting off big chunks they would float through it to waiting trucks.⁸⁷⁹

In an effort to make Billy into a doctor, Will dragged him along on visits to the Randall’s Island facilities, to observe surgical operations. In a goiter operation, he told his son to lean forward and see the different parts of the throat as he explained them. “If I touch right here,” he said, pointing, “the man will never speak again.” The number of charity operations done in a day was so great, that there often was not time to clean up fully after one job before another was begun. Will amputated a man’s gangrenous leg, but there was no place to dispose of it, nor time to take it away. Therefore, it was stood in the corner, a bloody stump supported on a dead foot, and it remained there through several other operations.
Lucy's Last Expeditions
When the children were at Gramercy, Lucy would see them practically every day, and she told them many stories about her life and travels. But they were young, and she feared they would not remember after she was gone. Therefore, in her eighty-second year, Lucy completed her final literary project, a brief autobiography titled Yesterdays, which she dictated to her secretary, Lillian E. Foster.

She had twice earlier written sketches of her childhood, once in her early fifties, and once again soon after her grandchildren were born, but now she wrote the story afresh, except for two chapters on her Civil War experiences which she had already published in The Outlook magazine. She selected seven photographs to illustrate her life: the view from her cottage at Warwick Neck, her husband as a young man, Will and Helen as children, Helen in academic gown, herself as Sister Ohio, herself in the Mission Society years, and as frontispiece her three grandchildren. It was for them, she explained, “to keep them in touch with the far-away past, and give them a true understanding of the lives that led up to their lives.”⁸⁸⁰

Well into her eighties, Lucy walked ram-rod straight, tall and thin with a stiff high collar that accentuated her dignity. But age takes its toll on flesh and bone; her vision gradually faded, and every year her health was more precarious. In May 1924, at the age of eighty-two, Lucy fractured her hip. Six very difficult months followed, as she was confined to bed with shock, congestion of the lungs, upset stomach, asthma, and other afflictions. At one brave moment, Lucy told her son, “This must be to some good purpose. Perhaps I was getting too impatient to have my eyes operated upon. The Lord wanted me to wait a little longer when the cataracts would mature, and they could be best removed.”⁸⁸¹

Even so many years after resigning her position with the Mission Society, Lucy still participated in many of its activities and took a personal interest in particular people who came to it for help. This year, through DeWitt Memorial Church, she adopted a poor family consisting of husband, wife and ten children, sending money and clothing at intervals and demanding detailed reports so she could plan the next steps to assist them.

Will went to Cleveland for the 1924 meetings of the American Association of Obstetricians, Gynecologists and Abdominal Surgeons, when quite unexpectedly they asked him to address the banquet. Never at a loss for words he told them about John and Cleora Seaman, their journey westward along the road of life to a thriving village of forty houses clasped between the river and the lake, and he speculated that some of his listeners’ ancestors had worn Seaman and Smith shoes. He explained proudly that his grandmother had studied medicine, hitched electric wires to a bathtub, and established the first physiotherapeutic institute in the middle states. At Woodland cemetery the next day, he tried to recall his grandfather or the time Lucy and he had visited the grave when he was nine. Gazing at the mound of earth, he thought “But they are not there and the road is not ended, not changed, only glorified, and their work is to follow.”

Lucy recovered from her series of illnesses, and despite continued weakness she insisted on embarking on another extensive trip the following spring, before submitting to the eye operations. Attended by an emotionally warm and physically strong companion, Mrs. Hazard, she went west, and by early April she was in San Diego, a guest of June’s cousin, William Wheeler. She rested, gained strength and weight, and enjoyed Pacific breezes from a balcony that overlooked flower gardens which she could not see because of the advancing cataracts. Lucy wired Will and June, “Getting along nicely. Loving wishes to both for happy journey.”

They sailed on the Acquitania of the Cunard line, the first overseas trip for June since their honeymoon more than a decade earlier. The Comité de l’Union Interallié honored Will with a dinner with one hundred and ten medical and military notables. Doctor Tuffier, who had been president of the Interallied Surgical Conferences held in Paris during the war, told the assembled throng that “Dr. Bainbridge’s universal activity astonishes only those who are not acquainted with him and his admirable mother who is a great part of his heart.”⁸⁸² Lucy thrilled as she read June’s letter describing this magnificent tribute. “All the officers were in full uniform, and the scene was gay... Will wore his navy regalia and I was in a lovely new gown of a pinkish orchid satin with a cloudy tulle scarf of the same color and a dainty string of valuable but make-believe pearls that Will has just given me. There were orchids at my plate.”⁸⁸³

Meanwhile, Lucy and Mrs. Hazard took a steamer from San Diego to San Francisco so Lucy could strain for a glimpse of the Golden Gate. Forty-six years earlier she had sailed out from the harbor: “The heavy drapery of fog which has hidden the prospect is lifted, and we get charming views of the city on its several hills, and of Monte Diabolo, passing through the Golden Gate under sunny skies.”⁸⁸⁴ Now it was not the bay mists, but obstructions in her eyes that hid the scene.

In Will’s mind, Lucy’s journey was not a mere vacation but a triumph: “What a wonderful spirit she showed at eighty-three, after double pneumonia and fracturing her hip, to go five thousand miles to San Diego, where on her little balcony, overlooking flower gardens, which she could not see, and feeling the breezes from the Pacific, although she did not have the vision to see the ocean, for growing cataracts were pulling down the curtain! There she has grown stronger and gained in weight, but her eyes have not improved. She went to San Francisco by steamer to get a glimpse of the Golden Gate again before sailing from there for New York. I believe firmly that all things are working together for good for those in the front rank, of which in loving work and service for others my mother marches.”⁸⁸⁵

When they left San Francisco, they sailed south to pass through the Panama Canal, a waterway that had not existed when Lucy took her first world tour. On board, she became friendly with a fellow passenger, the famous deaf and blind author Helen Keller, who had just completed a grueling fund-raising tour for the American Foundation for the Blind, in the company of her teacher, Anne Sullivan Macy, and her secretary, Polly Thomson. Lucy and the new friend enjoyed the modern facilities of Balboa on the Canal, where Lucy sent a telegram to Will, and exotic Havana. When they reached New York, and the family greeted Lucy at the dock, she exclaimed, “I want you to meet my new friend.”

Communicating by spelling out letters with her fingers, augmented with a few indistinct high-pitched spoken words, Helen Keller told Will, “Your mother is a wonderful woman who has been a great inspiration to me.”⁸⁸⁶ Helen had been an inspiration for Lucy, as well, testimony to the possibility of having a full life without benefit of sight. Lucy underwent a preliminary operation, rested at home a few weeks, then received further surgery that restored part of her vision. Helen Keller became Will’s patient, and years later she would stand in the reception line at Barbara’s coming-out party, feeling the faces of the guests with her hands as a way to know them.

On her eighty-fourth birthday, Lucy reminisced with her son. “She spoke of Civil War days — Clara Barton, Sister Ohio, Lincoln; no X-rays; no nurses; amputations; gangrene. Ingenuity of man has increased terrors of war; but inventive genius has lent itself to discover remedial agencies.”⁸⁸⁷ Despite her terrible physical decline, she had finally found complete joy. With her son's help, she had erased all dishonor, and the dark days were buried in the past. She was the last of her generation; brother Henry had died in 1920, and Charles in 1923.⁸⁸⁸

As Lucy aged into her ninth decade, many health problems beset her: the broken hip, double pneumonia, the blindness from cataracts and three operations that largely restored her eyesight. She refused to surrender, and she asserted her vitality by taking a trip to the south. But near her eighty-fifth birthday in Augusta, Georgia, she suffered a devastating stroke. Partially paralyzed, she could not say a word.

The family rallied around. At Mohegan, Billy promised to think about his grandmother every evening at 9:45, and if she would think of him at that same moment their love could make contact.⁸⁸⁹

From Muhlenberg College, Will wrote his mother about her nephew and niece, Walter and Gussie Seaman, the children of poor brother Harry. After earning his Master’s degree at Columbia, Walter became the school’s Spanish instructor. With Gussie and Walter in attendance, Will spoke to the college faculty about cancer, about spirit, and about science. “There is a scientific skepticism that is legitimate for it is a safeguard. But there is a skepticism that is a malignant disease: it eats to the very vitals, and takes away from men and women the best that education, philosophy, science, and everything else put together can give them” This was skepticism about God and the truths of Christianity.

He praised the college for requiring every student to read the Bible and to pray. Then he quoted, “‘Kindle your fires from overhead wires, and call on the power at will.’ Whether it be electrical or spiritual, the power has never been seen, cannot be defined, only described and determined by the phenomena associated with it.”

After the lecture, he wrote Lucy, “It will make you happy to know that President Haas came over to me, put his arm through mine, and said in a low aside: ‘We have all fallen in love with your cousin. My only concern is that we shall keep him.’ I told Walter to hold off paying what he still owed us until next year, at least, and to try to go abroad next summer for another semester in Spanish, so that he could get his Ph.D. degree. With that, he could try for the head of a department and be fixed for life.

“At breakfast, yesterday morning, I told them that your birthday is on the eighteenth, and I wanted to give them something in honor of that. And so, in your name, I gave them each five dollars. The College life and contacts have done much for them, as they did at Hobart. Gussie and Walter are looking better and dressing better.”⁸⁹⁰

For many days Lucy could neither speak nor swallow. Then, someone showed her a newspaper. Struggling to express a thought to prove her mind was still intact, she responded with a single word — a word that spoke volumes about the rich life she had experienced. The word was China.⁸⁹¹

Recovery was painfully slow and incomplete, but she returned to Gramercy, living now in an apartment on the seventh floor that had good light and air. Practically every day, her grandchildren would come up to visit, and they knew that if they got her on their side for something they wanted to do, they would stand a much better chance with their father.

Will prepared to attend the fourth military medical congress in Warsaw, and Lucy was proud to see a photograph in the Herald Tribune of Polish Minister Jan Chiechanswski pinning the officers’ cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta on his chest.⁸⁹² He felt he should stay with her, but over and over she insisted, “I want you to go, it is best.”⁸⁹³ The day after Will sailed, June sent a three-word radiotelegram: “MOTHER EXCELLENT LOVE.” He penned his reaction on the back of it: “Worried about mother after my departure. This wire great relief. Yet, she always has seen clearly what is for the best, and I was comforted by the thought that she would rebound from temporary sadness.”

Two days later, Lucy dictated a letter to Will that proved her continuing interest in life. She spoke of roses and lilies of the valley, visitors she had received, a cold chill that made her pleased to have a fire in the grate, and a visit she planned to make. Sensitive as always to her son’s tendency to work himself into exhaustion, she said she was glad he was getting some rest.

While Will was in Paris, a medical emergency struck at Gramercy Park. Little Barbara was gripped by a terrible pain. Will’s colleague Dr. Meeker diagnosed acute appendicitis, then complained that he would have to do the operation for free because he could not charge a colleague. When news reached Will, he exclaimed, “Poor dear little girl when she needed her daddy he was away! Then poor June and the anxiety and Mother B.”

He read again the letter Barbara had written before her illness, describing her feelings about his departure: “I was proud of my dad. Always have been. Some day we’ll all be sailing together in Paris, won’t we? Won’t it be fun? Grandma is fine. She went out riding for a long time this afternoon. Worlds of love, Skeewee.”⁸⁹⁴ Frequent telegrams convinced him that she was recovering well from the operation, and there was no evidence of infection. Soon, “Skeewee” wrote, “Don’t worry about me. I’m feeling fine. Dr. Meeker, Dr. Giles and Dr. Duff and Dr. Terril all come and see me every day.”⁸⁹⁵ Lucy wrote, “I feel that Barbara is well now. The last dressing came off today. Saturday, June and John are planning to drive up to Mohegan to get Billy. June is very busy getting the children ready for camp.”

The day before her letter, Lucy had helped June turn forty-eight. “She had a nice birthday yesterday. Mrs. Wheeler sent her a beautiful leather jacket, books. Con sent her two dozen roses. The children tied balloons on the chairs and decorated the dining room elaborately. She got your cable and one from Ernest. I gave her $40.00 and asked her to buy something when she got to Paris. I celebrated her birthday by driving over to Sheepshead Bay and on to Coney Island where we had our pictures taken. I stood the trip so well that I felt very much encouraged, and have felt no ill effects today.”⁸⁹⁶ She is just barely visible in the picture taken of her that day, sitting on the back seat of an enclosed car, as chauffeur Keller stands proudly by his engine and her nurse holds the rear door open so the camera can record a dim image. When Will saw the photo he was sure it had been taken “so as to prove to her boy, way over seas in Poland, that she was getting better and really enjoying things and that he must not worry.”

Lucy kept informed about world events, such as the first direct flight across the Atlantic. “The excitement over Lindbergh is greater than ever here. I hear nothing else! He will soon be in Washington and then in New York. I am not going to Eagle Rest until he comes. The papers say he has carried himself so well that he has won the admiration of the world. Keller tells me that Henry Ford has made him an offer of several million dollars to take charge of his aeroplane factory. It does not sound reasonable to me.

“I am feeling so much better. Tomorrow I plan to go for another drive. Mrs. Hazard spilled a large egg nog all over me today. Fortunately I had on an old robe. Half of it went in her lap. I laughed very hard, it made such a mess. Everything is all right here. Barbara looks fine. I spent an hour with her this afternoon. John is devoted and waits on Barbara every minute. All going well. Have a good rest. You need it badly.”

Will helped Lindbergh celebrate his triumph in Paris, then travelled to Rome where he presented a copy of the new Italian translation of his book on cancer, Il Problema del Cancro, to Mussolini.⁸⁹⁷ “Bainbridge,” Mussolini said, “You in America quarantine against smallpox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and other diseases. But when I read one of your newspapers, with its gruesome stories of crime, its indecent sex stories, I realize you do not guard against one thing, and that is the sewerage of civilization.”⁸⁹⁸

Her Final Year
At the end of July, 1927, Lucy was at Eagle Rest in New Preston, Connecticut, and on her behalf a cable was sent to Will then still in Europe: “Ideal.” This single word was part of a simple family code drafted to save telegram per-word charges, meaning “Really enjoying and gaining day by day.”⁸⁹⁹

The house where she stayed was constructed of rubble masonry, and while she and a Mission Society member were sitting on the porch the visitor commented, “Wasn’t this house wonderfully built? It’s like our family of Mission Society workers — of so many different kinds and yet all necessary and all fitted together.”

Lucy replied, “Don’t forget that they have a good foundation. Christ is their foundation.”⁹⁰⁰

Lucy's hearing was nearly gone, so visitors were required to shout into a tube held up to her ear. Her speech remained extremely labored, and she had lost much of the control over the muscles that operated her mouth, sometimes letting saliva drool. As therapy for her hands and mind, a doctor had taught her an exercise where she wiggled her fingers as if playing the piano. The grandchildren would shout into her listening tube for her to play the piano, and the fingers would wiggle vigorously.

Many visitors came, and often they would read to her, yelling the precious words of poems as if they were stockyard announcements. When one spoke the words of George Eliot, Lucy’s thoughts returned half a century to the analysis of Eliot that earned her stature in the cultural life of Providence, and her mind reached forward to her own death and the possibility of existence beyond: “O may I join the choir invisible of those immortal dead who live again in minds made better by their presence: live in pulses stirred to generosity, in deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn for miserable aims that end with self, in thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, and with their mild persistence urge man’s search to vaster issues. So to live is heaven: To make undying music in the world, breathing as beauteous order that controls with growing sway the growing life of man.”⁹⁰¹

When Lucy returned to Gramercy she said, “I want to go home.” Will chose to interpret this to mean his mother wanted to go to Heaven. “That is just like you to want to go somewhere else just as I have unpacked your trunk,” he replied.⁹⁰²

On Lucy’s eighty-sixth birthday, the ladies who had served with her long before at the Mission Society gathered at Gramercy, and shouted praise into her hearing tube: “And we her friends have felt the greatness of her soul, when as our leader, in the service of the Master, we ministered to those for whom He gave Himself. And happier lived, and served because of her. Thank God for her! Thank God!”⁹⁰³ Harry Burleigh sang Lucy’s favorite melodies in his clear baritone.⁹⁰⁴

Rushing off to an American Legion meeting, Will asked Lucy for a message to include in his speech, and together they assembled a few words that linked episodes of her long life to the theme of preparedness: “At the end of the Civil War they said no more wars; they said the same at the end of the Spanish American War, and they are saying the same today. Tell the patriotic society and any other body of thinking people that the end is not yet. Be ready.”⁹⁰⁵

As far back as 1893, she had written: “Our longing is for a country home of our own, accessible to New York, which we can use and control; a house which has a wing fitted up for winter use, to which a tired worker may go for a few days of pure air and quietness.”⁹⁰⁶ After Will married, they definitely planned to buy a country home, partly to provide healthy summers for Lucy’s grandchildren, and partly to satisfy her longing for a place of peace. But the Great War intervened, and Will’s international responsibilities diverted their attention from this plan.

On a Friday in the early spring of 1928, Lucy called for her son, and with the greatest difficulty she spoke to him about the country place they had thought about before the war. “I want you to do something for me. I won’t be here very much longer, and want to have a little farm in the country, so that the children can be around me and we can be in closer touch. I want it near enough so that you can come up, and where I can be with June. I want a little house with a view. I cannot see a great deal, but want to see all I can. Have maple trees around it — a typical New England house, white, with green blinds, on a hill, and with some animals.”⁹⁰⁷

He asked her where she wanted to go, and she recalled a biblical verse that had long ago become one of their favorites. “I want to go to Bethel.” In the thirty-fifth chapter of Genesis, we read: “And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Beth-el, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto God.” Jacob prepared his household, saying, “And let us arise, and go up to Beth-el.”⁹⁰⁸ Will quoted the paraphrase, “Let us go up unto a place called Bethel and there abide.”

On Sunday, Will and June drove into Connecticut, described Lucy’s wishes to an agent, and inspected various properties. Maple Hill Farm in Bethel was perfect, but it was not for sale. Monday morning Will asked Lucy what sort of a night she had had. “I have not slept a wink.” He asked what was troubling her, and she said, “Nothing. I have been praying all night.” Struggling against her paralysis, she smiled. “We are going to have that place.”