Book manuscript- (c) 2009 by William Sims Bainbridge

The high point of Samuel’s intellectual career came in 1856, when he gave a sermon before the Yates Baptist Association in Lyons Hollow that so moved his listeners they had it printed.¹²¹ “The Last Great Shaking” drew its text from the twelfth chapter of Paul’s epistle to the Hebrews, where the Lord said, “Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.”¹²² This was a prophecy. All that could be shaken would be swept away, and all that would remain was unshakable. Samuel explained that this epistle showed “the superiority of the Christian dispensation to the Jewish,” and the shaking of heaven was the dispossession of Judaism from God’s favor. But now, eighteen hundred and fifty-six years later, a second and final upheaval was imminent that would establish Protestantism as the religion of the whole world, sweep tyrannical regimes from Europe and Asia, and end slavery in the United States.

Samuel was only forty-nine when he died, and William was the eldest of six children. His sister Frances had also reached adulthood, and brother Samuel was seventeen. But George was fifteen, Clement was eleven, and Mary was only nine. Thus, Samuel’s early death was a family disaster, and William’s mother would struggle for years with poverty. The family summoned up a powerful will to survive. One sign is the fact that when both of Samuel’s daughters eventually gave birth to sons, both boys received the first name Bainbridge. Bainbridge Colby became Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson, and Bainbridge Cowell achieved a distinguished career in the diplomatic service. William had already committed himself to surpass his father in the ministry, and he aimed to surpass him also as a man of letters.
The Wedding
On September 5, 1866, in the First Baptist Church of Cleveland, pastor Augustus H. Strong united Lucy and William in holy matrimony. When Lucy moved to Erie, it was a town of just fifteen thousand, and their home nestled just east of the public park, on Sixth Street between French and Holland.¹²³ First Baptist was just three blocks away, and William could choose either to walk through the park or stroll past the newspaper office and the Presbyterian church. William’s church was a brick building eighty-two feet square with a corner tower containing a fine sounding bell weighing half a ton. Fine hundred people could fit in the nearly ninety pews, and another two hundred could squeeze in the lecture room where the Sabbath School classes were held.

Lucy’s Brother Henry had moved to Erie when he married Lou Barr, daughter of the president of the Barr, Johnson and Company stove foundry. Explaining that Harry’s penmanship was good, the elder Barr hired him, and after a while Lucy’s father gave him three or four thousand dollars to buy part ownership in the business. Widely known through the west for the Morning Glory Base Burning Stove, the company sold outfits by other manufacturers and perfected Stickney’s Patent Rising Sun Cooking Stove which its advertisements prophesied would “work a complete revolution in the use of cook stoves in this line of trade.”¹²⁴

Harry built a large house on 10th Street between Peach and Sassafras, just four blocks from Lucy’s new home, where he lived well.¹²⁵ He had always wanted to do church work, and now he could teach Sunday School in William’s church where he soon became a trustee. Lucy found Lou to be amiable, loving and devoted, but also a poor housekeeper with neither method nor energy. Despite his prosperity, Harry’s home “always had torn curtains, dirty corners, half kept rooms and the children were in the same state.”¹²⁶ But Lou put a bright ribbon in her hair, played the piano, and Harry seemed happily oblivious to the squalor around him.

Soon after her marriage, Lucy discovered a small secret about her new husband, a secret that would prove to be the first clue of a vast future calamity. William secretly shaved the hair back off his forehead to appear more intellectual. Now Lucy felt ashamed of the contempt she had expressed when she saw brother Harry do the same thing years before.¹²⁷ Two decades later, this tiny shadow of her husband’s intellectual vanity would grow into a vast darkness.

Analysis
At a first approximation, we can distinguish two kinds of religious compensation, primary and secondary. Primary compensation substitutes a compensator for a reward that people desire for themselves. Secondary compensation substitutes a compensator for a reward that a person is obligated to provide to an exchange partner. Often the same compensator may serve both functions simultaneously. But the two can also diverge, and analytically they are quite distinct. A person of relatively little faith, in a religious society, can fulfill obligations ritualistically by going through the proper religious motions when an exchange partner is in need. The exchange partner may not really feel much better, but the obligation has been fulfilled. Similarly, in a religious community a person of whatever degree of faith may pray for a sick acquaintance, and feel confident he or she has taken care of the social obligation, even if the sufferer does not improve.

Conceivably, secondary compensation may be the key factor in the creation and maintenance of religious organizations, even though the sociological literature has concentrated on primary compensation. If religious compensators actually do not satisfy sufferers' needs very well, they might still satisfy their exchange partners' obligations to provide assistance. I am not here asserting that religious primary compensation is ineffective, merely suggesting that much of the success of religious organizations is due to secondary compensation.

A fundamental concept in the sociology of emotions is self-esteem, the feelings of pride or shame people have about themselves.¹²⁸ In exchange theory, self-esteem is a positive evaluation of oneself as a potential exchange partner, and those with self-esteem imagine they are attractive to other people.¹²⁹ Lucy, like her brother Henry, was self-conscious about her appearance, especially about the unusual color of her hair. Although photographs show she was a handsome woman, she was not beautiful. Furthermore, whether correctly or incorrectly she interpreted men's physical attraction as a dangerous and demeaning emotion, not something which could benefit her. Therefore, she could not base her self-esteem primarily on physical attractiveness. Given the self-reliant traditions of her family, she was more ready to base self-esteem on competence, especially in comparison to her incompetent brother, Henry.

Aside from physical attractiveness, a standard arena for female self-esteem was nurturance, competence at taking care of other people. Lucy's mother had become a doctor in part because of her own life-long health problems, but also because she had failed to save her parents and several of her children from disease-caused death. Lucy herself took on the responsibility for tending her sick brother, George, and she fell into deep demoralization when he died. All the religious compensators of her devout Baptist faith could not fully comfort Lucy at the loss of George nor quiet her fear that she, too, was about to die.

At Ipswich, Lucy did several things that handled her grief. They can be described as strategies for getting control over her fate, or ways of expressing personal competency. Although few human beings really have the fortitude to laugh in the face of death, the episode of the mouse funeral reminds us that humor is a fundamental human response to disaster. In writing the one serious poem of her life about her deceased loved ones, Lucy employed the symbolic power of words. In both episodes, Lucy used structured forms of social communication to deal with her own grief, and to give herself confidence that she was competent to live her own life in the face of personal death. One interpretation is that she gained social support for the religious compensators that told her she would still benefit from her investments in her departed loved ones, in Heaven if not on Earth.

However, Lucy had some responsibility to protect several of the people who died near her, beginning with George and her beloved little sister Cora Gussie. In her weeks at the battlefront in Virginia, she took on that responsibility for dozens of wounded soldiers. At the time there was no easy medical cure for typhoid or gangrene. Faith in the Christian afterlife would allow Lucy to feel less guilt, because her loved ones had not lost all at death, but had "gone to their reward." Through sharing her religion publicly, in literature or everyday life, she forced her living associates to agree that the deaths were acceptable or even rewarding, thereby socially legitimating her lack of responsibility for their loss. Thus, she could be free from public shame as well as private guilt.

Lucy's few weeks as a nurse in the Civil War were an intense initiation into adulthood that established an identity as "Sister Ohio" that she would cherish for the rest of her life. Given the lack of sanitary conditions and the impotence of medical technology to deal with loss of blood or the ubiquitous infections, death often followed wounding. Lucy's letters home from the battlefront and her published reminiscences contain sentimental stories of how she provided soldiers with religious compensators as she watched them die. In caring for the men, by means of secondary compensation she fulfilled a responsibility that ultimately rested with the people of Ohio and the government of the United States. Thus she took on a public role that could confer great self-esteem so long as everyone involved expressed faith in the religious compensators.

The next challenge of her life would be gaining a husband. On her way to school in Massachusetts, she had barricaded her hotel door against possible male intruders. As an elaborate prank she had pretended to be the male suitor of one of the other girls, displaying extreme psychological ambivalence. Her escape from the war in Virginia had been precipitated by an unsuccessful sexual assault. Her first proposal of marriage had come from a one-armed veteran whose reeking body she had nursed from death. And the young man she had loved most dearly, her brother George, had died horribly under her care. What could Lucy have felt about the physical touch of a man? What kind of man could she marry? William Folwell Bainbridge was a Baptist minister, and thus the closest to heaven a man could get, at least in the eyes of a Baptist girl.

Chapter 3:

Tenting through the Holy Land

Once Lucy and William had fully settled in Erie, her father gave them a wedding present of incalculable value: a tour of Egypt, Palestine, and Europe. Lucy promised to keep a journal to share the experience with her mother, and a Cincinnati newspaper published it in twenty-six installments. Lucy’s Cleveland cousin, a widow identified only as Mrs. M, accompanied her. They would not be the first members of the family to take a grand tour. Lucy’s beloved brother George had seen England, and William’s cousin, William Watts Folwell, had studied language in Greece and Italy.¹³⁰ But in 1867, very few American clergy had ever seen the land that Jesus trod.

On the voyage to Ireland, Lucy was constantly seasick. “If there is any one place in the world where one feels a complete dependence upon God and their own insufficiency, it is at mid-ocean on a stormy night, when even the sailors are lashed at their posts on deck. At such a time we read the hundred and fourth psalm with more interest and appreciation than we had ever done by the fire-side at home.”¹³¹ This psalm praises the Lord of Nature who “watereth the mountains,” “sendeth forth springs into the valleys,” and caused the great flood to cover the earth in the ancient days of Noah. “The waters stood above the mountains. At thy rebuke they fled.”

The ship reached Cork safely, then Liverpool. A train ride of five and a half hours took them to London, through the park-like green fields of England. Baptist that she was, Lucy was fascinated to see her first English high church service at St. Paul’s. At Westminster Abbey, the tourist guide dragged her away from the ancient coronation chairs, past innumerable tombs, “talking with the speed one could only acquire by having his story so often told, that the tongue says the words without calling on the brain for any help.” At the Houses of Parliament, National Gallery, and Tower of London, Lucy battled other tour guides to see what fascinated her rather than what they wanted to show. Despite its brevity, the rainy trip across the Channel achieved the climax in sea sickness.

In Paris, the Great Universal Exposition was in full swing, trumpeting the glory of Emperor Napoleon III. A dispute with Prussia over Luxembourg had been settled in time for The King of Prussia to attend, in the company of Otto von Bismarck. Fearing war between their countries, the French allowed themselves to be charmed by this ogre, and soon the fashion houses had named a shade of brown ‘Bismarck’ and applied it to silks and satins, parasols and bonnets. A bullet fired by a Polish exile passed between Napoleon III and Czar Alexander as they were riding in a carriage, and during the chief prize ceremony Napoleon learned that his agent, Emperor Maximillian, had been executed in Mexico.¹³²

Lucy entered Paris just in time to see the Sultan of Turkey arrive in full regalia. “Outriders, coachmen, attendants, were all in scarlet and gilt. The trappings of the white horses were scarlet, and they stood motionless, except for the swish of their tails, as rigid as the liveried men standing at the head of each. In the glittering royal coach sat the Empress Eugenie all in filmy, white lace, her hair as fashion decreed, in two long ringlets behind her ears, while upon her head was set a coronet of diamonds. Beside her in the coach the young Prince Imperial stood motionless, a straight boy figure in black velvet with priceless lace about his neck, waiting and watching in quiet dignity for the coming of his father, Napoleon III, and the Sultan of Turkey. When the royal party at last came in sight there was no lack of splendor in the view as His Turkish Majesty appeared in the full pomp and magnificence of an Oriental Potentate.”¹³³ Over the following years, Lucy would read with fascination each step in the fall of the French dynasty: the ignominious defeat of Napoleon III by Bismarck at Sedan; Napoleon’s shameful death in England under too-long-delayed surgery for an immense kidney stone; the eighteen spear thrusts that ended the life of the Prince Imperial in Zululand; finally, the demise of cataract-blinded Eugene half a century later.

Lucy and William did not linger in Paris, and their brief tour of the Lyons cathedral merely confirmed Lucy in her distrust of Catholicism. “Crowning this Church of Notre Dame stands a copper image of the Virgin Mary, with hand ever extending toward the city, as though she said, ‘It was my intercessions which saved you from cholera; worship thou me;’ and the people of Lyons really believe they were so saved. If such is her power, why did she not save from persecution the Christians who, on this very height, went up to God as martyrs for Jesus’ sake?” Scanning the castles and fields from the train to Marseilles, Lucy observed many women laboring heavily, and lazy men lounging about, causing her to reflect upon the improvements in domestic work that such inventions as the laundry wringer had brought to American homes.

Always trying to economize, they carried candles in their satchel, knowing that French hotels charged exorbitantly for light in the rooms. But when they refused a two-franc charge for hotel candles, they were haughtily reminded that they had used hotel candlesticks and the light of the hall when they entered. Even after the four terrible years of the Civil War, many wealthy Americans traveling in Europe acted like princes, and the Europeans could be forgiven for overcharging her countrymen. “A general idea prevails that the Yankee purse has no bottom, and they want to try its depth.”
Egypt
It was the nineteenth of February, when they took the steamship Säid for Alexandria. “The deck was completely covered with Arabs arranged for the night. Where they could have come from; why such specimens of humanity could wish to leave their native land, was a mystery. Huddled together, they lay along the deck appropriated to them, in their peculiar dress — a long, loose sack, of course light colored, or broad striped material, with a huge pointed hood attached; their feet naked, and the head loaded down with several yards of turban. Could our much revered Bible Fathers have resembled such as these? Was Isaac such a dirty fellow as these Egyptians, whose only occupation is getting rid of their little followers? Truly, the plague of flies, grown into fleas, has remained in Egypt unto this day.”

In France, they had discovered the French custom of charging extra for service; tipping was not yet the custom in America. Now in Egypt they felt ready for the Arab custom of baksheesh, a word that can mean the giving of tips, gratuities, and even alms. “The steamers at all ports in this part of the world lie at anchor out from the city, and a traveler must get on shore and to a hotel as best he may. One is completely at the mercy of the worst sort of Arab trickery. Determined in this, our first effort, not to be swindled, a written contract was penciled out and signed. No sooner were we in the little boat than our half French, half Arab guide urged his plea for ‘baksheesh’ extra for the boatman; he was shown his contract. Again at the landing another request was persistently made for the boy to receive a ‘baksheesh,’ and so on to the Hotel de l’Europe a dozen pleas and refusals, until there, he having fulfilled his contract, received the sum agreed upon, and found, for once at least, that a Yankee was too keen for him.”

They were unprepared for the filth, degradation and laziness they saw. Pompey’s Pillar, which seemed in fact to have no connection to Pompey the Great, and the obelisks collectively called Cleopatra’s Needles contrasted with the rude structures that constituted most of the city. Even their supposedly European hotel was a nest of contradictions. “Small iron bedsteads, with their well-arranged mosquito nettings, stand in two corners of the room. The large, chintz-covered lounge, dressing-table and curtains, all correspond. The stand, table and chairs are of European make. The cemented floor, which is continually crumbling, furnishes a complete hiding place for the fleas, which will not wait for ceremony, but immediately commence their guerrilla warfare.”

Lucy’s fascination with death drew her to a native burial service, finding it terribly sad compared with an American interment under green lawns and shady willows. “Closely as possible we followed the irregular straggling procession, who wailed and beat themselves as they heard the discordant music in front. The body was wrapped in a white cloth, tied at the feet, and it was borne on two parallel poles, fastened together over the head. On a stick was the scarlet cap, or tarbish and turban, wound about it, as worn by the deceased. No hedge or fence enclosed this place of the dead; no broad shaded paths and grassy mounds were there; but in the glaring sun we picked our way among tombs of brick and cement.

“At the grave the body was surrounded by about twenty men, either voluntary or hired mourners, who endeavored to pray the soul of the deceased into Paradise. Swaying to the right and to the left, forward and back with each motion, they would wring their hands and exclaim, ‘Ya-Allah, Ya-Allah, Ya-Allah.’ This monotonous service lasted full twenty minutes.

“Seated a little way off were the women, clad in the common blue dress and veil of coarse cotton. In the center of the group was the chief hired mourner, who would raise her bare arms, covered with rude bracelets, and, throwing her handkerchief, declare that the young man now dead had been a good brother, or kind father, or husband. Upon this all would join in a loud wail, pulling their hair and clothes. In the shallow grave men were laying a few stones, where, after a few words from a priest, the body in its winding sheet was thrown rudely in, and the funeral service ended.”

By second-class railway coach they crossed the Nile delta to Cairo, and as they rode Lucy scrutinized an Egyptian fellow passenger. “The only part of her face visible most of the way was a pair of very black eyes. From below them hung a long triangular piece of cloth, over which was suspended a string of coins. Sitting with her feet under her, and her bare arms well tattooed, and her fingers covered with rings, while the nails were dyed a deep blue, she was a picture of indolent content, and only seemed to have ambition enough to smoke her cigarettes.”

For thousands of years the Egyptians had employed the shaduf to irrigate their fields, a bucket suspended from one end of a pole that pivoted in the middle and was weighted at the other end. With disgust Lucy watched men working these primitive devices, imagining that a Yankee would have rebelled. “While an Arab was giving the field a dozen buckets of Nile water, he would have some ingenious invention ready to be patented, by which acres could be watered in the same length of time and with less labor.”

At Shepherd’s Hotel in Cairo, they were charmed by a bright-faced Egyptian boy: “Ma’am, mine be a berry good donkey; he name be Yankee Doodle; you want him? He be a berry good donkey for pyramids; want Yankee Doodle in morning?” To prepare for the trek to Giza, the Bainbridges decided to take a short ride around the Uzbekiah, the extensive garden-centered square beside their hotel. They were not ready for the crush of boys and donkeys. One boy, thinking he was not being noticed, made his donkey rear up on its hind legs pushing its nose within an inch of William's face. He beat it off with his umbrella handle and was too busy to notice that another boy had forced Lucy onto his own beast.

“I was not allowed the time to get used to an Arab donkey saddle, which, by the way, is but a piece of rough cloth stuffed with straw; but my donkey boy’s stick sent me off at a good speed, while a gratuitous whack from a stout Arab helped it on, and down the street I cantered, leaving my party and the boy in the distance. I soon found myself midst camels and carriages, mules and donkeys, and slipping off into the sandy road was the only thing to be done, as stopping a donkey with anything but a stick at its head is impossible, and thus my first ride came to an inglorious end.” The second ride, aboard Yankee Doodle the next day, took Lucy to the great pyramid of Cheops beyond Giza.

Crowds of half-naked men and boys pressed around the group of foreigners, some trying to sell alleged antiques, others asking for baksheesh. William bargained with the local Sheikh, and hired a team to assist them up the four hundred and fifty feet of the great pyramid, two men to help William, three men each for Lucy and her cousin, and one man to carry the lunch. Step by step, they zigzagged up the steep side of the colossal stone monument, resting often. Constantly, the hired men demanded more baksheesh, one even asserting that a lady had fallen off the pyramid the week before because she had lacked such good guides. Lucy was adamant, saying that William was her Sheikh and he had made a firm bargain with the men. “Why do you ask me for money?” she challenged them. “Your women never have any; you never give your wives any money.”

“Humph,” her guide retorted. “Arab wives no gude, dey no need money. You kind a women has all de money; men no hab so much as de womens has.”¹³⁴ This unpleasant conversation was ended by loud cheers as they reached the pinnacle. The vista stunned them. To the west, barren sands stretched away to Libya. To the east, fields rich with cultivation drank the waters of the Nile. Beside them were the pyramids of Chephren and Mycerinus, and in the southern distance they could see other pyramids toward Sakkara. To Lucy’s eye, the Nile shone like melted silver.